15 files changed, 60927 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/38311-8.txt b/38311-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abe3848
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,18986 @@
+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: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** 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 façade 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 matinée 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 débutante
+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 cafés 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 café. 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 François dance and have a dance with him."
+
+Forbes felt well enough acquainted by now to ask: "Pardon my ignorance,
+but who is François?"
+
+"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 Café
+de Paris or the Pré-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, François, 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 Café 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 Café 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 mêlée 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 café. 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 variés_,
+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 décolletées, 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 _thés 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 fêtes 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 fiancé, 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, hätt' ich früher 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 débutante 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 débutante. 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 cañon 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 René 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 _Thés 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 _purée 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 _purée St.-Germain_ we shall make it
+special--say, about five dollars. I should recommend the _poulet de
+grain aux cèpes_; it is two-fifty per person. You do not really need any
+_légumes_, 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 _thés
+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 rôle of _hôte malgré 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 élan 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 château, 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 André.
+
+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-cochère 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
+châteaux. 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 châtelaine 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 fête. 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 débris 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 château 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 châtelaine 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 soirée,"
+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 rôle 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 mænad 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 fiancé 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 attaché, 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, châteaux, 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--crêpe, 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 attaché. 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 "Tannhäuser," 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 attaché 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 café-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 attaché 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 ægis 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 fête 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 rôle 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 Hôtel 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 à 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 _thés dansants_, and
+musicales, and embassies, town houses, hotels, and châteaux,
+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 _thé
+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 _thé 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 portières
+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 tête-à-tête. 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 antennæ. 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 canapé 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 _purée 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 _à 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, _financière_. 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 José. 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'Âme 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, "_Dépêche-toi! veux-tu te
+dépêcher!_"
+
+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
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38311-8.txt or 38311-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/3/1/38311/
+
+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.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/38311-8.zip b/38311-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aa7226
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-8.zip
diff --git a/38311-h.zip b/38311-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51576a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h.zip
diff --git a/38311-h/38311-h.htm b/38311-h/38311-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c086e64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/38311-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,22939 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ -->
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of What Will People Say, by Rupert Hughes.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 15%;
+    margin-right: 15%;
+}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+h2 {
+    font-size: 140%;
+    font-weight: normal;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .75em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .75em;
+}
+
+.p2 {
+    margin-top: 4em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .75em;
+}
+
+.p3 {
+    margin-top: .75em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: 4em;
+}
+
+p.cap:first-letter { float: left; clear: left;
+    margin: 0 0.1em 0 0;
+    padding:0;
+    line-height: 1em; font-size: 250%; }
+
+
+.ind {
+    margin-left: 15em;
+}
+
+.attr {
+    text-indent: 20em;
+}
+
+.notes {
+    background-color: #eeeeee;
+    color: #000;
+    padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 2em;
+    padding-left: 2em;  padding-right: 1em;
+    margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+}
+
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+table {
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 0%;
+}
+
+.tdl {
+    text-align: left;
+
+}
+
+.tdr {
+    text-align: right;
+}
+
+
+.tdlp {
+    text-align: left;
+    padding-left: 4em;
+    padding-right: 4em;
+
+}
+
+
+.tdc {
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: 75%; text-indent: 0em;
+    background-color: inherit; font-weight: normal;
+    font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
+    text-decoration: none;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+
+.blockquot {
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+
+.smaller {
+    font-size: 60%;
+}
+
+.small {
+    font-size: 75%;
+}
+
+.big {
+    font-size: 140%;
+}
+
+.bigger {
+    font-size: 160%;
+}
+
+
+.bb       {border-bottom: solid 2px;
+    margin-left: 18%;
+    margin-right: 18%;
+}
+
+
+
+.bt       {border-top: solid 2px;
+    margin-left: 18%;
+    margin-right: 18%;
+}
+
+
+.center   {text-align: center;}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+
+.hang {
+    text-indent: -2em;
+    margin-left: 2em;
+}
+
+/* Images */
+
+.caption  {
+    text-align: center;
+    margin-left: 25%;
+    margin-right: 25%;
+    font-size: 80%;
+    margin-top: .25em;
+}
+
+.atext {
+    font-size: 60%;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    margin-left: 35em;
+    text-align: left;
+    margin-top: .25em;
+}
+
+.figcenter   {
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poem {
+    margin-left:10%;
+    margin-right:10%;
+    text-align: left;
+}
+
+.poem br {display: none;}
+
+.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+
+.poem span.i0 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 0em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i2 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 2em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i4 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 4em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+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: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** 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.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="notes">
+<p>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:</p>
+<p>The original print version of this book does not contain a table of contents.
+However, for the reader's ease of navigation through this html version,
+a <a href="#Table_of_Contents">Table of Contents</a>
+has been inserted at the end.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/icover.jpg" alt="cover" />
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a id="ifpc" name="ifpc"></a>
+<img src="images/ifpc.jpg" alt="" />
+
+<p class="atext">See page 405</p>
+<p class="caption">THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL AS TRISTAN AND ISOLDE</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<h1>WHAT WILL<br />
+PEOPLE SAY?</h1>
+
+<p class="center bb bt">
+<span class="bigger"> ?&nbsp; ?&nbsp; ?&nbsp; ?&nbsp; ? &nbsp;?&nbsp; ? &nbsp;?&nbsp; ? &nbsp;?</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">A NOVEL</p>
+<p class="center small">BY</p>
+<p class="center big">RUPERT HUGHES</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller p3">ILLUSTRATED</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i003.jpg" alt="logo" />
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p class="center p2">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br />
+NEW YORK AND LONDON<br />
+<span class="small">MCMXIV</span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center smaller">COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER &amp; BROTHERS<br />
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br />
+PUBLISHED APRIL, 1914
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<table summary="illustrations" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="20">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl hang"><span class="smcap"><a href="#ifpc">They were As Oblivious of Their Peril
+  as Tristan and Isolde</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tdr"><i>Frontispiece</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl hang"><span class="smcap"><a href="#i018">And Now Design Emerged, a Woman Stood
+  Revealed</a></span>  </td>
+<td class="tdr"><i>Facing p. 18</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl hang"><span class="smcap"><a href="#i252">"There's That Other Me Down in the Pool,
+  Watching This Me"</a></span> </td>
+<td class="tdr"><i>"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 252</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl hang"><span class="smcap"><a href="#i480">Her Obstinate Pluck Bewildered Him</a></span>  </td>
+<td class="tdr"><i>"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 480</i></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As Lieutenant Forbes watched the surge of automobiles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The splendid façade 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the cars were gorgeously upholstered, Aladdin's
+divans of comfort and speed; and some of them were deco<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>rated
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This was one of the many things he was to learn.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the
+throng was almost altogether women. And to Forbes'
+eye, unused to city standards, almost all the women were
+princesses.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+The stage never fell far behind, and never quite won
+alongside.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sort of inverted flower-pot of straw&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He grew eager and more eager to see what flower-face
+was hidden under that overturned straw flower-pot of a
+hat.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We had a rotten time," she said. "I was bored stiff.
+You ought to have been there."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You poor old dear, I wish I had a lump of sugar."</p>
+
+<p>It was to the horse that she spoke, but the officer answered:</p>
+
+<p>"The sight of you, ma'am, is enough for um."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pairdon, Miss&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes, seeing his prey escaping, made a mental note
+of the number of her car, "48150, N. Y. 1913."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;48150,
+N. Y. 1913&mdash;the mystic symbol on her chariot of
+translation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And then he felt alarm for her. Already she might
+have met disaster. Her car might have crashed into some
+other&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>That taunting white question-feather might be dabbled
+with red. The face might be upturned to any man's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+view and every man's horror. He was almost afraid to
+follow farther lest his curiosity be more than sated.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The press gradually thickened, and before long it was
+dense and viscid, as if theater audiences were debouching
+at every corner.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A few haberdashers displayed articles of strange gorgeousness
+for men&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+me? Couldn't you postpone the rent or some other debt
+awhile? Perhaps I could be bought on credit."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+to every passer-by and rated their success with heaven
+by their prosperity with strangers.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A cynicism unusual to his warm and woman-worshiping
+soul crept into Forbes' mind. He went along philosophizing:</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"What do the women give in return? They must pay
+something. What do they pay?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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&mdash;all in
+order that the she half of the world should bedeck itself.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;as useless, yet as lovely as music or
+flowers or poetry.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was apparent that many of them were ready enough
+to extend their hospitality. Numbers of them&mdash;beauti<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>ful
+ones, too, and lavishly adorned&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The woman of the bird-of-paradise feather was buried
+in Forbes' mind as deeply as if a balcony full of matinée
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was better that they should meet and endure
+the furnace of emotions and superb experiences in gorgeous
+scenes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Forbes was unsuspicious of the future, and
+unaware of nearly everything except heart-fag and foot-weariness.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;N. Y. 41508. Or was it N. Y.
+85140, or&mdash;what the devil was the number?</p>
+
+<p>He had not brought away even that!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forbes sat in the dark room in an arm-chair and
+muffled his bathrobe about him, watching the electric
+signs working like solemn acrobats&mdash;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&mdash;all the automatic electric
+voices shouting words of light.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He ordered more than he had appetite for, and tried
+not to blanch at the prices.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And now, indeed, he was in New York again&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The room emptied rapidly as the hour for opera and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"What's a good play to see?"</p>
+
+<p>The man named over the reigning successes, and some
+of their titles fell strangely pat with Forbes' humor:</p>
+
+<p>"Romance," "The Poor Little Rich Girl," "Oh, Oh,
+Delphine!" "Peg o' My Heart," "The Lady of the Slipper,"
+"The Sunshine Girl."</p>
+
+<p>"They're mostly about girls," Forbes smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"They mostly always are," the agent grinned. "But
+there's others: 'Within the Law,' 'The Argyle Case,'
+'The Five Frankfurters,' 'Years of Discretion.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon I'd better see 'Within the Law.' I've heard
+a good deal about that."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you have. It's been a sell-out for months."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid not. How many are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"One."</p>
+
+<p>"One? Let me see. Here's a pair ordered by a party
+that hasn't called for them. Could you use them both?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I could put my overcoat in one seat," Forbes groaned,
+at this added irony in his loneliness and penuriousness.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd split the pair, but it's too late to sell the other
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take both." Forbes sighed and waved a handsome
+five-dollar bill farewell.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a id="i018" name="i018"></a>
+<img src="images/i018.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD REVEALED</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forbes watched one of the clothes-horses stripped of
+its encumbrances.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;strangely columnar
+it was, and so slender that there was merely the
+slightest inslope of waist, merely the slightest entasis at
+the hips.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the almost
+impossible facts of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;not a tiara of diamonds, but a black crest
+with a pearl or two studding it&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+conjoin till just in time above the breast, and just a little
+too late at the back.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The other women followed her, and the men them.
+They seated themselves just as the curtain fell.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It never occurred to Forbes that it might be the same
+back he had followed up the Avenue. How could he have
+told?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Jarred back to reasonableness by the shock of laughter,
+Forbes looked again to the box to see what manner of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+women this woman went with. One of them was tiny
+but quite perfect. She had the face of a débutante 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.</p>
+
+<p>The other woman laughed, too, laughed large and wide.
+She was beautiful, too, a Rubens ideal, drawn in liberal
+rotundities&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The men were almost invisible, mere cut-outs in black
+and white.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+that Forbes felt sorry for them&mdash;especially for her. She
+was too pretty for a public humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Murray
+Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>None was so indignant as the man who had similarly
+climbed out for a drink the <i>entr'acte</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+cafés where coffee could not be obtained. Forbes found
+his man at last in the smoking-room below-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>He was puffing a cigarette, and met Forbes' eager
+glance with such blank indifference that Forbes' words
+of greeting stopped in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The two men paced back and forth on crisscrossing
+paths as violently oblivious of each other as the two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+traditional Englishmen who were cast away on the same
+desert island and had never been introduced.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, suh, but aren't you Mr. Mu'y Ten Eyck?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Ten Eyck&mdash;simply that, and nothing
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes, nonplussed at the abrupt brevity of the answer,
+tried again:</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you don't remember me."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck showed a hint of interest. If he were a
+snob he blamed it on his own weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to, but&mdash;well, I'm simply putrid at names and
+faces. A man pulled me out of the surf at Palm Beach
+last winter&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was in Manila. You were&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God bless me! You're Harvey Forbes&mdash;well,
+I'll be&mdash;" 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&mdash;Let's
+have a drink."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank you!" He hurried Forbes up the stairs,
+out into the street, and into a peacock-rivaling café.
+With one foot on the rail, one elbow on the bar, and
+one elbow crooked upward, they toasted each other in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+a hearty "How!" Then, with libations tossed inward,
+the old friendship was consecrated anew.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," said Ten Eyck, "are you alone&mdash;or with
+somebody? Don't answer if it will incriminate you."</p>
+
+<p>"No such luck," groaned Forbes. "I'm alone, a castaway
+on this deserted island."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm the little rescuing party. How long you
+here for?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"That won't take you long. There's nothing going on,
+and nobody in town."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes remembered the crowds he had seen, and
+smiled. "I saw three ve'y charming ladies in that party
+of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Glad you like 'em. Come and meet 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps one of them is your wife. Are you ma'ied
+yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. Not while I have my health and strength."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm right glad to hear it. I was beginning to feel
+afraid that you had ma'ied that wonderful one."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck shook his head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Me? Me marry Persis Cabot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that her name? Well, why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you only knew her you wouldn't ask why. I'm
+not a millionaire."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't look mercenary."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! Come along." As they climbed the stairs
+Ten Eyck was saying: "I hate an obligation like poison.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck gave Forbes a glowing advertisement as a
+brilliant soldier and a life-saver, and offered him his own
+chair next to Persis.</p>
+
+<p>She had answered his low bow of homage with nothing
+more than a wren-like nod and half a hint of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck threw Forbes into confusion by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Persis smiled a little more cordially and murmured:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's very nice of him."</p>
+
+<p>She was evidently so used to bouquets in the face that
+they neither offended nor excited her. But Miss&mdash;or was
+it Mrs?&mdash;anyway, the plump woman interposed:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When the thief in the play shot the stool-pigeon with
+a silencered revolver a man seated below the box was
+overheard to say:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish somebody would invent a silencer for box-parties."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What you doing after the play?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come turkey-trotting with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Turkey-trotting!" Forbes gasped. "Do nice people&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We're not nice people," said Persis, "but we do."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all we do do," said the lady of the embonpoint,
+whose first name by now he had gleaned as Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's awful," said the little man. "People have gone
+stark mad over it. The mayor ought to stop it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Willie, don't be a prude," said Persis. "You
+know it's healthier than playing bridge all day and all
+night."</p>
+
+<p>"And much less expensive," said the white-haired one.</p>
+
+<p>"It's sickening," Willie insisted. "It's unfit for a
+decent woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks!" said Persis, with a tone of zinc.</p>
+
+<p>The little man made haste with an apology. "I don't
+mean you, my dear, of course; you dance it harmlessly
+enough; but&mdash;well, I don't like to see you at it, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Your own mother is learning it," said Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother!" Willie gasped. "I gave her up long
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck intervened. Forbes remembered now that
+he was always intervening between extremists in the
+club quarrels in Manila.</p>
+
+<p>"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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+wholesome thing. For several years you couldn't get
+people to dance at all. Now they're at it morning, noon,
+and night."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't come along, my dear," Persis answered,
+with a glint of temper.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes did not like that "my dear." It might mean
+nothing, but it might mean everything.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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&mdash;by street-car to a welsh rabbit in
+a kitchenette, or by motor to a restaurant of pretense.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"That's Willie Enslee with her, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess so."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't see why they call that big fellow Little Willie."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a joke, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he's worth twenty million dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"He looks it."</p>
+
+<p>At any other time it would have amused Forbes im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>mensely
+to be called so far out of his name and to receive
+twenty million dollars by acclamation.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;what
+else could it mean?</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+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.)</p>
+
+<p>At length the footman, who had howled out other people's
+numbers, held up a timid finger and murmured, awesomely,
+"Mr. Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+large cork in a small bottle.</p>
+
+<p>Willie put his head in to ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Where d'you want to go, Persis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Trotting, of course," came from the crowded depths.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then take me home and go to the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll trot," sighed Willie. He spoke to the chauffeur
+dolefully, then appeared at the door to wail helplessly:</p>
+
+<p>"There seems to be no room for me."</p>
+
+<p>"You're only the host," said Winifred. "Hop on behind."</p>
+
+<p>"You can sit on my lap," said Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Seven persons were packed where there was hardly
+space for five; but Forbes noted that they were as in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>formal
+and good-natured as yokels on a hay-ride. All
+except Willie, and his distress was not because of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The car had no more than left the theater when Mrs.
+Neff was groaning:</p>
+
+<p>"A cigarette, somebody, quick&mdash;before I faint!"</p>
+
+<p>Winifred by a mighty twisting produced a concaved
+golden case and snapped it open, only to gasp:</p>
+
+<p>"Empty! My God, it's empty!"</p>
+
+<p>Persis saved the day. "I have some. Give us a light,
+Willie. There's a dear."</p>
+
+<p>As usual, Willie had a counter-idea.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Persis, don't you think you could wait till&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her only answer was, "Murray, give me a light."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly they whirled off Broadway, and, describing
+a short curve, came to a stop. A footman opened the
+door, but nobody moved.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they are not!" said Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes, wondering where they were, looked up and read
+with difficulty a great sign in vertical electric letters,
+"Reisenweber's."</p>
+
+<p>Willie told his chauffeur to wait, and the car drew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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.'"</p>
+
+<p>And the brunette answered: "You can't put no trust
+in them kind of Johns. Besides, he tangoes like he had
+two left feet."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, maybe you'll go to the Plaza or some place and
+have a human supper."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to have a trot and a tango if I have to hunt
+the town over," said Persis.</p>
+
+<p>Willie gnashed his teeth, but had the car recalled, and
+asked her where she would go.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try the Beaux Arts," she said; and they huddled
+together once more.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too bad we were thrown out of Reisenweber's,"
+Winifred pouted. "I was dying to see François dance
+and have a dance with him."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes felt well enough acquainted by now to ask:
+"Pardon my ignorance, but who is François?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 Café de Paris or the
+Pré-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."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he's getting rich dancing in theaters and
+restaurants and giving lessons at twenty-five per."</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody was telling me he actually makes fifteen
+hundred to two thousand dollars a week," said Mrs. Neff.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had that much, would you marry me, Persis?"
+said Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we're engaged," said Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>"It's outrageous!" said Willie. "That fellow with an
+income equal to five per cent. on a couple of million
+dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"What you kicking about, Willie?" said Winifred. "You
+get several times as much, and you never lifted hand or
+foot in your life."</p>
+
+<p>"But Willie's father did," said Mrs. Neff. "He killed
+himself working."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Willie has it much better arranged," said Bob. "Instead
+of Willie working for money he has the money working
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>"It works while he sleeps," said Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was thinking gloomily in the gloom of the car.
+This dancer, this mountebank, François, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When a footman at the Café 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.</p>
+
+<p>The car nosed round, turned with difficulty, and went
+to Bustanoby's. It was the same story here.</p>
+
+<p>"New York's gone mad, I tell you!" Willie raved.
+"And nobody is as crazy as we are. To think of us going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll try once more," said Persis. "The Café de
+Ninive."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>An elevator took the determined Persis and her cohort
+up to another thronged vestibule.</p>
+
+<p>Persis had said to Willie in the car, "If you don't get
+us a table here I'll never speak to you again."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie triumphantly beckoned Persis, who approached
+the captain with the pouting appeal of a lady of the court
+to a relenting sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>"Fritz," she said, "you've got to take care of us."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I refuse Mees Cabot," said Fritz. "Do
+you weesh to seet and watch the artists, or to seet weeth
+the dancers?"</p>
+
+<p>"We want to dance," said Persis.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?'"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?&mdash;a little caviar to give us an appetite,
+what? What sort of a cocktail, eh? What sort of a
+cocktail, uh?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not stir till I've had food."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes leaned over to explain to the marooned matron:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could ask you to honor me; but I don't know
+how."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>At first Forbes was disgusted; the one epithet he could
+think of was "obscene." As he watched the mêlée 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;like food that is turned from in
+disgust because another's fork has touched it.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I must say I don't see anything wrong."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">HARVEY FORBES came of a Southern stock that
+inherited its manners with its silver. Both were a
+trifle formal, yet very gracious and graceful.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;bunny-hug,
+Texas Tommy, grizzly bear, turkey-trot.</p>
+
+<p>It was a peculiar revolution in social history that
+people who for so long had refused to dance in public or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Even though he told Willie Enslee he saw nothing
+wrong, he sat gasping as at a turbulent pool of iniquity.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes watched with the eager eyes of a fisher the re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>appearance
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dancers fell on the appetizers with the appetite
+of harvesters. Persis thrilled Forbes with a careless:</p>
+
+<p>"It's too bad you don't trot, Mr. Forbes."</p>
+
+<p>"He's not too old to learn," said Ten Eyck. "It's
+really very simple, once you get the hang of it."</p>
+
+<p>And he fell into a description of the technic.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;get up here a minute and I'll show
+you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down flushed with confusion, but determined
+to retrieve himself. In a little while the music struck up
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to try it?" she said, with an irresistible
+simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I'd disgrace you."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't do that. Come along. We'll practise it
+here."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He felt extremely foolish as he sidled, dragging one foot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+after the other. He trod on her toes, and smote her with
+his knee-caps, but she only laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You're getting it! That's right. Don't be afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"You must lock knees with me."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He was turkey-trotting with Persis Cabot! He wanted
+everybody to know it. This thought alone gave him the
+braggadocio necessary to success.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They moved like a single being, a four-legged&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly, and all too soon, the music stopped. The
+dancers applauded hungrily, and the band took up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+last strains again. Again Forbes caught Persis to him,
+and they reveled till the music repeated its final crash.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes experienced a sinking of the heart as each of the
+guests named his choice, and nobody asked for any of the
+waiting champagne.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when Willie turned to him and said, "Mr. Forbes,
+you have the two bottles of <i>brut</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When the music stopped there was another interlude
+of supper. People gulped hastily, as at a lunch-counter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, young man," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't know how."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll teach you."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid of me. I've got a son as old as you,
+and I taught him."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When the music ended with a jolt Mrs. Neff clung dizzily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 sun<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>set,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>She simply whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When the music ended he mumbled:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you ever dance with me again?"</p>
+
+<p>She abashed him with the true forgiveness that forgets,
+and spoke with all cheerfulness:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>The incident was closed in her heart. Its influence had
+just begun in his.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Just one little 'nother," Winifred wheedled.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck whispered, "About this time Winifred always
+begins to talk baby-talk."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The thin ice was breaking through in spots, and a few
+of the couples were floundering in black waters.</p>
+
+<p>Others were merely childish in their wickedness. They
+tried to be vicious, and their very effort made them only
+naughty.</p>
+
+<p>It all reminded Forbes of certain savage debauches he
+had witnessed. Only the savages lacked the weapons of
+costume. It was curious&mdash;to a philosopher it was amusingly
+curious&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+grown about the human leg, since it has been wrapped up,
+is surely one of the quaintest phases of human inconsistency.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then she spoke frankly:</p>
+
+<p>"Sha'n't we have another dance? They're playing the
+tune that made Robert E. Lee famous."</p>
+
+<p>"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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's very nice of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice of me," he echoed, fatuously, "to be tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"Umm-humm," she crooned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just because."</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+And when a man from another table came across to ask
+her to dance with him, she answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, Jim, we're just off for home. Come along,
+Willie. Are you going to keep us here all night?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie lost no time in huddling his flock away from
+the table. He fussed about them like a green collie pup.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Disgusting! Disgusting!" Willie sneered.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>But she yawned as she defended them, and looked suddenly
+an old woman tired out. They all looked tired.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>A grown-up newsboy, choosing a soft tone as if afraid
+to waken the sleeping town, murmured confidentially:</p>
+
+<p>"Morn' paper? <i>Joinal</i>, <i>Woil</i>, <i>Hurl</i>, <i>Times</i>, <i>Sun</i>,
+<i>Tolegraf</i>? Paper, boss?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes bought one to enjoy the paradox of reading to-morrow's
+paper last night.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>modest"
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was amazed. The great, the wicked city still
+had a Puritan conscience, a teacher to punish its naughtiness
+and send it to bed&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the breakfast-room he was quite alone. But the
+streets were alive, and the street-cars crowded with the
+humbler thousands.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Coming toward him he noted what he supposed to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were turned full upon him when she looked
+up before she passed under the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Wake up, old boy, I'll beat you to the next policeman."</p>
+
+<p>The old boy put spurs to his horse, and they dwindled
+at a gallop.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>From the telephone, when he reached it, came the voice
+of Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Save to-morrow for me though, eh? I'll call for you this
+afternoon about four, eh? Right-o! 'By!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>What a splendid city New York was! How hospitable,
+how ready to welcome the worthy stranger to her splendid
+privileges!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">FORBES had planned to visit the Army and Navy
+Club, in which he held a membership, but now he
+preferred to lunch alone&mdash;yet not alone, for he was entertaining
+a guest.</p>
+
+<p>The head waiter could not see her when Forbes presented
+himself at the door of the Knickerbocker café.
+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 <i>hors d'&oelig;uvres variés</i>, from
+the <i>plat du jour</i> in the <i>roulante</i>, and from the <i>patisseries</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But Forbes had a guest. She sat on the seat beside him
+and nibbled fascinatingly at the banquet he ordered for
+her.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a before-breakfast one-step.
