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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Changeling and Other Stories, by Donn Byrne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Changeling and Other Stories
+
+Author: Donn Byrne
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2019 [EBook #59892]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHANGELING AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHANGELING
+
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+BY
+
+DONN BYRNE
+
+Author of "The Wind Bloweth," "Messer Marco Polo," etc.
+
+
+
+
+_New York & London_
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1923, by
+
+The Century Co.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+So you are going to bring out a book of your stories, said the Old Poet.
+
+I think I am, sir, said I.
+
+I'm sorry for it, said the Old Poet, for it won't have a friend in the
+world.
+
+When it comes to the publishing of books, people are always
+pessimistic, and, in my case, always right.  Success, I am sufficient
+of a heretic to believe, matters little, but friendship a great deal.
+And I could as little think of sending a story friendless into the
+world as I would of sending a child, or horse, or dog.  So "Changeling"
+itself I will put under the friendly hand of the Right Honorable the
+Lord Justice O'Connor, who will find law treated in it in a _dégagé_
+manner that will surprise even him.  And "The Parliament at Thebes" I
+dedicate to Addison and Josephine Hanan.
+
+For Bulmer and Clare Hobson, near Three-Rock Mountain, is "Delilah, Now
+It Was Dusk," and for Brinsley MacNamara, that splendid Irish novelist,
+"Wisdom Buildeth Her House."  And "In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler"
+for Arthur Somers Roche, in memory of a chivalrous kindness.
+
+"Reynardine" for Miss OEnone Somerville and in memory of Martin
+Ross--their pens were one of the lost Irish glories.  "Irish" for
+Jeffrey Farnol--none more than he loves and understands the Ring.  And
+I am sorry there is not a story of war and its intricacies in the
+collection to dedicate to my friend Lieutenant-General J. J. O'Connell.
+
+I have not by hundreds come to the end of those whom I love to think my
+friends; but so many of them are sportsmen that to dedicate stories to
+them would be like giving a two-year-old racer to a maiden and
+church-going lady, loading her with responsibility and embarrassment,
+so that--
+
+So that the rest of the stories can go out and make friends for
+themselves, and if they can't, 't was surely a poor hand that wrote
+them.
+
+Donn Byrne.
+
+By the Cinque Ports,
+  England.  1923.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+Changeling
+
+The Barnacle Goose
+
+Belfasters
+
+The Keeper of the Bridge
+
+In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler
+
+Reynardine
+
+Dramatis Personæ
+
+Wisdom Buildeth Her House
+
+The Parliament at Thebes
+
+Delilah, Now It Was Dusk
+
+A Quatrain Of Ling Tai Fu's
+
+"Irish"
+
+By Ordeal of Justice
+
+
+
+
+CHANGELING AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+
+CHANGELING
+
+I
+
+To outward appearance the whole of the courtroom scene was drab,
+ordinary.  There was the stuffy rectangle of a room, half dark in the
+January dusk, for all that the electric lights glowed with meager
+incandescence.  There was the judge, in his robe, at the desk of the
+court.  There were the jurymen, solemn as in church.  There the court
+stenographers, bald, active as ants.  There the men of the daily
+journals, more aloof, more judicial than the judge.  There the press of
+morbid spectators, leaning forward like runners on the mark.  There the
+policemen, court attendants, whatnot, relaxed of body, concentrated of
+eye, jealous of the dignity of the court as a house-dog of its master's
+home.  Through the windows of the court could be seen the bulk of the
+Tombs, heavy, hopeless, horrible as the things whence it takes its
+chilly name.
+
+The case of the people _versus_ Anna Janssen for the murder of Alastair
+de Vries droned on.
+
+The district attorney, youngish, slim, lithe, a little sinister--the
+impression of a hunting-dog all over him--was examining a witness, a
+rat-faced man who had something of the old-time bartender or private
+detective about him.
+
+"It was your business, as attendant at the Oriental Garden, to see that
+order was kept?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"There was no semblance of disorder at all until you heard the shot
+fired?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Mr. De Vries was at a table with a party?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You heard the shot and you saw Mr. De Vries fall forward?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  Crumpled up, sort of."
+
+"Then you ran to him?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You saw the woman Janssen back of the hall with a revolver?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What was she doing?"
+
+"She was laughing."
+
+"Was she drunk?"
+
+"The laugh sounded drunk."
+
+"Was she very much under the influence of liquor?"
+
+"She could n't have been, else she would n't have got away."
+
+"You are certain that it was the prisoner?"
+
+All eyes in the court-room were turned to the prisoner in the dock.
+And there was in the sordid trial chamber a sense of great disturbance
+in the air, though, from the minds and personalities of all gathered
+there, there rose in gray tendrils a haze of doubt, of disbelief, of
+mystery.
+
+She sat in the dock, in the sordid court-room, among the unseemly
+officers and the public, as a statue in some public square might stand
+above the rabble.  Mature, magnificent, the prisoner seemed almost like
+some goddess from a Norse mythology.
+
+First, her strange coloring made all catch their breath.  Her face was
+tanned to an absolutely golden hue, and out of this work of delicate
+bronze there looked, calm and confident, two eyes that were blue as
+sea-water.  Her eyebrows, her hair, were bleached by the sun until her
+eyebrows were two half-moons of silver, until her hair was the pale,
+beautiful gold of honey in dark lights and like vivid strands of live
+silver when the light fell on it.  She had the strange, exotic
+appearance of the women of Saba Isle, the ancient colony of Holland
+sailors and Carib Indian belles, a small dot in the West Indies where
+there is a town on the top of a mountain, and life is as in the garden
+of the Hesperides.
+
+It was not alone her coloring, her splendid face.  From her there came
+such an aura of health, of spiritual strength, it seemed impossible
+that this woman was the chorus girl Janssen who had been the cast-off
+mistress of the rake and spendthrift De Vries, who had been drunk, who
+attended cabarets with wine-merchants and Broadway belles.  This woman!
+Impossible!  In her own calm eyes there seemed also a look that said
+more: "This is ridiculous.  I can't have done this.  Why am I here?
+Why don't they get up and let me go?"
+
+Even the rat-faced witness was perturbed.
+
+"The prisoner in the dock?" he said with a sense of puzzled wonder.
+"The prisoner in the dock?"
+
+"Well, don't mind the prisoner in the dock, then.  It was the woman
+Janssen you saw."
+
+"I am sure of that."
+
+"You were well acquainted with her appearance.  You couldn't have been
+mistaken?"
+
+"No, sir, I could not have been mistaken.  She was often at the
+Oriental with Mr. De Vries.  Sometimes every night for a week.  I could
+not have been mistaken.  It was she shot Mr. De Vries."
+
+The district attorney sat down, with a gesture of his hand toward
+Howard Donegan, the prisoner's counsel.  With his massive body, with
+his massive head, with his cruel jurist's face, Howard Donegan was as
+much a part of the attraction for the public as was the prisoner, the
+notoriety of the ten-year-old case, the romantic capture of Annette
+Janssen.  The great Irish-American was the foremost criminal lawyer of
+his day, all but invincible when defending a man or a woman with the
+slightest chance of escape, and right on his side.  As a cross-examiner
+he was dreaded as the plague.  The public would get the thrill of
+seeing a superbly cruel and magnificent performance when Donegan arose.
+Even now the rat-faced witness shook as with ague as Donegan turned
+casually toward him, with hooded eyes.  But Donegan shook his head.  He
+did not wish to cross-examine.
+
+Even the judge was surprised.
+
+"Did I hear aright?"  He leaned forward, his fine mystic's face in
+lines of doubt and worry.  "The counsel for the prisoner does not wish
+to cross-examine?"
+
+"Your Honor heard aright.  I will not cross-examine."
+
+Through the big chamber there was a buzz of comment, of doubt, of all
+but horror.  Was there nothing to be done for this woman?  Even if she
+did kill De Vries, give her a sporting chance for her life!  "What is
+Donegan doing?" the public, the attendants, the newspaper reporters
+asked themselves with mistrust.  Was he throwing her down?
+
+There was a tensing in court, a tightening, as of drama.  Already there
+was a sense in every one's chilled veins of the horrible harness of the
+electric chair.  But Donegan only drowsed.
+
+"You can step down," the Court told the witness.
+
+The rat-faced man crept from the witness-box, white, shaking still with
+the fear of Donegan's eye.  He tried to get a seat in the benches, but
+none would make room for him.  And though he had only done his duty,
+and that at command of the law, there was about him, as he slunk from
+the room, the look there was about him who was surnamed Iscariot, as he
+crept from the garden on the Mount of Olives, on the world's most
+tragic dawn....  Like a story from some old book there unrolled before
+the public the history of Anna Janssen of ten, or twelve, or fifteen
+years before, in a New York we know no longer, so changed is it in that
+brief space.  Then it was a riotous spendthrift, a glorious waster,
+hell-roaring, somehow lovable, and now it is a burgess of standing,
+with all the burgess virtues.
+
+And the eyes of the court-room glistened as old names appeared like
+Falstaffian ghosts.  The Poodle Dog, the German Village, the Holland
+House, the Knickerbocker.  Gorgeous, blowsy, out of a dim past they
+rose for an instant.  Baron Wilkins's and Nigger Mike's.  And there was
+the thin clink of glasses across forgotten bars.  And at three o'clock
+of a morning the flying wedge at Pat's was hurling some truculent guest
+to the sidewalk.  And gunmen were gunmen then, not strike-breakers.
+
+Old days, great days, and only a dozen years before.  And John
+Barrymore was not _Richard III_ but the comedian of "Are You a Mason?"
+And Mr. Chambers had written "The Danger Mark," and Lieutenant Becker
+still patrolled the streets.  And Mannie Chappelle and Diamond Jim were
+still alive and merry, who are now dust, God rest them!  And cops
+grafted and politics were corrupt, after the old and pleasant
+tradition.  And out of the side door of saloons came the old-fashioned
+drunkard, who with the old-fashioned ghost-story and the old-fashioned
+Christmas is laid to rest forevermore.  And the voice of Dr. Parkhurst
+was heard through the land.
+
+Ichabod!  Gone is glory!
+
+The night life of Paris was hectic, hysterical.  The night life of
+Berlin was heavy, somehow sinister.  But, lush, extravagant, now
+joyous, now _macabre_, the foam of New-World liquor, the night life of
+New York challenged the heavens with streaming rays, retiring only
+before the chaste, armored dawn.  Like some Thousand and One Nights of
+some writer of the people, it challenged the imagination, it intrigued,
+it repelled.  Overdone not seldom, often in bad taste, but virile,
+rude, and unabashed, it claimed recognition with brazen clamor.
+
+And on this stage, and against this background, now leading woman to De
+Vries, now being supported by a caste of wasters, brokers, men about
+town, there moved Anna Janssen, the Swedish Beauty.  Cast in the form
+and figure of a Norse goddess, fit for great epics, she was a figurante
+in a debauched side-show.  Her eyes, which were blue as the sea and
+should have been pure and passionate as the sea, were drenched with
+wine, and her mouth, with its clear-cut outlines as of a woman of the
+painter Zorn's, which should have been firm as a budding flower, was
+relaxed and wet from kissing.
+
+A woman of Broadway, hungered after and yet despised, she might have
+gone the accustomed path that leads from the chattering magnificence of
+Broadway to the sinister silence of Potter's Field.  Down the old
+beaten decline toward sordid Death she could have gone, and none would
+have tried to stay her, none to help.  And then the end.  And the only
+result would have been a little chilling in the hearts of the newer
+Beauties of Broadway, a ghost whispering in their hearts the most
+terrible of epitaphs: The wages of sin is death.  For a moment only.
+And some celebrity of Broadway might feel sad for an hour, with easy
+sentiment: "Poor Anna!  And I knew her when she wore diamonds, and New
+York was at her feet!"  Or some respectable citizen in his warm home
+might treasure secret, ashamed memories, and never avow them.  And some
+one might even seek out her grave to say a hurried prayer and make an
+offering of flowers.  And the rest would be silence.
+
+But that, in a mood of drunken pique, she shot and killed Alastair de
+Vries!
+
+Of her life there is little to be said.  It is a life that a thousand
+girls have lived.  Admit the evidence which satisfied a judge in a
+trial of murder and it boils down to this: The daughter of a Brooklyn
+mechanic, she got a place in the chorus of a big musical comedy, and
+was flattered and courted by the blades of Broadway.  And the one to
+whom she fell victim was Alastair de Vries, who had forsaken Fifth
+Avenue to travel westward to Broadway.  Of the old patroon stock which
+had settled New Amsterdam and been lords of the manor along the Hudson
+before the English came, bankers and traders, soldiers and explorers,
+all there remained of them was one moneyed boy who saw adventure only
+in ruining the daughters of tradesmen where his forebears had seen it
+in hacking out the destiny of a New World.
+
+Blond, rather chubby, not yet thirty, Alastair de Vries had already had
+a large biography in the Sunday papers and weeklies of gossip in New
+York.  Annette Janssen was one of perhaps twenty conquests and she was
+not the last.  She was the all but last.
+
+He took her from the chorus, gave her everything she desired, made her
+for her brief life the semiannual queen of Broadway.
+
+And then a small brunette came along, acclaimed as the Queen of the
+Ponies, and, turning like a flash, De Vries hurried to conquer the new
+arrival.  And Anna shot him, not because of jealousy, not because she
+loved him, but just to make trouble.
+
+There's her life for you.  There are what the dazzling facts of her
+queendom of Broadway amount to.  There they are, without their glitter
+and romance.  Through the black magic of Sinister Alley they shine like
+fireflies, but, like fireflies, in the calm sanity of daytime they are
+nothing but grubby crawling things we flick from our palms with a
+_moue_ of distaste....
+
+
+Day followed day, and witness witness, and item by item the sordid
+chronicle was written.  Each fact attested and proved to the
+satisfaction of the court, to the satisfaction of the public.  It was a
+sort of journey toward a definite objective--a journey on which the
+public was invited to see Justice hearken to the call of the people of
+the State of New York.
+
+There was no doubt about it.  Coldly, callously, for a whim, in a
+moment of piqued vanity, a chorus girl had shot a gentleman.
+
+And then in the mind of every one there loomed, as it approached nearer
+until its horrible lines, its terrifying aura were visible, the
+objective of the voyage--the dreadful electric chair.
+
+"Why does n't Donegan do something?  Why?  Why?  Why does n't he put up
+a fight at least?"
+
+But Donegan drowsed on.  Only when the prisoner in the dock threw him a
+swift look of appeal, as she did occasionally when some damning point
+was raised, did he drop the granite mask.  Now and then her face would
+blanch under the tan, and her mouth quiver.  And then would come a
+miracle in Donegan.  Those harsh bulldog features would relax, the
+glinting eyes open, and over the hated face would play the smile
+of--oh, forty years ago--when he was just an innocent, likable Irish
+boy, and not a great jurist, whom communion with the sinister qualities
+of the law, and battles for life and liberty, and knowledge of strange
+strata in the minds of men, which is good for none to know, had
+transformed into a dark angel with a protective and flaming sword.
+
+But the smile did n't reassure the public.
+
+"Yes, he 's smiling.  He 's confident, all right.  But why does n't he
+do something?"
+
+Had the people in the court-room read of this trial in their
+homes--read the bare facts, the testimony of witnesses, there was not
+one who would have wasted a second thought on Anna Janssen.  Perhaps in
+the hearts of one or two there would have lingered the feeling that it
+was not right she should be strapped horribly in the chair.  But that
+would have been chivalry, not justice.  One and all would have said:
+"That is what the death penalty is for--to remove from human contact
+one who has no right to God's sunshine, and who has arrogated to her
+vile and puny self the right of the Creator, the disposal of human
+life.  Muffle her up.  Hustle her away.  Throw on the current and hide
+her in quicklime.  Life is not for such as she!"
+
+But between the woman whom the witnesses had drawn in black, sinister
+colors and the lady in the dock there was a continent of difference.
+True, she was the same height, the same figure, but for a healthy
+development of years.  True, such marks of identification as Anna
+Janssen the chorus girl had, might be noted on the body of her who was
+a prisoner at the bar.
+
+But the body of Anna Janssen the chorus girl was soft and white and
+made for sinister loving, while that of the woman in the dock was
+healthy and hard and tanned, after the fashion of Eve, whom the Lord
+God made in the garden.  And Anna Janssen's had swayed alluringly with
+provocative sophistication, while the carriage of this woman was erect
+and of great dignity.  And the eyes of the chorus girl had been full of
+evil knowledge and unhealthy flame, but this woman's had wistfulness
+and a strange mystery.
+
+And in the heart of every one there rose a cry: "This is not the same
+woman.  This is a good woman!"
+
+There is a theory of an old medical school whose name--not that it
+matters--I regret to have forgotten.  And it is this: that every seven
+years the human body changes.  We have not the same bones, nor the same
+skin, the same muscles at thirty-five that we had at twenty-eight.
+They are worn out and are eliminated, and new tissue takes their place.
+It may be wrong, but it is a very taking theory.  It explains to us how
+the track athlete of some years ago becomes the paunchy, bald-headed,
+repulsive man of to-day.  It explains how the well-fed man of the world
+may turn into a harsh-faced monk.  It explains to us how the soft,
+succubine chorus girl of a dozen years before became the splendid
+amazon that Anna Janssen is to-day.
+
+And yet this may be wrong about the body.  But about the mind (and
+there you have the inner person) there is one thing certain, not a
+theory but a fact--that people change completely.  Like a child's
+slate, the mind is, on which a thousand things are written.  The young
+take so much for granted; the old know.  And gallantly they write this
+for a fact, that for a falsehood.  But day by day they live and learn,
+as the old saw goes.  And simple equations become quadratic.  And the
+writing on the slate is altered month by month, as new factors of life
+are realized.  All is a correction, a readjustment.
+
+This is gradual, but occasionally, very occasionally, by some mental or
+spiritual cataclysm all on the slate is sponged clear.  And a new and
+startling departure takes its place.  As we see in the inner
+personality of Anna Janssen the change from the petty arithmetic of
+Broadway, the venal crooked sums of Sinister Street, to the gigantic
+calculus of life as the Lord God conceived it, when He formed man of
+the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
+life; and man became a living soul....
+
+
+The district attorney turned from his last witness to the twelve men in
+the box.  "Gentlemen," he said, in the manner of a workman well
+satisfied with the progress of the job in hand, "I have proved the
+crime and proved the perpetrator, the circumstances, the setting, the
+motive.  There is but one more thing to be done to clinch this case
+home like a nail in a horse's shoe.  It is now ten years between the
+time this murder was committed and the bringing of the prisoner to the
+bar of justice.  There is but one more thing to do to remove the
+smallest iota of doubt that the prisoner at the bar and Anna Janssen,
+Alastair de Vries's mistress, are one and the same person.  And to
+prove this I shall call to the witness-stand the detective who arrested
+Anna Janssen in Tahiti, and in whose custody the prisoner has been from
+that day until she was brought to justice here--a period of nine years
+and four months in all."
+
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy!"
+
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy to the stand."
+
+The public craned forward, and with that strange shifting sound that
+betokens an immensity of interest they settled themselves in their
+seats for the recital of the detective.  Here was the great attraction
+of the trial--the story of McCarthy and Anna Janssen alone on a desert
+island, a murderess and the officer who arrested her.  More than the
+morbid interest of the killing of De Vries, more than the realistic
+tale of old New York that was, more than the spectacle of a woman
+dicing for her life, more than the prospect of watching Donegan, the
+greatest of criminal lawyers, harass the court, and pound the battered
+witnesses, and at last possibly and probably carry off the prisoner as
+in an old-time rescue from Tyburn, was the promised recital of the
+adventure in the lonely Southern sea.  There had been one romantic
+story of it in one day of the papers, and then no more, for the matter
+would have called forth intense comment from the papers, arousing
+sympathy or hatred, and the case was _sub judice_.
+
+But that one story stirred the imagination of the public.  And the
+sordid tale told of a woman killing her fickle lover in an attack of
+offended vanity faded into a golden haze of romance.  The scented smell
+of the tropics came to their nostrils, and their eyes saw golden sands
+and phosphorescent seas.  And here the palms murmured with a rustle as
+of exotic silks, and the Bird of Paradise winged its iridescent flight
+through the opaque Marquesan dusk.  And the spirits of strange gods
+moved upon the face of the waters....
+
+Here was a setting for Scheherazade and here characters for a master
+writer: a patrolman of New York, young, athletic, unspoiled, canny with
+the knowledge of his native city, brave as only his kind is brave; and
+here a woman from the sloughs of the Tenderloin, an admitted beauty, a
+proven murderess.
+
+What drama had happened in that isle of dreams, in that immense act of
+nine rolling years?  And did she love him, or did she hate him?  And
+had he succumbed to her, as Adam to Lilith in Eden, before Eve was?  Or
+had he resisted her as Anthony of Egypt resisted the succuba in the
+desert near Fayum?  And did she wheedle him with words sweeter than
+honey?  Or did she curse him with strange black blasphemies?  Or was it
+just one long, dumb vigil of hatred?  Or had they become friends,
+hunter and hunted, marooned now on the islands of strange dead gods?
+
+In God's name, what?
+
+At any rate they would soon know.
+
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy, this way!"
+
+Then, of a sudden, up rose Howard Donegan.  The judge on his bench, the
+jurymen, the prosecuting attorney, the court, the prisoner herself, all
+looked at him with a hesitant surprise.  Somehow his action was
+surprisingly dramatic.  He stood up slowly and said nothing, but looked
+around.  Into the drama of crime and romance, there was injected a new
+element, powerful, sluggish, but immensely sure.
+
+"If it please the Court," went his heavy, significant voice, "may I say
+a few words?"
+
+"It is hardly regular, at this period, Mr. Donegan," the judge said,
+puzzled.  "Surely you will have an opportunity later on."
+
+"The opportunity is opportune only now."  Like some strange gargoyle in
+an old cathedral the great animal appeared.  His eyes, under their
+threatening hoods, were black and beady like the eyes of some
+malevolent creature of the jungle.  His mouth, a wide, thin slit,
+pouted like the mouth of a fish.  His sedentary body was massive and
+grotesque like some monster of a mad artist's drawing.  His voice
+creaked like unoiled machinery.  But--God!--what power was there!
+
+"Your Honor, men of the jury, and Mr. District Attorney, at any point I
+could have obstructed the course of this trial until all of you were
+weary in your chairs.  I could have obfuscated facts and motives and
+testimony until you were as uncertain of truth as Pilate.  The woman
+Wilkins--I could have shown that her word was no more to be depended on
+than the word of the village idiot.  Mr. Howland Christy, De Vries's
+relative--I could have shaken him on the stand until he would have been
+uncertain of his testimony, for he is an honest man.  And the usher of
+the cabaret--if I had concentrated on him, I could have made that
+whisky-sodden brain, that broken will, contradict everything he had
+said.
