errata 21017 & 21018HEADmain

1 files changed, 9031 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/4368-0.txt b/4368-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d101a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4368-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9031 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4368 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                   FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
+                      F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
+
+                            To Zelda
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+  The Offshore Pirate
+  The Ice Palace
+  Head and Shoulders
+  The Cut-Glass Bowl
+  Bernice Bobs Her Hair
+  Benediction
+  Dalyrimple Goes Wrong
+  The Four Fists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Flappers and Philosophers
+
+
+
+
+
+The Offshore Pirate
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as
+colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the
+irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the
+sun was shying little golden disks at the sea--if you gazed
+intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip
+until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was
+collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling
+sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden
+collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding
+at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired
+girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the
+Angels, by Anatole France.
+
+She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled
+alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity.
+Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in
+blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were
+perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied.
+And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint
+application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her
+hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and
+rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion
+of the tide.
+
+The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden
+collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy
+silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of
+heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair
+and clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of the
+companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became
+accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning
+he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval.
+
+If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was
+doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages,
+turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting
+distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned.
+
+"Ardita!" said the gray-haired man sternly.
+
+Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing.
+
+"Ardita!" he repeated. "Ardita!"
+
+Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip
+out before it reached her tongue.
+
+"Oh, shut up."
+
+"Ardita!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Will you listen to me--or will I have to get a servant to hold
+you while I talk to you?"
+
+The lemon descended very slowly and scornfully.
+
+"Put it in writing."
+
+"Will you have the decency to close that abominable book and
+discard that damn lemon for two minutes?"
+
+"Oh, can't you lemme alone for a second?"
+
+"Ardita, I have just received a telephone message from the
+shore---"
+
+"Telephone?" She showed for the first time a faint interest.
+
+"Yes, it was---"
+
+"Do you mean to say," she interrupted wonderingly, "'at they let
+you run a wire out here?"
+
+"Yes, and just now---"
+
+"Won't other boats bump into it?"
+
+"No. It's run along the bottom. Five min---"
+
+"Well, I'll be darned! Gosh! Science is golden or
+something--isn't it?"
+
+"Will you let me say what I started to?"
+
+"Shoot!"
+
+"Well it seems--well, I am up here--" He paused and swallowed
+several times distractedly. "Oh, yes. Young woman, Colonel
+Moreland has called up again to ask me to be sure to bring you in
+to dinner. His son Toby has come all the way from New York to
+meet you and he's invited several other young people. For the
+last time, will you---"
+
+"No," said Ardita shortly, "I won't. I came along on this darn
+cruise with the one idea of going to Palm Beach, and you knew it,
+and I absolutely refuse to meet any darn old colonel or any darn
+young Toby or any darn old young people or to set foot in any
+other darn old town in this crazy state. So you either take me to
+Palm Beach or else shut up and go away."
+
+"Very well. This is the last straw. In your infatuation for this
+man.--a man who is notorious for his excesses--a man your father
+would not have allowed to so much as mention your name--you have
+rejected the demi-monde rather than the circles in which you have
+presumably grown up. From now on---"
+
+"I know," interrupted Ardita ironically, "from now on you go your
+way and I go mine. I've heard that story before. You know I'd
+like nothing better."
+
+"From now on," he announced grandiloquently, "you are no niece of
+mine. I---"
+
+"O-o-o-oh!" The cry was wrung from Ardita with the agony of a
+lost soul. "Will you stop boring me! Will you go 'way! Will you
+jump overboard and drown! Do you want me to throw this book at
+you!"
+
+"If you dare do any---"
+
+Smack! The Revolt of the Angels sailed through the air, missed
+its target by the length of a short nose, and bumped cheerfully
+down the companionway.
+
+The gray-haired man made an instinctive step backward and then
+two cautious steps forward. Ardita jumped to her five feet four
+and stared at him defiantly, her gray eyes blazing.
+
+"Keep off!"
+
+"How dare you!" he cried.
+
+"Because I darn please!"
+
+"You've grown unbearable! Your disposition---"
+
+"You've made me that way! No child ever has a bad disposition
+unless it's her fancy's fault! Whatever I am, you did it."
+
+Muttering something under his breath her uncle turned and,
+walking forward called in a loud voice for the launch. Then he
+returned to the awning, where Ardita had again seated herself and
+resumed her attention to the lemon.
+
+"I am going ashore," he said slowly. "I will be out again at nine
+o'clock to-night. When I return we start back to New York,
+wither I shall turn you over to your aunt for the rest of your
+natural, or rather unnatural, life."  He paused and looked at
+her, and then all at once something in the utter childness of her
+beauty seemed to puncture his anger like an inflated tire, and
+render him helpless, uncertain, utterly fatuous.
+
+"Ardita," he said not unkindly, "I'm no fool. I've been round. I
+know men. And, child, confirmed libertines don't reform until
+they're tired--and then they're not themselves--they're husks of
+themselves." He looked at her as if expecting agreement, but
+receiving no sight or sound of it he continued. "Perhaps the man
+loves you--that's possible. He's loved many women and he'll love
+many more. Less than a month ago, one month, Ardita, he was
+involved in a notorious affair with that red-haired woman, Mimi
+Merril; promised to give her the diamond bracelet that the Czar
+of Russia gave his mother. You know--you read the papers."
+
+"Thrilling scandals by an anxious uncle," yawned Ardita. "Have it
+filmed. Wicked clubman making eyes at virtuous flapper. Virtuous
+flapper conclusively vamped by his lurid past. Plans to meet him
+at Palm Beach. Foiled by anxious uncle."
+
+"Will you tell me why the devil you want to marry him?"
+
+"I'm sure I couldn't say," said Audits shortly. "Maybe because
+he's the only man I know, good or bad, who has an imagination and
+the courage of his convictions. Maybe it's to get away from the
+young fools that spend their vacuous hours pursuing me around the
+country. But as for the famous Russian bracelet, you can set
+your mind at rest on that score. He's going to give it to me at
+Palm Beach--if you'll show a little intelligence."
+
+"How about the--red-haired woman?"
+
+"He hasn't seen her for six months," she said angrily. "Don't you
+suppose I have enough pride to see to that? Don't you know by
+this time that I can do any darn thing with any darn man I want
+to?"
+
+She put her chin in the air like the statue of France Aroused,
+and then spoiled the pose somewhat by raising the lemon for
+action.
+
+"Is it the Russian bracelet that fascinates you?"
+
+"No, I'm merely trying to give you the sort of argument that
+would appeal to your intelligence. And I wish you'd go 'way," she
+said, her temper rising again. "You know I never change my mind.
+You've been boring me for three days until I'm about to go
+crazy. I won't go ashore! Won't! Do you hear? Won't!"
+
+"Very well," he said, "and you won't go to Palm Beach either. Of
+all the selfish, spoiled, uncontrolled disagreeable, impossible
+girl I have---"
+
+Splush! The half-lemon caught him in the neck. Simultaneously
+came a hail from over the side.
+
+"The launch is ready, Mr. Farnam."
+
+Too full of words and rage to speak, Mr. Farnam cast one utterly
+condemning glance at his niece and, turning, ran swiftly down the
+ladder.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Five o'clock robed down from the sun and plumped soundlessly into
+the sea. The golden collar widened into a glittering island; and
+a faint breeze that had been playing with the edges of the
+awning and swaying one of the dangling blue slippers became
+suddenly freighted with song. It was a chorus of men in close
+harmony and in perfect rhythm to an accompanying sound of oars
+dealing the blue writers. Ardita lifted her head and listened.
+
+     "Carrots and Peas,
+      Beans on their knees,
+      Pigs in the seas,
+          Lucky fellows!
+      Blow us a breeze,
+      Blow us a breeze,
+      Blow us a breeze,
+          With your bellows."
+
+Ardita's brow wrinkled in astonishment. Sitting very still she
+listened eagerly as the chorus took up a second verse.
+
+     "Onions and beans,
+      Marshalls and Deans,
+      Goldbergs and Greens
+          And Costellos.
+      Blow us a breeze,
+      Blow us a breeze,
+      Blow us a breeze,
+          With your bellows."
+
+With an exclamation she tossed her book to the desk, where it
+sprawled at a straddle, and hurried to the rail. Fifty feet away
+a large rowboat was approaching containing seven men, six of them
+rowing and one standing up in the stern keeping time to their
+song with an orchestra leader's baton.
+
+     "Oysters and Rocks,
+      Sawdust and socks,
+      Who could make clocks
+          Out of cellos?---"
+
+The leader's eyes suddenly rested on Ardita, who was leaning over
+the rail spellbound with curiosity. He made a quick movement
+with his baton and the singing instantly ceased. She saw that he
+was the only white man in the boat--the six rowers were negroes.
+
+"Narcissus ahoy!" he called politely.
+
+"What's the idea of all the discord?" demanded Ardita cheerfully.
+"Is this the varsity crew from the county nut farm?"
+
+By this time the boat was scraping the side of the yacht and a
+great bulking negro in the bow turned round and grasped the
+ladder. Thereupon the leader left his position in the stern and
+before Ardita had realized his intention he ran up the ladder and
+stood breathless before her on the deck.
+
+"The women and children will be spared!" he said briskly. "All
+crying babies will be immediately drowned and all males put in
+double irons!" Digging her hands excitedly down into the pockets
+of her dress Ardita stared at him, speechless with astonishment.
+He was a young man with a scornful mouth and the bright blue eyes
+of a healthy baby set in a dark sensitive face. His hair was
+pitch black, damp and curly--the hair of a Grecian statue gone
+brunette. He was trimly built, trimly dressed, and graceful as an
+agile quarter-back.
+
+"Well, I'll be a son of a gun!" she said dazedly.
+
+They eyed each other coolly.
+
+"Do you surrender the ship?"
+
+"Is this an outburst of wit?" demanded Ardita. "Are you an
+idiot--or just being initiated to some fraternity?"
+
+"I asked you if you surrendered the ship."
+
+"I thought the country was dry," said Ardita disdainfully. "Have
+you been drinking finger-nail enamel? You better get off this
+yacht!"
+
+"What?" the young man's voice expressed incredulity.
+
+"Get off the yacht! You heard me!"
+
+He looked at her for a moment as if considering what she had
+said.
+
+"No," said his scornful mouth slowly; "No, I won't get off the
+yacht. You can get off if you wish."
+
+Going to the rail be gave a curt command and immediately the crew
+of the rowboat scrambled up the ladder and ranged themselves in
+line before him, a coal-black and burly darky at one end and a
+miniature mulatto of four feet nine at to other. They seemed to
+be uniformly dressed in some sort of blue costume ornamented with
+dust, mud, and tatters; over the shoulder of each was slung a
+small, heavy-looking white sack, and under their arms they
+carried large black cases apparently containing musical
+instruments.
+
+"'Ten-SHUN!" commanded the young man, snapping his own heels
+together crisply. "Right DRISS! Front! Step out here, Babe!"
+
+The smallest Negro took a quick step forward and saluted.
+
+"Take command, go down below, catch the crew and tie 'em up--all
+except the engineer. Bring him up to me. Oh, and pile those bags
+by the rail there."
+
+"Yas-suh!"
+
+Babe saluted again and wheeling about motioned for the five others
+to gather about him. Then after a short whispered consultation
+they all filed noiselessly down the companionway.
+
+"Now," said the young man cheerfully to Ardita, who had witnessed
+this last scene in withering silence, "if you will swear on your
+honor as a flapper--which probably isn't worth much--that you'll
+keep that spoiled little mouth of yours tight shut for
+forty-eight hours, you can row yourself ashore in our
+rowboat."
+
+"Otherwise what?"
+
+"Otherwise you're going to sea in a ship."
+
+With a little sigh as for a crisis well passed, the young man
+sank into the settee Ardita had lately vacated and stretched his
+arms lazily. The corners of his mouth relaxed appreciatively as
+he looked round at the rich striped awning, the polished brass,
+and the luxurious fittings of the deck. His eye felt on the book,
+and then on the exhausted lemon.
+
+"Hm," he said, "Stonewall Jackson claimed that lemon-juice
+cleared his head. Your head feel pretty clear?"
+
+Ardita disdained to answer.
+
+"Because inside of five minutes you'll have to make a clear
+decision whether it's go or stay."
+
+He picked up the book and opened it curiously.
+
+"The Revolt of the Angels. Sounds pretty good. French, eh?" He
+stared at her with new interest "You French?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Farnam."
+
+"Farnam what?"
+
+"Ardita Farnam."
+
+"Well Ardita, no use standing up there and chewing out the
+insides of your mouth. You ought to break those nervous habits
+while you're young. Come over here and sit down."
+
+Ardita took a carved jade case from her pocket, extracted a
+cigarette and lit it with a conscious coolness, though she knew
+her hand was trembling a little; then she crossed over with her
+supple, swinging walk, and sitting down in the other settee blew
+a mouthful of smoke at the awning.
+
+"You can't get me off this yacht," she raid steadily; "and you
+haven't got very much sense if you think you'll get far with it.
+My uncle'll have wirelesses zigzagging all over this ocean by
+half past six."
+
+"Hm."
+
+She looked quickly at his face, caught anxiety stamped there
+plainly in the faintest depression of the mouth's corners.
+
+"It's all the same to me," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
+"'Tisn't my yacht. I don't mind going for a coupla hours' cruise.
+I'll even lend you that book so you'll have something to read on
+the revenue boat that takes you up to Sing-Sing."
+
+He laughed scornfully.
+
+"If that's advice you needn't bother. This is part of a plan
+arranged before I ever knew this yacht existed. If it hadn't been
+this one it'd have been the next one we passed anchored along
+the coast."
+
+"Who are you?" demanded Ardita suddenly. "And what are you?"
+
+"You've decided not to go ashore?"
+
+"I never even faintly considered it."
+
+"We're generally known," he said "all seven of us, as Curtis
+Carlyle and his Six Black Buddies late of the Winter Garden and
+the Midnight Frolic."
+
+"You're singers?"
+
+"We were until to-day. At present, due to those white bags you
+see there we're fugitives from justice and if the reward offered
+for our capture hasn't by this time reached twenty thousand
+dollars I miss my guess."
+
+"What's in the bags?" asked Ardita curiously.
+
+"Well," he said "for the present we'll call it--mud--Florida
+mud."
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Within ten minutes after Curtis Carlyle's interview with a very
+frightened engineer the yacht Narcissus was under way, steaming
+south through a balmy tropical twilight. The little mulatto,
+Babe, who seems to have Carlyle's implicit confidence, took full
+command of the situation. Mr. Farnam's valet and the chef, the
+only members of the crew on board except the engineer, having
+shown fight, were now reconsidering, strapped securely to their
+bunks below. Trombone Mose, the biggest negro, was set busy with
+a can of paint obliterating the name Narcissus from the bow, and
+substituting the name Hula Hula, and the others congregated aft
+and became intently involved in a game of craps.
+
+Having given order for a meal to be prepared and served on deck
+at seven-thirty, Carlyle rejoined Ardita, and, sinking back into
+his settee, half closed his eyes and fell into a state of
+profound abstraction.
+
+Ardita scrutinized him carefully--and classed him immediately as
+a romantic figure. He gave the effect of towering self-confidence
+erected on a slight foundation--just under the surface of each
+of his decisions she discerned a hesitancy that was in decided
+contrast to the arrogant curl of his lips.
+
+"He's not like me," she thought "There's a difference somewhere."
+Being a supreme egotist Ardita frequently thought about
+herself; never having had her egotism disputed she did it
+entirely naturally and with no detraction from her unquestioned
+charm.  Though she was nineteen she gave the effect of a
+high-spirited precocious child, and in the present glow of her
+youth and beauty all the men and women she had known were but
+driftwood on the ripples of her temperament. She had met other
+egotists--in fact she found that selfish people bored her rather
+less than unselfish people--but as yet there had not been one she
+had not eventually defeated and brought to her feet.
+
+But though she recognized an egotist in the settee, she felt none
+of that usual shutting of doors in her mind which meant clearing
+ship for action; on the contrary her instinct told her that this
+man was somehow completely pregnable and quite defenseless. When
+Ardita defied convention--and of late it had been her chief
+amusement--it was from an intense desire to be herself, and she
+felt that this man, on the contrary, was preoccupied with his own
+defiance.
+
+She was much more interested in him than she was in her own
+situation, which affected her as the prospect of a matineé might
+affect a ten-year-old child. She had implicit confidence in her
+ability to take care of herself under any and all circumstances.
+
+The night deepened. A pale new moon smiled misty-eyed upon the
+sea, and as the shore faded dimly out and dark clouds were blown
+like leaves along the far horizon a great haze of moonshine
+suddenly bathed the yacht and spread an avenue of glittering mail
+in her swift path. From time to time there was the bright flare
+of a match as one of them lighted a cigarette, but except for
+the low under-tone of the throbbing engines and the even wash of
+the waves about the stern the yacht was quiet as a dream boat
+star-bound through the heavens. Round them bowed the smell of the
+night sea, bringing with it an infinite languor.
+
+Carlyle broke the silence at last.
+
+"Lucky girl," he sighed "I've always wanted to be rich--and buy
+all this beauty."
+
+Ardita yawned.
+
+"I'd rather be you," she said frankly.
+
+"You would--for about a day. But you do seem to possess a lot of
+nerve for a flapper."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't call me that."
+
+"Beg your pardon."
+
+"As to nerve," she continued slowly, "it's my one redeeming
+feature. I'm not afraid of anything in heaven or earth."
+
+"Hm, I am."
+
+"To be afraid," said Ardita, "a person has either to be very
+great and strong--or else a coward. I'm neither." She paused for
+a moment, and eagerness crept into her tone. "But I want to talk
+about you. What on earth have you done--and how did you do it?"
+
+"Why?" he demanded cynically.  "Going to write a movie, about
+me?"
+
+"Go on," she urged. "Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous
+story."
+
+A negro appeared, switched on a string of small lights under the
+awning, and began setting the wicker table for supper. And while
+they ate cold sliced chicken, salad, artichokes and strawberry
+jam from the plentiful larder below, Carlyle began to talk,
+hesitatingly at first, but eagerly as he saw she was interested.
+Ardita scarcely touched her food as she watched his dark young
+face--handsome, ironic faintly ineffectual.
+
+He began life as a poor kid in a Tennessee town, he said, so poor
+that his people were the only white family in their street. He
+never remembered any white children--but there were inevitably a
+dozen pickaninnies streaming in his trail, passionate admirers
+whom he kept in tow by the vividness of his imagination and the
+amount of trouble he was always getting them in and out of. And
+it seemed that this association diverted a rather unusual musical
+gift into a strange channel.
+
+There had been a colored woman named Belle Pope Calhoun who
+played the piano at parties given for white children--nice white
+children that would have passed Curtis Carlyle with a sniff. But
+the ragged little "poh white" used to sit beside her piano by the
+hour and try to get in an alto with one of those kazoos that
+boys hum through. Before he was thirteen he was picking up a
+living teasing ragtime out of a battered violin in little cafés
+round Nashville. Eight years later the ragtime craze hit the
+country, and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of
+them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little
+mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New York, and
+long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an
+eight-inch stiletto in his master's back. Almost before Carlyle
+realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of
+engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ever dreamed
+of.
+
+It was about then that a change began in his whole attitude, a
+rather curious, embittering change. It was when he realized that
+he was spending the golden years of his life gibbering round a
+stage with a lot of black men. His act was good of its
+kind--three trombones, three saxaphones, and Carlyle's flute--and
+it was his own peculiar sense of rhythm that made all the
+difference; but he began to grow strangely sensitive about it,
+began to hate the thought of appearing, dreaded it from day to
+day.
+
+They were making money--each contract he signed called for
+more--but when he went to managers and told them that he wanted
+to separate from his sextet and go on as a regular pianist, they
+laughed at him and told him he was crazy--it would be an artistic
+suicide. He used to laugh afterward at the phrase "artistic
+suicide." They all used it.
+
+Half a dozen times they played at private dances at three
+thousand dollars a night, and it seemed as if these crystallized
+all his distaste for his mode of livlihood.  They took place in
+clubs and houses that he couldn't have gone into in the daytime.
+After all, he was merely playing to rôle of the eternal monkey, a
+sort of sublimated chorus man. He was sick of the very smell of
+the theatre, of powder and rouge and the chatter of the
+greenroom, and the patronizing approval of the boxes. He couldn't
+put his heart into it any more. The idea of a slow approach to
+the luxury of leisure drove him wild. He was, of course,
+progressing toward it, but, like a child, eating his ice-cream so
+slowly that he couldn't taste it at all.
+
+He wanted to have a lot of money and time and opportunity to read
+and play, and the sort of men and women round him that he could
+never have--the kind who, if they thought of him at all, would
+have considered him rather contemptible; in short he wanted all
+those things which he was beginning to lump under the general
+head of aristocracy, an aristocracy which it seemed almost any
+money could buy except money made as he was making it.  He was
+twenty-five then, without family or education or any promise that
+he would succeed in a business career.  He began speculating
+wildly, and within three weeks he had lost every cent he had
+saved.
+
+Then the war came.  He went to Plattsburg, and even there his
+profession followed him. A brigadier-general called him up to
+headquarters and told him he could serve his country better as a
+band leader--so he spent the war entertaining celebrities behind
+the line with a headquarters band.  It was not so bad--except
+that when the infantry came limping back from the trenches he
+wanted to be one of them.  The sweat and mud they wore seemed
+only one of those ineffable symbols of aristocracy that were
+forever eluding him.
+
+"It was the private dances that did it.  After I came back from
+the war the old routine started.  We had an offer from a
+syndicate of Florida hotels.  It was only a question of time
+then."
+
+He broke off and Ardita looked at him expectantly, but he shook
+his head.
+
+"No," he said, "I'm going to tell you about it.  I'm enjoying it
+too much, and I'm afraid I'd lose a little of that enjoyment if I
+shared it with anyone else.  I want to hang on to those few
+breathless, heroic moments when I stood out before them all and
+let them know I was more than a damn bobbing, squawking clown."
+
+From up forward came suddenly the low sound of singing. The
+negroes had gathered together on the deck and their voices rose
+together in a haunting melody that soared in poignant harmonics
+toward the moon. And Ardita listens in enchantment.
+
+    "Oh down---
+          oh down,
+     Mammy wanna take me down milky way,
+     Oh down,
+          oh down,
+     Pappy say to-morra-a-a-ah
+     But mammy say to-day,
+     Yes--mammy say to-day!"
+
+Carlyle sighed and was silent for a moment looking up at the
+gathered host of stars blinking like arc-lights in the warm sky.
+The negroes' song had died away to a plaintive humming and it
+seemed as if minute by minute the brightness and the great
+silence were increasing until he could almost hear the midnight
+toilet of the mermaids as they combed their silver dripping curls
+under the moon and gossiped to each other of the fine wrecks
+they lived on the green opalescent avenues below.
+
+"You see," said Carlyle softly, "this is the beauty I want.
+Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding--it's got to burst
+in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl."
+
+He turned to her, but she was silent.
+
+"You see, don't you, Anita--I mean, Ardita?"
+
+Again she made no answer.  She had been sound asleep for some
+time.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+In the dense sun-flooded noon of next day a spot in the sea
+before them resolved casually into a green-and-gray islet,
+apparently composed of a great granite cliff at its northern end
+which slanted south through a mile of vivid coppice and grass to
+a sandy beach melting lazily into the surf.  When Ardita, reading
+in her favorite seat, came to the last page of The Revolt of the
+Angels, and slamming the book shut looked up and saw it, she
+gave a little cry of delight, and called to Carlyle, who was
+standing moodily by the rail.
+
+"Is this it?  Is this where you're going?"
+
+Carlyle shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
+
+"You've got me."  He raised his voice and called up to the acting
+skipper: "Oh, Babe, is this your island?"
+
+The mulatto's miniature head appeared from round the corner of
+the deck-house.
+
+"Yas-suh!  This yeah's it."
+
+Carlyle joined Ardita.
+
+"Looks sort of sporting, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," she agreed; "but it doesn't look big enough to be much of
+a hiding-place."
+
+"You still putting your faith in those wirelesses your uncle was
+going to have zigzagging round?"
+
+"No," said Ardita frankly.  "I'm all for you.  I'd really like to
+see you make a get-away."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You're our Lady Luck.  Guess we'll have to keep you with us as a
+mascot--for the present anyway."
+
+"You couldn't very well ask me to swim back," she said coolly.
+"If you do I'm going to start writing dime novels founded on that
+interminable history of your life you gave me last night."
+
+He flushed and stiffened slightly.
+
+"I'm very sorry I bored you."
+
+"Oh, you didn't--until just at the end with some story about how
+furious you were because you couldn't dance with the ladies you
+played music for."
+
+He rose angrily.
+
+"You have got a darn mean little tongue."
+
+"Excuse me," she said melting into laughter, "but I'm not used to
+having men regale me with the story of their life
+ambitions--especially if they've lived such deathly platonic
+lives."
+
+"Why? What do men usually regale you with?"
+
+"Oh, they talk about me," she yawned. "They tell me I'm the
+spirit of youth and beauty."
+
+"What do you tell them?"
+
+"Oh, I agree quietly."
+
+"Does every man you meet tell you he loves you?"
+
+Ardita nodded.
+
+"Why shouldn't he? All life is just a progression toward, and
+then a recession from, one phrase--'I love you.'"
+
+Carlyle laughed and sat down.
+
+"That's very true. That's--that's not bad. Did you make that up?"
+
+"Yes--or rather I found it out. It doesn't mean anything
+especially. It's just clever."
+
+"It's the sort of remark," he said gravely, "that's typical of
+your class."
+
+"Oh," she interrupted impatiently, "don't start that lecture on
+aristocracy again! I distrust people who can be intense at this
+hour in the morning. It's a mild form of insanity--a sort of
+breakfast-food jag. Morning's the time to sleep, swim, and be
+careless."
+
+Ten minutes later they had swung round in a wide circle as if to
+approach the island from the north.
+
+"There's a trick somewhere," commented Ardita thoughtfully. "He
+can't mean just to anchor up against this cliff."
+
+They were heading straight in now toward the solid rock, which
+must have been well over a hundred feet tall, and not until they
+were within fifty yards of it did Ardita see their objective.
+Then she clapped her hands in delight. There was a break in the
+cliff entirely hidden by a curious overlapping of rock, and
+through this break the yacht entered and very slowly traversed a
+narrow channel of crystal-clear water between high gray walls.
+Then they were riding at anchor in a miniature world of green and
+gold, a gilded bay smooth as glass and set round with tiny
+palms, the whole resembling the mirror lakes and twig trees that
+children set up in sand piles.
+
+"Not so darned bad!" cried Carlyle excitedly.
+
+"I guess that little coon knows his way round this corner of the
+Atlantic."
+
+His exuberance was contagious, and Ardita became quite jubilant.
+
+"It's an absolutely sure-fire hiding-place!"
+
+"Lordy, yes! It's the sort of island you read about."
+
+The rowboat was lowered into the golden lake and they pulled to
+shore.
+
+"Come on," said Carlyle as they landed in the slushy sand, "we'll
+go exploring."
+
+The fringe of palms was in turn ringed in by a round mile of
+flat, sandy country. They followed it south and brushing through
+a farther rim of tropical vegetation came out on a pearl-gray
+virgin beach where Ardita kicked of her brown golf shoes--she
+seemed to have permanently abandoned stockings--and went wading.
+Then they sauntered back to the yacht, where the indefatigable
+Babe had luncheon ready for them. He had posted a lookout on the
+high cliff to the north to watch the sea on both sides, though he
+doubted if the entrance to the cliff was generally known--he had
+never even seen a map on which the island was marked.
+
+"What's its name," asked Ardita--"the island, I mean?"
+
+"No name 'tall," chuckled Babe. "Reckin she jus' island, 'at's
+all."
+
+In the late afternoon they sat with their backs against great
+boulders on the highest part of the cliff and Carlyle sketched
+for her his vague plans. He was sure they were hot after him by
+this time. The total proceeds of the coup he had pulled off and
+concerning which he still refused to enlighten her, he estimated
+as just under a million dollars. He counted on lying up here
+several weeks and then setting off southward, keeping well
+outside the usual channels of travel rounding the Horn and
+heading for Callao, in Peru. The details of coaling and
+provisioning he was leaving entirely to Babe who, it seemed, had
+sailed these seas in every capacity from cabin-boy aboard a
+coffee trader to virtual first mate on a Brazillian pirate craft,
+whose skipper had long since been hung.
+
+"If he'd been white he'd have been king of South America long
+ago," said Carlyle emphatically. "When it comes to intelligence
+he makes Booker T. Washington look like a moron. He's got the
+guile of every race and nationality whose blood is in his veins,
+and that's half a dozen or I'm a liar. He worships me because I'm
+the only man in the world who can play better ragtime than he
+can. We used to sit together on the wharfs down on the New York
+water-front, he with a bassoon and me with an oboe, and we'd
+blend minor keys in African harmonics a thousand years old until
+the rats would crawl up the posts and sit round groaning and
+squeaking like dogs will in front of a phonograph."
+
+Ardita roared.
+
+"How you can tell 'em!"
+
+Carlyle grinned.
+
+"I swear that's the gos---"
+
+"What you going to do when you get to Callao?" she interrupted.
+
+"Take ship for India. I want to be a rajah. I mean it. My idea is
+to go up into Afghanistan somewhere, buy up a palace and a
+reputation, and then after about five years appear in England
+with a foreign accent and a mysterious past. But India first. Do
+you know, they say that all the gold in the world drifts very
+gradually back to India. Something fascinating about that to me.
+And I want leisure to read--an immense amount."
+
+"How about after that?"
+
+"Then," he answered defiantly, "comes aristocracy. Laugh if you
+want to--but at least you'll have to admit that I know what I
+want--which I imagine is more than you do."
+
+"On the contrary," contradicted Ardita, reaching in her pocket
+for her cigarette case, "when I met you I was in the midst of a
+great uproar of all my friends and relatives because I did know
+what I wanted."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"A man."
+
+He started.
+
+"You mean you were engaged?"
+
+"After a fashion. If you hadn't come aboard I had every intention
+of slipping ashore yesterday evening--how long ago it seems--and
+meeting him in Palm Beach. He's waiting there for me with a
+bracelet that once belonged to Catherine of Russia. Now don't
+mutter anything about aristocracy," she put in quickly. "I liked
+him simply because he had had an imagination and the utter
+courage of his convictions."
+
+"But your family disapproved, eh?"
+
+"What there is of it--only a silly uncle and a sillier aunt. It
+seems he got into some scandal with a red-haired woman name Mimi
+something--it was frightfully exaggerated, he said, and men don't
+lie to me--and anyway I didn't care what he'd done; it was the
+future that counted. And I'd see to that. When a man's in love
+with me he doesn't care for other amusements. I told him to drop
+her like a hot cake, and he did."
+
+"I feel rather jealous," said Carlyle, frowning--and then he
+laughed. "I guess I'll just keep you along with us until we get
+to Callao. Then I'll lend you enough money to get back to the
+States. By that time you'll have had a chance to think that
+gentleman over a little more."
+
+"Don't talk to me like that!" fired up Ardita. "I won't tolerate
+the parental attitude from anybody! Do you understand me?" He
+chuckled and then stopped, rather abashed, as her cold anger
+seemed to fold him about and chill him.
+
+"I'm sorry," he offered uncertainly.
+
+"Oh, don't apologize! I can't stand men who say 'I'm sorry' in
+that manly, reserved tone. Just shut up!"
+
+A pause ensued, a pause which Carlyle found rather awkward, but
+which Ardita seemed not to notice at all as she sat contentedly
+enjoying her cigarette and gazing out at the shining sea. After a
+minute she crawled out on the rock and lay with her face over
+the edge looking down. Carlyle, watching her, reflected how it
+seemed impossible for her to assume an ungraceful attitude.
+
+"Oh, look," she cried. "There's a lot of sort of ledges down
+there. Wide ones of all different heights."
+
+"We'll go swimming to-night!" she said excitedly. "By moonlight."
+
+"Wouldn't you rather go in at the beach on the other end?"
+
+"Not a chance. I like to dive. You can use my uncle's bathing
+suit, only it'll fit you like a gunny sack, because he's a very
+flabby man. I've got a one-piece that's shocked the natives all
+along the Atlantic coast from Biddeford Pool to St. Augustine."
+
+"I suppose you're a shark."
+
+"Yes, I'm pretty good. And I look cute too. A sculptor up at Rye
+last summer told me my calves are worth five hundred dollars."
+
+There didn't seem to be any answer to this, so Carlyle was
+silent, permitting himself only a discreet interior smile.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+When the night crept down in shadowy blue and silver they
+threaded the shimmering channel in the rowboat and, tying it to a
+jutting rock, began climbing the cliff together. The first shelf
+was ten feet up, wide, and furnishing a natural diving platform.
+There they sat down in the bright moonlight and watched the
+faint incessant surge of the waters almost stilled now as the
+tide set seaward.
+
+"Are you happy?" he asked suddenly.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Always happy near the sea. You know," she went on, "I've been
+thinking all day that you and I are somewhat alike. We're both
+rebels--only for different reasons. Two years ago, when I was
+just eighteen and you were---"
+
+"Twenty-five."
+
+"---well, we were both conventional successes. I was an utterly
+devastating débutante and you were a prosperous musician just
+commissioned in the army---"
+
+"Gentleman by act of Congress," he put in ironically.
+
+"Well, at any rate, we both fitted. If our corners were not
+rubbed off they were at least pulled in.  But deep in us both was
+something that made us require more for happiness. I didn't know
+what I wanted. I went from man to man, restless, impatient,
+month by month getting less acquiescent and more dissatisfied. I
+used to sit sometimes chewing at the insides of my mouth and
+thinking I was going crazy--I had a frightful sense of
+transiency. I wanted things now--now--now! Here I
+was--beautiful--I am, aren't I?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Carlyle tentatively.
+
+Ardita rose suddenly.
+
+"Wait a second. I want to try this delightful-looking sea."
+
+She walked to the end of the ledge and shot out over the sea,
+doubling up in mid-air and then straightening out and entering to
+water straight as a blade in a perfect jack-knife dive.
+
+In a minute her voice floated up to him.
+
+"You see, I used to read all day and most of the night. I began
+to resent society---"
+
+"Come on up here," he interrupted. "What on earth are you doing?"
+
+"Just floating round on my back. I'll be up in a minute. Let me
+tell you. The only thing I enjoyed was shocking people; wearing
+something quite impossible and quite charming to a fancy-dress
+party, going round with the fastest men in New York, and getting
+into some of the most hellish scrapes imaginable."
+
+The sounds of splashing mingled with her words, and then he heard
+her hurried breathing as she began climbing up side to the
+ledge.
+
+"Go on in!" she called
+
+Obediently he rose and dived.  When he emerged, dripping, and
+made the climb he found that she was no longer on the ledge, but
+after a second frightened he heard her light laughter from another shelf
+ten feet up. There he joined her and they both sat quietly for a
+moment, their arms clasped round their knees, panting a little
+from the climb.
+
+"The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry
+me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was
+scarcely worth living I found something"--her eyes went skyward
+exultantly---"I found something!"
+
+Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush.
+
+"Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to
+cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in
+myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some
+manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that
+attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of
+life. All sorts of courage--the beaten, bloody prize-fighter
+coming up for more--I used to make men take me to prize-fights;
+the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at
+them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like
+always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions--just to
+live as I liked always and to die in my own way-- Did you bring
+up the cigarettes?"
+
+He handed one over and held a match for her gently.
+
+"Still," Ardita continued, "the men kept gathering--old men and
+young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but
+all intensely desiring  to have me--to own this rather
+magnificent proud tradition I'd built up round me. Do you see?"
+
+"Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized."
+
+"Never!"
+
+She sprang to the edge, poised for a moment like a crucified
+figure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked
+without a slash between two silver ripples twenty feet below.
+
+Her voice floated up to him again.
+
+"And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist
+that comes down on life--not only overriding people and
+circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of
+insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient
+things."
+
+She was climbing up now, and at her last words her head, with the
+damp yellow hair slicked symmetrically back appeared on his
+level.
+
+"All very well," objected Carlyle. "You can call it courage, but
+your courage is really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You
+were bred to that defiant attitude. On my gray days even courage
+is one of the things that's gray and lifeless."
+
+She was sitting near the edge, hugging her knees and gazing
+abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther back, crammed like
+a grotesque god into a niche in the rock.
+
+"I don't want to sound like Pollyanna," she began, "but you
+haven't grasped me yet. My courage is faith--faith in the eternal
+resilience of me--that joy'll come back, and hope and
+spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my
+lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide--not necessarily any
+silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite
+often--and the female hell is deadlier than the male."
+
+"But supposing," suggested Carlyle, "that before joy and hope and
+all that came back the curtain was drawn on you for good?"
+
+Ardita rose, and going to the wall climbed with some difficulty
+to the next ledge, another ten or fifteen feet above.
+
+"Why," she called back "then I'd have won!"
+
+He edged out till he could see her.
+
+"Better not dive from there! You'll break your back," he said
+quickly.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Not I!"
+
+Slowly she spread her arms and stood there swan-like, radiating a
+pride in her young perfection that lit a warm glow in Carlyle's
+heart.
+
+"We're going through the black air with our arms wide and our
+feet straight out behind like a dolphin's tail, and we're going
+to think we'll never hit the silver down there till suddenly
+it'll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing
+waves."
+
+Then she was in the air, and Carlyle involuntarily held his
+breath. He had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet.
+It seemed an eternity before he heard the swift compact sound as
+she reached the sea.
+
+And it was with his glad sigh of relief when her light watery
+laughter curled up the side of the cliff and into his anxious
+ears that he knew he loved her.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Time, having no axe to grind, showered down upon them three days
+of afternoons.  When the sun cleared the port-hole of Ardita's
+cabin an hour after dawn she rose cheerily, donned her
+bathing-suit, and went up on deck.  The negroes would leave their
+work when they saw her, and crowd, chuckling and chattering, to
+the rail as she floated, an agile minnow, on and under the
+surface of the clear water.  Again in the cool of the afternoon
+she would swim--and loll and smoke with Carlyle upon the cliff;
+or else they would lie on their sides in the sands of the
+southern beach, talking little, but watching the day fade
+colorfully and tragically into the infinite langour of a tropical
+evening.
+
+And with the long, sunny hours Ardita's idea of the episode as
+incidental, madcap, a sprig of romance in a desert of reality,
+gradually left her.  She dreaded the time when he would strike
+off southward; she dreaded all the eventualities that presented
+themselves to her; thoughts were suddenly troublesome and
+decisions odious.  Had prayers found place in the pagan rituals
+of her soul she would have asked of life only to be unmolested
+for a while, lazily acquiescent to the ready, naïf flow of
+Carlyle's ideas, his vivid boyish imagination, and the vein of
+monomania that seemed to run crosswise through his temperament
+and colored his every action.
+
+But this is not a story of two on an island, nor concerned
+primarily with love bred of isolation. It is merely the
+presentation of two personalities, and its idyllic setting among
+the palms of the Gulf Stream is quite incidental. Most of us are
+content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both,
+and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attest to control one's
+destiny, is reserved for the fortunate or unfortunate few. To me
+the interesting thing about Ardita is the courage that will
+tarnish with her beauty and youth.
+
+"Take me with you," she said late one night as they sat lazily in
+the grass under the shadowy spreading palms. The negroes had
+brought ashore their musical instruments, and the sound of weird
+ragtime was drifting softly over on the warm breath of the night.