+In fancy he was now thridding the maze between the
+tables with her.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you bank here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was just opening an account," Forbes answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon my not lifting my hat before," said Ten
+Eyck. "I didn't know your middle name was Cr&oelig;sus."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll call for you at four, Mr. Rothschild," said Ten
+Eyck. "Got a date at Sherry's here. Good-by!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This train of thought impelled him to pause now be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>fore
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But that was for next week. For a few days more he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+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&mdash;with
+tea as an excuse!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you millionaire! Will you deign to have a drink
+with a hick like me?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes pleasantly requested him not to be a damned
+fool, but the flattery was irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They had been rejected here the night before, but Ten
+Eyck, at Persis' request, had engaged a table by telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"He acted as if he owned Miss Cabot," said Forbes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He usually does."</p>
+
+<p>"But he doesn't, does he?&mdash;doesn't own her, I mean?"
+Forbes demanded, with an anxiety that did not escape
+Ten Eyck, who answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Opinions differ. He'll probably get her some day,
+unless her old man has a change of luck."</p>
+
+<p>"Her old man?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"She couldn't marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, couldn't she? And why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"She can't love a&mdash;a&mdash;him?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But what has that to do with love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who said anything about love? This is the era of
+the modern business woman."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes said nothing, but looked a rebuke that led Ten
+Eyck to remind him:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you," Forbes thought, but did not
+say.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's a healthier sport than sitting round watching
+somebody else play baseball&mdash;or Ibsen," Ten Eyck
+observed, answering an imaginary critic; and then he
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The answer to the query-plume was Persis. Forbes
+saw a kind of mystic significance in it.</p>
+
+<p>Winifred, as she put out her hand to him, turned to
+Persis:</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't tell me our li'l snojer man was coming."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>The costumes were duller than at night, of course.
+Most of the men wore business suits; the women were not
+décolletées, and they kept on their hats.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come right in, Alice; don't stop to knock."</p>
+
+<p>The girl under whose feet the floor still eddied clung
+to Persis and stared at her a second, then gasped:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Cabot, is it <i>you</i>? I must have nearly
+<i>killed</i> you. Can you ever <i>ever</i> for<i>give</i> me?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis patted her hand and turned her round to Forbes:
+"You'd better ask Mr. Forbes. You gave him a lovely
+black eye."</p>
+
+<p>The girl acknowledged the introduction with a duck
+and a prayer of wild appeal:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Forbes, <i>what</i> a ghastly, <i>ghastly</i> shame!
+Did I really hurt you? I must have simply <i>murdered</i>
+you. I'm so <i>ashamed</i>. Can you ever <i>ever</i> forgive
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes smiled at her melodramatic agitation: "It's
+nothing at all, Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;I never liked this nose, anyway.
+I only wish you had hit it harder, Miss&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Neff," Persis prompted. "You met her mother
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Were you expecting to meet your mother here this
+afternoon, Alice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, I should say <i>not</i>! Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I just wondered. She is to meet us here."</p>
+
+<p>"When? In heaven's <i>name</i>! When?"</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to be here now."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," he answered, with a lofty sweetness; and
+she cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, honey, what <i>do</i> you sup<i>pose</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"That awful Mother of mine is expected here any
+<i>moment</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man's majesty collapsed like an overblown
+balloon in one pop: "Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>Tableau! Ten Eyck, seeing it, muttered, gloatingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Some folks gits ketched."</p>
+
+<p>Alice turned eyes of reproach upon him:</p>
+
+<p>"She'll <i>kill</i> us if she finds us together. Isn't there
+some other way out?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could go down the stairs the waiters come up," said
+Stowe; "but how will you get home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mother will get me home all right, never fear!"
+said Alice. "Run for your <i>life</i>, honey. I'll have my
+maid call you on the 'phone later."</p>
+
+<p>The young man gave her one long sad look fairly reeking
+with desperate kisses and embraces. Then he vanished
+into the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Alice must have remarked the comments in Forbes'
+eyes, for she turned to him:</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't misunderstand the poor boy, Mr.
+Forbes. Mr. Webb is as <i>brave</i> as a <i>lion</i>, but he runs
+away on my account. He knows that my mother will
+give me no rest if she finds it out."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand perfectly," said Forbes. "There are
+times when the better a soldier is the faster he runs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Forbes is a soldier," Persis explained.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+me one <i>terribly</i> great favor? I'll remember it to my <i>dying</i>
+day, if you only will."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Alice's wide eyes widened to the danger-point:</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you simply <i>wonderful</i>! How on earth could
+you possibly have ever <i>ever</i> guessed it?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis cast a sidelong glance at Forbes; it had all the
+effect of a wink without being so violent.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a mind-reader," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Alice caught the glance but not the irony of it, and
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"In<i>deed</i> she is, Mr. Forbes. She really <i>is</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she is," said Forbes, with a quiet conviction
+that was almost more noisy than the violent emphasis
+of Alice.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<i>proving</i> that Mother
+can't bear to go herself. She sends <i>me</i> and then forgets
+to ask me what it was all about. So I sneaked it to-day
+and met Stowe."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Persis could not resist a motherly question: "Is this
+an ideal trysting-place, do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the harm? We couldn't go to the Park very
+well. Everybody's always going <i>by</i> and looking <i>on</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you receive Mr. Webb at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>why</i> don't I, indeed! Mother won't allow him
+within a <i>mile</i> of the place. Didn't you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis shook her head and turned to Forbes: "Doesn't
+it sound old-fashioned, a young girl afraid of her parents?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite medieval," Forbes agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Alice broke in: "Oh, fathers&mdash;they're different! My
+poor Daddelums was the sweetest thing on earth. I
+wrapped him round my little finger. But mother&mdash;umm,
+she gets her own way, I can tell you&mdash;at least she <i>thinks</i>
+she does. I wouldn't let <i>any</i> earthly power tear me away
+from my darling Stowe, but I don't dare face her down."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought she always liked Mr. Webb?" Persis said.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>so</i> materialistic! She wants to
+marry me off to that dreadful old Senator Tait."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+knew what Alice was thinking, and canceled it by meeting
+it frankly:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could have him. God knows I'd prefer him
+to any of these half-baked whippersnappers that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Winifred!" Persis murmured, subduingly; and Miss
+Mather subsided like a retreating thunder-storm. "The
+Senator is one of the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know he is, my dear," Alice broke in, in her most
+soothing tone. "He's far, <i>far</i> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alice!" gasped Persis. "Remember that there are
+young men present."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but
+do you really mean that Senator Tait is&mdash;is proposing for
+your hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"So my awful mother says."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't sound like the Senator Tait I used to know."</p>
+
+<p>"You knew him well?" Persis asked, with a quick eagerness
+that did not quite conceal a note of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously Ten Eyck gave him this diploma also,
+though his motive was rather one of rebuke to Persis for
+her little tang of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"A million dollars!" Forbes gasped. "Is there that
+much money in the world?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes had no desire to obtain the reputation of money<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<p>"Is anybody at home?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm mad and I'm hungry as the devil&mdash;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&mdash;a&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>The waiter nodded in response to Ten Eyck's nod, and
+vanished with an excellent imitation of great speed.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>thés dansants</i>
+while her poor old mother works."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But mother dear, I was just&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"He&mdash;who?" said every one, zealously, with a stare
+of innocence sadly overdone.</p>
+
+<p>"He&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother dear, how you do run on," Alice protested.
+"I don't think you really need another highball."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed low and smiled. "Nothing would give me
+more pleasure."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff returned his bow with an old-fashioned
+courtesy, as she beamed:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Alice gasped.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing would give me more pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! Then we may as well announce our engagement.
+Kind friends, permit me to introduce my next
+husband, Mr.&mdash;Mr.&mdash;what is your first name, darling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Alice implored.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm sure his first name can't be Mother. But
+we're missing the dance. Come along, hero mine!"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes cast a farewell look of longing at Persis, who was
+regarding him with an amused bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once
+in close embrace.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>Bonhomme Richard</i> and the <i>Serapis</i>. And Winifred is like
+old John Paul Jones: when everybody else is dead her
+motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"</p>
+
+<p>But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and
+sighed. "It's awful to be a widow when they play that
+tango."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take
+Alice out and dance with her."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for
+the consolation stakes."</p>
+
+<p>Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her
+eyes would meet his with a gaze of deep inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"That Vacation Savings Fund&mdash;may I ask what it
+is?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;<i>la-de-de-da-de-da!</i> The poor things slave
+like mules and they're paid like slaves&mdash;<i>te-dum-te-dum!</i>&mdash;yet
+most of them never think of putting a penny by for
+a rainy day, or what's more important&mdash;<i>ta-ra-rum!</i>&mdash;a
+sunny day.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;<i>la-de-de-da-de-da!</i>&mdash;to
+encourage the girls to stay home&mdash;<i>ta-ra-rum!</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>&mdash;from
+a few moving-picture fêtes 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&mdash;<i>te-dum-te-dum</i>&mdash;a little
+holiday when her chance came&mdash;<i>te-di-do-dee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" said Forbes. "Did it work out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather. We started with forty girls, and now we've
+got&mdash;how many do you suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred and fifty."</p>
+
+<p>"Eight thousand! And they've saved fifty thousand
+dollars!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, or we'll be murdered!" cried Mrs. Neff, and
+dragged him into the current again.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+huge heart made up of countless village hearts.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+action fall to capering. Her motive was not lost on
+Forbes when she said:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;unless
+we loot the Savings Fund."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, stop! I'm afraid I'm only an old woman after
+all. And I didn't want you to know."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>They all were.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck "had a dinner-job on," but promised to drop
+in when he could.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"May I have the honor?"</p>
+
+<p>As Persis stepped into his arms, Winifred cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Traitress! It's my turn with the li'l snojer man."</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Neff caught Persis' elbow to say: "Be very
+circumspect or I'll sue you for alienation of the alimony."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes and Persis sent back mocking smiles as they
+side-stepped into the carousel.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Forbes astonished Persis and himself by his first words:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you ever sleep, Miss Cabot?"</p>
+
+<p>She threw him a startled glance. "Do I look so jaded
+as all that?"</p>
+
+<p>He was so upset that he lost step and regained it with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+awkwardness of foot and word. "No, no, it's be&mdash;because
+you look&mdash;you look as if you slept for&mdash;forever. I don't
+mean that exact&mdash;exactly, either."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what do you mean, Mr. Forbes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean: I left you this morning at about four o'clock
+in one costume, and I saw you at eight in another."</p>
+
+<p>"At eight this morning? Oh yes, I was riding with my
+father. Were you riding, too? I didn't see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you did. I stood on the bridge at daybreak.
+And you looked at me and cut me dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I really? I must have been asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Far from it. Your eyes were as bright as&mdash;as&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"This music is very reassuring, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>There was an interlude of tenderness in the music. He
+responded to it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's very beautiful and self-sacrificing of you.
+But how can you keep up the pace?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be made of iron," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I so heavy as all that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, no, you are&mdash;you are&mdash;" But he could not
+say anything without saying too much. She saved the
+day by a change of subject.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And I stared right at you, and didn't know you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you? It was stupid of me to expect you
+to remember me. But I did, and&mdash;when you didn't, I
+was crushed."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you were," she crooned. "I always want
+to murder anybody who forgets me."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely that can't happen often? How could any one
+forget You?"</p>
+
+<p>It was perfectly sincere, yet it sounded like the bumptious
+praise of a yokel. She raised her eyelids and
+reproved him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's pretty rough work for a West-Pointer. Rub
+it out and do it over again."</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you pardon me one question?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably not. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you wear this same hat yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>Her head came up with a glare. "Isn't that a rather
+catty remark for a man to make?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," he faltered. "It's a
+beautiful hat."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No hat is beautiful two days in succession. It's unkind
+of you, though, to notice it, and rub it in."</p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's sake, don't take it that way. I&mdash;I followed
+this hat of yours for miles and miles yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"You followed this hat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis could not but be pleased, though she tried to
+disguise her delight by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been a shock to you when you saw what
+was really under this hat."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"If you could only know how I&mdash;how you&mdash;how beautiful
+you&mdash;how&mdash;I wish you'd let me say it!"</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you like me."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+it surrounded them. They were no longer strangers.
+They were together within a magic inclosure.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Just in time the music came to an abrupt end, and the
+<i>danse macabre</i> was done. But the floor still wheeled beneath
+his feet, and he staggered as he held her limp and
+swaying body.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Gad, old man, you need a drink!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;more at herself than at him.
+He met them with a gaze of adoration and dread.</p>
+
+<p>As his hot brow cooled, it seemed that an icy hand
+passed across it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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&mdash;or the just the wrong&mdash;reagent.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Willie Enslee was universally accepted as her fiancé,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She offered to drop Forbes and Ten Eyck at their destinations,
+and they clambered into her car with Winifred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Yet here were thousands thronging to its destroying
+blaze like fanatic moths&mdash;moths that paid a high price
+to be admitted to the lamp, and clamored to be consumed
+in its divine distress.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+come soon. He thought of her as "Persis"&mdash;or "Isolde";
+he could not think of her as Miss Cabot to this music.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody greeted Forbes with the casual informality
+of old friendship, except Willie Enslee, who nodded
+obliquely, and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"H' are yu, Mr. Ward."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"If I sit there nobody can see the stage. You're such
+a little wisp I can see round you or through you."</p>
+
+<p>Persis preferred almost anything to a disturbance, and
+her protest was a mere form.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or was it not a year ago? Surely he must
+have known her for more than a day.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She was so thoroughly alive&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+other; her feet crossed, uncrossed, and seemed unable to
+settle upon precedence.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The woman next him was becoming more beautiful
+every moment. He felt a craving to touch her&mdash;with
+reverence; to link arms in comradeship, and to clench
+hands with her when the music stormed the peaks.</p>
+
+<p>An aura seemed to transpire mistily from his pores to
+meet the aureole that shimmered about her.</p>
+
+<p>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: "<i>Ach, hätt' ich früher dich
+geseh'n!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>But Fate can play the clown as well as the tragedian,
+and accomplish as much by an absurd accident as by
+elaborate glooms.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After some hesitation he resolved to slip them out of
+their glistening jails a moment, under cover of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And Forbes, suddenly understanding what he had done,
+snickered too, and just managed to throttle down a loud
+guffaw.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Persis would have taken to flight, but one of her slippers
+she could not find, and she could not get the other on.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie was furious at Persis' lack of dignity, and forgot
+his own in complaining of it.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd say, run right along, Willie, if you want to," said
+Persis. "<i>Moi, j'y suis, j'y reste!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right, I suppose I'll have to <i>suis</i> and <i>reste</i>, too.
+But don't mind if I snore."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck appeared now with apologies for his delay.
+And a number of callers knocked at the back door of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes denied this violently, but Ten Eyck winked.</p>
+
+<p>"Diplomatic, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>When they were gone Forbes asked who they were.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>When he read this Forbes breathed a prayer that none
+of his superior officers might be addicted to the social
+columns.</p>
+
+<p>But that was to-morrow's excitement.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes forgot all light thoughts before the infinitely
+pathetic wail of the shepherd's pipe and the reiterated
+appeal of Tristan for "<i>das Schiff!</i> <i>das Schiff!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Like most men of to-day, Forbes never wept except at
+the theater, or at some other fiction. He had not wept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff was sniffling as she beat her gloves together.</p>
+
+<p>"Even Isolde's husband couldn't hate her&mdash;or him&mdash;for
+a love like that."</p>
+
+<p>And Winifred, with her cheeks all blubbered, swallowed
+hard as she applauded.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't we have such lovers nowadays? Even I
+could play Isolde if I could find a Tristan."</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me," said Bob Fielding. But he was referring
+to the opera-cloak he was holding out for her.</p>
+
+<p>Willie Enslee, however, shook his head contemptuously
+and made no pretense of applause.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"How in heaven did you hurt your finger?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis answered quietly and at once:</p>
+
+<p>"I caught it on the thorn of a rose. It's nothing."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was compelled to silence by Persis' explanation
+of the accident. He must not say how sorry he was,
+though he had wounded her&mdash;he had wounded Persis till
+she bled!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;even of obsolete broughams
+and coaches drawn by four-legged anachronisms.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff claimed Forbes as her personal escort, and
+carried him off in her own chariot, which rolled up long
+before Enslee's.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff's first word, of course, was of tobacco. The
+door was hardly slammed upon them before she had her
+cigarettes out.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;much. We'll stroll in the
+garden. They say tobacco is good for the plants&mdash;bad
+for the insects."</p>
+
+<p>And she took his arm and sauntered with him while he
+ruined the scent of the honeysuckle vines.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+she reached out for Forbes' cigar and rekindled her
+cigarette, smiling:</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't we nice and clubby?"</p>
+
+<p>Once her weed was prospering, she began to puff gossip:</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she a darling&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that Miss Cabot is mixed up hopelessly with
+Mr. Enslee. Do you mean that they are engaged?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But they are not actually engaged?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. But it looks inevitable to me. If
+you've got a lot of money, ask her&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+to the supper-rooms, and some toward the elevators to
+the various assembly-rooms, where various coteries were
+giving dances.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He could see the women they brought&mdash;girls and their
+mothers, or aunts or something.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;<i>chez eux</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was variety enough in the unity. Girls of
+intellectual type, girls of plain and old-maidish prospects,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it as bad as that, already, old man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is what as bad as what already?" Forbes answered,
+half puzzled and half aware. Ten Eyck replied with a
+riddle.</p>
+
+<p>"You can buy 'em for almost any price. It's the upkeep
+that costs."</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil are you talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yachts."</p>
+
+<p>"Yachts?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that about yachts?" Willie Enslee asked, unexpectedly
+at his elbow. Ten Eyck answered, blandly:</p>
+
+<p>"I was making the highly original remark that it's not
+the initial expense&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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).</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This did not distress him at the time, for the orchestra
+on the stage in the grand ballroom was busily at work.</p>
+
+<p>"The music is calling us," said Forbes. "May I have
+the honor?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>preux chevalier</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+I'm afraid she'll expect you to pay for your ride in her
+car by a little honest work, won't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid so. Of course she will," Forbes groaned,
+ashamed of his oversight. "But the next one I may have?"</p>
+
+<p>"The next one is yours. Don't forget."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the dance was their divorce. He transferred
+her into Bob Fielding's arms for a time, while he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 débutante he
+was rushing.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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 débutante. 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forbes was infinitely repentant, rebuffed, but not
+routed. He began once more to scout along her outposts.</p>
+
+<p>"That hat you wore, you remember, day before yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you how I followed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"My heart ran after you like a newsboy calling to you.
+But you didn't hear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see! Yes, I was. I was hurrying home to
+meet Willie. He is always furious when I am late."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I guessed right! I knew it was a man, and I was
+jealous."</p>
+
+<p>Persis stared up at him. She smiled incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"You were jealous? But you hadn't even seen me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I wanted to see you. I felt you in the air.
+And I was jealous."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind if I asked you one very personal
+question?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you'll look the other way when I answer it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you engaged to Willie Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was so unexpected and so forthright that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+it almost staggered her. She flashed one look up into
+his earnest eyes and laughed; but it was a cold laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the most amazing piece of impudence I ever
+met."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't answered."</p>
+
+<p>"What difference could it make to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the difference in the world. It is a matter of the
+utmost importance to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because if you are not&mdash;" 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&mdash;to
+tell you that you have&mdash;you are&mdash;that&mdash;well, my heart
+is at your feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Watch out, then, for I can't see my feet, and my
+heels are sharp."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you be serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I've known you long enough to know that you are&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, you haven't. You've only seen me with my
+party manners on."</p>
+
+<p>"But you&mdash;you&mdash;oh, I can't talk to this music. Will
+you sit down a moment somewhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed. I came here to dance, and I wish you
+would stick to your knitting."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't answered my question. Are you engaged
+to that man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so he is 'that man' already?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to marry him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no prophet, Mr. Forbes."</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+oh Pop!" Half the dancers shouted the refrain as they
+whirled.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I have to breathe, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," he murmured into the curls about her
+ear. "But you're a wonderful thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?" she laughed, but with a sort of patient indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm mad about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I dared to tell you that I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you won't."</p>
+
+<p>"Men are always telling you that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not always&mdash;once or twice." She was so far
+away, though in his arms, that her voice seemed to come
+to him across a long wire.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you love any of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing I'm surer of than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Does that mean that you are not engaged to Mr.
+Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessarily."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+great distress. Before she could explain her errand, he
+had said, with a smile that was pitifully brave:</p>
+
+<p>"I needn't ask what evil motive brings you down here.
+It was just to tell your old father how much you love
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;especially when you
+deduct the cost of an ocean voyage, for I couldn't equal
+them this side of Paris."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;not
+the very latest, of course, but still good enough since
+he was feeling poor.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She returned to her car, and ordered the driver home.
+It was a long journey up the cañon 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie had brought the ring&mdash;a wonderful composition
+by René 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."</p>
+
+<p>Thoughts like this danced through Persis' mind now,
+while her body danced in Forbes' arms. And Forbes
+was talking of his jealousy!</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was different from Willie in so many ways. He
+could be loved. She did not love him now. But he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>She would not be indiscreet, of course, or disloyal in
+any important way. But&mdash;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&mdash;a soldier, a gentleman, a lover, distinguished&mdash;nobody
+would laugh if she went up the aisle with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily Forbes had money. He was surely not so rich
+as Willie. But then Persis was not mercenary. She
+wanted only a reasonable amount&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+didn't want him to stop seeing her. He was really very
+nice!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;oh,
+Lord, it was a sad world. Yet it was very
+comfortable, dancing in this man's arms.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he was pounding at the door of her heart
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to ride in Central Park to-morrow&mdash;this
+morning?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Rain or shine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"May I ride there, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not my park."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not very encouraging."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it? Well, haven't you been a trifle discouraging
+yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm terribly sorry," he pleaded; and she surprised
+him by sighing:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm rather glad."</p>
+
+<p>"Glad? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I had come dangerously near to feeling that
+you were&mdash;different."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But some day you will ride with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow may I stand on the bridge and watch you
+go by?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The park is open to the public at all hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind if I got a horse and rode by and said
+'Good morning!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine. Come along. I'll introduce you to my father."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be there!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+coagulate, more or less haphazard. Those that cannot pay
+the dues drop into other clubs. Even labor-unions are
+run in that way.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I ever going to see you again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be at all surprised," she answered, blowing
+neither cold nor hot.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll probably be dancing at some tea-place or
+other, as usual."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you ever stop dancing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Could I see you one of those times?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, almost any time."</p>
+
+<p>"Any time is no time."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't my engagement-book here. I can't remember."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take lunch with me to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean all of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I do. I reckon I wouldn't dare ask you
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you betta hadn't," she said, mocking his accent
+as best she could.</p>
+
+<p>"When will you-all come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it would be right smart of a job to get us-all
+together at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her burlesque, but persisted:</p>
+
+<p>"How would you like to&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nobody eats anything any more, or drinks much
+of anything."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you," she said. "Ask Mrs. Neff to be the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+hostess. You're under some obligations to her, and none
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask her to order the luncheon, too?" said
+Forbes, with dwindled enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no; you must do that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't know what to have."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;of us. And
+now let's see who can come."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I could get more if you want," said Persis; "but seven
+is lucky, and more is no fun."</p>
+
+<p>"Seven is just right," said Forbes, with a little premonitory
+chill at the thought of the probable cost.</p>
+
+<p>It was finally agreed that they were to lunch late, take
+a little spin round town, and then turkey-trot again in
+the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was amazed at himself. Now he was to play
+the host, and Persis was to be at his elbow! Or should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+he put her opposite him, as if she were his wife? What a
+decoration she would be at a man's home table!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;soldiers' quarters, hotel&mdash;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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>They were glad now when their demoiselles confessed
+to fatigue, too, or the mothers began to mention the hour.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, she gave up the effort to go on danc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>ing
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I beg you to go home and sleep till noon. Please
+don't try to get up and ride in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I must," she answered. "It's the one duty I do."</p>
+
+<p>But the note of protecting solicitude in his voice had
+touched her. She turned softer eyes upon him and
+smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll dance some more to-morrow afternoon. Till
+then, <i>au revoir</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am to <i>revoir</i> you in the park in a few hours?"</p>
+
+<p>"So you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Also at luncheon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Persis, are you never c-coming?" Willie Enslee hiccoughed.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck boosted Willie in and clambered after him
+"as a chaperon."</p>
+
+<p>Bob Fielding and Winifred tested the capacity of a
+taxicab, and Forbes stood ready to escort Mrs. Neff<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+home in her own car; but she shook her head as she
+gaped:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;oh wait&mdash;have you a box of matches you can
+give me? Thanks! You've saved my life. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes paused to say: "Does the chauffeur know you
+want to go home?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope so, at this hour!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+woke Forbes, and to his unspeakable disappointment he
+found himself in a bachelor bed at a hotel, with Times
+Square furnishing a roaring offertory.</p>
+
+<p>Automatically he reached for his watch, wondering if
+he could not have a little further nap to get back into
+that dream without delay.</p>
+
+<p>But the dial blandly informed him that it wanted a
+few minutes to noon. Horror shocked him wide awake.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+telephone-tome. Her father's office was mentioned, but
+not his residence. Yet he must have a residence, and it
+must have a telephone.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Information answered with a lilt as if the name of Persis
+were one of importance:</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's a private wire; I'll see."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Jus' z'I thought, 's a priva twire."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's a private wire!" Forbes thundered. "I
+don't want to have a public conversation. What's the
+number?"</p>
+
+<p>"'S 'gainst comp'ny rules to give numbers listed as
+private. Sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"But this is a matter of life and death."</p>
+
+<p>There was an almost audible sigh, as if she had heard
+that before.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, but under no soic'mstances are we p'mitted
+to give numbers of parties listed private."</p>
+
+<p>He insisted, pleaded, threatened; but she answered
+with implacable politeness. "Sorry, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Not
+at all! Very good, sir."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>While he danced into his trousers his eyes were caught
+by head-lines on the paper folded at his plate:</p>
+
+<p>"Mayor puts Lid on <i>Thés Dansants</i>."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+whose corpulence alone was proof enough of their wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I want to give a little luncheon&mdash;nothing elaborate,
+but&mdash;well, something rather nice, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly, M'sieur. And how many will there be?"</p>
+
+<p>Fernand spoke English glibly, with hardly more accent
+than a sweetish thickness.</p>
+
+<p>"We are seven," said Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, sir. Will you select what you wish, or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He handed Forbes the card of the day. Forbes looked
+at the French. He could read military memoirs and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+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&mdash;I'm
+just home from Asia. I feel a little out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes swallowed a small lump of embarrassment, and
+was careful to ask carelessly:</p>
+
+<p>"About how much would it be?"</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to forestall at least one surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>caviar d'Astrakhan</i>
+to begin; and perhaps a little broth; ah, better! she likes
+<i>purée St.-Germain</i>. And after, a little berd and some
+salade, a sweet, perhaps, or a cheese, some coffee&mdash;nothing
+more! Very simple is best."</p>
+
+<p>This sounded so sane that Forbes began to pluck up
+hope. He asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Does she&mdash;do they&mdash;will you give us wine of any
+kind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Cabot does not care for champagne; and Mr.