+
+"But I did none of these things.  I made no haze of doubt out of honest
+facts.  For why?  Because these facts are true.  I grant them freely!"
+
+There were a rustle and a murmur in the room.  The public was suddenly
+aghast.  What was this from Donegan?  Treachery?  Who ever heard of a
+counsel granting things like that?  Good Lord! what was the man doing?
+The murmuring went on in spite of the judge's gavel, the attendants'
+cries.
+
+Donegan swept the room with his black, minatory glance, and the
+murmuring died.
+
+"Your Honor, Mr. District Attorney, men of the jury, a crime is not an
+instantaneous action.  What goes before a crime is important, and not
+less important is what follows it.  Has the affair been brooded over,
+or has it been the result of momentary passion, and has the deed been
+regarded with smug satisfaction, or with quaking horror?
+
+"And what effect has this had on the prisoner, on the world, on its
+time?  So many things have to be taken into consideration when we are
+adjudging the crime.
+
+"Gentlemen, the law and legal procedure are as easy to comprehend as a
+child's primer.  The office of the district attorney is to see that a
+malefactor is brought to justice.  The office of the jury is to decide
+whether that action was or was not done.  The object of the judge is to
+weigh, decide, and in the name of the people say what shall be done
+with a member of the community who has hurt the interests of the
+community by his or her action.  The duty of the counsel for the
+prisoner is to see that his client is not traduced by false witnesses,
+nor his or her liberty endangered by unfacts.
+
+"But the object of all in the court-room is to see that justice is
+done, though the heavens crumble.
+
+"I have examined no witnesses.  I shall examine none.  But I ask this
+in the latitude of the Court, and in the name of that Justice whose
+servants we one and all are, as much myself, advocate for the prisoner,
+as the district attorney for the people of the State of New York, as
+the jury in the box, as the judge on his bench: that the next witness,
+Thomas McCarthy, shall be allowed to tell his own story in his own way,
+relating facts which may not seem germane to the case, but which I
+claim are as pertinent as the pistol with which the crime was committed
+or the _corpus delicti_ itself.  I ask this of the Court and I request
+the Court so to direct."
+
+"This is hardly regular, Mr. Donegan."
+
+"I ask this in the name of Justice!"
+
+"This is a court of Justice, Mr. Donegan."  The judge's manner had a
+slight rebuke.  "But if the district attorney is agreeable--"
+
+The district attorney, a little nettled, but rather awed before the
+tremendous purpose of Donegan, shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Very well, Mr. Donegan," the judge nodded.  "The district attorney--"
+Donegan addressed the jury--"is calling Thomas McCarthy to prove the
+identity of Anna Janssen.  He is an officer of the City of New York, a
+witness for the State of New York.  The attorney has called him to
+prove that the prisoner in the dock is Anna Janssen.  I shall not
+examine him.  But when he has given his testimony for the district
+attorney he will have given his testimony for me.
+
+"And I shall have proven that the chorus girl who killed Alastair de
+Vries is not the woman who stands in the dock!"
+
+There was an instant's sighing from the courtroom, a momentary
+relaxation.  So Donegan had fought and won his first fight, and now
+they were going to hear the History of the Spicy Isles.  Now all the
+mystery would be lifted that had been hanging about the court-room like
+a necromancer's mist.
+
+"Call Thomas McCarthy!" Donegan barked from the side of his mouth.
+
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy."
+
+"Thomas McCarthy to the stand!"
+
+As he stood in the witness-box, McCarthy seemed to bulk tremendously in
+the room.  As Anna Janssen seemed to fill the court spiritually, so he
+seemed to fill it physically.  Emanations of strength, emanations of
+power came from him like current from a battery.  He was not six feet
+tall, but so erect did he stand, so free was his carriage that he
+seemed to tower above all in the court-room.  He was not a big man, but
+he suggested tremendous strength, so easily with the smallest movement
+did the sinews ripple beneath his coat.  Brown as copper, his face had
+not the strange mystery of Anna Janssen's, because his eyes and hair
+were black, where hers were fair.  Yet he was strange.
+
+It was principally that he was out of place in his city clothes.  One
+could have imagined him easily as some young athlete in the Olympic
+games, hurling the discus possibly, or flinging himself over the high
+jump.  Or one might have suffered him in the clothes of summer in the
+country, soft rolling collar and roomy sport coat.  But in the
+"business suit" of some department-store, he seemed like an actor some
+inept stage manager had dressed.  Grotesquely, a police badge was
+pinned to the lapel of his coat.
+
+As he entered the box, Anna Janssen turned toward him with a swift
+outpouring of her eyes.  It might have been interest, but it was warmer
+than interest.  It might have been appeal, but it was more confident
+than appeal.
+
+"You are plain-clothes officer Thomas McCarthy?" the district attorney
+examined.
+
+"Yes, sir.  Number eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen."
+
+"Attached to police headquarters?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Tell us the circumstances under which you arrested the prisoner."
+
+"The Commissioner--the Commissioner--"  McCarthy began, faltered,
+suddenly stopped.
+
+"Yes, the Commissioner."
+
+But McCarthy seemed struck by sudden panic.
+
+"Yes, yes!" the district attorney became irritable.  "The
+Commissioner--"  He rapped the table.
+
+Donegan rose.
+
+"McCarthy," he explained gently, "has had no one to talk to for seven
+years but my client.  He finds it hard to get his words right.  Take
+your time, McCarthy," he told the witness.  "Close your eyes.  Say it
+as if you were saying it to yourself."
+
+The prisoner threw him a look of gratitude.
+
+"I was on the vice squad under Inspector O'Gara."  The witness found
+words at last.  "One morning the Commissioner sends for me.  It was
+when the trouble was on about the graft in the Raines-law hotels.  The
+Commissioner looks at me kind of hard.
+
+"'Are you on the square, McCarthy?' he says.
+
+"'Yes, Commissioner, I 'm on the square,' I tells him.
+
+"'It's news to me they 's any one on the square,' the Commissioner
+laughs kind o' mean.
+
+"'Tell me, McCarthy, were you ever mixed up with a woman?'  I gets
+chilled all over, because I thinks some one's trying to frame me.
+
+"'No, sir.  Never,' I answers.
+
+"'Then why were n't you?'
+
+"'I don't know,' I says, 'except it was my people were from Ireland and
+brought me up their own way.  When I was a kid, Commissioner, I could
+go to confession without holding out, and I guess I can do it to-day.'
+
+"'Oh, you 're one of them good Irish cops,' he sneers.  'I heard tell
+on them, but I never met one before.'
+
+"'Well, you meet him now.'  I looks him cold in the eye.  And then I 'm
+sorry, because I sees he means nothing.  He 's just sore.
+
+"'Well, square cop,' he says, 'I got a job for you.  Anna Janssen,' he
+says, 'is found.  A rich guy hides her and brings her to Tahiti on his
+yacht.  She's there now.  The French authorities,' he says, 'have made
+a pinch.  Go get her.'
+
+"'All right,' I says, and turns to go.
+
+"'Just a moment, McCarthy,' he says.  'I said: "Get her."  You
+understand?  Get her.  And keep her.  Was a man to try and escape on
+you, what would you do?'
+
+"'I 'd shoot,' I says.  'I 'd bring him in, alive or dead.'
+
+"'Well, shoot her.'
+
+"'Oh, gee, Chief!' I says.  'I can't shoot a woman.'
+
+"'Well, then, shoot yourself,' he says.  'At any rate, if you come home
+alone, come home cold storage.  I 'll pay the freight.  And that 'll be
+all,' he says.
+
+"I goes to Paris, and from Paris to Marseilles--"
+
+"That's all right, McCarthy," the district attorney waived.  "It does
+n't matter how you went.  Tell us what happened at Tahiti."
+
+"In Tahiti something tells me all is not right.  The steamer I come on
+docks in the morning and leaves that afternoon, and I hopes to make it
+with Janssen.  Maybe it's because I can't get their French and our
+consul is not a well man, but they delay me until the steamer goes and
+then I 'm left flat.  The extradition papers must be in order, they
+say.  But there is too much of this belle-prisoner stuff.
+
+"Well, all's finished and they takes me to her.  'Well, Janssen,' I
+says, 'we got you.'  'Now that you got me, what are you going to do
+with me?' she laughs; and every one laughs.  Right away I see they 're
+all rooting for her, and they like me like a souse likes water.
+
+"Honest, Judge, I don't blame them.  They's few white women in that
+place and, such as they are, they 're not lookers.  And the Kanaka
+girls, for all they are pretty as a picture, they ain't human and they
+_ain't_ healthy, you know, as we white people think.  Anna certainly
+had the looks, and was white, and had the pep, and they were all crazy
+about her.  The Frenchmen are daffy about women, and they don't think
+nothing about a woman shooting a man--nothing at all.
+
+"So they smiles at me and they says, 'You must see our beautiful island
+before you sail away with the belle prisoner!'
+
+"'Your island is fine,' I tells them, 'and, no offense meant, but it's
+got nothing on Manhattan Island.  And as for the belle prisoner,' I
+says, 'ain't you folks forgetting something?  This dame is as nifty a
+little murderess as ever I sees.'
+
+"'It was a crime passional,' they says, and they shrugs their shoulders.
+
+"'Tell that to the judge,' I says.  'I 'm only the copper.'
+
+"'Well,' they say, 'unfortunately Monsieur will have to enjoy our
+island for three weeks.  The next liner will not be here until then.'
+
+"'Oh, is that so?' I laughs.  'Well, let me tell you something.  While
+you guys was examining the papers for your belle prisoner, I was doing
+a little scouting around the harbor.  And they's a schooner leaving
+to-night for San Francisco.  I guess that 'll do us all right.'
+
+"'Impossible!'  They go wild.  'A lady cannot travel--'
+
+"'Cut the lady stuff,' I says.  'She's my prisoner.'
+
+"She was a trading schooner, dealing in copra, oranges, cotton,
+mother-of-pearl, and such like, but once she must have been a fine
+yacht.  There were state-rooms still aboard her, though now they were
+filled with junk for trading, but I made a deal with the captain and he
+cleans one out and fixes it up for Janssen.  And then I takes Janssen
+down to the docks.
+
+"Judge, you'd 'a' thought she'd saved the country instead of killing De
+Vries, the way they acted about that woman.  They lined up on the docks
+of Papeete, all the men and a good many women, too.  And they sang and
+they danced and they said good-by.  'When you get off, come back,' they
+says to her.  They got on my nerves so much, I had all I could do not
+to laugh dirty, when they says that about getting off.
+
+"Janssen looks at the boat, and looks at the people.  And she goes
+crazy-mad.  'Damn you, damn you!'  She turns on me.  'Only for you, I
+'d not be going back!'
+
+"'Yeh, only for me,' I says, 'you would n't have killed De Vries.  It's
+all my fault, hey?  Now, listen to me, Janssen.  You 're my prisoner,
+and my prisoner you 'll remain.  You had the game; now pay up, and stop
+hollering.  You and I are from the same town, and I know you.  You
+ought to know me a little better.  I would n't have been sent for you
+if I had n't been able to take care of myself.  All your French friends
+won't save you from a New York cop, once he 's out to get you.  You 're
+beat, Janssen,' I tells her; 'you might as well give in.'
+
+"She looks at me a long time.
+
+"'I 'm not beat yet,' she says.
+
+"The captain tells us he's going to stop at Nukahivo and a few other
+islands to take cargo aboard.  He 's an old guy and sensible, and
+Janssen plays up to him to beat the band, so I takes no risks and keeps
+close.  Even if he is an old guy and has n't any ambition, still and
+all, nobody likes a copper, and every one hates to see a prisoner taken
+home, especially if it's a woman.  So I give Janssen and him no chance
+for private conversation.  Once clear of the islands, I think, and all
+will be well.  Janssen sees my game.
+
+"'You don't give me much chance with the old fellow.'
+
+"'No, ma'am,' I laughs.  'That's your business.  I give you no chance.
+You 're beat, Janssen.  What's the use of fooling yourself?'
+
+"'Oh, I 've still got an ace in the hole.  I 'm not beat yet!'
+
+"She turns in early.  'I suppose you 're going to lock the door?' she
+asks me.
+
+"'What's the use?  They's other keys.  The islands are near at hand,
+and they could put you off in a boat.  I 'm not going to lock the
+door,' I tells her, 'but I 'm going to sleep outside it, up against it.
+It opens out, and the smallest movement will wake me up.  You 're beat.'
+
+"'All right!  I 'm beat,' she says, and she turns in.
+
+"I puts myself against the door, and falls asleep on the deck.  It
+might have been ten minutes after it, but it was really hours, the door
+opens.  It's the middle of the night, for the stars are high, and there
+'s nothing to be seen, and the waves keep lapping the bow of the
+schooner and she dips pretty like a cantering horse.  And suddenly I 'm
+awake and lonely and wet with dew.  I looks up and there 's Janssen
+above me, big and handsome and her eyes like the stars.
+
+"'You 're not comfortable there, McCarthy,' she whispers.
+
+"'I can't say as I 'm on a bed of roses,' I tells her.
+
+"'Why don't you come inside?'
+
+"'I don't know what you mean,' I says.
+
+"'Never mind what I mean,' she laughs.  'Come on in.'
+
+"'I think I 'll stay where I am,' I says kind of short.
+
+"'I 'm not accustomed to having invitations like this refused.'  There
+was a kind of jar in her voice.
+
+"'They 's lots of things you 're not accustomed to, you better get
+accustomed to right away,' I says.  'You 're accustomed to fine hotels.
+Now you got to get used to the Tombs.  You 're accustomed to lying down
+on couches.  Now you got to get accustomed to sitting up, very
+straight, in a chair at Sing Sing.'  I did n't want to be brutal toward
+her, Judge, but I did n't want her to be making passes like that at me.
+
+"What she says to me then I could n't tell, Judge.  But she closes the
+door with a slam and leaves me be.
+
+"I notices the wind is getting kind o' high, and that when the schooner
+pitches she sort of jars, and that under the green light on the
+starboard sight of the boat the water is rushing past very quick.  The
+boat is lying over and the sailors pass me quick as lightning and in
+the cordage the air is whining like a broken fiddle-string, but over it
+all I can hear Janssen cursing in her cabin, cursing just like the
+girls cursed in the old days when a pinch was made in the Tenderloin,
+cursing me because I would n't fall for her."
+
+
+II
+
+As Officer McCarthy paused for an instant in his story the eyes of the
+court-room seemed by common consent to turn to Anna Janssen in the
+dock.  The jury looked at her with knitted brows; the spectators with
+puzzled glances.  It seemed impossible that this calm, majestic figure
+could once have acted the siren of the streets to the officer bringing
+her from her Tahitian sanctuary.  Immobile, somehow immaculate, with
+strange superhuman dignity, she did not blush, she did not smile.  Only
+a genre shadow of pain was about her eyes, such as creeps about the
+eyes of some one who remembers old, all-but-forgotten painful things of
+phases of life long by.
+
+Out of those firm lips like a rose in bloom could blasphemy have flowed
+in a sluggish lecherous stream?  Out of that glorious bronze throat,
+fit for Magnificats?  It seemed impossible, was impossible.
+
+The judge looked at her with moved, understanding eyes.  The district
+attorney cast at her puzzled glances.  Donegan looked neither at her,
+nor at anything.  He just drowsed like a dog....
+
+"All next day," McCarthy went on, "the blow grew worse.  They reefed
+down sail until we were flying along under top and foresails.  The
+funny thing was that here and there the sky was blue.  You 'd have
+thought all was going to get fair in an hour or two, but it did n't.
+And the captain stood by the man at the wheel and looked worried.
+
+"You had to shout to make yourself heard.  'Ain't it going to calm
+down, Captain?' I says.
+
+"'I don't know,' he says.  'I wish to God I was out of these islands,'
+he says.  'If I was all alone in the middle of the Pacific, I would n't
+give a damn, but these here coral insects,' he says, 'they 're always
+building, and they sure do bother me.  And these charts of the
+Marquesas,' he says, 'they ain't worth a damn.  I wish I was out of
+these islands,' he says; 'I sure do.'
+
+"'Oh, you 'll be all right, Cap,' I says.
+
+"'You get for'a'd out o' here,' he barks at me.
+
+"'I 'll talk to you later about that,' I says, but I goes off, because
+I see he 's worried.
+
+"All we get to eat that day is a cup of coffee and a sandwich.  And
+night comes and we 're still plunging on.
+
+"And then we hear thunder.
+
+"Janssen won't turn in.  She 's scared, she says, and she sticks by me.
+And the thunder keeps up, and comes closer, and it gets very dark.
+
+"'What's that?' Janssen says.
+
+"'It strikes me it is n't thunder at all.  It's some boat in distress
+firing a gun,' I tells her.  'It's too bad we can't do anything for
+them.  But I don't think we can.'
+
+"'I 'm afraid, McCarthy,' Janssen says.  'That's no gun.'
+
+"'Maybe it's a lot of guns,' I says.  'Maybe it's the French navy
+practising.  They take a funny night for it,' I says.
+
+"'I 'm scared, McCarthy,' she whimpers, and comes close.
+
+"'We 'll be all right,' I tells her.
+
+"'I 'm scared,' she cries.  'Put your arms around me, McCarthy, please.'
+
+"'Oh, come off!' I tells her.  That game don't go, Janssen.  What's the
+use?'
+
+"'I 'm scared, honest.  They's something going to happen.'  The boat
+does a little jazz step, and the guns is right in our ears.  And
+overhead, Judge, the stars were out.  'Please take me in your arms,
+McCarthy--just like I was your sister.'
+
+"'Well, you ain't just like you was my sister.  And they 's been too
+many arms around you for me to put mine.  But you can hold on to me,' I
+says.
+
+"And then my teeth come together with a jar and my spine is near driven
+through my skull, and something hits me on the head.  And all the water
+in the world comes over me.  And I know nothing."
+
+
+The witness, it seemed, here underwent a strange dramatic
+transformation.  Until now in his recital, his story had been a story
+all could understand, a policeman's story, told in a policeman's voice,
+in a policeman's words.  To the court-room he was a figure within their
+ken, a person to warm the hearts of burgesses.  Honest, homely,
+speaking in dialect, he stood in their eyes for the typical and honored
+defender of city families and city homes.  Great figures, those men!
+They make heroism casual.  We may call the New York police grafters; we
+may call them brutes and tyrants; we may call them the scum of Ireland.
+We can never call them cowards.
+
+There is on record the case of--shall I say O'Kelly?  A homicidal
+maniac, armed to the teeth, took refuge in a cellar.  "And then what?"
+"I goes down into the cellar and I gets him out."  "Good God!  You went
+down alone into that dark hole after--"  "Oh, that was not'in'; he was
+easy!"
+
+You can have your great regiments--your Old Guard at Waterloo; your
+Rough Riders of San Juan Hill, your Black Watch, your Bashi-Bazouks;
+your Bersaglieri.  Give me the New York police!
+
+Up to now McCarthy had been only a New York policeman, telling in a dry
+way the facts of a case.  But a new dignity arose in him of a sudden.
+He was no longer dealing with the processes of his profession but with
+big human phenomena.  Until now he had been deferential to court and
+officers, a cog in the legal machine.  Suddenly he assumed
+individuality, poise, dignity.  He became bigger than the personnel of
+the case, as big as the woman in the dock.  And curiously his language
+changed to fit the newer individuality, turning from the idioms of the
+sidewalks of New York to what we term, in that archaic phrase which has
+so much of dignity, the King's English.
+
+"I came to," he resumed.  "At first it was blackness and a terrible
+headache, and the thought in my brain: 'Where is Janssen?  I've lost
+Janssen.'  And then my head cleared, and my eyes opened.  And I was
+lying on the sand in the dawn, and Janssen was bathing my head.
+
+"'So there you are!' I said.
+
+"And then it struck me.  Where 's the ship?
+
+"I got up on my elbow and looked around.  We were on a strand, with
+trees behind us and a bay in front and the sun just coming up, bright
+as a golden eagle.  In front of us was a sort of bay where the water
+was still and sparkling, like wine sparkles.  And then I look out
+further.  And there 's a sort of wall of crags between the bay and the
+sea, and on the other side of it the sea is pounding, pounding,
+pounding, like a man crazy with anger.  _Swish!  Crash!  Boom!_  And
+then I notice pieces of timber, a bale, a piece of cloth in the lagoon.
+
+"The schooner 's gone, I understand.  There 's been a wreck.
+
+"'Where are the rest?' I ask Janssen.
+
+"'There are no rest.'  She throws her arms out.  'Just you and I!'
+
+"Then after a while I said: 'We 're in a pretty bad way
+here--shipwrecked; without anything to eat; with a very small chance of
+rescue.  We 're up against it.  There is n't even water.'
+
+"But she only laughed.
+
+"'We 're not so bad as you 'd think,' she says.  'There 's water.  I
+found it when I looked for something to bathe that cut on your head.
+And as for food, I 'd been in these islands a while before they put me
+in the--place--at Papeete.  There 's bananas, and there 's cocoanuts,
+and there 's breadfruit.  And that cove is full of fish.'
+
+"'You can't eat fish raw,' I tell her.
+
+"I 'm turning out my pockets then, leaving things in the sun to dry--my
+gun, with the shells out in a row; my watch; my knife; my pocketbook.
+She points at the watch.
+
+"'You can make a fire with the crystal of that,' she says.  'Your
+bananas 'll do for the present.  I 'll go off and get some.  You need
+n't worry,' she says as she notices me looking at her.  'I can't get
+off the island.'
+
+"After a while she comes back and sits down.
+
+"'Do you know how you got ashore, McCarthy?'
+
+"'I don't,' I answer.  'I know nothing.'
+
+"'When the boat struck,' she tells me, 'you and I were washed over the
+reef.  Something hit you on the head.  But I pulled you in, McCarthy.
+You went down.  You were out cold.  I had a job, too,' she laughs
+nervously.  'Your hair is awfully short.'
+
+"'Well, I got to thank you,' I said.
+
+"'Don't mind thanking me,' she said.  'Tell me this!'  She 's awfully
+serious.  'Don't you think a life is worth a life?'
+
+"I say nothing to that.
+
+"'Don't you, McCarthy?' she pleads.
+
+"'I 'm sorry,' I tell her.  'I 'm awfully, awfully sorry, but I 've got
+to bring you in.'
+
+"'You 're a hard man, McCarthy.'
+
+"'I 'm not a hard man.  I 'm just a man sworn in to do my job.  I 'm
+just a man a big trust's been put in, and I can't fall down.  Sis, you
+missed your chance,' I told her.  'You ought to have let me go down,
+when you saw me going.  Then you 'd have been free.  You ought to have
+stood clear and let me drown.'