+"I'd love to reappear in ten years, as a fabulously wealthy
+high-caste Indian lady," she continued.
+
+Carlyle looked at her quickly.
+
+"You can, you know."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Is it a proposal of marriage? Extra!  Ardita Farnam becomes
+pirate's bride. Society girl kidnapped by ragtime bank robber."
+
+"It wasn't a bank."
+
+"What was it? Why won't you tell me?"
+
+"I don't want to break down your illusions."
+
+"My dear man, I have no illusions about you."
+
+"I mean your illusions about yourself."
+
+She looked up in surprise.
+
+"About myself! What on earth have I got to do with whatever stray
+felonies you've committed?"
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+She reached over and patted his hand.
+
+"Dear Mr. Curtis Carlyle," she said softly, "are you in love with
+me?"
+
+"As if it mattered."
+
+"But it does--because I think I'm in love with
+you."
+
+He looked at her ironically.
+
+"Thus swelling your January total to half a dozen," he suggested.
+"Suppose I call your bluff and ask you to come to India with
+me?"
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"We can get married in Callao."
+
+"What sort of life can you offer me? I don't mean that unkindly,
+but seriously; what would become of me if the people who want
+that twenty-thousand-dollar reward ever catch up with you?"
+
+"I thought you weren't afraid."
+
+"I never am--but I won't throw my life away just to show one man
+I'm not."
+
+"I wish you'd been poor. Just a little poor girl dreaming over a
+fence in a warm cow country."
+
+"Wouldn't it have been nice?"
+
+"I'd have enjoyed astonishing you--watching your eyes open on
+things. If you only wanted things! Don't you see?"
+
+"I know--like girls who stare into the windows of
+jewelry-stores."
+
+"Yes--and want the big oblong watch that's platinum and has
+diamonds all round the edge. Only you'd decide it was too
+expensive and choose one of white gold for a hundred dollar. Then
+I'd say: 'Expensive? I should say not!' And we'd go into the
+store and pretty soon the platinum one would be gleaming on your
+wrist."
+
+"That sounds so nice and vulgar--and fun, doesn't it?" murmured
+Ardita.
+
+"Doesn't it? Can't you see us travelling round and spending money
+right and left, and being worshipped by bell-boys and waiters?
+Oh, blessed are the simple rich for they inherit the earth!"
+
+"I honestly wish we were that way."
+
+"I love you, Ardita," he said gently.
+
+Her face lost its childish look for moment and became oddly
+grave.
+
+"I love to be with you," she said, "more than with any man I've
+ever met. And I like your looks and your dark old hair, and the
+way you go over the side of the rail when we come ashore. In
+fact, Curtis Carlyle, I like all the things you do when you're
+perfectly natural. I think you've got nerve and you know how I
+feel about that. Sometimes when you're around I've been tempted
+to kiss you suddenly and tell you that you were just an
+idealistic boy with a lot of caste nonsense in his head.
+Perhaps if I were just a little bit older and a little more bored
+I'd go with you. As it is, I think I'll go back and marry--that
+other man."
+
+Over across the silver lake the figures of the negroes writhed
+and squirmed in the moonlight like acrobats who, having been too
+long inactive, must go through their tacks from sheer surplus
+energy. In single file they marched, weaving in concentric
+circles, now with their heads thrown back, now bent over their
+instruments like piping fauns. And from trombone and saxaphone
+ceaselessly whined a blended melody, sometimes riotous and
+jubilant, sometimes haunting and plaintive as a death-dance from
+the Congo's heart.
+
+"Let's dance," cried Ardita. "I can't sit still with that perfect
+jazz going on."
+
+Taking her hand he led her out into a broad stretch of hard sandy
+soil that the moon flooded with great splendor. They floated out
+like drifting moths under the rich hazy light, and as the
+fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired
+Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandoned
+her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropical flowers
+and the infinite starry spaces overhead, feeling that if she
+opened her eyes it would be to find herself dancing with a ghost
+in a land created by her own fancy.
+
+"This is what I should call an exclusive private dance," he
+whispered.
+
+"I feel quite mad--but delightfully mad!"
+
+"We're enchanted.  The shades of unnumbered generations of
+cannibals are watching us from high up on the side of the cliff
+there."
+
+"And I'll bet the cannibal women are saying that we dance too
+close, and that it was immodest of me to come without my
+nose-ring."
+
+They both laughed softly--and then their laughter died as over
+across the lake they heard the trombones stop in the middle of a
+bar, and the saxaphones give a startled moan and fade out.
+
+"What's the matter?" called Carlyle.
+
+After a moment's silence they made out the dark figure of a man
+rounding the silver lake at a run. As he came closer they saw it
+was Babe in a state of unusual excitement. He drew up before them
+and gasped out his news in a breath.
+
+"Ship stan'in' off sho' 'bout half a mile suh. Mose, he uz on
+watch, he say look's if she's done ancho'd."
+
+"A ship--what kind of a ship?" demanded Carlyle
+anxiously.
+
+Dismay was in his voice, and Ardita's heart gave a sudden wrench
+as she saw his whole face suddenly droop.
+
+"He say he don't know, suh."
+
+"Are they landing a boat?"
+
+"No, suh."
+
+"We'll go up," said Carlyle.
+
+They ascended the hill in silence, Ardita's hand still resting in
+Carlyle's as it had when they finished dancing. She felt it
+clinch nervously from time to time as though he were unaware of
+the contact, but though he hurt her she made no attempt to remove
+it. It seemed an hour's climb before they reached the top and
+crept cautiously across the silhouetted plateau to the edge of
+the cliff. After one short look Carlyle involuntarily gave a
+little cry. It was a revenue boat with six-inch guns mounted fore
+and aft.
+
+"They know!" he said with a short intake of breath. "They know!
+They picked up the trail somewhere."
+
+"Are you sure they know about the channel? They may be only
+standing by to take a look at the island in the morning. From
+where they are they couldn't see the opening in the cliff."
+
+"They could with field-glasses," he said hopelessly. He looked at
+his wrist-watch. "It's nearly two now. They won't do anything
+until dawn, that's certain. Of course there's always the faint
+possibility that they're waiting for some other ship to join; or
+for a coaler."
+
+"I suppose we may as well stay right here."
+
+The hour passed and they lay there side by side, very silently,
+their chins in their hands like dreaming children. In back of
+them squatted the negroes, patient, resigned, acquiescent,
+announcing now and then with sonorous snores that not even the
+presence of danger could subdue their unconquerable African
+craving for sleep.
+
+Just before five o'clock Babe approached Carlyle. There were half
+a dozen rifles aboard the Narcissus he said. Had it been decided
+to offer no resistance?
+
+A pretty good fight might be made, he thought, if they worked out
+some plan.
+
+Carlyle laughed and shook his head.
+
+"That isn't a Spic army out there, Babe. That's a revenue boat.
+It'd be like a bow and arrow trying to fight a machine-gun. If
+you want to bury those bags somewhere and take a chance on
+recovering them later, go on and do it. But it won't work--they'd
+dig this island over from one end to the other. It's a lost
+battle all round, Babe."
+
+Babe inclined his head silently and turned away, and Carlyle's
+voice was husky as he turned to Ardita.
+
+"There's the best friend I ever had. He'd die for me, and be
+proud to, if I'd let him."
+
+"You've given up?"
+
+"I've no choice. Of course there's always one way out--the sure
+way--but that can wait. I wouldn't miss my trial for
+anything--it'll be an interesting experiment in notoriety.  'Miss
+Farnam testifies that the pirate's attitude to her was at all
+times that of a gentleman.'"
+
+"Don't!" she said. "I'm awfully sorry."
+
+When the color faded from the sky and lustreless blue changed to
+leaden gray a commotion was visible on the ship's deck, and they
+made out a group of officers clad in white duck, gathered near
+the rail. They had field-glasses in their hands and were
+attentively examining the islet.
+
+"It's all up," said Carlyle grimly.
+
+"Damn," whispered Ardita. She felt tears gathering in her eyes
+"We'll go back to the yacht," he said. "I prefer that to being
+hunted out up here like a 'possum."
+
+Leaving the plateau they descended the hill, and reaching the
+lake were rowed out to the yacht by the silent negroes. Then,
+pale and weary, they sank into the settees and waited.
+
+Half an hour later in the dim gray light the nose of the revenue
+boat appeared in the channel and stopped, evidently fearing that
+the bay might be too shallow. From the peaceful look of the
+yacht, the man and the girl in the settees, and the negroes
+lounging curiously against the rail, they evidently judged that
+there would be no resistance, for two boats were lowered casually
+over the side, one containing an officer and six bluejackets,
+and the other, four rowers and in the stern two gray-haired men
+in yachting flannels. Ardita and Carlyle stood up, and half
+unconsciously started toward each other.
+
+Then he paused and putting his hand suddenly into his pocket he
+pulled out a round, glittering object and held it out to her.
+
+"What is it?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+"I'm not positive, but I think from the Russian inscription
+inside that it's your promised bracelet."
+
+"Where--where on earth---"
+
+"It came out of one of those bags. You see, Curtis Carlyle and
+his Six Black Buddies, in the middle of their performance in the
+tea-room of the hotel at Palm Beach, suddenly changed their
+instruments for automatics and held up the crowd. I took this
+bracelet from a pretty, overrouged woman with red hair."
+
+Ardita frowned and then smiled.
+
+"So that's what you did! You HAVE got nerve!"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"A well-known bourgeois quality," he said.
+
+And then dawn slanted dynamically across the deck and flung the
+shadows reeling into gray corners. The dew rose and turned to
+golden mist, thin as a dream, enveloping them until they seemed
+gossamer relics of the late night, infinitely transient and
+already fading. For a moment sea and sky were breathless, and
+dawn held a pink hand over the young mouth of life--then from out
+in the lake came the complaint of a rowboat and the swish of
+oars.
+
+Suddenly against the golden furnace low in the east their two
+graceful figures melted into one, and he was kissing her spoiled
+young mouth.
+
+"It's a sort of glory," he murmured after a second.
+
+She smiled up at him.
+
+"Happy, are you?"
+
+Her sigh was a benediction--an ecstatic surety that she was youth
+and beauty now as much as she would ever know. For another
+instant life was radiant and time a phantom and their strength
+eternal--then there was a bumping, scraping sound as the rowboat
+scraped alongside.
+
+Up the ladder scrambled the two gray-haired men, the officer and
+two of the sailors with their hands on their revolvers. Mr.
+Farnam folded his arms and stood looking at his niece.
+
+"So," he said nodding his head slowly.
+
+With a sigh her arms unwound from Carlyle's neck, and her eyes,
+transfigured and far away, fell upon the boarding party. Her
+uncle saw her upper lip slowly swell into that arrogant pout he
+knew so well.
+
+"So," he repeated savagely. "So this is your idea of--of romance.
+A runaway affair, with a high-seas pirate."
+
+Ardita glanced at him carelessly.
+
+"What an old fool you are!" she said quietly.
+
+"Is that the best you can say for yourself?"
+
+"No," she said as if considering. "No, there's something else.
+There's that well-known phrase with which I have ended most of
+our conversations for the past few years--'Shut up!'"
+
+And with that she turned, included the two old men, the officer,
+and the two sailors in a curt glance of contempt, and walked
+proudly down the companionway.
+
+But had she waited an instant longer she would have heard a sound
+from her uncle quite unfamiliar in most of their interviews. He
+gave vent to a whole-hearted amused chuckle, in which the second
+old man joined.
+
+The latter turned briskly to Carlyle, who had been regarding this
+scene with an air of cryptic amusement.
+
+"Well Toby," he said genially, "you incurable, hare-brained
+romantic chaser of rainbows, did you find that she was the person
+you wanted?"
+
+Carlyle smiled confidently.
+
+"Why--naturally," he said "I've been perfectly sure ever since I
+first heard tell of her wild career. That'd why I had Babe send
+up the rocket last night."
+
+"I'm glad you did," said Colonel Moreland gravely. "We've been
+keeping pretty close to you in case you should have trouble with
+those six strange niggers. And we hoped we'd find you two in some
+such compromising position," he sighed. "Well, set a crank to
+catch a crank!"
+
+"Your father and I sat up all night hoping for the best--or
+perhaps it's the worst. Lord knows you're welcome to her, my boy.
+She's run me crazy. Did you give her the Russian bracelet my
+detective got from that Mimi woman?"
+
+Carlyle nodded.
+
+"Sh!" he said. "She's coming on deck."
+
+Ardita appeared at the head of the companionway and gave a quick
+involuntary glance at Carlyle's wrists. A puzzled look passed
+across her face. Back aft the negroes had begun to sing, and the
+cool lake, fresh with dawn, echoed serenely to their low voices.
+
+"Ardita," said Carlyle unsteadily.
+
+She swayed a step toward him.
+
+"Ardita," he repeated breathlessly, "I've got to tell you
+the--the truth. It was all a plant, Ardita. My name isn't
+Carlyle. It's Moreland, Toby Moreland. The story was invented,
+Ardita, invented out of thin Florida air."
+
+She stared at him, bewildered, amazement, disbelief, and anger
+flowing in quick waves across her face. The three men held their
+breaths. Moreland, Senior, took a step toward her; Mr. Farnam's
+mouth dropped a little open as he waited, panic-stricken, for the
+expected crash.
+
+But it did not come. Ardita's face became suddenly radiant, and
+with a little laugh she went swiftly to young Moreland and looked
+up at him without a trace of wrath in her gray eyes.
+
+"Will you swear," she said quietly "That it was entirely a
+product of your own brain?"
+
+"I swear," said young Moreland eagerly.
+
+She drew his head down and kissed him gently.
+
+"What an imagination!" she said softly and almost enviously. "I
+want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the
+rest of my life."
+
+The negroes' voices floated drowsily back, mingled in an air that
+she had heard them singing before.
+
+    "Time is a thief;
+     Gladness and grief
+     Cling to the leaf
+         As it yellows---"
+
+"What was in the bags?" she asked softly.
+
+"Florida mud," he answered. "That was one of the two true things
+I told you."
+
+"Perhaps I can guess the other one," she said; and reaching up on
+her tiptoes she kissed him softly in the illustration.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Ice Palace
+
+
+
+
+The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art
+jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified
+the rigor of the bath of light. The Butterworth and Larkin houses
+flanking were entrenched behind great stodgy trees; only the
+Happer house took the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty
+road-street with a tolerant kindly patience. This was the city of
+Tarleton in southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.
+
+Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her
+nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched
+Clark Darrow's ancient Ford turn the corner. The car was
+hot--being partly metallic it retained all the heat it absorbed
+or evolved--and Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel
+wore a pained, strained expression as though he considered
+himself a spare part, and rather likely to break. He laboriously
+crossed two dust ruts, the wheels squeaking indignantly at the
+encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the
+steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self and car
+approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving
+sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the
+air was rent by a startling whistle.
+
+Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily.  She started to yawn, but
+finding this quite impossible unless she raised her chin from the
+window-sill, changed her mind and continued silently to regard
+the car, whose owner sat brilliantly if perfunctorily at
+attention as he waited for an answer to his signal. After a
+moment the whistle once more split the dusty air.
+
+"Good mawnin'."
+
+With difficulty Clark twisted his tall body round and bent a
+distorted glance on the window.
+
+"Tain't mawnin', Sally Carrol."
+
+"Isn't it, sure enough?"
+
+"What you doin'?"
+
+"Eatin' 'n apple."
+
+"Come on go swimmin'--want to?"
+
+"Reckon so."
+
+"How 'bout hurryin' up?"
+
+"Sure enough."
+
+Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with profound
+inertia from the floor where she had been occupied in
+alternately destroyed parts of a green apple and painting paper
+dolls for her younger sister. She approached a mirror, regarded
+her expression with a pleased and pleasant languor, dabbed two
+spots of rouge on her lips and a grain of powder on her nose, and
+covered her bobbed corn-colored hair with a rose-littered
+sunbonnet. Then she kicked over the painting water, said, "Oh,
+damn!"--but let it lay--and left the room.
+
+"How you, Clark?" she inquired a minute later as she slipped
+nimbly over the side of the car.
+
+"Mighty fine, Sally Carrol."
+
+"Where we go swimmin'?"
+
+"Out to Walley's Pool. Told Marylyn we'd call by an' get her an'
+Joe Ewing."
+
+Clark was dark and lean, and when on foot was rather inclined to
+stoop. His eyes were ominous and his expression somewhat petulant
+except when startlingly illuminated by one of his frequent
+smiles. Clark had "a income"--just enough to keep himself in ease
+and his car in gasolene--and he had spent the two years since he
+graduated from Georgia Tech in dozing round the lazy streets of
+his home town, discussing how he could best invest his capital
+for an immediate fortune.
+
+Hanging round he found not at all difficult; a crowd of little
+girls had grown up beautifully, the amazing Sally Carrol foremost
+among them; and they enjoyed being swum with and danced with and
+made love to in the flower-filled summery evenings--and they all
+liked Clark immensely. When feminine company palled there were
+half a dozen other youths who were always just about to do
+something, and meanwhile were quite willing to join him in a few
+holes of golf, or a game of billiards, or the consumption of a
+quart of "hard yella licker." Every once in a while one of these
+contemporaries made a farewell round of calls before going up to
+New York or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh to go into business, but
+mostly they just stayed round in this languid paradise of dreamy
+skies and firefly evenings and noisy nigger street fairs--and
+especially of gracious, soft-voiced girls, who were brought up on
+memories instead of money.
+
+The Ford having been excited into a sort of restless resentful
+life Clark and Sally Carrol rolled and rattled down Valley Avenue
+into Jefferson Street, where the dust road became a pavement;
+along opiate Millicent Place, where there were half a dozen
+prosperous, substantial mansions; and on into the down-town
+section.  Driving was perilous here, for it was shopping time;
+the population idled casually across the streets and a drove of
+low-moaning oxen were being urged along in front of a placid
+street-car; even the shops seemed only yawning their doors and
+blinking their windows in the sunshine before retiring into a
+state of utter and finite coma.
+
+"Sally Carrol," said Clark suddenly, "it a fact that you're
+engaged?"
+
+She looked at him quickly.
+
+"Where'd you hear that?"
+
+"Sure enough, you engaged?"
+
+"'At's a nice question!"
+
+"Girl told me you were engaged to a Yankee you met up in
+Asheville last summer."
+
+Sally Carrol sighed.
+
+"Never saw such an old town for rumors."
+
+"Don't marry a Yankee, Sally Carrol.  We need you round here."
+
+Sally Carrol was silent a moment.
+
+"Clark," she demanded suddenly, "who on earth shall I marry?"
+
+"I offer my services."
+
+"Honey, you couldn't support a wife," she answered cheerfully.
+"Anyway, I know you too well to fall in love with you."
+
+"'At doesn't mean you ought to marry a Yankee," he persisted.
+
+"S'pose I love him?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You couldn't. He'd be a lot different from us, every way."
+
+He broke off as he halted the car in front of a rambling,
+dilapidated house. Marylyn Wade and Joe Ewing appeared in the
+doorway.
+
+"'Lo Sally Carrol."
+
+"Hi!"
+
+"How you-all?"
+
+"Sally Carrol," demanded Marylyn as they started of again, "you
+engaged?"
+
+"Lawdy, where'd all this start? Can't I look at a man 'thout
+everybody in town engagin' me to him?"
+
+Clark stared straight in front of him at a bolt on the clattering
+wind-shield.
+
+"Sally Carrol," he said with a curious intensity, "don't you
+'like us?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Us down here?"
+
+"Why, Clark, you know I do. I adore all you boys."
+
+"Then why you gettin' engaged to a Yankee?"
+
+"Clark, I don't know. I'm not sure what I'll do, but--well, I
+want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want
+to live where things happen on a big scale."
+
+"What you mean?"
+
+"Oh, Clark, I love you, and I love Joe here and Ben Arrot, and
+you-all, but you'll--you'll---"
+
+"We'll all be failures?"
+
+"Yes. I don't mean only money failures, but just sort of--of
+ineffectual and sad, and--oh, how can I tell you?"
+
+"You mean because we stay here in Tarleton?"
+
+"Yes, Clark; and because you like it and never want to change
+things or think or go ahead."
+
+He nodded and she reached over and pressed his hand.
+
+"Clark," she said softly, "I wouldn't change you for the world.
+You're sweet the way you are. The things that'll make you fail
+I'll love always--the living in the past, the lazy days and
+nights you have, and all your carelessness and generosity."
+
+"But you're goin' away?"
+
+"Yes--because I couldn't ever marry you. You've a place in my
+heart no one else ever could have, but tied down here I'd get
+restless. I'd feel I was--wastin' myself. There's two sides to
+me, you see. There's the sleepy old side you love an' there's a
+sort of energy--the feeling that makes me do wild things. That's
+the part of me that may be useful somewhere, that'll last when
+I'm not beautiful any more."
+
+She broke of with characteristic suddenness and sighed, "Oh,
+sweet cooky!" as her mood changed.
+
+Half closing her eyes and tipping back her head till it rested on
+the seat-back she let the savory breeze fan her eyes and ripple
+the fluffy curls of her bobbed hair. They were in the country
+now, hurrying between tangled growths of bright-green coppice and
+grass and tall trees that sent sprays of foliage to hang a cool
+welcome over the road. Here and there they passed a battered
+negro cabin, its oldest white-haired inhabitant smoking a corncob
+pipe beside the door, and half a dozen scantily clothed
+pickaninnies parading tattered dolls on the wild-grown grass in
+front. Farther out were lazy cotton-fields where even the workers
+seemed intangible shadows lent by the sun to the earth, not for
+toil, but to while away some age-old tradition in the golden
+September fields. And round the drowsy picturesqueness, over the
+trees and shacks and muddy rivers, flowed the heat, never
+hostile, only comforting, like a great warm nourishing bosom for
+the infant earth.
+
+"Sally Carrol, we're here!"
+
+"Poor chile's soun' asleep."
+
+"Honey, you dead at last outa sheer laziness?"
+
+"Water, Sally Carrol! Cool water waitin' for you!"
+
+Her eyes opened sleepily.
+
+"Hi!" she murmured, smiling.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In November Harry Bellamy, tall, broad, and brisk, came down from
+his Northern city to spend four days. His intention was to
+settle a matter that had been hanging fire since he and Sally
+Carrol had met in Asheville, North Carolina, in midsummer. The
+settlement took only a quiet afternoon and an evening in front of
+a glowing open fire, for Harry Bellamy had everything she
+wanted; and, beside, she loved him--loved him with that side of
+her she kept especially for loving. Sally Carrol had several
+rather clearly defined sides.
+
+On his last afternoon they walked, and she found their steps
+tending half-unconsciously toward one of her favorite haunts, the
+cemetery. When it came in sight, gray-white and golden-green
+under the cheerful late sun, she paused, irresolute, by the iron
+gate.
+
+"Are you mournful by nature, Harry?" she asked with a faint
+smile.
+
+"Mournful? Not I."
+
+"Then let's go in here. It depresses some folks, but I like it."
+
+They passed through the gateway and followed a path that led
+through a wavy valley of graves--dusty-gray and mouldy for the
+fifties; quaintly carved with flowers and jars for the seventies;
+ornate and hideous for the nineties, with fat marble cherubs
+lying in sodden sleep on stone pillows, and great impossible
+growths of nameless granite flowers.
+
+Occasionally they saw a kneeling figure with tributary flowers,
+but over most of the graves lay silence and withered leaves with
+only the fragrance that their own shadowy memories could waken in
+living minds.
+
+They reached the top of a hill where they were fronted by a tall,
+round head-stone, freckled with dark spots of damp and half
+grown over with vines.
+
+"Margery Lee," she read; "1844-1873.  Wasn't she nice?  She died
+when she was twenty-nine.  Dear Margery Lee," she added softly.
+"Can't you see her, Harry?"
+
+"Yes, Sally Carrol."
+
+He felt a little hand insert itself into his.
+
+"She was dark, I think; and she always wore her hair with a
+ribbon in it, and gorgeous hoop-skirts of Alice blue and old
+rose."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, she was sweet, Harry!  And she was the sort of girl born to
+stand on a wide, pillared porch and welcome folks in.  I think
+perhaps a lot of men went away to war meanin' to come back to
+her; but maybe none of 'em ever did."
+
+He stooped down close to the stone, hunting for any record of
+marriage.
+
+"There's nothing here to show."
+
+"Of course not.  How could there be anything there better than
+just 'Margery Lee,' and that eloquent date?"
+
+She drew close to him and an unexpected lump came into his throat
+as her yellow hair brushed his cheek.
+
+"You see how she was, don't you Harry?"
+
+"I see," he agreed gently. "I see through your precious eyes.
+You're beautiful now, so I know she must have been."
+
+Silent and close they stood, and he could feel her shoulders
+trembling a little. An ambling breeze swept up the hill and
+stirred the brim of her floppidy hat.
+
+"Let's go down there!"
+
+She was pointing to a flat stretch on the other side of the hill
+where along the green turf were a thousand grayish-white crosses
+stretching in endless, ordered rows like the stacked arms of a
+battalion.
+
+"Those are the Confederate dead," said Sally Carrol simply.
+
+They walked along and read the inscriptions, always only a name
+and a date, sometimes quite indecipherable.
+
+"The last row is the saddest--see, 'way over there. Every cross
+has just a date on it and the word 'Unknown.'"
+
+She looked at him and her eyes brimmed with tears.
+
+"I can't tell you how real it is to me, darling--if you don't
+know."
+
+"How you feel about it is beautiful to me."
+
+"No, no, it's not me, it's them--that old time that I've tried to
+have live in me. These were just men, unimportant evidently or
+they wouldn't have been 'unknown'; but they died for the most
+beautiful thing in the world--the dead South. You see," she
+continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears,
+"people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've
+always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was
+all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've
+tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse
+oblige--there's just the last remnants of it, you know, like the
+roses of an old garden dying all round us--streaks of strange
+courtliness and chivalry in some of these boys an' stories I used
+to hear from a Confederate soldier who lived next door, and a
+few old darkies. Oh, Harry, there was something, there was
+something! I couldn't ever make you understand but it was there."
+
+"I understand," he assured her again quietly.
+
+Sally Carol smiled and dried her eyes on the tip of a
+handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket.
+
+"You don't feel depressed, do you, lover?  Even when I cry I'm
+happy here, and I get a sort of strength from it."
+
+Hand in hand they turned and walked slowly away. Finding soft
+grass she drew him down to a seat beside her with their backs
+against the remnants of a low broken wall.
+
+"Wish those three old women would clear out," he complained. "I
+want to kiss you, Sally Carrol."
+
+"Me, too."
+
+They waited impatiently for the three bent figures to move off,
+and then she kissed him until the sky seemed to fade out and all
+her smiles and tears to vanish in an ecstasy of eternal seconds.
+
+Afterward they walked slowly back together, while on the corners
+twilight played at somnolent black-and-white checkers with the
+end of day.
+
+"You'll be up about mid-January," he said, "and you've got to
+stay a month at least. It'll be slick. There's a winter carnival
+on, and if you've never really seen snow it'll be like fairy-land
+to you. There'll be skating and skiing and tobogganing and
+sleigh-riding, and all sorts of torchlight parades on snow-shoes.
+They haven't had one for years, so they're gong to make it a
+knock-out."
+
+"Will I be cold, Harry?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"You certainly won't. You may freeze your nose, but you won't be
+shivery cold. It's hard and dry, you know."
+
+"I guess I'm a summer child. I don't like any cold I've ever
+seen."
+
+She broke off and they were both silent for a minute.
+
+"Sally Carol," he said very slowly, "what do you say to--March?"
+
+"I say I love you."
+
+"March?"
+
+"March, Harry."
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+All night in the Pullman it was very cold. She rang for the
+porter to ask for another blanket, and when he couldn't give her
+one she tried vainly, by squeezing down into the bottom of her
+berth and doubling back the bedclothes, to snatch a few hours'
+sleep. She wanted to look her best in the morning.
+
+She rose at six and sliding uncomfortably into her clothes
+stumbled up to the diner for a cup of coffee. The snow had
+filtered into the vestibules and covered the door with a slippery
+coating. It was intriguing this cold, it crept in everywhere.
+Her breath was quite visible and she blew into the air with a
+naïve enjoyment. Seated in the diner she stared out the window at
+white hills and valleys and scattered pines whose every branch
+was a green platter for a cold feast of snow. Sometimes a
+solitary farmhouse would fly by, ugly and bleak and lone on the
+white waste; and with each one she had an instant of chill
+compassion for the souls shut in there waiting for spring.
+
+As she left the diner and swayed back into the Pullman she
+experienced a surging rush of energy and wondered if she was
+feeling the bracing air of which Harry had spoken. This was the
+North, the North--her land now!
+
+     "Then blow, ye winds, heighho!
+      A-roving I will go,"
+
+she chanted exultantly to herself.
+
+"What's 'at?" inquired the porter politely.
+
+"I said: 'Brush me off.'"
+
+The long wires of the telegraph poles doubled, two tracks ran up
+beside the train--three--four; came a succession of white-roofed
+houses, a glimpse of a trolley-car with frosted windows,
+streets--more streets--the city.
+
+She stood for a dazed moment in the frosty station before she saw
+three fur-bundled figures descending upon her.
+
+"There she is!"
+
+"Oh, Sally Carrol!"
+
+Sally Carrol dropped her bag.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+A faintly familiar icy-cold face kissed her, and then she was in
+a group of faces all apparently emitting great clouds of heavy
+smoke; she was shaking hands. There were Gordon, a short, eager
+man of thirty who looked like an amateur knocked-about model for
+Harry, and his wife, Myra, a listless lady with flaxen hair under
+a fur automobile cap. Almost immediately Sally Carrol thought of
+her as vaguely Scandinavian. A cheerful chauffeur adopted her
+bag, and amid ricochets of half-phrases, exclamations and
+perfunctory listless "my dears" from Myra, they swept each other
+from the station.
+
+Then they were in a sedan bound through a crooked succession of
+snowy streets where dozens of little boys were hitching sleds
+behind grocery wagons and automobiles.
+
+"Oh," cried Sally Carrol, "I want to do that! Can we Harry?"
+
+"That's for kids. But we might---"
+
+"It looks like such a circus!" she said regretfully.
+
+Home was a rambling frame house set on a white lap of snow, and
+there she met a big, gray-haired man of whom she approved, and a
+lady who was like an egg, and who kissed her--these were Harry's
+parents. There was a breathless indescribable hour crammed full
+of self-sentences, hot water, bacon and eggs and confusion; and
+after that she was alone with Harry in the library, asking him if
+she dared smoke.
+
+It was a large room with a Madonna over the fireplace and rows
+upon rows of books in covers of light gold and dark gold and
+shiny red. All the chairs had little lace squares where one's head
+should rest, the couch was just comfortable, the books looked as
+if they had been read--some--and Sally Carrol had an
+instantaneous vision of the battered old library at home, with
+her father's huge medical books, and the oil-paintings of her
+three great-uncles, and the old couch that had been mended up for
+forty-five years and was still luxurious to dream in.  This room
+struck her as being neither attractive nor particularly
+otherwise. It was simply a room with a lot of fairly expensive
+things in it that all looked about fifteen years old.
+
+"What do you think of it up here?" demanded Harry eagerly. "Does
+it surprise you? Is it what you expected I mean?"
+
+"You are, Harry," she said quietly, and reached out her arms to
+him.
+
+But after a brief kiss he seemed to extort enthusiasm from her.
+
+"The town, I mean. Do you like it? Can you feel the pep in the
+air?"
+
+"Oh, Harry," she laughed, "you'll have to give me time. You can't
+just fling questions at me."
+
+She puffed at her cigarette with a sigh of contentment.
+
+"One thing I want to ask you," he began rather apologetically;
+"you Southerners put quite an emphasis on family, and all
+that--not that it isn't quite all right, but you'll find it a
+little different here. I mean--you'll notice a lot of things
+that'll seem to you sort of vulgar display at first, Sally
+Carrol; but just remember that this is a three-generation town.
+Everybody has a father, and about half of us have grandfathers.
+Back of that we don't go."
+
+"Of course," she murmured.
+
+"Our grandfathers, you see, founded the place, and a lot of them
+had to take some pretty queer jobs while they were doing the
+founding. For instance there's one woman who at present is about
+the social model for the town; well, her father was the first
+public ash man--things like that."
+
+"Why," said Sally Carol, puzzled, "did you s'pose I was goin' to
+make remarks about people?"
+
+"Not at all," interrupted Harry, "and I'm not apologizing for any
+one either. It's just that--well, a Southern girl came up here
+last summer and said some unfortunate things, and--oh, I just
+thought I'd tell you."
+
+Sally Carrol felt suddenly indignant--as though she had been
+unjustly spanked--but Harry evidently considered the subject
+closed, for he went on with a great surge of enthusiasm.
+
+"It's carnival time, you know. First in ten years. And there's an
+ice palace they're building new that's the first they've had
+since eighty-five. Built out of blocks of the clearest ice they
+could find--on a tremendous scale."
+
+She rose and walking to the window pushed aside the heavy Turkish
+portières and looked out.
+
+"Oh!" she cried suddenly. "There's two little boys makin' a snow
+man! Harry, do you reckon I can go out an' help 'em?"
+
+"You dream! Come here and kiss me."
+
+She left the window rather reluctantly.
+
+"I don't guess this is a very kissable climate, is it? I mean, it
+makes you so you don't want to sit round, doesn't it?"
+
+"We're not going to. I've got a vacation for the first week
+you're here, and there's a dinner-dance to-night."
+
+"Oh, Harry," she confessed, subsiding in a heap, half in his lap,
+half in the pillows, "I sure do feel confused. I haven't got an
+idea whether I'll like it or not, an' I don't know what people
+expect, or anythin'. You'll have to tell me, honey."
+
+"I'll tell you," he said softly, "if you'll just tell me you're
+glad to be here."
+
+"Glad--just awful glad!" she whispered, insinuating herself into
+his arms in her own peculiar way.  "Where you are is home for me,
+Harry."
+
+And as she said this she had the feeling for almost the first
+time in her life that she was acting a part.
+
+That night, amid the gleaming candles of a dinner-party, where
+the men seemed to do most of the talking while the girls sat in a
+haughty and expensive aloofness, even Harry's presence on her
+left failed to make her feel at home.
+
+"They're a good-looking crowd, don't you think?" he demanded.
+"Just look round. There's Spud Hubbard, tackle at Princeton last
+year, and Junie Morton--he and the red-haired fellow next to him
+were both Yale hockey captains; Junie was in my class. Why, the
+best athletes in the world come from these States round here.
+This is a man's country, I tell you. Look at John J. Fishburn!"
+
+"Who's he?" asked Sally Carrol innocently.
+
+"Don't you know?"
+
+"I've heard the name."
+
+"Greatest wheat man in the Northwest, and one of the greatest
+financiers in the country."
+
+She turned suddenly to a voice on her right.
+
+"I guess they forget to introduce us. My name's Roger Patton."
+
+"My name is Sally Carrol Happer," she said graciously.
+
+"Yes, I know. Harry told me you were coming."
+
+"You a relative?"
+
+"No, I'm a professor."
+
+"Oh," she laughed.
+
+"At the university.  You're from the South, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes; Tarleton, Georgia."
+
+She liked him immediately--a reddish-brown mustache under watery
+blue eyes that had something in them that these other eyes
+lacked, some quality of appreciation. They exchanged stray
+sentences through dinner, and she made up her mind to see him
+again.
+
+After coffee she was introduced to numerous good-looking young
+men who danced with conscious precision and seemed to take it for
+granted that she wanted to talk about nothing except Harry.
+
+"Heavens," she thought, "They talk as if my being engaged made me
+older than they are--as if I'd tell their mothers on them!"
+
+In the South an engaged girl, even a young married woman,
+expected the same amount of half-affectionate badinage and
+flattery that would be accorded a débutante, but here all that
+seemed banned.  One young man after getting well started on the
+subject of Sally Carrol's eyes and, how they had allured him ever
+since she entered the room, went into a violent convulsion when
+he found she was visiting the Bellamys--was Harry's fiancée. He
+seemed to feel as though he had made some risqué and inexcusable
+blunder, became immediately formal and left her at the first
+opportunity.
+
+She was rather glad when Roger Patton cut in on her and suggested
+that they sit out a while.
+
+"Well," he inquired, blinking cheerily, "how's Carmen from the
+South?"
+
+"Mighty fine.  How's--how's Dangerous Dan McGrew? Sorry, but he's
+the only Northerner I know much about."
+
+He seemed to enjoy that.
+
+"Of course," he confessed, "as a professor of literature I'm not
+supposed to have read Dangerous Dan McGrew."
+
+"Are you a native?"
+
+"No, I'm a Philadelphian. Imported from Harvard to teach French.
+But I've been here ten years."
+
+"Nine years, three hundred an' sixty-four days longer than me."
+
+"Like it here?"
+
+"Uh-huh.  Sure do!"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Well, why not? Don't I look as if I were havin' a good time?"
+
+"I saw you look out the window a minute ago--and shiver."
+
+"Just my imagination," laughed Sally Carroll "I'm used to havin'
+everythin' quiet outside an' sometimes I look out an' see a
+flurry of snow an' it's just as if somethin' dead was movin'."
+
+He nodded appreciatively.
+
+"Ever been North before?"
+
+"Spent two Julys in Asheville, North Carolina."
+
+"Nice-looking crowd aren't they?" suggested Patton, indicating
+the swirling floor.
+
+Sally Carrol started. This had been Harry's remark.
+
+"Sure are! They're--canine."
+
+"What?"
+
+She flushed.
+
+"I'm sorry; that sounded worse than I meant it. You see I always
+think of people as feline or canine, irrespective of sex."
+
+"Which are you?"
+
+"I'm feline. So are you. So are most Southern men an' most of
+these girls here."
+
+"What's Harry?"
+
+"Harry's canine distinctly. All the men I've to-night seem to be
+canine."
+
+"What does canine imply? A certain conscious masculinity as
+opposed to subtlety?"
+
+"Reckon so. I never analyzed it--only I just look at people an'
+say 'canine' or 'feline' right off. It's right absurd I guess."
+
+"Not at all. I'm interested. I used to have a theory about these
+people. I think they're freezing up."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, they're growing' like Swedes--Ibsenesque, you know. Very
+gradually getting gloomy and melancholy. It's these long winters.
+Ever read Ibsen?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, you find in his characters a certain brooding rigidity.
+They're righteous, narrow, and cheerless, without infinite
+possibilities for great sorrow or joy."
+
+"Without smiles or tears?"
+
+"Exactly.  That's my theory.  You see there are thousands of
+Swedes up here. They come, I imagine, because the climate is very
+much like their own, and there's been a gradual mingling.
+There're probably not half a dozen here to-night, but--we've had
+four Swedish governors. Am I boring you?"
+
+"I'm mighty interested."
+
+"Your future sister-in-law is half Swedish. Personally I like
+her, but my theory is that Swedes react rather badly on us as a
+whole. Scandinavians, you know, have the largest suicide rate in
+the world."
+
+"Why do you live here if it's so depressing?"
+
+"Oh, it doesn't get me. I'm pretty well cloistered, and I suppose
+books mean more than people to me anyway."
+
+"But writers all speak about the South being tragic. You
+know--Spanish señoritas, black hair and daggers an' haunting
+music."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No, the Northern races are the tragic races--they don't indulge
+in the cheering luxury of tears."