+Enslee&mdash;did you say he would be of the party?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Enslee will be here."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for the sake
+of the berd. I have a sherry that is delicious."</p>
+
+<p>"How much delicious?" Forbes asked, trying to be
+flippant at his own funeral.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Eight dollars the bottle. But very fine! They
+would all like it very much."</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of a concrete price Forbes grew uneasy,
+and asked outright: "Could you tell me how much&mdash;about
+how much this luncheon is going to cost me?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>purée
+St.-Germain</i> we shall make it special&mdash;say, about five
+dollars. I should recommend the <i>poulet de grain aux
+cèpes</i>; it is two-fifty per person. You do not really need
+any <i>légumes</i>, 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 <i>salade</i>&mdash;no, you will not wish
+<i>salade</i>, though the endive is&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;yes? Miss
+Cabot likes the white mint. There will be some cigars
+for the gentlemen, of course&mdash;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&mdash;about
+fifty-four-seventy-five. Yes&mdash;ah no! we have not added
+the sherry&mdash;one bottle, perhaps two. So you see, Monsieur,
+it will come only to sixty&mdash;sixty-five dollars&mdash;roughly."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Cabot has her favorite table. You shall have
+that, also her captain and her waiter."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes remembered Persis' warning.</p>
+
+<p>"But this luncheon is really in honor of Mrs. Neff,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, in that case you will want her table. She prefers
+the opposite side, nearer the band."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+explained that his man had had the impudence to fall
+ill, and had left him to dress himself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Save when it was interrupted by exclamations of ap<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>plause
+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 <i>thés dansants</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"They call this a free country," Mrs. Neff grumbled,
+"and yet they tell us we may not dance with our tea!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But what are we to do with our afternoons?" Winifred
+sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do before?" said Willie.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; but I'm sure it was stupid."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see the Old Faithful geyser geyse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know I simply adore lilacs," he smiled. "Up
+at my country place they must be glorious. My gardener<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+writes me they have never been so good as this year. I
+wish I could see them."</p>
+
+<p>Nobody paid much heed to his emotions until, a little
+later, he broke out suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, I believe I'll take a run up in the country
+and see my lilacs and spend a night in real air."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fine idea," said Winifred; "we'll all go along."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, you won't," said Willie. "The place isn't
+open yet. Nobody there but the gardener and his helpers."</p>
+
+<p>This checked Winifred only for a moment, then she
+returned to the charge.</p>
+
+<p>"All the more fun," she exclaimed. "Let's all go up
+and make a week-end of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But there are no servants there, I tell you," Willie
+insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"We have to eat, you know," Willie reminded her,
+coldly; "and nobody to cook it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a love of a cook," said Winifred. "And I've
+been through your kitchen up there. It's a model&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Winifred, behave!" Willie sniffed.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" said Winifred. "It's time you learned
+to use your lazy hands before they drop off from neglect."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No thank you!" Willie demurred. "If we've got to
+go, we'll take along some deck-hands. What do you say,
+Persis?"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You and your fear of the newspapers!" Winifred
+retorted. "They need never know."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"If you've got to have a chaperon, maybe you'd take
+me," said Mrs. Neff.</p>
+
+<p>"You!" Willie laughed cynically. "And who'll chaperon
+the chaperon? You'll make more mischief than anybody.
+Your affair with Mr. Lord&mdash;er, pardon me, Mr.
+Ward&mdash;is the talk of the town already."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"But if I marry him afterward it will put a stop to the
+scandal."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, you are simply indecent!" her daughter
+piped up, with a kind of militant innocence.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+train window he had watched the splendors unroll like
+a moving film. He had wished to leap from the car and
+wander with somebody&mdash;with a vague somebody. And
+now he had found her, and the golden opportunity tapped
+on the window.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie, yielding to the rôle of <i>hôte malgré lui</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie went to call up his gardener and have the house
+thrown open to the air and fresh provisions ordered in.</p>
+
+<p>He had just gone when a page came to Persis with the
+word that her father wanted to speak to her on the
+telephone.</p>
+
+<p>She gave a start and looked afraid as she rose. Forbes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;on business."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes hesitated over his next words.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope this won't prevent you from going up to Mr.
+Enslee's."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, quite the contrary," she said. "I'd be alone
+at home. I'll be glad of the&mdash;the diversion. Here's the
+taxi. It's really not necessary for you to go with me."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+they were under way, running cautiously on the skiddish
+pavement.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of this, Forbes said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm mighty glad you're not leaving town."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am."</p>
+
+<p>"With your father, I mean. You're leaving town with
+me, instead."</p>
+
+<p>She looked him in the eye with some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good thing we put the blame for that luncheon
+on Mrs. Neff. It tickled her to death and&mdash;do you know
+that Willie really thinks you're flirting with her&mdash;or aiming
+at Alice? He can't tell which." She laughed deliciously.
+It did not grieve her to fool Willie.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not flirting with anybody," he said. "I'm
+adoring you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We're not at the opera, you know," she said. "That
+noise isn't the music of 'Tristan and Isolde.' That's
+rain."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," he answered, "and I don't want you to be
+Isolde. If only she had married Tristan in the first
+place&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They might have been divorced in the second place."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be&mdash;don't talk that way. I'm in deadly earnest,"
+he pleaded, but she laughed evasively.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That was very heady sherry you gave us to-day."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head sadly, as over the flippancy of a
+child, and took her hand in both of his.</p>
+
+<p>"It's broad daylight, Mr. Forbes, and this is Madison
+Avenue."</p>
+
+<p>"But nobody can see us," he answered. "Look at the
+rain."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if a brief tropical flood had burst upon New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow it did make a difference that nobody could
+see. It always makes a difference in us that nobody
+can see us.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And then he paused. He lacked the élan to seize the
+red flag of her lips. He paused weakly to stare at her
+and to beseech the kiss he might have captured.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>So silly a phrase for so warm a deed. She shook her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+head, and her fright was gone. She taunted him from her
+eyes as from an unconquered citadel.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me!" he repeated, feeling poltroon and idiotic.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She flung off his hands with a gasp of anger and terror.
+He stared at her in a daze. Then he understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me!" he pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>She was furious with him; but she blamed herself more,
+and breathed hard with rage as she straightened her hat
+and her hair.</p>
+
+<p>An old footman was waiting at the top of the steps with
+an umbrella. He ran down and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father is waiting for you, miss," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes stepped forth into the light drizzle and helped
+her out.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;if Enslee could be called a man.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, in invading Enslee's own domain he was giv<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>ing
+Enslee every advantage. All of the splendor of Enslee's
+château, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He did not smile so well a few hours later, when Willie,
+with the kindliest of motives, assigned him to Mrs. Neff's
+automobile.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 André.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause by agreement for dinner at a road-house&mdash;"their
+last civilized meal," as Ten Eyck mournfully
+prophesied, "before they entered the Purgatory of
+Winifred's cooking at Willie's boarding-house."</p>
+
+<p>When the task of fretting out a dinner was finished
+they got under way, pushing north again.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, you're just death to romance!" Alice protested.
+She had doubtless been thinking of Stowe Webb.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The door under the porte-cochère was open, and in its
+embrasure stood a leanish man and his fattish wife, hos<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>pitable
+as innkeepers, the warm light streaming back of
+them like peering children.</p>
+
+<p>Enslee's voice came out of the silence:</p>
+
+<p>"That you, Prout? H'are you, Martha?" And then,
+with characteristic originality, "Well, we got here."</p>
+
+<p>To which Prout responded with equal importance:</p>
+
+<p>"So you did, sir."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Martha giggled into her fat palm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, 'e will 'ave 'is joke; 'e will so. And isn't this
+Miss Cabot? Of course it is."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes, seated in the rear car, heard again that assumption
+of Persis and Enslee as a couple.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Prout explained that he had been unable to start either
+the hot-water furnace that heated the house or the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Me for the nursery," said Winifred. "It's the sunniest
+place in the house, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going to try to sleep on one of those children's
+beds?" Willie gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"No, nor on two of them," said Winifred; "but there's
+a glorious window-seat a mile wide."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+themselves keyed up all season, like instruments in a concert,
+and now that the tension was released they seemed
+to collapse upon themselves.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis paused for a moment, looking over the books to
+select something to take up to her room. She pushed them
+about with indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Last year's novels!" she smiled. "As thrilling as last
+year's birds' nests."</p>
+
+<p>She turned up an illustrated society weekly of a former
+spring. The frontispiece held her a moment, and she
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"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.'"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff took the paper from her hand. "Her husband
+got the kiddies. Pretty little tikes, too."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you children pick up such things?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not children," said Alice, "and the papers were
+full of it."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+been talking a lot even then, but I never suspected anything
+till later."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You, probably," Willie snickered, and the others
+laughed lazily. But Mrs. Neff bristled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you have to laugh. Am I too old to
+misbehave?"</p>
+
+<p>"Far from it, darling!" said Willie. "You're just at
+the dangerous age. I&mdash;er&mdash;I don't mean exactly that,
+either."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff turned a page hastily. "Here's a picture of
+Deborah Reeve in her coming-out gown."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Corliss will be finding it out before long," said
+Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Willie the observing little thing?" said Winifred.
+The others exchanged glances of contemptuous
+amusement while their host looked wise.</p>
+
+<p>Persis strolled round to the divan, took Murray by
+the ear, and hoisted him from his place.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks, Murray," she said. "I couldn't think of
+taking your seat." And dropped into it.</p>
+
+<p>"What are we going to do for amusement to-night?"
+said Willie. "Who wants to play auction?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said Mrs. Neff.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we have some music, then?" A general declination.
+"Some singing? A dance?"</p>
+
+<p>They refused even that, and he grew desperate.</p>
+
+<p>"Charades?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up!" came from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to be entertained," said Persis. "I'm
+never so miserable as when I'm being entertained."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody approved. Just to be let alone was a
+luxury.</p>
+
+<p>Willie ventured a last retort: "Anybody want a
+drink?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is everybody?" he snapped. Then the truth
+dawned on him again. "Good Lord, we're marooned!"</p>
+
+<p>Winifred chuckled at the situation. "You'll have to
+be your own barkeep, Willie. Go rustle us what you can
+find."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;give his life to save a peony&mdash;but he's death
+on liquor. I couldn't trust him to order in drinkables&mdash;besides,
+I forgot."</p>
+
+<p>There were groans of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"'Water, water, everywhere,'" said Ten Eyck, "'and
+not a drop to drink.'"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We'll get in a supply from the village to-morrow,"
+said Willie, handsomely.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow never comes," said Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>For lack of artificial stimulus the momentary enthusiasm
+lapsed again. Nobody cared even to read. The
+fireplace was books enough.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>haps,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Her comfortable sigh was echoed and her yawn outdone
+by Winifred, who moaned:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so damned sleepy I'll turn in here if the rest of
+you will get off the bed."</p>
+
+<p>Then Alice yawned and wriggled, and Mrs. Neff gaped
+with a slight restraint and staggered to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't," said Willie, thrusting out his arms
+in an all-embracing oscitation.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Ten Eyck turned back to pound on the door and
+put in his palm, whining:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget the poor baggage-smasher, lady."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck bit his coin and touched his hat, with a
+husky murmur of:</p>
+
+<p>"'Ch obliged, mum! 'Ch obliged!"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes kept his for a lucky piece&mdash;the first keepsake
+he had had from her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Rabelais: "Panurge had it right when he said, 'I
+am never so well served as when I am my own valet.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is this your first experience as your own man?" said
+Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"I should say not!" Ten Eyck snorted, with a cloud of
+smoke. "I've roughed it as rough as any rough-neck
+going, Forbesy."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes, from the experience of a campaigner, a wilderness
+hiker, lifted an eyebrow of patronizing incredulity.
+Ten Eyck retorted:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You needn't grin. I don't mean any of this roughing
+<i>de luxe</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd cut out that talk about my being a
+millionaire," Forbes broke in, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Millionaire is a newspaper term," Ten Eyck explained,
+"for anybody who is worth more than a few thousand
+dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm poor, but I'm not honest," Forbes said; "I'm
+obtaining courtesy under false pretenses."</p>
+
+<p>"Rot!" said Ten Eyck. "Money couldn't buy what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes lifted his head with a quick, startled movement
+that did not escape Ten Eyck, who pretended to misunderstand.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if you really are after Mrs. Neff or the little
+Neffkin, there might be a call for a show-down of bankbooks."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;naming no names&mdash;I like her mighty well,
+but don't get false notions in your head, and don't put
+false notions in hers."</p>
+
+<p>"About my money, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Umm-humm."</p>
+
+<p>"You think that money would make a difference to
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hah!" Ten Eyck snorted. "Would water make any
+difference to a fish?"</p>
+
+<p>"But if she loved&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My boy, you can keep a mighty sweet canary in a
+mighty little cage, and it will sing away like mad and be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+very fond of you; but you can't keep a bird of paradise
+there&mdash;or a sea-gull&mdash;can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon not," said Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't the fault of the bird of paradise, either, is
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes shook his head and sighed: "It's the fault of
+the man that puts it in the cage."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, maybe he means well. He may be crazy about
+the bird, just crazy to keep it near him, but&mdash;he can't.
+That's all, he can't. It'll beat itself to death or break
+loose."</p>
+
+<p>"Unless he lets it go," said Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it! You understand me, don't you, old man?"</p>
+
+<p>"I get you, Steve."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon not," said Forbes, dismally.</p>
+
+<p>"And there's a lot of them to be had. And some of
+them are very pretty."</p>
+
+<p>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?'"</p>
+
+<p>He ended with a querying inflection, and Forbes echoed
+it with a period:</p>
+
+<p>"Allus the best o' friends."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He gave up Persis as completely as he gave up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+planet. A few days ago he did not know her name. A
+few days more and she would have slipped from his sky.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE only dream that Forbes knew that night&mdash;or remembered,
+at least&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Now he found himself in a sumptuously furnished chamber,
+whose window framed a scene of royally ordered
+beauty&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes crept back to bed, but only to reproach himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>One imperial group of lilac-trees seemed to hold torches
+up for the sun to kindle. They blazed with purple
+flame.</p>
+
+<p>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 be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>longs
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Now Forbes knew that he loved her irretrievably. He
+would storm the clouds to win her. He could afford a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+home with a pair of shutters, and she could close them
+against the sun and be as snug as a cuckoo in a clock.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+frowned ferociously. Then, at length, she smiled and
+nodded and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was his first command, and she had obeyed it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're so circumspect," he said, "you'd better
+button your shoes."</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot to bring up a button-hook," she laughed, "and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+when I bent over with a hairpin I got so sleepy that I
+nearly fell back in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me," he urged.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't walk with 'em falling off like that," he insisted.
+"A hairpin, please."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon your feet are put on the wrong way."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"For being buttoned, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"My maid buttons them every morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me how on earth she gets at your foot?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks. I'll button them myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, you won't. How do the shoe clerks manage
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Get away," she said; "you're killing me."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"In my pocket next my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Give it to me, please."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to keep it."</p>
+
+<p>"By what right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Conquest and possession."</p>
+
+<p>"What if somebody should see you with it?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nobody shall."</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody always does. Nobody would believe it
+fell out of a window!"</p>
+
+<p>"It fell straight into my heart."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"I could make you some, if I knew where the coffee
+was, and the coffee-pot, and if there were any fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's look into the kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>She knew the way, and led him into a great food-studio&mdash;a
+place to delight a chef with its equipment and
+an artist with its coppers.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the faintest idea how much of that goes in,
+have you?" she said, helplessly. He nodded and made
+the measurements deftly.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"A soldier ought to be able to build a fire and make a
+cup of coffee, oughtn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's mighty pleasant to be building a fire for you&mdash;for
+just us," he maundered.</p>
+
+<p>"It is fine, isn't it?" she chuckled, with glistening eyes.
+"Rather reversing the usual, though, for idiotic woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+to stand by while strong man boils the coffee&mdash;or are you
+baking it? I might be getting the dishes."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd be willing to do this every morning&mdash;for you&mdash;for
+us," he ventured, his heart thumping at its own
+dauntlessness.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>She brought out a perilous, double arm-load of cups and
+saucers, and a sugar-bowl.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the service china, I suppose. You could drive
+nails with it."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her with idolatry. She was so variously
+beautiful; at the theater, the opera, the luncheon, here
+in a country kitchen&mdash;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&mdash;or
+any bread&mdash;just these tinned biscuits."</p>
+
+<p>They sat at the kitchen table. The coffee was not
+good, really; but she found it amusing, and he thought
+it was ambrosia&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;anything for
+a picnic&mdash;for a while. But as a regular thing&mdash;ugh! To
+get breakfast once in somebody's else kitchen at an ungodly
+hour with a captivating stranger&mdash;glorious! But to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+get up every morning&mdash;every every morning, rain or
+shine, cold or hot, sleepy or sick or blue&mdash;no, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You think the rich are happier than the poor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they are. That's why everybody wants
+to be rich."</p>
+
+<p>"But the rich aren't contented."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;at least, he always has
+been able to&mdash;up to now."</p>
+
+<p>A little shiver agitated her like a flaw of wind running
+along a calm lake.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;yet."</p>
+
+<p>She rose and moved out to the kitchen porch, and,
+round the house, up a sweep of stairs to the main terrace.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+garden&mdash;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&mdash;an <i>hors d'&oelig;uvre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Please! Now, tell me all about yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cuba. Philippines."</p>
+
+<p>"You were in the Spanish War? Really! I didn't
+know you were so old."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't so old then. I'm very ancient now."</p>
+
+<p>She mused aloud: "They say a husband should be ten
+years older than his wife."</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I'm very ancient," she said. "I ought to have
+been married years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. There's no
+need for further delay."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;ugh! is that a caterpillar?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"You are brave!"</p>
+
+<p>"St. George and the dragon," he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"In those battles of yours," she resumed, "were you
+ever by any chance wounded or killed or anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was never killed entirely," he answered, "but I
+stopped a few bits of lead."</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered and caught his arm with a rush of sympathy
+none the less fierce for being belated.</p>
+
+<p>"Wounded! You were wounded?"</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand on hers where it lay on his sleeve.
+"Yes, you blessed thing. Does it make any difference
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>She drew her hand away gently. "I hate to think of&mdash;of
+anybody getting hurt. Did it hurt&mdash;to be wounded?"</p>
+
+<p>"Afterward. I didn't notice it much at the time&mdash;except
+when I was shot in the mouth."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, how?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was yelling something to my sergeant, and a bullet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+went right in and out here." He put his finger on his
+cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Great heavens! I thought it was a dimple. I rather
+liked it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm glad I got it."</p>
+
+<p>She writhed with pain for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>"Did it hurt&mdash;hideously?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"How did they get them out, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him wild-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say that you're standing there
+with a couple of bullets in you? Why, you're positively
+uncanny."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, if it disturbs you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please! You're wonderful. But aren't you
+afraid they'll kill you&mdash;turn green or something?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're neatly surrounded by now with aseptic sacs,
+the surgeon tells me. I'd forgotten all about them till
+you reminded me."</p>
+
+<p>"And they never pain you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The only wound I'm suffering now is from the arrow
+of this sharp-shooter."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't hit you, too, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>She toppled backward and sank on a marble bench before
+he could help her. He stared at her in bewildered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+unbelief. He understood that she was nearly aswoon
+because he had suffered once.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg you to be careful," she said. "You are perfectly
+visible from the house."</p>
+
+<p>"But nobody's awake. The blinds are closed."</p>
+
+<p>"There are always eyes behind blinds."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let them see me tell you how much I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not here!" she gasped. "Don't tell me that here."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Enslee built this little temple to this little Cupid
+to propose to me in."</p>
+
+<p>"And did he?" Forbes asked, in a voice that rattled.
+"Did he propose to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Regularly."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">SHE studied Forbes closely and laughed aloud at the
+almost nausea he plainly felt.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She told him of her life: endowed with every material
+comfort, yet with a vague unhappiness for something or
+somebody&mdash;"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 châteaux.
+Her sister was in England. She had married a title and
+was unhappy; but for the matter of that, so were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+wives of most of the stanch Americans she knew, rich
+and poor.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;well, I'd rather they wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;sometime when it
+could be arranged without attracting attention or detracting
+from the duties toward the host and his other
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You folks been up all night?" he asked, with a drowsy
+surliness.</p>
+
+<p>Persis shook her head and smiled. "It's you that have
+overslept."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He changed the subject abruptly. "I just been buildin'
+a fire for Miss Mather."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, is she awake?" Persis gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Prout, "as to that, she's not wot you'd
+exackly call awake, but she's up an' doin' in the kitchin."</p>
+
+<p>While the gardener shuffled away to play valet to his
+flowers, Persis stood irresolute.</p>
+
+<p>"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. <i>Au 'voir!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I took the liberty of making myself a little coffee,"
+said Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"There are two cups."</p>
+
+<p>"I made two cups," said Forbes; and she was too busy
+to notice the evasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, since you've had your breakfast," she snapped,
+"you can help me get something for the rest. You'd
+better put this on."</p>
+
+<p>Like another Omphale, she fastened a womanish apron
+on Hercules, and set him at uncongenial tasks, retrieving
+butter, milk, salt, and eggs.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Well! H'lo, Perse, what you doing awake so early?
+Insomnia? No, I will not send your breakfast up on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+tray! You can come down and get it. My little snojer
+man is helping me."</p>
+
+<p>She hung up the ear-piece and turned to Forbes with
+her broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>"A cook has no chance to entertain her gempman
+friends. The minute I get a policeman in here somebody
+rings."</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good get-busy!" Winifred growled.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do?" said Persis, helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"For one thing, you can rout the other loafers out of
+bed."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Use the telephone. Tell 'em the house is on fire."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They knelt together to pick up the pieces. He began:</p>
+
+<p>"While I'm down here on my knees, I ask you again&mdash;"
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Morning! 'Morning!" was his almost swallowed
+greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"We just broke one of your cups," said Persis, "while
+we were setting the table."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You see!" said Persis, reproachfully, putting down
+the silver very slowly. "You nearly got caught."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The boyish manly sincerity of this convinced her and
+filled her eyes with a morning haze.</p>
+
+<p>"You do? Really?" She moved on to the next place.
+He followed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do. Will you?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's rather fun being proposed to while one is setting
+the table," Persis murmured. "We're getting terribly
+domestic already."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be so beautiful domesticated," Forbes urged.</p>
+
+<p>"But so somebody else thinks&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said Forbes. "And I&mdash;I dare you to
+come outside&mdash;off the place."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I will, the first chance I get."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Persis surprised Forbes and Mrs. Neff by her frankness.</p>
+
+<p>"I was saying I would take a long walk with Mr. Forbes
+the first chance I get."</p>
+
+<p>"Good work!" said Mrs. Neff, quite earnestly. "I was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+telling him what a love of a couple you two would
+make."</p>
+
+<p>Persis turned on her in amazement. "You were telling
+Mr. Forbes that?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>This to her daughter, who sauntered in just in time to
+receive the facer and gasp:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, mother, what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes watched them off with a look of jealousy that
+did not escape Mrs. Neff. She put a kindly hand on his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, he owns the place; he's the host&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The surroundings were as tempting as Naboth's vineyard
+was to David. He understood why men grew unscrupulous
+in the hunt for great wealth.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"That wall is the end of the Enslee estate," said Mrs.
+Neff.</p>
+
+<p>"There is an end to it, then?" said Forbes, more bitterly
+than he intended.</p>
+
+<p>"There's an end to everything, my boy," Mrs. Neff
+brooded, with a far-off bitterness of her own&mdash;"an end to
+wealth and love and&mdash;everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Who owns that place off there, I wonder?" said
+Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+sorts of money, but he won't let go. You might have
+better luck."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes again ignored the assumption that he was
+wealthy, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"There are things, then, that even the Enslee money
+can't buy?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;but aren't we stupid and cynical
+this beautiful morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are we?" Forbes smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Are those the only causes for unhappiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are three of the worst, and the most incurable."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+châtelaine of this splendor.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He could not know that he pleaded well enough at a
+distance. His absence wrought for him against Willie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a joy for Forbes and her to pick out a hundred
+acres or more&mdash;not too far from New York; perhaps
+among the hunting and poloing colonies on Long Island.