+
+"'Oh, I could n't do that!' she says.
+
+"'Neither could I let you go!'
+
+"In the afternoon I go around the island to see where we are.  But from
+no point can I see land or a sail or anything.  We are just on one of
+those Pacific atolls, as they call them, away from the line of
+everything but sailing-ships trading from isle to isle.  I look
+everywhere--north, east, south, and west--and there is nothing but
+boiling sea, white, muddy, with birds fluttering, or floating in the
+air.
+
+"The island itself is not more than ten miles square and there are
+rocks everywhere about it except around the cove where we landed, and
+that has a coral breakwater.  The sand is bright and yellow like new
+gold, and on the island itself there is greenness that is nearly black.
+And you can see cocoanut-trees and banana-trees and oranges.  And while
+I 'm standing there a little pig breaks through the underbrush and
+looks at me, and then flies off with a squeal.  And for a moment my
+heart goes pit-a-pat because I think there are people on this island.
+A pig is a human thing.  It's always been so near humans, it's nearly
+human itself.  But a moment later something in me tells me there 's no
+one here.  It's been put ashore, it and others, by some of the old
+whaling-ships that are gone now.
+
+"I look around and I see the island, the sand like gold, the clean
+wind, the water in the cove as transparent as water in a glass; the
+fish in the water and the animals on the island, and the fruit on the
+trees.  And the sun is bright and warm and full of life, and in the
+distance I can see Janssen.  She has let her hair down and it covers
+her to the knees in a great shining cloak, like some wonderful fur
+cloak.
+
+"And I think: There's many 's the old cop in New York--there 's many 's
+the millionaire, even--would like to finish his life alone in this
+paradise island, away from all trouble and worry and having everything
+he needs in sunshine that's more like wine than light, and with Janssen
+with him, when she has let down her hair.
+
+"But I says to myself: You needn't think that way.  You 're not old,
+nor disappointed.  You 've got no reason to idle your life away.  You
+'ve got a job on hand.  You 're a detective officer, and you 've got a
+prisoner, and you 're going to bring her home!
+
+"I return to where Janssen is by the cove and I look for my knife and
+watch and gun.  But my gun is n't there.
+
+"'Do you know where my gun is?'
+
+"She wheels around on me suddenly and points it at my head.
+
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'your word's good with me.  Either tell me now
+you 'll let me go when we 're rescued or I 'll kill you.'
+
+"'I can't,' I said.  'I won't.  Now give me my gun and be sensible.'
+
+"'I mean it,' she said.  'Let me off or I 'll kill you.'
+
+"'I would n't be the first.'
+
+"'Will you?'
+
+"'No!' I says.
+
+"I 'm watching the gun, to grab it if I can.  Then I see a spat of fire
+like a match lighting.  Then something burns my ear like red-hot iron.
+I hear the shot.  I 'm sprung halfway round.
+
+"I face up again.
+
+"'You made a better job with De Vries,' I says, stupid-like.
+
+"I 'm expecting the finisher, but she walks up to me and hands me the
+gun.  She just looks at me, and her throat works, and then suddenly
+from her eyes run two big tears down to the corners of her mouth and I
+turn away.
+
+"'I 'm going to fix you a bed of banana-leaves, and then I 'm going to
+light a fire.  Forget your troubles for a while.  Think of this as a
+picnic.'
+
+"But the tears still run down her face and she says nothing.  I go off
+and get busy because I can't stand the sight of It.  I 'm not feeling
+any too like a comedy, myself.
+
+"'We 're sitting that night at a fire on the beach, and the thin new
+moon is up.  A light breeze is in shore.  Suddenly she turns to me.
+
+"'You 're religious, McCarthy,' she says to me.
+
+"'I 'm not exactly religious,' I say.  'I 'm like every one, I guess.'
+
+"'You believe in God, McCarthy?'
+
+"Nobody likes to talk much about things of that kind.  You think about
+them, but you don't say them.  And particularly you don't talk about
+them to a prisoner who 's up for murder, unless you 're one of those
+Holy Willie boys.
+
+"'Who does n't?' I spars.
+
+"'You believe--' her voice is serious--'that God takes care of you on
+this island?'
+
+"That's what they say.'
+
+"'Do you believe, McCarthy, that He knows me, takes care of me, cares
+for me?'
+
+"I say nothing--because I can't see it.  She 's too far out of the
+pale.  I 'd like to tell her 'yes.'  But I can't.
+
+"'You don't believe, then, McCarthy--' her voice is just a husky
+whisper--'that there is any caring for me, anywhere.'
+
+"'Oh, what's the use of bothering about that?'
+
+"'You don't, then,' she said.  'You think I 'm too bad for--even--that.'
+
+"I get up and shake myself.  'Maybe there's nothing to it, after all,'
+I tell her.  But all of a sudden she is crying, her face down to the
+sand, as though her heart would break.
+
+"I move away, because I 'm no good to her, and go down the strand a
+bit.  The water laps the strand, and whispers in the trees, but I can
+hear Janssen crying still.
+
+"I walk on and on.  I hear the sea rumble on the rocks, and the whisper
+of the trees is louder.  A turtle pluds into the water, and a cocoanut
+falls with a thud, but over it all I still can hear the voice of
+Janssen crying, little tearing cries, as though pieces of silk were
+being ripped from the main fabric with shrill protesting tragedy.  It
+struck me that she herself was flaying her heart with brutal knout-like
+strokes, and that every red shred was moaning in protest: 'Don't,
+don't, don't!'...
+
+
+"The new moon became the full moon, and waned and died," McCarthy went
+on.  "But no help came.
+
+"There was nothing to do but wait, and a policeman does n't mind
+waiting.  All his life is waiting, except for a hint of action now and
+then.  But I worried about Janssen.
+
+"Janssen gave me no trouble.  We talked just as friendly strangers
+might talk, waiting on a railroad platform.  She got the bananas and
+the cocoanuts and the breadfruit, gathering them as they fell.  I
+managed to kill a suckling pig now and then, and I rigged up a
+fishing-line from a piece of rope I unraveled that had come ashore from
+the wreck of the boat, and a pin Janssen gave me.
+
+"There 's nothing I like to do better than fish, and I sit there and
+fish and think all the time.  And little things come to me of the life
+in New York, and I worry over them.  I never was a grafter.  I never
+took a penny from any one when I was on the vice squad, in the way of
+protection, but there 's little things that worry me.  As, for
+instance, when I go into a saloon for a drink, they never take my
+money.  When an arrest is made, sometimes I find a bailsman for the
+prisoner, and they give me something as a favor.  Or I sell tickets for
+this benefit or another, and nobody wants them, but nobody dares
+refuse.  And I sit there in a few acres of coral in the Pacific Ocean
+and the sun rises in the east way over New York, and the moon sets in
+the west down China way.  And the winds blow south from Japan or north
+from the edge of the world.  And I think: It's very small.  It's not
+worth a man's while.
+
+"And while I 'm thinking Janssen is thinking, too.  But what she 's
+thinking about, I can't figure.  She 's very silent.  And at times her
+mouth is n't hard at all, nor her eyes, either.  And when she speaks
+her eyes are on the ground and she 's very serious.
+
+"'What are you thinking about, Janssen?' I ask.
+
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'did you ever, after a hard day's work,
+disappointed, clogged with dirt, come in and turn on a cold shower and
+suddenly feel better and cleaner--and be happy again?'
+
+"'That's the only thing to do, on a day like that.'
+
+"'Well, I feel,' she said, 'as if this island were that bath after the
+awful day of my life,' she said.
+
+"At times I think, myself, that it must be getting on her nerves, this
+place.  She 'll want the lights, the gaiety, the people, if only for a
+little space, before she faces her trial.  Even the chair must be
+better for her than this waiting, I think.
+
+"'Are n't you getting lonely, Janssen?' I ask.  'Does n't this get on
+your nerves--having nobody to talk to?'  We never speak any more about
+the murder or the trial.
+
+"'Why, no, McCarthy!'
+
+"'I should have thought,' I say, 'that after the gaiety you knew you 'd
+find this a terrible trial.'
+
+"'McCarthy,' she said suddenly, 'were you ever at Saranac?'
+
+"'I 've passed through it.'
+
+"'Did you ever see the poor people there, quiet, waiting, glad to be
+alive, just being healed?  Well, I 'm like those.'
+
+"I don't notice for a while the change that is coming over Janssen.  I
+see things on the outside of people.  I don't see them on the inside.
+I 'm a detective.  I just think maybe she 's got the blues, Maybe she's
+worried.  But one afternoon she comes to me and springs a new one.
+
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'would you mind every afternoon keeping away for
+an hour or so from the cove?'
+
+"'What's the idea?' I says.
+
+"'Well, I used to be a good swimmer,' she says, 'and I 'm going to
+practise, and I have n't got any bathing-suit,' she says, 'not even
+tights.  So you 'd better keep away.'
+
+"I think to myself: 'This is a queer thing for any one as tough as they
+tell me Janssen is, to come out with.'  And I wonder if she means
+exactly the opposite of what she says.  She wants me, I half figure, to
+hang around.  And maybe she thinks I 'll fall for her.  And if I do,
+she has me, I say to myself.
+
+"And then I look up at her, and I see her eyes, and I never was so
+ashamed before or since.
+
+"'All right, Janssen,' I say.
+
+"'Thanks, McCarthy!'
+
+"A week later she borrows my knife.
+
+"'My clothes are in rags, McCarthy,' she says, 'so it's back to the
+Garden of Eden for me.  I got to dress up like these wahinies down
+here.  Don't laugh at me, McCarthy; promise me you won't.'
+
+"'Not too much Garden of Eden, now,' I warn her.
+
+"'Don't worry!' she laughs.  And next morning you could have knocked me
+down with a straw, as they say.  She has strung together big green
+banana-leaves with fiber, and made a knee-length skirt of them.  And
+under her arms and about her is a little closed jacket of leaves, and
+that great golden cloak of her hair falls around, rippling and
+shimmering.
+
+"'How do I look, McCarthy?'
+
+"'You look fine,' I tell her.  'You look like a picture, you sure do.
+You might be in a stage play,' I tell her, 'only you 're so fine and
+modest.'  She blushes pretty as a girl of sixteen, until it was a shock
+to me to remember that she was my prisoner for the crime of murder.
+And I look at myself, feel my chin, see how my suit is going.  'You
+make me feel like a bum.'
+
+"The months pass and two sails go by.
+
+"One I see in the early evening.  A few very fleecy clouds shuttle in
+and out before the sun, and the great sea is purple, and the sand takes
+on a deep hue like the color of a gold coin that's been in circulation
+for years, mellow and reddish-like.  And the green of the trees is so
+green you can feel it.  And on the horizon is a native boat with a
+lateen sail that is orange-colored.
+
+"I see it.  I make no effort.  I can do nothing.  But it seems to me
+that it is unreal.  It is not there.  It is just a dream.  It is unreal
+as the island is to me, unreal as my old life is to me, unreal as
+everything is--except Janssen.
+
+"But a week later another boat comes, and this time it is n't unreal.
+Squat and bulky, it is a tramp steamer headed down New Zealand way.  It
+passes not more than three miles off, and very ugly it is upon the sea,
+its funnel belching out black smoke that is like an insult to the
+shining seas.  I have a bonfire ready-made and go to it with my
+burning-glass.  And Janssen stands by and looks at me.
+
+"'Do I have to go back, McCarthy?' she asks.
+
+"'You got to go back and face the music, Janssen.'  And I lights the
+fire.
+
+"I get everything ready to board, but the steamer pays no attention.
+They go straight ahead.  Maybe they think it's just natives, but at any
+rate they don't put about or anything.  I go to the edge of the water
+and shout to them.  I go into it up to my waist and whistle and snap my
+fingers and call to it, as I would to a dog, but they pay no attention.
+And then I give up.
+
+"'I 'm sorry, McCarthy,' Janssen says.
+
+"'What are you sorry for?' I asks her.  'You ought to be glad.'
+
+"'I am glad,' she says.  'I 'm glad for myself, but I 'm sorry for your
+sake, McCarthy.  I 'm really sorry.'
+
+"One night we 're setting by the fire in the moonlight, and I 'm trying
+to figure out how the natives build their huts, because I want to build
+one for Janssen.  There 's a queer sort of rain in these islands.
+Sometimes in a bright sky a cloud will pass, very high, very quick, and
+the rain comes down like bullets.  You can hear it thunder in the
+leaves, and rattle over the sea like pistol shots.  And it's not so
+pleasant after a while.  It's over in a minute or so, but Janssen ought
+to have some place when it comes.
+
+"And Janssen is sitting there as quiet as anything, making figures in
+the sand and saying nothing.  She turns to me.
+
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'did I really kill Alec de Vries?'
+
+"'You killed him dead.'
+
+"'It seems like a dream to me, a bad dream in the night.'
+
+"'If you had waited and looked at that corpse, you 'd have known it was
+no dream.'
+
+"'And because I killed a man that was no use to any one I 've got to go
+back.'
+
+"'You 've got to go back, all right,' I tell her.
+
+"'Well, do you know, it's only fair,' she says.  'You 've called the
+tune, and danced it, and you 've got to pay the fiddler.  But I 'm
+scared, McCarthy.  I 'm terribly scared.  It would be very easy for me
+to jump in the water or borrow your gun some night.  Think of it.  They
+put metal on your legs and strap you into a chair, and they put a cap
+over your head.  And, then a man, as human as yourself, pushes a
+switch, and just as if he were putting out a light, he puts out the
+light of your life, the same light that's in himself....  And all in
+the cold gray morning....'
+
+"'Tell you something, kid--'  I had this on my mind for a while.  'I
+don't think they 'll burn you.  We 'll get you a good lawyer when we go
+back and you 'll get off with a long stretch up the river.'
+
+"'But don't you see, McCarthy,' she laughs nervously, 'that that's
+worse still?  A person does something, as I 've done, because his mind
+and his--his self--are full of nooks and crannies, dust and cobwebs,
+bad feelings, passions.  And he flies away.  And maybe in the desert or
+the mountains a great wind comes and cleanses him.  And he mends the
+shattered self together.
+
+"'But the silly judge and the silly police go after him, and they send
+him to prison, and he sits there in the darkness and the wheels of his
+head go around.  And the cobwebs collect again, and the grime from the
+other people comes off on him.  And in the end he is worse than he was
+in the beginning.
+
+"'I 'd rather die, McCarthy--die, all in the cold gray morning.'
+
+"A month after this Janssen falls ill.  Perhaps it's a gust of rain
+that's made her ill.  Perhaps it's some of the berries or the fish or
+something.  But at any rate, there she lies, white and near dead, all
+the life gone from her.  There 's nothing I can do for her much but try
+to cheer her up and move her when she 's tired of lying in one position.
+
+"'You 've got to get well, Janssen,' I say to her.  'You 've got to
+make an effort.'
+
+"'But why?' she asks.  'Why shouldn't I die?'
+
+"'That's no way to talk.'
+
+"'What has life got for me?' she asks bitterly.  'The electric chair?'
+
+"'You 've got nothing to worry about,' I say.  'It 'll be only a few
+years up the river and then out again, and the good old days.'
+
+"'I won't live for that,' she says.
+
+"'Well, listen,' I joke with her.  'You 're not going to make me come
+all the way across the world for you, and then not bring you home.  You
+'re not going to throw me down, kid; be game.'
+
+"'I 'd like to oblige you, McCarthy,' she smiles; 'but even for that I
+won't stay alive.  Can't you think of any other reason?'
+
+"'It would be awful lonely, if you were to go,' I say; and I mean it.
+'Awful, awful lonely.  I 'm getting very fond of you, Janssen.'
+
+"'That's better,' she says, and pats my hand.  And she turns her head.
+'Don't worry, McCarthy.  I 'll--I 'll live.'"
+
+
+III
+
+Without, the gray January dusk had crept into the cañons of New York
+and given the narrow streets, the crenelated buildings, the moving
+trucks, the pedestrians a semblance of unreality, as though they were
+being seen through a mist raised by some necromancer at the call of a
+wretched man.  Through the windows of the court-room the Tombs were
+still evident, but the building had become unreal.  It was like some
+ogre's castle in a fairy-tale for children, very terrible, but not
+really there.
+
+The judge, the jury, the attendants, all the court had somehow lost
+entity as a court.  It was no more a court than a house in a play is a
+house.  It was just a formula embracing a hundred or so human beings.
+And one felt also that this was not in New York.  There was no
+atmosphere of New York.  New York might be a cloak and a disguise, but
+the minds and personalities of all were on a golden island on shining
+seas.
+
+And they didn't see McCarthy in the witness-box, nor Janssen in the
+dock, but by the cove where the water was so translucent that one could
+see, fathom on fathom deep, the rainbow fish below....
+
+"She gets better day by day, and I 'm so glad I could sing," continued
+the officer, speaking more easily as practice came after his seven
+years of silence.  "She sits on the beach and health comes to her with
+the wind, and little by little the flush comes in her cheek, and life
+ferments, and her hair that has become dank ripples and flows, as a
+still sea stirs up with a breeze.  And soon she 's swimming again.  But
+there 's little of the old Janssen left.  All her movements are grave.
+At times she sits thinking, and her brow is working with thought.  At
+other times she smiles.  Just a dignified little smile.
+
+"And soon after she gets well, she saves my life a second time.
+
+"This is how it happens.  I 'm fishing one day and my line and hook get
+caught down in the coral.  And I don't want to lose that hook.  Hooks
+are n't easy to make.  So I says: 'I 'll go down after that hook.'
+
+"I shoot in and go swimming down through the water, and I hang on to
+the coral with one hand, and unloose the hook with the other.  I 'm
+about ready to come up when in the water between me and the sun I can
+see a shadow like a boat.  For a moment I think it's a boat, and come
+up with a rush.  But half-way up I know it's no boat.  And in the warm
+water I go cold as ice.
+
+"I 'm more than half-way up, and I have no chance of shouting,
+splashing, making a noise, the way you frighten them off.  And suddenly
+I know the big fellow sees me.  I can feel the vibration of his swirl
+in the water as he turns off to a point where he can come rushing at me.
+
+"'It's good-by, McCarthy!' I say to myself, and turn to face him.  And
+then I hear a _plung-h_ into the water the moment he's ready to turn
+over and come at me.  And Janssen comes shooting down.
+
+"She has a stone or something in her hand drawn back and lets him have
+it just on the soft point of the nose, the only place you can hurt
+those fellows.  One crack!  And the big coward turns and slinks off
+just like a dog that's been kicked.
+
+"When we get ashore I 'm just as mad as I can be.  The idea of her
+taking a chance like that!
+
+"'Haven't you got any sense at all?' I bawl her out.  'What do you
+mean, taking a chance like that?  What do you think a shark is?  A
+mackerel?  Maybe you think he wouldn't touch you?  Maybe you think he's
+a gentleman?  He's not.  If brains were money,' I say, 'I don't think
+you could buy a subway ticket.  Never do that, or anything like that
+again.  Mind your own business!'
+
+"But she 's crying and laughing together.  She walks off, now sobbing,
+now laughing.  I run after her.
+
+"'Not that from the bottom of my heart I 'm not grateful to you, but
+you must never again--'
+
+"But she laughs and she sobs:
+
+"'Go away, McCarthy.  Go away.  Please go away!'
+
+
+"All this time I know I 'm very fond of Janssen, and something tells me
+Janssen is of me, though God knows why.  But we say nothing.  At times
+it's hard to talk.  And I look at her and think.  If things were only
+different, how I could love that girl!  But here she is, a prisoner,
+and I 'm her keeper.  It's a pity.  It's a pity, even, she's changed.
+It makes it awful hard for me.
+
+"But I can't keep my eyes off her.  She stands on the beach, the wind
+rustling her green garment, and rippling her hair.  Very beautiful.
+And a little butterfly, from God knows where, is fluttering about her.
+Now it's in her hair, now about her throat.  And curiously it comes to
+light on her lips.
+
+"'You look awfully pretty, Janssen,' I say, 'with that butterfly.'
+
+"She smiles at me, kind of queerly.
+
+"'You 're a brave man, McCarthy,' she says, 'the bravest man I ever
+knew.  You 're strong.  You 're tremendous.  Yes, you 're brave.  But
+this little butterfly, that in all its body has n't the strength of one
+single hair of your head, whose brief life is but a single day, is
+braver than you, McCarthy, braver far than you.'
+
+"'I don't understand you, Janssen.'
+
+"But I understand her all right.
+
+
+"And the days roll by, roll by, and nothing changes, nothing comes to
+us.  Once or twice we see sails.  Once a full-rigged ship under bare
+poles runs before a gale.  And once in the distance we see a schooner
+heeling to the breeze.
+
+"We are not speaking much to each other.  There is a feeling of
+strangeness in the air.  And at night I 'm worried-like.  The trees
+rustle.  The waves lap.  There is great darkness.  And for all we are
+the only two people in that island, yet I feel at night somehow we are
+not alone.  Unseen, shadowy people are about us, in the sea, in the
+air.  Once there were millions on these islands and now there are few.
+Once they were a great strong race, and now they are a timid handful.
+And I imagine that in the dark of the moon the brown tribes reassemble
+and put to sea in their war-canoes, and walk on the beaches that are so
+like Paradise.
+
+"And there are great temples on these islands, but their gods are no
+more.  And may they not too walk in the night-time with terrible,
+silent stride?
+
+"The Cross of Christ is between me and all harm.  I believe that, and I
+know it, and I am not afraid.  But I am unquiet, nevertheless.
+
+"And if I am unquiet, what of Janssen, wide-eyed through the night?
+
+"At last one night I take my courage in both hands.  Janssen is sitting
+in the moonlight by the cove, and for the first time I ever heard her
+she is singing a little something.  Her voice is somehow like a boy's.
+
+"'Janssen!'  I stand and look at her.
+
+"'Yes, McCarthy.'  She turns and looks at me.
+
+"'Janssen, when we go back,' I say, 'and when what has to be will be
+done, and when all is over, the morning you are free, I 'll be waiting
+at the gate for you.  I 'll want you to marry me and come to me.'
+
+"'You love me, McCarthy?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'I love you, Janssen.'
+
+"'I love you, too, McCarthy.  I suppose you know.'
+
+"All this time she never looks at me, but out on the moonlit cove.
+
+"'But if we never get off this island,' she says after a little while,
+'we never get married.'
+
+"'How can we?' I say.  'There is none to marry us.'
+
+"She is speaking slowly, seriously, in the moonlight, and every word
+she says has the weight of sincerity.
+
+"'Do you believe, McCarthy, that the church and all the people there
+and the organ and the rice make a marriage?  Are all these necessary,
+McCarthy?  Tell me, please.'
+
+"'No.'  I think it out.  'The only one necessary is the clergyman.'
+
+"'Because he is the representative of--God?'