+
+Sally Carrol thought of her graveyard. She supposed that that was
+vaguely what she had meant when she said it didn't depress her.
+
+"The Italians are about the gayest people in the world--but it's
+a dull subject," he broke off.  "Anyway, I want to tell you
+you're marrying a pretty fine man."
+
+Sally Carrol was moved by an impulse of confidence.
+
+"I know. I'm the sort of person who wants to be taken care of
+after a certain point, and I feel sure I will be."
+
+"Shall we dance? You know," he continued as they rose, "it's
+encouraging to find a girl who knows what she's marrying for.
+Nine-tenths of them think of it as a sort of walking into a
+moving-picture sunset."
+
+She laughed and liked him immensely.
+
+Two hours later on the way home she nestled near Harry in the
+back seat.
+
+"Oh, Harry," she whispered "it's so co-old!"
+
+"But it's warm in here, daring girl."
+
+"But outside it's cold; and oh, that howling wind!"
+
+She buried her face deep in his fur coat and trembled
+involuntarily as his cold lips kissed the tip of her ear.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The first week of her visit passed in a whirl. She had her
+promised toboggan-ride at the back of an automobile through a
+chill January twilight. Swathed in furs she put in a morning
+tobogganing on the country-club hill; even tried skiing, to sail
+through the air for a glorious moment and then land in a tangled
+laughing bundle on a soft snow-drift. She liked all the winter
+sports, except an afternoon spent snow-shoeing over a glaring
+plain under pale yellow sunshine, but she soon realized that
+these things were for children--that she was being humored and
+that the enjoyment round her was only a reflection of her own.
+
+At first the Bellamy family puzzled her. The men were reliable
+and she liked them; to Mr. Bellamy especially, with his iron-gray
+hair and energetic dignity, she took an immediate fancy, once
+she found that he was born in Kentucky; this made of him a link
+between the old life and the new. But toward the women she felt a
+definite hostility. Myra, her future sister-in-law, seemed the
+essence of spiritless conversationality. Her conversation was so
+utterly devoid of personality that Sally Carrol, who came from a
+country where a certain amount of charm and assurance could be
+taken for granted in the women, was inclined to despise her.
+
+"If those women aren't beautiful," she thought, "they're nothing.
+They just fade out when you look at them. They're glorified
+domestics. Men are the centre of every mixed group."
+
+Lastly there was Mrs. Bellamy, whom Sally Carrol detested. The
+first day's impression of an egg had been confirmed--an egg with
+a cracked, veiny voice and such an ungracious dumpiness of
+carriage that Sally Carrol felt that if she once fell she would
+surely scramble. In addition, Mrs. Bellamy seemed to typify the
+town in being innately hostile to strangers. She called Sally
+Carrol "Sally," and could not be persuaded that the double name
+was anything more than a tedious ridiculous nickname. To Sally
+Carrol this shortening of her name was presenting her to the
+public half clothed. She loved "Sally Carrol"; she loathed
+"Sally."  She knew also that Harry's mother disapproved of her
+bobbed hair; and she had never dared smoke down-stairs after that
+first day when Mrs. Bellamy had come into the library sniffing
+violently.
+
+Of all the men she met she preferred Roger Patton, who was a
+frequent visitor at the house.  He never again alluded to the
+Ibsenesque tendency of the populace, but when he came in one day
+and found her curled upon the sofa bent over "Peer Gynt" he
+laughed and told her to forget what he'd said--that it was all
+rot.
+
+They had been walking homeward between mounds of high-piled snow
+and under a sun which Sally Carrol scarcely recognized. They
+passed a little girl done up in gray wool until she resembled a
+small Teddy bear, and Sally Carrol could not resist a gasp of
+maternal appreciation.
+
+"Look! Harry!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That little girl--did you see her face?"
+
+"Yes, why?"
+
+"It was red as a little strawberry.  Oh, she was cute!"
+
+"Why, your own face is almost as red as that already! Everybody's
+healthy here.  We're out in the cold as soon as we're old enough
+to walk.  Wonderful climate!"
+
+She looked at him and had to agree.  He was mighty
+healthy-looking; so was his brother.  And she had noticed the new
+red in her own cheeks that very morning.
+
+Suddenly their glances were caught and held, and they stared for
+a moment at the street-corner ahead of them.  A man was standing
+there, his knees bent, his eyes gazing upward with a tense
+expression as though he were about to make a leap toward the
+chilly sky.  And then they both exploded into a shout of
+laughter, for coming closer they discovered it had been a
+ludicrous momentary illusion produced by the extreme bagginess of
+the man's trousers.
+
+"Reckon that's one on us," she laughed.
+
+"He must be Southerner, judging by those trousers," suggested
+Harry mischievously.
+
+"Why, Harry!"
+
+Her surprised look must have irritated him.
+
+"Those damn Southerners!"
+
+Sally Carrol's eyes flashed.
+
+"Don't call 'em that."
+
+"I'm sorry, dear," said Harry, malignantly apologetic, "but you
+know what I think of them.  They're sort of--sort of
+degenerates--not at all like the old Southerners.  They've lived
+so long down there with all the colored people that they've
+gotten lazy and shiftless."
+
+"Hush your mouth, Harry!" she cried angrily. "They're not! They
+may be lazy--anybody would be in that climate--but they're my
+best friends, an' I don't want to hear 'em criticised in any such
+sweepin' way. Some of 'em are the finest men in the world."
+
+"Oh, I know. They're all right when they come North to college,
+but of all the hangdog, ill-dressed, slovenly lot I ever saw, a
+bunch of small-town Southerners are the worst!"
+
+Sally Carrol was clinching her gloved hands and biting her lip
+furiously.
+
+"Why," continued Harry, "if there was one in my class at New
+Haven, and we all thought that at last we'd found the true type
+of Southern aristocrat, but it turned out that he wasn't an
+aristocrat at all--just the son of a Northern carpetbagger, who
+owned about all the cotton round Mobile."
+
+"A Southerner wouldn't talk the way you're talking now," she said
+evenly.
+
+"They haven't the energy!"
+
+"Or the somethin' else."
+
+"I'm sorry Sally Carrol, but I've heard you say yourself that
+you'd never marry---"
+
+"That's quite different. I told you I wouldn't want to tie my
+life to any of the boys that are round Tarleton now, but I never
+made any sweepin' generalities."
+
+They walked along in silence.
+
+"I probably spread it on a bit thick Sally Carrol. I'm sorry."
+
+She nodded but made no answer.  Five minutes later as they stood
+in the hallway she suddenly threw her arms round him.
+
+"Oh, Harry," she cried, her eyes brimming with tears; "let's get
+married next week. I'm afraid of having fusses like that. I'm
+afraid, Harry. It wouldn't be that way if we were married."
+
+But Harry, being in the wrong, was still irritated.
+
+"That'd be idiotic. We decided on March."
+
+The tears in Sally Carrol's eyes faded; her expression hardened
+slightly.
+
+"Very well--I suppose I shouldn't have said that."
+
+Harry melted.
+
+"Dear little nut!" he cried. "Come and kiss me and let's forget."
+That very night at the end of a vaudeville performance the
+orchestra played "Dixie" and Sally Carrol felt something stronger
+and more enduring than her tears and smiles of the day brim up
+inside her. She leaned forward gripping the arms of her chair
+until her face grew crimson.
+
+"Sort of get you dear?" whispered Harry.
+
+But she did not hear him. To the limited throb of the violins and
+the inspiring beat of the kettle-drums her own old ghosts were
+marching by and on into the darkness, and as fifes whistled and
+sighed in the low encore they seemed so nearly out of sight that
+she could have waved good-by.
+
+     "Away, Away,
+         Away down South in Dixie!
+      Away, away,
+         Away down South in Dixie!"
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+It was a particularly cold night. A sudden thaw had nearly
+cleared the streets the day before, but now they were traversed
+again with a powdery wraith of loose snow that travelled in wavy
+lines before the feet of the wind, and filled the lower air with
+a fine-particled mist. There was no sky--only a dark, ominous
+tent that draped in the tops of the streets and was in reality a
+vast approaching army of snowflakes--while over it all, chilling
+away the comfort from the brown-and-green glow of lighted
+windows and muffling the steady trot of the horse pulling their
+sleigh, interminably washed the north wind. It was a dismal town
+after all, she though, dismal.
+
+Sometimes at night it had seemed to her as though no one lived
+here--they had all gone long ago--leaving lighted houses to be
+covered in time by tombing heaps of sleet. Oh, if there should be
+snow on her grave! To be beneath great piles of it all winter
+long, where even her headstone would be a light shadow against
+light shadows. Her grave--a grave that should be flower-strewn
+and washed with sun and rain.
+
+She thought again of those isolated country houses that her train
+had passed, and of the life there the long winter through--the
+ceaseless glare through the windows, the crust forming on the
+soft drifts of snow, finally the slow cheerless melting and the
+harsh spring of which Roger Patton had told her. Her spring--to
+lose it forever--with its lilacs and the lazy sweetness it
+stirred in her heart. She was laying away that spring--afterward
+she would lay away that sweetness.
+
+With a gradual insistence the storm broke. Sally Carrol felt a
+film of flakes melt quickly on her eyelashes, and Harry reached
+over a furry arm and drew down her complicated flannel cap. Then
+the small flakes came in skirmish-line, and the horse bent his
+neck patiently as a transparency of white appeared momentarily on
+his coat.
+
+"Oh, he's cold, Harry," she said quickly.
+
+"Who? The horse? Oh, no, he isn't. He likes it!"
+
+After another ten minutes they turned a corner and came in sight
+of their destination. On a tall hill outlined in vivid glaring
+green against the wintry sky stood the ice palace. It was three
+stories in the air, with battlements and embrasures and narrow
+icicled windows, and the innumerable electric lights inside made
+a gorgeous transparency of the great central hall. Sally Carrol
+clutched Harry's hand under the fur robe.
+
+"It's beautiful!" he cried excitedly. "My golly, it's beautiful,
+isn't it! They haven't had one here since eighty-five!"
+
+Somehow the notion of there not having been one since eighty-five
+oppressed her. Ice was a ghost, and this mansion of it was
+surely peopled by those shades of the eighties, with pale faces
+and blurred snow-filled hair.
+
+"Come on, dear," said Harry.
+
+She followed him out of the sleigh and waited while he hitched
+the horse. A party of four--Gordon, Myra, Roger Patton, and
+another girl--drew up beside them with a mighty jingle of bells.
+There were quite a crowd already, bundled in fur or sheepskin,
+shouting and calling to each other as they moved through the
+snow, which was now so thick that people could scarcely be
+distinguished a few yards away.
+
+"It's a hundred and seventy feet tall," Harry was saying to a
+muffled figure beside him as they trudged toward the entrance;
+"covers six thousand square yards."
+
+She caught snatches of conversation: "One main hall"--"walls
+twenty to forty inches thick"--"and the ice cave has almost a
+mile of--"--"this Canuck who built it---"
+
+They found their way inside, and dazed by the magic of the great
+crystal walls Sally Carrol found herself repeating over and over
+two lines from "Kubla Khan":
+
+     "It was a miracle of rare device,
+      A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"
+
+In the great glittering cavern with the dark shut out she took a
+seat on a wooded bench and the evening's oppression lifted. Harry
+was right--it was beautiful; and her gaze travelled the smooth
+surface of the walls, the blocks for which had been selected for
+their purity and dearness to obtain this opalescent, translucent
+effect.
+
+"Look! Here we go--oh, boy!" cried Harry.
+
+A band in a far corner struck up "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All
+Here!" which echoed over to them in wild muddled acoustics, and
+then the lights suddenly went out; silence seemed to flow down
+the icy sides and sweep over them. Sally Carrol could still see
+her white breath in the darkness, and a dim row of pale faces
+over on the other side.
+
+The music eased to a sighing complaint, and from outside drifted
+in the full-throated remnant chant of the marching clubs. It grew
+louder like some pæan of a viking tribe traversing an ancient
+wild; it swelled--they were coming nearer; then a row of torches
+appeared, and another and another, and keeping time with their
+moccasined feet a long column of gray-mackinawed figures swept
+in, snow-shoes slung at their shoulders, torches soaring and
+flickering as their voice rose along the great walls.
+
+The gray column ended and another followed, the light streaming
+luridly this time over red toboggan caps and flaming crimson
+mackinaws, and as they entered they took up the refrain; then
+came a long platoon of blue and white, of green, of white, of
+brown and yellow.
+
+"Those white ones are the Wacouta Club," whispered Harry eagerly.
+"Those are the men you've met round at dances."
+
+The volume of the voices grew; the great cavern was a
+phantasmagoria of torches waving in great banks of fire, of
+colors and the rhythm of soft-leather steps. The leading column
+turned and halted, platoon deploys in front of platoon until the
+whole procession made a solid flag of flame, and then from
+thousands of voices burst a mighty shout that filled the air like
+a crash of thunder, and sent the torches wavering. It was
+magnificent, it was tremendous! To Sally Carol it was the North
+offering sacrifice on some mighty altar to the gray pagan God of
+Snow. As the shout died the band struck up again and there came
+more singing, and then long reverberating cheers by each club.
+She sat very quiet listening while the staccato cries rent the
+stillness; and then she started, for there was a volley of
+explosion, and great clouds of smoke went up here and there
+through the cavern--the flash-light photographers at work--and
+the council was over. With the band at their head the clubs
+formed in column once more, took up their chant, and began to
+march out.
+
+"Come on!" shouted Harry. "We want to see the labyrinths
+down-stairs before they turn the lights off!"
+
+They all rose and started toward the chute--Harry and Sally
+Carrol in the lead, her little mitten buried in his big fur
+gantlet. At the bottom of the chute was a long empty room of ice,
+with the ceiling so low that they had to stoop--and their hands
+were parted. Before she realized what he intended Harry had
+darted down one of the half-dozen glittering passages that
+opened into the room and was only a vague receding blot against
+the green shimmer.
+
+"Harry!" she called.
+
+"Come on!" he cried back.
+
+She looked round the empty chamber; the rest of the party had
+evidently decided to go home, were already outside somewhere in
+the blundering snow. She hesitated and then darted in after
+Harry.
+
+"Harry!" she shouted.
+
+She had reached a turning-point thirty feet down; she heard a
+faint muffled answer far to the left, and with a touch of panic
+fled toward it. She passed another turning, two more yawning
+alleys.
+
+"Harry!"
+
+No answer. She started to run straight forward, and then turned
+like lightning and sped back the way she had come, enveloped in a
+sudden icy terror.
+
+She reached a turn--was it here?--took the left and came to what
+should have been the outlet into the long, low room, but it was
+only another glittering passage with darkness at the end. She
+called again, but the walls gave back a flat, lifeless echo with
+no reverberations. Retracing her steps she turned another corner,
+this time following a wide passage. It was like the green lane
+between the parted water of the Red Sea, like a damp vault
+connecting empty tombs.
+
+She slipped a little now as she walked, for ice had formed on the
+bottom of her overshoes; she had to run her gloves along the
+half-slippery, half-sticky walls to keep her balance.
+
+"Harry!"
+
+Still no answer. The sound she made bounced mockingly down to the
+end of the passage.
+
+Then on an instant the lights went out, and she was in complete
+darkness. She gave a small, frightened cry, and sank down into a
+cold little heap on the ice. She felt her left knee do something
+as she fell, but she scarcely noticed it as some deep terror far
+greater than any fear of being lost settled upon her. She was
+alone with this presence that came out of the North, the dreary
+loneliness that rose from ice-bound whalers in the Arctic seas,
+from smokeless, trackless wastes where were strewn the whitened
+bones of adventure. It was an icy breath of death; it was rolling
+down low across the land to clutch at her.
+
+With a furious, despairing energy she rose again and started
+blindly down the darkness. She must get out. She might be lost in
+here for days, freeze to death and lie embedded in the ice like
+corpses she had read of, kept perfectly preserved until the
+melting of a glacier. Harry probably thought she had left with
+the others--he had gone by now; no one would know until next day.
+She reached pitifully for the wall. Forty inches thick, they had
+said--forty inches thick!
+
+On both sides of her along the walls she felt things creeping,
+damp souls that haunted this palace, this town, this North.
+
+"Oh, send somebody--send somebody!" she cried aloud.
+
+Clark Darrow--he would understand; or Joe Ewing; she couldn't be
+left here to wander forever--to be frozen, heart, body, and soul.
+This her--this Sally Carrol! Why, she was a happy thing. She
+was a happy little girl. She liked warmth and summer and Dixie.
+These things were foreign--foreign.
+
+"You're not crying," something said aloud. "You'll never cry any
+more. Your tears would just freeze; all tears freeze up here!"
+
+She sprawled full length on the ice.
+
+"Oh, God!" she faltered.
+
+A long single file of minutes went by, and with a great weariness
+she felt her eyes dosing. Then some one seemed to sit down near
+her and take her face in warm, soft hands. She looked up
+gratefully.
+
+"Why it's Margery Lee," she crooned softly to herself. "I knew
+you'd come." It really was Margery Lee, and she was just as Sally
+Carrol had known she would be, with a young, white brow, and
+wide welcoming eyes, and a hoop-skirt of some soft material that
+was quite comforting to rest on.
+
+"Margery Lee."
+
+It was getting darker now and darker--all those tombstones ought
+to be repainted sure enough, only that would spoil 'em, of
+course. Still, you ought to be able to see 'em.
+
+Then after a succession of moments that went fast and then slow,
+but seemed to be ultimately resolving themselves into a multitude
+of blurred rays converging toward a pale-yellow sun, she heard a
+great cracking noise break her new-found stillness.
+
+It was the sun, it was a light; a torch, and a torch beyond that,
+and another one, and voices; a face took flesh below the torch,
+heavy arms raised her and she felt something on her cheek--it
+felt wet. Some one had seized her and was rubbing her face with
+snow. How ridiculous--with snow!
+
+"Sally Carrol! Sally Carrol!"
+
+It was Dangerous Dan McGrew; and two other faces she didn't know.
+"Child, child! We've been looking for you two hours! Harry's
+half-crazy!"
+
+Things came rushing back into place--the singing, the torches,
+the great shout of the marching clubs. She squirmed in Patton's
+arms and gave a long low cry.
+
+"Oh, I want to get out of here! I'm going back home. Take me
+home"---her voice rose to a scream that sent a chill to Harry's
+heart as he came racing down the next passage--"to-morrow!" she
+cried with delirious, unstrained passion--"To-morrow! To-morrow!
+To-morrow!"
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The wealth of golden sunlight poured a quite enervating yet oddly
+comforting heat over the house where day long it faced the dusty
+stretch of road. Two birds were making a great to-do in a cool
+spot found among the branches of a tree next door, and down the
+street a colored woman was announcing herself melodiously as a
+purveyor of strawberries. It was April afternoon.
+
+Sally Carrol Happer, resting her chin on her arm, and her arm on
+an old window-seat, gazed sleepily down over the spangled dust
+whence the heat waves were rising for the first time this spring.
+She was watching a very ancient Ford turn a perilous corner and
+rattle and groan to a jolting stop at the end of the walk. See
+made no sound and in a minute a strident familiar whistle rent
+the air. Sally Carrol smiled and blinked.
+
+"Good mawnin'."
+
+A head appeared tortuously from under the car-top below.
+
+"Tain't mawnin', Sally Carrol."
+
+"Sure enough!" she said in affected surprise. "I guess maybe
+not."
+
+"What you doin'?"
+
+"Eatin' a green peach. 'Spect to die any minute."
+
+Clark twisted himself a last impossible notch to get a view of
+her face.
+
+"Water's warm as a kettla steam, Sally Carol. Wanta go swimmin'?"
+
+"Hate to move," sighed Sally Carol lazily, "but I reckon so."
+
+
+
+
+
+Head and Shoulders
+
+
+
+
+In 1915 Horace Tarbox was thirteen years old. In that year he
+took the examinations for entrance to Princeton University and
+received the Grade A--excellent--in Cæsar, Cicero, Vergil,
+Xenophon, Homer, Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, and
+Chemistry.
+
+Two years later while George M. Cohan was composing "Over There,"
+Horace was leading the sophomore class by several lengths and
+digging out theses on "The Syllogism as an Obsolete Scholastic
+Form," and during the battle of Château-Thierry he was sitting at
+his desk deciding whether or not to wait until his seventeenth
+birthday before beginning his series of essays on "The Pragmatic
+Bias of the New Realists."
+
+After a while some newsboy told him that the war was over, and he
+was glad, because it meant that Peat Brothers, publishers, would
+get out their new edition of "Spinoza's Improvement of the
+Understanding." Wars were all very well in their way, made young
+men self-reliant or something but Horace felt that he could never
+forgive the President for allowing a brass band to play under
+his window the night of the false armistice, causing him to leave
+three important sentences out of his thesis on "German
+Idealism."
+
+The next year he went up to Yale to take his degree as Master of
+Arts.
+
+He was seventeen then, tall and slender, with near-sighted gray
+eyes and an air of keeping himself utterly detached from the mere
+words he let drop.
+
+"I never feel as though I'm talking to him," expostulated
+Professor Dillinger to a sympathetic colleague. "He makes me feel
+as though I were talking to his representative. I always expect
+him to say: 'Well, I'll ask myself and find out.'"
+
+And then, just as nonchalantly as though Horace Tarbox had been
+Mr. Beef the butcher or Mr. Hat the haberdasher, life reached in,
+seized him,  handled him, stretched him, and unrolled him like a
+piece of Irish lace on a Saturday-afternoon bargain-counter.
+
+To move in the literary fashion I should say that this was all
+because when way back in colonial days the hardy pioneers had
+come to a bald place in Connecticut and asked of each other,
+"Now, what shall we build here?" the hardiest one among 'em had
+answered: "Let's build a town where theatrical managers can try
+out musical comedies!" How afterward they founded Yale College
+there, to try the musical comedies on, is a story every one
+knows. At any rate one December, "Home James" opened at the
+Shubert, and all the students encored Marcia Meadow, who sang a
+song about the Blundering Blimp in the first act and did a shaky,
+shivery, celebrated dance in the last.
+
+Marcia was nineteen. She didn't have wings, but audiences agreed
+generally that she didn't need them. She was a blonde by natural
+pigment, and she wore no paint on the streets at high noon.
+Outside of that she was no better than most women.
+
+It was Charlie Moon who promised her five thousand Pall Malls if
+she would pay a call on Horace Tarbox, prodigy extraordinary.
+Charlie was a senior in Sheffield, and he and Horace were first
+cousins. They liked and pitied each other.
+
+Horace had been particularly busy that night. The failure of the
+Frenchman Laurier to appreciate the significance of the new
+realists was preying on his mind. In fact, his only reaction to a
+low, clear-cut rap at his study was to make him speculate as to
+whether any rap would have actual existence without an ear there
+to hear it. He fancied he was verging more and more toward
+pragmatism. But at that moment, though he did not know it, he was
+verging with astounding rapidity toward something quite
+different.
+
+The rap sounded--three seconds leaked by--the rap sounded.
+
+"Come in," muttered Horace automatically.
+
+He heard the door open and then close, but, bent over his book in
+the big armchair before the fire, he did not look up.
+
+"Leave it on the bed in the other room," he said absently.
+
+"Leave what on the bed in the other room?"
+
+Marcia Meadow had to talk her songs, but her speaking voice was
+like byplay on a harp.
+
+"The laundry."
+
+"I can't."
+
+Horace stirred impatiently in his chair.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Why, because I haven't got it."
+
+"Hm!" he replied testily. "Suppose you go back and get it."
+
+Across the fire from Horace was another easychair. He was
+accustomed to change to it in the course of an evening by way of
+exercise and variety. One chair he called Berkeley, the other he
+called Hume. He suddenly heard a sound as of a rustling,
+diaphanous form sinking into Hume. He glanced up.
+
+"Well," said Marcia with the sweet smile she used in Act Two
+("Oh, so the Duke liked my dancing!") "Well, Omar Khayyam, here I
+am beside you singing in the wilderness."
+
+Horace stared at her dazedly. The momentary suspicion came to him
+that she existed there only as a phantom of his imagination.
+Women didn't come into men's rooms and sink into men's Humes.
+Women brought laundry and took your seat in the street-car and
+married you later on when you were old enough to know fetters.
+
+This woman had clearly materialized out of Hume. The very froth
+of her brown gauzy dress was art emanation from Hume's leather
+arm there! If he looked long enough he would see Hume right
+through her and then he would be alone again in the room. He
+passed his fist across his eyes. He really must take up those
+trapeze exercises again.
+
+"For Pete's sake, don't look so critical!" objected the emanation
+pleasantly. "I feel as if you were going to wish me away with
+that patent dome of yours. And then there wouldn't be anything
+left of me except my shadow in your eyes."
+
+Horace coughed. Coughing was one of his two gestures. When he
+talked you forgot he had a body at all. It was like hearing a
+phonograph record by a singer who had been dead a long time.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked.
+
+"I want them letters," whined Marcia melodramatically--"them
+letters of mine you bought from my grandsire in 1881."
+
+Horace considered.
+
+"I haven't got your letters," he said evenly. "I am only
+seventeen years old. My father was not born until March 3, 1879.
+You evidently have me confused with some one else."
+
+"You're only seventeen?" repeated March suspiciously.
+
+"Only seventeen."
+
+"I knew a girl," said Marcia reminiscently, "who went on the
+ten-twenty-thirty when she was sixteen. She was so stuck on
+herself that she could never say 'sixteen' without putting the
+'only' before it. We got to calling her 'Only Jessie.' And she's
+just where she was when she started--only worse. 'Only' is a bad
+habit, Omar--it sounds like an alibi."
+
+"My name is not Omar."
+
+"I know," agreed Marcia, nodding--"your name's Horace. I just
+call you Omar because you remind me of a smoked cigarette."
+
+"And I haven't your letters. I doubt if I've ever met your
+grandfather. In fact, I think it very improbable that you
+yourself were alive in 1881."
+
+Marcia stared at him in wonder.
+
+"Me--1881? Why sure! I was second-line stuff when the Florodora
+Sextette was still in the convent. I was the original nurse to
+Mrs. Sol Smith's Juliette. Why, Omar, I was a canteen singer
+during the War of 1812."
+
+Horace's mind made a sudden successful leap, and he grinned.
+
+"Did Charlie Moon put you up to this?"
+
+Marcia regarded him inscrutably.
+
+"Who's Charlie Moon?"
+
+"Small--wide nostrils--big ears."
+
+She grew several inches and sniffed.
+
+"I'm not in the habit of noticing my friends' nostrils.
+
+"Then it was Charlie?"
+
+Marcia bit her lip--and then yawned.  "Oh, let's change the
+subject, Omar. I'll pull a snore in this chair in a minute."
+
+"Yes," replied Horace gravely, "Hume has often been considered
+soporific---"
+
+"Who's your friend--and will he die?"
+
+Then of a sudden Horace Tarbox rose slenderly and began to pace
+the room with his hands in his pockets. This was his other
+gesture.
+
+"I don't care for this," he said as if he were talking to
+himself--"at all. Not that I mind your being here--I don't.
+You're quite a pretty little thing, but I don't like Charlie
+Moon's sending you up here. Am I a laboratory experiment on which
+the janitors as well as the chemists can make experiments? Is my
+intellectual development humorous in any way? Do I look like the
+pictures of the little Boston boy in the comic magazines? Has
+that callow ass, Moon, with his eternal tales about his week in
+Paris, any right to---"
+
+"No," interrupted Marcia emphatically.  "And you're a sweet boy.
+Come here and kiss me."
+
+Horace stopped quickly in front of her.
+
+"Why do you want me to kiss you?" he asked intently, "Do you just
+go round kissing people?"
+
+"Why, yes," admitted Marcia, unruffled. "'At's all life is. Just
+going round kissing people."
+
+"Well," replied Horace emphatically, "I must say your ideas are
+horribly garbled! In the first place life isn't just that, and in
+the second place. I won't kiss you. It might get to be a habit
+and I can't get rid of habits. This year I've got in the habit of
+lolling in bed until seven-thirty---"
+
+Marcia nodded understandingly.
+
+"Do you ever have any fun?" she asked.
+
+"What do you mean by fun?"
+
+"See here," said Marcia sternly, "I like you, Omar, but I wish
+you'd talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You
+sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and
+lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever
+had any fun."
+
+Horace shook his head.
+
+"Later, perhaps," he answered. "You see I'm a plan. I'm an
+experiment. I don't say that I don't get tired of it sometimes--I
+do. Yet--oh, I can't explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call
+fun wouldn't be fun to me."
+
+"Please explain."
+
+Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his
+mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to
+determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at
+him.
+
+"Please explain."
+
+Horace turned.
+
+"If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn't
+in?"
+
+"Uh-uh."
+
+"Very well, then. Here's my history: I was a 'why' child. I
+wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young
+economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system
+of answering every question I asked him to the best of his
+ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an
+experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear
+trouble--seven operations between the age of nine and twelve. Of
+course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for
+forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle
+Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.
+
+"I passed off my college examinations when I was thirteen because
+I couldn't help it. My chief associates were professors, and I
+took a tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine
+intelligence, for though I was unusually gifted I was not
+abnormal in other ways. When I was sixteen I got tired of being a
+freak; I decided that some one had made a bad mistake. Still as
+I'd gone that far I concluded to finish it up by taking my degree
+of Master of Arts. My chief interest in life is the study of
+modern philosophy. I am a realist of the School of Anton
+Laurier--with Bergsonian trimmings--and I'll be eighteen years
+old in two months. That's all."
+
+"Whew!" exclaimed Marcia. "That's enough! You do a neat job with
+the parts of speech."
+
+"Satisfied?"
+
+"No, you haven't kissed me."
+
+"It's not in my programme," demurred Horace. "Understand that I
+don't pretend to be above physical things. They have their place,
+but---"
+
+"Oh, don't be so darned reasonable!"
+
+"I can't help it."
+
+"I hate these slot-machine people."
+
+"I assure you I---" began Horace.
+
+"Oh shut up!"
+
+"My own rationality---"
+
+"I didn't say anything about your nationality. You're Amuricun,
+ar'n't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, that's O.K. with me.  I got a notion I want to see you do
+something that isn't in your highbrow programme. I want to see if
+a what-ch-call-em with Brazilian trimmings--that thing you said
+you were--can be a little human."
+
+Horace shook his head again.
+
+"I won't kiss you."
+
+"My life is blighted," muttered Marcia tragically. "I'm a beaten
+woman. I'll go through life without ever having a kiss with
+Brazilian trimmings." She sighed. "Anyways, Omar, will you come
+and see my show?"
+
+"What show?"
+
+"I'm a wicked actress from 'Home James'!"
+
+"Light opera?"
+
+"Yes--at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian
+rice-planter. That might interest you."
+
+"I saw 'The Bohemian Girl' once," reflected Horace aloud. "I
+enjoyed it--to some extent---"
+
+"Then you'll come?"
+
+"Well, I'm--I'm---"
+
+"Oh, I know--you've got to run down to Brazil for the week-end."
+
+"Not at all. I'd be delighted to come---"
+
+Marcia clapped her hands.
+
+"Goodyforyou! I'll mail you a ticket--Thursday night?"
+
+"Why, I---"
+
+"Good! Thursday night it is."
+
+She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his
+shoulders.
+
+"I like you, Omar.  I'm sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you'd
+be sort of frozen, but you're a nice boy."
+
+He eyed her sardonically.
+
+"I'm several thousand generations older than you are."
+
+"You carry your age well."
+
+They shook hands gravely.
+
+"My name's Marcia Meadow," she said emphatically. "'Member it--
+Marcia Meadow. And I won't tell Charlie Moon you were in."
+
+An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of
+stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper
+banister: "Oh, say---"
+
+She stopped and looked up--made out a vague form leaning over.
+
+"Oh, say!" called the prodigy again. "Can you hear me?"
+
+"Here's your connection Omar."
+
+"I hope I haven't given you the impression that I consider
+kissing intrinsically irrational."
+
+"Impression? Why, you didn't even give me the kiss! Never
+fret--so long."
+
+Two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine
+voice. A tentative cough sounded from above. Gathering her
+skirts, Marcia dived wildly down the last flight, and was
+swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside.
+
+Up-stairs Horace paced the floor of his study. From time to time
+he glanced toward Berkeley waiting there in suave dark-red
+reputability, an open book lying suggestively on his cushions.
+And then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him
+each time nearer to Hume. There was something about Hume that was
+strangely and inexpressibly different. The diaphanous form still
+seemed hovering near, and had Horace sat there he would have
+felt as if he were sitting on a lady's lap. And though Horace
+couldn't have named the quality of difference, there was such a
+quality--quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real,
+nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two
+hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before.
+
+Hume was radiating attar of roses.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth
+row and witnessed "Home James." Oddly enough he found that he
+was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed
+at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the
+Hammerstein tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for
+Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering
+Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced
+hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he
+did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.
+
+In the intermission after the second act an usher materialized
+beside him, demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox, and then
+handed him a note written in a round adolescent band. Horace read
+it in some confusion, while the usher lingered with withering
+patience in the aisle.
+
+"Dear Omar: After the show I always grow an awful hunger. If you
+want to satisfy it for me in the Taft Grill just communicate your
+answer to the big-timber guide that brought this and oblige.
+                        Your friend,
+                                                 Marcia Meadow."
+
+"Tell her,"--he coughed--"tell her that it will be quite all
+right. I'll meet her in front of the theatre."
+
+The big-timber guide smiled arrogantly.
+
+"I giss she meant for you to come roun' t' the stage door."
+
+"Where--where is it?"
+
+"Ou'side. Tunayulef. Down ee alley."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Ou'side. Turn to y' left! Down ee alley!"
+
+The arrogant person withdrew. A freshman behind Horace snickered.
+
+Then half an hour later, sitting in the Taft Grill opposite the
+hair that was yellow by natural pigment, the prodigy was saying
+an odd thing.
+
+"Do you have to do that dance in the last act?" he was asking
+earnestly--"I mean, would they dismiss you if you refused to do it?"
+
+Marcia grinned.
+
+"It's fun to do it. I like to do it."
+
+And then Horace came out with a FAUX PAS.
+
+"I should think you'd detest it," he remarked succinctly. "The
+people behind me were making remarks about your bosom."
+
+Marcia blushed fiery red.
+
+"I can't help that," she said quickly. "The dance to me is only
+a sort of acrobatic stunt. Lord, it's hard enough to do! I rub
+liniment into my shoulders for an hour every night."
+
+"Do you have--fun while you're on the stage?"
+
+"Uh-huh--sure! I got in the habit of having people look at me,
+Omar, and I like it."
+
+"Hm!" Horace sank into a brownish study.
+
+"How's the Brazilian trimmings?"
+
+"Hm!" repeated Horace, and then after a pause: "Where does the
+play go from here?"
+
+"New York."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"All depends.  Winter--maybe."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Coming up to lay eyes on me, Omar, or aren't you int'rested?
+Not as nice here, is it, as it was up in your room?  I wish we
+was there now."
+
+"I feel idiotic in this place," confessed Horace, looking round
+him nervously.
+
+"Too bad!  We got along pretty well."
+
+At this he looked suddenly so melancholy that she changed her
+tone, and reaching over patted his hand.
+
+"Ever take an actress out to supper before?"
+
+"No," said Horace miserably, "and I never will again. I don't
+know why I came to-night. Here under all these lights and with
+all these people laughing and chattering I feel completely out
+of my sphere. I don't know what to talk to you about."
+
+"We'll talk about me. We talked about you last time."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Well, my name really is Meadow, but my first name isn't Marcia--
+it's Veronica. I'm nineteen. Question--how did the girl make
+her leap to the footlights? Answer--she was born in Passaic, New
+Jersey, and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe by
+pushing Nabiscoes in Marcel's tea-room in Trenton. She started
+going with a guy named Robbins, a singer in the Trent House
+cabaret, and he got her to try a song and dance with him one
+evening. In a month we were filling the supper-room every night.
+Then we went to New York with meet-my-friend letters thick as a
+pile of napkins.
+
+"In two days we landed a job at Divinerries', and I learned to
+shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries'
+six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist,
+ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous
+Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had
+three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I
+wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his
+column--said that the style was like Carlyle's, only more
+rugged and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American
+literature. This got me a coupla more vaudeville offers and a
+chance as an ingénue in a regular show. I took it--and here I
+am, Omar."
+
+When she finished they sat for a moment in silence she draping
+the last skeins of a Welsh rabbit on her fork and waiting for
+him to speak.
+
+"Let's get out of here," he said suddenly.
+
+Marcia's eyes hardened.
+
+"What's the idea? Am I making you sick?"
+
+"No, but I don't like it here. I don't like to be sitting here
+with you."
+
+Without another word Marcia signalled for the waiter.
+
+"What's the check?" she demanded briskly "My part--the rabbit
+and the ginger ale."
+
+Horace watched blankly as the waiter figured it.
+
+"See here," he began, "I intended to pay for yours too. You're
+my guest."
+
+With a half-sigh Marcia rose from the table and walked from the
+room. Horace, his face a document in bewilderment, laid a bill
+down and followed her out, up the stairs and into the lobby. He
+overtook her in front of the elevator and they faced each other.
+
+"See here," he repeated "You're my guest. Have I said something to
+offend you?"
+
+After an instant of wonder Marcia's eyes softened.
+
+"You're a rude fella!" she said slowly. "Don't you know you're
+rude?"
+
+"I can't help it," said Horace with a directness she found quite
+disarming. "You know I like you."
+
+"You said you didn't like being with me."
+
+"I didn't like it."
+
+"Why not?" Fire blazed suddenly from the gray forests of his
+eyes.
+
+"Because I didn't. I've formed the habit of liking you. I've
+been thinking of nothing much else for two days."
+
+"Well, if you---"
+
+"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "I've got something to say. It's
+this: in six weeks I'll be eighteen years old. When I'm
+eighteen years old I'm coming up to New York to see you. Is
+there some place in New York where we can go and not have a lot
+of people in the room?"
+
+"Sure!" smiled Marcia. "You can come up to my 'partment. Sleep
+on the couch if you want to."
+
+"I can't sleep on couches," he said shortly. "But I want to talk
+to you."
+
+"Why, sure," repeated Marcia, "in my 'partment."
+
+In his excitement Horace put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"All right--just so I can see you alone. I want to talk to you
+as we talked up in my room."
+
+"Honey boy," cried Marcia, laughing, "is it that you want to kiss
+me?"
+
+"Yes," Horace almost shouted. "I'll kiss you if you want me to."
+
+The elevator man was looking at them reproachfully. Marcia edged
+toward the grated door.
+
+"I'll drop you a post-card," she said.
+
+Horace's eyes were quite wild.
+
+"Send me a post-card! I'll come up any time after January first.
+I'll be eighteen then."
+
+And as she stepped into the elevator he coughed enigmatically,
+yet with a vague challenge, at the calling, and walked quickly
+away.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He was there again. She saw him when she took her first glance
+at the restless Manhattan audience--down in the front row with
+his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her. And
+she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where
+the high-rouged row of ballet faces and the massed whines of the
+violins were as imperceivable as powder on a marble Venus. An
+instinctive defiance rose within her.
+
+"Silly boy!" she said to herself hurriedly, and she didn't take
+her encore.
+
+"What do they expect for a hundred a week--perpetual motion?"
+she grumbled to herself in the wings.
+
+"What's the trouble? Marcia?"
+
+"Guy I don't like down in front."