+While they were building they could cruise.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps Forbes could not afford a yacht. She
+must not run him into extravagances. Well, after all, the
+suites <i>de luxe</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>"The average is perfect," was Ten Eyck's verdict.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck rubbed his sagging waistcoat and groaned:</p>
+
+<p>"This is the emptiest empty house-party I ever went
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been a noble institution in Lent,"
+Persis sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"You would come," Willie snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank heaven," Alice purred, "I have a five-pound
+box of chocolates in my room."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite as nourishing as the Congressional Record,"
+said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"Deuce all!" cried Ten Eyck. "But family matters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We must take these poor nags out for a run," said
+Persis, looking at Forbes, who accepted with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, we will. To-morrow morning," said Willie;
+and Forbes resigned with a look.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>On the piazza the crowd dined well, and returned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Silence fell upon them all, and they sat once more
+staring into the flames, each finding there the glittering
+castles of desire.</p>
+
+<p>Prout came in with more logs of wood and tiptoed out,
+shaking his head in stupefaction at this latest game of
+these amazing people.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Everything in this house is last year's. There's not
+a turkey-trot on the place, or a tango."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather be second choice than a wallflower. That
+music takes me back a thousand years."</p>
+
+<p>She glided with an old-time dignity. Forbes tried to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+keep his eyes from Persis and heed Mrs. Neff's reminiscences.</p>
+
+<p>"Waltzes, waltzes!" she wailed. "How much they
+meant once to me. There are no dances like the old
+dances."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon so," said Mrs. Neff. "I can just remember
+when the polka was considered immoral."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"We must get back."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please!" he implored.</p>
+
+<p>"The others will wonder."</p>
+
+<p>"What of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can't afford to set them talking."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't afford to waste a night like this in a stuffy
+room."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be other moonlight nights."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know? We can't be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"The moon is pretty regular in its habits."</p>
+
+<p>"But we may not be alive. It may rain to-morrow.
+And the day after I must be getting back to my post."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Really? Oh, that is too bad!" There was such deep
+regret in her words that he took courage to say:</p>
+
+<p>"If we could only walk together a long, long distance!
+Doesn't the moon seem to&mdash;to command you to march?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but&mdash;but my slippers are all wet with the dew."</p>
+
+<p>"You could change them."</p>
+
+<p>"And what would the others say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Must they know?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could they help knowing?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you told them all good night and went to your
+room and changed your slippers, and came out later, and
+I met you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was a very elaborate conspiracy for him, and she
+gasped:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I'm quite mad?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know I am, or it seems that I'll go mad unless I
+can be with you in this wonderful light."</p>
+
+<p>"It is wonderful, but&mdash;even if I were crazy enough to
+do as you say you would spoil it all&mdash;you wouldn't be
+good."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I would. I promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Solemnly?"</p>
+
+<p>"I solemnly promise that I will not annoy you. I will
+not presume to&mdash;to kiss you unless you ask me to."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie, who was partially awake, supplied the necessary
+excuse for absence. He demanded that she change
+at once and not risk pneumonia.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm sent to my room I won't come back," said
+Persis, and yawned convincingly. This set up a con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>tagion
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you are afraid of stumbling here, I&mdash;I'm not forgetting
+my promise; but I just wanted to say that I&mdash;I
+don't mind holding on to you, if you want to ask me to."</p>
+
+<p>She declined with whispered thanks. Down, down the
+walk drifted. At length they heard a murmur&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>They stood and watched it like children for a long
+while. Then Forbes urged Persis along to the lowest of
+the circular levels.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The ragged woods in the distance were superb now in
+blue velvet. Everything was ennobled&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis and Forbes sat worshiping like Parsees of the
+moon, in awesome silence, till Forbes could no longer
+hush the clamor in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Cabot," he said, "I promised not to annoy you.
+Would it annoy you if I told you that&mdash;that I love you
+with all my heart and soul and being?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could you love me?" she answered, softly, hoping
+to be contradicted. "You've known me only a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"There are some people we live with for years and
+never like nor understand; others we know and love the
+moment our eyes meet."</p>
+
+<p>"And did you love me the moment our eyes met?"</p>
+
+<p>"Long before that. I loved the back of your hat and
+one shoulder."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very happy just now," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;only on&mdash;Mr. Enslee's
+property."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let's leave Mr. Enslee's property."</p>
+
+<p>"How? In an airship?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an awfully long way."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so long as you think."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not far. Let's walk to keep warm. You are
+cold, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Frozen, that's all. Well, come along, I'll go part way
+with you."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>His hands fought to caress her, his lips tingled to be
+again at her cheek, but he kept his promise.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But his sense of honor prevailed upon his hands, though
+he could not keep silent about his heartache.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you possibly love me, Miss Cabot? Couldn't
+you possibly?" he pleaded; and she whispered, with a
+sad sweetness:</p>
+
+<p>"I could&mdash;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&mdash;I'm afraid of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid," he implored. "Love me. Let
+yourself love me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid, Mr. Forbes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if you're afraid to love, it's because you don't,
+because you&mdash;can't."</p>
+
+<p>This hurt her pride. Her heart was so swollen with this
+new power that it would not be denied either by herself
+or him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I could! Oh, I could! But I mustn't&mdash;I mustn't
+let myself love you&mdash;not now&mdash;not so soon."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;so far from him. In
+his arms would be warmth and comfort as at a fireplace.
+She was lonely, unendurably lonely and wistful.</p>
+
+<p>And he sat at her side in an equal ague of distance
+and need.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he took his eyes from the moon and bent his
+gaze on her. He saw how her shoulders quaked.</p>
+
+<p>"You're cold, you poor, sweet child&mdash;you're cold. I'm
+dying to take you in my arms, but I promised&mdash;I promised."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Only a moment she lingered in Elysium, and then she
+sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"We must go back&mdash;we must! I hate to, but there's
+to-morrow&mdash;and the people! What wouldn't they think
+if they saw us?"</p>
+
+<p>He knew that they would not think the beautiful and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+holy thoughts that filled his heart and hers, so he consented
+to climb back from this lowly heaven to the Upper
+Purgatory.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They could not harm the perfection of that bliss by
+any other confessions than their love.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At their remote doors they paused to throw kisses into
+the black dark toward each other's invisible presences.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps her courage or her love would flinch from the
+sacrifice. Then he could not protect her from the un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>known
+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&mdash;everybody knows what mercy females
+have for one another.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie Enslee smiled&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>After the breakfast he sought an opportunity for a
+secret word with Persis. She was told off to the bed-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Last night when we were saying good night some one
+else was in the hall."</p>
+
+<p>Her lips parted in a gasp of terror, and her eyes whitened.
+"How do you know?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard her&mdash;or him."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I can't even guess," he mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it could have been&mdash;All right, Mr.
+Forbes, I'll be careful of your razor-blades."</p>
+
+<p>This last aloud for the benefit of Mrs. Neff, who came
+by and spoke with icy severity&mdash;was it ironical?</p>
+
+<p>"Chambermaids are not allowed to flirt with customers
+in this hotel." She went on up; and Persis followed
+helplessly, leaving Forbes distraught.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What about Persis and her horse's neck?" Ten Eyck
+asked, speaking Forbes' own uneasy thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Persis can ride anything," Willie said. "She's
+a born centaurette, while a horse and I are like oil and
+water&mdash;only oil always stays on top, and I don't."</p>
+
+<p>But Forbes did not feel so sure of Persis as Willie did.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+He ventured to say as much when she appeared, but she
+laughed at him:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Are those men leading horses, Willie, or flying kites?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"They're very becoming. Keep 'em on. You've got
+good legs, and you make Willie look like a wishbone."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+houseboats moored in shady niches, these lawns sloped
+and rolled in massive sweeps, fronting a mighty stream.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck seemed to note the anxiety that kept his eyes
+shuttling this way and that, for he remarked, as if quite
+casually:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck was as nearly right as a prophet is required
+to be.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;"to distinguish them
+from the members," said Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+ample time for at least nine holes before Persis could
+arrive.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 rec<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>ognized
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes shrieked an <i>ex post facto</i> "Fore!" but it was
+drowned in the snort of pain and rage from the man,
+whose left shoulder-blade stopped the ball.</p>
+
+<p>As Forbes ran forward with abject apologies a glaring
+face peered over the bunker and roared out:</p>
+
+<p>"Damn it, man! Where do you think you&mdash;Why,
+it's you! Harvey, my boy!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," Forbes murmured. "You were his
+best friend&mdash;our best friend."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+your not looking me up before. Mrs. Neff has just told
+me you've been in town nearly a week."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I've been very busy," Forbes stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;invent
+some new explosive&mdash;or a new gun?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes smiled bitterly and explained the foolish mistake,
+too foolish to correct at first, and later embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>The Senator stared at him a moment searchingly with
+a tender inquisition, then said:</p>
+
+<p>"Unless you're golf-hungry, let's send the caddies back
+and have a talk."</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>Tait and Forbes strolled aside from the traffic of the
+golf-course and found a quiet seat in the shade.</p>
+
+<p>"And now tell me," the Senator said; "but first have a
+cigar?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor's orders."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I won't."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"What's this about doctor's orders? You're the kind
+of picture that goes with the testimonials&mdash;after taking."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She's a big woman now&mdash;regular old maid&mdash;fanatic
+on charities&mdash;fine mind&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;to me! And spends my money,
+too, on scientific rescue work among women who&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"You congratulated me on my wealth. Am I to congratulate
+you the same way for your success with little
+Miss Neff?"</p>
+
+<p>The Senator stared at him. "My success with little
+Miss Neff? What do you mean? Who's little Miss
+Neff? Alice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"The girl that was just here with her mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What success should I have with her?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;Is
+Alice in on the game, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no; Alice is crazy to marry Stowe Webb."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Jim Webb's boy, eh?" Forbes nodded.
+"Well, why doesn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has no money."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's one of those."</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't even a job."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of politics," said Forbes, "the papers are
+full of the possibility of your being an ambassador somewhere.
+Is there anything in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forbes laughed at the spectacle of a big, rich man
+pouting like a reluctant child against having a sweetmeat
+forced on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are you going?" he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know I was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you said you didn't want to. We only say,
+'I don't want to' when we're just about to."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll tell you, Harvey. There's just one reason&mdash;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&mdash;a wife&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;well, who knows? Anyway, my last business
+on this earth is leaving my only child provided for,
+and I'm worried because&mdash;because&mdash;well, I'm too fat
+around the heart, and my neck is too thick, and the doctor
+tells me to be ready. You understand?</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+He bent over to pull on an overshoe, and&mdash;he just went
+on over and sprawled out on the rug&mdash;dead."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had a son to leave her with, Harvey; then I'd
+feel better, but my only boy&mdash;well, he married the wrong
+woman, and she drove him to the dogs, deceived him and
+tormented him, and&mdash;finally he had to make her divorce
+him. And he loved her in spite of it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Tait did not notice Forbes' inattention. Rummag<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>ing
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes spoke. "Sha'n't we stroll back to the club-house?
+I'm expected there for luncheon."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means," said Tait. "And I want you to meet
+Mildred again."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd love to," said Forbes, absently. He said nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+more, but strode on so rapidly down the steep slope that
+Tait had to take his arm for support and to hold him
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"You're visiting at the Enslees', Mrs. Neff tells me,"
+the old man panted.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse my fatherly familiarity, but how can you afford
+to gad with those wild asses?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"What's her name?" Tait laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I may be able to tell you later, and I may not."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my boy, I don't know who she is, but I bet she
+isn't worth it&mdash;not if she trails with the Enslee pack."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but she is beautiful&mdash;she is wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be hit damned hard."</p>
+
+<p>"Am."</p>
+
+<p>And then, not heeding the connotation, he exclaimed,
+as Persis emerged from the eclipsing shrubbery:</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one woman can ride like that."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey, it's not possible that you love her&mdash;actually
+love her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible not to?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you've not known her long."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, but I've known her well. Do you know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I knew her mother. Once I thought I loved
+her mother. But I had less money&mdash;when I proposed to
+her than I have now&mdash;Heaven be praised!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven be praised?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the men goldfish, the women catfish.
+Their blood is cold&mdash;Lord, how cold! Just look at their
+eyes! Hard eyes, hard hearts. They despise sincerity;
+they laugh at honest emotion."</p>
+
+<p>"But Persis has soft eyes," Forbes broke in, "and a
+warm heart."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Senator, the rich can't all be bad," Forbes complained.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's too late for me to dream of money. I'm a
+soldier."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that Willie Enslee expects to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't expect to marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have my reasons for believing that she doesn't
+love him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody ever accused her of that, but&mdash;well, does
+she think what Mrs. Neff thinks&mdash;that you have money?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes did not answer except with a blush. The
+Senator spared him any pressure on that point. He said,
+simply:</p>
+
+<p>"Enslee has a lot of money&mdash;more than her father has.
+In fact, her father is in a very bad plight."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Persis!" Forbes groaned. "Poor Persis!"</p>
+
+<p>There was such anguish in his tone that the Senator
+gripped his arm hard and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care so much for her?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When he opened his eyes he saw that Forbes was
+smiling glowingly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He had a fierce impulse to meet the horse, leap at him,
+catch him by the bridle and the nose and smother him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+to a standstill. But Tait had seen a policeman killed
+trying to stop a horse so, and he flung his arms about
+Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't!" he gasped. "You can't stop him!
+I won't let you risk your life&mdash;not for that woman."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"My boy, I love you like a son. You sha'n't risk your
+life&mdash;not for her!"</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly his clutch relaxed; his fingers opened;
+he rolled forward on his face, his white hair fluttering in
+the grass.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes sprawled on the turf; but at least he had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as they do when
+the curtain is down&mdash;audiences might roar as the golfers
+and the club servants and members roared at this spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>Willie, meanwhile, had vanished over the hill like the
+headless horseman Ten Eyck had likened him to.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Persis, my darling, my angel, speak to me! Are you
+dead?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>The two men stared all the more, but she released her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>self
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along," she said; "I feel as if I were on the stage
+of the Metropolitan Opera House."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"You were wonderful to try to save me as you did."</p>
+
+<p>"As I didn't," he groaned. "You wouldn't let me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't want you ever to risk anything for me,
+Harvey. But I'm just as grateful&mdash;and more than that.
+If there weren't so many people looking on do you know
+what I'd say?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"How soon shall I be able to call you mine before all
+the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madly! It is my one great wish."</p>
+
+<p>She breathed deeply and caressed him with a delicious
+smile, and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"It is mine, too."</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But where's Willie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord," Persis gasped, "I forgot all about him."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;simply
+sick."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you know the one I mean&mdash;at the
+top there&mdash;the big bunker?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he refused it."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I took it alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your horse?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I hope to God he breaks a leg or rips
+himself open on barbed wire or something."</p>
+
+<p>There was a vindictive ferocity in his voice that surprised
+Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, in his joy at being near to Persis, he remem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>bered
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>But Mildred, instead of an equally commonplace answer,
+sighed: "I suppose it is, but I&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Senator Tait shrugged his shoulders and smiled at
+Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she hopeless?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Enslee stared at the horses in disgust. "There are
+those brutes of mine, and not a bit hurt, either&mdash;worse luck.
+I'll have 'em both sold to somebody who'll work 'em
+hard and beat 'em harder."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Persis. "If you
+don't want them I'll take them."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And a pretty fool you'll make of me," Enslee wrangled.
+"Besides, I haven't ridden much lately; I'm saddle-sore."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been riding every morning in the Park," Persis
+insisted. "I'll lead your horse back, unless&mdash;" She
+hesitated and looked at Forbes, who leaped at the cue.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd be glad to ride him, if you don't object, Mr.
+Enslee."</p>
+
+<p>Enslee stared at Forbes, saw nothing ulterior in his
+eyes, and yielded with a bad grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right. Go ahead. Only don't sue me for
+damages if you get pitched under an auto."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," Forbes laughed, elated beyond belief by the
+unimaginable luck of riding at Persis' stirrup for miles
+and miles.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">"IS it possible that we're actually alone?" Forbes
+gloated, turning in his saddle to take her in in her
+brisk, youthful beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful, to be riding with you!"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I?" he said. "As you told me the first time I
+met you, I'm glad you like me."</p>
+
+<p>"I more than that, now."</p>
+
+<p>"More than like me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Umm-humm!"</p>
+
+<p>"Love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Umm-humm!"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, He would understand."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;a thoroughly equipped desert
+island with hot and cold water and automatic cooking?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see if there's one in the market."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a fine addition to the same old town and
+country house and yacht. Had you thought where you
+will have your&mdash;our country place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;no, I hadn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you have to be at your post much? Are the
+office-hours very strict?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty strict. We'd have to live on Governor's
+Island, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? In one of those little houses?" He nodded.
+"I saw them there once when they gave a lawn fête. I
+never dreamed I'd live in one of them. They aren't very
+commodious, are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends."</p>
+
+<p>"Nichette&mdash;she's my maid&mdash;would make an awful row,
+and my chauffeur&mdash;I suppose we could keep him? He
+expects to marry Nichette."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he?"</p>
+
+<p>"If they can stop fighting long enough to get married.
+Does a garage go with the house we should occupy there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it."</p>
+
+<p>"No garage!" she exclaimed. "How should we manage?
+It's rather awkward getting to the Island, too, as
+I remember&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid not."</p>
+
+<p>His heart was thumping. She grew more exquisite as
+she grew more fairy-like in her visions. He could not tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+her the truth&mdash;not yet&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't!" she warned. "Really!"</p>
+
+<p>"But no one can see us."</p>
+
+<p>"So we thought in the dark hall. And there was some
+one there. Do you know who it was?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't been able to find out."</p>
+
+<p>"I have!" She spoke triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it, in Heaven's name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who would be your last guess?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enslee."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he smiled; because he let me ride with you."</p>
+
+<p>"That shows how much a man's reasoning power is
+worth. That was just who it was."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know so. He told me."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was dazed; he marveled aloud: "And yet he
+smiled? He let me ride with you?"</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forbes chuckled a moment, then flushed, as Persis
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"That means I can't be with you to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so."</p>
+
+<p>"And you won't let me kiss you now?"</p>
+
+<p>"But we couldn't go spooning about in the daylight,
+could we? Not even if we were an old married couple,
+could we?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not. But when&mdash;when are we going to be
+an old married couple?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever you say," she said, with a shy down-look.
+"We'd have to announce our engagement, I suppose, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+then it would take a long time to get my clothes
+made."</p>
+
+<p>"Would it?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're like a rose on fire."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel deliciously a ninny. Can you get away from
+your hateful army for a good long honeymoon, do you
+suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Where would you like to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Riviera isn't bad. A trip around the world
+would be pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it!" he groaned. "But I'm afraid I
+couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel that way?" he asked, hungrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Terribly. I love you&mdash;I love you hideously much.
+Watch out! Will you never learn that somebody's always
+looking?&mdash;a whole picnic this time."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>While the horses cropped the grass soberly a pack of
+substantial wives cleared away such part of the débris
+of the banquet as was not scattered about the ground.</p>
+
+<p>As Forbes and Persis rounded the turn that disclosed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it ghastly?" Persis whispered. "They were trying
+to spoon&mdash;just as we were. And we both broke up
+both of us. It makes love rather a silly, shabby spectacle,
+doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," Forbes said. "I should say that
+instead of their making love shabby, love covered them
+with a little glory."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a much prettier way to put it. But shabby
+people&mdash;oh Lord! Look at that family, dear! If that's
+wedded bliss, give me chloroform."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes laughed sheepishly. "It was what I was thinking,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>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?&mdash;should we?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"If we ride fast on levels, we can take more time
+later," she said; "then they won't wonder at our being
+so late."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They say he's worth a hundred or two hundred million
+dollars," Persis called across to Forbes.</p>
+
+<p>"That ought to be enough," said Forbes. "It's more
+than we shall have." And he smiled at the comparison.
+Persis sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"If he could lend us just one million for a few years
+we could make good use of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I might ask him," said Forbes. "I'll send a boy over
+for it to-night."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He took her into his arms again and kissed her and
+laughed at her.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you'll warn me now that the horses are looking."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said; "but one of them is standing on one
+of my coat-tails."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd take off my boots and dip my poor aching feet in
+that water."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a id="i252" name="i252"></a>
+<img src="images/i252.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">"THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL, WATCHING THIS ME"</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not here," he urged.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, there's that other Me down in the pool
+watching this Me, and saying, 'Don't make a fool of yourself,
+honey.'"</p>
+
+<p>"There are two Persises, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"At least a hundred. But there's one down there.
+Look, you can see her yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"At home?" he echoed, reprovingly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her in terror, and she smiled with pride
+at his fear and babbled on almost incoherently.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid&mdash;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&mdash;I&mdash;I've told you how often
+Willie Enslee proposed to me, and&mdash;well, one day&mdash;that
+very day you saw me in my old hat&mdash;the first time, you
+know&mdash;well, I had just had a talk with my father, and
+the poor old boy was all cut up about his&mdash;his money
+matters. He's too nice and sweet to be much of a financier,
+you know, and&mdash;well, I was scared to death, and I
+thought the world was coming to an end, and I'd better&mdash;better
+get aboard the ark, you know&mdash;and I hadn't met<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+you then, you know, and Willie proposed again, and I&mdash;I
+accepted him."</p>
+
+<p>"You promised to be his wife!" Forbes whispered,
+chokingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered. "I&mdash;you see, I didn't know you.
+I didn't dream I should ever meet anybody who would&mdash;would
+thrill me&mdash;that's the only word&mdash;as you did, as
+you do. I didn't imagine that I should ever love as other
+people do&mdash;insanely, madly, dishonorably&mdash;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&mdash;it seemed so hateful even to mention his name. It
+would have been like&mdash;like this."</p>
+
+<p>With her heel she pushed a rock into the water, and it
+thumped and splashed and curdled the little pool.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+back at the horses blissfully tearing young leaves from
+high branches.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would, indeed!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's buy them from Willie. He would sell them for
+a song."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fine idea," Forbes answered, with a gulp.
+He knew how much horses like these were worth&mdash;and
+saddles, bridles, and stables.</p>
+
+<p>"We shouldn't want to ride in a car all the time, should
+we?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed," he answered. She was at her fairy
+plans again, and his heart sickened.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;to hold only two. I could drive
+down and get you and bring you home. It would save
+wear on our limousine&mdash;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&mdash;at least
+for a year or so, till you and I can get acquainted. Will
+you buy me a little car like Winifred's&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer. She turned and looked at him
+and saw on his face the look she had seen on her father's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+that day&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Experience and common sense&mdash;for he had them in
+large measure in his ordinary life&mdash;seemed to bend down
+and say: "Let your sea-gull go. She'll die in your cage,
+or she'll break it apart."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Common Sense grinned: "Suppose it should rain? This
+is all very well for a while, but what of next winter?"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+hundred a year, and that's good pay. Don't you let him
+wheedle you out of a penny more."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm what you would call&mdash;a pauper, I suppose.
+I have only my army pay."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I'd be able to adapt myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope so. How much is your army pay, if
+you don't mind my asking?"</p>
+
+<p>"As first lieutenant I get a little over two thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"Two thousand a week? Why, that's not bad at all.
+Why did you frighten me?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed aloud, and she corrected herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, two thousand a month. That's about twenty-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>five
+thousand a year. It isn't much, is it? But we could
+skimp and scrape, and we'd have each other."</p>
+
+<p>She had given him his death-blow unwittingly.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled dismally, and groaned:</p>
+
+<p>"Two thousand a year with forage."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"The hero business is the worst paid of all. Look at
+the firemen."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear, two thousand a&mdash;why, our chef gets
+more than that, and our chauffeur nearly as much; and
+my father's secretary&mdash;everybody gets more than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Not everybody. The vast majority of people get
+much less. But that's what I get."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We're better paid than other armies," said Forbes.
+"Officers in foreign armies are supposed to have private
+fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wonder," she gasped. "And you haven't
+any?" He shook his head. "No relatives?"</p>
+
+<p>"None that aren't poorer than I am."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope to be promoted captain very shortly&mdash;any
+day now I should get my commission. That carries
+with it twenty-four hundred a year."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. "The little car I wanted would cost more
+than that. Well, let it go. Walking is healthier. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+would save the chauffeur's wages, too. And my maid&mdash;I
+don't know what Nichette would say. But&mdash;well, let
+her go. Let everything go but you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;all very envious
+of me. And the cathedral was to be one ocean of
+flowers and silk ribbons, and&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"It was a silly dream. It's not the ceremony that
+counts&mdash;it's the long life after. Love's the main thing,
+isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;yes. My father got squeezed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+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&mdash;indignant
+creditors. Oh, the bills, the bills&mdash;my God,
+the bills!</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;two thousand a
+year&mdash;and forage!</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Harvey, it would take you a year and a half of
+work to pay for the little car I wanted&mdash;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&mdash;and ate only the
+forage. We couldn't have a chauffeur. I couldn't have
+my maid. I couldn't have any friends&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>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?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Persis had understood, and, being in funds at the time,
+had seen all conducted with taste and even with a little
+splendor.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes felt that he clung to the mere clothes of her soul.
+Herself was already gone from him. Yet he loved her so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+that he found her not unworthy nor selfish nor craven, but
+infinitely precious and beautiful, difficult to win and wear.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old boy, I'm afraid all bets are off."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">FORBES had been recruiting strength to tell her that
+he released her; but she anticipated him by jilting
+him first&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>"You're pretty poor, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Not people with hearts like yours," he ventured at
+last to put in as a feeble objection.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you of all men. I knew you weren't really terribly
+rich, but I didn't think you were so pitifully, cruelly poor."</p>
+
+<p>The epithet reiterated stung him like a whip in the face.