+
+"'Yes,' I say in a minute or so, 'because he is there for--God.'
+
+"'And yet God is everywhere?  Knows all?  Sees everything?  Reads the
+inside of our hearts as easily as the clergyman reads our faces?'
+
+"'That is what they say, Janssen.  That is--what--we believe--'
+
+"There is silence.  Then she sinks to her knees in the sand in the
+moonlight.
+
+"'Kneel down, McCarthy, and give me your hands.'  I kneel and give her
+my hands without protest--her voice is so commanding, so sincere.  And
+there is a strange thing between us now.  All the time before if I
+touch her I feel strength flowing from me to her, but to-night when I
+hold her hands there is an even level.
+
+"'If God wishes to hear us to-night, then we are married.'
+
+"'But,' I say, 'Janssen, how do we know if He hears us, gives His
+consent?'
+
+"Her eyes wander over the island, over the sea.  She points suddenly to
+the lagoon.
+
+"'See, McCarthy.  See, under the moon there, that big turtle.  He is
+uncertain where to go.'  I look and I see the little black head like a
+dot on the water and the widening ripple as he swims around.  'See the
+boatswain bird's rock.'  I saw the flat square surface in the cove.
+'If he swims to and mounts that rock, then it will be a sign we have
+been heard and--He has given His consent.'
+
+"'But he will never come to the rock, dear Janssen,' I say.  'He is
+going out with the tide.'
+
+"'McCarthy,' she says a little scornfully, 'you are the good man, the
+untarnished one, the one who was brought up to believe, and you do not.
+And I, the bad woman, the murderess, the worse than Magdalen because I
+never loved until now, I believe.  I believe and know.'
+
+"And then her belief came to me and I turned to see the great turtle.
+He swam around and around and the moon shot the little ripples in
+gleaming silk.  And at last I could bear it no longer, and I lowered my
+head; but Janssen still watched with her head high.  And I could feel
+her hands tremble, and then crisp, and then tremble, and suddenly grow
+firm and fine and powerful.
+
+"'Look, McCarthy, look!'  Her voice rang like a bell.  'He is come
+to--he is on the rock.'"
+
+"And I raised my head, too, and I saw the Miracle of the Turtle....
+
+"And so we were married, and dwelt as happy as we could be, until the
+brig _Angela Scofield_ put in for water and rescued us, and I brought
+Janssen back to the bar of justice, as I was bound under oath to do."
+
+Here McCarthy stopped, and all knew he would say no more.  Indeed, it
+seemed as if he could physically say no more, for the man seemed
+overcome.  All the tenseness of him was gone and the prisoner and he
+looked at each other in a strange, pathetic, and trusting way, smiling
+with dry mouths and wet eyes.  All in the court-room felt suddenly
+abashed, as a cynic might feel before the eyes of a child.
+
+And suddenly in every one's mind there were translated his simple
+words, "And so we were married, and dwelt as happy as we could be,"
+into pictures that were not pictures but chords, harmony and
+counterpoint, not for the mind's eye but for the heart's feeling.
+There they had been by a cove on Paradise Island, loving each other not
+joyously but simply and sincerely and with great strength.
+
+They could see them, strong and fine, by the translucent water of the
+cove, under the golden sun on the golden sands, in a place as beautiful
+as the garden the Lord God planted in Eden.  And as over that first
+garden, so over this one did a storm brood like an owl.
+
+What terror she must have gone through, with the prison gate
+continually before her!  What temptations must he have undergone with
+his wife by him, and the thought in his head that one day he must bring
+her back to stand trial for the killing of a man!
+
+In God's name, what was the use to them of shining seas and golden
+sands, trees green as green banners, moons of Paradise and scented
+tropic winds, while tragedy was in the air, electric as a storm?
+
+"You can step down, McCarthy," the district attorney said.  And turning
+to the court he spread out his hands.
+
+"The case of the people rests."
+
+"The case for Anna Janssen rests," countered Howard Donegan.
+
+For a long time there was a pause, that was accentuated into
+uncomfortable drama by the ticking of the court clock.  It was as
+though an angel of silence were passing.  The jury looked
+uncomfortable.  The district attorney bit his nails.  The spectators
+looked at one another in mental disorientation.  It might have been the
+first bar of justice with no precedent to follow, no set of rules, so
+suddenly had all the machinery stalled.  Only Howard Donegan drowsed
+an....
+
+The judge was the first to come to himself.  He rustled papers.  He
+rapped for order.  He turned to the jury.
+
+"Gentlemen," he began, "the case for the people rests and the counsel
+for the prisoner rests his case also.  It has now arrived to make a
+decision.
+
+"You jurymen have only one duty to perform, and a bounden duty it is.
+You have got to decide one fact.  Did Anna Janssen kill Alastair de
+Vries?
+
+"Were Anna Janssen before you, the lowest of the low, gutter-soiled,
+evil, a menace to the community, and did not kill De Vries, then you
+would have to bring in a verdict of 'not guilty,' no matter how much
+enmity you felt to her.  No matter what she is before you now, no
+matter what sympathy you feel for her, you must bring in a verdict of
+'guilty' if you are certain she killed De Vries.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, there can be no reasonable doubt of this.  Even the
+prisoner herself admits it.  So I must instruct you to bring in a
+verdict of guilty."
+
+The jury looked at one another, amazed, a little scared.  They turned
+to the foreman, a fine, florid personage, with a fan-shaped red beard,
+a man who ought to be equal to every occasion, so it seemed.  They
+turned to him as a sheep turns to a bellwether.  He rose to his feet.
+
+"But this woman is changed," he objected.  "She is not the same--"
+
+"That is not germane to your offices," the judge answered severely.
+"You weigh facts.  I weigh justice, Your affair is between Alastair de
+Vries and Anna Janssen.  De Vries is now in the hands of his God.
+Janssen is in mine.  Though I am the arbiter of legal form, yet also I
+am the personation of Equity.  God has judged De Vries; I, with the
+voice of God, shall judge Anna Janssen.  Consider your verdict."
+
+"If we bring in a verdict of 'not guilty--'" the foreman suggested.
+
+"If you do--" the judge was cold as steel--"you have done an
+unpardonable thing.  You have betrayed the people of New York, whose
+representatives you are.  You have brought into disrepute the law of
+your city.  And women will kill men with the hope of obtaining lax
+verdicts.  Moreover, on legal grounds, I shall declare this no trial.
+And the prisoner will go through the ordeal again."
+
+"Well, if that's the way--"  The foreman looked around embarrassedly at
+the jury.  The jury seemed to put implicit faith in him.  "We will not
+have to leave the box!"
+
+"Clerk of the Court," called the judge....
+
+"Prisoner, look on the jury.  Jury, look on the prisoner.  What say ye,
+have ye arrived at a verdict?"
+
+"We have."
+
+"What say ye: is the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"
+
+"Well, this woman killed De Vries, but--"
+
+"Guilty or not guilty?" judge demanded.
+
+"Guilty!"
+
+"Prisoner--" the judge turned to Janssen--"you have committed a murder.
+You have been adjudged guilty of it by a jury of your peers.
+
+"It is now my duty to sentence you to a punishment not fitting the
+crime of murder but fitting such circumstances before and after as come
+within the scope of the foresight of Equity.  You have taken a life and
+your life is hostage to the law.
+
+"It now rests with me to decide what I shall do with this life that is
+in my hands and forfeit to the justice of the community; not only what
+is the best thing for the community, but what is the best thing for
+you.  Shall I extinguish it, that it shall be no longer a danger to
+living men, a danger to your own immortal soul?  Or shall I dispose of
+it otherwise, as my inspiration directs?
+
+"Prisoner, I give you back that life, but I sentence you to
+imprisonment for its natural term."
+
+There was a moment's pregnant silence in the court.  Then a quick
+bourdon hum of anger.  Suddenly came riot.  The prisoner wilted.  The
+jury stood up in protest.  The spectators rose on threatening feet.
+
+The judge raised his hand.  He was suddenly clothed in the majesty of
+Solomon.
+
+"Prisoner, I have made inquiries and there is owing to your husband his
+salary for ten years, which he will collect.  He will then take you and
+have this marriage made legal.  He will then take you from the place
+where you now are to the place whence you came, to your island down the
+Pacific, and you will live there, happy ever after, is the wish of this
+court of justice."
+
+There came suddenly from the throats of all a mighty cheering.  For an
+instant the attendants sought to keep order, but they soon desisted,
+themselves to join the joyous clamor.  The sound bellied from the
+court-room and into the street.  Pedestrians stopped and horses
+started.  All looked at one another in amazement.  Out of the
+court-room of tragedy had issued springtime carnival.  One expected at
+any moment to hear chiming bells.
+
+
+
+
+THE BARNACLE GOOSE
+
+I
+
+He might have been a hundred years away, he thought, as he sped along
+the road on the jaunting-car; he might have been a hundred years away
+instead of a meager dozen, so strange did everything appear to him.
+Every turn of the way, every stone, every smoking farm-house, every
+green field, was new.  Even the sea to the right of him, beside which
+he had played for nineteen years, was dramatically unexpected.  Faintly
+the whole landscape came back to him; hazily, as though he were seeing
+for the first time a scene that had been inadequately described in a
+book.
+
+First, there was the road itself, broad, undulating, rising and
+falling, like an artist's fancy.  Then, right and left, fields of
+delicate blue-green corn, soft as no carpet could be; and great meadows
+of hay, sprinkled with white and red clover; long stretches of potatoes
+with delicate pink and mauve flowers; and here and there a gnarled
+apple orchard.  Huge chestnut trees lined the way, and mellow
+farm-houses showed cozily, with their dun thatched roofs.  Cows grazed
+in the distance--shining, mottled Jerseys and stocky Kerrys, black as
+ink.
+
+In the background the purple Mourne Mountains loomed like strange
+giants; and beside him the sea plashed musically, with a sound
+reminiscent of the chiming of bells.  It was all surprisingly mellow,
+surprisingly rich, like the land which the spies of Joshua reported to
+lie past the Jordan's banks.  Grant's eyebrows raised in puzzlement.
+
+The brick-faced driver looked at him with a horseman's shrewd eyes.
+
+"I knew you the first time I put eyes on you," he said in his clipped
+Ulster accent.  "You 're Thomas Grant's son--Willie John--that went
+away to America twelve years ago last March.  And why should n't I know
+you?  Many 's the time I drove you when you were that high."  He gave
+the dapper little mare a flick of the whip.  "I suppose you 'll be
+settling down and staying at home now?" he asked.
+
+"No; I don't think I will," Grant answered; and he smiled as he heard
+his voice slip into the musical singsong it had n't known for many
+years.  "I 'll be going back in a month or so."
+
+They whipped along past the sea for another mile, the little mare's
+hoofs striking the white road as true and as staccato as drumsticks.  A
+strip of salt-marsh spun toward them.  Eastward, over the sea, a flock
+of birds hove.  Their wings flapped wearily, and as they flew landward
+they uttered faint whimpering cries.
+
+"The wild geese."  The driver pointed them out with his whip.  "They're
+coming back to the marsh.  They 're queer birds."
+
+Grant watched them as they came.  Their cries came sharp and
+complaining through the air, high-pitched, querulous, turbulent.  And
+still there seemed to be something satisfied in them, like the sobbing
+of a child who has received what he wants but cannot stop for a moment.
+
+"I often heard my grandfather say--and it's little he did n't know
+about birds," the driver went on "that there is n't a queerer bird in
+the world than the barnacle goose.  The moment they can fly they 'll
+leave the country.  My grandfather saw them in Egypt, and he saw them
+in France, traveling all the time; but they can never get the taste of
+the Irish marshes out of their mouths, and they come back.  The young
+ones go and the old ones stay.  Even a bird does n't get sense until
+it's taught."
+
+They swept from the highway into a narrower road, and Grant's heart
+jumped a little, for he recognized it, broader though it was, and
+greener its hedges and smoother its surface than he had thought it.
+The sun was going down and a soft bronze twilight was beginning to
+settle.  A little river ran past to the sea through the lush
+meadowland, and for an instant he saw the shimmer of a trout as it
+leaped for a fly.  And from everywhere came the scent of clover.
+
+They had turned, almost before he noticed it, into the yard of the
+farm-house, and again the sense of surprise struck Grant like a blow.
+Of course he remembered everything now--the long white-washed
+farm-house, thatched with golden straw, with the sweet-pea and ivy
+clustering about its walls; the massive slated stable and byre; the
+barn to the rear of that, in the orchard; the white dairy near the big
+iron gates with its cinder churning table; the giant ricks of hay back
+of it all; the dogs running in the yard--sheep-dog and setter and
+greyhound--the two farm-hands stopping to look at him solemnly as he
+came through the gates; the thick servant-girl hurrying out of the
+front door as she heard the grinding of wheels.  It was so different
+from what he had thought it was that he caught his breath in shamed
+embarrassment.
+
+A tall young fellow with red hair and a humorous twist to his mouth
+came strolling from the stables.  He wore a tweed coat and
+riding-breeches and boots.  He stopped short and looked at the car.
+
+"It's Willie John!" he shouted.
+
+He swung across the yard like a flash and grasped Grant's hand in
+something that felt like a vise.  He slammed his returned brother a
+terrific blow on the shoulder.
+
+"Willie John!  I 'm glad to see you!"
+
+Grant's father came out of the house, a spare Titan of a man, hair shot
+through with gray and a great bronzed hawk's face.  He pushed Joe aside
+and caught Grant by the shoulders.  He was inarticulate for a moment.
+
+"You 're back again, Willie John," he said simply and quietly; but
+behind the simple words Grant felt there was a wealth of welcome and of
+pleasure that David could not psalm.  The elder Grant looked round
+toward the house.  "Sarah Ann," he called, "here 's Willie John!"
+
+She came out through the door with a quick, trembling step, a very
+little woman to be the mother of two such powerful men and the wife of
+a giant--a little woman of fifty, with the face of a russet apple, with
+fine lacework about the corners of her eyes, hair a delicate gray, like
+rich silk, and a girl's mouth and eyes.  She had Grant in her arms in
+an instant, as though he were no more than a boy.  Slowly she looked at
+him.  "My son!  Willie John!" she murmured.
+
+They took him into the house, and they looked at him again; and they
+talked to him for hours, the mother with her eyes shining like stars,
+the father with that steadfast, proud expression on his face, the
+brother Joe in his riotous, loud-voiced way.
+
+It was a welcome that overwhelmed Grant; that took him off his feet,
+like a great wave, and sent him spinning; that warmed him with a flame,
+setting his heart alight.
+
+But there was something disappointing and strange about it all.  They
+were just content and happy to have him.  He had come back to their
+hearts after twelve years.  They did n't care where he had been or how
+he had prospered.  He might have just come from the next townland.  He
+might have come back a pauper.  Their welcome would have been the same
+warm, hearty thing.
+
+And he had imagined something so very different!  He had pictured the
+land he was returning to as a thriftless waste.  His own home he had
+never thought of as the richly comfortable place it was.  He had seen
+himself returning in triumph from beyond the seas, laden with treasure,
+like Columbus returning with the wealth of Borinquen, or like the
+legendary Irish lad who married the Spanish king's daughter and
+returned to his impoverished people in a coach-and-four.
+
+He had imagined himself telling them of the wonders of New York,--tales
+as marvelous as any of the thousand and one told in Oriental
+bazaars,--of the buildings that tower as high as the Irish mountains;
+of the river of light that is Broadway; of the shop windows on Fifth
+Avenue, each of which holds a king's ransom; of the motley throngs in
+New York, greater in number than all Ireland holds; of the struggle and
+competition in which he, their son and brother, had won a sound
+business worth ten thousand dollars.
+
+He wanted to tell them of his own epic.  He wanted to be questioned; to
+be admired.  And they did none of that.  They were only glad to have
+him back.  And he was disappointed!
+
+
+II
+
+It was after the March fairs, twelve years ago, that he had gone to
+America.  He had taken over a drove of cattle to Liverpool for his
+father and uncles, had delivered them and received the purchase money.
+There was one small venture of his own among the lot--a calf that he
+had raised to be a personable heifer, and that brought him in nine
+pounds.  Along the docks he saw a liner bound for New York, a great
+leviathan, like a city.  The thing hypnotized him by its vastness.
+
+"I 'm going to America," he said out loud on the pier; and in a great
+glow he took his passage and sent home the purchase money for the
+cattle.
+
+He did not know at the time what the impulse was that sent him abroad,
+and he did not trouble to analyze it.  Later he found a motive, and it
+was a false one.  He might have asked his father, who had gone in an
+ancient high moment to fight as a Papal Zouave against the onrush of
+the Neapolitan cohorts on Rome.  He might have asked his red- and
+curly-headed brother Joe, who had once shipped from Newry to Iceland,
+and to Archangel, in Russia, and to Vladivostok, coming home by way of
+the China Seas.  And, again, he might have asked the downy young of the
+barnacle goose, who wing their way down southward when the first black
+frost comes.  All these could have told him.
+
+He had very little difficulty in finding something to do in New York,
+for a stocky, healthy man, with honesty written all over a clean-cut
+face and looking unabashed from clear gray eyes, is an acquisition to
+any employer.  They put him to work on a street-car, conducting and
+taking in the fares with assiduous honesty.  The ten or twelve dollars
+a week he made, and what he got for them, compared very unfavorably
+with the healthful comfort and clean sea air of home.  But the
+adventure of the New World held his attention until home became an
+affectionate and dull memory.  And letters to and from Ireland were
+rare.
+
+He stood, in his stocking feet, as fine a specimen of strength and
+health as there is outside the ranks of professional athletes; he was
+good-looking in an impersonal way; to doubt his honesty was impossible
+against the evidence of those gray eyes; but he had been allotted no
+more than the usual share of brains.  Wherefore, it took three years
+for the New York idea to get home, which was to put money in his purse.
+He went about it in the way one should expect of him.  He sought a
+position that gave reasonable promise of advancement.  A great chain of
+grocery stores gave him an assistantship in one of its shops.
+
+"Hard work, and saving your money," he said to himself, "that's the way
+you get on in the world."
+
+And he got on, with his dogged persistence.  Six years of that, with
+the money he had saved, and he had set himself up in business on his
+own account, in an out-of-the-way avenue, on the road to Coney
+Island--a squat two-story building with an apartment upstairs and his
+shop below.  A long, bare street, newly bedded, with grayish-white
+apartment-houses on each hand, so new that the mortar still lay in ugly
+flecks about the sidewalk.
+
+Opposite him a newly fitted chemist's shop showed garishly with its
+green and red lights.  A valet's store was beside him, and here and
+there in the avenue gaps showed where the real-estate men had not yet
+found capitalists to erect stores or flats.  It was very bleak and new,
+and somehow lonely; but in his own store he was happy and busy all day
+long.  He had had his name put on the glass window--William J.
+Grant--in angular gold letters; and inside he and his assistant, a
+sallow Scotch boy, attended customers, a lean but constant string.
+They took loaves from the glass case on the counter, or dug butter from
+the cool, moist vat, or ground coffee in the red mill that suggested a
+ceremonial vessel in a Hindu temple.  He wished the people in Ireland
+could see him now.
+
+"Ay!" he would say.  "I think this would open their eyes."
+
+He had heard much about Ireland and talked much about it since he came
+to America--a great deal more than he had ever heard or talked about it
+at home.  And in his eyes now it had taken on a dim, distorted shape
+and spirit.  The physical contours of it he had forgotten--the lush
+green hillsides, the fruitful orchards, the kine heavy with fat, the
+dim, warm houses--all these were to him as though they had never been.
+Instead of them, he saw a frail, worn country, with a vague spiritual
+light emanating from it, like the light from the face of a man who
+knows that death is near him and is resigned to it.  The people about
+him mentioned it with sympathetic voices.  They spoke of the poverty of
+it, with a sort of contemptuous affection.  And little by little Grant
+came to think of it in that way, too, as one thinks of a poor but
+worthy relative.
+
+"There 's no doubt to it," he would say to himself; "a man doesn't get
+a chance there.  He has to come over here."  And he would look about
+his store with proud satisfaction.
+
+He began to think even of his own home as a place that the poisonous
+finger of poverty had touched; and for a year now, and more, he had
+thought of returning to see it.  Maybe he could do something for the
+people at home.  A few pounds would come in useful.  And, apart from
+that, he could tell them some things that would help them along.  He
+would make them "get a move on," as the New York phrase went.  Perhaps
+he would take Joe, his brother, out and give him a chance to show what
+he had in him.  Perhaps they might all come out with him--the father
+and mother too.
+
+"Ay!  Why not!" he would argue.  "Why shouldn't they?  What's there for
+them in Ireland?"
+
+He ruminated over the idea every day as he came from work to the brown
+stone boarding-house where he lived, in Schermerhorn Street, a dingy,
+unpalatable sort of place that had become a home to him.  There were
+employees of department-stores there; and an occasional theatrical
+couple stayed a week in it, a week electric with criticism.  In the
+summer evenings the boarders sat on the stoop, and in the winter they
+congregated inside to be played to in insufficient light on a tinkling
+piano.  For Grant the place had a metropolitan quality that others
+sought in the great hotels.
+
+And, with the same care he had used in mapping out his business career,
+he watched for somebody to marry.
+
+He found her in the boarding-house--a trim and rather pale girl, who
+acted as though she were twenty and looked twenty-eight, but whom the
+Vital Statistics Bureau had registered as having been born thirty years
+before.  Her hair was black and glossy, and her eyes were big and black
+and lustrous; her face, outside those features, was the face of a
+hundred others.  But what captivated Grant about her was her chicness,
+her quality of being up-to-the-minute in dress and deed and word.
+Grant liked the flare of her wide skirts and the gray suede shoes
+lacing up the sides.  He liked the faint powder on her face, and her
+carefully cultured eyebrows.  He liked her talk of skating and of the
+new theatrical pieces, and her ability to do the latest twirls in the
+one-step.  Her name was Miss Levine--Ada Levine.
+
+"It's not every man could have a wife like that!" he told himself; and
+he thought of the awe in which his people in Ireland would behold her.
+
+She talked to him interestedly of his prospects and the trend of
+business in his direction; and that pleased him, for, what with that
+interest and with the training she received in the department-store
+where she worked, she would be exactly what he needed to get on in the
+world.  He told her of his intention of going back home for a month, of
+putting the store in the care of a friend of his from the old business
+where he had worked.
+
+"And when I come back," he said, "I 'd like to say something to you."
+She sat on the steps quietly and lowered her eyes demurely.  "That is,"
+he continued, "if nobody gets there before me."
+
+She looked up at him and smiled.
+
+"That's a date," she agreed.
+
+His heart expanded blithely.  Everything was settled now.  Life showed
+in front of him like a straight line.  A wife like that!  And his
+thriving business!  Now he would go back to Ireland and show them
+something!