+
+During the last act as she waited for her specialty she had an
+odd attack of stage fright. She had never sent Horace the
+promised post-card. Last night she had pretended not to see him--
+had hurried from the theatre immediately after her dance to
+pass a sleepless night in her apartment, thinking--as she had
+so often in the last month--of his pale, rather intent face, his
+slim, boyish fore, the merciless, unworldly abstraction that
+made him charming to her.
+
+And now that he had come she felt vaguely sorry--as though an
+unwonted responsibility was being forced on her.
+
+"Infant prodigy!" she said aloud.
+
+"What?" demanded the negro comedian standing beside her.
+
+"Nothing--just talking about myself."
+
+On the stage she felt better. This was her dance--and she
+always felt that the way she did it wasn't suggestive any more
+than to some men every pretty girl is suggestive. She made it
+a stunt.
+
+     "Uptown, downtown, jelly on a spoon,
+      After sundown shiver by the moon."
+
+He was not watching her now. She saw that clearly. He was looking
+very deliberately at a castle on the back drop, wearing that
+expression he had worn in the Taft Grill. A wave of exasperation
+swept over her--he was criticising her.
+
+     "That's the vibration that thrills me,
+      Funny how affection fi-lls me
+            Uptown, downtown---"
+
+Unconquerable revulsion seized her. She was suddenly and horribly
+conscious of her audience as she had never been since her first
+appearance. Was that a leer on a pallid face in the front row, a
+droop of disgust on one young girl's mouth? These shoulders of
+hers--these shoulders shaking--were they hers? Were they real?
+Surely shoulders weren't made for this!
+
+     "Then--you'll see at a glance
+      I'll need some funeral ushers with St. Vitus dance
+      At the end of the world I'll---"
+
+The bassoon and two cellos crashed into a final chord. She paused
+and poised a moment on her toes with every muscle tense, her
+young face looking out dully at the audience in what one young
+girl afterward called "such a curious, puzzled look," and then
+without bowing rushed from the stage. Into the dressing-room she
+sped, kicked out of one dress and into another, and caught a taxi
+outside.
+
+Her apartment was very warm--small, it was, with a row of
+professional pictures and sets of Kipling and O. Henry which she
+had bought once from a blue-eyed agent and read occasionally. And
+there were several chairs which matched, but were none of them
+comfortable, and a pink-shaded lamp with blackbirds painted on it
+and an atmosphere of other stifled pink throughout. There were
+nice things in it--nice things unrelentingly hostile to each
+other, offspring of a vicarious, impatient taste acting in stray
+moments. The worst was typified by a great picture framed in oak
+bark of Passaic as seen from the Erie Railroad--altogether a
+frantic, oddly extravagant, oddly penurious attempt to make a
+cheerful room. Marcia knew it was a failure.
+
+Into this room came the prodigy and took her two hands awkwardly.
+
+"I followed you this time," he said.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"I want you to marry me," he said.
+
+Her arms went out to him. She kissed his mouth with a sort of
+passionate wholesomeness.
+
+"There!"
+
+"I love you," he said.
+
+She kissed him again and then with a little sigh flung herself
+into an armchair and half lay there, shaken with absurd laughter.
+
+"Why, you infant prodigy!" she cried.
+
+"Very well, call me that if you want to. I once told you that I
+was ten thousand years older than you--I am."
+
+She laughed again.
+
+"I don't like to be disapproved of."
+
+"No one's ever going to disapprove of you again."
+
+"Omar," she asked, "why do you want to marry me?"
+
+The prodigy rose and put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Because I love you, Marcia Meadow."
+
+And then she stopped calling him Omar.
+
+"Dear boy," she said, "you know I sort of love you. There's
+something about you--I can't tell what--that just puts my heart
+through the wringer every time I'm round you. But honey--" She
+paused.
+
+"But what?"
+
+"But lots of things. But you're only just eighteen, and I'm
+nearly twenty."
+
+"Nonsense!" he interrupted. "Put it this way--that I'm in my
+nineteenth year and you're nineteen. That makes us pretty
+close--without counting that other ten thousand years I
+mentioned."
+
+Marcia laughed.
+
+"But there are some more 'buts.' Your people---
+
+"My people!" exclaimed the prodigy ferociously. "My people tried
+to make a monstrosity out of me." His face grew quite crimson at
+the enormity of what he was going to say. "My people can go way
+back and sit down!"
+
+"My heavens!" cried Marcia in alarm. "All that? On tacks, I
+suppose."
+
+"Tacks--yes," he agreed wildly--"on anything. The more I think of
+how they allowed me to become a little dried-up mummy---"
+
+"What makes you thank you're that?" asked Marcia quietly--"me?"
+
+"Yes. Every person I've met on the streets since I met you has
+made me jealous because they knew what love was before I did. I
+used to call it the 'sex impulse.' Heavens!"
+
+"There's more 'buts,'" said Marcia
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"How could we live?"
+
+"I'll make a living."
+
+"You're in college."
+
+"Do you think I care anything about taking a Master of Arts
+degree?"
+
+"You want to be Master of Me, hey?"
+
+"Yes! What? I mean, no!"
+
+Marcia laughed, and crossing swiftly over sat in his lap. He put
+his arm round her wildly and implanted the vestige of a kiss
+somewhere near her neck.
+
+"There's something white about you," mused Marcia "but it doesn't
+sound very logical."
+
+"Oh, don't be so darned reasonable!"
+
+"I can't help it," said Marcia.
+
+"I hate these slot-machine people!"
+
+"But we---"
+
+"Oh, shut up!"
+
+And as Marcia couldn't talk through her ears she had to.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Horace and Marcia were married early in February. The sensation
+in academic circles both at Yale and Princeton was tremendous.
+Horace Tarbox, who at fourteen had been played up in the Sunday
+magazines sections of metropolitan newspapers, was throwing over
+his career, his chance of being a world authority on American
+philosophy, by marrying a chorus girl--they made Marcia a chorus
+girl. But like all modern stories it was a four-and-a-half-day
+wonder.
+
+They took a flat in Harlem. After two weeks' search, during which
+his idea of the value of academic knowledge faded unmercifully,
+Horace took a position as clerk with a South American export
+company--some one had told him that exporting was the coming
+thing. Marcia was to stay in her show for a few months--anyway
+until he got on his feet. He was getting a hundred and
+twenty-five to start with, and though of course they told him it
+was only a question of months until he would be earning double
+that, Marcia refused even to consider giving up the hundred and
+fifty a week that she was getting at the time.
+
+"We'll call ourselves Head and Shoulders, dear," she said softly,
+"and the shoulders'll have to keep shaking a little longer until
+the old head gets started."
+
+"I hate it," he objected gloomily.
+
+"Well," she replied emphatically, "Your salary wouldn't keep us
+in a tenement. Don't think I want to be public--I don't. I want
+to be yours. But I'd be a half-wit to sit in one room and count
+the sunflowers on the wall-paper while I waited for you. When you
+pull down three hundred a month I'll quit."
+
+And much as it hurt his pride, Horace had to admit that hers was
+the wiser course.
+
+March mellowed into April. May read a gorgeous riot act to the
+parks and waters of Manhatten, and they were very happy. Horace,
+who had no habits whatsoever--he had never had time to form
+any--proved the most adaptable of husbands, and as Marcia
+entirely lacked opinions on the subjects that engrossed him there
+were very few jottings and bumping. Their minds moved in
+different spheres. Marcia acted as practical factotum, and Horace
+lived either in his old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of
+triumphantly earthy worship and adoration of his wife. She was a
+continual source of astonishment to him--the freshness and
+originality of her mind, her dynamic, clear-headed energy, and
+her unfailing good humor.
+
+And Marcia's co-workers in the nine-o'clock show, whither she had
+transferred her talents, were impressed with her tremendous
+pride in her husband's mental powers. Horace they knew only as a
+very slim, tight-lipped, and immature-looking young man, who
+waited every night to take her home.
+
+"Horace," said Marcia one evening when she met him as usual at
+eleven, "you looked like a ghost standing there against the
+street lights. You losing weight?"
+
+He shook his head vaguely.
+
+"I don't know. They raised me to a hundred and thirty-five
+dollars to-day, and---"
+
+"I don't care," said Marcia severely. "You're killing yourself
+working at night. You read those big books on economy---"
+
+"Economics," corrected Horace.
+
+"Well, you read 'em every night long after I'm asleep. And you're
+getting all stooped over like you were before we were married."
+
+"But, Marcia, I've got to---"
+
+"No, you haven't dear. I guess I'm running this shop for the
+present, and I won't let my fella ruin his health and eyes. You
+got to get some exercise."
+
+"I do. Every morning I---"
+
+"Oh, I know! But those dumb-bells of yours wouldn't give a
+consumptive two degrees of fever. I mean real exercise. You've
+got to join a gymnasium. 'Member you told me you were such a
+trick gymnast once that they tried to get you out for the team in
+college and they couldn't because you had a standing date with
+Herb Spencer?"
+
+"I used to enjoy it," mused Horace, "but it would take up too
+much time now."
+
+"All right," said Marcia. "I'll make a bargain with you. You join
+a gym and I'll read one of those books from the brown row of
+'em."
+
+"'Pepys' Diary'? Why, that ought to be enjoyable. He's very
+light."
+
+"Not for me--he isn't. It'll be like digesting plate glass. But
+you been telling me how much it'd broaden my lookout. Well, you
+go to a gym three nights a week and I'll take one big dose of
+Sammy."
+
+Horace hesitated.
+
+"Well---"
+
+"Come on, now! You do some giant swings for me and I'll chase
+some culture for you."
+
+So Horace finally consented, and all through a baking summer he
+spent three and sometimes four evenings a week experimenting on
+the trapeze in Skipper's Gymnasium. And in August he admitted to
+Marcia that it made him capable of more mental work during the
+day.
+
+"MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO," he said.
+
+"Don't believe in it," replied Marcia. "I tried one of those
+patent medicines once and they're all bunk. You stick to
+gymnastics."
+
+One night in early September while he was going through one of
+his contortions on the rings in the nearly deserted room he was
+addressed by a meditative fat man whom he had noticed watching
+him for several nights.
+
+"Say, lad, do that stunt you were doin' last night."
+
+Horace grinned at him from his perch.
+
+"I invented it," he said. "I got the idea from the fourth
+proposition of Euclid."
+
+"What circus he with?"
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"Well, he must of broke his neck doin' that stunt. I set here
+last night thinkin' sure you was goin' to break yours."
+
+"Like this!" said Horace, and swinging onto the trapeze he did
+his stunt.
+
+"Don't it kill your neck an' shoulder muscles?"
+
+"It did at first, but inside of a week I wrote the QUOD ERAT
+DEMONSTRANDUM on it."
+
+"Hm!"
+
+Horace swung idly on the trapeze.
+
+"Ever think of takin' it up professionally?" asked the fat man.
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Good money in it if you're willin' to do stunts like 'at an' can
+get away with it."
+
+"Here's another," chirped Horace eagerly, and the fat man's mouth
+dropped suddenly agape as he watched this pink-jerseyed
+Prometheus again defy the gods and Isaac Newton.
+
+The night following this encounter Horace got home from work to
+find a rather pale Marcia stretched out on the sofa waiting for
+him.
+
+"I fainted twice to-day," she began without preliminaries.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yep. You see baby's due in four months now. Doctor says I ought
+to have quit dancing two weeks ago."
+
+Horace sat down and thought it over.
+
+"I'm glad of course," he said pensively--"I mean glad that we're
+going to have a baby. But this means a lot of expense."
+
+"I've got two hundred and fifty in the bank," said Marcia
+hopefully, "and two weeks' pay coming."
+
+Horace computed quickly.
+
+"Inducing my salary, that'll give us nearly fourteen hundred for
+the next six months."
+
+Marcia looked blue.
+
+"That all? Course I can get a job singing somewhere this month.
+And I can go to work again in March."
+
+"Of course nothing!" said Horace gruffly. "You'll stay right
+here. Let's see now--there'll be doctor's bills and a nurse,
+besides the maid: We've got to have some more money."
+
+"Well," said Marcia wearily, "I don't know where it's coming
+from. It's up to the old head now. Shoulders is out of business."
+
+Horace rose and pulled on his coat.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"I've got an idea," he answered. "I'll be right back."
+
+Ten minutes later as he headed down the street toward Skipper's
+Gymnasium he felt a placid wonder, quite unmixed with humor, at
+what he was going to do. How he would have gaped at himself a
+year before! How every one would have gaped! But when you opened
+your door at the rap of life you let in many things.
+
+The gymnasium was brightly lit, and when his eyes became
+accustomed to the glare he found the meditative fat man seated on
+a pile of canvas mats smoking a big cigar.
+
+"Say," began Horace directly, "were you in earnest last night
+when you said I could make money on my trapeze stunts?"
+
+"Why, yes," said the fat man in surprise.
+
+"Well, I've been thinking it over, and I believe I'd like to try
+it. I could work at night and on Saturday afternoons--and
+regularly if the pay is high enough."
+
+The fat men looked at his watch.
+
+"Well," he said, "Charlie Paulson's the man to see. He'll book
+you inside of four days, once he sees you work out. He won't be
+in now, but I'll get hold of him for to-morrow night."
+
+The fat man was as good as his word. Charlie Paulson arrived next
+night and put in a wondrous hour watching the prodigy swap
+through the air in amazing parabolas, and on the night following
+he brought two age men with him who looked as though they had
+been born smoking black cigars and talking about money in low,
+passionate voices. Then on the succeeding Saturday Horace
+Tarbox's torso made its first professional appearance in a
+gymnastic exhibition at the Coleman Street Gardens. But though
+the audience numbered nearly five thousand people, Horace felt no
+nervousness. From his childhood he had read papers to
+audiences--learned that trick of detaching himself.
+
+"Marcia," he said cheerfully later that same night, "I think
+we're out of the woods. Paulson thinks he can get me an opening
+at the Hippodrome, and that means an all-winter engagement. The
+Hippodrome you know, is a big---"
+
+"Yes, I believe I've heard of it," interrupted Marcia, "but I
+want to know about this stunt you're doing. It isn't any
+spectacular suicide, is it?"
+
+"It's nothing," said Horace quietly. "But if you can think of an
+nicer way of a man killing himself than taking a risk for you,
+why that's the way I want to die."
+
+Marcia reached up and wound both arms tightly round his neck.
+
+"Kiss me," she whispered, "and call me 'dear heart.' I love to
+hear you say 'dear heart.' And bring me a book to read to-morrow.
+No more Sam Pepys, but something trick and trashy. I've been
+wild for something to do all day. I felt like writing letters,
+but I didn't have anybody to write to."
+
+"Write to me," said Horace. "I'll read them."
+
+"I wish I could," breathed Marcia. "If I knew words enough I
+could write you the longest love-letter in the world--and never
+get tired."
+
+But after two more months Marcia grew very tired indeed, and for
+a row of nights it was a very anxious, weary-looking young
+athlete who walked out before the Hippodrome crowd. Then there
+were two days when his place was taken by a young man who wore
+pale blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But
+after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close
+to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on
+that young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly
+in the air an the middle of his amazing and original shoulder
+swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and
+dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time--and then
+tiptoed very carefully into a quiet room.
+
+"Marcia," he whispered.
+
+"Hello!" She smiled up at him wanly. "Horace, there's something I
+want you to do. Look in my top bureau drawer and you'll find a
+big stack of paper. It's a book--sort of--Horace. I wrote it down
+in these last three months while I've been laid up. I wish you'd
+take it to that Peter Boyce Wendell who put my letter in his
+paper.  He could tell you whether it'd be a good book. I wrote it
+just the way I talk, just the way I wrote that letter to him.
+It's just a story about a lot of things that happened to me. Will
+you take it to him, Horace?"
+
+"Yes, darling."
+
+He leaned over the bed until his head was beside her on the
+pillow, and began stroking back her yellow hair.
+
+"Dearest Marcia," he said softly.
+
+"No," she murmured, "call me what I told you to call me."
+
+"Dear heart," he whispered passionately--"dearest heart."
+
+"What'll we call her?"
+
+They rested a minute in happy, drowsy content, while Horace
+considered.
+
+"We'll call her Marcia Hume Tarbox," he said at length.
+
+"Why the Hume?"
+
+"Because he's the fellow who first introduced us."
+
+"That so?" she murmured, sleepily surprised. "I thought his name
+was Moon."
+
+Her eyes dosed, and after a moment the slow lengthening surge of
+the bedclothes over her breast showed that she was asleep.
+
+Horace tiptoed over to the bureau and opening the top drawer
+found a heap of closely scrawled, lead-smeared pages. He looked
+at the first sheet:
+
+                    SANDRA PEPYS, SYNCOPATED
+                        BY MARCIA TARBOX
+
+He smiled. So Samuel Pepys had made an impression on her after
+all. He turned a page and began to read. His smile deepened--he
+read on. Half an hour passed and he became aware that Marcia had
+waked and was watching him from the bed.
+
+"Honey," came in a whisper.
+
+"What Marcia?"
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+Horace coughed.
+
+"I seem to be reading on. It's bright."
+
+"Take it to Peter Boyce Wendell. Tell him you got the highest
+marks in Princeton once and that you ought to know when a book's
+good. Tell him this one's a world beater."
+
+"All right, Marcia," Horace said gently.
+
+Her eyes closed again and Horace crossing over kissed her
+forehead--stood there for a moment with a look of tender pity.
+Then he left the room.
+
+All that night the sprawly writing on the pages, the constant
+mistakes in spelling and grammar, and the weird punctuation
+danced before his eyes. He woke several times in the night, each
+time full of a welling chaotic sympathy for this desire of
+Marcia's soul to express itself in words. To him there was
+something infinitely pathetic about it, and for the first time in
+months he began to turn over in his mind his own half-forgotten
+dreams.
+
+He had meant to write a series of books, to popularize the new
+realism as Schopenhauer had popularized pessimism and William
+James pragmatism.
+
+But life hadn't come that way. Life took hold of people and
+forced them into flying rings. He laughed to think of that rap at
+his door, the diaphanous shadow in Hume, Marcia's threatened
+kiss.
+
+"And it's still me," he said aloud in wonder as he lay awake in
+the darkness. "I'm the man who sat in Berkeley with temerity to
+wonder if that rap would have had actual existence had my ear not
+been there to hear it. I'm still that man. I could be
+electrocuted for the crimes he committed.
+
+"Poor gauzy souls trying to express ourselves in something
+tangible. Marcia with her written book; I with my unwritten ones.
+Trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get--and
+being glad."
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"Sandra Pepys, Syncopated," with an introduction by Peter Boyce
+Wendell the columnist, appeared serially in JORDAN'S MAGAZINE,
+and came out in book form in March. From its first published
+instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough
+subject--a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York
+to go on the stage--treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of
+phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very
+inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made an irresistible appeal.
+
+Peter Boyce Wendell, who happened at that time to be advocating
+the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption
+of expressive vernacular words, stood as its sponsor and
+thundered his indorsement over the placid bromides of the
+conventional reviewers.
+
+Marcia received three hundred dollars an instalment for the
+serial publication, which came at an opportune time, for though
+Horace's monthly salary at the Hippodrome was now more than
+Marcia's had ever been, young Marcia was emitting shrill cries
+which they interpreted as a demand for country air. So early April
+found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County, with a
+place for a lawn, a place for a garage, and a place for
+everything, including a sound-proof impregnable study, in which
+Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up
+when her daughter's demands began to be abated, and compose
+immortally illiterate literature.
+
+"It's not half bad," thought Horace one night as he was on his
+way from the station to his house. He was considering several
+prospects that had opened up, a four months' vaudeville offer in
+five figures, a chance to go back to Princeton in charge of all
+gymnasium work. Odd! He had once intended to go back there in
+charge of all philosophic work, and now he had not even been
+stirred by the arrival in New York of Anton Laurier, his old
+idol.
+
+The gravel crunched raucously under his heel. He saw the lights
+of his sitting-room gleaming and noticed a big car standing in
+the drive. Probably Mr. Jordan again, come to persuade Marcia to
+settle down' to work.
+
+She had heard the sound of his approach and her form was
+silhouetted against the lighted door as she came out to meet him.
+"There's some Frenchman here," she whispered nervously. "I
+can't pronounce his name, but he sounds awful deep. You'll have
+to jaw with him."
+
+"What Frenchman?"
+
+"You can't prove it by me. He drove up an hour ago with Mr.
+Jordan, and said he wanted to meet Sandra Pepys, and all that sort
+of thing."
+
+Two men rose from chairs as they went inside.
+
+"Hello Tarbox," said Jordan. "I've just been bringing together
+two celebrities. I've brought M'sieur Laurier out with me.
+M'sieur Laurier, let me present Mr. Tarbox, Mrs. Tarbox's
+husband."
+
+"Not Anton Laurier!" exclaimed Horace.
+
+"But, yes. I must come. I have to come. I have read the book of
+Madame, and I have been charmed"--he fumbled in his pocket--"ah
+I have read of you too. In this newspaper which I read to-day it
+has your name."
+
+He finally produced a clipping from a magazine.
+
+"Read it!" he said eagerly. "It has about you too."
+
+Horace's eye skipped down the page.
+
+"A distinct contribution to American dialect literature," it
+said. "No attempt at literary tone; the book derives its very
+quality from this fact, as did 'Huckleberry Finn.'"
+
+Horace's eyes caught a passage lower down; he became suddenly
+aghast--read on hurriedly:
+
+"Marcia Tarbox's connection with the stage is not only as a
+spectator but as the wife of a performer. She was married last
+year to Horace Tarbox, who every evening delights the children at
+the Hippodrome with his wondrous flying performance. It is said
+that the young couple have dubbed themselves Head and Shoulders,
+referring doubtless to the fact that Mrs. Tarbox supplies the
+literary and mental qualities, while the supple and agile
+shoulder of her husband contribute their share to the family
+fortunes.
+
+"Mrs. Tarbox seems to merit that much-abused title--'prodigy.'
+Only twenty---"
+
+Horace stopped reading, and with a very odd expression in his
+eyes gazed intently at Anton Laurier.
+
+"I want to advise you--" he began hoarsely.
+
+"What?"
+
+"About raps. Don't answer them! Let them alone--have a padded
+door."
+
+
+
+
+The Cut-Glass Bowl
+
+
+
+
+There was a rough stone age and a smooth stone age and a bronze
+age, and many years afterward a cut-glass age. In the cut-glass
+age, when young ladies had persuaded young men with long, curly
+mustaches to marry them, they sat down several months afterward
+and wrote thank-you notes for all sorts of cut-glass
+presents--punch-bowls, finger-bowls, dinner-glasses,
+wine-glasses, ice-cream dishes, bonbon dishes, decanters, and
+vases--for, though cut glass was nothing new in the nineties, it
+was then especially busy reflecting the dazzling light of fashion
+from the Back Bay to the fastnesses of the Middle West.
+
+After the wedding the punch-bowls were arranged in the sideboard
+with the big bowl in the centre; the glasses were set up in the
+china-closet; the candlesticks were put at both ends of
+things--and then the struggle for existence began. The bonbon
+dish lost its little handle and became a pin-tray upstairs; a
+promenading cat knocked the little bowl off the sideboard, and
+the hired girl chipped the middle-sized one with the sugar-dish;
+then the wine-glasses succumbed to leg fractures, and even the
+dinner-glasses disappeared one by one like the ten little
+niggers, the last one ending up, scarred and maimed as a
+tooth-brush holder among other shabby genteels on the bathroom
+shelf. But by the time all this had happened the cut-glass age
+was over, anyway.
+
+It was well past its first glory on the day the curious Mrs.
+Roger Fairboalt came to see the beautiful Mrs. Harold Piper.
+
+"My dear," said the curious Mrs. Roger Fairboalt, "I LOVE your
+house. I think it's QUITE artistic."
+
+"I'm SO glad," said the beautiful Mrs. Harold Piper, lights
+appearing in her young, dark eyes; "and you MUST come often. I'm
+almost ALWAYS alone in the afternoon."
+
+Mrs. Fairboalt would have liked to remark that she didn't believe
+this at all and couldn't see how she'd be expected to--it was
+all over town that Mr. Freddy Gedney had been dropping in on Mrs.
+Piper five afternoons a week for the past six months. Mrs.
+Fairboalt was at that ripe age where she distrusted all beautiful
+women---
+
+"I love the dining-room MOST," she said, "all that MARVELLOUS
+china, and that HUGE cut-glass bowl."
+
+Mrs. Piper laughed, so prettily that Mrs. Fairboalt's lingering
+reservations about the Freddy Gedney story quite vanished.
+
+"Oh, that big bowl!" Mrs. Piper's mouth forming the words was a
+vivid rose petal. "There's a story about that bowl---"
+
+"Oh---"
+
+"You remember young Carleton Canby? Well, he was very attentive
+at one time, and the night I told him I was going to marry
+Harold, seven years ago in ninety-two, he drew himself way up and
+said: 'Evylyn, I'm going to give a present that's as hard as you
+are and as beautiful and as empty and as easy to see through.'
+He frightened me a little--his eyes were so black. I thought he
+was going to deed me a haunted house or something that would
+explode when you opened it. That bowl came, and of course it's
+beautiful. Its diameter or circumference or something is two and
+a half feet--or perhaps it's three and a half. Anyway, the
+sideboard is really too small for it; it sticks way out."
+
+"My DEAR, wasn't that ODD! And he left town about then didn't
+he?" Mrs. Fairboalt was scribbling italicized notes on her
+memory--"hard, beautiful, empty, and easy to see through."
+
+"Yes, he went West--or South--or somewhere," answered Mrs. Piper,
+radiating that divine vagueness that helps to lift beauty out of
+time.
+
+Mrs. Fairboalt drew on her gloves, approving the effect of
+largeness given by the open sweep from the spacious music-room
+through the library, disclosing a part of the dining-room beyond.
+It was really the nicest smaller house in town, and Mrs. Piper
+had talked of moving to a larger one on Devereaux Avenue. Harold
+Piper must be COINING money.
+
+As she turned into the sidewalk under the gathering autumn dusk
+she assumed that disapproving, faintly unpleasant expression that
+almost all successful women of forty wear on the street.
+
+If _I_ were Harold Piper, she thought, I'd spend a LITTLE less
+time on business and a little more time at home. Some FRIEND
+should speak to him.
+
+But if Mrs. Fairboalt had considered it a successful afternoon
+she would have named it a triumph had she waited two minutes
+longer. For while she was still a black receding figure a hundred
+yards down the street, a very good-looking distraught young man
+turned up the walk to the Piper house. Mrs. Piper answered the
+door-bell herself, and with a rather dismayed expression led him
+quickly into the library.
+
+"I had to see you," he began wildly; "your note played the devil
+with me. Did Harold frighten you into this?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I'm through, Fred," she said slowly, and her lips had never
+looked to him so much like tearings from a rose. "He came home
+last night sick with it. Jessie Piper's sense of duty was to much
+for her, so she went down to his office and told him. He was hurt
+and--oh, I can't help seeing it his way, Fred. He says we've been
+club gossip all summer and he didn't know it, and now he
+understands snatches of conversation he's caught and veiled hints
+people have dropped about me. He's mighty angry, Fred, and he
+loves me and I love him--rather."
+
+Gedney nodded slowly and half closed his eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said "yes, my trouble's like yours. I can see other
+people's points of view too plainly." His gray eyes met her dark
+ones frankly. "The blessed thing's over. My God, Evylyn, I've
+been sitting down at the office all day looking at the outside of
+your letter, and looking at it and looking at it---"
+
+"You've got to go, Fred," she said steadily, and the slight
+emphasis of hurry in her voice was a new thrust for him. "I gave
+him my word of honor I wouldn't see you. I know just how far I
+can go with Harold, and being here with you this evening is one
+of the things I can't do."
+
+They were still standing, and as she spoke she made a little
+movement toward the door. Gedney looked at her miserably, trying,
+here at the end, to treasure up a last picture of her--and then
+suddenly both of them were stiffened into marble at the sound of
+steps on the walk outside. Instantly her arm reached out grasping
+the lapel of his coat--half urged, half swung him through the
+big door into the dark dining-room.
+
+"I'll make him go up-stairs," she whispered close to his ear;
+"don't move till you hear him on the stairs. Then go out the
+front way."
+
+Then he was alone listening as she greeted her husband in the
+hall.
+
+Harold Piper was thirty-six, nine years older than his wife. He
+was handsome--with marginal notes: these being eyes that were too
+close together, and a certain woodenness when his face was in
+repose. His attitude toward this Gedney matter was typical of all
+his attitudes. He had told Evylyn that he considered the subject
+closed and would never reproach her nor allude to it in any
+form; and he told himself that this was rather a big way of
+looking at it--that she was not a little impressed. Yet, like all
+men who are preoccupied with their own broadness, he was
+exceptionally narrow.
+
+He greeted Evylyn with emphasized cordiality this evening.
+
+"You'll have to hurry and dress, Harold," she said eagerly;
+"we're going to the Bronsons'."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"It doesn't take me long to dress, dear," and, his words trailing
+off, he walked on into the library. Evylyn's heart clattered
+loudly.
+
+"Harold---" she began, with a little catch in her voice, and
+followed him in. He was lighting a cigarette. "You'll have to
+hurry, Harold," she finished, standing in the doorway.
+
+"Why?" he asked a trifle impatiently; "you're not dressed
+yourself yet, Evie."
+
+He stretched out in a Morris chair and unfolded a newspaper. With
+a sinking sensation Evylyn saw that this meant at least ten
+minutes--and Gedney was standing breathless in the next room.
+Supposing Harold decided that before he went upstairs he wanted a
+drink from the decanter on the sideboard. Then it occurred to
+her to forestall this contingency by bringing him the decanter
+and a glass. She dreaded calling his attention to the dining-room
+in any way, but she couldn't risk the other chance.
+
+But at the same moment Harold rose and, throwing his paper down,
+came toward her.
+
+"Evie, dear," he said, bending and putting his arms about her, "I
+hope you're not thinking about last night---" She moved close to
+him, trembling. "I know," he continued, "it was just an
+imprudent friendship on your part. We all make mistakes."
+
+Evylyn hardly heard him. She was wondering if by sheer clinging
+to him she could draw him out and up the stairs. She thought of
+playing sick, asking to be carried up--unfortunately she knew he
+would lay her on the couch and bring her whiskey.
+
+Suddenly her nervous tension moved up a last impossible notch.
+She had heard a very faint but quite unmistakable creak from the
+floor of the dining room. Fred was trying to get out the back
+way.
+
+Then her heart took a flying leap as a hollow ringing note like a
+gong echoed and re-echoed through the house. Gedney's arm had
+struck the big cut-glass bowl.
+
+"What's that!" cried Harold. "Who's there?"
+
+She clung to him but he broke away, and the room seemed to crash
+about her ears. She heard the pantry-door swing open, a scuffle,
+the rattle of a tin pan, and in wild despair she rushed into the
+kitchen and pulled up the gas. Her husband's arm slowly unwound
+from Gedney's neck, and he stood there very still, first in
+amazement, then with pain dawning in his face.
+
+"My golly!" he said in bewilderment, and then repeated: "My
+GOLLY!"
+
+He turned as if to jump again at Gedney, stopped, his muscles
+visibly relaxed, and he gave a bitter little laugh.
+
+"You people--you people---" Evylyn's arms were around him and her
+eyes were pleading with him frantically, but he pushed her away
+and sank dazed into a kitchen chair, his face like porcelain.
+"You've been doing things to me, Evylyn. Why, you little devil!
+You little DEVIL!"
+
+She had never felt so sorry for him; she had never loved him so
+much.
+
+"It wasn't her fault," said Gedney rather humbly. "I just came."
+But Piper shook his head, and his expression when he stared up
+was as if some physical accident had jarred his mind into a
+temporary inability to function. His eyes, grown suddenly
+pitiful, struck a deep, unsounded chord in Evylyn--and
+simultaneously a furious anger surged in her. She felt her
+eyelids burning; she stamped her foot violently; her hands
+scurried nervously over the table as if searching for a weapon,
+and then she flung herself wildly at Gedney.
+
+"Get out!" she screamed, dark eves blazing, little fists beating
+helplessly on his outstretched arm. "You did this! Get out of
+here--get out--get OUT! GET OUT!"
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Concerning Mrs. Harold Piper at thirty-five, opinion was
+divided--women said she was still handsome; men said she was
+pretty no longer. And this was probably because the qualities in
+her beauty that women had feared and men had followed had
+vanished. Her eyes were still as large and as dark and as sad,
+but the mystery had departed; their sadness was no longer
+eternal, only human, and she had developed a habit, when she was
+startled or annoyed, of twitching her brows together and blinking
+several times. Her mouth also had lost: the red had receded and
+the faint down-turning of its corners when she smiled, that had
+added to the sadness of the eyes and been vaguely mocking and
+beautiful, was quite gone. When she smiled now the corners of her
+lips turned up. Back in the days when she revelled in her own
+beauty Evylyn had enjoyed that smile of hers--she had accentuated
+it. When she stopped accentuating it, it faded out and the last
+of her mystery with it.
+
+Evylyn had ceased accentuating her smile within a month after the
+Freddy Gedney affair. Externally things had gone an very much as
+they had before. But in those few minutes during which she had
+discovered how much she loved her husband, Evylyn had realized how
+indelibly she had hurt him. For a month she struggled against
+aching silences, wild reproaches and accusations--she pled with
+him, made quiet, pitiful little love to him, and he laughed at
+her bitterly--and then she, too, slipped gradually into silence
+and a shadowy, impenetrable barrier dropped between them. The
+surge of love that had risen in her she lavished on Donald, her
+little boy, realizing him almost wonderingly as a part of her
+life.
+
+The next year a piling up of mutual interests and
+responsibilities and some stray flicker from the past brought
+husband and wife together again--but after a rather pathetic
+flood of passion Evylyn realized that her great opportunity was
+gone. There simply wasn't anything left. She might have been
+youth and love for both--but that time of silence had slowly
+dried up the springs of affection and her own desire to drink
+again of them was dead.
+
+She began for the first time to seek women friends, to prefer
+books she had read before, to sew a little where she could watch
+her two children to whom she was devoted. She worried about
+little things--if she saw crumbs on the dinner-table her mind
+drifted off the conversation: she was receding gradually into
+middle age.
+
+Her thirty-fifth birthday had been an exceptionally busy one, for
+they were entertaining on short notice that night, as she stood
+in her bedroom window in the late afternoon she discovered that
+she was quite tired. Ten years before she would have lain down
+and slept, but now she had a feeling that things needed watching:
+maids were cleaning down-stairs, bric-à-brac was all over the
+floor, and there were sure to be grocery-men that had to be
+talked to imperatively--and then there was a letter to write
+Donald, who was fourteen and in his first year away at school.
+
+She had nearly decided to lie down, nevertheless, when she heard
+a sudden familiar signal from little Julie down-stairs. She
+compressed her lips, her brows twitched together, and she
+blinked.
+
+"Julie!" she called.
+
+"Ah-h-h-ow!" prolonged Julie plaintively. Then the voice of
+Hilda, the second maid, floated up the stairs.
+
+"She cut herself a little, Mis' Piper."
+
+Evylyn flew to her sewing-basket, rummaged until she found a torn
+handkerchief, and hurried downstairs. In a moment Julie was
+crying in her arms as she searched for the cut, faint,
+disparaging evidences of which appeared on Julie's dress.
+
+"My THU-umb!" explained Julie. "Oh-h-h-h, t'urts."
+
+"It was the bowl here, the he one," said Hilda apologetically.
+"It was waitin' on the floor while I polished the sideboard, and
+Julie come along an' went to foolin' with it. She yust scratch
+herself."
+
+Evylyn frowned heavily at Hilda, and twisting Julie decisively in
+her lap, began tearing strips of the handkerchief.
+
+"Now--let's see it, dear."
+
+Julie held it up and Evelyn pounced.
+
+"There!"
+
+Julie surveyed her swathed thumb doubtfully. She crooked it; it
+waggled. A pleased, interested look appeared in her tear-stained
+face. She sniffled and waggled it again.
+
+"You PRECIOUS!" cried Evylyn and kissed her, but before she left
+the room she levelled another frown at Hilda. Careless! Servants
+all that way nowadays. If she could get a good Irishwoman--but
+you couldn't any more--and these Swedes---
+
+At five o'clock Harold arrived and, coming up to her room,
+threatened in a suspiciously jovial tone to kiss her thirty-five
+times for her birthday. Evylyn resisted.
+
+"You've been drinking," she said shortly, and then added
+qualitatively, "a little. You know I loathe the smell of it."
+
+"Evie," he said after a pause, seating himself in a chair by the
+window, "I can tell you something now. I guess you've known
+things haven't beep going quite right down-town."
+
+She was standing at the window combing her hair, but at these
+words she turned and looked at him.
+
+"How do you mean? You've always said there was room for more than
+one wholesale hardware house in town." Her voice expressed some
+alarm.
+
+"There WAS," said Harold significantly, "but this Clarence Ahearn
+is a smart man."
+
+"I was surprised when you said he was coming to dinner."
+
+"Evie," he went on, with another slap at his knee, "after January
+first 'The Clarence Ahearn Company' becomes 'The Ahearn, Piper
+Company'--and 'Piper Brothers' as a company ceases to
+exist."
+
+Evylyn was startled. The sound of his name in second place was
+somehow hostile to her; still he appeared jubilant.
+
+"I don't understand, Harold."
+
+"Well, Evie, Ahearn has been fooling around with Marx. If those
+two had combined we'd have been the little fellow, struggling
+along, picking up smaller orders, hanging back on risks. It's a
+question of capital, Evie, and 'Ahearn and Marx' would have had
+the business just like 'Ahearn and Piper' is going to now." He
+paused and coughed and a little cloud of whiskey floated up to
+her nostrils. "Tell you the truth, Evie, I've suspected that
+Ahearn's wife had something to do with it. Ambitious little lady,
+I'm told. Guess she knew the Marxes couldn't help her much
+here."
+
+"Is she--common?" asked Evie.
+
+"Never met her, I'm sure--but I don't doubt it. Clarence Ahearn's
+name's been up at the Country Club five months--no action
+taken." He waved his hand disparagingly. "Ahearn and I had lunch
+together to-day and just about clinched it, so I thought it'd be
+nice to have him and his wife up to-night--just have nine, mostly
+family. After all, it's a big thing for me, and of course we'll
+have to see something of them, Evie."
+
+"Yes," said Evie thoughtfully, "I suppose we will."
+
+Evylyn was not disturbed over the social end of it--but the idea
+of "Piper Brothers" becoming "The Ahearn, Piper Company" startled
+her. It seemed like going down in the world.
+
+Half an hour later, as she began to dress for dinner, she heard
+his voice from down-stairs.
+
+"Oh, Evie, come down!"
+
+She went out into the hall and called over the banister:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I want you to help me make some of that punch before dinner."
+
+Hurriedly rehooking her dress, she descended the stairs and found
+him grouping the essentials on the dining-room table. She went
+to the sideboard and, lifting one of the bowls, carried it
+over.
+
+"Oh, no," he protested, "let's use the big one. There'll be
+Ahearn and his wife and you and I and Milton, that's five, and
+Tom and Jessie, that's seven: and your sister and Joe Ambler,
+that's nine. You don't know how quick that stuff goes when YOU
+make it."
+
+"We'll use this bowl," she insisted. "It'll hold plenty. You know
+how Tom is."
+
+Tom Lowrie, husband to Jessie, Harold's first cousin, was rather
+inclined to finish anything in a liquid way that he began.