+He protested impatiently:</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His resistance gave her something to fight, and her resentment
+at fate welcomed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Me happy at an army post? With nothing but poker
+for you and gossip for me? No, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>She caught a twitch of anger in his brows, and she
+grew harsher:</p>
+
+<p>"Look here! Would you give up your career for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"A woman can't ask a man to give up his career," he
+answered; and she retorted with the spirit of her time:</p>
+
+<p>"Then why should she give up hers for him?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked an old-fashioned surprise. "And have you
+a career?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And what career have you?" he asked, amazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage. It's the average woman's main business
+in life, Harvey. If she fails in that she fails in everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think the poor have no right to marry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, I'm not such a fool as that. There are people
+with simple tastes who can be happy on nothing a year&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>He cried out against her self-portrait as a libel. "Oh,
+Persis, don't tell me that you are mercenary&mdash;a woman
+with a big heart like yours."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;in time&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk like that, or you will ruin your own life!
+There's a big tragedy in store for you, Persis, unless you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She was so tortured with disillusion and with the death
+of her first romance that she grew very hard.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He aided her to her feet, untied the horses, and offered
+her his hand for a mounting-block. But she said:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and get me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+a real husband. He could give me enough for us both to
+live on comfortably."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon I could hardly accept that arrangement,"
+Forbes said, as gently as he might.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I could hardly object to that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, if everything goes right with my father's
+plans we'll have love and money and all. It will be wonderful&mdash;heaven
+on earth! Kiss me!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a final irony.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me if this road leads to Briarcliff?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think so," Persis answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Miss Cabot," he called out, as the car
+whirred away.</p>
+
+<p>Persis stared after him in amazement. "Now who was
+that? How did he know my name?"</p>
+
+<p>"By your pictures in the papers," Forbes suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Persis; "I've met him somewhere. Oh, I
+know. He's a reporter on the&mdash;some paper. Lord, I
+hope he didn't misconstrue our being here. I didn't like
+the grin on his face."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a little
+cold, perhaps, but charmingly definite. Now everything
+was crashing about her. She must walk warily among the
+fragments or she would suffer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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"&mdash;cottage being an elastic word.
+Friends of hers owned cottages of palatial dimensions.
+But two thousand a year&mdash;with a prospect of twenty-four
+hundred a year! She simply could not imagine it.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>That would have re-established the <i>entente</i>. But that
+was the one thing Forbes could not say. He rode on at
+Persis' side, a silent and dejected prisoner of circum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>stances,
+a spy captured in the enemy's camp in the enemy's
+uniform.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually they reached the Enslee place&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>They trotted across the granite bridge and urged the
+horses to the ascent.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+château of stately charm enthroned in beauty.</p>
+
+<p>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 châtelaine of this place.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke her thought aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"It's this sort of thing, Harvey, that I love and need&mdash;beautiful
+things and plenty of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," Forbes groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"If only you could get them for us!"</p>
+
+<p>"If only I could!"</p>
+
+<p>A little farther she checked her horse, whose trunk was
+heaving like a bellows. It was in a little colonnade of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+trees with an arched roof of green leaves in more than
+Gothic confusion. Birds were everywhere, fluting, fighting,
+and building.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"They're making love, too, I suppose," Persis said, a
+trifle anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>And he was still aggrieved enough to answer: "And
+the fish ladies also select the gentleman with the most
+gold."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him a moment, hurt and shamed. Then
+she flung back at him:</p>
+
+<p>"Then you oughtn't to blame us&mdash;us other females for
+making the wisest choice we can. It must be a law of
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Willie greeted them in his whiniest tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Where on earth were you? We've been home for
+ages."</p>
+
+<p>"We got off the main road," Persis said, as she climbed
+the steps, followed by Forbes, "and the horses were tired
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I was awfully anxious. I was about to start out to
+look for you."</p>
+
+<p>"There was no occasion to be anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, your father telephoned you."</p>
+
+<p>"My father! Is he back in New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he telephoned from Chicago. He was just leaving
+on the twenty-hour train. He couldn't wait till you
+got back."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he have to say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lots." Willie looked uneasily at Forbes, as if he were
+in the way.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be changing for dinner," Forbes said, with uncomfortable
+haste.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better be cooking the dinner," Willie said.
+"Winifred is counting on your soldierly experience to
+help her out."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>"What did father have to say?" she asked, in a dull
+tone already despairing.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;it wasn't very pleasant."</p>
+
+<p>"Hand it to me."</p>
+
+<p>"He said to break it to you gently."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, speak up, Willie. Break it! For the Lord's
+sake, break it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, won't you?" He led her to a bench in the
+temple. "I hardly know where to begin."</p>
+
+<p>"Begin at the ending."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, your poor governor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Has lost all his money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes&mdash;in a way."</p>
+
+<p>"It's getting to be rather a habit with the poor old
+boy, isn't it? Is he smashed up badly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty badly."</p>
+
+<p>"The house in town and the country place will have to
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid so."</p>
+
+<p>"The cars and the horses&mdash;my car, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I needn't worry about it's being a last year's
+model," she laughed. Willie stared at her admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Gad, but you're a good loser."</p>
+
+<p>"I try to be; an easy winner, an easy loser. I'm awfully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+sorry for father, though. Did you&mdash;did you tell him
+anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him we were engaged."</p>
+
+<p>She shivered and mumbled, "What did he say to
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He seemed immensely relieved. He said, 'God bless
+her.' His voice was very faint, but I think that's what
+he said."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he said, 'God help her.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he did," Willie sighed. "Anyway, we're to
+meet him in town to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;perhaps
+a little for him, certainly for herself.</p>
+
+<p>He overestimated the tenderness in her gaze and
+squeezed her fingers in his. She winced and drew her
+hand away.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm awfully sorry I hurt you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It was this ring again," she explained, though she had
+not meant to say the "again."</p>
+
+<p>"My ring? Our ring?" he murmured, with such joy
+that her sportsmanship compelled a last effort at playing
+fair.</p>
+
+<p>"Under the circumstances," she said, "I think I'd
+better return it to you&mdash;with thanks for the loan."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want it back!" he gasped. "I won't have it
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't agree to marry a beggar."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to marry you&mdash;just you," he pleaded. "The
+engagement stands."</p>
+
+<p>"You're terribly polite, but I can't&mdash;not for charity."</p>
+
+<p>"Charity&mdash;bosh!" he stormed. "I can't get along
+without you. You couldn't get along without a lot of
+money, Persis. If&mdash;if you'll let the engagement stand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+I'll put your father on his feet again. I'll&mdash;I'll do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"How put him on his feet? I thought he was smashed?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;unless&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Think what people would say. It looks so hideously
+mercenary on my part."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>She resigned herself to all the shames she foresaw, and
+sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Willie, it will brace Dad up a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he the only one you think of?" Willie pouted.
+"Haven't you a word of&mdash;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&mdash;the best she could do was to mumble:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She broke from him and hurried down the steps. He
+overtook her half-way to plead:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me announce our engagement now&mdash;to the people
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Not now," she pleaded; "not here!" And she ran
+on. But he followed chuckling. He had a great dramatic
+idea.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>When at last the board was decked, the candelabra
+alight, fresh flowers lavished everywhere, and chairs
+arranged, the guests were ravenous.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes had taken off his coat for his kitchen work.
+Winifred would not let him put it on again.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Our own people are probably eating at our own tables
+at home," said Mrs. Neff, "and passing scandal with
+every plate."</p>
+
+<p>"There's the one thing missing to make this a true
+servant's soirée," said Ten Eyck&mdash;"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&mdash;a receipted
+bill for five-and-twenty dollars for Mr. and Mrs. William
+Jones, one night's lodging, so 'elp me!'"</p>
+
+<p>Everybody glanced at Willie, but he giggled. "You
+flatter me."</p>
+
+<p>Alice, with the sophistication that young women have
+apparently always had except in fiction, put up her hand
+reprovingly to Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>"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!'"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff smiled and retaliated: "Now I'm Alice's
+Hibernian maid: 'At that the ould shrew had nothin'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+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.'"</p>
+
+<p>"How on earth did you find out?" said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm Mrs. Neff's secretary talking to my little
+niece's governess."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I surrender," said Winifred, hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said Ten Eyck. "As Connie Ediss sang,
+'It all comes out in the wash.'"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fine idea!" said Ten Eyck. "A game of tag
+in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in my dark!" said Willie, sternly, with a calm
+incisiveness that surprised everybody and ended the project
+before it was begun.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck complained: "We came here to be rid of the
+spying servants, and we've been more respectable than
+ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Crowds are almost always respectable," said Mrs.
+Neff, "unless they're drunk."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody is almost always respectable," said Ten
+Eyck. "Even the worst of us only sin for a few minutes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the remorse and the atonement that make up the
+life," said Mrs. Neff.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't had our smoke yet," protested Mrs. Neff.
+A respite was granted for this.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody smoked but Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, Alice?" said Winifred.
+"Sore throat?"</p>
+
+<p>Alice shrugged her shoulders and answered, "Ask my
+awful mother."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Great heavens!" said Winifred, pretending to put
+away her cigarette, "I've ruined my life. No wonder I'm
+wasting away."</p>
+
+<p>"Eighteen is the legal age for women," said Ten Eyck.</p>
+
+<p>Winifred resumed her cigarette with a mock childishness.
+"Then I can just qualify. I was eighteen last&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Last century, my dear?" Mrs. Neff cooed.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I am a martyr in the cause of truth," Mrs. Neff
+groaned. "Come on; let's get it over with."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I never understood before why my servants are so
+snappy at night," said Mrs. Neff. "If anybody speaks
+to me I'll cry."</p>
+
+<p>"Pull down your skirts, at least, mother," said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"They're too far away," sighed Mrs. Neff. "And nobody's
+interested in my old legs."</p>
+
+<p>Alice, with the fierce decency of the young, rose wearily,
+bent down, put her mother's ankles together, and covered
+them with the skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's a nice little girl, sometimes," she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"And it would be a nice little mother," said Alice,
+"if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother went on: "Do you remember how you had
+all the chocolate creams you wanted&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Alice made no answer. She sat studying her own
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>After a while of silent meditation Mrs. Neff spoke up,
+briskly:</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one thing that would rest me, and that's
+a tango. Where are those records we bought this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I choose to dance with Major General Forbes," said
+Mrs. Neff, "unless he's otherwise engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"Before we dance," said Willie, "I have an announcement
+to make. Ladies and gentlemen, so to speak"&mdash;he
+cleared his throat and ran his fingers round inside his
+tight collar&mdash;"I am about to&mdash;er&mdash;give birth&mdash;er&mdash;to an
+after-dinner speech&mdash;my first and only."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear! Hear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Some time ago Miss Persis&mdash;er&mdash;Cabot, whom you
+all know, did me the&mdash;er&mdash;unspeakable honor of consenting
+to become Mrs. William&mdash;er&mdash;Enslee. Circumstances
+rendered it&mdash;er&mdash;advisable to defer&mdash;er&mdash;the publication
+of the glorious&mdash;er&mdash;news, so to speak. But Miss Cabot
+has to-night given me&mdash;er&mdash;permission to announce&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not!" Persis broke in; but Willie put up his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Order in the court&mdash;er! Anyway, now you know the
+worst. You behold in me the happiest man on&mdash;er&mdash;earth."</p>
+
+<p>There was a round of applause, and Ten Eyck proposed
+"three lusty chahs and a tigress for the&mdash;er&mdash;bride and&mdash;er&mdash;groom&mdash;er."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't congratulated me, Mr. Ward&mdash;er&mdash;Forbes."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes seized Enslee's small hand and wrung it, and
+said in a tone more fitted to condolence:</p>
+
+<p>"I do congratulate you, indeed, and Miss Cabot, I&mdash;I
+congratulate her."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to look at her, but Willie was clinging to his
+hand and driveling on: "I want to thank you for&mdash;er&mdash;at
+least trying to save her when her horse bolted this
+morning. They told me you were&mdash;er&mdash;quite splendid,
+and I take it as a&mdash;er&mdash;personal favor."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mention it, please."</p>
+
+<p>"And now let's&mdash;er&mdash;dance," said Willie. "I will
+dance with the blushing bride, if you don't mind. Let
+'er go, Winifred."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+the words something from Sophokles; it was a romping
+ditty about</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'Way down on the lev-ee<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In old Alabam-y,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">There's daddy and mam-my,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">There's Ephraim and Sam-my<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">On a moon-light night.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Watch them shuf-flin' along,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">See them shuf-flin' along.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Go take your best&mdash;gal&mdash;real&mdash;pal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Go down to the lev-ee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I said to the lev-ee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And join that shuf-flin' throng.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hear that mu-sic and song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It's simply great&mdash;O mate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Waitin' on the levee, waitin' for the <i>Robert E. Lee</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>For the second dance Forbes demanded Persis, and
+she granted him the privilege with some terror; the look
+on his face had alarmed her.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so loud, my love!"</p>
+
+<p>"'My love?'" he quoted. "You can call me that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going to make a scene, are you?" she
+whispered, trembling in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"A scene!" he laughed. "Is that your greatest terror
+in life?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of them."</p>
+
+<p>"You intended to marry him, and you let me kiss you!
+Were you simply making a fool of me?"</p>
+
+<p>("<i>At the Devil's ball, at the Devil's ball.</i>")</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>("<i>I saw the cute Mrs. Devil, so pretty and fat.</i>")</p>
+
+<p>"When will you explain?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first chance I get."</p>
+
+<p>("<i>Dressed in a beautiful fireman's hat.</i>")</p>
+
+<p>"To-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>("<i>Dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!</i>")</p>
+
+<p>"Everything on earth is ridiculous, but nothing is so
+ridiculous as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear!'" he echoed, bitterly. "When do I see you, I
+say?"</p>
+
+<p>("<i>Dancing at the Devil's Ball.</i>")</p>
+
+<p>"There's no chance."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll make one. I'll&mdash;I'll come to your room."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a nauseating rôle 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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's match-making plot by giving
+Stowe Webb a position she became a mænad 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary
+to begin with," Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic
+hopes.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Forbes; "I promised you I wouldn't
+take Miss Cabot seriously. I&mdash;I admit I was surprised.
+That's all. And it rather shocks me to think of so&mdash;so&mdash;of
+her tying up with a man like Enslee. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+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?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the best of advice," Forbes assented.</p>
+
+<p>He thought that he sounded convinced; but Ten Eyck
+shook his head and masked a sigh as a yawn.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>And he closed his door.</p>
+
+<p>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 fiancé 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have you a match?" she whispered. "If you haven't
+I have."</p>
+
+<p>"I have a cigar-lighter," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The wee taper gave Forbes a glimpse as well of the
+place he was in.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>To her it was a clandestine romance&mdash;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&mdash;a
+broad, padded seat in front of a tall mullioned window.
+Within the window was a smaller window, and she swung
+this back.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When he released her from this constraint she sighed
+luxuriously:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Harvey, it seems as if all the happiness in the
+world had to be sneaked, doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he realized again the dishonesty of their
+communion.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that your creed?" he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my experience. Stolen fruit, you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I hate stolen fruit. I want to have the right to
+own&mdash;you."</p>
+
+<p>"You do&mdash;pretty nearly."</p>
+
+<p>"I want everybody to know it. I want you to be my
+wife. It's not too late, if you love me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's no question of that, for I do love you.
+You are&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother&mdash;you haven't met him; he's loafing
+through college&mdash;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&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Obey your heart!" Forbes broke in, at last. She
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"So you will marry this rich man. And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall probably learn to hate him."</p>
+
+<p>"And to love somebody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;always to conceal."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Despise your love!" she cried. "It's myself I despise.
+Ah, Harvey, try to understand me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't! I can only warn you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't warn me! Don't lecture me! Just love
+me! Let's not think of the future&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think that you will escape that by marrying
+without love?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But yourself&mdash;your body&mdash;you will give that to him?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>He flung her from him as something unclean, common,
+cheap.</p>
+
+<p>From the huddle she was in she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"I understand. I&mdash;I don't blame you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She wept but a little while, and then she was quiet,
+reclining against him in silence and meditating.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that other man's soul of her&mdash;was
+gone voyaging.</p>
+
+<p>But now it was in the cold of night, in the dark chill of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He clenched his arms about her with a new and different
+ardor&mdash;no longer the sacred fervor of a lover who
+protects his affianced from himself, but the outlaw that
+raids and desecrates.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Help me! Harvey, help me!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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&mdash;the cry of
+"Help!" that never falls in vain on the ears of a man
+unless he has become a beast&mdash;or a god.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you how grateful I am, Harvey, and how
+ashamed. I didn't know I was so&mdash;so hopelessly like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was impelled to taunt her with a whispered:
+"There is your husband. Go to him!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;called it her "career"!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;as she was.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was served more slipshoddily than before.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+Even the novelty of the experience had gone. Henceforward
+Winifred was converted to the vital importance
+of servants.</p>
+
+<p>Persis was the last to appear. Mrs. Neff greeted her
+with:</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I caught cold, too," she said. "The change in the
+weather."</p>
+
+<p>The explanation sufficed to satisfy Mrs. Neff and to
+convince Forbes that Persis was dangerously apt at concealments.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The three automobiles rolled up through the rain, all
+shipshape for the storm, with tops hooded and side-curtains
+buttoned down snugly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! Good-by Alice! Good-by Mr.
+Wa&mdash;er&mdash;Forbes. Awfully glad you could come. See you
+again. Go on to Miss Cabot's house." This last to his
+own driver.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff and Alice cried in unison: "Good-by! Had
+lovely time! See you soon!"</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, P&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad you let Willie take her away from you; it's
+not too late yet if you've any ambition."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes smiled dully, and Alice said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, you do say the most tactless things!"</p>
+
+<p>"I had set my heart on that love-match," sighed Mrs.
+Neff.</p>
+
+<p>"Better begin at home," said Alice, with unusual cheer.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"That's mighty kind of you," said Forbes. He helped
+them to alight, promised to call, and re-entered the car.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It is doleful travel that takes one home from an unaccomplished
+errand&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was gloriously impersonal and objective,
+accurate and material.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He paid his bill at the hotel&mdash;with further erosion of
+the bank-account&mdash;and took the Subway and the ferry to
+Governor's Island.</p>
+
+<p>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!&mdash;the little piece of wrinkling sky in the corner and
+the red stripes swimming in luxurious curves.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>One of these officers, Major Chatham, dragged Forbes
+to his home for dinner&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>He left, after his first cigar, on a pretext of unpacking.
+In the late twilight the sea-gulls that swung and tilted and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and found in the inside
+pocket that perfumed nightcap.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;given her back to herself!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>That night was a condensed eternity. The next morning's
+duties were performed in a kind of somnambulism.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The second day brought his commission as captain.
+He glanced over it listlessly and tossed it aside.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But at least he would telephone her. Then he remembered
+the fruitless effort he had made to discover her
+number&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And so he tossed hope and despair like a mad juggler<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"That you, Harvey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Hello, Senator."</p>
+
+<p>"You sound mighty doleful, my boy. Anything the
+matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure you're not dead? You disappeared so
+completely I thought you might be. You sound as if
+you wished you were."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, I'm all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you come up to the house for dinner to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>He realized that this would mean meeting Mildred&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow night, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Terribly sorry. I can't get off."</p>
+
+<p>"How about lunch? At the club&mdash;to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to discuss with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be there! At one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! One o'clock. Metropolitan Club. Do you
+know where it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll find it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good! Perhaps Mildred can be there."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer up! Maybe she can't come!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I&mdash;I hope she can. She's&mdash;I'd love to see her, I
+assure you."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Don't worry. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>The Senator was laughing, but there was a wounded
+pride in his voice. Forbes hung up the telephone, feeling
+a cad and an ingrate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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&mdash;Victory or Peace or something,
+he was not sure just what.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a very different
+horse from the Park horses he found, with their tan-clad
+grooms clustered at the mounting-blocks near by.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 cock<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>tail,
+and joined Forbes in it in joyous disobedience of his
+physician's warning.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;wealth
+the upholsterer, the caterer, the artist, the butler.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Tait hesitated to open his real business. He began
+obliquely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've just fired the first gun in my war with Mrs.
+Neff."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Forbes, drearily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Tait, positively. "Just before you came
+young Stowe Webb was here&mdash;nice young fellow. I sent
+for him, and said to him: 'Young man, Miss Alice Neff,
+whom I believe you know'&mdash;he blushed like a house
+afire&mdash;'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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+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!'"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"And what is the job?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and
+her, too. If they can't stand the test they wouldn't last
+long in the battle of matrimony."</p>
+
+<p>"Your secretary?" said Forbes. "Does he know any
+law?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a
+diplomat&mdash;in Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" cried Forbes, reaching across to squeeze
+his hand. "I congratulate the country&mdash;and France. I
+envy you Paris. I've never been there."</p>
+
+<p>"How would you like to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I like to be a major-general?"</p>
+
+<p>Tait opened his lips to say something important, then
+stammered, and said instead:</p>
+
+<p>"Waiter, give Captain Forbes some more of that curry.
+It's good here, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid," said Forbes, who had hardly touched what
+was on his plate.</p>
+
+<p>Senator Tait shifted uncomfortably, made to speak,
+pursed his lips, eyed Forbes, and then said, with abrupt
+irrelevance:</p>
+
+<p>"I was wrong, I see, about old Cabot."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Were you?" Forbes mumbled, with a sudden flush at
+the broaching of that dangerous theme.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I said that he was to be closed up, forced into
+involuntary bankruptcy, and all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't he?" said Forbes, weakly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he got money and credit and a new start&mdash;from
+the Enslee estates. There is a rumor that his daughter
+is to marry Willie Enslee. I thought that perhaps you&mdash;did
+you&mdash;did you hear anything of it&mdash;from Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the very day
+I saw you last."</p>
+
+<p>His head drooped as if his neck could no longer hold
+it up. Tait noted his harrowed look and broke out
+angrily:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be cut up, my boy, just because she's fool
+enough to marry a bigger fool than herself."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be glad to be revenged so neatly."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+black despair repeated in the son. He felt that he must
+repeat the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that you can't stand the loss of Miss Cabot,
+and you might as well commit suicide?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might as well."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean it?" Forbes asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Tait murmured; "all good Americans go to
+Paris when they die&mdash;let's go to Paris."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Tait seized the opportunity of Forbes' disorder and
+urged his idea:</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to have a military attaché, you know. I
+could get the billet for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why select me for the honor? You'll be beset with
+applications."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I like you, Harvey. You are your father
+come to life again. I love you&mdash;as if you were your father&mdash;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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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 "<i>petite</i>." 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>So little jealousy he had&mdash;or, rather, so slow a jealousy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 cover<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>ing
+of the mirror over the mantel that she might catch a
+glimpse of her hair.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"But you mustn't sleep here. Go to your own room&mdash;or
+the club."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone," Willie protested, with querulous anger,
+still befuddled, and relapsing at once into sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly from his lips broke a half-strangled gurgle,
+then a wild shriek of "Persis! Persis!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>His mother peered into his eyes, and he clutched her
+by the arms, staring at her. Then he mumbled:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you," and smiled foolishly, and laughed as
+with a great relief.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, my boy?" said Mrs. Enslee.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have dropped off to sleep. It was only a
+dream."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What was it?" Mrs. Enslee repeated; but he spoke
+with a sickly cheer:</p>
+
+<p>"That's the one consolation about nightmares, when
+you wake up&mdash;thank God, they're not true!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what did you dream?" Mrs. Enslee demanded
+till he explained:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it seemed to be my&mdash;er&mdash;wedding-day. And I
+was standing there by Persis&mdash;I was&mdash;er&mdash;fumbling in
+my pocket for the&mdash;er&mdash;ring, and feeling like a fool&mdash;because
+she's so much taller than I am&mdash;and the preacher
+said, 'If anybody knows any&mdash;er&mdash;reason why these two
+should not be&mdash;er&mdash;wed, let him speak now, or forever&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said his audience of one.</p>
+
+<p>"There was&mdash;er&mdash;silence for a minute. Then a man
+stood up in the church&mdash;I couldn't see his face&mdash;but he
+was tall, and he called out&mdash;er, 'I forbid the banns! She
+loves me. She is only marrying that man for his&mdash;er&mdash;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&mdash;er&mdash;walked out of the church. And the&mdash;er&mdash;ceremony
+went on. But Persis shivered all the
+time&mdash;er&mdash;just shivered, and when I kissed her her lips
+were like&mdash;er&mdash;like ice. Then the music began, and we
+marched down the aisle&mdash;and then&mdash;then we&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;no,
+I won't tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on&mdash;please go on!" the mother pleaded; but Willie
+grew embarrassed, and his eyes wandered as he stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;at last&mdash;we were in our room&mdash;and I&mdash;er&mdash;she
+shrank away from me as if I were&mdash;er&mdash;a toad. And
+she swore she hated me&mdash;and loved the&mdash;er&mdash;other man.
+Then I saw everything red&mdash;I hated her. I wanted to
+throttle her&mdash;to tear her to pieces. But she ran to the
+window and fell, all&mdash;er&mdash;tangled up in the veil and the
+long train. I tried to save her&mdash;but I couldn't. And
+then&mdash;when it was too late&mdash;my love for her came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+back, and I cried, 'Persis! Persis!' and&mdash;er&mdash;woke up.