+
+
+III
+
+He had been home for a month and he had made no move toward
+returning--not that it was ever out of his mind for an instant, but it
+pleased him to stay there and savor the ripe mellow ness of everything
+as he might savor a fruit.  Summer was fairly in and the yellow
+blossoms had fallen from the gorse, but roses were blooming in every
+garden, great creamy ones and others with the vivid red of an autumn
+sunset.
+
+The horse-chestnuts were heavy with balloons of white flowers, and
+every evening the bees returned drowsy from the heather of the purple
+mountains.  There was something in it all that he had missed for years
+and that he was greedy for.
+
+At first he had gone about, a splendid figure, in the clothes he had
+brought with him from America: suits of fine broadcloth, and buttoned
+shoes, and a watch that was held in place by a fob.  But nobody seemed
+impressed by this splendor and a few were covertly amused; and suddenly
+he had discarded it in a sort of shame, returning to the rich tweeds of
+his own people.  He had helped a little about the farm, finding again a
+lost aptitude in milking a cow and in handling a horse in a dog-cart.
+He had gone to the fairs and put in a shrewd word here and there on the
+price of a colt.  He had gaped in wonder at the antics of the
+Punch-and-Judy show and had listened to the croon of the ballad-singer.
+He lost sixpences with the trick-of-the-loop man and with the artist of
+the three cards.  All through it he tried to keep in his mind and on
+his face the attitude of a grown-up who is playing a child's game, a
+patronizing superiority.
+
+"If they could only see this at Coney Island," he thought, "they would
+laugh their heads off."
+
+And he tried to remember as enjoyable the days he had spent there in
+search of amusement, returning in the evening a battered and limp and
+irritated rag.
+
+It was the evening of the Newry Fair when he began to think seriously
+of returning.  They were all sitting in the great stone-flagged kitchen
+of the farm-house.  From the long deal table in the middle of the room
+a huge lamp filled the space with creamy light, and in the lighted
+fireplace a kettle purred, hanging from its crane.  The kitchen rafters
+were black and amber from the smoke of four generations, and below them
+hung at intervals long flitches of bacon.  Over the mantel were the
+guns he remembered from his boyhood--his father's double-barreled
+fowling-piece with the long, true barrels; his grandfather's old
+musket; and the flintlock his great-grandfather had borne when he went
+out with Lord Edward in '98.
+
+His father sat by the table, reading a paper diligently, and he was
+surprised to see how hale the old man looked; he was sixty now and
+looked fifteen years younger.  His mother fussed about with a pannikin
+of milk, followed by three mewing kittens, while in a corner of the
+room Joe was binding whipcord about the handle of a fishing-rod,
+occasionally making it swish through the air with a keen sibilant sound
+like the hiss of a snake.
+
+"I think I 'll be going back soon," Grant said suddenly.  "I think I 'd
+better be getting along."
+
+His mother looked at him sharply, but said nothing.  Joe lowered his
+rod.  His father raised his eyes from his paper.
+
+"And what would you be doing that for?" he asked slowly.  "Sure, I
+thought you were going to stay with us."
+
+"I can't be doing that," Grant answered easily.  "I 've got my business
+over there.  And I 've got to be making my way in the world."
+
+"And why can't you stay and do it here?" the old man went on.
+
+"Ah, sure, what would I be doing here?" Grant began impatiently.
+"There 's nothing for a man here.  On the other side I 've got a place
+of my own, made by my own hands in twelve years.  That's something, is
+n't it?"
+
+"There 's no use talking to you," his father said resignedly.  "If you
+must go, you must go.  But if you were wise, Willie John, you would
+take whatever money you 've made in America and buy that place of Peter
+McKenna's down the road.  You 'd get it cheap now.  And after I 'm gone
+the farm goes to you and Joe.  If you have n't got enough money I 'll
+lend it to you."
+
+"No, thank you," Grant replied a little surlily.  "I 'll get back to my
+own place."
+
+"Ah, well--" his father turned back to his paper--"have it your own
+way."
+
+Joe sent the rod swishing through the air a couple of times.  He turned
+to Grant with a quick smile.
+
+"It's not back to your business you want to be getting, Willie John,"
+he laughed.  "You want to be getting back to where the good times are.
+In a week or two you 'll be walking up Broadway, looking at the big
+buildings you do be telling about.  Or going down Fifth Avenue, maybe,
+riding in a motor-car.  Or hanging round all day drinking highballs
+with the millionaires.  That's what you will be after.  Business!"
+
+Grant turned on him with a sudden gust of anger.
+
+"I want to tell you something, Joe," he whipped back: "I'm up in the
+morning at half-past six.  I 've got the place open by eight.  It's
+seldom I 'm through before ten at night--and twelve of a Saturday
+night.  Do you know, this is the first holiday I 've had for twelve
+years, barring Sundays and bank holidays!  And on them I 'm too tired
+to do anything.  I 'm as hard worked as you are."
+
+"I 'm afraid you 're worse," the brother replied.  He looked keenly at
+the hitch of the whipcord to the haft of the rod.  "It's seldom we
+can't get a day off when there 's a fair on, or a good horse-race, or a
+coursing-match.  What would life be if we couldn't?"  He swished the
+rod through the air again.  "And as for your father--" he took a
+sidelong smiling look at the old man--"he 's hardly ever at home now
+since they elected him to the County Council."
+
+"To get on in the world," Grant said sententiously, "you 've got to
+work night, noon, and morning.  There's no time for flying round to
+places of amusement, and chucking away hard-earned money.  That's
+what's wrong with all this country."
+
+Joe looked up at the rafters heavy with flitches of bacon; at the
+kettle purring on its crane.  He glanced through the window to where
+the full haggard lay.  His ever-ready smile crept about his eyes.
+
+"Oh, I hardly think we 'll starve for a while," he laughed.  "Will we,
+mother?"
+
+The little old lady with the kittens smiled and shook her head.
+
+"I 'm not saying anything," she said.
+
+There was the sound of a gate clanging and the chime of voices.  A dog
+growled and then broke into a bark of welcome.  The voices came nearer
+to the door.  Joe rose to open it.  The mother put her head on one side
+to listen.
+
+"Do you know who that is, Willie John?" she asked.
+
+"No," Grant answered, "I do not."
+
+"It 's Eunice Doran," she said.  She waited an instant.  A smile crept
+over her face.  "Larry Doran's daughter, from beyond the hill."
+
+"Oh, to be sure; I remember her," Grant smiled back.
+
+Of course he did--a lank, gray-eyed girl, with a habit of staring you
+out of countenance.  The last time he had seen her she was fifteen,
+with long arms and legs that seemed eternally in the way; and he
+recalled, with a smile, how in those days he had been a little in love
+with her, and they had passed many queer, awkward moments together.
+
+A funny, pathetic thing!  And as he thought of it a shutter in his mind
+opened and he saw again the girl he had left on the stoop in
+Schermerhorn Street, with her chic way and flashing eyes.
+
+He wondered what she would think if she knew he had once had a boyish
+affair with this simple thing from his own townland; and he blushed in
+imagining her teasing laughter.
+
+He warmed with a glow of pride as he thought of her,--of Miss Levine,
+as he somehow always called her to himself,--of her marvelous clothes,
+of her manicured hands and wonderful eyebrows, of her appreciation of
+the latest effort of a cinematograph comedian, and her up-to-dateness
+with the last flivver joke.  He smiled, too, as he thought of the
+wonder with which this poor country girl would regard the metropolitan
+divinity.
+
+She came into the room slowly; and, though he could distinguish little
+of her features or form, he felt a sense of shock, for somehow he had
+expected a lanky, overgrown girl with arms and hands like the awkward
+legs of a foal--and what he saw was a tall woman, as tall as he, who
+moved with the slow dignity of a queen.
+
+She threw her cloak off and Joe took it from her, and as it fell Grant
+caught one instantaneous glimpse of her that effectually wiped the
+Brooklyn girl from his mind, like a sponge passing over a chalked
+slate.  He saw first the great mass of black hair knotted at the back
+of her head, which seemed less like hair than a splash of dim, vivid
+color; and from a side view he saw the small nose, with the sensitive
+nostrils, as clearly cut as the nose on an intaglio; and the line of
+chin sweeping down, as it were, in one soft, firm stroke.  That was all
+he saw for a minute--that and the flush on her cheeks.
+
+"How are you?" she said to his mother.  "And how are you, Mr. Grant?
+And Joe?"  She turned to Grant, looked at him for an instant and put
+out her hand.  "And this is Willie John," she said.  "You 've been a
+long time away, Willie John."
+
+He saw, as he looked at her, how very gray her eyes were, and how very
+deep--like orifices through which light shone--and how very steady.  He
+noticed that her mouth was firm, and that she seemed to have lived each
+instant of her twenty-seven years; and still she was a woman with the
+first flush of beauty on her.  She turned away to talk to his mother
+and he saw for the first time that her servant-girl was with her.  So
+engrossed had he been with her entry, and so shocked by seeing her
+beauty, that he had seen only her.
+
+"I 'm going to have the flax pulled on the ten-acre," she was
+saying--and Grant felt every syllable of her low contralto strike him
+clear and compelling--"so I 'm asking the neighbors fair and early.  My
+father 's dead, Willie John--" she turned to Grant for a moment--"and I
+'ve the place on my hands."
+
+"Ay; I heard that, Eunice," he said.  "I was sorry to hear it."
+
+"You 'll be going back soon?" she asked.
+
+"I 'll be going back very soon now," he said.  "In a couple of weeks at
+most."
+
+"I 've been wanting him to stay and settle down," his father broke in;
+"but there 's no use talking to him."
+
+"Ah, there's nothing for a man here," he answered disgustedly.  "It's
+on the other side a man gets his chance--ay, and a woman, too, for that
+matter."
+
+"Is that so?" Eunice uttered; and she caught him with her serious gray
+eyes.
+
+"There was Joe Carragher's daughter, from Balleek," he instanced; "you
+knew her well.  She went over six years ago and now she 's a lady's
+maid in one of the big houses on Fifth Avenue.  A grand position!"
+
+"Is that so?" she repeated; her eyes had narrowed a little and she was
+studying him intently.
+
+"Then there was Patrick Hagan, the brother of the captain in the Dublin
+Fusiliers.  He 's got a saloon on Third Avenue and does a grand
+business."
+
+"That's the devil's business, Willie John," his mother said quietly.
+
+It was the first time since he came back that he had seen her without a
+smile on her lips.
+
+"It's different on the other side, I tell you," Grant commented with
+asperity.  "And there's Barney Doyle, that went over before me; he 's
+head waiter in one of the big places on Broadway.  Do you know that
+fellow makes as much as seventy dollars a week in tips?  Seventy
+dollars!  Fourteen pounds!"
+
+"His father was a great lawyer."  Old Grant shook his head.  "God be
+good to him!  They called him the Star of the North."
+
+"Fourteen pounds a week--in tips!"
+
+Grant thought he could detect a chill, contemptuous tone in the Doran
+girl's voice; but he put the thought out of his head, for why should
+she be contemptuous?  She drew her blue cloak about her.
+
+"I think I 'll be going," she said.
+
+"I 'll leave you a bit of the road," Grant offered.
+
+They went out and down the loaning.  Overhead a great white moon
+showed, a great silver plate of a thing whose beams scintillated in
+minute gossamer threads.  Before them the road ran, as white as the
+moon, and everything showed in a faint purple--trees, fields, the
+singing river on the left of them, and the hill that rose between them
+and the sea.  A little breeze was stirring and they could hear a soft
+soughing from the trees and a murmur from the beach.  Somewhere behind
+them, on the Yellow Road probably, a corn-crake was venting its
+harmoniously raucous cry.
+
+They stopped and looked about them.  Beneath them the great plain of
+Louth lay, which Maeve of Connaught had once raided at the head of a
+hundred thousand men.  And as Grant looked at it in the subtle
+moonlight the memory of forgotten legends came to him in vague
+uncoördinated fragments.  There was Slieve Gullion behind him, where
+Cuala, the great artificer, hammered on his magic anvil night and day,
+and up whose slopes Finn MacCool had pursued the white deer without
+horns.
+
+And in front of him was the sea, where for thrice three hundred years
+the Children of Lir had mourned in the guise of white swans.  And on
+the hill beside him was the fortress of Bricriu of the poisoned tongue,
+whose satires killed men and withered the leaves on the green trees.
+Suddenly he heard Eunice's voice addressing him.
+
+"I suppose you 've done well for yourself, Willie John?" she asked.
+
+"Ay; I 've done well," he told her.  "I 've got a business over there
+worth ten thousand dollars.  And I 've built it up in twelve years."
+
+"Ten thousand dollars!" she mused.  "Two thousand pounds; that's a good
+deal.  That's half as much as your brother Joe made, and it's a great
+deal more than I have myself."
+
+"Brother Joe made!" he muttered in a tone of amazement.
+
+"Yes--your brother Joe made," she answered naïvely.  "He 's made as
+much as four thousand pounds trading in cattle between here and
+England, and buying horses for the Italian Government."
+
+"Twenty thousand dollars!" Grant said, dumb-founded.  "Brother Joe!"
+
+"And you 've more than I have," she continued mercilessly.  "The Cliff
+Farm is worth only eighteen hundred pounds.  That's only nine thousand
+of your dollars."
+
+He answered nothing, for a quick sense of shame suddenly suffused him
+when he remembered how much he had talked, and the others keeping so
+dumb.  Something began tumbling very fast about him.  They went up the
+hill and suddenly the sea stretched before them, sheer through to
+England, a vast surface of shimmering ripples, where the moon touched,
+and here and there white curling waves.  And beneath them it murmured
+on the beach in a steady crooning.  The breeze blew landward and
+pressed about them firmly in a cool, even motion.  To the right the
+Cliff Farm lay, softly white, and a faint scent came down from its
+orchard.  The servant-girl passed through the gate and up toward the
+house.
+
+"America 's a great country!" Grant said aloud.
+
+He did not know why he said it.  Perhaps it was because he could find
+nothing else to say, and perhaps it was a sort of incantation,
+conjuring away the doubts that were rising in his mind.
+
+Eunice made no answer.  And as he looked at her, standing there in the
+moonlight and the breeze, the old affection he had for her a dozen
+years ago rose within him, and he wondered whether he should n't put
+his arm about her and kiss her for old times' sake.  But the idea left
+him as soon as it came, for the thought of trifling with her seemed a
+desecration.
+
+"It's a great place!" he said again lamely.
+
+She swung around upon him suddenly, savagely, her head tilted, her eyes
+flashing.  The cloak behind her stood backward with the breeze; and as
+he watched her, amazed, petrified almost, the thought of dead ancient
+Irish women flashed through his brain--Maeve, the fighting queen of
+Connaught; and Deirdre, who dashed herself dead against a rock; and
+Grainne, the king's daughter, who fled to follow Diarmuid of the Spears.
+
+"Then why don't you stay there?" she uttered passionately.
+
+"Why don't I stay there?" he repeated blankly.
+
+"Why don't you stay there?" she said again.  "You come back here--you
+and your like--with a smile on your mouth and a sneer in your eye.  You
+come back here in your fine clothes, that you 've sweated day and night
+for, and taken charity to get--ay, charity!  What's tips but
+charity?--And you lord it round for a while and tell us what fools we
+are--and patronize us.  Patronize us!"
+
+She swung round and fronted the low-lying land with the faint blue heat
+haze of summer over it, touched into silver in the June moon.  The
+muscles of her throat were throbbing.  She was poised on her feet like
+a bird ready for flight.
+
+"Look down there at your father's farm," she told him.  Her hand
+stretched toward it and her gray eyes blazed in his face.  "Look at it
+well!  Look at the corn that's green, and the rye ripening, and the
+stacked haggard.  Look at the trees in the orchard and the fruit
+hanging from them, and the river alive with trout, and the mountain
+with its grouse and hares.  And then go back to your grand business and
+fumble the halfpence in your greasy till!"
+
+He said nothing.  Mechanically his eyes followed her hand where it
+pointed, and every word ate its meaning into his brain as if etched by
+strong acid.
+
+"Ay!" he said dully.
+
+"Have you eyes to see, man?"  She bent toward him with her hands
+outstretched and her face aflame with anger.  "Or have you ears to
+hear?  Or has groping for coppers made you blind like a mole?  Or the
+tinkle of tuppences deafened you the like of a bat?"
+
+"I 've got eyes," he answered sullenly.
+
+"Use them, then!" she snapped.  "And when you go back to your grand
+business, stop making a poor mouth about Ireland.  Don't whine the like
+of a beggar in the street.  Stop your talk about poverty-stricken
+Ireland, and oppressed Ireland and lazy Ireland.  We 've got money here
+as well as you, for all your grand business; and we've got pride; and
+we 've got strength.  And we don't want anybody talking about our
+sorrows, and the nations pitying us in the four corners of the earth."
+
+He said nothing, but his face had gone white; and every now and then he
+winced, as though he had been caught by a whip.  He wished to Heaven
+she would stop; and still, back in him, something had awakened that
+yearned to be lashed into life.
+
+"I heard you wanted your father and mother to go back to America with
+you and partake of the grand business.  Look at that farm-house again.
+Your grandfather built that with granite hewn from his own quarry.  And
+you want them to leave that and to go off with you and grub in a
+huckster's booth!  God's glory and the blue sky over us!"
+
+There was the rapid flapping of wings and they saw a wedge of birds in
+the moonlight.  Suddenly they caught the shrill clamor of the barnacle
+goose.
+
+"Even the birds," she uttered with scorn, "even the birds have sense.
+They 're happy when they get back from roving.  Not like you and your
+like, Willie John.  If you want to go, go!  And God go with you!  If
+you want to stay, stay--and you're welcome.  But don't come back for a
+while, croaking like a magpie chattering over a ruined hearth."
+
+She turned to him, and the agitation and passion seemed to leave her by
+a great effort of will.  Her hands unclenched and her voice grew calm,
+with even a queer crooning melody in it; but her bosom heaved
+tumultuously.
+
+"I liked you once, Willie John," she said.  "I thought there was the
+makings of a big man in you.  I mind the time at the football, and you
+running down the field like a hare, and no one to catch or trip you.
+And at the fairs I mind you putting the horses through their paces like
+a jockey born.  And at throwing the weight there was no one of your
+size or years that could best you.  Ay!  I mind you, and your dogs
+following you, and your head high up in the air.  I thought well of you
+that time, Willie John.  I thought there was no one like you."  She
+raised herself to her full height and looked at him squarely.  "But
+now," she said, "I 'd rather have a stray tinker that does be traveling
+the roads."
+
+And scornfully she left him.
+
+
+IV
+
+He came into the kitchen, two evenings later, from the parlor.  His
+father sat by the table, reading his paper.  His mother pottered about
+the turf fire, teasing it into flame.  In a corner Joe sat, polishing
+the barrel of a breech-loading fowling-piece with an old rag.  His
+father caught the glimpse of paper in his hand.
+
+"Were you writing, Willie John?"
+
+"Ay," Grant answered; "I was writing a letter to America."
+
+He moved toward the fireplace and turned slowly about again to his
+father.
+
+"You were saying," he asked, "that that place of McKenna's was for
+sale.  I wonder how much he 'd want for it."
+
+"He 'd take four thousand pounds," his father answered.  "Maybe less."
+
+"I 'm afraid I have n't got that much."  Grant shook his head.  "I 've
+only two thousand."
+
+"We can lend you the difference, Willie John," Joe broke in.  He
+squinted down the barrel of the rifle.  "Can't we, Dad?"
+
+"Ay sure!" his father answered.
+
+"I 'm much obliged to both of you," Grant said.
+
+He reached for his hat.
+
+"Are you going out, Willie John?" his mother asked.
+
+"I thought I 'd go up and call on Eunice Doran," Grant answered her.
+"I might as well be neighborly."
+
+He went out, and there was silence in the kitchen for a few minutes.
+Joe clicked the lock of the gun.
+
+"Do you mind that wild gander I put a ring on three years ago?" he
+asked his father.  "It's back again.  I saw it over the marshes to-day."
+
+"It 'll take a mate and settle down in the marsh now."  His father
+nodded.  "It took it three years to find out that home is a good place.
+It's a queer, silly bird--the barnacle goose."
+
+A little ripple of laughter came from the mother's lips as she stood
+over and poked the turf.  The elder Grant looked up, astonished.
+
+"What are you laughing at, Sarah Ann?" he inquired.
+
+"I was thinking," she answered.
+
+"What was it you were thinking about?" he pursued.
+
+"Oh nothing!" she parried.  "I was just thinking."
+
+And she went on teasing the fire, while a subtle, affectionate smile
+played about the corners of her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+BELFASTERS
+
+"Oh, I'll go down unto Belfast to see that seaport gay."--A COUNTRY
+POET.
+
+
+To him the whole conversation, the whole setting, the whole event, was
+unreal as ghosts are unreal, or objects on a foggy night.  Here was
+this woman, who had been so nigh to him, and to whom he had been so
+much, talking of leaving him, in as matter-of-fact a manner as though
+she were speaking of taking a street-car.  Here was the murk of a
+February evening in Belfast, the minute rain yellowing the
+street-lamps; the cable-cars rushing by brusquely and short-temperedly,
+a "get out of the way and be damned to you!" in their crashing, abrupt
+passage.  She was thinking of leaving him, she was thinking of leaving
+him for good, all because of a strike, mind you! just for nothing more
+than a strike!
+
+"Well, I 'd best be going," she said.
+
+"Well--"  He shifted from one foot to the other.  "I think it's very
+foolish of you," he said.
+
+She smiled, as he looked at her, that strange secret smile of hers that
+meant she had drawn into herself.  He knew every expression on her
+face--for a year now.
+
+"What is it you want me to do?" he asked for the fourth time.
+
+"Give the workers in the mill what they want.  They ask only bare
+justice.  A couple o' shillings a week!  What is it to you?"
+
+"I will not."  He shook his head.  His great red beard shook too.
+
+"You 're a hard man, Aleck," she said softly.  "You 're no' exactly
+human.  And you 're getting on, Aleck.  You 're no' young any more.  Be
+a wee bit soft, man.  It's no shame."
+
+"I will not."
+
+"Ah, well!"  She stepped toward the curb, ready to signal a car.  He
+followed her with his look.  Of all the women in his life she had been
+most to him:--she, just a working-girl!  He was fond of her.  He was
+more than in love with her.  His feeling towards her was no phenomenon
+but an accepted fact.  He admired her, too, which was more than he did
+any woman, though she had been more to him than any but a wife should
+be.  He admired her for that too--she had gone into the relation so
+calmly, so open-mindedly, so fearlessly.  He admired her; in her was no
+slight, common blood.
+
+"But, Jennie, I can't leave you like that."
+
+She turned to face him.  He was abashed by her steadfast brown eyes.