+
+Harold shook his head.
+
+"Don't be foolish. That one holds only about three quarts and
+there's nine of us, and the servants'll want some--and it isn't
+strong punch. It's  so much more cheerful to have a lot, Evie; we
+don't have to drink all of it."
+
+"I say the small one."
+
+Again he shook his head obstinately.
+
+"No; be reasonable."
+
+"I AM reasonable," she said shortly. "I don't want any drunken
+men in the house."
+
+"Who said you did?"
+
+"Then use the small bowl."
+
+"Now, Evie---"
+
+He grasped the smaller bowl to lift it back. Instantly her hands
+were on it, holding it down. There was a momentary struggle, and
+then, with a little exasperated grunt, he raised his side,
+slipped it from her fingers, and carried it to the sideboard.
+
+She looked at him and tried to make her expression contemptuous,
+but he only laughed. Acknowledging her defeat but disclaiming all
+future interest in the punch, she left the room.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At seven-thirty, her cheeks glowing and her high-piled hair
+gleaming with a suspicion of brilliantine, Evylyn descended the
+stairs. Mrs. Ahearn, a little woman concealing a slight
+nervousness under red hair and an extreme Empire gown, greeted
+her volubly. Evelyn disliked her on the spot, but the husband she
+rather approved of. He had keen blue eyes and a natural gift of
+pleasing people that might have made him, socially, had he not so
+obviously committed the blunder of marrying too early in his
+career.
+
+"I'm glad to know Piper's wife," he said simply. "It looks as
+though your husband and I are going to see a lot of each other in
+the future."
+
+She bowed, smiled graciously, and turned to greet the others:
+Milton Piper, Harold's quiet, unassertive younger brother; the
+two Lowries, Jessie and Tom; Irene, her own unmarried sister; and
+finally Joe Ambler, a confirmed bachelor and Irene's perennial
+beau.
+
+Harold led the way into dinner.
+
+"We're having a punch evening," he announced jovially--Evylyn saw
+that he had already sampled his concoction--"so there won't be
+any cocktails except the punch. It's m' wife's greatest
+achievement, Mrs. Ahearn; she'll give you the recipe if you want
+it; but owing to a slight"--he caught his wife's eye and paused
+--"to a slight indisposition; I'm responsible for this batch.
+Here's how!"
+
+All through dinner there was punch, and Evylyn, noticing that
+Ahearn and Milton Piper and all the women were shaking their
+heads negatively at the maid, knew she had been right about the
+bowl; it was still half full. She resolved to caution Harold
+directly afterward, but when the women left the table Mrs. Ahearn
+cornered her, and she found herself talking cities and
+dressmakers with a polite show of interest.
+
+"We've moved around a lot," chattered Mrs. Ahearn, her red head
+nodding violently. "Oh, yes, we've never stayed so long in a town
+before--but I do hope we're here for good. I like it here; don't
+you?"
+
+"Well, you see, I've always lived here, so, naturally---"
+
+"Oh, that's true," said Mrs. Ahearn and laughed. Clarence always
+used to tell me he had to have a wife he could come home to and
+say: "Well, we're going to Chicago to-morrow to live, so pack
+up."
+
+"I got so I never expected to live ANYwhere." She laughed her
+little laugh again; Evylyn suspected that it was her society
+laugh.
+
+"Your husband is a very able man, I imagine."
+
+"Oh, yes," Mrs. Ahearn assured her eagerly. "He's brainy,
+Clarence is. Ideas and enthusiasm, you know. Finds out what he
+wants and then goes and gets it."
+
+Evylyn nodded. She was wondering if the men were still drinking
+punch back in the dining-room. Mrs. Ahearn's history kept
+unfolding jerkily, but Evylyn had ceased to listen. The first
+odor of massed cigars began to drift in. It wasn't really a large
+house, she reflected; on an evening like this the library
+sometimes grew blue with smoke, and next day one had to leave the
+windows open for hours to air the heavy staleness out of the
+curtains. Perhaps this partnership might . . . she began to
+speculate on a new house . . .
+
+Mrs. Ahearn's voice drifted in on her:
+
+"I really would like the recipe if you have it written down
+somewhere---"
+
+Then there was a sound of chairs in the dining-room and the men
+strolled in. Evylyn saw at once that her worst fears were
+realized. Harold's face was flushed and his words ran together at
+the ends of sentences, while Tom Lowrie lurched when he walked
+and narrowly missed Irene's lap when he tried to sink onto the
+couch beside her. He sat there blinking dazedly at the company.
+Evylyn found herself blinking back at him, but she saw no humor in
+it. Joe Ambler was smiling contentedly and purring on his cigar.
+Only Ahearn and Milton Piper seemed unaffected.
+
+"It's a pretty fine town, Ahearn," said Ambler, "you'll find
+that."
+
+"I've found it so," said Ahearn pleasantly.
+
+"You find it more, Ahearn," said Harold, nodding emphatically "'f
+I've an'thin' do 'th it."
+
+He soared into a eulogy of the city, and Evylyn wondered
+uncomfortably if it bored every one as it bored her. Apparently
+not. They were all listening attentively. Evylyn broke in at the
+first gap.
+
+"Where've you been living, Mr. Ahearn?" she asked interestedly.
+Then she remembered that Mrs. Ahearn had told her, but it didn't
+matter. Harold mustn't talk so much. He was such an ASS when he'd
+been drinking. But he plopped directly back in.
+
+"Tell you, Ahearn. Firs' you wanna get a house up here on the
+hill. Get Stearne house or Ridgeway house. Wanna have it so
+people say: 'There's Ahearn house.' Solid, you know, tha's effec'
+it gives."
+
+Evylyn flushed. This didn't sound right at all. Still Ahearn
+didn't seem to notice anything amiss, only nodded gravely.
+
+"Have you been looking---" But her words trailed off unheard as
+Harold's voice boomed on.
+
+"Get house--tha's start. Then you get know people. Snobbish town
+first toward outsider, but not long--after know you. People like
+you"--he indicated Ahearn and his wife with a sweeping
+gesture--"all right. Cordial as an'thin' once get by first
+barrer-bar-barrer--" He swallowed, and then said "barrier,"
+repeated it masterfully.
+
+Evylyn looked appealingly at her brother-in-law, but before he
+could intercede a thick mumble had come crowding out of Tom
+Lowrie, hindered by the dead cigar which he gripped firmly with
+his teeth.
+
+"Huma uma ho huma ahdy um---"
+
+"What?" demanded Harold earnestly.
+
+Resignedly and with difficulty Tom removed the cigar--that is, he
+removed part of it, and then blew the remainder with a WHUT
+sound across the room, where it landed liquidly and limply in
+Mrs. Ahearn's lap.
+
+"Beg pardon," he mumbled, and rose with the vague intention of
+going after it. Milton's hand on his coat collapsed him in time,
+and Mrs. Ahearn not ungracefully flounced the tobacco from her
+skirt to the floor, never once looking at it.
+
+"I was sayin'," continued Tom thickly, "'fore 'at happened,"--he
+waved his hand apologetically toward Mrs. Ahearn--"I was sayin' I
+heard all truth that Country Club matter."
+
+Milton leaned and whispered something to him.
+
+"Lemme 'lone," he said petulantly; "know what I'm doin'.  'Ats
+what they came for."
+
+Evylyn sat there in a panic, trying to make her mouth form words.
+She saw her sister's sardonic expression and Mrs. Ahearn's face
+turning a vivid red. Ahearn was looking down at his watch-chain,
+fingering it.
+
+"I heard who's been keepin' y' out, an' he's not a bit better'n
+you. I can fix whole damn thing up. Would've before, but I didn't
+know you. Harol' tol' me you felt bad about the thing---"
+
+Milton Piper rose suddenly and awkwardly to his feet. In a second
+every one was standing tensely and Milton was saying something
+very hurriedly about having to go early, and the Ahearns were
+listening with eager intentness. Then Mrs. Ahearn swallowed and
+turned with a forced smile toward Jessie. Evylyn saw Tom lurch
+forward and put his hand on Ahearns shoulder--and suddenly she
+was listening to a new, anxious voice at her elbow, and, turning,
+found Hilda, the second maid.
+
+"Please, Mis' Piper, I tank Yulie got her hand poisoned. It's all
+swole up and her cheeks is hot and she's moanin' an'
+groanin'---"
+
+"Julie is?" Evylyn asked sharply. The party suddenly receded. She
+turned quickly, sought with her eyes for Mrs. Ahearn, slipped
+toward her.
+
+"If you'll excuse me, Mrs.--" She had momentarily forgotten the
+name, but she went right on:  "My little girl's been taken sick.
+I'll be down when I can." She turned and ran quickly up the
+stairs, retaining a confused picture of rays of cigar smoke and a
+loud discussion in the centre of the room that seemed to be
+developing into an argument.
+
+Switching on the light in the nursery, she found Julie tossing
+feverishly and giving out odd little cries. She put her hand
+against the cheeks. They were burning. With an exclamation she
+followed the arm down under the cover until she found the hand.
+Hilda was right. The whole thumb was swollen to the wrist and in
+the centre was a little inflamed sore. Blood-poisoning! her mind
+cried in terror. The bandage had come off the cut and she'd
+gotten something in it. She'd cut it at three o'clock--it was now
+nearly eleven. Eight hours. Blood-poisoning couldn't possibly
+develop so soon.
+
+She rushed to the 'phone.
+
+Doctor Martin across the street was out. Doctor Foulke, their
+family physician, didn't answer. She racked her brains and in
+desperation called her throat specialist, and bit her lip
+furiously while he looked up the numbers of two physicians.
+During that interminable moment she thought she heard loud voices
+down-stairs--but she seemed to be in another world now. After
+fifteen minutes she located a physician who sounded angry and
+sulky at being called out of bed. She ran back to the nursery
+and, looking at the hand, found it was somewhat more
+swollen.
+
+"Oh, God!" she cried, and kneeling beside the bed began smoothing
+back Julie's hair over and over. With a vague idea of getting
+some hot water, she rose and stared toward the door, but the lace
+of her dress caught in the bed-rail and she fell forward on her
+hands and knees. She struggled up and jerked frantically at the
+lace. The bed moved and Julie groaned. Then more quietly but with
+suddenly fumbling fingers she found the pleat in front, tore the
+whole pannier completely off, and rushed from the room.
+
+Out in the hall she heard a single loud, insistent voice, but as
+she reached the head of the stairs it ceased and an outer door
+banged.
+
+The music-room came into view. Only Harold and Milton were there,
+the former leaning against a chair, his face very pale, his
+collar open, and his mouth moving loosely.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+Milton looked at her anxiously.
+
+"There was a little trouble---"
+
+Then Harold saw her and, straightening up with an effort, began
+to speak.
+
+"Sult m'own cousin m'own house. God damn common nouveau rish.
+'Sult m'own cousin---"
+
+"Tom had trouble with Ahearn and Harold interfered," said Milton.
+"My Lord Milton," cried Evylyn, "couldn't you have done
+something?"
+
+"I tried; I---"
+
+"Julie's sick," she interrupted; "she's poisoned herself. Get him
+to bed if you can."
+
+Harold looked up.
+
+"Julie sick?"
+
+Paying no attention, Evylyn brushed by through the dining-room,
+catching sight, with a burst of horror, of the big punch-bowl
+still on the table, the liquid from melted ice in its bottom. She
+heard steps on the front stairs--it was Milton helping Harold
+up--and then a mumble: "Why, Julie's a'righ'."
+
+"Don't let him go into the nursery!" she shouted.
+
+The hours blurred into a nightmare. The doctor arrived just
+before midnight and within a half-hour had lanced the wound. He
+left at two after giving her the addresses of two nurses to call
+up and promising to return at half past six. It was
+blood-poisoning.
+
+At four, leaving Hilda by the bedside, she went to her room, and
+slipping with a shudder out of her evening dress, kicked it into a
+corner. She put on a house dress and returned to the nursery
+while Hilda went to make coffee.
+
+Not until noon could she bring herself to look into Harold's
+room, but when she did it was to find him awake and staring very
+miserably at the ceiling. He turned blood-shot hollow eyes upon
+her. For a minute she hated him, couldn't speak. A husky voice
+came from the bed.
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"Noon."
+
+"I made a damn fool---"
+
+"It doesn't matter," she said sharply. "Julie's got
+blood-poisoning. They may"--she choked over the words--"they
+think she'll have to lose her hand."
+
+"What?"
+
+"She cut herself on that--that bowl."
+
+"Last night?"
+
+"Oh, what does it matter?" see cried; "she's got blood-poisoning.
+Can't you hear?" He looked at her bewildered--sat half-way up
+in bed.
+
+"I'll get dressed," he said.
+
+Her anger subsided and a great wave of weariness and pity for him
+rolled over her. After all, it was his trouble, too.
+
+"Yes," she answered listlessly, "I suppose you'd better."
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+If Evylyn's beauty had hesitated an her early thirties it came to
+an abrupt decision just afterward and completely left her. A
+tentative outlay of wrinkles on her face suddenly deepened and
+flesh collected rapidly on her legs and hips and arms. Her
+mannerism of drawing her brows together had become an
+expression--it was habitual when she was reading or speaking and
+even while she slept. She was forty-six.
+
+As in most families whose fortunes have gone down rather than up,
+she and Harold had drifted into a colorless antagonism. In
+repose they looked at each other with the toleration they might
+have felt for broken old chairs; Evylyn worried a little when he
+was sick and did her best to be cheerful under the wearying
+depression of living with a disappointed man.
+
+Family bridge was over for the evening and she sighed with
+relief. She had made more mistakes than usual this evening and
+she didn't care. Irene shouldn't have made that remark about the
+infantry being particularly dangerous. There had been no letter
+for three weeks now, and, while this was nothing out of the
+ordinary, it never failed to make her nervous; naturally she
+hadn't known how many clubs were out.
+
+Harold had gone up-stairs, so she stepped out on the porch for a
+breath of fresh air. There was a bright glamour of moonlight
+diffusing on the sidewalks and lawns, and with a little half
+yawn, half laugh, she remembered one long moonlight affair of her
+youth. It was astonishing to think that life had once been the
+sum of her current love-affairs. It was now the sum of her
+current problems.
+
+There was the problem of Julie--Julie was thirteen, and lately
+she was growing more and more sensitive about her deformity and
+preferred to stay always in her room reading. A few years before
+she had been frightened at the idea of going to school, and
+Evylyn could not bring herself to send her, so she grew up in her
+mother's shadow, a pitiful little figure with the artificial
+hand that she made no attempt to use but kept forlornly in her
+pocket. Lately she had been taking lessons in using it because
+Evylyn had feared she would cease to lift the arm altogether, but
+after the lessons, unless she made a move with it in listless
+obedience to her mother, the little hand would creep back to the
+pocket of her dress. For a while her dresses were made without
+pockets, but Julie had moped around the house so miserably at a
+loss all one month that Evylyn weakened and never tried the
+experiment again.
+
+The problem of Donald had been different from the start.  She had
+attempted vainly to keep him near her as she had tried to teach
+Julie to lean less on her--lately the problem of Donald had been
+snatched out of her hands; his division had been abroad for three
+months.
+
+She yawned again--life was a thing for youth.  What a happy youth
+she must have had!  She remembered her pony, Bijou, and the trip
+to Europe with her mother when she was eighteen---
+
+"Very, very complicated," she said aloud and severely to the
+moon, and, stepping inside, was about to close the door when she
+heard a noise in the library and started.
+
+It was Martha, the middle-aged servant: they kept only one now.
+
+"Why, Martha!" she said in surprise.
+
+Martha turned quickly.
+
+"Oh, I thought you was up-stairs.  I was jist---"
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+Martha hesitated.
+
+"No; I---"  She stood there fidgeting.  "It was a letter, Mrs.
+Piper, that I put somewhere.
+
+"A letter?  Your own letter?" asked Evylyn.
+
+"No, it was to you. 'Twas this afternoon, Mrs. Piper, in the last
+mail. The postman give it to me and then the back door-bell
+rang. I had it in my hand, so I must have stuck it somewhere. I
+thought I'd just slip in now and find it."
+
+"What sort of a letter?  From Mr. Donald?"
+
+"No, it was an advertisement, maybe, or a business letter. It was
+a long narrow one, I remember."
+
+They began a search through the music-room, looking on trays and
+mantelpieces, and then through the library, feeling on the tops
+of rows of books. Martha paused in despair.
+
+"I can't think where. I went straight to the kitchen. The
+dining-room, maybe." She started hopefully for the dining-room,
+but turned suddenly at the sound of a gasp behind her. Evylyn had
+sat down heavily in a Morris chair, her brows drawn very close
+together eyes blanking furiously.
+
+"Are you sick?"
+
+For a minute there was no answer. Evylyn sat there very still and
+Martha could see the very quick rise and fall of her bosom.
+
+"Are you sick?" she repeated.
+
+"No," said Evylyn slowly, "but I know where the letter is. Go
+'way, Martha. I know."
+
+Wonderingly, Martha withdrew, and still Evylyn sat there, only
+the muscles around her eyes moving--contracting and relaxing and
+contracting again. She knew now where the letter was--she knew
+as well as if she had put it there herself. And she felt
+instinctively and unquestionably what the letter was. It was long
+and narrow like an advertisement, but up in the corner in large
+letters it said "War Department" and, in smaller letters below,
+"Official Business." She knew it lay there in the big bowl with
+her name in ink on the outside and her soul's death within.
+
+Rising uncertainly, she walked toward the dining-room, feeling
+her way along the bookcases and through the doorway. After a
+moment she found the light and switched it on.
+
+There was the bowl, reflecting the electric light in crimson
+squares edged with black and yellow squares edged with blue,
+ponderous and glittering, grotesquely and triumphantly ominous.
+She took a step forward and paused again; another step and she
+would see over the top and into the inside--another step and she
+would see an edge of white--another step--her hands fell on the
+rough, cold surface--
+
+In a moment she was tearing it open, fumbling with an obstinate
+fold, holding it before her while the typewritten page glared out
+and struck at her. Then it fluttered like a bird to the floor.
+The house that had seemed whirring, buzzing a moment since, was
+suddenly very quiet; a breath of air crept in through the open
+front door carrying the noise of a passing motor; she heard faint
+sounds from upstairs and then a grinding racket in the pipe
+behind the bookcases-her husband turning of a water-tap---
+
+And in that instant it was as if this were not, after all,
+Donald's hour except in so far as he was a marker in the
+insidious contest that had gone on in sudden surges and long,
+listless interludes between Evylyn and this cold, malignant thing
+of beauty, a gift of enmity from a man whose face she had long
+since forgotten.  With its massive, brooding passivity it lay
+there in the centre of her house as it had lain for years,
+throwing out the ice-like beams of a thousand eyes, perverse
+glitterings merging each into each, never aging, never changing.
+
+Evylyn sat down on the edge of the table and stared at it
+fascinated. It seemed to be smiling now, a very cruel smile, as
+if to say:
+
+"You see, this time I didn't have to hurt you directly. I didn't
+bother. You know it was I who took your son away. You know how
+cold I am and how hard and how beautiful, because once you were
+just as cold and hard and beautiful."
+
+The bowl seemed suddenly to turn itself over and then to distend
+and swell until it became a great canopy that glittered and
+trembled over the room, over the house, and, as the walls melted
+slowly into mist, Evylyn saw that it was still moving out, out
+and far away from her, shutting off far horizons and suns and
+moons and stars except as inky blots seen faintly through it. And
+under it walked all the people, and the light that came through
+to them was refracted and twisted until shadow seamed light and
+light seemed shadow--until the whole panoply of the world became
+changed and distorted under the twinkling heaven of
+the bowl.
+
+Then there came a far-away, booming voice like a low, clear bell.
+It came from the centre of the bowl and down the great sides to
+the ground and then bounced toward her eagerly.
+
+"You see, I am fate," it shouted, "and stronger than your puny
+plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your
+little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty
+and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and
+the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am
+the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control,
+the condiment in the dish of life."
+
+The booming sound stopped; the echoes rolled away over the wide
+land to the edge of the bowl that bounded the world and up the
+great sides and back to the centre where they hummed for a moment
+and died. Then the great walls began slowly to bear down upon
+her, growing smaller and smaller, coming closer and closer as if
+to crush her; and as she clinched her hands and waited for the
+swift bruise of the cold glass, the bowl gave a sudden wrench and
+turned over--and lay there on the side-board, shining and
+inscrutable, reflecting in a hundred prisms, myriad, many-colored
+glints and gleams and crossings and interlaces of light.
+
+The cold wind blew in again through to front door, and with a
+desperate, frantic energy Evylyn stretched both her arms around
+the bowl. She must be quick--she must be strong. She tightened
+her arms until they ached, tauted the thin strips of muscle under
+her soft flesh, and with a mighty effort raised it and held it.
+She felt the wind blow cold on her back where her dress had come
+apart from the strain of her effort, and as she felt it she
+turned toward it and staggered under the great weight out through
+the library and on toward the front door.  She must be
+quick--she must be strong. The blood in her arms throbbed dully
+and her knees kept giving way under her, but the feel of the cool
+glass was good.
+
+Out the front door she tottered and over to the stone steps, and
+there, summoning every fibre of her soul and body for a last
+effort, swung herself half around--for a second, as she tried to
+loose her hold, her numb fingers clung to the rough surface, and
+in that second she slipped and, losing balance, toppled forward
+with a despairing cry, her arms still around the bowl . . . down
+. . .
+
+Over the way lights went on; far down the block the crash was
+heard, and pedestrians rushed up wonderingly; up-stairs a tired
+man awoke from the edge of sleep and a little girl whimpered in a
+haunted doze. And all over the moonlit sidewalk around the
+still, black form, hundreds of prisms and cubes and splinters of
+glass reflected the light in little gleams of blue, and black
+edged with yellow, and yellow, and crimson edged with black.
+
+
+
+
+
+Bernice Bobs Her Hair
+
+
+
+
+After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of
+the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow
+expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this
+ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few
+of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional's deaf
+sister--and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who
+might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the
+gallery.
+
+The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker
+chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and
+ballroom. At these Saturday-night dances it was largely feminine;
+a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy
+hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms. The main function of
+the balcony was critical, it occasionally showed grudging
+admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies
+over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the
+summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world,
+and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will
+dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more
+popular, more dangerous, girls will sometimes be kissed in the
+parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers.
+
+But, after all, this critical circle is not close enough to the
+stage to see the actors' faces and catch the subtler byplay. It
+can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory
+deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one which
+states that every young man with a large income leads the life of
+a hunted partridge. It never really appreciates the drama of the
+shifting, semi-cruel world of adolescence. No; boxes,
+orchestra-circle, principals, and chorus be represented by the
+medley of faces and voices that sway to the plaintive African
+rhythm of Dyer's dance orchestra.
+
+From sixteen-year-old Otis Ormonde, who has two more years at
+Hill School, to G. Reece Stoddard, over whose bureau at home
+hangs a Harvard law diploma; from little Madeleine Hogue, whose
+hair still feels strange and uncomfortable on top of her head, to
+Bessie MacRae, who has been the life of the party a little too
+long--more than ten years--the medley is not only the centre of
+the stage but contains the only people capable of getting an
+unobstructed view of it.
+
+With a flourish and a bang the music stops. The couples exchange
+artificial, effortless smiles, facetiously repeat "LA-de-DA-DA
+dum-DUM," and then the clatter of young feminine voices soars
+over the burst of clapping.
+
+A few disappointed stags caught in midfloor as they had been
+about to cut in subsided listlessly back to the walls, because
+this was not like the riotous Christmas dances--these summer
+hops were considered just pleasantly warm and exciting, where
+even the younger marrieds rose and performed ancient waltzes and
+terrifying fox trots to the tolerant amusement of their younger
+brothers and sisters.
+
+Warren McIntyre, who casually attended Yale, being one of the
+unfortunate stags, felt in his dinner-coat pocket for a cigarette
+and strolled out onto the wide, semidark veranda, where couples
+were scattered at tables, filling the lantern-hung night with
+vague words and hazy laughter. He nodded here and there at the
+less absorbed and as he passed each couple some half-forgotten
+fragment of a story played in his mind, for it was not a large
+city and every one was Who's Who to every one else's past. There,
+for example, were Jim Strain and Ethel Demorest, who had been
+privately engaged for three years. Every one knew that as soon as
+Jim managed to hold a job for more than two months she would
+marry him. Yet how bored they both looked, and how wearily Ethel
+regarded Jim sometimes, as if she wondered why she had trained
+the vines of her affection on such a wind-shaken poplar.
+
+Warren was nineteen and rather pitying with those of his friends
+who hadn't gone East to college. But, like most boys, he bragged
+tremendously about the girls of his city when he was away from
+it. There was Genevieve Ormonde, who regularly made the rounds of
+dances, house-parties, and football games at Princeton, Yale,
+Williams, and Cornell; there was black-eyed Roberta Dillon, who
+was quite as famous to her own generation as Hiram Johnson or Ty
+Cobb; and, of course, there was Marjorie Harvey, who besides
+having a fairylike face and a dazzling, bewildering tongue was
+already justly celebrated for having turned five cart-wheels in
+succession during the last pump-and-slipper dance at New Haven.
+
+Warren, who had grown up across the street from Marjorie, had
+long been "crazy about her." Sometimes she seemed to reciprocate
+his feeling with a faint gratitude, but she had tried him by her
+infallible test and informed him gravely that she did not love
+him. Her test was that when she was away from him she forgot him
+and had affairs with other boys. Warren found this discouraging,
+especially as Marjorie had been making little trips all summer,
+and for the first two or three days after each arrival home he
+saw great heaps of mail on the Harveys' hall table addressed to
+her in various masculine handwritings. To make matters worse, all
+during the month of August she had been visited by her cousin
+Bernice from Eau Claire, and it seemed impossible to see her
+alone. It was always necessary to hunt round and find some one to
+take care of Bernice. As August waned this was becoming more and
+more difficult.
+
+Much as Warren worshipped Marjorie he had to admit that Cousin
+Bernice was sorta dopeless. She was pretty, with dark hair and
+high color, but she was no fun on a party. Every Saturday night
+he danced a long arduous duty dance with her to please Marjorie,
+but he had never been anything but bored in her company.
+
+"Warren"---a soft voice at his elbow broke in upon his thoughts,
+and he turned to see Marjorie, flushed and radiant as usual. She
+laid a hand on his shoulder and a glow settled almost
+imperceptibly over him.
+
+"Warren," she whispered "do something for me--dance with Bernice.
+She's been stuck with little Otis Ormonde for almost an
+hour."
+
+Warren's glow faded.
+
+"Why--sure," he answered half-heartedly.
+
+"You don't mind, do you? I'll see that you don't get stuck."
+
+"'Sall right."
+
+Marjorie smiled--that smile that was thanks enough.
+
+"You're an angel, and I'm obliged loads."
+
+With a sigh the angel glanced round the veranda, but Bernice and
+Otis were not in sight. He wandered back inside, and there in
+front of the women's dressing-room he found Otis in the centre of
+a group of young men who were convulsed with laughter. Otis was
+brandishing a piece of timber he had picked up, and discoursing
+volubly.
+
+"She's gone in to fix her hair," he announced wildly. "I'm
+waiting to dance another hour with her."
+
+Their laughter was renewed.
+
+"Why don't some of you cut in?" cried Otis resentfully. "She
+likes more variety."
+
+"Why, Otis," suggested a friend "you've just barely got used to
+her."
+
+"Why the two-by-four, Otis?" inquired Warren, smiling.
+
+"The two-by-four? Oh, this? This is a club. When she comes out
+I'll hit her on the head and knock her in again."
+
+Warren collapsed on a settee and howled with glee.
+
+"Never mind, Otis," he articulated finally. "I'm relieving you
+this time."
+
+Otis simulated a sudden fainting attack and handed the stick to
+Warren.
+
+"If you need it, old man," he said hoarsely.
+
+No matter how beautiful or brilliant a girl may be, the
+reputation of not being frequently cut in on makes her position
+at a dance unfortunate. Perhaps boys prefer her company to that
+of the butterflies with whom they dance a dozen times an but,
+youth in this jazz-nourished generation is temperamentally
+restless, and the idea of fox-trotting more than one full fox
+trot with the same girl is distasteful, not to say odious. When
+it comes to several dances and the intermissions between she can
+be quite sure that a young man, once relieved, will never tread
+on her wayward toes again.
+
+Warren danced the next full dance with Bernice, and finally,
+thankful for the intermission, he led her to a table on the
+veranda. There was a moment's silence while she did unimpressive
+things with her fan.
+
+"It's hotter here than in Eau Claire," she said.
+
+Warren stifled a sigh and nodded. It might be for all he knew or
+cared. He wondered idly whether she was a poor conversationalist
+because she got no attention or got no attention because she was
+a poor conversationalist.
+
+"You going to be here much longer?" he asked and then turned
+rather red. She might suspect his reasons for asking.
+
+"Another week," she answered, and stared at him as if to lunge at
+his next remark when it left his lips.
+
+Warren fidgeted. Then with a sudden charitable impulse he decided
+to try part of his line on her. He turned and looked at her
+eyes.
+
+"You've got an awfully kissable mouth," he began quietly.
+
+This was a remark that he sometimes made to girls at college
+proms when they were talking in just such half dark as this.
+Bernice distinctly jumped. She turned an ungraceful red and
+became clumsy with her fan. No one had ever made such a remark to
+her before.
+
+"Fresh!"---the word had slipped out before she realized it, and
+she bit her lip. Too late she decided to be amused, and offered
+him a flustered smile.
+
+Warren was annoyed. Though not accustomed to have that remark
+taken seriously, still it usually provoked a laugh or a paragraph
+of sentimental banter. And he hated to be called fresh, except
+in a joking way. His charitable impulse died and he switched the
+topic.
+
+"Jim Strain and Ethel Demorest sitting out as usual," he
+commented.
+
+This was more in Bernice's line, but a faint regret mingled with
+her relief as the subject changed. Men did not talk to her about
+kissable mouths, but she knew that they talked in some such way
+to other girls.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said, and laughed. "I hear they've been mooning
+around for years without a red penny. Isn't it silly?"
+
+Warren's disgust increased. Jim Strain was a close friend of his
+brother's, and anyway he considered it bad form to sneer at
+people for not having money. But Bernice had had no intention of
+sneering. She was merely nervous.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When Marjorie and Bernice reached home at half after midnight
+they said good night at the top of the stairs. Though cousins,
+they were not intimates. As a matter of fact Marjorie had no
+female intimates--she considered girls stupid. Bernice on the
+contrary all through this parent-arranged visit had rather longed
+to exchange those confidences flavored with giggles and tears
+that she considered an indispensable factor in all feminine
+intercourse. But in this respect she found Marjorie rather cold;
+felt somehow the same difficulty in talking to her that she had
+in talking to men. Marjorie never giggled, was never frightened,
+seldom embarrassed, and in fact had very few of the qualities
+which Bernice considered appropriately and blessedly feminine.
+
+As Bernice busied herself with tooth-brush and paste this night
+she wondered for the hundredth time why she never had any
+attention when she was away from home. That her family were the
+wealthiest in Eau Claire; that her mother entertained
+tremendously, gave little diners for her daughter before all
+dances and bought her a car of her own to drive round in, never
+occurred to her as factors in her home-town social success. Like
+most girls she had been brought up on the warm milk prepared by
+Annie Fellows Johnston and on novels in which the female was
+beloved because of certain mysterious womanly qualities always
+mentioned but never displayed.
+
+Bernice felt a vague pain that she was not at present engaged in
+being popular. She did not know that had it not been for
+Marjorie's campaigning she would have danced the entire evening
+with one man; but she knew that even in Eau Claire other girls
+with less position and less pulchritude were given a much bigger
+rush. She attributed this to something subtly unscrupulous in
+those girls. It had never worried her, and if it had her mother
+would have assured her that the other girls cheapened themselves
+and that men really respected girls like Bernice.
+
+She turned out the light in her bathroom, and on an impulse
+decided to go in and chat for a moment with her aunt Josephine,
+whose light was still on. Her soft slippers bore her noiselessly
+down the carpeted hall, but hearing voices inside she stopped
+near the partly openers door. Then she caught her own name, and
+without any definite intention of eavesdropping lingered--and the
+thread of the conversation going on inside pierced her
+consciousness sharply as if it had been drawn through with a
+needle.
+
+"She's absolutely hopeless!" It was Marjorie's voice. "Oh, I know
+what you're going to say! So many people have told you how
+pretty and sweet she is, and how she can cook! What of it? She
+has a bum time. Men don't like her."
+
+"What's a little cheap popularity?"
+
+Mrs. Harvey sounded annoyed.
+
+"It's everything when you're eighteen," said Marjorie
+emphatically. "I've done my best. I've been polite and I've made
+men dance with her, but they just won't stand being bored. When I
+think of that gorgeous coloring wasted on such a ninny, and
+think what Martha Carey could do with it--oh!"
+
+"There's no courtesy these days."
+
+Mrs. Harvey's voice implied that modern situations were too much
+for her. When she was a girl all young ladies who belonged to
+nice families had glorious times.
+
+"Well," said Marjorie, "no girl can permanently bolster up a
+lame-duck visitor, because these days it's every girl for
+herself. I've even tried to drop hints about clothes and things,
+and she's been furious--given me the funniest looks. She's
+sensitive enough to know she's not getting away with much, but
+I'll bet she consoles herself by thinking that she's very
+virtuous and that I'm too gay and fickle and will come to a bad
+end. All unpopular girls think that way. Sour grapes! Sarah
+Hopkins refers to Genevieve and Roberta and me as gardenia girls!
+I'll bet she'd give ten years of her life and her European
+education to be a gardenia girl and have three or four men in
+love with her and be cut in on every few feet at dances."
+
+"It seems to me," interrupted Mrs. Harvey rather wearily, "that
+you ought to be able to do something for Bernice. I know she's
+not very vivacious."
+
+Marjorie groaned.
+
+"Vivacious! Good grief! I've never heard her say anything to a
+boy except that it's hot or the floor's crowded or that she's
+going to school in New York next year. Sometimes she asks them
+what kind of car they have and tells them the kind she has.
+Thrilling!"
+
+There was a short silence and then Mrs. Harvey took up her
+refrain:
+
+"All I know is that other girls not half so sweet and attractive
+get partners. Martha Carey, for instance, is stout and loud, and
+her mother is distinctly common. Roberta Dillon is so thin this
+year that she looks as though Arizona were the place for her.
+She's dancing herself to death."
+
+"But, mother," objected Marjorie impatiently, "Martha is cheerful
+and awfully witty and an awfully slick girl, and Roberta's a
+marvellous dancer. She's been popular for ages!"
+
+Mrs. Harvey yawned.
+
+"I think it's that crazy Indian blood in Bernice," continued
+Marjorie. "Maybe she's a reversion to type.  Indian women all
+just sat round and never said anything."
+
+"Go to bed, you silly child," laughed Mrs. Harvey. "I wouldn't
+have told you that if I'd thought you were going to remember it.
+And I think most of your ideas are perfectly idiotic," she
+finished sleepily.
+
+There was another silence, while Marjorie considered whether or
+not convincing her mother was worth the trouble. People over
+forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At
+eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at
+forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
+
+Having decided this, Marjorie said good night. When she came out
+into the hall it was quite empty.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+While Marjorie was breakfasting late next day Bernice came into
+the room with a rather formal good morning, sat down opposite,
+stared intently over and slightly moistened her lips.
+
+"What's on your mind?" inquired Marjorie, rather puzzled.
+
+Bernice paused before she threw her hand-grenade.
+
+"I heard what you said about me to your mother last night."
+
+Marjorie was startled, but she showed only a faintly heightened
+color and her voice was quite even when she spoke.
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"In the hall. I didn't mean to listen--at first."
+
+After an involuntary look of contempt Marjorie dropped her eyes
+and became very interested in balancing a stray corn-flake on her
+finger.
+
+"I guess I'd better go back to Eau Claire--if I'm such a
+nuisance." Bernice's lower lip was trembling violently and she
+continued on a wavering note: "I've tried to be nice, and--and
+I've been first neglected and then insulted. No one ever visited
+me and got such treatment."
+
+Marjorie was silent.
+
+"But I'm in the way, I see. I'm a drag on you. Your friends don't
+like me." She paused, and then remembered another one of her
+grievances. "Of course I was furious last week when you tried to
+hint to me that that dress was unbecoming. Don't you think I know
+how to dress myself?"
+
+"No," murmured less than half-aloud.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I didn't hint anything," said Marjorie succinctly. "I said, as I
+remember, that it was better to wear a becoming dress three
+times straight than to alternate it with two frights."
+
+"Do you think that was a very nice thing to say?"
+
+"I wasn't trying to be nice." Then after a pause: "When do you
+want to go?"
+
+Bernice drew in her breath sharply.
+
+"Oh!" It was a little half-cry.
+
+Marjorie looked up in surprise.
+
+"Didn't you say you were going?"
+
+"Yes, but---"
+
+"Oh, you were only bluffing!"
+
+They stared at each other across the breakfast-table for a
+moment. Misty waves were passing before Bernice's eyes, while
+Marjorie's face wore that rather hard expression that she used
+when slightly intoxicated undergraduate's were making love to
+her.
+
+"So you were bluffing," she repeated as if it were what she might
+have expected.
+
+Bernice admitted it by bursting into tears. Marjorie's eyes
+showed boredom.
+
+"You're my cousin," sobbed Bernice. "I'm v-v-visiting you. I was
+to stay a month, and if I go home my mother will know and she'll
+wah-wonder---"
+
+Marjorie waited until the shower of broken words collapsed into
+little sniffles.
+
+"I'll give you my month's allowance," she said coldly, "and you
+can spend this last week anywhere you want. There's a very nice
+hotel---"
+
+Bernice's sobs rose to a flute note, and rising of a sudden she
+fled from the room.
+
+An hour later, while Marjorie was in the library absorbed in
+composing one of those non-committal marvelously elusive letters
+that only a young girl can write, Bernice reappeared, very
+red-eyed, and consciously calm. She cast no glance at Marjorie
+but took a book at random from the shelf and sat down as if to
+read. Marjorie seemed absorbed in her letter and continued
+writing. When the clock showed noon Bernice closed her book with
+a snap.
+
+"I suppose I'd better get my railroad ticket."
+
+This was not the beginning of the speech she had rehearsed
+up-stairs, but as Marjorie was not getting her cues--wasn't
+urging her to be reasonable; it's an a mistake--it was the best
+opening she could muster.
+
+"Just wait till I finish this letter," said Marjorie without
+looking round. "I want to get it off in the next mail."
+
+After another minute, during which her pen scratched busily, she
+turned round and relaxed with an air of "at your service." Again
+Bernice had to speak.
+
+"Do you want me to go home?"
+
+"Well," said Marjorie, considering, "I suppose if you're not
+having a good time you'd better go. No use being miserable."
+
+"Don't you think common kindness---"
+
+"Oh, please don't quote 'Little Women'!" cried Marjorie
+impatiently. "That's out of style."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Heavens, yes! What modern girl could live like those inane
+females?"
+
+"They were the models for our mothers."
+
+Marjorie laughed.
+
+"Yes, they were--not! Besides, our mothers were all very well in
+their way, but they know very little about their daughters'
+problems."
+
+Bernice drew herself up.
+
+"Please don't talk about my mother."
+
+Marjorie laughed.
+
+"I don't think I mentioned her."