+Mother, do you believe in&mdash;er&mdash;dreams?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, of course not," said Mrs. Enslee, without conviction.
+"Or else they go by contraries."</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh! How real they are while they last. I can't
+get over it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, I'm not superstitious," Mrs. Enslee
+insinuated; "but, if you are, perhaps&mdash;I just say perhaps&mdash;it
+might be a sort of omen that you'd better not marry
+Persis, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Not marry Persis!" Willie gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"There are other women on earth," Mrs. Enslee suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me!"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie laughed. "Huh! nobody ever loved me like
+that; nobody ever will."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid even you've found me&mdash;er&mdash;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&mdash;er&mdash;sweetheart. It wasn't that I didn't like
+other people, but other people can't seem to&mdash;er&mdash;like
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He pondered the mystery so tragically that Mrs. Enslee
+caressed him, and said: "You mustn't say that. I
+adore you."</p>
+
+<p>Willie eyed her with a cynical stare. "Don't be&mdash;er&mdash;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&mdash;er&mdash;passed me on the street and didn't
+speak to me! Then at night you used to give big dinners.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
+I had to eat early and alone up in the&mdash;er&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"But I always stopped in to kiss you good night, didn't
+I?" the mother urged, in self-defense.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes you would forget," Willie sighed. "Then
+I'd be left there alone with the governess. I didn't want
+to&mdash;er&mdash;speak French to a governess. I wanted to&mdash;er&mdash;talk
+to my mother. And when you did stop in to kiss
+me, your lips sometimes used to&mdash;er&mdash;leave red marks
+on my cheek."</p>
+
+<p>"Willie!" Mrs. Enslee gasped; but he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't put my arms around your neck for fear
+I'd&mdash;er&mdash;disarrange your hair, and even that was&mdash;er&mdash;dyed!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Enslee turned on him in rage. "Willie! How
+dare you?"</p>
+
+<p>He rounded on her fiercely. "You know it was! You
+know it was!"</p>
+
+<p>"You little beast!" Mrs. Enslee cried; but Willie
+laughed maliciously.</p>
+
+<p>"See! See! Now you're showing your&mdash;er&mdash;real feelings
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Enslee controlled her pain and her wrath, and implored:
+"Come, my boy, let's be friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right, mother," said Willie. "Friends
+is the word. It's too late for anything else."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I have decided."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't marry her, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not marry her?" Willie repeated, like a sarcastic
+echo. "Of course I will. And why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Motives are hard tangles to unravel, especially a
+mother's toward other women. Perhaps Mrs. Enslee<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it? What if she is?" Willie stormed.
+"What else is there to marry me for? My&mdash;er&mdash;beauty?
+What does it matter, so I get her? Why do dukes marry&mdash;er&mdash;chorus-girls&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that
+cosmic happiness was unknown to Willie Enslee.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Persis. He had
+won his choice of all the world's women. And now his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+mother was asking if he thought she loved him, and if
+people would not question her motives. She was already
+perhapsing and better-notting.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He chuckled triumphantly over this plot, and set about
+its perfection. He rejoiced to be in a position to compel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>At present Persis was not thinking of motherhood. She
+would have called it quite a ghastly day herself&mdash;one to be
+postponed by every ingenuity and subtlety known to
+American womanhood. She was thinking of her new name.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be Mrs. Enslee, and I suppose I'll be Mrs.
+William Enslee, or Mrs. Little Willie, sha'n't I, mama?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+Do you want me to call you mama, or shall I stick to
+Mrs. Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be pretty mixy with two Mrs. William Enslees,
+won't it? Like two in a single bed&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Enslee was rather pleased than offended at this.
+At least it credited her with the ability to create scandal.</p>
+
+<p>She was like Mrs. Neff in hating to get too old to be
+suspected.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She and Persis were going into business for a while on
+a large scale&mdash;a business for which Persis was peculiarly
+fitted and in which she developed an extraordinary
+energy.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
+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&mdash;and more.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he was even dismayed&mdash;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&mdash;was
+actually in a hurry to marry him!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>To prepare herself for a wedding did not mean&mdash;to
+Persis, at least, whatever it may mean to other women&mdash;that
+she must prepare her soul for a mystic union with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Congratulations old girl snooks says awfully glad
+to be with you if papa pays the freight we are stony.
+Elise."</p>
+
+<p>"Snooks" was the Earl of Kelvedon. Sometimes Elise
+called him "Kelly" for short. Papa cabled the freight&mdash;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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Persis kept him signing checks till he was tempted
+to buy one of those ingenious machines by which one
+signs twenty at a time.</p>
+
+<p>Persis was running amuck among the shops. She was
+in a torment of delight&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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, châteaux, 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&mdash;these women with
+their pallor for a gown of one color and their carmine for
+a gown of another.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And there were colors to choose from that made the
+rainbow look like a study in sepia. And there were fabrics
+of strange names&mdash;crêpe, tulle, serge, taffeta, brocade,
+charmeuse, paillette, jet, batiste, voile&mdash;what not?</p>
+
+<p>And there were the underpinnings to all these&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>
+stockings and garters, the corsets and chiffon corset-covers
+and combinations, chemi-pantalons and petticoats. And
+there were the accessories&mdash;hats, caps, bonnets, gloves,
+fans, parasols, veils, jabots, collars, aigrettes, boots, shoes,
+slippers, powders, paints, cerates, massage-cream&mdash;<i>ad infinitum</i>.
+And in every instance there must be a choice.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;other women!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Still it was her career. Forbes would not give up his
+for her; why should she give up hers for him?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>
+Harvey instead of Willie? Oh, what a pitiful sacrifice
+I am making of my life!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This brought her to one of the few churchyards in almost
+grassless New York&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>As she approached it a taxicab drew up at the curb,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you children doing in this dark alley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we're just&mdash;just&mdash;" Alice stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Does your mother know you're out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally not," Alice smiled, more cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Mischief's brewing. I've got to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you keep a secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's my other name&mdash;Inviolate."</p>
+
+<p>Alice hesitated, then took a precaution. "Cross your
+heart and hope to swallow fish-hooks?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis drew an X over her heart, and vowed: "I am
+full of fish-hooks."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Get a chocolate-sundae with two spoons!"</p>
+
+<p>Alice bridled with indignation. "Certainly not! We're
+not children! We are going to run away and be married."</p>
+
+<p>Persis nodded her head gravely. "That was what I
+was afraid you were going to say. But why this haste?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, Stowe has just got a job&mdash;umm-humm!
+It's a terribly important post&mdash;secretary to Ambassador
+Tait."</p>
+
+<p>"Ambassador?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; the Senator is going to France, and Stowe is to
+help him out."</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" said Persis, with subtlety. "I suppose you get
+a whopping big salary."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed he does!" said Alice. "Twelve hundred a year!
+It's wonderful for a beginning."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; we're going to surprise him."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Alice," she began, "let's be sensible." Alice
+looked appealingly at Stowe, but Persis objected. "Don't
+look at him&mdash;look at me. First, who's going to support
+you children when you are married?"</p>
+
+<p>They answered like a chorus: "Why, he is (I am), of
+course."</p>
+
+<p>"Alice, dear, how much has your mother been allowing
+you for pin-money&mdash;say, five thousand a year?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she claims it's more than that. We had an
+awful row the first of last month."</p>
+
+<p>Persis looked very innocent and school-girlish as she
+said: "And Mr. Webb gets twelve hundred?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'll economize!" Alice protested. "It will be
+a pleasure to do without things&mdash;if I have Stowe."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"At a hotel, to begin with," Stowe suggested.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you'll eat your cake first, eh? Not a bad idea;
+you're sure of getting it, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we can get such ducks of flats in Auteuil."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;ugh!
+Four flights of stairs six times a day&mdash;that's twenty-four
+flights. Seven times twenty-four is&mdash;help!"</p>
+
+<p>"One hundred and sixty-eight, I believe," said Stowe,
+after a mental twist.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"You've got me there. I fancy I could do it with a piece
+of chalk and a blackboard."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven and bath."</p>
+
+<p>"On twelve hundred a year?" Persis gasped. "Aren't
+you going to eat anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we could manage with two."</p>
+
+<p>"Two rooms!" Persis gasped again. "And your mother's
+house has thirty! Two rooms? Why, where will the
+servants sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"We sha'n't have any servants," Alice averred, stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>And her husband-to-be protested: "No, Alice, I'll
+never let you soil your pretty hands with work."</p>
+
+<p>Persis pressed the point. "But really, now, what about
+food?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can do Wonders with a chafing-dish," said Alice.</p>
+
+<p>"And a chafing-dish can do wonders with a stomach,"
+said Persis. "Bread and cheese&mdash;that is to say, Welsh
+rabbits&mdash;and kisses as a steady diet?" She shook her
+head.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alice made another try. "Well, everybody says you
+can buy almost everything in cans."</p>
+
+<p>"Including ptomaines. Oh, children, you don't know
+what's in store for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we shall have hardships," Stowe confessed;
+"but nothing can be worse than this uncertainty, this
+separation."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"The things we can't lose?" said Stowe; "that means
+me, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;for those are expensive
+luxuries&mdash;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&mdash;that's a woman's
+fate, Alice: to alienate a man by the very sacrifices she
+makes to bind him closer; and when&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to nag&mdash;and
+nag&mdash;oh, the unspeakable vulgarity of it! And then
+you'll ruin Stowe's career&mdash;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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't want to do that!" Alice wept. "I mustn't
+do that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then wait&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Stowe seized Alice's hands with ardor. "Don't listen
+to her, Alice."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm frightened now," Alice wailed. "It's for
+your sake, Stowe. We mustn't&mdash;not yet. And now may
+I please go home where I can cry my eyes out."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Alice's tears were standing out like orient pearls impaled
+on eyelashes as she said good-by to Persis at her
+own curb.</p>
+
+<p>"You hate me now," said Persis, "but you'll be very
+glad this happened some day."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't hate you," said Alice. "I know you're terribly
+wise; but I&mdash;I wish you hadn't come along."</p>
+
+<p>Persis laughed tenderly. "It's only for your happiness,
+Alice darling. Well, good-by!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was busy, too. Senator Tait had easily arranged
+his appointment as military attaché. He had his duties
+to learn in this capacity. He had to polish up his French
+and take lessons in conversation and composition, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+learn what he could about the French military establishment
+and procedure. And he had to make ready for a
+long residence abroad.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+where she was always passing. She smiled at him everywhere,
+and always with the shadow of the Enslee name
+imminent above her.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="center p2">
+MISS PERSIS CABOT<br />
+WEDS WM. ENSLEE<br />
+</p>
+<p class="bbs"></p>
+
+<p class="center small">HEAD OF THE FAMOUS HOUSE<br />
+MARRIED AT ST. THOMAS'S<br />
+YESTERDAY AFTERNOON<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="bbs"></p>
+
+<p class="center">Reception at Bride's Home
+</p>
+<p class="bbs"></p>
+
+<p class="center p3">Earl and Countess of Kelvedon among Distinguished Guests.<br />
+Church a Mass of Bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 "Tannhäuser," the prelude
+to "Lohengrin," the gavotte from "Mignon," and Simonetti's
+"Madrigale."</p>
+
+<p>The ushers who seated the guests included the bride's brother,
+LeGrand Cabot, Murray Ten Eyck, Robert Gammell Fielding,
+and Ives Erskine.</p>
+
+<p>The full vested-choir service was used for the ceremony, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Her two little children were the flower-bearers, the tiny Honorable
+Paul Hadham and the exquisite little Lady Maude
+Hadham.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony was performed by the rector of the church,
+assisted by....</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-five hundred invitations were sent out for the wedding.
+The church was quite full, and the residence of the bride's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
+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....</p>
+
+<p>Some of the wedding-gifts were shown in rooms on the third
+floor. They were....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Among those invited to the wedding were....</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The paper dropped from Forbes' hand. The irrevocable
+was accomplished. She was Enslee's, body and soul
+and name.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;frights
+ranging in importance from a fear that she might
+kneel on her veil and pull it askew to nameless terrors of
+the bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
+The rabble inside the church was hardly less insolently
+inquisitive for being better dressed.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a whirlpool of emotions and
+memoranda and impressions.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;then sick shudders at the blasphemy of
+such thoughts amid the sacraments at her husband's side&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+police and the judges and the laws were drawn up to keep
+her his.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's over. And, thank God, I can get out of
+this damned collar before it chokes me!"</p>
+
+<p>That was his first comment on their solitude! But it
+was better than the love speeches he tried to make next.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He was tugging at her hatpins and pulling her hair
+naggingly. She rose, controlling her impatience, and
+spoke with a meekness that amazed her:</p>
+
+<p>"Nichette is there. She will&mdash;help me."</p>
+
+<p>He grinned peevishly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nichette, eh? I thought we were to be alone&mdash;for
+once? Well, send her away&mdash;as soon as you can."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke already with command, and she said, with that
+sick meekness:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Willie."</p>
+
+<p>She slunk away and was afraid to meet the eyes of
+Nichette. And even Nichette wept at her ministrations.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Among these yachts, though Forbes was unaware of it,
+was the <i>Isolde</i>, 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 <i>Isolde</i> is under way."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+She selected some vague promenader and sent him her
+blessings. If he ever received them he never knew whence
+they came.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He imputed it to a native purity. He believed&mdash;and it
+was true&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis' creed&mdash;if she had thought much about it&mdash;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&mdash;intercourse without love,
+whether legalized or not.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+was part of the bargain. Soul and flesh could not pay the
+obligation her mind had so lightly incurred.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The crew is watching," she explained. And he retorted:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>And so&mdash;for the sake of the Scandinavians&mdash;she accepted
+his caresses.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it was bitter laughter; and it ended on the margin
+of hysteria. She conquered that&mdash;for the sake of the
+Scandinavians. But she felt altogether forlorn, miserably
+cheap, fooled.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow they'll be playing the first international
+polo game."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;yes&mdash;I believe it is to-morrow. Like to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no," she murmured. "I was just thinking what
+a splendid sight it will be. Everybody will be there, I
+suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;yes&mdash;I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie stood it as long as he could, then his torment
+broke out in a cry more tragic than its words:</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake play something or quit."</p>
+
+<p>She quit.</p>
+
+<p>She walked to a porthole and stared out at the dark
+waves shuffling past like stampeding cattle.</p>
+
+<p>He apologized at once. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.
+I apologize."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>The moon on the sea spread a pathway of dancing white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+tiles. She wanted to run away, to step forth on that
+fantastic pavement and follow it out of the world.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They were thinking of each other, longing for each
+other, and the space between them was widening every
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Svendsen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Put about and make for home."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, aye, sir."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie was a darling to yield so easily. It showed her
+how much he loved her&mdash;also how meekly he obeyed her.
+That is always an important question to settle. Perhaps
+it is what honeymoons are for&mdash;training-stations in which
+husbands are broken to harness and taught to answer
+a mere chirrup; it saves the whip.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She explained this to Willie, and he shook his head
+and broke out, peevishly:</p>
+
+<p>"Why the bally hell didn't you think of all this in the
+first place?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;where do you want to go&mdash;up to the country
+place?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She and Willie, therefore, sneaked from their yacht to
+their house in town. They astounded the servants, and
+there was much scurrying and whisking.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Hammerstein's.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck was there. He tried to hide from Persis and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he is&mdash;er&mdash;not alone."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"So the penance is over already? I thought you two
+doves were still on the ark."</p>
+
+<p>"We are, officially," said Persis.</p>
+
+<p>Ten Eyck wanted to help them out, so he said:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Did the yacht puncture a tire
+or lose a shoe or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Willie attempted to carry along the idea by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"It was trouble with the sparker." And he did not
+understand why Persis blushed and Ten Eyck blurted.</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophizing did not interest Willie. He came always
+back to the individual. By and by he wrestled with silence,
+and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;whatever became of that&mdash;er&mdash;soldier you
+brought up to the farm? Stupid solemn fella&mdash;Ward&mdash;or
+Lord&mdash;or something?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it&mdash;Forbes. Still at Ellis Island&mdash;or is it
+Ward's?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Governor's," said Ten Eyck. "He's been made military
+attaché at the French Embassy. Sailed for Paris
+the other day with Senator Tait&mdash;and&mdash;and Mildred."</p>
+
+<p>Persis' whole body seemed to clench itself like a hand.
+But Willie, everlastingly oblivious to significant things,
+driveled on:</p>
+
+<p>"Paris, eh? Racing season's on over there now.
+How'd you like to run across for the Grand Prix, Persis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Paris is a nice place," said Persis, with a mystic veil
+about her voice.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>But Ten Eyck slapped his knees impatiently, glared at
+her, and growled:</p>
+
+<p>"Bluffer! Good night!"</p>
+
+<p>And he was gone without shaking hands.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he mean by bluffer?" said Enslee. "Doesn't
+he like your sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently not," said Persis. "And he used to be
+crazy about her. She threw him overboard for 'Kelly.'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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 café-hunting bride with a husband who abhorred this
+whole chapter in the chronicle of diversion.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What about Paris?" Willie suggested.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered Ten Eyck's eyes, and said, "Let's
+make it London."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get what I can to-morrow. You wouldn't like to
+cross in the yacht?" he asked, haughtily. "<i>Isolde's</i> all
+right in the ugliest weather."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head violently, and yawned and spoke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
+so eloquently of her fatigue that he slunk away to his
+own room.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Imperator</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you grab it?" said Willie. The secretary shook
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Why the devil didn't you?" Willie snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"They ask five thousand dollars for it."</p>
+
+<p>Even Willie winced at this. "I don't want it for a
+year," he groaned. "Just one voyage."</p>
+
+<p>"It has a private deck, a drawing-room, two bath-rooms,
+two servants' rooms&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+was not so satisfied with her own triumph as to recommend
+her example to others.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;" Whereupon the "excepts" become the only
+things sincerely wishable.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>At the Royal Ascot the Queen sent a duke to fetch
+Persis to the royal box, and spoke amiably of her sister.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With his harrowed face, his unwelcome caresses, his
+unanswerable prayers for a little love, he ceased to be
+tragic. He became a pest.</p>
+
+<p>Persis was learning wherein wealth, as well as poverty,
+has its poverties, its nauseas, its petty annoyances, its
+daily denials, its hair-cloth shirts.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And what mockery her splendor was!&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIV" id="CHAPTER_LIV"></a>CHAPTER LIV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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 attaché 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the <i>grande semaine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Imperator</i>,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for points.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She had a widowed sister in Paris, Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe.
+With her as complotter and under her ægis
+Winifred attacked Senator Tait in a campaign so skilfully
+arranged under so many disguises that Tait was left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>
+hardly a minute to himself. All his invitations included
+Forbes and Mildred and young Stowe Webb.</p>
+
+<p>At one of them, a night fête 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you Alice. How are you? I didn't know you
+were in Paris. Followed the Senator over, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," said Alice. "Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's probably looking for me. I hope she doesn't
+find me. Have you seen Stowe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhere," said Winifred, with a perceptible thaw.
+"Does your mother know he's here?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Isn't he an angel?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is, indeed!" said Winifred, with a sigh of relief so
+deep that Alice stared at her in surprise and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do you really want him?"</p>
+
+<p>Winifred bridled as proudly as she could, but Alice
+only gasped: "Heavens! here comes that awful mother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
+of mine. Don't give me away!" And she fled from tree
+to tree.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's Winifred Mather!" was her undeniable
+affirmation. "So you are in Paris!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear. Did you bring dear Alice to Paris with
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was just going to ask if you had seen her."</p>
+
+<p>Winifred lied with the glibness of long training:</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed. But I'd love to. Let's look for her."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"Persis and Willie are here, I see."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they? I telegraphed the dear girl an invitation,
+but I was afraid she was stuck in London."</p>
+
+<p>"She came over for the <i>Prix des Drags</i> to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"How does the poor child look after&mdash;after honeymooning
+with Willie; Heaven help her!&mdash;and him!"</p>
+
+<p>"She looks&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
+from his man that Willie and she get along like the
+monkey and the parrot. But, of course, one can't listen
+to servants."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not; though God knows what we'd do
+for news without 'em."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"There's our little snojer man," said Winifred.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's the melancholiest man here&mdash;the ghost of the
+boulevards."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you staring at so hard?&mdash;Mrs. Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>He started at the name&mdash;"Mrs. Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Persis. You haven't forgotten her so soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, of course not. But she isn't here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, she is, with her brand-new husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Really," he said, trying to sound casual, though the
+warning of her nearness frightened him and put his
+heart to its paces.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never forgive you for not marrying her after you
+flirted with her so dreadfully."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I?" he laughed, wretchedly. "And you say she's
+in Paris?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's right behind you."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't seen her to-night," he answered guilelessly,
+forgetting his rôle in his excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must look for her. Come along, Winifred.
+I can't run about alone."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then Tait took Forbes by the arm and spoke with a
+curious sick thickness: "Let's get out into the air a
+minute."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Harvey, she's here&mdash;that damned woman&mdash;and
+her toy husband."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes smarted under the hatred the man he loved
+bore for the woman he loved, and when the Ambassador,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
+trying to be cheerful, spoke hopefully, "But, then, that
+flame has smoldered out, hasn't it?" Forbes only sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I think so&mdash;I hope so!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's this? What's this?" Tait gasped. "Are you
+still at her mercy&mdash;<i>her</i> mercy?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"There ought to be," Tait grumbled. "She's a cold-blooded,
+mercenary, calculating&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!" Forbes pleaded, but the old man raged on.</p>
+
+<p>"She sold herself to a man she didn't love. She's to
+blame for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't waste your pity on her; she had none for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not pity&mdash;it's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Tait shook his head: "No, he'd only swear at me for
+disobeying him. I'm all right&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you come here then?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you mustn't delay any further."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go if you'll come with me, Harvey. For one thing,
+it will get you away from that woman."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's no danger from her," said Forbes. "She's
+married now."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;humph, the weather doesn't last long as a
+topic of conversation. You come along with me."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes felt doubly humiliated by his position. "I
+don't like the idea of running away from a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. To-morrow, if you wish."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are needlessly worried."</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey, I never believed in playing with fire. I haven't
+asked you many favors. Will you grant me this one?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was almost filial in his obedience: "Why, of
+course I promise not to meet her if I can avoid it."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," said Forbes. "God bless you, I appreciate
+it. I shall always be grateful for all you've done for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I've done nothing but make a crutch of you, used you
+to fill the place of my own boy. If only you could&mdash;but
+we won't talk of her. But if anything happens to me&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is going to happen to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, but if anything should, I&mdash;I want you
+to promise to take care of Mildred. She'll have money
+enough&mdash;and so will you. I've fixed that&mdash;but&mdash;she'll
+need somebody to&mdash;well, we'll talk it over at Evian. Let's
+go, home."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LV" id="CHAPTER_LV"></a>CHAPTER LV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Green eyes like an ape!" he echoed, stupidly. "Well,
+I'll be&mdash;" 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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;I won't."</p>
+
+<p>Persis groaned with repugnance: "Oh, you've ceased
+to be a laughing matter to me, Willie."</p>
+
+<p>Willie was about to reply in kind, but he gave her a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>
+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&mdash;at
+everything, everybody. I used to love to watch you.
+Even when you guyed me I didn't much mind&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you
+went to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"It was soothing," she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Soothing? Gad! do you want a bally flying-machine?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it could take me to another planet."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want anything that money can buy," was her
+dreary confession. Somehow he seemed at last to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you're just tired of me," he sighed&mdash;"everlasting
+me. I must be a nuisance to you. Lord knows
+I am to myself!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with suddenly gentler eyes. In con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>temning
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis went back into the house and danced with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+Italian duke what he called "<i>il trotto alla turca</i>." She was
+so distraite that she never knew how well he made love
+and how badly he danced.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Vichy,
+Carlsbad, Marienbad, or Matlock; he was not
+sure where.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He was demonstrative in the car and very affectionate
+in the elevator at the Hôtel Meurice, where they were
+stopping. This did not endear him to Persis.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"We're married, and I suppose we've got to stay married&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry any more, Willie," she said, gently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+"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&mdash;and grown tired
+of the others&mdash;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&mdash;and&mdash;and I'm too tired to sleep.'"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;my first love."</p>
+
+<p>"First love!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to shake off gloom as a wet spaniel shakes off
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, aghast: "Do you hate me as much
+as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>Mariage à la Mode</i>, where the wife is yawning and the
+husband is sunk back in his chair in a dismal stupor.
+Only he was drunk&mdash;I think I'll get drunk."</p>
+
+<p>He stumbled out to find his usual nepenthe. When he
+came back her door was locked.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVI" id="CHAPTER_LVI"></a>CHAPTER LVI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+fought with evil and won the duel in a boudoir in a fashionable
+hotel in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Herald</i>. She learned that Ambassador-elect
+Tait and his entourage had gone to Evian-les-Bains.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile she must make haste to dress for the
+<i>Prix des Drags</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Life once more was a tango. She shifted from costume
+to costume like a dressmaker's model. She went the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+rounds of <i>thés dansants</i>, and musicales, and embassies,
+town houses, hotels, and châteaux, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;velvet-clad
+hoboes. Variety became monotony, luxury an
+oppression, contentment a will-o'-the-wisp.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered if time had cured Forbes' love. She
+wondered if he cared for some one else&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And now she was beginning to feel that she earned all
+she got, and was paying usury on her money, and being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVII" id="CHAPTER_LVII"></a>CHAPTER LVII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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 <i>thé dansant</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>thé dansant</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis beamed upon the complete disarray of all his
+faculties, and spoke with affected raillery, though her own
+mind was in a seethe.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;but Captain! Captain Harvey Forbes,
+U. S. A.! And they say we are rich now. What a pity
+I didn't wait a little!"</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I beg of you&mdash;" Forbes protested, tortured with
+chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
+very cruel of you, Harvey, to throw me over and run
+away after you had stolen my poor young affections."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was distraught; he groaned, "I see you've not
+forgotten how to make fun of me."</p>
+
+<p>But Persis went on in mock petulance: "It wasn't
+at all nice of you to cast me off just because I married
+Willie."</p>
+
+<p>This gave Forbes a chance to return her ridicule and
+he asked, "By the way, how is your excellent husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can see for yourself. There he is, still unable
+to learn the tango and trying to teach it to a fat Marquise."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was genuinely horrified at such dealing with a
+subject so sacred as marriage; he forsook irony for his
+usual forthright utterance:</p>
+
+<p>"Surely your&mdash;your husband doesn't neglect you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a touch of quick anxiety in Forbes' tone
+that showed how deeply he still cherished her.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>revue</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Never your love, my dear boy," said Persis, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+abrupt seriousness. "I never refused your love&mdash;only
+your hand. I always encouraged your love."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was poor," Forbes sneered.</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey, try to be just. If you had been rich&mdash;oh!