+
+"Why for no'?" she asked.  "Aleck, I 'm no lassie that's been fooled.
+What is between us, Aleck, is because I liked you and I knew you liked
+me.  Don't let that bother your head.  I 've done you no hurt, Aleck,
+nor you me.  That's our own affair."
+
+"But why break like this?  What for?"
+
+"For this, Aleck.  You 're the owner and the master.  I 'm a worker.  I
+'ve always been a worker.  You mind I 've never taken a thing from you,
+Aleck.  I 'm one of the people you 're fighting, Aleck, and I stick by
+my folks.  While this fight's on, Aleck, you and I are finished.
+That's the way I feel, Aleck.  I can't change it."
+
+"You're foolish!"
+
+"I don't think I am."  This time she signaled the car.  It stopped with
+its ill-tempered, hurried air.
+
+"When'll I see you again?"
+
+"When you do what my folks ask in justice, Aleck, and not before."  And
+she was gone.
+
+He stood for a few minutes in the rain.  A touch of panic seized him.
+For a year he had not been so lonely.  He felt he was on the verge of
+doing a foolish thing.
+
+"I will not!" he said doggedly.
+
+He turned down the road sullenly.  A great desire was on him to catch
+the next car and intercept her at a changing-station.
+
+"Stop making a fool o' yourself," he said to himself.  "You 'll do no
+such thing."
+
+He plugged on steadily, unmindful of where he was going.  He was aboil
+with perturbation.
+
+"I ha'e gi'en them a couple o' raises this year a'ready!"
+
+He was blind to everything but the action of the workers of his mill,
+of his father's mill, of his grandfather's mill, defying him openly and
+stubbornly.  And now they had to take Jeanie Lindsay from him, the only
+woman he had liked wholly in all his days.
+
+"To hell with them!" he said savagely.  His red beard bristled.
+
+He stopped suddenly.  He shook his fist at an arc-lamp.
+
+"I 'll close the mill," he muttered aloud.  "I 'll close down.  I will
+so.  I 've just had enough o' it.  They ha'e no softie in Aleck
+Robe'son.  I 'll close it.  Be damned but I will!  I will!  I will so!"
+
+From Aleck Robertson's earliest infancy he had been bred to the mill,
+as his father had been by his father before him.  It is a small,
+compact building, off the Falls Road, the Robertson mill is, harboring
+not more than four hundred employees.  But their fame is not in Belfast
+alone.  Many the royal house in Europe before the war had its bride's
+linen from the Robertson factory.  It is a small mill, as it should be,
+with a small door, and on a by-street is the lintel with the name
+"Robert Robertson & His Son, Founded 1803."
+
+A queer family, these Robertsons of Belfast, very solid, very stubborn.
+In five generations there has been but one son to the family, and no
+daughters.  "The Scottish weaver-bird, laying but one egg," some dry
+doctor dubbed them.  So they be.  They are a tall, solid dynasty,
+marrying toward middle age a bride solid as themselves.  Young Aleck,
+red-bearded and rangy, could remember his father, as tall and rangy as
+he, and bearded, too, as his grandfather was, both silent, speculative
+men, students of the Shorter Catechism, and shrewd observers of life,
+possessors of the trust of glossy linen.  They had their duties: to
+mind their own business; to take care of the mill, and to make fine
+cloth.
+
+"They can see the linen in the flax, they Robertsons!" a workman of
+theirs once boasted, and it was true.
+
+At Portrush golf-club you may hear about him.  "The championship of
+Ireland," they tell me, "Captain Macneill got it then and he held it
+for three years and then your Uncle Simon for a year, and then Mr.
+Campbell o' Kilkee, and then--who was it, then?--the linen man of
+Belfast--what the deuce is his name?  Robson?  Robinson?  Robertson,
+that's it!  You'd hardly remember him; he was not a showy player, not
+an affable man, but sound!  Ah, damned sound!"
+
+At his school they have difficulty in recalling him.  The president
+remembers him vaguely as a solemn youth with freckles and gigantic
+hands.
+
+They seem to have gone through life, he and his mill, with one object
+in the world--to produce linen that is the pride of Ulster.  They have
+each their worthy, definite place in the world.  On him there rests the
+mill, a legacy as important and dynastic in its way as one of the
+former German principalities.  He toured Ireland studying flax.  He saw
+it raise its bluish green stems in spring, soft as down.  He saw it
+rise and the wind ruffle and bend it, like still water.  He saw the
+strange blue flower break out on it, as blue as a near star.  It was
+plucked from the ground in summer time, acres and acres of it plucked
+carefully by a numerous population, and stacked like corn.  And the
+nights after the flax-pulling there would be great joy-making in the
+villages, dancing and singing and drinking and love-making under the
+inscrutable Irish stars.  It was taken then to the dikes and left
+rotting in the water, while mephitic gases rolled over the
+country-side.  It was then scutched in the scutch-mills, where wheels
+run by water, by men with querulous dispositions and hacking
+consumptive coughs.  To him and his like it came then, in soft, glossy,
+whitish strands, like the hair of Scandinavian women.  He turned it
+over to his operatives, weavers and throwsters and pickers, men
+hunchbacked from bending over their looms, and women very free in their
+ways and not often pretty.  Now it covered the stubborn hills of Ulster
+and soon it covered the groaning tables of kings.
+
+"It's an unco thing, the flax!" his Scots-Irish workmen used to say.
+Aleck Robertson had the same thought, when he considered, though he
+never phrased it, that the prosperity and good fame and management of
+his linen-mill was his religion.
+
+Life for him flowed by in a groove as regular and as well fitting as
+one of the bands on his own looms.  Since his father died, ten years
+ago, he had been following the same routine, getting up in the morning,
+in the club where he stayed, and going to work, taking a
+street-car--though the Robertson firm was famous, it was not
+rich--attending to the work, and coming back in the evenings to spend
+the time with a few friends over a tumbler of Scotch.
+
+"Why for do you no' take a wife and settle down, Aleck?" an occasional
+friend asked him.
+
+"Och, I 'm all right as I am," he would answer.
+
+Life at thirty-eight had become for Aleck Robertson a succession of
+minor hedonisms.  He liked the sting of the shower-bath in the morning,
+the goodly taste of breakfast.  He liked to hear the bustle and rumble
+of the works as he entered.  He liked his lunch.  He enjoyed his game
+of golf, and his occasional holidays in Scotland, or France, where he
+patronized the bathing-beaches, and played for small stakes at _petits
+chevaux_.  Every week he attended a music-hall, and occasionally he was
+seen as escort to a minor actress.
+
+"Aleck!" some of his cronies said.  "He's a card!"
+
+He had, for such girls as were not frightened by his beard and his
+position, a queer, provocative glint in his eye, which they would savor
+and giggle at.
+
+"He 's a pleasant fellow, Mr. Robertson," they agreed.  "He could be
+fine and pleasant to a girl he liked, I 'll warrant you!  They do
+say--" and here some immaterial scandal was told.
+
+It was strange how he ran across Jean Lindsay, for he made it a rule to
+have nothing to do socially--if one could call it socially--with the
+girls in the mill.  He had noticed her a few times about the place--a
+stately sort of girl with calm brow and eyes.  He admired the fine
+figure she had--the shapely arms and rich bosom.  A woman, that!  None
+of your fragile dolls!  And twice he had seen her leave the works at
+quitting time, a figure in a Paisley shawl and skirt and blouse, none
+of the cheap finery of the mill worker.
+
+"Yon 's a fine girl!" he thought, and forgot her.
+
+It was one night on Cave Hill he discovered her again, a soft June
+night with a half-moon in the sky.  He had been out for a tramp and sat
+down to watch the city beneath him.  He heard a rustle in the heather
+beside him.  He got up immediately.
+
+"I beg your pardon."  He noticed suddenly a girl looking at him, seated
+not ten yards away.  "I did n't know there was any one here."
+
+"It's all right, Mr. Robertson."  The voice was calm and self-possessed
+as that of any woman of the great world.  He had to look a few instants
+before he recognized her.
+
+"You 've seen me at the works," she explained.
+
+"Why, of course I have," he remembered.  "What are you doing here all
+alone?"
+
+"Oh, I like to come up of an evening among the heather," she told him.
+"It's a bonny wee flower.  I don't wonder the bees love it.  The
+Danes," she added slowly, "used to make a heather ale, but that's gone
+now.  It must have tasted fine."
+
+"It's a queer hour to come here."
+
+"It's a lot of other time I have," she replied, "and I tending your
+weavers from all but dawn until the fall o' day!  I like it this time,
+though, for you see things now you would n't see in the daytime.  You
+can hear the plover at night, calling like children.  And just now a
+badger passed me, gray as a gaffer.  I bees waiting, too," she said,
+and she smiled, "when the moon comes up to see the fairies dancing on
+the hillside.  There must be a lot o' the child in me," she explained,
+"because I do be thinking long."
+
+"There's not many girls come up here their lonesome."
+
+"There 's none think me beauty enough to come with."
+
+"Thon 's a town of blind men."  And they both laughed.
+
+"Maybe I 'm not missing much."
+
+"By God!  You are!"  And he leaned forward and kissed her.
+
+That night when he went home, thinking over the kissing and the
+laughing and the gentle caresses, the thing that impressed him most was
+how natural it all had been.  She had received it all, and he had given
+it, as though it were just like the scented heather, and the wind and
+the moon.  He met her another night by careful chance, and again there
+was all of the child in her, eagerness and pensiveness and artless
+kissing and bubbling laughter.  He could feel her eyes laugh.
+
+He met her a third time on the great hill above the town, and this time
+it was by appointment.  She had become a great pleasantness to him, a
+greater pleasantness than he could ever have imagined before, there was
+something so apart from the world.  The thought of meeting that night
+made his great chest heave involuntarily.
+
+That night he sensed, when he met her, she was all woman, not child
+alone.  He kissed her and they sat down in the springy heather bells.
+She was silent.
+
+"It's been a long day," she said at length, "a long, long day."  She
+looked at him and smiled.
+
+He turned to catch her up to him.  She held him at the length of her
+arm.
+
+"What is your name?" she asked.  "Your first name?"
+
+"Aleck."
+
+"Do you mean true, Aleck?"  Not only her mouth, but her eyes, her whole
+being was questioning.  "Aleck, do you mean true?"
+
+"Ay!  I mean true."
+
+And he had became her lover, her secret lover.
+
+For one whole year she was a delight and a mystery to him.  There was
+not in him, though, the whirling passion that makes for love epics.  It
+was just good for him to know her.  Had he been twenty he would have
+married her, nor been content until he had her bound by candle, book,
+and bell.  But he was in his thirties now, and steady and solid and
+wise.  She asked nothing of him.  She accompanied him here and there,
+to Bangor, to Antrim Glens, dressed in modest decency.  Their relation
+she accepted with dignity.  She was not possessive, as a commoner woman
+might be.  She was not fulsome in her affection for him.  It was very
+restrained.
+
+"I like you well, Aleck," was all she uttered.  "I like you fine, my
+big red man."
+
+At the works she never noticed him, nor he her.  Once, indeed, he had
+wanted her to leave and take a little house somewhere, but her eyes had
+flashed terribly at the first words.
+
+"I 'm sorry, Jeanie," he faltered.  "I 'm queer and sorry."
+
+"You hurt me," she confessed.  "You did so."  She relented at his
+distress.  "Ah, sure, don't take on about it.  A wee word--it comes out
+so easy.  I should not have looked so fierce.  But I know you did n't
+mean to belittle me, Aleck."
+
+He could never quite understand her.  No woman in his life had ever
+acted so.  There had been venal women, and foolish women, and women
+whom other women would instinctively recognize as evil.  But Jean was a
+mixture of the opposites of these things, and she was also Jean.
+
+He loved to stand and watch her.  She reminded him of a picture he had
+once seen--one of a series of four depicting the seasons; and Jean
+resembled the one called "Autumn," a figure of a woman in a purple
+Grecian robe walking through a wood of falling leaves, a mature woman,
+with kindliness and wisdom in her eyes, and a certain proud grace to
+her.  Jean often looked like that.
+
+She thought, too, in a simple way.  Her opinions were definite as rocks.
+
+"It's no' right, Aleck!"  She would raise her brown eyes calmly and
+fearlessly to him, discussing a manner of trading or a phase of
+municipal politics.
+
+She had only one fault to find with him.  She would pat his head and
+say:
+
+"There 's only one thing about you, Aleck, you 're not exactly human.
+There 's a wee thing missing somewhere, red fellow.  They workers of
+yours, they 're no more in your eye than the machinery they handle.  I
+'d like to have you a wee bit softer, Aleck.  I would so."
+
+"I 'm soft enough toward you," he would object.
+
+"It's no' the same thing, mannie.  You 're soft toward me because I 'm
+close to you.  But outside that you 're hard.  You don't see people.
+You must n't think with the head, Aleck.  You must think a wee bit wi'
+the heart.  Na, na!  Toward every one, I mean."
+
+He often regretted, in his club at night, after leaving her, that she
+was not the sort of person he could marry.  It would be so pleasant to
+have a house with her in it, the fine big woman, with the wise head and
+the warm heart, with the temperament rich as wine.  She would go well
+in a house of her own, fitting in it naturally, as some fine old clock
+would, or some mellow furniture of long ago.  And to be greeted by her
+in the evening--
+
+"It would be queer and pleasant," he thought in his stilted Belfast
+idiom.  "Och, ay!  It would that!"
+
+But she was not the manner of woman the Robertsons married.  His dead
+fathers would turn in their graves were he to pick a wife from out the
+mill-hands.
+
+The august and chaste and cold assembly of the Robertson wives had no
+room in it for anything as warm and handsome and as plebeian as Jean.
+The wives the Robertsons chose were of their own rank, meager spinsters
+with a little money, with the accomplishments of gentlewomen, the
+playing of certain tunes on the piano, the knitting of afghans, the
+speaking of a prim English instead of Belfast Scots--an acidulous
+gentility.
+
+Ay!  If it hadn't been so!
+
+
+The interview with the foreman had been stormy.  It became furious.  It
+had ended disastrously, so disastrously he did n't care a tinker's
+curse.
+
+"I ha'e gi'en you two raises a'ready, and here you 're back for more.
+Be damned to it, men, is it the king's mint you take me for?"
+
+"Ay, you ha' gi'en us the raises, Mister Aleck, but the rents ha'
+raised again.  There 's no place to flit to tha' 's cheaper.  The price
+o' food is unchristian--"
+
+"Is that my fault?"
+
+"Na!  Na!  It's no' your fault.  It's just the times.  And there 's
+childer comin'--"
+
+"Is that my fault?"
+
+"Ah, Mister Aleck, be reasonable!  We got to live.  Down at
+Richardson's mill they 're gi'en the third raise.  And at the United--"
+
+"Now, listen to me, men," he roared like a maddened bull.  "You 've got
+to make a choice.  Either get on with what you have, or I 'll close the
+mill.  I swear to my God I 'll close the mill."
+
+"We 've got to live," the men said sullenly.  An old workman stepped
+out.
+
+"Mister Aleck," he pleaded, "I 've worked for your da all my life, and
+I was a wee nipper when your grandfa'er was here.  I mind him well.
+You 've got neither chick nor child, and if you have n't, the mill goes
+wi' you--"
+
+Good God!  So it did.  He had never thought of that.
+
+"--so it is n't as though you wanted the money--"
+
+"I will not!"  One part of his brain formulated the reply and his lips
+uttered it.  The other part was busy on this new discovery, that with
+him the mills died.  Of course they did.
+
+"Well, then, be damned to you!  Close your mill!"
+
+"Be damned to the whole lot of you!  Take your week's notice from the
+day.  Saturday week the mill closes, and I swear to my God it never
+opens again."
+
+Why should it, he asked himself when they were gone, why should it?
+
+He sat back after they had left him and for an instant the magnitude of
+the thought that there would be no successor shook him physically, left
+him all of a tremble.  He had never thought of it before, incredible as
+that may seem.
+
+"No!  There'll be no other.  I'm the last."  He lighted a match to put
+to his pipe, but he let it go out.  "I 'm the last."
+
+All his life, at this moment, seemed shattered--the comfortable running
+order of it junked into a grotesque and cold puzzle, as a complicated
+engine will be ruined by a thunderbolt.  The mills were gone, for he
+would not give in to any raise, and Jeanie Lindsay too--she was so much
+to him, so much that she obtruded herself on every thought he had.
+
+For the first time in his existence, sitting on the ruin, it occurred
+to him after all what a poor thing this complicated mechanism had been.
+He could remember his boyhood, a drear Sabbatical term of years, spent
+with a bearded father and a thin, acidulous mother.  At school he had
+not been liked.
+
+"It was no' so pleasant, now that I come to think of it."
+
+And he was supposed to approach a strict spinster in marriage, that the
+destiny of the Robertsons should be accomplished; to be intimate with a
+frigid stranger, that another lonely and not-liked boy would be brought
+into the world, between a dour father and a mother of marked gentility,
+in a house that was cold no matter how warm the summer, and dark though
+the sun shone.
+
+"I will not!"
+
+The face of the Lindsay girl came between him and the tepid vision he
+had conjured, as in some motion-picture device.  And he saw her warmth
+and bonniness, her slow laughter, her calm eyes.  Why, under God's
+name, must she be born in a region where the Robertson tradition did
+not pick?  Why must she be so desirable, and eligible wives so insipid?
+
+"Ah, be damned to her!" he snapped viciously.  "The whole thing can go
+to the de'il.  It's a dog's life, that's what it is, and I 'm through.
+Ay, I am so."
+
+For a year he wandered across Europe, and to and fro in it.  He saw
+Denmark and Jutland, and though he had sworn good-by to linen, he could
+not help examining the quality of the flax grown there, and he did n't
+think much of it--as no good Belfast man should.  He visited Holland
+and approved the industrious population, but adjudged them "o'er
+pleased wi' themsel's."  Paris he knew before, but it palled on him
+now.  One of his old dreams had been to go there with Jeanie Lindsay.
+"It's kind o' empty," he thought.  England rather irritated him.
+People there, knowing he came from Ireland, wished to know what he
+thought of Home Rule and were shocked when they heard it.  He went
+north to Scotland for golf, and the flat Scot accent made him homesick
+for Belfast.
+
+"I think I 'll just run over to see how the old town 's getting on."
+The truth was, though he would n't acknowledge it to himself, he wanted
+to get news of Jeanie Lindsay.  How was she?  And was she the same as
+ever?  And was she--the thought stabbed him strangely--laughing her
+slow laugh and looking her calm look for some other than he?
+
+News he got of her quickly and with a vengeance.  Going across Donegal
+Place he was tapped on the arm.
+
+"I 'd like a wee word wi' you, Mr. Aleck Robertson."
+
+He saw beside him a compact figure with a set jaw and savage eyes.  He
+was mostly cognizant of the eyes.  They blazed at him with unconcealed
+hatred.
+
+"And who may you be?"
+
+"You 'll know me fine afore I 'm through with you, Aleck Robertson.  I
+'m Tom Lindsay, Jeanie Lindsay's brother."
+
+Robertson forgot the eyes in the question that jumped to his lips.  He
+held out his hand.
+
+"I ha'e heard her speak o' you.  You 're the one that went to
+Newcastle, to the shipbuilding.  And how 's Jean?"
+
+Lindsay struck the proffered hand down.
+
+"She 's the way you left her, wi' this difference: There 's a bastard
+o' yours on her arm this four months.  And do you know what I 'm going
+to do to you for that, Aleck Robertson?  I 'm going to kill you!"
+
+"Wi' a baby!"
+
+"Wi' a baby o' yours!"
+
+"Wi' a baby o' mine!"  Robertson was plainly dazed.
+
+"You were no' expecting that, maybe?"
+
+"No!  I was no' expecting that."  The big man tried to pull his
+faculties together.
+
+"And where is she now?  She 's no' gone away, is she?"
+
+"No!  She 's no' gone away.  And she 's not where she might be, for all
+you did--in the poor-house!  Nor tramping the streets, selling matches!
+No!  She 's at home.  In her father's house--"
+
+"At home, you say?"
+
+"She 's at home."  Tom Lindsay put himself in Robertson's way.  "And,
+now, listen to me--"
+
+The red-bearded man shoved Tom aside as though he were a troublesome
+bush in the path.
+
+"Will you get to hell out o' my way," he roared, "afore I gi'e you a
+clout on the lug?"
+
+He started at breakneck speed down the street.  The brother looked
+after him silently, his jaw loose with wonder.
+
+
+He pushed aside the little gate in front of the garden and though he
+knocked at the door, he tried it, so impatient was he for entry, and
+finding it on the latch, he opened it as a gust of wind might.  In the
+hall he met her coming to answer the knock, and suddenly as he saw her,
+all the bluster and the heartiness went out of him, and his knees
+turned to water and there was a great catch in his throat.  He wanted
+to see her only, but the baby she had on her arm was she also, both of
+them one.  It suddenly occurred to him that he too was a part of her,
+all three of them one.  And he felt suddenly as Saul must have felt
+when, going toward Damascus, he was stricken to the earth.
+
+She smiled at his perturbation.  "I 'm glad to see you, Aleck."  Calmly
+she shifted the child to her left arm.  She put out her hand to him and
+he caught it and held on to it as a foundering sailor hangs on to a
+thrown line.  She led him to the parlor.
+
+"Have you no word," she smiled, "for me and this wee fellow o' yours?"
+
+He looked at the both of them, she more like Ceres, the autumn spirit,
+than ever, buxom and wise and calmly happy, and the little thing of
+down and fluttering life in her arms, soft as a newly hatched chick, he
+sensed.
+
+"When," he asked, and his voice in his own ears was hoarse as the
+cawing of a rook, "when are you going to marry me?"
+
+"I 'm no' so sure," she said calmly, "that I 'm going to marry you at
+all."
+
+"You 're going to marry me, Jeanie, and I 'll start the mill again, and
+we 'll all be fine--"
+
+"And you 'll gi'e the working people the raises they're entitled to?"
+
+"I will not," he flashed out suddenly, as of old.  "They 're entitled
+to nothing."
+
+"Then I'll ha' nothing to do wi' you."  She looked at him calmly.  "Nor
+will this wee fellow.  I 'm a working-woman, Aleck, and he 's a
+working-woman's son.  We 're no' your kind."
+
+He saw the baby's face now, crumpled with sleep.  Very like an old
+man's face it seemed to him, and yet there was something indefinably
+pulling about it.
+
+"The wee workin'-fellow!"  There was such a pathetic touch to the idea.
+
+"By God!" he blurted suddenly.  "I'll gi'e them the mill!"
+
+She smiled again.  "The wee thing then was missing in you, Aleck--I
+think you got it now.  And I 'll marry you, Aleck, just when you say.
+It's no' too soon," she added simply.