+
+Bernice felt that she was being led away from her subject.
+
+"Do you think you've treated me very well?"
+
+"I've done my best. You're rather hard material to work with."
+
+The lids of Bernice's eyes reddened.
+
+"I think you're hard and selfish, and you haven't a feminine
+quality in you."
+
+"Oh, my Lord!" cried Marjorie in desperation "You little nut!
+Girls like you are responsible for all the tiresome colorless
+marriages; all those ghastly inefficiencies that pass as feminine
+qualities. What a blow it must be when a man with imagination
+marries the beautiful bundle of clothes that he's been building
+ideals round, and finds that she's just a weak, whining, cowardly
+mass of affectations!"
+
+Bernice's mouth had slipped half open.
+
+"The womanly woman!" continued Marjorie. "Her whole early life is
+occupied in whining criticisms of girls like me who really do
+have a good time."
+
+Bernice's jaw descended farther as Marjorie's voice rose.
+
+"There's some excuse for an ugly girl whining. If I'd been
+irretrievably ugly I'd never have forgiven my parents for
+bringing me into the world. But you're starting life without any
+handicap--" Marjorie's little fist clinched, "If you expect me to
+weep with you you'll be disappointed. Go or stay, just as you
+like." And picking up her letters she left the room.
+
+Bernice claimed a headache and failed to appear at luncheon. They
+had a matinée date for the afternoon, but the headache
+persisting, Marjorie made explanation to a not very downcast boy.
+But when she returned late in the afternoon she found Bernice
+with a strangely set face waiting for her in her bedroom.
+
+"I've decided," began Bernice without preliminaries, "that maybe
+you're right about things--possibly not. But if you'll tell me
+why your friends aren't--aren't interested in me I'll see if I
+can do what you want me to."
+
+Marjorie was at the mirror shaking down her hair.
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Without reservations? Will you do exactly what I say?"
+
+"Well, I---"
+
+"Well nothing! Will you do exactly as I say?"
+
+"If they're sensible things."
+
+"They're not! You're no case for sensible things."
+
+"Are you going to make--to recommend---"
+
+"Yes, everything. If I tell you to take boxing-lessons you'll
+have to do it. Write home and tell your mother you're going' to
+stay another two weeks.
+
+"If you'll tell me---"
+
+"All right--I'll just give you a few examples now. First you have
+no ease of manner. Why? Because you're never sure about your
+personal appearance. When a girl feels that she's perfectly
+groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That's
+charm. The more parts of yourself you can afford to forget the
+more charm you have."
+
+"Don't I look all right?"
+
+"No; for instance you never take care of your eyebrows. They're
+black and lustrous, but by leaving them straggly they're a
+blemish. They'd be beautiful if you'd take care of them in
+one-tenth the time you take doing nothing. You're going to brush
+them so that they'll grow straight."
+
+Bernice raised the brows in question.
+
+"Do you mean to say that men notice eyebrows?"
+
+"Yes--subconsciously. And when you go home you ought to have your
+teeth straightened a little. It's almost imperceptible,
+still---"
+
+"But I thought," interrupted Bernice in bewilderment, "that you
+despised little dainty feminine things like that."
+
+"I hate dainty minds," answered Marjorie. "But a girl has to be
+dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can
+talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get
+away with it."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Oh, I'm just beginning! There's your dancing."
+
+"Don't I dance all right?"
+
+"No, you don't--you lean on a man; yes, you do--ever so slightly.
+I noticed it when we were dancing together yesterday. And you
+dance standing up straight instead of bending over a little.
+Probably some old lady on the side-line once told you that you
+looked so dignified that way. But except with a very small girl
+it's much harder on the man, and he's the one that counts."
+
+"Go on." Bernice's brain was reeling.
+
+"Well, you've got to learn to be nice to men who are sad birds.
+You look as if you'd been insulted whenever you're thrown with
+any except the most popular boys. Why, Bernice, I'm cut in on
+every few feet--and who does most of it? Why, those very sad
+birds. No girl can afford to neglect them. They're the big part
+of any crowd. Young boys too shy to talk are the very best
+conversational practice. Clumsy boys are the best dancing
+practice. If you can follow them and yet look graceful you can
+follow a baby tank across a barb-wire sky-scraper."
+
+Bernice sighed profoundly, but Marjorie was not through.
+
+"If you go to a dance and really amuse, say, three sad birds that
+dance with you; if you talk so well to them that they forget
+they're stuck with you, you've done something. They'll come back
+next time, and gradually so many sad birds will dance with you
+that the attractive boys will see there's no danger of being
+stuck--then they'll dance with you."
+
+"Yes," agreed Bernice faintly. "I think I begin to see."
+
+"And finally," concluded Marjorie, "poise and charm will just
+come. You'll wake up some morning knowing you've attained it and
+men will know it too."
+
+Bernice rose.
+
+"It's been awfully kind of you--but nobody's ever talked to me
+like this before, and I feel sort of startled."
+
+Marjorie made no answer but gazed pensively at her own image in
+the mirror.
+
+"You're a peach to help me," continued Bernice.
+
+Still Marjorie did not answer, and Bernice thought she had seemed
+too grateful.
+
+"I know you don't like sentiment," she said timidly.
+
+Marjorie turned to her quickly.
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking about that. I was considering whether we
+hadn't better bob your hair."
+
+Bernice collapsed backward upon the bed.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+On the following Wednesday evening there was a dinner-dance at
+the country club. When the guests strolled in Bernice found her
+place-card with a slight feeling of irritation. Though at her
+right sat G. Reece Stoddard, a most desirable and distinguished
+young bachelor, the all-important left held only Charley Paulson.
+Charley lacked height, beauty, and social shrewdness, and in her
+new enlightenment Bernice decided that his only qualification to
+be her partner was that he had never been stuck with her.  But
+this feeling of irritation left with the last of the soup-plates,
+and Marjorie's specific instruction came to her. Swallowing her
+pride she turned to Charley Paulson and plunged.
+
+"Do you think I ought to bob my hair, Mr. Charley Paulson?"
+
+Charley looked up in surprise.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I'm considering it. It's such a sure and easy way of
+attracting attention."
+
+Charley smiled pleasantly. He could not know this had been
+rehearsed. He replied that he didn't know much about bobbed hair.
+But Bernice was there to tell him.
+
+"I want to be a society vampire, you see," she announced coolly,
+and went on to inform him that bobbed hair was the necessary
+prelude. She added that she wanted to ask his advice, because she
+had heard he was so critical about girls.
+
+Charley, who knew as much about the psychology of women as he did
+of the mental states of Buddhist contemplatives, felt vaguely
+flattered.
+
+"So I've decided," she continued, her voice rising slightly,
+"that early next week I'm going down to the Sevier Hotel
+barber-shop, sit in the first chair, and get my hair bobbed." She
+faltered noticing that the people near her had paused in their
+conversation and were listening; but after a confused second
+Marjorie's coaching told, and she finished her paragraph to the
+vicinity at large. "Of course I'm charging admission, but if
+you'll all come down and encourage me I'll issue passes for the
+inside seats."
+
+There was a ripple of appreciative laughter, and under cover of
+it G. Reece Stoddard leaned over quickly and said close to her
+ear: "I'll take a box right now."
+
+She met his eyes and smiled as if he had said something
+surprisingly brilliant.
+
+"Do you believe in bobbed hair?" asked G. Reece in the same
+undertone.
+
+"I think it's unmoral," affirmed Bernice gravely. "But, of
+course, you've either got to amuse people or feed 'em or shock
+'em." Marjorie had culled this from Oscar Wilde. It was greeted
+with a ripple of laughter from the men and a series of quick,
+intent looks from the girls. And then as though she had said
+nothing of wit or moment Bernice turned again to Charley and
+spoke confidentially in his ear.
+
+"I want to ask you your opinion of several people. I imagine
+you're a wonderful judge of character."
+
+Charley thrilled faintly--paid her a subtle compliment by
+overturning her water.
+
+Two hours later, while Warren McIntyre was standing passively in
+the stag line abstractedly watching the dancers and wondering
+whither and with whom Marjorie had disappeared, an unrelated
+perception began to creep slowly upon him--a perception that
+Bernice, cousin to Marjorie, had been cut in on several times in
+the past five minutes. He closed his eyes, opened them and looked
+again. Several minutes back she had been dancing with a visiting
+boy, a matter easily accounted for; a visiting boy would know no
+better. But now she was dancing with some one else, and there
+was Charley Paulson headed for her with enthusiastic
+determination in his eye. Funny--Charley seldom danced with more
+than three girls an evening.
+
+Warren was distinctly surprised when--the exchange having been
+effected--the man relieved proved to be none ether than G. Reece
+Stoddard himself. And G. Reece seemed not at all jubilant at
+being relieved. Next time Bernice danced near, Warren regarded
+her intently. Yes, she was pretty, distinctly pretty; and
+to-night her face seemed really vivacious. She had that look that
+no woman, however histrionically proficient, can successfully
+counterfeit--she looked as if she were having a good time. He
+liked the way she had her hair arranged, wondered if it was
+brilliantine that made it glisten so. And that dress was
+becoming--a dark red that set off her shadowy eyes and high
+coloring. He remembered that he had thought her pretty when she
+first came to town, before he had realized that she was dull. Too
+bad she was dull--dull girls unbearable--certainly pretty
+though.
+
+His thoughts zigzagged back to Marjorie. This disappearance would
+be like other disappearances. When she reappeared he would
+demand where she had been--would be told emphatically that it was
+none of his business. What a pity she was so sure of him! She
+basked in the knowledge that no other girl in town interested
+him; she defied him to fall in love with Genevieve or
+Roberta.
+
+Warren sighed. The way to Marjorie's affections was a labyrinth
+indeed. He looked up. Bernice was again dancing with the visiting
+boy. Half unconsciously he took a step out from the stag line in
+her direction, and hesitated. Then he said to himself that it
+was charity. He walked toward her--collided suddenly with G.
+Reece Stoddard.
+
+"Pardon me," said Warren.
+
+But G. Reece had not stopped to apologize. He had again cut in on
+Bernice.
+
+That night at one o'clock Marjorie, with one hand on the
+electric-light switch in the hall, turned to take a last look at
+Bernice's sparkling eyes.
+
+"So it worked?"
+
+"Oh, Marjorie, yes!" cried Bernice.
+
+"I saw you were having a gay time."
+
+"I did! The only trouble was that about midnight I ran short of
+talk. I had to repeat myself--with different men of course. I
+hope they won't compare notes."
+
+"Men don't," said Marjorie, yawning, "and it wouldn't matter if
+they did--they'd think you were even trickier."
+
+She snapped out the light, and as they started up the stairs
+Bernice grasped the banister thankfully. For the first time in
+her life she had been danced tired.
+
+"You see," said Marjorie it the top of the stairs, "one man sees
+another man cut in and he thinks there must be something there.
+Well, we'll fix up some new stuff to-morrow.  Good night."
+
+"Good night."
+
+As Bernice took down her hair she passed the evening before her
+in review.  She had followed instructions exactly.  Even when
+Charley Paulson cut in for the eighth time she had simulated
+delight and had apparently been both interested and flattered.
+She had not talked about the weather or Eau Claire or automobiles
+or her school, but had confined her conversation to me, you, and
+us.
+
+But a few minutes before she fell asleep a rebellious thought was
+churning drowsily in her brain--after all, it was she who had
+done it.  Marjorie, to be sure, had given her her conversation,
+but then Marjorie got much of her conversation out of things she
+read.  Bernice had bought the red dress, though she had never
+valued it highly before Marjorie dug it out of her trunk--and her
+own voice had said the words, her own lips had smiled, her own
+feet had danced.  Marjorie nice girl--vain, though--nice
+evening--nice boys--like Warren--Warren--Warren--what's his
+name--Warren---
+
+She fell asleep.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+To Bernice the next week was a revelation.  With the feeling that
+people really enjoyed looking at her and listening to her came
+the foundation of self-confidence.  Of course there were numerous
+mistakes at first.  She did not know, for instance, that
+Draycott Deyo was studying for the ministry; she was unaware that
+he had cut in on her because he thought she was a quiet,
+reserved girl. Had she known these things she would not have
+treated him to the line which began "Hello, Shell Shock!" and
+continued with the bathtub story--"It takes a frightful lot of
+energy to fix my hair in the summer--there's so much of it--so I
+always fix it first and powder my face and put on my hat; then I
+get into the bathtub, and dress afterward. Don't you think that's
+the best plan?"
+
+Though Draycott Deyo was in the throes of difficulties concerning
+baptism by immersion and might possibly have seen a connection,
+it must be admitted that he did not. He considered feminine
+bathing an immoral subject, and gave her some of his ideas on the
+depravity of modern society.
+
+But to offset that unfortunate occurrence Bernice had several
+signal successes to her credit. Little Otis Ormonde pleaded off
+from a trip East and elected instead to follow her with a
+puppylike devotion, to the amusement of his crowd and to the
+irritation of G. Reece Stoddard, several of whose afternoon calls
+Otis completely ruined by the disgusting tenderness of the
+glances he bent on Bernice. He even told her the story of the
+two-by-four and the dressing-room to show her how frightfully
+mistaken he and every one else had been in their first judgment
+of her. Bernice laughed off that incident with a slight sinking
+sensation.
+
+Of all Bernice's conversation perhaps the best known and most
+universally approved was the line about the bobbing of her hair.
+
+"Oh, Bernice, when you goin' to get the hair bobbed?"
+
+"Day after to-morrow maybe," she would reply, laughing. "Will you
+come and see me? Because I'm counting on you, you know."
+
+"Will we? You know! But you better hurry up."
+
+Bernice, whose tonsorial intentions were strictly dishonorable,
+would laugh again.
+
+"Pretty soon now. You'd be surprised."
+
+But perhaps the most significant symbol of her success was the
+gray car of the hypercritical Warren McIntyre, parked daily in
+front of the Harvey house. At first the parlor-maid was
+distinctly startled when he asked for Bernice instead of
+Marjorie; after a week of it she told the cook that Miss Bernice
+had gotta holda Miss Marjorie's best fella.
+
+And Miss Bernice had. Perhaps it began with Warren's desire to
+rouse jealousy in Marjorie; perhaps it was the familiar though
+unrecognized strain of Marjorie in Bernice's conversation;
+perhaps it was both of these and something of sincere attraction
+besides. But somehow the collective mind of the younger set knew
+within a week that Marjorie's most reliable beau had made an
+amazing face-about and was giving an indisputable rush to
+Marjorie's guest. The question of the moment was how Marjorie
+would take it. Warren called Bernice on the 'phone twice a day,
+sent her notes, and they were frequently seen together in his
+roadster, obviously engrossed in one of those tense, significant
+conversations as to whether or not he was sincere.
+
+Marjorie on being twitted only laughed. She said she was mighty
+glad that Warren had at last found some one who appreciated him.
+So the younger set laughed, too, and guessed that Marjorie didn't
+care and let it go at that.
+
+One afternoon when there were only three days left of her visit
+Bernice was waiting in the hall for Warren, with whom she was
+going to a bridge party. She was in rather a blissful mood, and
+when Marjorie--also bound for the party--appeared beside her and
+began casually to adjust her hat in the mirror, Bernice was
+utterly unprepared for anything in the nature of a clash.
+Marjorie did her work very coldly and succinctly in three
+sentences.
+
+"You may as well get Warren out of your head," she said coldly.
+
+"What?" Bernice was utterly astounded.
+
+"You may as well stop making a fool of yourself over Warren
+McIntyre. He doesn't care a snap of his fingers about you."
+
+For a tense moment they regarded each other--Marjorie scornful,
+aloof; Bernice astounded, half-angry, half-afraid. Then two cars
+drove up in front of the house and there was a riotous honking.
+Both of them gasped faintly, turned, and side by side hurried
+out.
+
+All through the bridge party Bernice strove in vain to master a
+rising uneasiness. She had offended Marjorie, the sphinx of
+sphinxes. With the most wholesome and innocent intentions in the
+world she had stolen Marjorie's property. She felt suddenly and
+horribly guilty. After the bridge game, when they sat in an
+informal circle and the conversation became general, the storm
+gradually broke. Little Otis Ormonde inadvertently precipitated
+it.
+
+"When you going back to kindergarten, Otis?" some one had asked.
+
+"Me? Day Bernice gets her hair bobbed."
+
+"Then your education's over," said Marjorie quickly. "That's only
+a bluff of hers. I should think you'd have realized."
+
+"That a fact?" demanded Otis, giving Bernice a reproachful
+glance.
+
+Bernice's ears burned as she tried to think up an effectual
+come-back. In the face of this direct attack her imagination was
+paralyzed.
+
+"There's a lot of bluffs in the world," continued Marjorie quite
+pleasantly. "I should think you'd be young enough to know that,
+Otis."
+
+"Well," said Otis, "maybe so. But gee!  With a line like
+Bernice's---"
+
+"Really?" yawned Marjorie. "What's her latest bon mot?"
+
+No one seemed to know. In fact, Bernice, having trifled with her
+muse's beau, had said nothing memorable of late.
+
+"Was that really all a line?" asked Roberta curiously.
+
+Bernice hesitated. She felt that wit in some form was demanded of
+her, but under her cousin's suddenly frigid eyes she was
+completely incapacitated.
+
+"I don't know," she stalled.
+
+"Splush!" said Marjorie. "Admit it!"
+
+Bernice saw that Warren's eyes had left a ukulele he had been
+tinkering with and were fixed on her questioningly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know!" she repeated steadily. Her cheeks were
+glowing.
+
+"Splush!" remarked Marjorie again.
+
+"Come through, Bernice," urged Otis. "Tell her where to get off."
+Bernice looked round again--she seemed unable to get away from
+Warren's eyes.
+
+"I like bobbed hair," she said hurriedly, as if he had asked her
+a question, "and I intend to bob mine."
+
+"When?" demanded Marjorie.
+
+"Any time."
+
+"No time like the present," suggested Roberta.
+
+Otis jumped to his feet.
+
+"Good stuff!" he cried. "We'll have a summer bobbing party.
+Sevier Hotel barber-shop, I think you said."
+
+In an instant all were on their feet. Bernice's heart throbbed
+violently.
+
+"What?" she gasped.
+
+Out of the group came Marjorie's voice, very clear and
+contemptuous.
+
+"Don't worry--she'll back out!"
+
+"Come on, Bernice!" cried Otis, starting toward the door.
+
+Four eyes--Warren's and Marjorie's--stared at her, challenged
+her, defied her. For another second she wavered wildly.
+
+"All right," she said swiftly "I don't care if I do."
+
+An eternity of minutes later, riding down-town through the late
+afternoon beside Warren, the others following in Roberta's car
+close behind, Bernice had all the sensations of Marie Antoinette
+bound for the guillotine in a tumbrel. Vaguely she wondered why
+she did not cry out that it was all a mistake. It was all she
+could do to keep from clutching her hair with both bands to
+protect it from the suddenly hostile world. Yet she did neither.
+Even the thought of her mother was no deterrent now. This was the
+test supreme of her sportsmanship; her right to walk
+unchallenged in the starry heaven of popular girls.
+
+Warren was moodily silent, and when they came to the hotel he
+drew up at the curb and nodded to Bernice to precede him out.
+Roberta's car emptied a laughing crowd into the shop, which
+presented two bold plate-glass windows to the street.
+
+Bernice stood on the curb and looked at the sign, Sevier
+Barber-Shop. It was a guillotine indeed, and the hangman was the
+first barber, who, attired in a white coat and smoking a
+cigarette, leaned nonchalantly against the first chair. He must
+have heard of her; he must have been waiting all week, smoking
+eternal cigarettes beside that portentous, too-often-mentioned
+first chair. Would they blind-fold her? No, but they would tie a
+white cloth round her neck lest any of her blood--nonsense--hair--should
+get on her clothes.
+
+"All right, Bernice," said Warren quickly.
+
+With her chin in the air she crossed the sidewalk, pushed open
+the swinging screen-door, and giving not a glance to the
+uproarious, riotous row that occupied the waiting bench, went up
+to the fat barber.
+
+"I want you to bob my hair."
+
+The first barber's mouth slid somewhat open. His cigarette
+dropped to the floor.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"My hair--bob it!"
+
+Refusing further preliminaries, Bernice took her seat on high. A
+man in the chair next to her turned on his side and gave her a
+glance, half lather, half amazement. One barber started and
+spoiled little Willy Schuneman's monthly haircut. Mr. O'Reilly in
+the last chair grunted and swore musically in ancient Gaelic as
+a razor bit into his cheek. Two bootblacks became wide-eyed and
+rushed for her feet. No, Bernice didn't care for a shine.
+
+Outside a passer-by stopped and stared; a couple joined him; half
+a dozen small boys' nose sprang into life, flattened against the
+glass; and snatches of conversation borne on the summer breeze
+drifted in through the screen-door.
+
+"Lookada long hair on a kid!"
+
+"Where'd yuh get 'at stuff? 'At's a bearded lady he just finished
+shavin'."
+
+But Bernice saw nothing, heard nothing. Her only living sense
+told her that this man in the white coat had removed one
+tortoise-shell comb and then another; that his fingers were
+fumbling clumsily with unfamiliar hairpins; that this hair, this
+wonderful hair of hers, was going--she would never again feel its
+long voluptuous pull as it hung in a dark-brown glory down her
+back. For a second she was near breaking down, and then the
+picture before her swam mechanically into her vision--Marjorie's
+mouth curling in a faint ironic smile as if to say:
+
+"Give up and get down! You tried to buck me and I called your
+bluff. You see you haven't got a prayer."
+
+And some last energy rose up in Bernice, for she clinched her
+hands under the white cloth, and there was a curious narrowing of
+her eyes that Marjorie remarked on to some one long afterward.
+
+Twenty minutes later the barber swung her round to face the
+mirror, and she flinched at the full extent of the damage that
+had been wrought. Her hair was not curls and now it lay in lank
+lifeless blocks on both sides of her suddenly pale face. It was
+ugly as sin--she had known it would be ugly as sin. Her face's
+chief charm had been a Madonna-like simplicity. Now that was gone
+and she was--well frightfully mediocre--not stagy; only
+ridiculous, like a Greenwich Villager who had left her spectacles
+at home.
+
+As she climbed down from the chair she tried to smile--failed
+miserably. She saw two of the girls exchange glances; noticed
+Marjorie's mouth curved in attenuated mockery--and that Warren's
+eyes were suddenly very cold.
+
+"You see,"--her words fell into an awkward pause--"I've done it."
+
+"Yes, you've--done it," admitted Warren.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+There was a half-hearted "Sure" from two or three voices, another
+awkward pause, and then Marjorie turned swiftly and with
+serpentlike intensity to Warren.
+
+"Would you mind running me down to the cleaners?" she asked.
+"I've simply got to get a dress there before supper. Roberta's
+driving right home and she can take the others."
+
+Warren stared abstractedly at some infinite speck out the window.
+Then for an instant his eyes rested coldly on Bernice before
+they turned to Marjorie.
+
+"Be glad to," he said slowly.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Bernice did not fully realize the outrageous trap that had been
+set for her until she met her aunt's amazed glance just before
+dinner.
+
+"Why Bernice!"
+
+"I've bobbed it, Aunt Josephine."
+
+"Why, child!"
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Why Bernice!"
+
+"I suppose I've shocked you."
+
+"No, but what'll Mrs. Deyo think tomorrow night? Bernice, you
+should have waited until after the Deyo's dance--you should have
+waited if you wanted to do that."
+
+"It was sudden, Aunt Josephine. Anyway, why does it matter to
+Mrs. Deyo particularly?"
+
+"Why child," cried Mrs. Harvey, "in her paper on 'The Foibles of
+the Younger Generation' that she read at the last meeting of the
+Thursday Club she devoted fifteen minutes to bobbed hair. It's
+her pet abomination. And the dance is for you and Marjorie!"
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"Oh, Bernice, what'll your mother say? She'll think I let you do
+it."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+Dinner was an agony. She had made a hasty attempt with a
+curling-iron, and burned her finger and much hair. She could see
+that her aunt was both worried and grieved, and her uncle kept
+saying, "Well, I'll be darned!" over and over in a hurt and
+faintly hostile torte. And Marjorie sat very quietly, intrenched
+behind a faint smile, a faintly mocking smile.
+
+Somehow she got through the evening. Three boy's called; Marjorie
+disappeared with one of them, and Bernice made a listless
+unsuccessful attempt to entertain the two others--sighed
+thankfully as she climbed the stairs to her room at half past
+ten. What a day!
+
+When she had undressed for the night the door opened and Marjorie
+came in.
+
+"Bernice," she said "I'm awfully sorry about the Deyo dance. I'll
+give you my word of honor I'd forgotten all about it."
+
+"'Sall right," said Bernice shortly. Standing before the mirror
+she passed her comb slowly through her short hair.
+
+"I'll take you down-town to-morrow," continued Marjorie, "and the
+hairdresser'll fix it so you'll look slick. I didn't imagine
+you'd go through with it. I'm really mighty sorry."
+
+"Oh, 'sall right!"
+
+"Still it's your last night, so I suppose it won't matter much."
+
+Then Bernice winced as Marjorie tossed her own hair over her
+shoulders and began to twist it slowly into two long blond braids
+until in her cream-colored negligée she looked like a delicate
+painting of some Saxon princess. Fascinated, Bernice watched the
+braids grow. Heavy and luxurious they were moving under the
+supple fingers like restive snakes--and to Bernice remained this
+relic and the curling-iron and a to-morrow full of eyes. She
+could see G. Reece Stoddard, who liked her, assuming his Harvard
+manner and telling his dinner partner that Bernice shouldn't have
+been allowed to go to the movies so much; she could see Draycott
+Deyo exchanging glances with his mother and then being
+conscientiously charitable to her. But then perhaps by to-morrow
+Mrs. Deyo would have heard the news; would send round an icy
+little note requesting that she fail to appear--and behind her
+back they would all laugh and know that Marjorie had made a fool
+of her; that her chance at beauty had been sacrificed to the
+jealous whim of a selfish girl. She sat down suddenly before the
+mirror, biting the inside of her cheek.
+
+"I like it," she said with an effort. "I think it'll be
+becoming."
+
+Marjorie smiled.
+
+"It looks all right. For heaven's sake, don't let it worry you!"
+
+"I won't."
+
+"Good night Bernice."
+
+But as the door closed something snapped within Bernice. She
+sprang dynamically to her feet, clinching her hands, then swiftly
+and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it
+dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and
+a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly
+dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She
+moved quietly, but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an
+hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed
+in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped her
+pick out.
+
+Sitting down at her desk she wrote a short note to Mrs. Harvey,
+in which she briefly outlined her reasons for going. She sealed
+it, addressed it, and laid it on her pillow. She glanced at her
+watch. The train left at one, and she knew that if she walked
+down to the Marborough Hotel two blocks away she could easily get
+a taxicab.
+
+Suddenly she drew in her breath sharply and an expression flashed
+into her eyes that a practiced character reader might have
+connected vaguely with the set look she had worn in the barber's
+chair--somehow a development of it. It was quite a new look for
+Bernice--and it carried consequences.
+
+She went stealthily to the bureau, picked up an article that lay
+there, and turning out all the lights stood quietly until her
+eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Softly she pushed open
+the door to Marjorie's room. She heard the quiet, even breathing
+of an untroubled conscience asleep.
+
+She was by the bedside now, very deliberate and calm. She acted
+swiftly. Bending over she found one of the braids of Marjorie's
+hair, followed it up with her hand to the point nearest the head,
+and then holding it a little slack so that the sleeper would
+feel no pull, she reached down with the shears and severed it.
+With the pigtail in her hand she held her breath. Marjorie had
+muttered something in her sleep. Bernice deftly amputated the
+other braid, paused for an instant, and then flitted swiftly and
+silently back to her own room.
+
+Down-stairs she opened the big front door, closed it carefully
+behind her, and feeling oddly happy and exuberant stepped off the
+porch into the moonlight, swinging her heavy grip like a
+shopping-bag. After a minute's brisk walk she discovered that her
+left hand still held the two blond braids. She laughed
+unexpectedly--had to shut her mouth hard to keep from emitting an
+absolute peal. She was passing Warren's house now, and on the
+impulse she set down her baggage, and swinging the braids like
+piece of rope flung them at the wooden porch, where they landed
+with a slight thud. She laughed again, no longer restraining
+herself.
+
+"Huh," she giggled wildly. "Scalp the selfish thing!"
+
+Then picking up her staircase she set off at a half-run down the
+moonlit street.
+
+
+
+
+
+Benediction
+
+
+
+
+The Baltimore Station was hot and crowded, so Lois was forced to
+stand by the telegraph desk for interminable, sticky seconds
+while a clerk with big front teeth counted and recounted a large
+lady's day message, to determine whether it contained the
+innocuous forty-nine words or the fatal fifty-one.
+
+Lois, waiting, decided she wasn't quite sure of the address, so
+she took the letter out of her bag and ran over it again.
+
+"Darling," IT BEGAN--"I understand and I'm happier than life ever
+meant me to be. If I could give you the things you've always
+been in tune with--but I can't Lois; we can't marry and we can't
+lose each other and let all this glorious love end in nothing.
+
+"Until your letter came, dear, I'd been sitting here in the half
+dark and thinking where I could go and ever forget you; abroad,
+perhaps, to drift through Italy or Spain and dream away the pain
+of having lost you where the crumbling ruins of older, mellower
+civilizations would mirror only the desolation of my heart--and
+then your letter came.
+
+"Sweetest, bravest girl, if you'll wire me I'll meet you in
+Wilmington--till then I'll be here just waiting and hoping for
+every long dream of you to come true.
+                                           "Howard."
+
+She had read the letter so many times that she knew it word by
+word, yet it still startled her. In it she found many faint
+reflections of the man who wrote it--the mingled sweetness and
+sadness in his dark eyes, the furtive, restless excitement she
+felt sometimes when he talked to her, his dreamy sensuousness
+that lulled her mind to sleep. Lois was nineteen and very
+romantic and curious and courageous.
+
+The large lady and the clerk having compromised on fifty words,
+Lois took a blank and wrote her telegram. And there were no
+overtones to the finality of her decision.
+
+It's just destiny--she thought--it's just the way things work
+out in this damn world. If cowardice is all that's been holding
+me back there won't be any more holding back. So we'll just let
+things take their course and never be sorry.
+
+The clerk scanned her telegram:
+
+"Arrived Baltimore today spend day with my brother meet me
+Wilmington three P.M. Wednesday
+Love
+
+                                      "Lois."
+
+"Fifty-four cents," said the clerk admiringly.
+
+And never be sorry--thought Lois--and never be sorry---
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Trees filtering light onto dapple grass. Trees like tall, languid
+ladies with feather fans coquetting airily with the ugly roof of
+the monastery. Trees like butlers, bending courteously over
+placid walks and paths. Trees, trees over the hills on either
+side and scattering out in clumps and lines and woods all through
+eastern Maryland, delicate lace on the hems of many yellow
+fields, dark opaque backgrounds for flowered bushes or wild
+climbing garden.
+
+Some of the trees were very gay and young, but the monastery
+trees were older than the monastery which, by true monastic
+standards, wasn't very old at all. And, as a matter of fact, it
+wasn't technically called a monastery, but only a seminary;
+nevertheless it shall be a monastery here despite its Victorian
+architecture or its Edward VII additions, or even its Woodrow
+Wilsonian, patented, last-a-century roofing.
+
+Out behind was the farm where half a dozen lay brothers were
+sweating lustily as they moved with deadly efficiency around the
+vegetable-gardens. To the left, behind a row of elms, was an
+informal baseball diamond where three novices were being batted
+out by a fourth, amid great chasings and puffings and blowings.
+And in front as a great mellow bell boomed the half-hour a swarm
+of black, human leaves were blown over the checker-board of paths
+under the courteous trees.
+
+Some of these black leaves were very old with cheeks furrowed
+like the first ripples of a splashed pool. Then there was a
+scattering of middle-aged leaves whose forms when viewed in
+profile in their revealing gowns were beginning to be faintly
+unsymmetrical. These carried thick volumes of Thomas Aquinas and
+Henry James and Cardinal Mercier and Immanuel Kant and many
+bulging note-books filled with lecture data.
+
+But most numerous were the young leaves; blond boys of nineteen
+with very stern, conscientious expressions; men in the late
+twenties with a keen self-assurance from having taught out in the
+world for five years--several hundreds of them, from city and
+town and country in Maryland and Pennsylvania and Virginia and
+West Virginia and Delaware.
+
+There were many Americans and some Irish and some tough Irish and
+a few French, and several Italians and Poles, and they walked
+informally arm in arm with each other in twos and threes or in
+long rows, almost universally distinguished by the straight mouth
+and the considerable chin--for this was the Society of Jesus,
+founded in Spain five hundred years before by a tough-minded
+soldier who trained men to hold a breach or a salon, preach a
+sermon or write a treaty, and do it and not argue . . .
+
+Lois got out of a bus into the sunshine down by the outer gate.
+She was nineteen with yellow hair and eyes that people were
+tactful enough not to call green. When men of talent saw her in a
+street-car they often furtively produced little stub-pencils and
+backs of envelopes and tried to sum up that profile or the thing
+that the eyebrows did to her eyes. Later they looked at their
+results and usually tore them up with wondering sighs.
+
+Though Lois was very jauntily attired in an expensively
+appropriate travelling affair, she did not linger to pat out the
+dust which covered her clothes, but started up the central walk
+with curious glances at either side. Her face was very eager and
+expectant, yet she hadn't at all that glorified expression that
+girls wear when they arrive for a Senior Prom at Princeton or New
+Haven; still, as there were no senior proms here, perhaps it
+didn't matter.
+
+She was wondering what he would look like, whether she'd possibly
+know him from his picture. In the picture, which hung over her
+mother's bureau at home, he seemed very young and hollow-cheeked
+and rather pitiful, with only a well-developed mouth and all
+ill-fitting probationer's gown to show that he had already made a
+momentous decision about his life. Of course he had been only
+nineteen then and now he was thirty-six--didn't look like that at
+all; in recent snap-shots he was much broader and his hair had
+grown a little thin--but the impression of her brother she had
+always retained was that of the big picture. And so she had
+always been a little sorry for him. What a life for a man!
+Seventeen years of preparation and he wasn't even a priest
+yet--wouldn't be for another year.
+
+Lois had an idea that this was all going to be rather solemn if
+she let it be. But she was going to give her very best imitation
+of undiluted sunshine, the imitation she could give even when her
+head was splitting or when her mother had a nervous breakdown or
+when she was particularly romantic and curious and courageous.
+This brother of hers undoubtedly needed cheering up, and he was
+going to be cheered up, whether he liked it or not.
+
+As she drew near the great, homely front door she saw a man break
+suddenly away from a group and, pulling up the skirts of his
+gown, run toward her. He was smiling, she noticed, and he looked
+very big and--and reliable. She stopped and waited, knew that her
+heart was beating unusually fast.
+
+"Lois!" he cried, and in a second she was in his arms. She was
+suddenly trembling.
+
+"Lois!" he cried again, "why, this is wonderful! I can't tell
+you, Lois, how MUCH I've looked forward to this. Why, Lois,
+you're beautiful!"
+
+Lois gasped.
+
+His voice, though restrained, was vibrant with energy and that
+odd sort of enveloping personality she had thought that she only
+of the family possessed.
+
+"I'm mighty glad, too--Kieth."
+
+She flushed, but not unhappily, at this first use of his name.
+
+"Lois--Lois--Lois," he repeated in wonder. "Child, we'll go in
+here a minute, because I want you to meet the rector, and then
+we'll walk around. I have a thousand things to talk to you
+about."
+
+His voice became graver. "How's mother?"
+
+She looked at him for a moment and then said something that she
+had not intended to say at all, the very sort of thing she had
+resolved to avoid.
+
+"Oh, Kieth--she's--she's getting worse all the time, every way."
+
+He nodded slowly as if he understood.
+
+"Nervous, well--you can tell me about that later. Now---"
+
+She was in a small study with a large desk, saying something to a
+little, jovial, white-haired priest who retained her hand for
+some seconds.
+
+"So this is Lois!"
+
+He said it as if he had heard of her for years.
+
+He entreated her to sit down.
+
+Two other priests arrived enthusiastically and shook hands with
+her and addressed her as "Kieth's little sister," which she found
+she didn't mind a bit.
+
+How assured they seemed; she had expected a certain shyness,
+reserve at least. There were several jokes unintelligible to her,
+which seemed to delight every one, and the little Father Rector
+referred to the trio of them as "dim old monks," which she
+appreciated, because of course they weren't monks at all. She had
+a lightning impression that they were especially fond of
+Kieth--the Father Rector had called him "Kieth" and one of the
+others had kept a hand on his shoulder all through the
+conversation. Then she was shaking hands again and promising to
+come back a little later for some ice-cream, and smiling and
+smiling and being rather absurdly happy . . . she told herself
+that it was because Kieth was so delighted in showing her off.
+
+Then she and Kieth were strolling along a path, arm in arm, and
+he was informing her what an absolute jewel the Father Rector
+was.
+
+"Lois," he broke off suddenly, "I want to tell you before we go
+any farther how much it means to me to have you come up here. I
+think it was--mighty sweet of you. I know what a gay time you've
+been having."
+
+Lois gasped. She was not prepared for this. At first when she had
+conceived the plan of taking the hot journey down to Baltimore
+staying the night with a friend and then coming out to see her
+brother, she had felt rather consciously virtuous, hoped he
+wouldn't be priggish or resentful about her not having come
+before--but walking here with him under the trees seemed such a
+little thing, and surprisingly a happy thing.
+
+"Why, Kieth," she said quickly, "you know I couldn't have waited
+a day longer. I saw you when I was five, but of course I didn't
+remember, and how could I have gone on without practically ever
+having seen my only brother?"
+
+"It was mighty sweet of you, Lois," he repeated.
+
+Lois blushed--he DID have personality.
+
+"I want you to tell me all about yourself," he said after a
+pause. "Of course I have a general idea what you and mother did
+in Europe those fourteen years, and then we were all so worried,
+Lois, when you had pneumonia and couldn't come down with
+mother--let's see that was two years ago--and then, well, I've
+seen your name in the papers, but it's all been so
+unsatisfactory. I haven't known you, Lois."
+
+She found herself analyzing his personality as she analyzed the
+personality of every man she met. She wondered if the effect
+of--of intimacy that he gave was bred by his constant repetition
+of her name. He said it as if he loved the word, as if it had an
+inherent meaning to him.
+
+"Then you were at school," he continued.
+
+"Yes, at Farmington. Mother wanted me to go to a convent--but I
+didn't want to."
+
+She cast a side glance at him to see if he would resent this.
+
+But he only nodded slowly.
+
+"Had enough convents abroad, eh?"
+
+"Yes--and Kieth, convents are different there anyway. Here even
+in the nicest ones there are so many COMMON girls."
+
+He nodded again.
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "I suppose there are, and I know how you feel
+about it. It grated on me here, at first, Lois, though I wouldn't
+say that to any one but you; we're rather sensitive, you and I,
+to things like this."
+
+"You mean the men here?"
+
+"Yes, some of them of course were fine, the sort of men I'd
+always been thrown with, but there were others; a man named
+Regan, for instance--I hated the fellow, and now he's about the
+best friend I have. A wonderful character, Lois; you'll meet him
+later. Sort of man you'd like to have with you in a fight."
+
+Lois was thinking that Kieth was the sort of man she'd like to
+have with HER in a fight.