+if you had been rich!&mdash;then, as you are now, Harvey,
+then I could have believed that such a thing as a love-match
+is feasible."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was poor!" Forbes reiterated, with a knell-like
+persistence.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it honest, then, not to give me your heart?"</p>
+
+<p>"My whole heart has always been yours for the asking&mdash;and
+still is."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes recoiled with a sudden: "What are you saying?
+You have a husband now!"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes tossed his hands in despair. He gave her up.
+She and her creed were beyond his understanding. "A
+fine code, that!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the morality of half the world, Harvey, rich or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>
+poor, city or country," Persis declared. "The crime
+consists in being found out."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you realize what you are saying?" Forbes demanded,
+eager to shield her from her own blasphemies.
+But she ran on unheedingly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But it was a marriage," Forbes urged, stoutly, and
+rose to escape.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes could only attempt a weak sarcasm, "Is it
+impossible that a woman should love her husband?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't bred in your world. I can't understand a
+thing you have said."</p>
+
+<p>His aloofness of manner gave Persis a sense of loneliness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>
+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&mdash;I don't have to tell you who the ghost
+is?"</p>
+
+<p>"And you know," Forbes echoed, "what ghost haunts
+me."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;I crossed the ocean to find you!"</p>
+
+<p>He was suffocated with longing for her, and horror of
+her. He gasped, "My God! on your honeymoon!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come to Paris?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Because I felt you still loved me as I still love you,
+and because I thought you were&mdash;perhaps&mdash;afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid, eh?" He laughed, his professional soldier's
+pride on fire. "Well, I don't think you will find me a
+coward."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he did not need to. He
+knew what their import would be. The burlesque of
+the wedding music was the final touch of sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>Persis, ignorant of his espionage, sighed, "Oh, it is
+wonderful to be together again!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful," Forbes panted. "But it is in a crowd, and
+you are married."</p>
+
+<p>"That does not mean that I am never to see you
+alone, does it?" she asked, anxiously and challengingly.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes was still wise enough and well enough aware of
+his own passion to say, "But discovery and scandal would
+be the only result."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if we were very discreet," Persis pleaded, thinking
+of those lonely months.</p>
+
+<p>"But your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis uttered that ugly old truth, "If we can evade
+gossip abroad, we shall be safe enough at home."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Mr. Ward," he drawled.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Captain Forbes, dear," Persis corrected.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"It is all the more shameful to deceive a fool."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, "Har<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>vey,
+my boy, I've cooked up an imaginary errand to get
+you away from her."</p>
+
+<p>But Forbes tossed his head at this aspersion on his
+ability to take care of himself. He answered, "I'm not
+afraid."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;alleged papers."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"May I send you an ice&mdash;or your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"An ice&mdash;or my husband?" Persis was forced to smile
+at such a collocation. "Neither, please. Sit down,
+Ambassador."</p>
+
+<p>Tait had not expected this. With a hesitating "Er&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis forsook all the modulations of diplomacy and cut
+straight to the point. "Ambassador Tait, why don't
+you like me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I&mdash;I admire you immensely," he gasped,
+amazed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;" 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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"But are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm as good a wife as he deserves. You've seen
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Last summer you took Captain Forbes to Evian-les-Bains
+to get him away from me. Didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Tait was off his guard; he stammered: "Certainly not&mdash;that
+is&mdash;well, how did you find it out?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Help, help!" Tait gasped, in a parody of fear that had
+a groundwork of reality.</p>
+
+<p>"You love Captain Forbes, don't you?" Persis lunged
+at his heart again; and he answered, solemnly:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do, as if he were my own son."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you want me to see him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want to see him? You're married."</p>
+
+<p>"But they don't keep women in harems nowadays.
+Paris is very dull this winter. Don't take Captain Forbes
+away again."</p>
+
+<p>"As I remember, you gave him marching orders once
+yourself. You mustn't mind if he goes of his own accord
+now."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But he won't go of his own accord if you don't make
+him. Why do you? You're not afraid of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I am."</p>
+
+<p>Persis laughed with a kind of pride. "Really! You
+flatter me! But why?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends upon the question." Persis chuckled,
+never dreaming of its nature. When it came it was:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed evasively now. "What a remarkable
+question!"</p>
+
+<p>The old lawyer repeated the demand:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he is very nice," she dodged. "But what has
+that to do with our friendship?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>She responded immediately to the almost affection of
+his tone. "I wish you would."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I believe you said 'friendship,' of a man who
+cares for her as Harvey cares for you."</p>
+
+<p>She extracted from his warning only the hidden sweet.
+"And he does care for me still!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you've married another man."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," she answered. "But do you think that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+I can find Mr. Enslee so fascinating that I must give up
+all my friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She mused aloud. "And you think he loves me still?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I don't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence,
+or something guarantee everybody the right
+to life, liberty, and the pursuit of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;well, I don't pretend to
+be a saint, but I have a heart&mdash;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&mdash;the innocent happiness."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A gesture of unbelief escaped the Ambassador. "How
+long could such love remain innocent&mdash;when it begins
+by being unlawful?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I love him," she insisted, "and he loves me with
+all his heart. Some day, I presume"&mdash;the coming sorrow
+cast its shadow over her already&mdash;"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&mdash;oh, you mustn't rob him of the happiness I
+could give him!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"But, my good woman&mdash;my dear girl&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Persis laid her hand on his arm. "But why? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>And Tait, after a weak temptation, girded himself for
+the eternal battle with unholy happiness, and answered
+with Mosaic simplicity:</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is against the law."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know," Persis returned, unabashed, "you
+were once a lawyer&mdash;you know that the laws in the books
+are only made for those who haven't the skill to bend
+them without breaking them."</p>
+
+<p>"Such a love as yours is against the great unwritten
+laws of society."</p>
+
+<p>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?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I have any discretion? Do you
+think I am a fool?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first sign of being a fool is trying to play double
+with the world. Some day&mdash;let me warn you&mdash;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&mdash;yes, the shame of a horrible exposure."</p>
+
+<p>She blenched at this facer. "Don't speak to me as
+though I were a criminal!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>She had no refuge but a prayer. "I implore you not
+to break my heart."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>Persis saw that for once appeal could not melt. She
+said, with resignation: "Then you are my sworn enemy?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And so you will fight me?" Persis faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"To the death!" the old jurist cried, as he got heavily
+to his feet; "though it breaks Harvey's heart&mdash;and your
+heart&mdash;and mine." He staggered weakly and jolted
+against the divan.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVIII" id="CHAPTER_LVIII"></a>CHAPTER LVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">PERSIS, forgetting that he was her enemy, leaped to
+his aid with instinctive womanliness. "You are ill;
+let me get you something."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"That's splendid!" Tait cried. "Live square&mdash;in the
+open. Respect the conventionalities; they're the world's
+code of morals. If you really love Harvey, let him go
+his way."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man squeezed her slim hand in both of his.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>
+"It's the one way. God bless you! And you won't see
+him again?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and
+make him think I was only&mdash;only fooling him,
+haven't I?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Harvey, good-by. I'm off to Capri to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought&mdash;" he stammered. "You're not going
+to leave just as we meet again? I thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You never could take a joke, could you, Harvey?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Harvey. But I'm married now."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have known I was only fooling you. I'm
+Mrs. Enslee now. And whom God hath joined&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She trembled before the storm of his wrath. "But I
+don't&mdash;I don't love you any more. I am happy."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't look me in the eyes, Persis, and repeat that
+lie."</p>
+
+<p>She tried vainly to meet his glare. She mumbled
+weakly, "Why, I'm happy&mdash;enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you love me still?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no! Of course not!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Persis toppled out of Forbes' relaxed embrace, and
+spoke from a daze: "No&mdash;I forgot&mdash;I must be out of my
+mind."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes came to her defense: "You mustn't blame her.
+It was my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it was mine," Persis insisted. "But I couldn't
+help it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>Persis was as amazed as he was. She muttered, "I know&mdash;I
+know&mdash;but I can't stand everything."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't."</p>
+
+<p>Tait's voice glittered with anger. "You've got to! I
+command you to! You can't commit this infamy and
+remain with me!"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes set his jaw hard. "I resign."</p>
+
+<p>Tait snapped: "I accept."</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes seized her other hand. "I'll not give you up
+again. You belong to me."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Persis stared at him in a panic. "You couldn't do
+that."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>
+cad than to be a criminal and a coward." He took another
+step to the door.</p>
+
+<p>Persis clung to his sleeve. "Oh, I implore you!"</p>
+
+<p>He shook her loose. "I am going to tell your husband
+what I saw."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He clapped his hand to his heart, and strangled at the
+words: "I must tell you&mdash;I must tell you&mdash;good night!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Run for a doctor&mdash;quick&mdash;you fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Willie staggered away, almost sobered with fright. Persis
+stood wringing her hands. Through her brain ran the
+music of the tango they were playing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">At the devil's ball, at the devil's ball,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dancing with the devil&mdash;oh, the little devil!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dancing at the devil's ball.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She ran to the door like a fury and shrieked: "Stop
+that music! For God's sake, stop that music!"</p>
+
+<p>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 re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>turned
+to Forbes' side, and, bending close, heard the old
+man speaking thickly as his hands fluttered feebly about
+Forbes' arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey&mdash;I'm so&mdash;sor-ry for you&mdash;and for her. Take
+care of&mdash;my poor&mdash;ch-child, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!" Forbes whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;and Harvey&mdash;I wanted to&mdash;to die in A-mer-America.
+Take me b-back and bury me&mdash;at home, won't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>The soft hands glided along Forbes' arm in a fumbling
+caress.</p>
+
+<p>"Th-thass&mdash;a goo' boy. You've been a&mdash;a&mdash;a&mdash;a son
+to me. Har-har-vey. Goo'-b-b&mdash;Good-by!"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes bent down and pressed his lips to the old man's
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, old girl, let's be getting home&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>Persis wrung his hand and sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old fellow! I'm sorry he hated me so bitterly.
+He said he'd fight against my happiness till he died, and
+now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes did not hear her. He was thinking only of
+the foster-father he had lost. He mumbled, with dark
+dejection:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm alone now&mdash;alone!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Not alone, Harvey? I'm here."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately he started back from her in horror, groaning:
+"What am I thinking? And he's just dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>So the eyes of Jael must have widened when she had
+driven the nail through the temples of Sisera.</p>
+
+<p>In her victory she remembered discretion and glided
+aside from Forbes just before Willie entered the room
+with a servant carrying Persis' furs.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, Persis," Willie complained; "we can't
+stay here all night."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm quite ready," she answered, with bridal gentleness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
+Then, "Good-by, Captain Forbes; so glad to have seen
+you again. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Forbes. He bowed and did not
+raise his eyes for fear of what might be smoldering in the
+eyes of Persis.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIX" id="CHAPTER_LIX"></a>CHAPTER LIX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;just died while
+pulling on his overshoes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The story was telegraphed and cabled about the world.
+As usual, every newspaper published a minutely circumstantial
+account with a pretendedly <i>verbatim</i> statement
+of the last words, and, as usual, the accounts were as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>
+discrepant mutually as they were commonly remote from
+the truth.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When this reporter&mdash;Hallard, his name was&mdash;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&mdash;um-m, a pippin!&mdash;swee' li'l dynamite bomb.
+Story's going to break some day, and I'm lovely li'l feller's
+goin' to break it."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>One's god is apt to be one's ideal servant magnified.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the restful word "Finis."</p>
+
+<p>That night he dined with Mildred. She, too, felt the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;honey, or a staying home from
+school, or some wild animal for a pet.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Persis came to him now with the charm
+of all three&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 cour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>age&mdash;or
+his cowardice&mdash;failed him. The last time he
+stopped short as if he heard a sudden "Halt!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LX" id="CHAPTER_LX"></a>CHAPTER LX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN he had gone a few hundred paces he whirled
+about and hurried back to the hotel; asked for
+Monsieur <i>et</i> Madame Enslee; sent up his card; wished
+he had it back; received a summons to come up; cursed
+the slowness of the Parisian <i>ascenseur</i>; 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 <i>voulez-vous'd</i> to seat himself
+and attend a little moment. Then Nichette left him
+and hastened to the corner of the street, where a little
+waiting <i>piou-piou</i> shivered in his uniform.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 "<i>Bonne chance!</i> I hope you find somebody to
+take you off my hands for a while!"</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard Persis' voice. It came through the
+glistening portières 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:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in here, Harvey, won't you? I can't budge,
+and I'm all by myself."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There would be resentment enough, but belated, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Man is the maker of laws, the upholder of laws, the
+punisher of those who violate the majesty of the law.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She implored him to postpone his return to America;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
+to follow the Ambassador's body on a later steamer; not
+to go, at least, on the steamer Mildred took&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You must hurry," she gasped, "Willie is long past
+due."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Little Willie Enslee could have put him to flight, have
+struck him without resistance, have shot him down without
+provoking an answering shot.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXI" id="CHAPTER_LXI"></a>CHAPTER LXI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;"at an increase of salary because
+of the extra trouble she would give him."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the money and build an Old Ladies' Home with
+it; but don't make a solemn jackass of yourself right out
+in public."</p>
+
+<p>Forbes took the money, promising himself that he would
+scatter it in beautiful deeds of charity.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't.</p>
+
+<p>One never does.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;say, six months, and see how you
+like it. Then you can resign or go back."</p>
+
+<p>"They won't give me six months' leave without a good
+reason," Forbes demurred, though he was fascinated by
+the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>His research was into the comforts of wealth, and his
+experiment was the effect of life without labor or ambition.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been long ashore before she learned the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+new status of Forbes. It was Mrs. Neff who told her,
+taunting her with having jumped into the marital noose
+with Willie too soon.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been long ashore before she met Forbes.
+And once more it was Willie who brought her into his
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and something to eat."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;especially
+the Cupid in the temple&mdash;a windy and forlorn
+white kiosk where a naked child suffered exile. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+struck him as pitifully appropriate to the Enslee menage
+that Love should be left out in the cold.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 tête-à-tête. 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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>
+faint impressions in the minds of servants and of guests;
+but her heart would not defer entirely to her intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"How well they dance!" was the spoken comment;
+but the thought was, "How congenial they seem!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put out the light. We can see better," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>On the far-off roads they could see the long shafts of
+motor-lights wavering like antennæ. From all the homes
+of the region the neighbors were hastening to the spectacle,
+huge night moths drawn by the flaring lamp.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>
+Look at the fraud in the building of the house&mdash;the rotten
+timbers, the ghastly furniture in the back rooms!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She shivered and said, "Let's get away from the
+place."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXII" id="CHAPTER_LXII"></a>CHAPTER LXII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 di<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>mensions
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The motor-car was another immense enlargement of
+liberty&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>furtivi foedera lecti</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>
+a human being suspected her love for Forbes, not a breath
+of scandal had been stirred.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody felt that Persis and Forbes, in their mad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The thought came to Forbes that there was but one
+way to make their life livable&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if he won't give it, you can take it, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the ghastly head-lines
+about Mrs. Tom Corliss&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span>
+the divorce court in droves&mdash;eighty divorces were granted
+in two hours the other day, Murray Ten Eyck was telling
+me, and only one paper mentioned it&mdash;in a paragraph!
+But if Mrs. Tom Corliss gets the front page, what wouldn't
+they give to Mrs. Willie Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXIII" id="CHAPTER_LXIII"></a>CHAPTER LXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>He was permitted to lag superfluous as a sort of butler
+<i>emeritus</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Did anybody call?" she asked, and asked several
+times in <i>crescendo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Only Mrs. Enslee, ma'am," he whispered, in his dry,
+cackling, deaf man's voice.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry, my dear. It's only a duty call."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"'Carmen!'" Mrs. Enslee sniffed. "That old slander
+on my race&mdash;as if Spanish women were all faithless!"</p>
+
+<p>"But if it's Carmen for Spain," Persis said, "it's Camille<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>
+for France, and Becky Sharp for England, and&mdash;who for
+America?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hester Prynne, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cynical Persis!" Mrs. Enslee sighed. "Well, I shall
+be late."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd stay," Persis lied, graciously. "You're
+a picture. And everybody says you are flirting dreadfully
+with old General Branscomb."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't believe all you hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Only the worst."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, and I've got to fling into my opera-gown."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you wearing to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>madre mia</i>," then turned to Persis.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget, dear, he is getting married this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"We all ought to have gone," said Mrs. Enslee; but
+Willie has no sense of obligation to his employees.</p>
+
+<p>He ignored the suggestion and raged on, "Well,
+Dobbs isn't our only servant, is he?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No," Persis explained; "but, you see, he's marrying
+the housekeeper's daughter, and the butler is best man,
+and the maids are bridesmaids&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"That's cheerful!" said Persis. "What brings you
+home from the club so early? It's such an unusual
+honor."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard something I didn't like&mdash;gossip."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us what you heard," Mrs. Enslee asked, hungrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer not to retail club gossip in my home," said
+Willie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aren't we punctilious?" Persis railed; and Willie
+answered, curtly:</p>
+
+<p>"One of us ought to be."</p>
+
+<p>Persis was jarred a trifle, but her only comment was:
+"Why is it that when men are feeling ugly they always
+come home early?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie threw her a look of wrath and turned to his
+distressed mother. "Won't you stop to dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not when there's so much war-paint visible, thanks!"</p>
+
+<p>"But hang it all&mdash;" 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."</p>
+
+<p>Crofts cupped his hand behind his ear, and crackled,
+"Beg pardon, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had to let myself in, I say."</p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry, sir, but owing to Dobbs' wedding and
+your early dinner, sir, the servants have a great deal to
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"But I rang and rang!" Willie stormed, and repeated,
+wrathfully, "I rang and rang!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry, indeed, sir," Crofts pleaded. "My hear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>ing
+isn't as good as it was when I entered your father's
+service."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I won't have my house turned into a&mdash;an infirmary."</p>
+
+<p>Crofts heard that and withered. "Your father never
+complained of me, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard better then and jumped quicker," Willie
+shouted.</p>
+
+<p>The old man, at bay, answered with unintended irony:
+"I meant no offense, sir, by growing old."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, get out!" Willie snapped.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie's mother rebuked him. "You've broken his
+poor old heart."</p>
+
+<p>And Persis was more severe. "You ought to be ashamed
+of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Willie retorted, more sharply: "Oh, we all ought to be
+ashamed of ourselves&mdash;for something or other. Crofts
+isn't the only man on earth with a broken heart."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Persis flinched at this, and stammered, "You'll excuse
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Enslee answered with a sudden frigidity, "Of
+course, but I'll not wait. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Willie, I&mdash;it's very hard for me to say it. But I
+think you allow Persis too much liberty."</p>
+
+<p>Willie snorted. "Gad! a lot of good it does an American
+husband to try to manage his wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, and Persis is very headstrong," Mrs. Enslee<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span>
+faltered; "but&mdash;well, if anything happens, remember I
+tried to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Enjoying the luxury of an 'I told you so' already,
+eh?" Willie sneered. "What's up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing&mdash;nothing definite&mdash;but I&mdash;I'm just a
+little uneasy. It can't hurt to keep your eyes open,
+can it?"</p>
+
+<p>She had said this much at last. Willie took it solemnly.
+"What could hurt a man worse than to have to watch his
+wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if that's the way you feel, just forget what I've
+said. I'm a foolish old woman. Good-by!"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>The question took Persis by surprise. "No one that
+would interest you."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Since when this sudden concern in my affairs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't your affairs mine?" he pleaded; but she was
+curt:</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed they're not. I don't nag you with questions."</p>
+
+<p>He answered this with a sorrowful humility. "Sometimes
+I wish you would take a little more interest."</p>
+
+<p>"You're in a funny mood," she said, more gently.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not very funny to me," he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll feel better after dinner. Run along and let
+Brooks dress you."</p>
+
+<p>"What about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had my hair done while I was out. I've got to wait
+for Nichette to get back. I&mdash;I'll come up as soon as I&mdash;as
+soon as I write a letter or two."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he sighed, and went out obediently, but
+paused to stare at her with a curious craftiness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXIV" id="CHAPTER_LXIV"></a>CHAPTER LXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Crofts was alarmed at once. "No, ma'am, I said you
+were at home."</p>
+
+<p>"But I said I was out to every one except&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Crofts was in despair at his blunder. "Oh, I'm so
+sorry! I'm afraid I'm too old and deaf to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>
+Winifred Mather in. Crofts protested feebly that Persis
+was not at home, but Winifred came in anyway.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Winifred had heard of it even in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"But what does Willie think of it?" she asked; "if he
+can think?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"He's right, my dear," said Mrs. Neff; "but who wants
+to do that sort of job? It's like street-cleaning&mdash;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&mdash;the mistake of a messenger-boy
+or a postman or somebody&mdash;and bang! out comes the
+whole scandal. Persis is clever, but she's juggling with
+dynamite."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She paused, struck to stone. Her heart pummeled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<p>"Winifred, it's you! I didn't know you were in town!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>And they kissed each other.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I haven't gone yet," Mrs. Neff apologized.
+"Winifred and I fell to talking&mdash;about you, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Say it to my face," said Persis.</p>
+
+<p>Winifred lied angelically. "Cornelia was telling me
+how famously you and Willie get along. You're so congenial."</p>
+
+<p>Persis recognized the intended obloquy, and beamed in
+answer: "Willie is a duck of a husband. Why don't you
+try marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>This was so straight a lunge that Winifred slid in a sly
+<i>riposte</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever see that li'l snojer man of yours any
+more?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff was enjoying the rare treat of seeing Persis
+discomfited, ill at ease. She joined the onset.</p>
+
+<p>"She means Captain Forbes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that's the one," Winifred smiled. "See him
+often?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, once in a long while," Persis confessed. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I just wondered. He used to be so devoted to you."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"It's my&mdash;my lawyer. I&mdash;I'll go to the door and see
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"But I asked him to come up!" Crofts protested in a
+doddering collapse, and vanished like a ghost at cockcrow.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Neff grinned with rapturous malice, and bewildered
+Forbes utterly by asking three ironical questions and not
+staying for an answer:</p>
+
+<p>"Changed your profession, Captain Forbes? A lawyer
+now? Specialty divorces?"</p>
+
+<p>Then she nodded to Winifred, and they made their way
+out, ignoring Persis' outstretched hand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXV" id="CHAPTER_LXV"></a>CHAPTER LXV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">FORBES stared after the two women in complete
+perplexity. He turned to Persis to ask stupidly:</p>
+
+<p>"What did they mean, Persis?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"They know everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, it's not possible! Was it because I came
+in as I did?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it wasn't your fault. It was mine and
+Crofts'."</p>
+
+<p>He made to take her in his arms, but she warned him
+where he was with a gesture. He sank into a chair,
+groaning:</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather cut off my right hand than bring suspicion
+on you, Persis."</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed bitterly, for the luxury of self-contempt
+was alkali upon her tongue. But Forbes could only sigh,
+"How you must hate me!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She walked to the window idly and stared out into the
+street. She fell back with a gasp. "Oh, they saw me!&mdash;they
+saw me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?&mdash;who saw you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alice Neff and Stowe Webb just drove up. They
+waved to me. They're coming here. Good Lord of
+heaven, at such a time!"</p>
+
+<p>The door-bell rang in confirmation, and Crofts shuffled
+down the hall. He glanced timidly at Persis, and she
+nodded her head.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't see them now," Forbes protested; "tell
+the man not to let them in."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;without
+seeing us!"</p>
+
+<p>"And do you poor children still have to meet in secret,
+too?" Persis asked with a dreary sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Alice corroborated this theory. "It's simply terrible
+the trials we are put to now. But you made it so vivid
+to me&mdash;the other side of it&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>
+we women always seem to be getting in the way of the
+careers of the men we love! Why can't we help them?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;of every one
+else!&mdash;than to feel that you can never, never forgive
+yourself. That is the most horrible thing in life, not to
+forgive yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"But you talk so differently now!" Alice interposed;
+and Persis explained it dismally enough:</p>
+
+<p>"I know more now than I did then."</p>
+
+<p>Alice went into her arms, eager to be coerced and decided
+for: "And you really think it is my duty to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"A woman's first duty is to her love," Persis cried.
+"Go, marry the boy, Alice, and be true to him&mdash;oh, be
+true to him!&mdash;always! whatever&mdash;whoever&mdash;comes into
+your life. Love and fidelity!&mdash;what a marriage they
+make!"</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>He started to drag her out, but Alice hung back and
+demanded, "Give us your blessing first."</p>
+
+<p>"My blessing? My blessing?" And Persis' amazement
+was hardly greater than a curious shock of rapture over
+the unheard-of prayer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for you are so good!" Alice insisted. And Persis,
+in half-hysterical emotion, waved her shivering hands over
+them and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"God be with you forever!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't stay a minute longer," she whispered.