+
+For a minute he was sunk in abstraction while she patted his hand with
+the old, familiar gesture.  He raised his head and spoke with
+conviction.
+
+"You know, Jeanie, you know, it's queer to think that an hour ago I had
+no idea of all this.  You and thon wee fellow, and the mill's working
+again and a' right between me and the men.  I had made an end, and now
+there 'll be no end.  You know, it seems ordained in a manner of
+speaking.  Ay, as it were, ordained.  It does," he said.  "It does
+that.  Ay, indeed.  It does so."
+
+
+
+
+THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE
+
+I
+
+Every time he came back, after a brief visit in the South American
+capital, to the gorge where he was building the great bridge, Lovat's
+heart would throb and his throat swell with pride as he looked at the
+great stone structure spanning the Andean chasm.  First the little
+train would come puffing and straining up the grade, on the iron path
+between the lavish tropic greenery.  Then there were the peaks of
+mountains, daring the sky, their tops lightly muffled with snow.
+_Nevada_, went the Spanish word, soft as the snow itself.  Then,
+imminent, one felt, was the drop of the gorge, a dramatic descent that
+stopped the heart in its rhythmic beating.  "Here is the end!" one
+said.  And then the bridge!
+
+Soaring, splendid, slender, strong, its arches spanning the tumbling
+river beneath, the great bridge ran like a rainbow from mountain to
+mountain.  Lovat thought of it, with its lightness, its perfection, its
+spurning of the ground, as a spirit that crossed with winged unwetted
+feet the challenging river beneath.  It suggested, somehow, Artemis in
+the dusk, with a tongue of fire above her proud brow.
+
+The wonder and the miracle of it never failed to thrill him.  All the
+harsh practical details of his work, details of thrust and strain, of
+fitting springer to pier, and voussoir to springer, of the curve of
+intrados, of the strength of abutments, never took away from him the
+sense that he had done, was doing, a great and practical thing.  These
+mountains, that composition of jungle, that smashing drop to the
+turbulent river, the snarling waters themselves--all these were the
+work of the Great Mason, the detail of his Divine Hand.  So they were
+when and so they had remained since the heavens and the earth were
+finished and all the host of them, and He rested on the seventh day
+from all the work which He had made.
+
+But a day would come, the Master of the Masons knew and had ordained,
+when the welter of passionate nature would subside, and the small race
+of mankind He had fashioned would reach a place of progress in their
+journey when this would have to be bridged.  Then one of His prentice
+men would do it.  And Lovat experienced a sense of holiness that he had
+been the chosen one.
+
+Lovat looked at the bridge with wonder and with pride each time he
+returned, but each time he returned he felt somehow that the bridge had
+been jealous of his absence, resented it, became temperamental as a
+woman.  Whilst he was there everything was right.  There were
+accidents, of course, but they were the recognized risks of a great
+venture, the ordinary failure of the human factor in a Titanic
+equation.  But when he was away strange things happened.  Now an
+unaccountable error in laying this or that, now a sudden collapse of
+machinery, now a terrible accident to the native workmen.  But when he
+was there, all was well.  It seemed as if the bridge demanded all his
+time, all his talent, all his attention.
+
+It occurred to him there was a sort of contest between him and the
+bridge, a sort of quiet, deadly fight, as between a man and a spirited
+horse he is riding in a steeplechase.  He felt, too, that all the
+strange things about him knew it--the surly river, the whispering
+jungle, the majestic mountains, the cold observant stars.  These could
+tell him what it was, for they had observed all things, seeing history
+begin and peoples fade and nations rise.  They had seen great
+prehistoric animals flap wings terrible and dark as a demon's.  They
+had seen these things die and be forgotten.  They were of nature and
+knew humanity, and they could tell him, if they wished.
+
+But they told nothing.  They observed the cruel law of silence, which
+all nature knows and dead men learn.  The business was his and the
+bridge's.  Let the twain fight it out.
+
+"I 'm getting morbid, up here in the mountains," Lovat complained, and
+he turned abruptly to think of a month from now, when Cecily would come
+south from New York to marry him in Cartagena, and to be with him for
+the last days before the bridge was opened.  Her dark, serious eyes and
+cloudy hair and serious smiling mouth were before him, but the shadow
+of the bridge rose between him and the vision of her like a barred
+door....
+
+
+II
+
+There were two mysteries in Simon Lovat's life.  One was how he, a poor
+Highland Scots-born boy, reared in abject poverty, had ever come to be
+the great architect he was.  And the other was how he had become
+engaged to Cecily Stanford, Gamaliel Stanford's only daughter, and
+Gamaliel Stanford was a millionaire.
+
+He hated to think of his infancy in the little Argyle town where he was
+born.  He hated even to think of his boyhood in New York.  People, he
+felt, would n't understand it.  They might talk of being hungry, but
+did they know what hunger for years was, abject hunger, malnutrition?
+Did these well-fed men who talked of hardship know, could they conceive
+of a family to whom for years a nickel meant the difference between
+butter on bread and dry bread?  They talked of slums, and dirt, and
+poverty, but he kept his mouth closed.  Were he to tell them what he
+knew of these--he himself--might they not draw back from him as they
+would draw back with a shudder from a man who had been close to lepers?
+Fine words mean so little in this world.
+
+All his life until seven years ago, when he was twenty-five, had been a
+succession of cold ill-fed days, relieved by the magic thrill of
+bridges.
+
+There had been a viaduct here, a railroad span there, an Egyptian arch
+somewhere else in Argyle that would vibrate some chord within him.  A
+rainbow would flush him with sudden beauty.  And in New York the wonder
+of the bridges made up for heartburnings and disappointments.  The
+gossamer span to Brooklyn affected him like a long note on a
+hunting-horn.  At times human weaknesses would boil within him, as when
+he thought with rage that other boys and men must be uplifted by the
+prizes and scholarships they won, feeling the pride of combat and of
+victory, but to him they meant only the wherewithal to live for himself
+and his mother and sisters.  Other boys were welcomed with feastings
+when they had achieved success, but success meant to him only the
+filling of famished hands--not that he grudged it, God knows! but one
+hungers for a little praise, a little recognition, as one hungers for
+food.  And then had come the days of obscurity, working for others
+until Gamaliel Stanford, the big, bluff builder, had recognized his
+genius and given him his chance.  He did fine work for Stanford.
+
+Stanford, the self-made millionaire, wished after the fashion of his
+kind to patronize the genius he had found, and so he brought him here,
+brought him there, to his club, to golf-links, to his house.  And there
+Lovat met Cecily, Stanford's daughter....
+
+
+III
+
+At thirty-one Lovat met people with ease, for they meant little to him,
+men or women.  Men, outside his own profession, were mere figures to
+him.  They did n't count.  He spoke to them in the chit-chat of the
+day, and when they mentioned architecture, he changed the subject
+deftly.  The alembication of engineering and art they could n't
+understand, so why talk of it?  Women he didn't mind so much.  They had
+a soft place in his heart, because they had been good to him as a boy
+and child whom there had been few to care for....  And he had had his
+little love-affairs, natural as the phases of the moon--calf-love,
+sentiment, adoration, passion.  They had loitered, knocked, passed by.
+None had ever touched that inmost self of him to whom God had once
+called and said seriously: "You are to build bridges."
+
+And then he saw Cecily Stanford coming toward him with her serious
+shining eyes.
+
+
+IV
+
+She did not say to him the ordinary, obvious things a woman says when
+she meets a man.  She held his hand for an instant and looked at him.
+
+"When I saw the bridge you built at Indian Ford," she told him, "I was
+afraid to meet you.  Afraid I might be disappointed in what you were.
+You might have been a chunky, merry man who treats his genius as a
+favorite, halloing to it when needed, proud of it, patronizingly
+modest.  Or you might have been an angular, unsure man, jealous of his
+talent's fame, comparing it as one compares horses.  But you are just
+you, Simon Lovat, and your bridge is you, and you are your bridge.  I
+'m blessed to see you this day."
+
+As he watched her he seemed to be watching not a woman but some fine
+spirit that struck a silver note in its movement.  Like a silver flame
+in the dusk she appeared to him.  There was so much spirit to her that
+nothing else really mattered.  The strain of Highland mysticism in him
+gave him an uncanny power of seeing people as they were, not as they
+seemed to the outward eye.  He could look at a certain man and say to
+himself with certainty, "At death that man dies," or at some
+sweet-faced woman, repressed, waiting, and know, "At death this woman's
+life begins."  He saw Cecily Stanford and said: "This woman endures
+forever.  She lives now and she will live always."
+
+And then from the spirit within his eyes went to the body without, as
+one might look first at some gracious womanhood and be all eyes for her
+presence, forgetting for the nonce the queenly satins that clothed it.
+He saw her hair, like a blue cloud.  Her eyes he knew.  He saw the
+skilful symmetry of face, a little, longish face with lips half open,
+eagerly.  He sensed the littleness of her figure, the long, firm line
+from knee to ankle, the small bosom, the loveliness of arms.  He saw
+the firm, sensitive hands.
+
+And yet she might have been nothing to him but a gracious memory, as of
+some splendid day, but that she was whole-heartedly interested in and
+understood the importance of bridges.  Some generous arch, or some line
+of a writer's might have turned her heart that way once, and set her on
+that broad masonic road the charm of which endures a lifetime.  A book
+may trouble or a picture inspire one, but those are of the spirit.  But
+a bridge is of spirit and body.  One sees the architect, one sees the
+art, one sees the courage and grandeur and beauty.  A history of
+bridges is a history of the world, of its wars, its commerce, its
+progress.  And the thoughts about it are without end.
+
+And she could speak of all that to him.  She understood the mystic
+errand of the builder of bridges, which is to be the servant of unborn
+men.  Old wisdom that had been lost was reborn in her.  She could feel
+why the heads of a great religion should call themselves proudly
+sovereign pontiffs--pontiff, _pontifex_, builder of bridges.  She could
+understand the reverence that stirred in Highlanders when they crossed
+a bridge and removed their bonnets.  "God bless the builder of the
+bridge!" their prayer went.
+
+She could understand the ideals of an ancient age, when a community of
+monks called themselves the Pontist Brothers, the _Frères Pontifes_.
+Modest, white-robed, they built bridges of great fame, they operated
+ferry-boats, they fed and housed pilgrims.  But their greatest care was
+the building and upkeep of bridges.  Before Pius II suppressed them,
+they built the Pont Saint-Esprit over the Rhone, one of the largest
+stone bridges in the world; a thousand meters long, it is, with
+twenty-six great arches.  Surely their spirits guard it still!
+
+She could understand the arrogant cry of the Roman architect when he
+finished the great Alcantare over the Tagus.  "_Pontem perpetui
+mansurum in saecula mundi_," Lacer smiled.  "It shall see the end of
+the world."  The Saracen trampled and Charles V rebuilt it.
+Wellington's troops blew it up, and the Carlists fought on its Titanic
+arches.  All these causes are forgotten now.  But the bridge, the
+bridge remains.
+
+And because she understood these things, she understood Simon Lovat,
+and got close to his heart, which none had ever been near.
+
+
+V
+
+Lovat told her his fear that never again would great stone bridges be
+built.  The days of beauty in bridges were past, like the days of
+chivalry.  Long steel suspension bridges, with their infinity of metal
+triangles, or marvels of carpentry, such as the Portage Bridge over the
+Genesee.  But never again would they build bridges such as the Romans
+did, like the dreadful Pont du Gard at Nîmes.
+
+"They will, Simon," she told him.  "You will build like that."
+
+"Never, Cecily.  Never again!"
+
+"Yes, Simon.  I know."
+
+"All those days are gone, Cecily."
+
+"Not for you."  The conviction would shine from her eyes.  "I know it
+here--" she touched her head--"and here--" she touched her bosom.
+
+And he was persuaded somehow that she was right, though his head told
+him she could not be, for cement and steel are cheaper and quicker, and
+only cheapness and rapidity obtain now that people no longer dream of
+to-morrow.  And the soldier's honor and the sailor's courage, and the
+writer's fire and the builder's genius--yes, and the dreams of great
+merchants, too, Lovat grimaced--are curbed and roweled by the
+huckster's purse.  Impossible!  But somehow because she believed it,
+the thought took form and substance in his heart, that one day he would
+build a great bridge--of stone.
+
+How they came so close to each other, neither knew.  It was just as
+natural as a tree growing out of the green ground.  They came so close
+that they could be silent, each with the other, for a long time, each
+knowing, feeling what the other thought.  Then they would smile at each
+other with a strange seriousness....
+
+One afternoon, in the December dusk, his heart opened suddenly, and
+all, all the horror of his early years came rushing like a flood from a
+broken dam.  Why he told her he didn't know.  He didn't believe it
+possible to tell any one.  Yet here he was, standing by the window of
+the drawing-room, looking out at the street glistening with fog, while
+she sat huddled in a great arm-chair by the log fire.  And out of his
+lips in harsh staccato sentences came the sordidness of his infant
+days....
+
+"... We were pleased when we found it.  And Joan took it under a shawl
+and went out.  But we had forgotten that the pawnbroker closed at six.
+So there was nothing to eat until he should open in the morning....  We
+all cried...."
+
+He was interrupted by her terrible fit of sobbing.  Suddenly he came
+out of his tragic vision.
+
+"I 'm sorry I should have horrified you," he said, aghast.  "I don't
+know what came over me to tell such things.  I 'll go."
+
+But she was in his arms, weeping bitterly.  "To think that you and I
+should have been in the same city!  And I had everything, and you
+nothing.  You hungry!  Cold!  Oh, Simon!  Simon!"  Though they were as
+close as this, as close as birds in a nest are, yet there had never
+been between them any talk of marriage, any talk of life other than
+they were leading that week.  He knew he loved her tremendously, but
+fear of refusal and Scots pride because he was poor kept the question
+in his heart.  And she, because she was modest as she was brave, never
+said anything, though she knew, she knew...
+
+At last the miracle happened.  Two South American commonwealths, with
+the hearts of children and the bravery of men, decided to span the
+Andes with an immense bridge.  They saw only peaceful progress in front
+of them, not war.  The bridge was to be of stone, because stone was
+plentiful and labor cheap, and to bring steel up the mountain gorge
+would be a wasteful undertaking.  First a German architect was to have
+the work, for they had the foothold there, and then an Englishman
+stepped in confidently.  But old Gamaliel Stanford had his friends in
+New York, heads of great fruit companies and immense
+agricultural-machinery syndicates, and banks powerful as nations.  So
+Simon Lovat was chosen.
+
+When he and Cecily were told, he was dumb.  She said nothing, but her
+shining eyes spoke, and she sat and watched the proud throw of his head
+as he thought of arches as powerful as the Romans', of great spans one
+hundred and fifty feet in width, of voussoirs weighing each eighty tons
+of stone.  Suddenly he knew her eyes were showering him with joy and
+confidence, and he put out his hand fearfully.
+
+"When this is done, Cecily--" he was red as a school-boy--"would
+you--could you--will you marry me?"
+
+"Whom else could I marry, dearest one?" she answered simply.
+
+
+VI
+
+Now they were married and moved into their house, a cool bungalow on
+the green hills.  Love and passion abode with them, silent and strong
+and clean as the winds on the great bridge below.  Above them of nights
+was the immense mosaic of the stars--the stars of the North, and the
+stars Northerners knew not; the Southern Cross, the false cross and the
+True, and an infinity of little worlds to southward yet unnamed, and
+which mariners had marked with quaint Greek letters in their charts.
+When the moon arose it was tremendously near, as near as Africa, so
+they could distinguish the immense blue mountains and the dips and
+whorls of her to whom poets had given fanciful, colorful names: the Bay
+of Rainbows, the Green Lagoon.  And all about them at night were
+movement and mystery,--the screeching of parakeets, the chattering and
+whistling of monkeys,--and in the dark green jungle there was rustling,
+as of pied serpents, and crackling, as of jaguars with limbs of flame.
+
+And then the dawn would come, and the earth, a mysterious womanhood by
+night, would enter with the sun as a gracious lady.  Clothed in
+glistening green, and jeweled with humming-birds and the sheen of
+parrots, she was like some barbaric princess of ancient days, such as
+Balkis, Queen of Sheba, must have been when she went forth from Arabia
+Felix to view the magnificence of Solomon the king.
+
+There was mystery at night and there was majesty in the daytime, and
+that all of nature, and then a little path of the mountainside, a
+little turn, a pace a big man could make, and there arose suddenly
+concentration and genius, the bridge.  One felt stunned at seeing it; a
+man might catch his breath and swear, a woman might cry, so great was
+its drama.  Arch by white arch it spanned the tropic gulf, and above
+it, straight as an arrow, ran the line of roadway.  Superb and splendid
+and slender, it joined the green-clad mountains, as the web of a master
+spider joins two branches of a tree.  Very high it was, "so high that
+it was dreadful," the words of Ezekiel came to one's mind, and beneath
+it now swirled, now weltered the tropic river, on its way to join the
+Amazon, greatest of waters.
+
+And yet somehow the bridge loitered, refused to be finished, brooded,
+sulked.  So much did it fight against him that had it not been for his
+wife Cecily, time and time again Lovat would have lost heart.
+
+But she was there with him, and in some hidden mystical way she had to
+do with the bridge.  One look at her, one touch of her, and he regained
+courage and patience.  Silently and strong she moved by his side, by
+day in her man's breeches and gaiters and sport coat, by night in her
+dark-blue garment with its rolling collar of white, somehow like a
+monk's but of line and beauty.  Very like a flower she was, a Northern
+flower, straight and slender and supple and velvety, and strong.  Yes,
+she had to do with the bridge, for he had only to look into her serious
+smiling eyes, and to him, through her, out of somewhere, flowed
+strength and wisdom.
+
+Yes, she had to do with the bridge, he knew.  Her being here was not
+fortuitous.  That she was a young bride on her honeymoon in an
+enchanted land, was not, as it is to most women, the only thing in the
+world.  They were two lovers, but they were oblivious of all things,
+sympathized with by all things.  The bridge was there.  And between him
+and her and the bridge there existed some strange link of destiny.
+There were three of them.  Two of them were happy, but the bridge was
+sullen.  Two of them were uncertain, but the bridge was sure.
+
+
+VII
+
+Out of dumb rock and lifeless iron the bridge arose.  First these were
+only amorphous objects, and then through the fire of genius was evoked
+an entity.  The bridge had a personality strong as a man's, as houses
+have personalities, and some trees.  It rose there strong and slim and
+beautiful and of use to men, but terrible as an army with banners.  And
+though Simon Lovat and his wife Cecily said nothing to each other about
+it, yet there arose in both their minds that the bridge demanded and
+needed something.  And ancient lore of bridges came to them in
+lightning flashes of memory--old stories of terror that told of human
+sacrifice before a bridge would stand.  What ancient mysticism made the
+priests of the Pons Sublicius of olden Rome throw dummies of human
+beings into the Tiber on festal days?  What horror of old made British
+Vortigern build his castle over the dead body of a murdered boy?  Even
+in China of to-day, a pig was thrown into the river in times of flood,
+that the bridge should hold.  And gnarled old masons told tales....
+
+Old wives' tales!  Ancient vile superstition!  And yet, what wisdom had
+departed from the world since ancient days!  Not spiritual wisdom alone
+but material wisdom.  How were the great blocks of the pyramids raised?
+We were n't certain of that!  The mighty things of Easter Island, yes,
+and the great stone legacies of the Incas!  We did n't know.  And the
+progress of the world was not spiritual.  It was material.  And we were
+n't even certain of material things.
+
+Why did they do it, Lovat pondered!  Was it a sacrifice to the bridge
+itself?  A tribute to the idol they had made with their own hands?
+Hardly!  For that would be the idea of barbarians, and barbarians never
+built great bridges.  Was it a sacrifice to the cruelty of the great
+elements that might endanger the bridge?  Possibly.  And yet storm was
+so powerful and so cruel when it felt that way that nothing would
+hinder it.  What was it?  He did n't know.
+
+And yet the bridge demanded, needed something.
+
+Cecily felt it,, too, he knew, for she spoke one evening in the
+lamplight, with averted eyes.
+
+"Dearest one, it sounds a silly question, but why are you building the
+bridge?"
+
+"Because it's my work, Cecily, to build bridges."  He felt what she
+meant.
+
+"Dearest one, if the bridge were to fall, you would be heartbroken,
+would n't you?"
+
+"I 'm afraid I should, Cecily."
+
+"Why, dearest one?  Is it because you are proud of your bridge?  That
+you want generations to remember you by your bridge?"
+
+"No, Cecily," he thought seriously, "it is n't that.  I--I 'm just a
+helper of the Master Mason, and if the bridge were to fall, I should
+feel I was a poor, an unworthy helper.  That's how I feel, Cecily.
+That's why I should be heart-broken."
+
+She put down the sewing work she was doing, and came to him, her eyes
+misty.  She took his hands.  She knelt by his side.
+
+"I know, my lover," she whispered, a little huskily, "but your bridge
+will never fall.  Believe it, dearest one.  Believe it night and day."
+
+But the bridge bothered him.  And all her wise courage could not still
+its silent clamor.  He could watch the ant-like battalions of men as
+they laid stone on stone, chanting in the guttural Chibcha as the
+bridge-builders of Persia chanted when they built the Perl-i-Khaju at
+Ispahan.  But above their voices came the silent voice of the bridge,
+loud as thunder.  Until he could stand it no longer.
+
+"What is it you want?  In God's name what do you want?"
+
+"You know."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Ta-wak knew when he builded the great wall of China."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"King Cheops knew when he builded his great pyramid at Ghizeh."
+
+"But I don't know."
+
+"The Romans knew when they raised the bridges of Gaul.  You know,
+building me."
+
+"I don't know.  I won't know."  Lovat broke from the place, his
+forehead damp with perspiration.  And as he went toward his cottage, it
+seemed to him that the jungle and the mountains and all the creatures
+of the wilds were watching with their inhuman apathetic eyes the
+Titanic struggle between himself and the thing he had conceived into
+being, out of lifeless iron and dumb stone.
+
+
+VIII
+
+For two days in the South American city Lovat now raged like a madman,
+now was limp and gray as if all life had left.  The storm crashed like
+artillery.  The wind swirled in terrific outshoots of uncontrolled
+power.  Rain whorled like a water-burst.  And all the time there ran
+through Lovat's head the unending, pounding rhythm: "The bridge!  The
+bridge is down!  Is down!  The bridge!  The bridge is down!"  Statesmen
+and ministers looked at him in pity, forgetting the country's loss in
+the great grief of the artist.
+
+Cecily he was n't worried about.  He knew she was all right.  There was
+an army to take care of her there, and their home was solid, would last
+against the deluge.
+
+Three days ago and no warning of this cataclysm.