+
+"How did you--how did you first happen to do it?" she asked,
+rather shyly, "to come here, I mean. Of course mother told me the
+story about the Pullman car."
+
+"Oh, that---" He looked rather annoyed.
+
+"Tell me that. I'd like to hear you tell it."
+
+"Oh, it's nothing except what you probably know. It was evening
+and I'd been riding all day and thinking about--about a hundred
+things, Lois, and then suddenly I had a sense that some one was
+sitting across from me, felt that he'd been there for some time,
+and had a vague idea that he was another traveller. All at once
+he leaned over toward me and I heard a voice say: 'I want you to
+be a priest, that's what I want.' Well I jumped up and cried out,
+'Oh, my God, not that!'--made an idiot of myself before about
+twenty people; you see there wasn't any one sitting there at all.
+A week after that I went to the Jesuit College in Philadelphia
+and crawled up the last flight of stairs to the rector's office
+on my hands and knees."
+
+There was another silence and Lois saw that her brother's eyes
+wore a far-away look, that he was staring unseeingly out over the
+sunny fields. She was stirred by the modulations of his voice
+and the sudden silence that seemed to flow about him when he
+finished speaking.
+
+She noticed now that his eyes were of the same fibre as hers,
+with the green left out, and that his mouth was much gentler,
+really, than in the picture--or was it that the face had grown
+up to it lately? He was getting a little bald just on top of his
+head. She wondered if that was from wearing a hat so much. It
+seemed awful for a man to grow bald and no one to care about it.
+
+"Were you--pious when you were young, Kieth?" she asked. "You
+know what I mean. Were you religious? If you don't mind these
+personal questions."
+
+"Yes," he said with his eyes still far away--and she felt that
+his intense abstraction was as much a part of his personality as
+his attention. "Yes, I suppose I was, when I was--sober."
+
+Lois thrilled slightly.
+
+"Did you drink?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I was on the way to making a bad hash of things." He smiled and,
+turning his gray eyes on her, changed the subject.
+
+"Child, tell me about mother. I know it's been awfully hard for
+you there, lately. I know you've had to sacrifice a lot and put
+up with a great deal and I want you to know how fine of you I
+think it is. I feel, Lois, that you're sort of taking the place
+of both of us there."
+
+Lois thought quickly how little she had sacrificed; how lately
+she had constantly avoided her nervous, half-invalid mother.
+
+"Youth shouldn't be sacrificed to age, Kieth," she said steadily.
+
+"I know," he sighed, "and you oughtn't to have the weight on
+your shoulders, child. I wish I were there to help you."
+
+She saw how quickly he had turned her remark and instantly she
+knew what this quality was that he gave off. He was SWEET. Her
+thoughts went of on a side-track and then she broke the silence
+with an odd remark.
+
+"Sweetness is hard," she said suddenly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing," she denied in confusion. "I didn't mean to speak
+aloud. I was thinking of something--of a conversation with a man
+named Freddy Kebble."
+
+"Maury Kebble's brother?"
+
+"Yes," she said rather surprised to think of him having known
+Maury Kebble. Still there was nothing strange about it. "Well, he
+and I were talking about sweetness a few weeks ago. Oh, I don't
+know--I said that a man named Howard--that a man I knew was
+sweet, and he didn't agree with me, and we began talking about
+what sweetness in a man was: He kept telling me I meant a sort of
+soppy softness, but I knew I didn't--yet I didn't know exactly
+how to put it. I see now. I meant just the opposite. I suppose
+real sweetness is a sort of hardness--and strength."
+
+Kieth nodded.
+
+"I see what you mean. I've known old priests who had it."
+
+"I'm talking about young men," she said rather defiantly.
+
+They had reached the now deserted baseball diamond and, pointing
+her to a wooden bench, he sprawled full length on the grass.
+
+"Are these YOUNG men happy here, Kieth?"
+
+"Don't they look happy, Lois?"
+
+"I suppose so, but those YOUNG ones, those two we just
+passed--have they--are they---?
+
+"Are they signed up?" he laughed. "No, but they will be next
+month."
+
+"Permanently?"
+
+"Yes--unless they break down mentally or physically. Of course in
+a discipline like ours a lot drop out."
+
+"But those BOYS. Are they giving up fine chances outside--like
+you did?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Some of them."
+
+"But Kieth, they don't know what they're doing. They haven't had
+any experience of what they're missing."
+
+"No, I suppose not."
+
+"It doesn't seem fair. Life has just sort of scared them at
+first. Do they all come in so YOUNG?"
+
+"No, some of them have knocked around, led pretty wild
+lives--Regan, for instance."
+
+"I should think that sort would be better," she said
+meditatively, "men that had SEEN life."
+
+"No," said Kieth earnestly, "I'm not sure that knocking about
+gives a man the sort of experience he can communicate to others.
+Some of the broadest men I've known have been absolutely rigid
+about themselves. And reformed libertines are a notoriously
+intolerant class. Don't you thank so, Lois?"
+
+She nodded, still meditative, and he continued:
+
+"It seems to me that when one weak reason goes to another, it
+isn't help they want; it's a sort of companionship in guilt,
+Lois. After you were born, when mother began to get nervous she
+used to go and weep with a certain Mrs. Comstock. Lord, it used
+to make me shiver. She said it comforted her, poor old mother.
+No, I don't think that to help others you've got to show yourself
+at all. Real help comes from a stronger person whom you respect.
+And their sympathy is all the bigger because it's impersonal."
+
+"But people want human sympathy," objected Lois. "They want to
+feel the other person's been tempted."
+
+"Lois, in their hearts they want to feel that the other person's
+been weak. That's what they mean by human.
+
+"Here in this old monkery, Lois," he continued with a smile, "they
+try to get all that self-pity and pride in our own wills out of
+us right at the first. They put us to scrubbing floors--and other
+things. It's like that idea of saving your life by losing it.
+You see we sort of feel that the less human a man is, in your
+sense of human, the better servant he can be to humanity. We
+carry it out to the end, too. When one of us dies his family
+can't even have him then. He's buried here under plain wooden
+cross with a thousand others."
+
+His tone changed suddenly and he looked at her with a great
+brightness in his gray eyes.
+
+"But way back in a man's heart there are some things he can't get
+rid of--an one of them is that I'm awfully in love with my
+little sister."
+
+With a sudden impulse she knelt beside him in the grass and,
+Leaning over, kissed his forehead.
+
+"You're hard, Kieth," she said, "and I love you for it--and
+you're sweet."
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Back in the reception-room Lois met a half-dozen more of Kieth's
+particular friends; there was a young man named Jarvis, rather
+pale and delicate-looking, who, she knew, must be a grandson of
+old Mrs. Jarvis at home, and she mentally compared this ascetic
+with a brace of his riotous uncles.
+
+And there was Regan with a scarred face and piercing intent eyes
+that followed her about the room and often rested on Kieth with
+something very like worship.  She knew then what Kieth had meant
+about "a good man to have with you in a fight."
+
+He's the missionary type--she thought vaguely--China or something.
+
+"I want Kieth's sister to show us what the shimmy is," demanded
+one young man with a broad grin.
+
+Lois laughed.
+
+"I'm afraid the Father Rector would send me shimmying out the
+gate. Besides, I'm not an expert."
+
+"I'm sure it wouldn't be best for Jimmy's soul anyway," said
+Kieth solemnly. "He's inclined to brood about things like
+shimmys. They were just starting to do the--maxixe, wasn't it,
+Jimmy?--when he became a monk, and it haunted him his whole first
+year. You'd see him when he was peeling potatoes, putting his
+arm around the bucket and making irreligious motions with his
+feet."
+
+There was a general laugh in which Lois joined.
+
+"An old lady who comes here to Mass sent Kieth this ice-cream,"
+whispered Jarvis under cover of the laugh, "because she'd heard
+you were coming. It's pretty good, isn't it?"
+
+There were tears trembling in Lois' eyes.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Then half an hour later over in the chapel things suddenly went
+all wrong. It was several years since Lois had been at
+Benediction and at first she was thrilled by the gleaming
+monstrance with its central spot of white, the air rich and heavy
+with incense, and the sun shining through the stained-glass
+window of St. Francis Xavier overhead and falling in warm red
+tracery on the cassock of the man in front of her, but at the
+first notes of the "O SALUTARIS HOSTIA" a heavy weight seemed to
+descend upon her soul. Kieth was on her right and young Jarvis on
+her left, and she stole uneasy glance at both of them.
+
+What's the matter with me? she thought impatiently.
+
+She looked again. Was there a certain coldness in both their
+profiles, that she had not noticed before--a pallor about the
+mouth and a curious set expression in their eyes? She shivered
+slightly: they were like dead men.
+
+She felt her soul recede suddenly from Kieth's. This was her
+brother--this, this unnatural person. She caught herself in the
+act of a little laugh.
+
+"What is the matter with me?"
+
+She passed her hand over her eyes and the weight increased. The
+incense sickened her and a stray, ragged note from one of the
+tenors in the choir grated on her ear like the shriek of a
+slate-pencil. She fidgeted, and raising her hand to her hair
+touched her forehead, found moisture on it.
+
+"It's hot in here, hot as the deuce."
+
+Again she repressed a faint laugh and, then in an instant the
+weight on her heart suddenly diffused into cold fear. . . . It
+was that candle on the altar. It was all wrong--wrong. Why didn't
+somebody see it? There was something IN it. There was something
+coming out of it, taking form and shape above it.
+
+She tried to fight down her rising panic, told herself it was the
+wick. If the wick wasn't straight, candles did something--but
+they didn't do this! With incalculable rapidity a force was
+gathering within her, a tremendous, assimilative force, drawing
+from every sense, every corner of her brain, and as it surged up
+inside her she felt an enormous terrified repulsion. She drew her
+arms in close to her side away from Kieth and Jarvis.
+
+Something in that candle . . . she was leaning forward--in
+another moment she felt she would go forward toward it--didn't
+any one see it? . . . anyone?
+
+"Ugh!"
+
+She felt a space beside her and something told her that Jarvis
+had gasped and sat down very suddenly . . . then she was kneeling
+and as the flaming monstrance slowly left the altar in the hands
+of the priest, she heard a great rushing noise in her ears--the
+crash of the bells was like hammer-blows . . . and then in a
+moment that seemed eternal a great torrent rolled over her
+heart--there was a shouting there and a lashing as of waves . . .
+
+. . . She was calling, felt herself calling for Kieth, her lips
+mouthing the words that would not come:
+
+"Kieth! Oh, my God! KIETH!"
+
+Suddenly she became aware of a new presence, something external,
+in front of her, consummated and expressed in warm red tracery.
+Then she knew. It was the window of St. Francis Xavier. Her mind
+gripped at it, clung to it finally, and she felt herself calling
+again endlessly, impotently--Kieth--Kieth!
+
+Then out of a great stillness came a voice:
+
+"BLESSED BE GOD."
+
+With a gradual rumble sounded the response rolling heavily
+through the chapel:
+
+"Blessed be God."
+
+The words sang instantly in her heart; the incense lay mystically
+and sweetly peaceful upon the air, and THE CANDLE ON THE ALTAR
+WENT OUT.
+
+"Blessed be His Holy Name."
+
+"Blessed be His Holy Name."
+
+Everything blurred into a swinging mist. With a sound half-gasp,
+half-cry she rocked on her feet and reeled backward into Kieth's
+suddenly outstretched arms.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"Lie still, child."
+
+She closed her eyes again. She was on the grass outside, pillowed
+on Kieth's arm, and Regan was dabbing her head with a cold towel.
+
+"I'm all right," she said quietly.
+
+"I know, but just lie still a minute longer. It was too hot in
+there. Jarvis felt it, too."
+
+She laughed as Regan again touched her gingerly with the towel.
+
+"I'm all right," she repeated.
+
+But though a warm peace was falling her mind and heart she felt
+oddly broken and chastened, as if some one had held her stripped
+soul up and laughed.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Half an hour later she walked leaning on Kieth's arm down the
+long central path toward the gate.
+
+"It's been such a short afternoon," he sighed, "and I'm so sorry
+you were sick, Lois."
+
+"Kieth, I'm feeling fine now, really; I wish you wouldn't worry."
+
+"Poor old child. I didn't realize that Benediction'd be a long
+service for you after your hot trip out here and all."
+
+She laughed cheerfully.
+
+"I guess the truth is I'm not much used to Benediction. Mass is
+the limit of my religious exertions."
+
+She paused and then continued quickly:
+
+"I don't want to shock you, Kieth, but I can't tell you how--how
+INCONVENIENT being a Catholic is. It really doesn't seem to apply
+any more. As far as morals go, some of the wildest boys I know
+are Catholics. And the brightest boys--I mean the ones who think
+and read a lot, don't seem to believe in much of anything any
+more."
+
+"Tell me about it. The bus won't be here for another half-hour."
+
+They sat down on a bench by the path.
+
+"For instance, Gerald Carter, he's published a novel. He
+absolutely roars when people mention immortality. And then
+Howa--well, another man I've known well, lately, who was Phi Beta
+Kappa at Harvard says that no intelligent person can believe in
+Supernatural Christianity. He says Christ was a great socialist,
+though. Am I shocking you?"
+
+She broke off suddenly.
+
+Kieth smiled.
+
+"You can't shock a monk. He's a professional shock-absorber."
+
+"Well," she continued, "that's about all. It seems so--so NARROW.
+Church schools, for instance. There's more freedom about things
+that Catholic people can't see--like birth control."
+
+Kieth winced, almost imperceptibly, but Lois saw it.
+
+"Oh," she said quickly, "everybody talks about everything now."
+
+"It's probably better that way."
+
+"Oh, yes, much better. Well, that's all, Kieth. I just wanted to
+tell you why I'm a little--luke-warm, at present."
+
+"I'm not shocked, Lois. I understand better than you think. We
+all go through those times. But I know it'll come out all right,
+child. There's that gift of faith that we have, you and I,
+that'll carry us past the bad spots."
+
+He rose as he spoke and they started again down the path.
+
+"I want you to pray for me sometimes, Lois. I think your prayers
+would be about what I need. Because we've come very close in
+these few hours, I think."
+
+Her eyes were suddenly shining.
+
+"Oh we have, we have!" she cried. "I feel closer to you now than
+to any one in the world."
+
+He stopped suddenly and indicated the side of the path.
+
+"We might--just a minute---"
+
+It was a pietà, a life-size statue of the Blessed Virgin set
+within a semicircle of rocks.
+
+Feeling a little self-conscious she dropped on her knees beside
+him and made an unsuccessful attempt at prayer.
+
+She was only half through when he rose. He took her arm again.
+
+"I wanted to thank Her for letting as have this day together," he
+said simply.
+
+Lois felt a sudden lump in her throat and she wanted to say
+something that would tell him how much it had meant to her, too.
+But she found no words.
+
+"I'll always remember this," he continued, his voice trembling a
+little---"this summer day with you. It's been just what I
+expected. You're just what I expected, Lois."
+
+"I'm awfully glad, Keith."
+
+"You see, when you were little they kept sending me snap-shots of
+you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the
+beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful
+little girl with wondering, pure eyes--and I used to build dreams
+about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I
+think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near
+me--even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea
+of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a
+million things came up to me and said: 'Look here at me! See, I'm
+Life. You're turning your back on it!' All the way through that
+shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead
+of me, very frail and clear and wonderful."
+
+Lois was crying softly. They had reached the gate and she rested
+her elbow on it and dabbed furiously at her eyes.
+
+"And then later, child, when you were sick I knelt all one night
+and asked God to spare you for me--for I knew then that I wanted
+more; He had taught me to want more. I wanted to know you moved
+and breathed in the same world with me. I saw you growing up,
+that white innocence of yours changing to a flame and burning to
+give light to other weaker souls. And then I wanted some day to
+take your children on my knee and hear them call the crabbed old
+monk Uncle Kieth."
+
+He seemed to be laughing now as he talked.
+
+"Oh, Lois, Lois, I was asking God for more then. I wanted the
+letters you'd write me and the place I'd have at your table. I
+wanted an awful lot, Lois, dear."
+
+"You've got me, Kieth," she sobbed "you know it, say you know it.
+Oh, I'm acting like a baby but I didn't think you'd be this way,
+and I--oh, Kieth--Kieth---"
+
+He took her hand and patted it softly.
+
+"Here's the bus. You'll come again won't you?"
+
+She put her hands on his cheeks, add drawing his head down,
+pressed her tear-wet face against his.
+
+"Oh, Kieth, brother, some day I'll tell you something."
+
+He helped her in, saw her take down her handkerchief and smile
+bravely at him, as the driver kicked his whip and the bus rolled
+off. Then a thick cloud of dust rose around it and she was gone.
+
+For a few minutes he stood there on the road his hand on the
+gate-post, his lips half parted in a smile.
+
+"Lois," he said aloud in a sort of wonder, "Lois, Lois."
+
+Later, some probationers passing noticed him kneeling before the
+pietà, and coming back after a time found him still there. And he
+was there until twilight came down and the courteous trees grew
+garrulous overhead and the crickets took up their burden of song
+in the dusky grass.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The first clerk in the telegraph booth in the Baltimore Station
+whistled through his buck teeth at the second clerk:
+
+"S'matter?"
+
+"See that girl--no, the pretty one with the big black dots on her
+veil. Too late--she's gone. You missed somep'n."
+
+"What about her?"
+
+"Nothing. 'Cept she's damn good-looking. Came in here yesterday
+and sent a wire to some guy to meet her somewhere. Then a minute
+ago she came in with a telegram all written out and was standin'
+there goin' to give it to me when she changed her mind or somep'n
+and all of a sudden tore it up."
+
+"Hm."
+
+The first clerk came around tile counter and picking up the two
+pieces of paper from the floor put them together idly. The second
+clerk read them over his shoulder and subconsciously counted the
+words as he read. There were just thirteen.
+
+"This is in the way of a permanent goodbye. I should suggest
+Italy.
+
+                                                      "Lois."
+
+"Tore it up, eh?" said the second clerk.
+
+
+
+
+
+Dalyrimple Goes Wrong
+
+
+
+
+In the millennium an educational genius will write a book to be
+given to every young man on the date of his disillusion. This
+work will have the flavor of Montaigne's essays and Samuel
+Butler's note-books--and a little of Tolstoi and Marcus
+Aurelius. It will be neither cheerful nor pleasant but will
+contain numerous passages of striking humor. Since first-class
+minds never believe anything very strongly until they've
+experienced it, its value will be purely relative . . . all
+people over thirty will refer to it as "depressing."
+
+This prelude belongs to the story of a young man
+who lived, as you and I do, before the book.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The generation which numbered Bryan Dalyrimple drifted out of
+adolescence to a mighty fan-fare of trumpets. Bryan played the
+star in an affair which included a Lewis gun and a nine-day romp
+behind the retreating German lines, so luck triumphant or
+sentiment rampant awarded him a row of medals and on his arrival
+in the States he was told that he was second in importance only
+to General Pershing and Sergeant York. This was a lot of fun.
+The governor of his State, a stray congressman, and a citizens'
+committee gave him enormous smiles and "By God, Sirs" on the
+dock at Hoboken; there were newspaper reporters and
+photographers who said "would you mind" and "if you could just";
+and back in his home town there were old ladies, the rims of
+whose eyes grew red as they talked to him, and girls who hadn't
+remembered him so well since his father's business went blah! in
+nineteen-twelve.
+
+But when the shouting died he realized that for a month he had
+been the house guest of the mayor, that he had only fourteen
+dollars in the world and that "the name that will live forever
+in the annals and legends of this State" was already living
+there very quietly and obscurely.
+
+One morning he lay late in bed and just outside his door he
+heard the up-stairs maid talking to the cook. The up-stairs maid
+said that Mrs. Hawkins, the mayor's wife, had been trying for a
+week to hint Dalyrimple out of the house. He left at eleven
+o'clock in intolerable confusion, asking that his trunk be sent
+to Mrs. Beebe's boarding-house.
+
+Dalyrimple was twenty-three and he had never worked. His father
+had given him two years at the State University and passed away
+about the time of his son's nine-day romp, leaving behind him
+some mid-Victorian furniture and a thin packet of folded paper
+that turned out to be grocery bills. Young Dalyrimple had very
+keen gray eyes, a mind that delighted the army psychological
+examiners, a trick of having read it--whatever it was--some time
+before, and a cool hand in a hot situation. But these things did
+not save him a final, unresigned sigh when he realized that he
+had to go to work--right away.
+
+It was early afternoon when he walked into the office of Theron
+G. Macy, who owned the largest wholesale grocery house in town.
+Plump, prosperous, wearing a pleasant but quite unhumorous
+smile, Theron G. Macy greeted him warmly.
+
+"Well--how do, Bryan? What's on your mind?"
+
+To Dalyrimple, straining with his admission, his own words, when
+they came, sounded like an Arab beggar's whine for alms.
+
+"Why--this question of a job." ("This question of a job" seemed
+somehow more clothed than just "a job.")
+
+"A job?" An almost imperceptible breeze blew across Mr. Macy's
+expression.
+
+"You see, Mr. Macy," continued Dalyrimple, "I feel I'm wasting
+time. I want to get started at something. I had several chances
+about a month ago but they all seem to have--gone---"
+
+"Let's see," interrupted Mr. Macy. "What were they?"
+
+"Well, just at the first the governor said something about a
+vacancy on his staff. I was sort of counting on that for a
+while, but I hear he's given it to Allen Gregg, you know, son of
+G. P. Gregg. He sort of forgot what he said to me--just talking,
+I guess."
+
+"You ought to push those things."
+
+"Then there was that engineering expedition, but they decided
+they'd have to have a man who knew hydraulics, so they couldn't
+use me unless I paid my own way."
+
+"You had just a year at the university?"
+
+"Two. But I didn't take any science or mathematics. Well, the
+day the battalion paraded, Mr. Peter Jordan said something about
+a vacancy in his store. I went around there to-day and I found
+he meant a sort of floor-walker--and then you said something one
+day"--he paused and waited for the older man to take him up, but
+noting only a minute wince continued--"about a position, so I
+thought I'd come and see you."
+
+"There was a position," confessed Mr. Macy reluctantly, "but
+since then we've filled it." He cleared his throat again.
+"You've waited quite a while."
+
+"Yes, I suppose I did. Everybody told me there was no hurry--and
+I'd had these various offers."
+
+Mr. Macy delivered a paragraph on present-day opportunities
+which Dalyrimple's mind completely skipped.
+
+"Have you had any business experience?"
+
+"I worked on a ranch two summers as a rider."
+
+"Oh, well," Mr. Macy disparaged this neatly, and then continued:
+"What do you think you're worth?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, Bryan, I tell you, I'm willing to strain a point and give
+you a chance."
+
+Dalyrimple nodded.
+
+"Your salary won't be much. You'll start by learning the stock.
+Then you'll come in the office for a while. Then you'll go on
+the road. When could you begin?"
+
+"How about to-morrow?"
+
+"All right. Report to Mr. Hanson in the stock-room. He'll start
+you off."
+
+He continued to regard Dalyrimple steadily until the latter,
+realizing that the interview was over, rose awkwardly.
+
+"Well, Mr. Macy, I'm certainly much obliged."
+
+"That's all right. Glad to help you, Bryan."
+
+After an irresolute moment, Dalyrimple found himself in the
+hall. His forehead was covered with perspiration, and the room
+had not been hot.
+
+"Why the devil did I thank the son of a gun?" he muttered.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Next morning Mr. Hanson informed him coldly of the necessity of
+punching the time-clock at seven every morning, and delivered
+him for instruction into the hands of a fellow worker, one
+Charley Moore.
+
+Charley was twenty-six, with that faint musk of weakness hanging
+about him that is often mistaken for the scent of evil. It took
+no psychological examiner to decide that he had drifted into
+indulgence and laziness as casually as he had drifted into life,
+and was to drift out. He was pale and his clothes stank of
+smoke; he enjoyed burlesque shows, billiards, and Robert
+Service, and was always looking back upon his last intrigue or
+forward to his next one. In his youth his taste had run to loud
+ties, but now it seemed to have faded, like his vitality, and
+was expressed in pale-lilac four-in-hands and indeterminate
+gray collars. Charley was listlessly struggling that losing
+struggle against mental, moral, and physical anæmia that takes
+place ceaselessly on the lower fringe of the middle classes.
+
+The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal
+cartons and carefully went over the limitations of the Theron
+G. Macy Company.
+
+"It's a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me.
+I'm quittin' in a coupla months. Hell! Me stay with this bunch!"
+
+The Charley Moores are always going to change jobs next month.
+They do, once or twice in their careers, after which they sit
+around comparing their last job with the present one, to the
+infinite disparagement of the latter.
+
+"What do you get?" asked Dalyrimple curiously.
+
+"Me? I get sixty." This rather defiantly.
+
+"Did you start at sixty?"
+
+"Me? No, I started at thirty-five. He told me he'd put me on the
+road after I learned the stock. That's what he tells 'em all."
+
+"How long've you been here?" asked Dalyrimple with a sinking
+sensation.
+
+"Me? Four years. My last year, too, you bet your boots."
+
+Dalyrimple rather resented the presence of the store detective
+as he resented the time-clock, and he came into contact with him
+almost immediately through the rule against smoking. This rule
+was a thorn in his side. He was accustomed to his three or four
+cigarettes in a morning, and after three days without it he
+followed Charley Moore by a circuitous route up a flight of back
+stairs to a little balcony where they indulged in peace. But
+this was not for long. One day in his second week the detective
+met him in a nook of the stairs, on his descent, and told him
+sternly that next time he'd be reported to Mr. Macy. Dalyrimple
+felt like an errant schoolboy.
+
+Unpleasant facts came to his knowledge. There were
+"cave-dwellers" in the basement who had worked there for ten or
+fifteen years at sixty dollars a month, rolling barrels and
+carrying boxes through damp, cement-walled corridors, lost in
+that echoing half-darkness between seven and five-thirty and,
+like himself, compelled several times a month to work until nine
+at night.
+
+At the end of a month he stood in line and received forty
+dollars. He pawned a cigarette-case and a pair of field-glasses
+and managed to live--to eat, sleep, and smoke. It was, however,
+a narrow scrape; as the ways and means of economy were a closed
+book to him and the second month brought no increase, he voiced
+his alarm.
+
+"If you've got a drag with old Macy, maybe he'll raise you," was
+Charley's disheartening reply. "But he didn't raise ME till I'd
+been here nearly two years."
+
+"I've got to live," said Dalyrimple simply. "I could get more
+pay as a laborer on the railroad but, Golly, I want to feel I'm
+where there's a chance to get ahead."
+
+Charles shook his head sceptically and Mr. Macy's answer next
+day was equally unsatisfactory.
+
+Dalyrimple had gone to the office just before closing time.
+
+"Mr. Macy, I'd like to speak to you."
+
+"Why--yes." The unhumorous smile appeared. The voice was faintly
+resentful.
+
+"I want to speak to you in regard to more salary."
+
+Mr. Macy nodded.
+
+"Well," he said doubtfully, "I don't know exactly what you're
+doing. I'll speak to Mr. Hanson."
+
+He knew exactly what Dalyrimple was doing, and Dalyrimple knew
+he knew.
+
+"I'm in the stock-room--and, sir, while I'm here I'd like to
+ask you how much longer I'll have to stay there."
+
+"Why--I'm not sure exactly. Of course it takes some time to
+learn the stock."
+
+"You told me two months when I started."
+
+"Yes. Well, I'll speak to Mr. Hanson."
+
+Dalyrimple paused irresolute.
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Two days later he again appeared in the office with the result
+of a count that had been asked for by Mr. Hesse, the bookkeeper.
+Mr. Hesse was engaged and Dalyrimple, waiting, began idly
+fingering in a ledger on the stenographer's desk.
+
+Half unconsciously he turned a page--he caught sight of his name
+--it was a salary list:
+
+     Dalyrimple
+     Demming
+     Donahoe
+     Everett
+
+His eyes stopped--
+
+     Everett.........................$60
+
+So Tom Everett, Macy's weak-chinned nephew, had started at sixty
+--and in three weeks he had been out of the packing-room and
+into the office.
+
+So that was it! He was to sit and see man after man pushed over
+him: sons, cousins, sons of friends, irrespective of their
+capabilities, while HE was cast for a pawn, with "going on the
+road" dangled before his eyes--put off with the stock remark:
+"I'll see; I'll look into it." At forty, perhaps, he would be a
+bookkeeper like old Hesse, tired, listless Hesse with a dull
+routine for his stint and a dull background of boarding-house
+conversation.
+
+This was a moment when a genii should have pressed into his
+hand the book for disillusioned young men. But the book has
+not been written.
+
+A great protest swelling into revolt surged up in him. Ideas
+half forgotten, chaoticly perceived and assimilated, filled his
+mind. Get on--that was the rule of life--and that was all. How
+he did it, didn't matter--but to be Hesse or Charley Moore.
+
+"I won't!" he cried aloud.
+
+The bookkeeper and the stenographers looked up in surprise.
+
+"What?"
+
+For a second Dalyrimple stared--then walked up to the desk.
+
+"Here's that data," he said brusquely. "I can't wait any longer."
+
+Mr. Hesse's face expressed surprise.
+
+It didn't matter what he did--just so he got out
+of this rut. In a dream he stepped from the elevator into the
+stock-room, and walking to an unused aisle, sat down on a box,
+covering his face with his hands.
+
+His brain was whirring with the frightful jar of discovering a
+platitude for himself.
+
+"I've got to get out of this," he said aloud and then repeated,
+"I've got to get out"--and he didn't mean only out of Macy's
+wholesale house.
+
+When he left at five-thirty it was pouring rain, but he struck
+off in the opposite direction from his boarding-house, feeling,
+in the first cool moisture that oozed soggily through his old
+suit, an odd exultation and freshness. He wanted a world that
+was like walking through rain, even though he could not see far
+ahead of him, but fate had put him in the world of Mr. Macy's
+fetid storerooms and corridors. At first merely the overwhelming
+need of change took him, then half-plans began to formulate in
+his imagination.
+
+"I'll go East--to a big city--meet people--bigger people--people
+who'll help me. Interesting work somewhere. My God, there MUST
+be."
+
+With sickening truth it occurred to him that his facility for
+meeting people was limited. Of all places it was here in his own
+town that he should be known, was known--famous--before the water
+of oblivion had rolled over him.
+
+You had to cut corners, that was all. Pull--relationship--wealthy
+marriages---
+
+For several miles the continued reiteration of this preoccupied
+him and then he perceived that the rain had become thicker and
+more opaque in the heavy gray of twilight and that the houses
+were falling away. The district of full blocks, then of big
+houses, then of scattering little ones, passed and great sweeps
+of misty country opened out on both sides. It was hard walking
+here. The sidewalk had given place to a dirt road, streaked with
+furious brown rivulets that splashed and squashed around his
+shoes.
+
+Cutting corners--the words began to fall apart, forming curious
+phrasings--little illuminated pieces of themselves. They
+resolved into sentences, each of which had a strangely familiar
+ring.
+
+Cutting corners meant rejecting the old childhood principles
+that success came from faithfulness to duty, that evil was
+necessarily punished or virtue necessarily rewarded--that honest
+poverty was happier than corrupt riches.
+
+It meant being hard.
+
+This phrase appealed to him and he repeated it over and over.
+It had to do somehow with Mr. Macy and Charley Moore--the
+attitudes, the methods of each of them.
+
+He stopped and felt his clothes. He was drenched to the skin. He
+looked about him and, selecting a place in the fence where a
+tree sheltered it, perched himself there.
+
+In my credulous years--he thought--they told me that evil was a
+sort of dirty hue, just as definite as a soiled collar, but it
+seems to me that evil is only a manner of hard luck, or
+heredity-and-environment, or "being found out." It hides in the
+vacillations of dubs like Charley Moore as certainly as it does
+in the intolerance of Macy, and if it ever gets much more
+tangible it becomes merely an arbitrary label to paste on the
+unpleasant things in other people's lives.
+
+In fact--he concluded--it isn't worth worrying over what's evil
+and what isn't. Good and evil aren't any standard to me--and
+they can be a devil of a bad hindrance when I want something.
+When I want something bad enough, common sense tells me to go
+and take it--and not get caught.
+
+And then suddenly Dalyrimple knew what he wanted first. He
+wanted fifteen dollars to pay his overdue board bill.
+
+With a furious energy he jumped from the fence, whipped off his
+coat, and from its black lining cut with his knife a piece about
+five inches square. He made two holes near its edge and then
+fixed it on his face, pulling his hat down to hold it in place.
+It flapped grotesquely and then dampened and clung clung to his
+forehead and cheeks.
+
+Now . . . The twilight had merged to dripping dusk . . . black
+as pitch. He began to walk quickly back toward town, not waiting
+to remove the mask but watching the road with difficulty through
+the jagged eye-holes. He was not conscious of any nervousness
+. . . the only tension was caused by a desire to do the thing as
+soon as possible.
+
+He reached the first sidewalk, continued on until he saw a hedge
+far from any lamp-post, and turned in behind it. Within a minute
+he heard several series of footsteps--he waited--it was a woman
+and he held his breath until she passed . . . and then a man,
+a laborer. The next passer, he felt, would be what he wanted
+. . . the laborer's footfalls died far up the drenched street
+. . . other steps grew nears grew suddenly louder.
+
+Dalyrimple braced himself.
+
+"Put up your hands!"
+
+The man stopped, uttered an absurd little grunt, and thrust
+pudgy arms skyward.
+
+Dalyrimple went through the waistcoat.
+
+"Now, you shrimp," he said, setting his hand suggestively to
+his own hip pocket, "you run, and stamp--loud! If I hear your
+feet stop I'll put a shot after you!"
+
+Then he stood there in sudden uncontrollable laughter as
+audibly frightened footsteps scurried away into the night.
+
+After a moment he thrust the roll of bills into his pocket,
+snatched off his mask, and running quickly across the street,
+darted down an alley.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Yet, however Dalyrimple justified himself intellectually, he had
+many bad moments in the weeks immediately following his decision.
+The tremendous pressure of sentiment and inherited ambition kept
+raising riot with his attitude. He felt morally lonely.
+
+The noon after his first venture he ate in a little lunch-room
+with Charley Moore and, watching him unspread the paper, waited
+for a remark about the hold-up of the day before. But either the
+hold-up was not mentioned or Charley wasn't interested. He
+turned listlessly to the sporting sheet, read Doctor Crane's
+crop of seasoned bromides, took in an editorial on ambition with
+his mouth slightly ajar, and then skipped to Mutt and Jeff.
+
+Poor Charley--with his faint aura of evil and his mind that
+refused to focus, playing a lifeless solitaire with cast-off
+mischief.
+
+Yet Charley belonged on the other side of the fence. In him
+could be stirred up all the flamings and denunciations of
+righteousness; he would weep at a stage heroine's lost virtue,
+he could become lofty and contemptuous at the idea of dishonor.
+
+On my side, thought Dalyrimple, there aren't any resting-places;
+a man who's a strong criminal is after the weak criminals as
+well, so it's all guerilla warfare over here.
+
+What will it all do to me? he thought with a persistent
+weariness. Will it take the color out of life with the honor?
+Will it scatter my courage and dull my mind?--despiritualize me
+completely--does it mean eventual barrenness, eventual remorse,
+failure?
+
+With a great surge of anger, he would fling his mind upon the
+barrier--and stand there with the flashing bayonet of his pride.
+Other men who broke the laws of justice and charity lied to all
+the world. He at any rate would not lie to himself. He was more
+than Byronic now: not the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the
+philosophical rebel, Faust; but a new psychological rebel of his
+own century--defying the sentimental a priori forms of his own
+mind---
+
+Happiness was what he wanted--a slowly rising scale of
+gratifications of the normal appetites--and he had a strong
+conviction that the materials, if not the inspiration of
+happiness, could be bought with money.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The night came that drew him out upon his second venture, and
+as he walked the dark street he felt in himself a great
+resemblance to a cat--a certain supple, swinging litheness. His
+muscles were rippling smoothly and sleekly under his spare,
+healthy flesh--he had an absurd desire to bound along the
+street, to run dodging among trees, to turn "cart-wheels" over
+soft grass.
+
+It was not crisp, but in the air lay a faint suggestion of
+acerbity, inspirational rather than chilling.
+
+"The moon is down--I have not heard the clock!"
+
+He laughed in delight at the line which an early memory had
+endowed with a hushed awesome beauty.
+
+He passed a man and then another a quarter of mile afterward.
+
+He was on Philmore Street now and it was very dark. He blessed
+the city council for not having put in new lamp-posts as a
+recent budget had recommended. Here was the red-brick Sterner
+residence which marked the beginning of the avenue; here was the
+Jordon house, the Eisenhaurs', the Dents', the Markhams', the
+Frasers'; the Hawkins', where he had been a guest; the
+Willoughbys', the Everett's, colonial and ornate; the little
+cottage where lived the Watts old maids between the imposing
+fronts of the Macys' and the Krupstadts'; the Craigs--
+
+Ah . . . THERE! He paused, wavered violently--far up the street
+was a blot, a man walking, possibly a policeman. After an
+eternal second be found himself following the vague, ragged
+shadow of a lamp-post across a lawn, running bent very low.
+Then he was standing tense, without breath or need of it, in the
+shadow of his limestone prey.
+
+Interminably he listened--a mile off a cat howled, a hundred
+yards away another took up the hymn in a demoniacal snarl, and
+he felt his heart dip and swoop, acting as shock-absorber for
+his mind. There were other sounds; the faintest fragment of song
+far away; strident, gossiping laughter from a back porch
+diagonally across the alley; and crickets, crickets singing in
+the patched, patterned, moonlit grass of the yard. Within the
+house there seemed to lie an ominous silence. He was glad he did
+not know who lived here.
+
+His slight shiver hardened to steel; the steel softened and his
+nerves became pliable as leather; gripping his hands he
+gratefully found them supple, and taking out knife and pliers he
+went to work on the screen.
+
+So sure was he that he was unobserved that, from the dining-room
+where in a minute he found himself, he leaned out and carefully
+pulled the screen up into position, balancing it so it would
+neither fall by chance nor be a serious obstacle to a sudden
+exit.
+
+Then he put the open knife in his coat pocket, took out his
+pocket-flash, and tiptoed around the room.
+
+There was nothing here he could use--the dining-room had never
+been included in his plans for the town was too small to permit
+disposing of silver.
+
+As a matter of fact his plans were of the vaguest. He had found
+that with a mind like his, lucrative in intelligence, intuition,
+and lightning decision, it was best to have but the skeleton of
+a campaign. The machine-gun episode had taught him that. And he
+was afraid that a method preconceived would give him two points
+of view in a crisis--and two points of view meant wavering.
+
+He stumbled slightly on a chair, held his breath, listened, went
+on, found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh
+stair creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was
+counting them automatically. At the third creak he paused again
+for over a minute--and in that minute he felt more alone than he
+had ever felt before. Between the lines on patrol, even when
+alone, he had had behind him the moral support of half a billion
+people; now he was alone, pitted against that same moral
+pressure--a bandit. He had never felt this fear, yet he had
+never felt this exultation.
+
+The stairs came to an end, a doorway approached; he went in and
+listened to regular breathing. His feet were economical of steps
+and his body swayed sometimes at stretching as he felt over the
+bureau, pocketing all articles which held promise--he could not
+have enumerated them ten seconds afterward. He felt on a chair
+for possible trousers, found soft garments, women's lingerie.