+"Willie is at home. You telephoned you had something
+awfully important to tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You've got to help me make the most important
+decision of my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't it wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>So disaster followed disaster.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't there any way out of it?" she asked, weakly.</p>
+
+<p>"I tried to get the order recalled, but there is some
+influence against me at Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"Some woman! I know! It's Willie's mother. She
+has General Branscombe under her thumb."</p>
+
+<p>"But that would mean that she suspected us!"</p>
+
+<p>"A woman always suspects the worst. And she's
+always right. Well, what are we to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is for you to decide, Persis," Forbes said. "I
+have two letters here, two requests." He produced two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span>
+formidable official envelopes. "I have influence enough to
+get either of them granted."</p>
+
+<p>"What are they?" she asked, terrified by the documents.</p>
+
+<p>"This is an acknowledgment of the order and a statement
+that I take the train to-morrow for New Mexico."</p>
+
+<p>"New Mexico!" Persis gasped. "I shouldn't see you
+again for a long, long while."</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I choose that you send the other letter, of
+course," she spoke almost gaily. "What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"My resignation from the service."</p>
+
+<p>"Your resignation?" she gasped. "Why should you
+resign?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to force a choice like that on me?"
+she protested. He nodded grimly.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do to silence those women? Harvey, you
+must help me. Think up some neat lie that will look like
+the truth."</p>
+
+<p>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?&mdash;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&mdash;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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Forbes glared at her incredulously. "Persis! Are you
+lost to all decency?"</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to know," she retorted. "But what of
+that? I'm desperate. I'm fighting for life."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my God, Persis, what have we come to?" he
+moaned. "Is this the result of our love?"</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go on with the situation any more. We are
+getting degraded&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to stay here and help me fight."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but the elopement of a young unmarried couple
+is a pretty romance; ours would be a hideous scandal."</p>
+
+<p>"But we're all smothered in scandal now. Everybody
+is talking about us&mdash;everybody. The only way to make
+our love right is to come out before the world and proclaim
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, of course. I've got to decide. I'm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span>
+afraid to be alone. I'll go with you. Give me just one
+moment to get my cloak. I&mdash;I can't very well go like
+this, though, can I&mdash;in an opera-gown and tiara? I must
+change to a traveling-suit. And Willie expects me to go
+to the opera."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Then she shivered and sank into a chair helpless.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go, Harvey, I just can't go. I'm afraid of
+what people will say."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the sneaking&mdash;the treachery&mdash;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&mdash;what do you care for me&mdash;for
+love&mdash;for honor? You care only for yourself and for
+what people will say&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span>
+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!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, Harvey," she pleaded, brokenly.
+"Take that back."</p>
+
+<p>"You've killed my trust," he raged. "You've killed
+my love. I hate the sight of you."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand over his cruel mouth to silence
+it. "Don't let me hear that from you&mdash;pity me,
+pity me!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Some one is behind that curtain&mdash;listening!"</p>
+
+<p>The curtain trembled, and she gasped again: "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>A shudder of uneasiness shook him, but he muttered:
+"It's only a draught from somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>And Forbes could descry the muffled outlines of fingers
+clutching the heavy fabric. He hesitated a moment,
+then he moved forward.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXVI" id="CHAPTER_LXVI"></a>CHAPTER LXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"The first shot might miss," Enslee admitted; "but
+there are five others."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;and
+I'd strangle you to death before I realized what I
+was doing."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, what good would it do to shed a lot of
+blood?" Forbes urged, gently, as to a child. "It would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span>
+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&mdash;" 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."</p>
+
+<p>He put his right hand out appealingly. "Come, let's
+make the best of it and cheat the gossips."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>By and by Persis gradually returned to consciousness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span>
+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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis' training and her heart fought a duel in her
+quivering frame. Then she gained her self-control, turned
+to Willie, and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner."</p>
+
+<p>The marvelously inappropriate word sent through him
+a shudder of nausea.</p>
+
+<p>Persis appealed to his other self. "Must we take the
+servants into our confidence?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>And Willie followed in excellent form.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXVII" id="CHAPTER_LXVII"></a>CHAPTER LXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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."</p>
+
+<p>Only three servants waited now: Roake and Chedsey&mdash;in
+the somber Enslee livery, whispering together as they
+straightened a rose stem or balanced a group of silver&mdash;and
+Crofts, eternally bent in an attitude of deference,
+standing near the door&mdash;the great golden portal ripped
+from the Spanish castle of one of the senior Mrs. Enslee's
+ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He loved the new Mrs. Enslee. All the servants did&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But the dignity vanished when the male buffoon,
+glancing at the array before him, broke out with a sharp
+whine:</p>
+
+<p>"Where's my cocktail?"</p>
+
+<p>There was such a twang of temper in his voice that
+Crofts heard at once, and made a quick effort at placation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry, sir, but, the other servants being away,
+I was not able to learn just how you had it mixed, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me make it for you, dear."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Mighty nice of you."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"That's all, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie, who had strolled to the sideboard in a kind of
+loathing fascination, spoke up:</p>
+
+<p>"Here, barkeeper, you're forgetting the absinthe."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," she said, recalling his particular among the
+numberless formulas&mdash;"six drops of absinthe and twelve
+drops of lemon."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve&mdash;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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hang the omen, so long as the cocktail's not bad."</p>
+
+<p>Persis nodded with a difficult smile, and, setting the
+top on the shaker, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Crofts."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Willie was too eager for the stimulus to go back to the
+table and take the cocktail there. He lifted his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"And now what's the toast? To the absent one?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Where the devil is my cushion?" he barked. "You
+know I can't carve without my cushion."</p>
+
+<p>The cushion was whisked under him instantly.</p>
+
+<p>He stabbed at his canapé of caviar with his fork as if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Enslee's raw nerves shrieked at the soft thud of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span>
+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:</p>
+
+<p>"In God's name, less noise! Less noise!"</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>purée Mongole</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that Persis had not even made a pretense of
+lifting her spoon to her lips, he nodded to Crofts, "Take
+it away."</p>
+
+<p>The failure of a dinner was a catastrophe to Crofts,
+and he forgot his wonted reticence enough to ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it good, sir? Sha'n't I tell the chef to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His solicitude brought him only a reproof:</p>
+
+<p>"Crofts, if you speak again I'll have the other servants
+serve the dinner. Take it away, I said."</p>
+
+<p>Hurt and frightened, Crofts hurried the soup and its
+apparatus off. As he slipped out with his aides the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span>
+swinging door went "Phew!" and the tapestried figures
+glanced and whispered together.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was alone with his wife, Enslee's voice
+rose querulously:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;if
+I can't have a decent wife!"</p>
+
+<p>Persis smiled patiently at this, but as with lips bruised
+from a blow.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust, Willie, that you won't forget yourself. All
+these doors have ears, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>
+before he learned that his own household was a theme for
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"I heard the best story to-day about Mrs. Tom
+Corliss."</p>
+
+<p>Forgetfully Persis, from her own glass house, protested:
+"Oh, don't tell me anything about that woman!"</p>
+
+<p>Enslee sneered. "Oh, you're always so easily shocked&mdash;such
+a prude, so conventional!"</p>
+
+<p>Persis understood and blanched. "Go on, I'll stand
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Enslee began to snicker again, taking some support in
+his shame from another man's disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know old plutocrat Crane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not old Deacon Crane," Persis gasped, "that passes
+the plate at church?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"What can he have to do with any story about Mrs.
+Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>Enslee he-he'd. "That's the fun of it. Mrs. Tom, it
+seems&mdash;one day when Tom was off to the races&mdash;entertained
+the dear Deacon at a little dinner&mdash;served <i>à deux</i>.
+The Deacon used to give her tips on the market and back
+them himself for her, and she&mdash;well, he was talking about
+the present-day craze for dancing with bare feet, <i>et
+cetera</i>; 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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Chedsey, leave the room, and don't come back!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Chedsey slunk away, and Roake became a statue of
+gravity. Crofts had not heard at all. Willie finished his
+story without mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, Tom Corliss came in unexpectedly just then,
+and&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"And where did you pick up all this garbage?"</p>
+
+<p>Enslee was outraged at this ingratitude for his hard
+work. "Oh, it shocks you, eh? So beautiful a veneer of
+refinement and so thin!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you hear it?" Persis persisted, lighting herself
+a cigarette to give her restless hands employment;
+and Willie answered:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;at
+the Club."</p>
+
+<p>"At the Club?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where I heard of your behavior."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard of me at the Club?" Persis gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The room swam, and Persis clung to her chair to keep
+from toppling out of it.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's what he said. And what did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't believe him&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>Persis was on fire with a woman's anxiety to know if
+any champion had defended her name. She demanded
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say to Bob Fielding?"</p>
+
+<p>And Enslee answered with a helpless, mincing burlesque
+of dignity:</p>
+
+<p>"I told him he was a cad, and I didn't want him ever
+to speak to me again."</p>
+
+<p>"And you didn't strike him?"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;who despised me&mdash;who dishonored
+me before the world. And I'm too weak to take
+revenge. I'm helpless in my disgrace, helpless!"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Master Willie, you're not crying?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie, with splendid presence of mind, answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, you old fool, it's that deviled crab. There
+was so much cayenne pepper in it, it w-went to my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Crofts was desolated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am sorry, sir. The chef shall hear of it, sir.
+And the roast now&mdash;shall I carve it, or will you?"</p>
+
+<p>Willie looked drearily across at Persis. "Do you want
+any roast?"</p>
+
+<p>She frowned with aversion. "I couldn't touch it."</p>
+
+<p>And Willie shook his head to Crofts. "We'll skip the
+roast. What follows that? Be quick about it!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;sent down from your own run, sir. It
+is braised, <i>financière</i>. 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Once more husband and wife were abandoned to themselves.
+But now Persis looked with new eyes at the heap<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Happiness!"</p>
+
+<p>Even at this belated hour the world's ambition was so
+dear to him that he was wrung with longing.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Again the vision of stalking gossip enraged him. "The
+world&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>
+trying to persuade a pack of flunkeys that you have been
+a good wife to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;do you remember?&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"When I look at you I can only think what you've been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span>
+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&mdash;my body&mdash;my wife's
+body. You show it in public&mdash;and you dance it in public
+with anybody&mdash;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&mdash;not mine.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the knife sharp?" he asked, for lack of other topic.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, sir," said Crofts. "I steeled it myself."</p>
+
+<p>Willie began anew, groping in his tormented brain for
+something to dispel the silence. The result was a dazed
+query:</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, my dear, what's the opera to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Carmen," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He brightened. "Oh, of course. That's the opera
+where the fellow kills the girl who betrays him, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span>
+wise boy, that Don José. He knew how to treat faithless
+women. He knew how to talk to 'em. A knife in the
+back&mdash;that's all they can understand."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Willie, my dear&mdash;my dear! Won't you send for some
+champagne&mdash;or sherry. I hate this red wine, and, besides,
+we've skipped the roast."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," Willie agreed, with abrupt calm. "Crofts,
+down in the&mdash;er&mdash;wine-cellar in the farthest end&mdash;you'll
+find laid away by itself one bottle of&mdash;er&mdash;L'Âme de
+Rheims&mdash;one bottle, the last of its ancient and&mdash;er&mdash;honorable
+name. Bring that here."</p>
+
+<p>As Crofts stumbled out on his long journey, Willie commented,
+ominously:</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good time to say good-by to that vintage!"</p>
+
+<p>His roving eyes discovered Roake standing aloof.
+Willie snapped his fingers and yelped at him:</p>
+
+<p>"Get out! And stay out!"</p>
+
+<p>Roake withdrew in haste, and Enslee muttered:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sick of seeing so many people standing around,
+staring, smirking, listening, thinking about me. I wish
+I were on a desert island."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"My God, he took my revolver away from me!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXVIII" id="CHAPTER_LXVIII"></a>CHAPTER LXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette and fanned
+it away with leisure, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd look well, now, wouldn't you, if one of the servants
+came in?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed at the picture.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered him with all the authority she could
+command:</p>
+
+<p>"Put down that knife! Put it down, I say! You know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>There was an insanity in his look that frightened her
+at last. She tried persuasion now, and her voice was soft
+and caressing.</p>
+
+<p>"Gently, Willie; gently now, I beg you. You're not
+yourself, you know. You must control yourself. Please!&mdash;as
+a favor to me."</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>And this was sacrilege to her one love. Her lip curled
+in angry contempt, and she turned from him in loathing,
+muttering:</p>
+
+<p>"You dirty little beast!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span>
+staring at her and wondering, and she wondering at
+him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a id="i480" name="i480"></a>
+<img src="images/i480.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">HER OBSTINATE PLUCK BEWILDERED HIM</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, ma'am; but did you call?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she answered; then quickly: "Yes, I&mdash;I am ill&mdash;a
+little&mdash;suddenly. Telephone for Doctor&mdash;Doctor&mdash;the
+nearest doctor. You'd better run."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to obey, but paused to ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't there anything I can do first, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, go! Go!" she fluttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Sha'n't I send some one else while I am gone, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; keep them all away, all of them, till I ring."</p>
+
+<p>Roake, with a face like ashes, still waited, staring.</p>
+
+<p>"But, ma'am, you are hurt! You are bleeding!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She paused now, clinging to one of the red curtains,
+and stammering:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Madame, Madame! qu'y a-t-il? qu'avez-vous?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est toi, Nichette? Ce n'est rien, mais&mdash;mais</i>"&mdash;A
+shiver ran through her. "<i>Je sentis des frissons. Va
+faire mon lit. Je me vais coucher.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Nichette came forward unconvinced or to help her, but
+she motioned her off with a frantic hand, crying impatiently,
+"<i>Dépêche-toi! veux-tu te dépêcher!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And Nichette, mutinously obedient, ran away, leaving
+Persis shivering indeed with a chill.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>And now husband and wife were alone once more. And
+Willie could only stare and murmur, vacuously:</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done? What have I done?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, no, not that! What have I to do with death?
+I'm not ready to die. I'm not ready to die."</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>"They must come very soon, then," Persis said, "for
+I'm bleeding&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;just now of all times, with no chance to make good
+the wrong I've done."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;he, of all men!&mdash;said I
+wasn't worth fighting for! Faithless to you&mdash;faithless to
+him! But oh, God knows, most faithless to myself. And
+now I must die for it."</p>
+
+<p>"You are too beautiful to die! I won't let you die!
+You can't die!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I must, boy. Don't hate me too much. I didn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span>
+mean to harm you. Some day&mdash;long after&mdash;you'll forgive
+me, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you only won't die I'll forgive you anything."</p>
+
+<p>"That's awfully nice of you, Willie," she said, with almost
+a smile. "I wonder if God will be as polite? They&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>The idea was so ridiculously tragic that she laughed;
+but he would not so far surrender her as to pray. He
+sobbed:</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's growing very dark, Willie&mdash;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&mdash;is the last&mdash;of Persis. Poor Persis!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Willie, Willie, I've just thought. They'll try you for&mdash;for
+murder. The newspapers&mdash;the newspapers! Oh,
+my poor father! And they'll put you in jail! That
+mustn't happen to you&mdash;not to one of your family!&mdash;not
+through me!&mdash;no&mdash;no, it just mustn't! You must run&mdash;run&mdash;run!"</p>
+
+<p>Enslee shivered at the future, and would have fled if
+he could have found the strength to rise from his knees.</p>
+
+<p>And then the swinging door puffed softly, sardonically,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span>
+and on the tapestries Tristram and Isoud looked at each
+other and then at her and shook their heads in pity.</p>
+
+<p>Crofts, who had neither heard nor been told, came in
+with that eminent champagne in a dingy and ancient
+bottle.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He put the bottle on the table and shuffled toward her.</p>
+
+<p>She motioned him nearer with a limp and tremulous
+hand, and he bent down to hear her tiny voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Crofts, come closer&mdash;listen to me&mdash;do you hear?"
+He nodded. "Perfectly?" He nodded, wringing his dry
+old hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she began, "I must tell you&mdash;and you must
+remember. Mr. Enslee and I had a&mdash;a little quarrel&mdash;and
+I&mdash;I lost my temper&mdash;you know&mdash;and seized the
+knife and&mdash;and stabbed myself."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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&mdash;myself!
+Re-mem&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come&mdash;come&mdash;Persis!"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to be trying to die like a thoroughbred, a
+good loser.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She was dead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_AFTERMATH" id="THE_AFTERMATH"></a>THE AFTERMATH</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis had said, "This is the last of Persis." As if
+there were ever the last of anybody or anything.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Roake tiptoed to him and put his hand on his arm,
+and whispered, "Mr. Crofts."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;so different an office
+now from what it had always been to Nichette.</p>
+
+<p>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-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But little things thwart great schemes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! the young one?" he cried, afire with the
+news possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she killed herself."</p>
+
+<p>This was almost too good to be true. Hallard grew
+greedy as a miser.</p>
+
+<p>"Does anybody else know of this? Have any reporters
+called at the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody; only the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why did she kill herself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knows. She had a terrible quar'l with Mr.
+Enslee, though."</p>
+
+<p>"What about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody could find out."</p>
+
+<p>Hallard thought hard. The name of Forbes occurred
+to him, for he remembered the time he had seen Forbes
+with Persis.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Captain Forbes call to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>The maid stared. "Ain't you a wonder! How did you
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did they quarrel about him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knows they did, but all of us feels sure they
+did."</p>
+
+<p>Hallard bade his inamorata good night with genuine
+affection. She had been worth while.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span>
+Only, the Hallards are dealing in real lives, and not
+feigned.</p>
+
+<p>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."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Is this lady-like weapon the latest government issue?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Hallard put down the weapon and talked yellow
+journalism of the Philippine problem. A little later he
+said, quite casually:</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad about Mrs. Enslee, wasn't it, Captain?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The startled look of Forbes confounded his theories.</p>
+
+<p>"What is too bad about Mrs. Enslee?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her sudden death, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Her death!" Forbes cried, the world rocking with
+sudden earthquake. "Her death! Not Persis! Persis
+isn't dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes; didn't you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"My God! My God! how did she die? She was well,
+perfectly well at&mdash;at&mdash;this afternoon when I&mdash;tell me,
+man, man, what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Hallard was readjusting his case. He spoke very
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes whitened at this, but his grief was keener than
+his shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, how did she die?"</p>
+
+<p>"The story we get is that she killed herself&mdash;stabbed
+herself!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Who was with her when she killed herself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's a lie. She never&mdash;she wouldn't&mdash;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&mdash;that&mdash;and
+now she's dead! He butchered her! I'll kill him for it.
+I will! He wasn't man enough to fight me&mdash;he&mdash;did
+you say you were a reporter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm a special writer."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>
+aloud in Madison Square Garden. Grief, discretion, remorse,
+revenge, assailed him from all sides at once.</p>
+
+<p>He seized Hallard by the shoulder and raged at him.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He saw his big Colt's revolver in his trunk-tray, and he
+thundered:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hallard smiled and raised his half-eyebrow.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Forbes turned away helpless.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet I would," Hallard said. "If you'll tell me
+the exact truth, as far as you know it, about the suicide&mdash;or
+murder, as you call it&mdash;of one of the most beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span>
+members of one of the most prominent families&mdash;I'll
+publish it."</p>
+
+<p>"In your own way, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The hideously altered face of things shattered him so
+that Hallard felt merciful.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;if there is such a thing&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span>
+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&mdash;'way in. Better crawl under my umbrella
+and give me the story."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as if that were the
+only weapon in the world!</p>
+
+<p>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!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>When he read this Forbes turned as scarlet as if he
+had been bound hand and foot and struck in the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>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 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span>, and had their
+"night" editions ready by noon. They all made use of
+Hallard's material and tried to supplement it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He felt like a mortgager who sees himself foreclosed and
+sold up. He had lost Persis, and he was about to lose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Harvey</span>,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>You are too big a man to let this or anything break you down.
+Bend to it, but don't break.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>I enclose a time-table with the best trains marked.</p>
+
+<p>Take a closed taxi to the station, and you'll not be noticed.
+If I can do anything, command me.</p>
+
+<p class="ind">
+Affectionately yours,</p>
+
+<p class="attr"><span class="smcap">Murray Ten Eyck</span>.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Forbes wrote:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>God love you for this. I'll never forget. I'll prove my
+gratitude by sparing you the ordeal of my company.</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;careless, childish ecstasies and
+wild throes of rapture.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered what she had told him of Ambassador
+Tait's warning: "The world is old, my child,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>
+but it is stronger than any of us. And it can punish
+without mercy."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The district-attorney was busy, however, on an Augean
+task&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span>
+men, and they earned whatever he paid them. They
+succeeded in fighting off an indictment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>corpus delicti</i> had been hastily
+hidden?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span>
+desolation and her peril. Ten Eyck used every plea to
+dissuade him; but, failing, determined to go with him.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look! In God's name keep the memory of her
+as she was."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Persis, wherever she was, kept her secret. And Willie,
+abiding the decision in a stupor of terror, thanked God
+and her for their silence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But then he loved her, he could forgive her anything.
+If God loved her, could he not do as much?</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="notes">
+<p>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Page 24: "tile" was changed to "tie" in the phrase: "... one silk tie..."</p>
+
+<p>Page 99: "lovelily" was changed to "lovely" in the phrase: "... her
+lovely disparted bosom..."</p>
+
+<p>Page 206: "darkled": was changed to "darted" in the phrase: "And they
+darted between the planets..."</p>
+
+<p>Page 251: The phrase: "... some one's else success." was changed to:
+"... some one else's success."</p>
+
+<p>Page 284: "ditto" was changed to "ditty" in the phrase: "... it was a romping ditty...."</p>
+
+<p>Page 423:  A question mark (?) was changed to a period (or full-stop)
+in the sentence ending: "... stealth of clandestine lovers."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The author's use of the words "thridding" and "thredding" have been left
+unchanged as in the following instances:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Page 13:  "... as it thridded the unpoliced traffic...."</p>
+
+<p>Page 67:  "... he was now thridding the maze...."</p>
+
+<p>Page 380: "... thredding the increasingly mucilaginous crowd...."</p></blockquote>
+</div>
+
+<div class="notes">
+
+<p class="center"><a name="Table_of_Contents" id="Table_of_Contents">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<table summary="contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><p>CHAPTER</p></td>
+<td class="tdr"><p>Page</p></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">7</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">11</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">15</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">24</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">31</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">40</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">45</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">51</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">57</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">61</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">67</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">74</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">80</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">93</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">96</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">103</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">108</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">119</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">123</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">130</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">135</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">139</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">143</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">153</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">159</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">172</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">177</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">182</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">191</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">202</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">215</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">220</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">226</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">237</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">CHAPTER XXXVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">244</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">263</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">CHAPTER XXXVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">267</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">CHAPTER XXXIX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">272</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XL">CHAPTER XL</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">275</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">CHAPTER XLI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">283</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">CHAPTER XLII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">288</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">CHAPTER XLIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">296</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">CHAPTER XLIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">299</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">CHAPTER XLV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">310</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">CHAPTER XLVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">318</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII">CHAPTER XLVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">327</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII">CHAPTER XLVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">337</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX">CHAPTER XLIX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">341</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_L">CHAPTER L</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">346</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LI">CHAPTER LI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">351</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LII">CHAPTER LII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">359</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LIII">CHAPTER LIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">364</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LIV">CHAPTER LIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">369</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LV">CHAPTER LV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">378</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LVI">CHAPTER LVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">383</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LVII">CHAPTER LVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">388</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LVIII">CHAPTER LVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">403</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LIX">CHAPTER LIX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">411</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LX">CHAPTER LX</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">417</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXI">CHAPTER LXI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">424</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXII">CHAPTER LXII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">434</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXIII">CHAPTER LXIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">440</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXIV">CHAPTER LXIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">446</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXV">CHAPTER LXV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">450</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXVI">CHAPTER LXVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">459</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXVII">CHAPTER LXVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">462</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><a href="#CHAPTER_LXVIII">CHAPTER LXVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">479</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlp"><p><a href="#THE_AFTERMATH">THE AFTERMATH</a></p></td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><a href="#I">I</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">489</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><a href="#II">II</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">493</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><a href="#III">III</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">496</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><a href="#IV">IV</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">502</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><a href="#V">V</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">507</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><a href="#VI">VI</a></td>
+<td class="tdr">510</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Will People Say?, by Rupert Hughes
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38311-h.htm or 38311-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/3/1/38311/
+
+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.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/38311-h/images/i003.jpg b/38311-h/images/i003.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1682ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/images/i003.jpg
diff --git a/38311-h/images/i018.jpg b/38311-h/images/i018.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4138eed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/images/i018.jpg
diff --git a/38311-h/images/i252.jpg b/38311-h/images/i252.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f206c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/images/i252.jpg
diff --git a/38311-h/images/i480.jpg b/38311-h/images/i480.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f74f49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/images/i480.jpg
diff --git a/38311-h/images/icover.jpg b/38311-h/images/icover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39c0087
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/images/icover.jpg
diff --git a/38311-h/images/ifpc.jpg b/38311-h/images/ifpc.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85cd3b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311-h/images/ifpc.jpg
diff --git a/38311.txt b/38311.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b18023
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,18986 @@
+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
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38311.txt or 38311.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/3/1/38311/
+
+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.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/38311.zip b/38311.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a89c2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38311.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d69f51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #38311 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38311)