+The corners of his mouth smiled mechanically.
+
+Another room . . . the same breathing, enlivened by one ghastly
+snort that sent his heart again on its tour of his breast. Round
+object--watch; chain; roll of bills; stick-pins; two rings--he
+remembered that he had got rings from the other bureau. He
+started out winced as a faint glow flashed in front of him,
+facing him. God!--it was the glow of his own wrist-watch on his
+outstretched arm.
+
+Down the stairs. He skipped two crumbing steps but found
+another. He was all right now, practically safe; as he neared
+the bottom he felt a slight boredom. He reached the dining-room
+--considered the silver--again decided against it.
+
+Back in his room at the boarding-house he examined the additions
+to his personal property:
+
+Sixty-five dollars in bills.
+
+A platinum ring with three medium diamonds, worth, probably,
+about seven hundred dollars. Diamonds were going up.
+
+A cheap gold-plated ring with the initials O. S. and the date
+inside--'03--probably a class-ring from school. Worth a few
+dollars. Unsalable.
+
+A red-cloth case containing a set of false teeth.
+
+A silver watch.
+
+A gold chain worth more than the watch.
+
+An empty ring-box.
+
+A little ivory Chinese god--probably a desk ornament.
+
+A dollar and sixty-two cents in small change.
+
+He put the money under his pillow and the other things in the
+toe of an infantry boot, stuffing a stocking in on top of them.
+Then for two hours his mind raced like a high-power engine here
+and there through his life, past and future, through fear and
+laughter. With a vague, inopportune wish that he were married,
+he fell into a deep sleep about half past five.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Though the newspaper account of the burglary failed to mention
+the false teeth, they worried him considerably.  The picture of
+a human waking in the cool dawn and groping for them in vain,
+of a soft, toothless breakfast, of a strange, hollow, lisping
+voice calling the police station, of weary, dispirited visits
+to the dentist, roused a great fatherly pity in him.
+
+Trying to ascertain whether they belonged to a man or a woman,
+he took them carefully out of the case and held them up near
+his mouth. He moved his own jaws experimentally; he measured
+with his fingers; but he failed to decide: they might belong
+either to a large-mouthed woman or a small-mouthed man.
+
+On a warm impulse he wrapped them in brown paper from the
+bottom of his army trunk, and printed FALSE TEETH on the
+package in clumsy pencil letters. Then, the next night, he
+walked down Philmore Street, and shied the package onto the
+lawn so that it would be near the door. Next day the paper
+announced that the police had a clew--they knew that the
+burglar was in town. However, they didn't mention what the
+clew was.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+At the end of a month "Burglar Bill of the Silver District
+was the nurse-girl's standby for frightening children. Five
+burglaries were attributed to him, but though Dalyrimple had
+only committed three, he considered that majority had it and
+appropriated the title to himself. He had once been seen--"a
+large bloated creature with the meanest face you ever laid eyes
+on." Mrs. Henry Coleman, awaking at two o'clock at the beam of
+an electric torch flashed in her eye, could not have been
+expected to recognize Bryan Dalyrimple at whom she had waved
+flags last Fourth of July, and whom she had described as "not
+at all the daredevil type, do you think?"
+
+When Dalyrimple kept his imagination at white heat he managed to
+glorify his own attitude, his emancipation from petty scruples
+and remorses--but let him once allow his thought to rove
+unarmored, great unexpected horrors and depressions would
+overtake him. Then for reassurance he had to go back to think
+out the whole thing over again. He found that it was on the
+whole better to give up considering himself as a rebel. It was
+more consoling to think of every one else as a fool.
+
+His attitude toward Mr. Macy underwent a change. He no longer
+felt a dim animosity and inferiority in his presence. As his
+fourth month in the store ended he found himself regarding his
+employer in a manner that was almost fraternal.  He had a vague
+but very assured conviction that Mr. Macy's innermost soul would
+have abetted and approved. He no longer worried about his
+future. He had the intention of accumulating several thousand
+dollars and then clearing out--going east, back to France, down
+to South America. Half a dozen times in the last two months he
+had been about to stop work, but a fear of attracting attention
+to his being in funds prevented him. So he worked on, no longer
+in listlessness, but with contemptuous amusement.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Then with astounding suddenness something happened that changed
+his plans and put an end to his burglaries.
+
+Mr. Macy sent for him one afternoon and with a great show of
+jovial mystery asked him if he had an engagement that night. If
+he hadn't, would he please call on Mr. Alfred J. Fraser at eight
+o'clock. Dalyrimple's wonder was mingled with uncertainty. He
+debated with himself whether it were not his cue to take the
+first train out of town. But an hour's consideration decided him
+that his fears were unfounded and at eight o'clock he arrived at
+the big Fraser house in Philmore Avenue.
+
+Mr. Fraser was commonly supposed to be the biggest political
+influence in the city. His brother was Senator Fraser, his
+son-in-law was Congressman Demming, and his influence, though not
+wielded in such a way as to make him an objectionable boss, was
+strong nevertheless.
+
+He had a great, huge face, deep-set eyes, and a barn-door of an
+upper lip, the melange approaching a worthy climax in a long
+professional jaw.
+
+During his conversation with Dalyrimple his expression kept
+starting toward a smile, reached a cheerful optimism, and then
+receded back to imperturbability.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" he laid, holding out his hand. "Sit down.
+I suppose you're wondering why I wanted you. Sit down."
+
+Dalyrimple sat down.
+
+"Mr. Dalyrimple, how old are you?"
+
+"I'm twenty-three."
+
+"You're young. But that doesn't mean you're foolish. Mr.
+Dalyrimple, what I've got to say won't take long. I'm going to
+make you a proposition. To begin at the beginning, I've been
+watching you ever since last Fourth of July when you made that
+speech in response to the loving-cup."
+
+Dalyrimple murmured disparagingly, but Fraser waved him to
+silence.
+
+"It was a speech I've remembered. It was a brainy speech,
+straight from the shoulder, and it got to everybody in that
+crowd. I know. I've watched crowds for years." He cleared his
+throat as if tempted to digress on his knowledge of crowds--then
+continued. "But, Mr. Dalyrimple, I've seen too many young men
+who promised brilliantly go to pieces, fail through want of
+steadiness, too many high-power ideas, and not enough
+willingness to work. So I waited. I wanted to see what you'd
+do. I wanted to see if you'd go to work, and if you'd stick to
+what you started."
+
+Dalyrimple felt a glow settle over him.
+
+"So," continued Fraser, "when Theron Macy told me you'd started
+down at his place, I kept watching you, and I followed your
+record through him.  The first month I was afraid for awhile.
+He told me you were getting restless, too good for your job,
+hinting around for a raise---"
+
+Dalyrimple started.
+
+"---But he said after that you evidently made up your mind to
+shut up and stick to it. That's the stuff I like in a young man!
+That's the stuff that wins out. And don't think I don't
+understand. I know how much harder it was for you after all that
+silly flattery a lot of old women had been giving you. I know
+what a fight it must have been---"
+
+Dalyrimple's face was burning brightly. It felt young and
+strangely ingenuous.
+
+"Dalyrimple, you've got brains and you've got the stuff in you--
+and that's what I want. I'm going to put you into the State
+Senate."
+
+"The WHAT?"
+
+"The State Senate. We want a young man who has got brains, but
+is solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don't
+stop there. We're up against it here, Dalyrimple. We've got to
+get some young men into politics--you know the old blood that's
+been running on the party ticket year in and year out."
+
+Dalyrimple licked his lips.
+
+"You'll run me for the State Senate?"
+
+"I'll PUT you in the State Senate."
+
+Mr. Fraser's expression had now reached the
+point nearest a smile and Dalyrimple in a happy frivolity felt
+himself urging it mentally on--but it stopped, locked, and slid
+from him. The barn-door and the jaw were separated by a line
+strait as a nail.  Dalyrimple remembered with an effort that it
+was a mouth, and talked to it.
+
+"But I'm through," he said.  "My notoriety's dead.  People are
+fed up with me."
+
+"Those things," answered Mr. Fraser, "are mechanical.  Linotype
+is a resuscitator of reputations.  Wait till you see the HERALD,
+beginning next week--that is if you're with us--that is," and
+his voice hardened slightly, "if you haven't got too many ideas
+yourself about how things ought to be run."
+
+"No," said Dalyrimple, looking him frankly in the eye.  "You'll
+have to give me a lot of advice at first."
+
+"Very well.  I'll take care of your reputation then.  Just keep
+yourself on the right side of the fence."
+
+Dalyrimple started at this repetition of a phrase he had thought
+of so much lately.  There was a sudden ring at the door-bell.
+
+"That's Macy now," observed Fraser, rising.  "I'll go let him in.
+The servants have gone to bed."
+
+He left Dalyrimple there in a dream.  The world was opening up
+suddenly-- The State Senate, the United States Senate--so life
+was this after all--cutting corners--common sense, that was the
+rule.  No more foolish risks now unless necessity called--but it
+was being hard that counted-- Never to let remorse or
+self-reproach lose him a night's sleep--let his life be a sword of
+courage--there was no payment--all that was drivel--drivel.
+
+He sprang to his feet with clinched hands in a sort of triumph.
+
+"Well, Bryan," said Mr. Macy stepping through the portières.
+
+The two older men smiled their half-smiles at him.
+
+"Well Bryan," said Mr. Macy again.
+
+Dalyrimple smiled also.
+
+"How do, Mr. Macy?"
+
+He wondered if some telepathy between them had made this new
+appreciation possible--some invisible realization. . . .
+
+Mr. Macy held out his hand.
+
+"I'm glad we're to be associated in this scheme--I've been for
+you all along--especially lately. I'm glad we're to be on the
+same side of the fence."
+
+"I want to thank you, sir," said Dalyrimple simply. He felt a
+whimsical moisture gathering back of his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Four Fists
+
+
+
+
+At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to
+hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty
+is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a
+hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all
+his hitable qualities have quite vanished. But it is certain
+that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his
+face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a
+girl's lips.
+
+I'm sure every one has met a man like that, been casually
+introduced, even made a friend of him, yet felt he was the sort
+who aroused passionate dislike--expressed by some in the
+involuntary clinching of fists, and in others by mutterings
+about "takin' a poke" and "landin' a swift smash in ee eye." In
+the juxtaposition of Samuel Meredith's features this quality was
+so strong that it influenced his entire life.
+
+What was it? Not the shape, certainly, for he was a pleasant-looking
+man from earliest youth: broad-bowed with gray eyes that
+were frank and friendly. Yet I've heard him tell a room full of
+reporters angling for a "success" story that he'd be ashamed to
+tell them the truth that they wouldn't believe it, that it
+wasn't one story but four, that the public would not want to
+read about a man who had been walloped into prominence.
+
+It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen.
+He had been brought up on a diet of caviar and bell-boys' legs
+in half the capitals of Europe, and it was pure luck that his
+mother had nervous prostration and had to delegate his education
+to less tender, less biassed hands.
+
+At Andover he was given a roommate named Gilly Hood. Gilly was
+thirteen, undersized, and rather the school pet. From the
+September day when Mr. Meredith's valet stowed Samuel's clothing
+in the best bureau and asked, on departing, "hif there was
+hanything helse, Master Samuel?" Gilly cried out that the
+faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in
+whose bowl has been put goldfish.
+
+"Good gosh!" he complained to his sympathetic contemporaries,
+"he's a damn stuck-up Willie. He said, 'Are the crowd here
+gentlemen?' and I said, 'No, they're boys,' and he said age
+didn't matter, and I said, 'Who said it did?' Let him get fresh
+with me, the ole pieface!"
+
+For three weeks Gilly endured in silence young Samuel's comments
+on the clothes and habits of Gilly's personal friends, endured
+French phrases in conversation, endured a hundred half-feminine
+meannesses that show what a nervous mother can do to a boy, if
+she keeps close enough to him--then a storm broke in the aquarium.
+
+Samuel was out. A crowd had gathered to hear Gilly be wrathful
+about his roommate's latest sins.
+
+"He said, 'Oh, I don't like the windows open at night,' he said,
+'except only a little bit,'" complained Gilly.
+
+"Don't let him boss you."
+
+"Boss me?  You bet he won't.  I open those windows, I guess, but
+the darn fool won't take turns shuttin' 'em in the morning."
+
+"Make him, Gilly, why don't you?"
+
+"I'm going to."  Gilly nodded his head in fierce agreement.
+"Don't you worry.  He needn't think I'm any ole butler."
+
+"Le's see you make him."
+
+At this point the darn fool entered in person and included the
+crowd in one of his irritating smiles.  Two boys said, "'Lo,
+Mer'dith"; the others gave him a chilly glance and went on talking
+to Gilly.  But Samuel seemed unsatisfied.
+
+"Would you mind not sitting on my bed?" he suggested politely to
+two of Gilly's particulars who were perched very much at ease.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"My bed.  Can't you understand English?"
+
+This was adding insult to injury.  There were several comments on
+the bed's sanitary condition and the evidence within it of animal
+life.
+
+"S'matter with your old bed?" demanded Gilly truculently.
+
+"The bed's all right, but---"
+
+Gilly interrupted this sentence by rising and walking up to
+Samuel. He paused several inches away and eyed him fiercely.
+
+"You an' your crazy ole bed," he began. "You an' your crazy---"
+
+"Go to it, Gilly," murmured some one.
+
+"Show the darn fool--"
+
+Samuel returned the gaze coolly.
+
+"Well," he said finally, "it's my bed--"
+
+He got no further, for Gilly hauled off and hit him succinctly in
+the nose.
+
+"Yea! Gilly!"
+
+"Show the big bully!"
+
+"Just let him touch you--he'll see!"
+
+The group closed in on them and for the first time in his life
+Samuel realized the insuperable inconvenience of being
+passionately detested. He gazed around helplessly at the
+glowering, violently hostile faces. He towered a head taller
+than his roommate, so if he hit back he'd be called a bully and
+have half a dozen more fights on his hands within five minutes;
+yet if he didn't he was a coward. For a moment he stood there
+facing Gilly's blazing eyes, and then, with a sudden choking
+sound, he forced his way through the ring and rushed from the
+room.
+
+The month following bracketed the thirty most miserable days of
+his life. Every waking moment he was under the lashing tongues
+of his contemporaries; his habits and mannerisms became butts
+for intolerable witticisms and, of course, the sensitiveness of
+adolescence was a further thorn. He considered that he was a
+natural pariah; that the unpopularity at school would follow him
+through life. When he went home for the Christmas holidays he
+was so despondent that his father sent him to a nerve
+specialist. When he returned to Andover he arranged to arrive
+late so that he could be alone in the bus during the drive from
+station to school.
+
+Of course when he had learned to keep his mouth shut every one
+promptly forgot all about him. The next autumn, with his
+realization that consideration for others was the discreet
+attitude, he made good use of the clean start given him by the
+shortness of boyhood memory. By the beginning of his senior year
+Samuel Meredith was one of the best-liked boys of his class--and
+no one was any stronger for him than his first friend and
+constant companion, Gilly Hood.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Samuel became the sort of college student who in the early
+nineties drove tandems and coaches and tallyhos between
+Princeton and Yale and New York City to show that they
+appreciated the social importance of football games. He believed
+passionately in good form--his choosing of gloves, his tying of
+ties, his holding of reins were imitated by impressionable
+freshmen. Outside of his own set he was considered rather a
+snob, but as his set was THE set, it never worried him. He
+played football in the autumn, drank high-balls in the winter,
+and rowed in the spring. Samuel despised all those who were
+merely sportsmen without being gentlemen or merely gentlemen
+without being sportsmen.
+
+He lived in New York and often brought home several of his
+friends for the week-end. Those were the days of the horse-car
+and in case of a crush it was, of course, the proper thing for
+any one of Samuel's set to rise and deliver his seat to a
+standing lady with a formal bow. One night in Samuel's junior
+year he boarded a car with two of his intimates. There were
+three vacant seats. When Samuel sat down he noticed a heavy-eyed
+laboring man sitting next to him who smelt objectionably of
+garlic, sagged slightly against Samuel and, spreading a little
+as a tired man will, took up quite too much room.
+
+The car had gone several blocks when it stopped for a quartet of
+young girls, and, of course, the three men of the world sprang
+to their feet and proffered their seats with due observance of
+form. Unfortunately, the laborer, being unacquainted with the
+code of neckties and tallyhos, failed to follow their example,
+and one young lady was left at an embarrassed stance. Fourteen
+eyes glared reproachfully at the barbarian; seven lips curled
+slightly; but the object of scorn stared stolidly into the
+foreground in sturdy unconsciousness of his despicable conduct.
+Samuel was the most violently affected. He was humiliated that
+any male should so conduct himself. He spoke aloud.
+
+"There's a lady standing," he said sternly.
+
+That should have been quite enough, but the object of scorn only
+looked up blankly. The standing girl tittered and exchanged
+nervous glances with her companions. But Samuel was aroused.
+
+"There's a lady standing," he repeated, rather raspingly. The
+man seemed to comprehend.
+
+"I pay my fare," he said quietly.
+
+Samuel turned red and his hands clinched, but the conductor was
+looking their way, so at a warning nod from his friends he
+subsided into sullen gloom.
+
+They reached their destination and left the car, but so did the
+laborer, who followed them, swinging his little pail. Seeing his
+chance, Samuel no longer resisted his aristocratic inclination.
+He turned around and, launching a full-featured, dime-novel
+sneer, made a loud remark about the right of the lower animals
+to ride with human beings.
+
+In a half-second the workman had dropped his pail and let fly at
+him. Unprepared, Samuel took the blow neatly on the jaw and
+sprawled full length into the cobblestone gutter.
+
+"Don't laugh at me!" cried his assailant. "I been workin' all
+day. I'm tired as hell!"
+
+As he spoke the sudden anger died out of his eyes and the mask
+of weariness dropped again over his face. He turned and picked
+up his pail. Samuel's friends took a quick step in his direction.
+
+"Wait!" Samuel had risen slowly and was motioning back. Some
+time, somewhere, he had been struck like that before. Then he
+remembered--Gilly Hood. In the silence, as he dusted himself
+off, the whole scene in the room at Andover was before his eyes--
+and he knew intuitively that he had been wrong again.  This
+man's strength, his rest, was the protection of his family. He
+had more use for his seat in the street-car than any young girl.
+
+"It's all right," said Samuel gruffly. "Don't touch 'him. I've
+been a damn fool."
+
+Of course it took more than an hour, or a week, for Samuel to
+rearrange his ideas on the essential importance of good form. At
+first he simply admitted that his wrongness had made him
+powerless--as it had made him powerless against Gilly--but
+eventually his mistake about the workman influenced his entire
+attitude. Snobbishness is, after all, merely good breeding grown
+dictatorial; so Samuel's code remained but the necessity of
+imposing it upon others had faded out in a certain gutter.
+Within that year his class had somehow stopped referring to him
+as a snob.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+After a few years Samuel's university decided that it had shone
+long enough in the reflected glory of his neckties, so they
+declaimed to him in Latin, charged him ten dollars for the paper
+which proved him irretrievably educated, and sent him into the
+turmoil with much self-confidence, a few friends, and the proper
+assortment of harmless bad habits.
+
+His family had by that time started back to shirt-sleeves,
+through a sudden decline in the sugar-market, and it had already
+unbuttoned its vest, so to speak, when Samuel went to work. His
+mind was that exquisite TABULA RASA that a university education
+sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, so he
+used his former ability as a dodging half-back in twisting
+through Wall Street crowds as runner for a bank.
+
+His diversion was--women. There were half a dozen: two or three
+débutantes, an actress (in a minor way), a grass-widow, and one
+sentimental little brunette who was married and lived in a
+little house in Jersey City.
+
+They had met on a ferry-boat. Samuel was crossing from New York
+on business (he had been working several years by this time) and
+he helped her look for a package that she had dropped in the crush.
+
+"Do you come over often?" he inquired casually.
+
+"Just to shop," she said shyly. She had great brown eyes and the
+pathetic kind of little mouth. "I've only been married three
+months, and we find it cheaper to live over here."
+
+"Does he--does your husband like your being alone like this?"
+
+She laughed, a cheery young laugh.
+
+"Oh, dear me, no. We were to meet for dinner but I must have
+misunderstood the place. He'll be awfully worried."
+
+"Well," said Samuel disapprovingly, "he ought to be. If you'll
+allow me I'll see you home."
+
+She accepted his offer thankfully, so they took the cable-car
+together. When they walked up the path to her little house they
+saw a light there; her husband had arrived before her.
+
+"He's frightfully jealous," she announced, laughingly apologetic.
+
+"Very well," answered Samuel, rather stiffly. "I'd better leave
+you here."
+
+She thanked him and, waving a good night, he left her.
+
+That would have been quite all if they hadn't met on Fifth
+Avenue one morning a week later. She started and blushed and
+seemed so glad to see him that they chatted like old friends.
+She was going to her dressmaker's, eat lunch alone at Taine's,
+shop all afternoon, and meet her husband on the ferry at five.
+Samuel told her that her husband was a very lucky man. She
+blushed again and scurried off.
+
+Samuel whistled all the way back to his office, but about twelve
+o'clock he began to see that pathetic, appealing little mouth
+everywhere--and those brown eyes. He fidgeted when he looked at
+the clock; he thought of the grill down-stairs where he lunched
+and the heavy male conversation thereof, and opposed to that
+picture appeared another; a little table at Taine's with the
+brown eyes and the mouth a few feet away. A few minutes before
+twelve-thirty he dashed on his hat and rushed for the cable-car.
+
+She was quite surprised to see him.
+
+"Why--hello," she said. Samuel could tell that she was just
+pleasantly frightened.
+
+"I thought we might lunch together. It's so dull eating with a
+lot of men."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Why, I suppose there's no harm in it. How could there be!"
+
+It occurred to her that her husband should have taken lunch with
+her--but he was generally so hurried at noon. She told Samuel
+all about him: he was a little smaller than Samuel, but, oh,
+MUCH better-looking. He was a book-keeper and not making a lot
+of money, but they were very happy and expected to be rich
+within three or four years.
+
+Samuel's grass-widow had been in a quarrelsome mood for three or
+four weeks, and through contrast, he took an accentuated
+pleasure in this meeting; so fresh was she, and earnest, and
+faintly adventurous. Her name was Marjorie.
+
+They made another engagement; in fact, for a month they lunched
+together two or three times a week. When she was sure that her
+husband would work late Samuel took her over to New Jersey on
+the ferry, leaving her always on the tiny front porch, after
+she had gone in and lit the gas to use the security of his
+masculine presence outside. This grew to be a ceremony--and it
+annoyed him. Whenever the comfortable glow fell out through the
+front windows, that was his CONGÉ; yet he never suggested coming
+in and Marjorie didn't invite him.
+
+Then, when Samuel and Marjorie had reached a stage in which they
+sometimes touched each other's arms gently, just to show that
+they were very good friends, Marjorie and her husband had one of
+those ultrasensitive, supercritical quarrels that couples never
+indulge in unless they care a great deal about each other. It
+started with a cold mutton-chop or a leak in the gas-jet--and
+one day Samuel found her in Taine's, with dark shadows under her
+brown eyes and a terrifying pout.
+
+By this time Samuel thought he was in love with Marjorie--so he
+played up the quarrel for all it was worth. He was her best
+friend and patted her hand--and leaned down close to her brown
+curls while she whispered in little sobs what her husband had
+said that morning; and he was a little more than her best friend
+when he took her over to the ferry in a hansom.
+
+"Marjorie," he said gently, when he left her, as usual, on the
+porch, "if at any time you want to call on me, remember that I
+am always waiting, always waiting."
+
+She nodded gravely and put both her hands in his. "I know," she
+said. "I know you're my friend, my best friend."
+
+Then she ran into the house and he watched there until the gas
+went on.
+
+For the next week Samuel was in a nervous turmoil. Some
+persistently rational strain warned him that at bottom he and
+Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is
+usually so much mud in the water that one can seldom see to the
+bottom. Every dream and desire told him that he loved Marjorie,
+wanted her, had to have her.
+
+The quarrel developed. Marjorie's husband took to staying in New
+York until late at night, came home several times disagreeably
+overstimulated, and made her generally miserable. They must have
+had too much pride to talk it out--for Marjorie's husband was,
+after all, pretty decent--so it drifted on from one
+misunderstanding to another. Marjorie kept coming more and more
+to Samuel; when a woman can accept masculine sympathy that is
+much more satisfactory to her than crying to another girl. But
+Marjorie didn't realize how much she had begun to rely on him,
+how much he was part of her little cosmos.
+
+One night, instead of turning away when Marjorie went in and lit
+the gas, Samuel went in, too, and they sat together on the sofa
+in the little parlor. He was very happy. He envied their home,
+and he felt that the man who neglected such a possession out of
+stubborn pride was a fool and unworthy of his wife. But when he
+kissed Marjorie for the first time she cried softly and told him
+to go. He sailed home on the wings of desperate excitement,
+quite resolved to fan this spark of romance, no matter how big
+the blaze or who was burned. At the time he considered that his
+thoughts were unselfishly of her; in a later perspective he knew
+that she had meant no more than the white screen in a motion
+picture: it was just Samuel--blind, desirous.
+
+Next day at Taine's, when they met for lunch, Samuel dropped all
+pretense and made frank love to her. He had no plans, no
+definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her
+in his arms and feel that she was very little and pathetic and
+lovable. . . . He took her home, and this time they kissed until
+both their hearts beat high--words and phrases formed on his lips.
+
+And then suddenly there were steps on the porch--a hand tried
+the outside door. Marjorie turned dead-white.
+
+"Wait!" she whispered to Samuel, in a frightened voice, but in
+angry impatience at the interruption he walked to the front door
+and threw it open.
+
+Every one has seen such scenes on the stage--seen them so often
+that when they actually happen people behave very much like
+actors. Samuel felt that he was playing a part and the lines
+came quite naturally: he announced that all had a right to lead
+their own lives and looked at Marjorie's husband menacingly, as
+if daring him to doubt it. Marjorie's husband spoke of the
+sanctity of the home, forgetting that it hadn't seemed very holy
+to him lately; Samuel continued along the line of "the right to
+happiness"; Marjorie's husband mentioned firearms and the
+divorce court. Then suddenly he stopped and scrutinized both of
+them--Marjorie in pitiful collapse on the sofa, Samuel
+haranguing the furniture in a consciously heroic pose.
+
+"Go up-stairs, Marjorie," he said, in a different tone.
+
+"Stay where you are!" Samuel countered quickly.
+
+Marjorie rose, wavered, and sat down, rose again and moved
+hesitatingly toward the stairs.
+
+"Come outside," said her husband to Samuel. "I want to talk to
+you."
+
+Samuel glanced at Marjorie, tried to get some message from her
+eyes; then he shut his lips and went out.
+
+There was a bright moon and when Marjorie's husband came down
+the steps Samuel could see plainly that he was suffering--but
+he felt no pity for him.
+
+They stood and looked at each other, a few feet apart, and the
+husband cleared his throat as though it were a bit husky.
+
+"That's my wife," he said quietly, and then a wild anger surged
+up inside him.  "Damn you!" he cried--and hit Samuel in the
+face with all his strength.
+
+In that second, as Samuel slumped to the ground, it flashed to
+him that he had been hit like that twice before, and
+simultaneously the incident altered like a dream--he felt
+suddenly awake.  Mechanically he sprang to his feet and squared
+off.  The other man was waiting, fists up, a yard away, but
+Samuel knew that though physically he had him by several inches
+and many pounds, he wouldn't hit him. The situation had
+miraculously and entirely changed--a moment before Samuel had
+seemed to himself heroic; now he seemed the cad, the outsider,
+and Marjorie's husband, silhouetted against the lights of the
+little house, the eternal heroic figure, the defender of his home.
+
+There was a pause and then Samuel turned quickly away and went
+down the path for the last time.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Of course, after the third blow Samuel put in several weeks at
+conscientious introspection. The blow years before at Andover
+had landed on his personal unpleasantness; the workman of his
+college days had jarred the snobbishness out of his system, and
+Marjorie's husband had given a severe jolt to his greedy
+selfishness. It threw women out of his ken until a year later,
+when he met his future wife; for the only sort of woman worth
+while seemed to be the one who could be protected as Marjorie's
+husband had protected her. Samuel could not imagine his grass-widow,
+Mrs. De Ferriac, causing any very righteous blows on her
+own account.
+
+His early thirties found him well on his feet. He was associated
+with old Peter Carhart, who was in those days a national figure.
+Carhart's physique was like a rough model for a statue of
+Hercules, and his record was just as solid--a pile made for the
+pure joy of it, without cheap extortion or shady scandal. He had
+been a great friend of Samuel's father, but he watched the son
+for six years before taking him into his own office. Heaven
+knows how many things he controlled at that time--mines,
+railroads, banks, whole cities. Samuel was very close to him,
+knew his likes and dislikes, his prejudices, weaknesses and
+many strengths.
+
+One day Carhart sent for Samuel and, closing the door of his
+inner office, offered him a chair and a cigar.
+
+"Everything O. K., Samuel?" he asked.
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"I've been afraid you're getting a bit stale."
+
+"Stale?" Samuel was puzzled.
+
+"You've done no work outside the office for nearly ten years?"
+
+"But I've had vacations, in the Adiron---"
+
+Carhart waved this aside.
+
+"I mean outside work. Seeing the things move that we've always
+pulled the strings of here."
+
+"No," admitted Samuel; "I haven't."
+
+"So," he said abruptly "I'm going to give you an outside job
+that'll take about a month."
+
+Samuel didn't argue. He rather liked the idea and he made up his
+mind that, whatever it was, he would put it through just as
+Carhart wanted it. That was his employer's greatest hobby, and
+the men around him were as dumb under direct orders as infantry
+subalterns.
+
+"You'll go to San Antonio and see Hamil," continued Carhart.
+"He's got a job on hand and he wants a man to take charge."
+
+Hamil was in charge of the Carhart interests in the Southwest, a
+man who had grown up in the shadow of his employer, and with
+whom, though they had never met, Samuel had had much official
+correspondence.
+
+"When do I leave?"
+
+"You'd better go to-morrow," answered Carhart, glancing at the
+calendar. "That's the 1st of May. I'll expect your report here on
+the 1st of June."
+
+Next morning Samuel left for Chicago, and two days later he was
+facing Hamil across a table in the office of the Merchants'
+Trust in San Antonio. It didn't take long to get the gist of the
+thing. It was a big deal in oil which concerned the buying up of
+seventeen huge adjoining ranches. This buying up had to be done
+in one week, and it was a pure squeeze. Forces had been set in
+motion that put the seventeen owners between the devil and the
+deep sea, and Samuel's part was simply to "handle" the matter
+from a little village near Pueblo. With tact and efficiency the
+right man could bring it off without any friction, for it was
+merely a question of sitting at the wheel and keeping a firm
+hold. Hamil, with an astuteness many times valuable to his
+chief, had arranged a situation that would give a much greater
+clear gain than any dealing in the open market. Samuel shook
+hands with Hamil, arranged to return in two weeks, and left for
+San Felipe, New Mexico.
+
+It occurred to him, of course, that Carhart was trying him out.
+Hamil's report on his handling of this might be a factor in
+something big for him, but even without that he would have done
+his best to put the thing through. Ten years in New York hadn't
+made him sentimental and he was quite accustomed to finish
+everything he began--and a little bit more.
+
+All went well at first. There was no enthusiasm, but each one of
+the seventeen ranchers concerned knew Samuel's business, knew
+what he had behind him, and that they had as little chance of
+holding out as flies on a window-pane. Some of them were
+resigned--some of them cared like the devil, but they'd talked
+it over, argued it with lawyers and couldn't see any possible
+loophole. Five of the ranches had oil, the other twelve were
+part of the chance, but quite as necessary to Hamil's purpose,
+in any event.
+
+Samuel soon saw that the real leader was an early settler named
+McIntyre, a man of perhaps fifty, gray-haired, clean-shaven,
+bronzed by forty New Mexico summers, and with those clear steady
+eye that Texas and New Mexico weather are apt to give. His ranch
+had not as yet shown oil, but it was in the pool, and if any man
+hated to lose his land McIntyre did. Every one had rather looked
+to him at first to avert the big calamity, and he had hunted all
+over the territory for the legal means with which to do it, but
+he had failed, and he knew it. He avoided Samuel assiduously,
+but Samuel was sure that when the day came for the signatures he
+would appear.
+
+It came--a baking May day, with hot wave rising off the parched
+land as far as eyes could see, and as Samuel sat stewing in his
+little improvised office--a few chairs, a bench, and a wooden
+table--he was glad the thing was almost over.  He wanted to get
+back East the worst way, and join his wife and children for a
+week at the seashore.
+
+The meeting was set for four o'clock, and he was rather
+surprised at three-thirty when the door opened and McIntyre came
+in. Samuel could not help respecting the man's attitude, and
+feeling a bit sorry for him. McIntyre seemed closely related to
+the prairies, and Samuel had the little flicker of envy that
+city people feel toward men who live in the open.
+
+"Afternoon," said McIntyre, standing in the open doorway, with
+his feet apart and his hands on his hips.
+
+"Hello, Mr. McIntyre." Samuel rose, but omitted the formality of
+offering his hand. He imagined the rancher cordially loathed
+him, and he hardly blamed him. McIntyre came in and sat down
+leisurely.
+
+"You got us," he said suddenly.
+
+This didn't seem to require any answer.
+
+"When I heard Carhart was back of this," he continued, "I gave up."
+
+"Mr. Carhart is---" began Samuel, but McIntyre waved him silent.
+
+"Don't talk about the dirty sneak-thief!"
+
+"Mr. McIntyre," said Samuel briskly, "if this half-hour is to be
+devoted to that sort of talk---"
+
+"Oh, dry up, young man," McIntyre interrupted, "you can't abuse
+a man who'd do a thing like this."
+
+Samuel made no answer.
+
+"It's simply a dirty filch. There just ARE skunks like him too
+big to handle."
+
+"You're being paid liberally," offered Samuel.
+
+"Shut up!" roared McIntyre suddenly. "I want the privilege of
+talking." He walked to the door and looked out across the land,
+the sunny, steaming pasturage that began almost at his feet and
+ended with the gray-green of the distant mountains. When he
+turned around his mouth was trembling.
+
+"Do you fellows love Wall Street?" he said hoarsely, "or
+wherever you do your dirty scheming---" He paused. "I suppose you
+do. No critter gets so low that he doesn't sort of love the
+place he's worked, where he's sweated out the best he's had in
+him."
+
+Samuel watched him awkwardly. McIntyre wiped his forehead with a
+huge blue handkerchief, and continued:
+
+"I reckon this rotten old devil had to have another million. I
+reckon we're just a few of the poor he's blotted out to buy a
+couple more carriages or something." He waved his hand toward
+the door. "I built a house out there when I was seventeen, with
+these two hands. I took a wife there at twenty-one, added two
+wings, and with four mangy steers I started out. Forty summers
+I've saw the sun come up over those mountains and drop down red
+as blood in the evening, before the heat drifted off and the
+stars came out. I been happy in that house. My boy was born
+there and he died there, late one spring, in the hottest part of
+an afternoon like this. Then the wife and I lived there alone
+like we'd lived before, and sort of tried to have a home, after
+all, not a real home but nigh it--cause the boy always seemed
+around close, somehow, and we expected a lot of nights to see
+him runnin' up the path to supper." His voice was shaking so he
+could hardly speak and he turned again to the door, his gray
+eyes contracted.
+
+"That's my land out there," he said, stretching out his arm, "my
+land, by God-- It's all I got in the world--and ever wanted." He
+dashed his sleeve across his face, and his tone changed as he
+turned slowly and faced Samuel. "But I suppose it's got to go
+when they want it--it's got to go."
+
+Samuel had to talk. He felt that in a minute more he would lose
+his head. So he began, as level-voiced as he could--in the sort
+of tone he saved for disagreeable duties.
+
+"It's business, Mr. McIntyre," he said. "It's inside the law.
+Perhaps we couldn't have bought out two or three of you at any
+price, but most of you did have a price. Progress demands some
+things---"
+
+Never had he felt so inadequate, and it was with the greatest
+relief that he heard hoof-beats a few hundred yards away.
+
+But at his words the grief in McIntyre's eyes had changed to fury.
+
+"You and your dirty gang of crooks!" he cried. "Not one of you
+has got an honest love for anything on God's earth! You're a
+herd of money-swine!"
+
+Samuel rose and McIntyre took a step toward him.
+
+"You long-winded dude. You got our land--take that for Peter
+Carhart!"
+
+He swung from the shoulder quick as lightning and down went
+Samuel in a heap. Dimly he heard steps in the doorway and knew
+that some one was holding McIntyre, but there was no need. The
+rancher had sunk down in his chair, and dropped his head in his
+hands.
+
+Samuel's brain was whirring. He realized that the fourth fist
+had hit him, and a great flood of emotion cried out that the law
+that had inexorably ruled his life was in motion again. In a
+half-daze he got up and strode from the room.
+
+The next ten minutes were perhaps the hardest of his life. People
+talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man's
+duty to his family may make a rigid corpse seem a selfish
+indulgence of his own righteousness. Samuel thought mostly of
+his family, yet he never really wavered. That jolt had brought him
+to.
+
+When he came back in the room there were a log of worried faces
+waiting for him, but he didn't waste any time explaining.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "Mr. McIntyre has been kind enough to
+convince me that in this matter you are absolutely right and the
+Peter Carhart interests absolutely wrong. As far as I am
+concerned you can keep your ranches to the rest of your days."
+
+He pushed his way through an astounded gathering, and within a
+half-hour he had sent two telegrams that staggered the operator
+into complete unfitness for business; one was to Hamil in San
+Antonio; one was to Peter Carhart in New York.
+
+Samuel didn't sleep much that night. He knew that for the first
+time in his business career he had made a dismal, miserable
+failure. But some instinct in him, stronger than will, deeper
+than training, had forced him to do what would probably end his
+ambitions and his happiness. But it was done and it never
+occurred to him that he could have acted otherwise.
+
+Next morning two telegrams were waiting for him. The first was
+from Hamil. It contained three words:
+
+"You blamed idiot!"
+
+The second was from New York:
+
+"Deal off come to New York immediately Carhart."
+
+Within a week things had happened. Hamil quarrelled furiously
+and violently defended his scheme. He was summoned to New York
+and spent a bad half-hour on the carpet in Peter Carhart's
+office. He broke with the Carhart interests in July, and in
+August Samuel Meredith, at thirty-five years old, was, to all
+intents, made Carhart's partner. The fourth fist had done its
+work.
+
+I suppose that there's a caddish streak in every man that runs
+crosswise across his character and disposition and general
+outlook. With some men it's secret and we never know it's there
+until they strike us in the dark one night. But Samuel's showed
+when it was in action, and the sight of it made people see red.
+He was rather lucky in that, because every time his little devil
+came up it met a reception that sent it scurrying down below in
+a sickly, feeble condition. It was the same devil, the same
+streak that made him order Gilly's friends off the bed, that
+made him go inside Marjorie's house.
+
+If you could run your hand along Samuel Meredith's jaw you'd
+feel a lump. He admits he's never been sure which fist left it
+there, but he wouldn't lose it for anything. He says there's no
+cad like an old cad, and that sometimes just before making a
+decision, it's a great help to stroke his chin. The reporters
+call it a nervous characteristic, but it's not that. It's so he
+can feel again the gorgeous clarity, the lightning sanity of
+those four fists.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4368 ***