+
+And now, to-day!  To-day was like the Day of Judgment.  To be sure, a
+half-crazy astronomer had predicted the end of the world, and sane
+scientists had pooh-poohed it, saying that there might be bad weather
+from the stellar conjunctions, but outside of that--nothing.  And then,
+suddenly, this immensity of flood.  Down in the lowlands, on the shore
+of the Caribbees, there had been havoc past imagining.  Whole towns
+were swept away.  There had been no chance of getting in touch with the
+bridge.  All telegraph wires were down.
+
+Now it was Wednesday, and on Sunday he had left to discuss some details
+of the opening with the ministry and he had asked Cecily to come with
+him, but she would not go.
+
+"Lover, no," she had said; "I would rather stay here by the bridge."
+
+"But, Cecily, you have n't been away from here in two months.  Would
+n't you like to come to the city?  There 'll be clothes to buy and
+people to see, and an opera from Madrid.  Come, Cecily."
+
+"Dearest one, no!" she had refused.  She smiled.  "One of us must stay
+by the bridge."
+
+"But, Cecily--"
+
+"No!  No!"
+
+She loved the bridge as much as he.
+
+On the little platform of the working railroad station he had said
+good-by to her.  The train started and she ran alongside.
+
+"Stop the train!" she cried.
+
+He pulled the emergency cord.
+
+"What is it, Cecily?  Changing your mind?"
+
+"Dearest one, I just want to kiss you again before you go.  Just once
+more.  I 'm a silly woman."
+
+"Come with me, Cecily.  Come as you are.  We can get you clothes in
+town."
+
+"No, lover.  I must stay and take care of your bridge.  I don't mind
+who 's looking, lover.  Just--kiss me again."
+
+Had she some premonition of the disaster?  Did that spiritual wisdom
+which we call intuition, tell her of ruin that was hovering like a
+hawk?  Poor Cecily!  How heartbroken she'd be.  Her eyes, her poor
+eyes, would be burnt with crying.  Poor Cecily!  Perhaps he could make
+her believe it did n't matter.  Nothing mattered so long as he had her.
+Ah, but it did!  He would never build another bridge.  He might do
+mighty structures of iron and cement, immense feats of engineering, but
+never a great stone bridge again.  Never again!...  Poor Cecily!
+
+
+IX
+
+He had steeled himself to see it all, and on Saturday when the storm
+had subsided, and the little train started up the mountainside, his
+face was a gray mask, and the nearer the top he came, the more
+impassive, the grayer was his face.  A little turn of a boulder and he
+knew he 'd see the ruin.  A few piles and the welter of the swollen
+river attacking them.  His eyes were open, but he saw nothing.  The
+official beside him suddenly screamed.
+
+"My God!  Excellency!  The bridge!"
+
+"Yes, I know.  The bridge is down."
+
+"The bridge is there.  Excellency, the bridge is there!"
+
+All Lovat could do was to laugh, a vacant laugh.  Yes, it was there.
+But it was so impossible.  The sun suddenly flashed behind it, and he
+saw the arrogant white structure soar like a bird, joining green hill
+to green hill.  Beneath it rolled an unknown river, not the tumbling,
+snarling river of a week before, but a brown concave current, become
+gigantic, flying northward to the greatest of waters and carrying on
+its thewed back death and desolation.  There was something that looked
+like a man and then an ox.  And here was the wreckage of a homestead.
+And there was a jaguar and here was a great serpent of the jungle, and
+now a horse and here a gigantic tree.  But the bridge spurned the
+river, floated on it like a swan.  Lovat jumped off on the platform.
+
+"It holds!  It stays!" he cried exultantly.  He rushed toward the
+house.  "Cecily, it holds!"
+
+But he felt, as he flung open the door, that the house was empty.
+
+"Cecily!  Where are you, Cecily?"
+
+There was no one there but a weeping, terrified maid.
+
+"Where is Madame?  Where is your señora?"
+
+But she only wept and wrung her hands.  Lovat, half crazy, yanked her
+to her feet, and shook her.
+
+"Where is Madame?
+
+"Cecily!  Cecily!"
+
+He ran outside.  It suddenly occurred to him that all his men had made
+way for him from the station, with silent pitying eyes.  Why, they
+should have been cheering, too, but for something--
+
+"Cecily!  Cecily!"  He ran around the little house.
+
+One of the big Inca foreman detached himself from a standing group, and
+stood in front of the frenzied man.
+
+"Excellency," he said, "there's no good calling Madame.  Madame has
+left us."
+
+"Left us?  What do you mean?"
+
+"Excellency--" the big Indian threw his hands toward the river--"the
+bridge is there, but Madame has left us.  Don't you understand?"
+
+With numbing force the blow descended on Lovat.
+
+"The bridge took her, you mean."
+
+"No, señor.  She left us."
+
+Lovat suddenly straightened up.
+
+"Mason, what do you mean?"
+
+"Señor, when the wind came and the flood, the men quit.  The wind
+shrieked through the arches.  The river rose and attacked the piers.
+And the bridge groaned, and we left.  It was the will of God, we
+thought.  He did n't want this chasm joined.
+
+"And I came up toward your house, señor, to see if everything was right
+there.  I met Madame on the path.  She had her big black cloak on.
+
+"'You had better go back, señora,' I said.
+
+"'I am going to the bridge,' she said.
+
+"'But it is growing black as night, señora; you had better go back.'
+
+"'Stand aside, Vicente,' was all she said.  And there was something in
+her eyes that made me give way.  She went on.
+
+"Excellency, I loved Madame, as did every one here.  And she liked me.
+And I was your man.  I followed her down the path.  I caught up to her
+at the bridge.  It was blue dark, like twilight.  The bridge was
+quivering.  I caught the edge of her cape.
+
+"'What are you going to do, señora?'
+
+"'Stand aside, Vicente.'
+
+"'You are crazy, señora!' I cried out.
+
+"'No, Vicente, I am wise.'
+
+"'You must n't, señora!'
+
+"'I must, Vicente.'
+
+"'Let me, señora,' I pleaded.
+
+"'Vicente,' she said, 'you 've done your work on the bridge.  Now I
+must do mine.'
+
+"I could n't stop her, Excellency.  Something in the face, in the
+eyes--I don't know--I dropped on my knees.  She moved over the bridge.
+
+"Excellency, from the time she was on it the bridge stopped quivering,
+the wind hushed.  I saw her drop her cloak as she stood in the center.
+I saw her step forward, sure, unafraid.  And for an instant I saw her,
+like a blossom in the wind....
+
+"And so, Excellency, the bridge stands, will always stand...."
+
+
+X
+
+So there it was, all finished, all done, and for the last time Lovat
+looked at it, saw the green mountains, the tumbling river, the white
+span of the bridge.  But the bridge and he were finished now.  His work
+was done.
+
+The little Latin-American official touched his elbow deferentially.
+
+"Excellency, the train!"
+
+"Yes, the train," Lovat repeated mechanically.  His companion looked at
+him with grave sympathy.  Only three months ago Lovat was a young and
+happy bridegroom.  To-day the builder was a grave gray-haired man.
+
+Yes, the bridge was done, Lovat knew.  A little while ago it was just
+the product of his hand and genius and will, a thing of himself.  But
+now it was a fulfilled entity, with its own duties, its own uses, its
+own destiny.  Over it went trains joining country to country and sea to
+sea.  Over it went the loping Latin people.  Over it went the little
+patient burros, pannier-laden.  In confidence all went over it.
+
+"It will stand."  Lovat knew.  "It will always stand."
+
+But there was no high note of proud achievement in his thought.  It
+would not stand because of skill in building or strength in masonry.
+But because there guarded it one whose pleading sacrificial fingers
+would unclench the angry hand of God.  Flood and thunder and immense
+winds would spare it because of that guardian like a white flame, to
+whose unselfishness selfish nature must do reverence.
+
+The official ventured to recall him:
+
+"Excellency!"
+
+"Just one more moment!"
+
+He had a vision of her for the moment, and his throat quivered and his
+eyes were uncertain.  He saw her in her white, billowing gown, with her
+dark head and face like a flower.  Two brown shy little children were
+standing fearful of the bridge, and she knelt to them.  "Come,
+darlings," he could hear the deep remembered voice.  She led them
+confidently across his bridge, and as she led them she smiled to him.
+
+Well, he must go.  There was other work to be done, other bridges to
+build, until the time the Master of the Masons told him to rest.  He
+must be about his work.
+
+"All our life is work," he said to himself as he boarded the train.
+"All our love is comradeship."
+
+Well, there was work to be done, and there was comradeship.  She would
+always be with him now, being dead....
+
+
+
+
+IN PRAISE OF LADY MARGERY KYTELER
+
+I
+
+All those things I dreamed about, and I thousands of miles away, are
+there still: the house, half farm-house and half castle, at one end an
+ancient military tower, at the other a thatched cottage; all the
+trees--the ash, the elms, the chestnut with the dark-green foliage and
+the prickly bulb containing the polished mahogany fruit, the
+rowan-trees with the gallant red berries, bitter as death, the copper
+beech with the foliage of lace and the fuzzy brown nuts, the apple- and
+pear-trees, and the trees of cherries that the birds do be ever after.
+
+The lawns that were once shaven so closely are now rectangles of high
+sweet grass where the bees are seeking.  And the tennis-courts, where
+once was the laughter of young girls--those, too, are knee-high in
+grass, swaying in the soft Irish wind.  And here and there is a gallant
+yew-tree, blackly green.  Roses still cling to the wall, and around all
+the walls are riots of flowers.
+
+The low greenhouses are still there, under whose glass roofs grew great
+purple grapes, and where row on row of exotic flowers grew and delicate
+ferns whose names are unknown to me, so much closer are men and horses
+to me than flowers and ferns.  Ivy is on the walls, soft-looking as
+velvet, and the winds and rains have been kind to the lodge and the
+stables.  The walls are still white and a little moss is on the slates
+of them, and a soft and gentle grass is between the cobbled stones.
+
+And the deep well is there.  And everywhere are birds and bees.  The
+bees are wild now, who once lived in skips of yellow straw, and their
+nests are in the long grass, and there, too, is the meadowlark, and
+under the eaves the swallows flit.  And here the robin is safe with his
+impudent eye, and the blackbird of the yellow bill.  And everywhere the
+throaty murmur of the wood-pigeons, the thrum of their wings.
+
+Eh!  There it is all still, at the foot of the soft and purple
+mountains--the Sugarloaves, the Big Sugarloaf and the Little, and the
+hill called Kitty Gallagher's, and the Scalp with its slender tower and
+the sweet shoulder of Three Rock Mountain.  And below--one could pitch
+a stone nearly--is Dublin, the abiding city.  There the Liffey,
+rippling gently to the sea.  And one can almost see St. Patrick's,
+where great Swift was Dean, and Trinity, where poor Goldsmith and
+fearless Burke were students.  The broad streets, the princely squares.
+And there Robert Emmet was hanged for treason against our Sovereign
+Lord the King, His Crown and Majesty, and Lord Edward, the rebel
+Geraldine, was stabbed.  And there is Clontarf, where Brian the High
+King fought the red Danes, fought and died, but fought and conquered.
+And there Howth, where Iseult, the Dublin princess, sailed to marry
+Mark in rugged Cornwall, sailed with Tristram....
+
+Eh!  There from Mount Kyteler one can see it all--the soft dreaming
+mountains, the sad weeping city.  And here where was once the laughter
+of young women, the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the
+shouting of lads--here is silence, but for the husky note of the
+wood-pigeon, the little thunder of his wings, and the droning of the
+seeking bees.  All, all are dead, but here is no desolation.  There is
+the sweet gentleness of remembered twilights, and the copper beech
+rustles, and the rowan nods, and the apple-trees murmur with their
+antique boughs: "Is it yourself is in it, Ronnie?  Is it yourself, long
+lad?  And it is long you've stayed away from us in foreign lands and
+bitter seas.  And it's Lady Margery you 're looking for?  And Paddy the
+Pipes?  You mind him, do you so?  And Jacky Sullivan--ah, the great
+lad!  Sure, they 've just left this minute, laughing fellow.  Gone to
+see the old earl, they have.  Sure, you'll be following them, and
+seeing them all soon.  Over the mountains they went, a wee ways.  You
+'ll see them all soon, very soon, a wheen of years...."
+
+Not for long will be this sweet silence, this soft, dim loneliness.
+Soon will be business of courts, justices sitting in wig and gown.  And
+Mount Kyteler will die, and its name be forgotten.  Sad history will
+pass and affairs proceed in their inexorable ordinance.  And where once
+great Norman fighters charged in mail, and Elizabethan nobles ruffled,
+and the old red-faced earl swore when the gout was on him, and of late
+Lady Margery moved over lawns and walks with her sweet, sad-faced
+dignity, will be three or four little farms, their smoke blue against
+the purple of Three Rock Mountain.  And the lawns will turn to fields
+of blue corn, and fat cattle will graze where once was a maze of
+flowers.
+
+And all the crops will prosper there.  And the children that are born
+of the farmer folk will be happy as the birds in the trees.  There will
+be no blight on the milk the cows give, and there will be great luck on
+the stock of the kindly land.  Always will there be prodigal bees and
+the dancing of swallows.
+
+There are houses and lands that are kindly, and places that are
+sinister, fields that are surly, meadows that are sweetly generous.
+Old things, if we watch them, have a very human quality, and that is
+because they have been intimately connected with people who have these
+qualities themselves.  One influences one's surroundings so much.
+Whirling sparks of personality fall from us and charge what we have
+usually by us.  On all the estate came such a current of sweetness that
+even the thieving wood-pigeons grew generous, leaving the young trees
+alone.
+
+Will she ever come back here when Mount Kyteler is gone, and the little
+whitewashed farmhouses are an outpost against the heather of Three Rock
+Mountain?  I think she will.  She will have so much beauty to know, now
+she is dead, that she will not begrudge the loss of the flower gardens
+and the courts where tennis was played.  Apple-trees and flowers will
+be hers wherever she is, and perhaps the same ones--who can say no?
+Yet I can see her come to visit the whitewashed houses in the hushed
+summer twilight, when the daisies have tucked in their modest heads and
+only the great foam of the hawthorn billows over the country-side.  On
+some warm little breeze from Three Rock Mountain she will come.  And
+horses in their stalls will know her, and the kine will turn their
+heads to her, lowing gently, and the dogs will bark joyously, and some
+little child on the floor will stand up suddenly and run forward, its
+arms outstretched, bubbles of laughter beating from the tiny lips....
+
+
+II
+
+Now when the last Lord Kyteler died, there was very little fuss made.
+Another poverty-stricken Irish peer gone.  He had n't been rich enough
+to own an estate large enough for tenants to squabble on.  A few farms
+here and there through the country, Mount Kyteler itself, not worth a
+tremendous amount.  He was the last lord of one of these very, very old
+families who had been lost in the back-wash of Irish history.  Once
+Kytelers had fought in the Holy Land under Richard the Lion-Hearted and
+had fought later under Irish viceroys against the O'Bernes and O'Tooles
+and O'Moores of the Wicklow hills; and antiquarians remembered that
+Dame Alice Kyteler was the most sinister witch of all Ireland, and was
+burned at the stake in Kilkenny many centuries before.  But it was a
+matter of politics more than demonology, though undoubtedly Dame Alice
+was second only to Gilles de Rais, murderer and Marshal of France, in
+worship of evil idols and in sinister sacrifice....
+
+It was one of these old names that should have died out, when the
+medieval chivalry of Europe died, Knights Templar and sporting Norman
+bishops and morbid medieval ladies.  But it existed, as many things
+exist in Ireland and are forgotten in Europe and never known in
+America,--strange Christian customs, strange pagan beliefs,--and "It"
+the most horrible of all horrible ghosts.
+
+They were a poor family, as poor is understood in Ireland.  That is,
+they had money enough for all necessities and many luxuries.  They had
+money enough for food, for clothes, for a few good horses for
+conveyance and hunting, and they could go to the viceregal court at
+Dublin Castle and be decent figures there.  But they could not keep
+racehorses, which is really a great hardship if you are Irish, and they
+could not afford to live in London as an Irish nobleman should live,
+which should be as a very great nobleman indeed.  They were as well off
+as a rich farmer, and they had a title, and they were not intolerably
+proud.
+
+If you were to meet a very red-faced man in tweeds and with a heavy
+stick, at the Curragh races, betting modest sovereigns, and were told
+that he was the Earl of Mount Kyteler, you would feel that there was
+something wrong.  He had not that terrible courtesy of the earls and
+better sort of dukes which makes you feel like a clodhopper, no matter
+from which particular Irish king you claim direct descent.  He was too
+human, too decent an old skate; you chuckled when you thought of a
+coronet cocked rakishly over that red, weather-beaten face.
+
+Oh, but Lady Margery! that was different!
+
+Her appearance I could describe to you: the close-bound black hair, the
+face like some rain-washed flower, the dark luminous eyes and laughing
+lips, the balanced neck, the body that was half boy's and half young
+woman's.  All that means nothing, but if I say that when she appeared
+there was a chime like an old silver bell, such antique sweetness came
+upon the air ... the feet that never seemed to touch the ground, her
+long, white, quiet hands.  How that old-world title fitted her,
+described her!  Not demure miss, not buxom mistress, but the Lady
+Margery Kyteler.
+
+How important it is for me to bring her back, to have her real for an
+instant in the clear air!  But not as a necromancer under the
+glittering stars, with circle and acolyte, fire, sword, and crown,
+saying terrible words--Here be the symbols of secret things, the flags
+and banners of God the Conqueror, the weapons to compel the aerial
+potencies--and have that sweet face come white and fearful in the gray
+dawn.  I would have her seen with her merry smile, her feet that moved
+lightly, as to hidden music, her long quiet hands.  For all her boyish
+strong body, there was such harmony and light, one knew that beyond the
+body was something that would not die with the years--no more than the
+sun dies when it drops into the sea, or the sweet, friendly moon.  To
+see her was more than miracles; she convinced better than the fathers
+of the church.
+
+Very unconsciously she did all this.  And very embarrassed she would
+have been and a little mad she would have thought one, had she been
+told she was an argument for eternity.  Know her to be eternal, but see
+her playing with a terrier, pulling its tail, its ears, and clipping it
+deftly under the jaw as it snapped playfully.  Or stroking the sleek
+neck of a horse, and talking to it as horses love to be talked to, or
+kneeling to comfort some crying child of the people, and wooing it back
+to happiness by being very happy herself....
+
+
+III
+
+Now by the ordinance of time and nature the old earl was quietly
+gathered to his forbears--to Gilles de Kyteler, who came over to
+Ireland with Strongbow; to Piers Kyteler, who could run against a horse
+for five miles; to Dame Alice Kyteler, whose name is still used to
+frighten little children; to Fulke, or the bastard Kyteler, who joined
+with Silken Thomas in rebellion; Hugh, who lost the family money in the
+South Sea Bubble; to another Pierce, who backed Boxer Donelly, the
+Irishman, against the English champion, Cooper, for a thousand
+pounds--and won!--to Hugh, who grew rare tulips, and to Patrick, of
+whom it was said he was the stupidest man in Ireland.  Some one has
+written a book about the family; possibly it's worth reading, probably
+not.
+
+And now of the family of the Earls of Mount Kyteler there was only one
+left, the Lady Margery Kyteler, and she was alone in the world.
+
+Except for the ordinary natural grief for the old earl, whom she loved
+and liked, she did n't mind being alone.  Mount Kyteler had now only
+seven servants, an ancient cook and two equally ancient maids, a
+gardener so ancient as to need an assistant, who was himself so verging
+on the ancient that it was a puzzle as to what assistance he could
+give.  There were a couple of lads in the stable, lads of fifty, a
+groom, and a coachman, the coachman assuming the livery of butler on
+great occasions, such as in Horse Show Week.  Ancient grumbling people
+they all were, who were united only in this, that they loved her.
+Among themselves there were always ancient grudges, present fights.
+And instead of her ruling them, they ruled her with a terrible tyranny.
+
+The old cook below-stairs was forever complaining of the great work to
+be done, and refusing to have any help given her.
+
+"Is it bringing in another you 'd be and me here child and woman for
+fifty years?  Twelve years old I was when they brought me into the
+pantry and set me to cleaning knives, and now it's on top of me you 'd
+be bringing some streel you 'd be getting out of a register's office, a
+woman does be following the tinkers to the Country Wicklow, mad with
+love.  Och, to think of the insult put on me this day!  _Wirra, is
+thrue_!"
+
+"Sure, it 's only to help you, Peggy."
+
+"And what help would I be needing, me that's the fine, supple woman, in
+the prime o' my years!  Ne'er a day over sixty I am, and thirty hard
+years' work in me still."
+
+"But you were complaining, Peggy."
+
+"Sure, 't was only to keep my mind active I was."
+
+The old gardener could be terrible, with his face like an apple and his
+bent back.  He watched her as he might watch a thieving boy.
+
+"Now, if it's a thing you 'd be wanting chrysanthemums, my lady, would
+n't it be the right and proper thing for you to be coming to me, that's
+the head gardener of this garden, and if it's a thing there 's
+chrysanthemums in it, you 'll get them, and if it's a thing there 's no
+chrysanthemums in it, you won't."
+
+"I thought I 'd save you trouble, Darby."
+
+"And what trouble would you be saving me, my Lady, by destroying the
+symmetry of the design?  All the work that 's on me, and ne'er a hand's
+turn do I get from the young fellow that's the assistant.  Devil the
+hand's turn he 's done in all the forty-three years he 's been here,
+barring playing the bagpipes in the greenhouse and talking about the
+good ould times.  I mind the time your grandfather was in it, my
+Lady--a real gentleman him.  He would n't put a hand on an apple, or a
+gooseberry itself, without asking the head gardener's permission."
+
+Also were the two ancient maids problems in their way.  They were
+forever sniffing at each other, and complaining of each other to
+Margery.
+
+"If your Ladyship would be so kind as to give Rose Ann a tip about her
+conduct, 't would be a mercy so.  For the queer way she does be acting
+with the postman is no credit to this house at all.  New ribbons in her
+cap, indeed, looking for love, when she ought to be making her peace
+with God and man."
+
+But Rose Ann had the same story.
+
+"If your Ladyship pleases, a wee word to Ellen would not be out of the
+way.  'T is the postman, your Ladyship, has been complaining bitterly.
+'Ma'am,' says he to me, 'would you be telling a secret?'  'If so be as
+I know it,' says I, 'I will.'  'Is that one,' says he, 'right in her
+head?'  'Is it Ellen you mean?' says I.  ''T is that same,' says he.
+''T is that has been puzzling myself, but why do you ask?' say I.  ''T
+is the dirty look she has in her eye,' says he, 'and the queer
+conversation is at her.  "'T is the world's wonder you never married,"
+she does be telling me, "and you the fine lad you are."'  Your Ladyship
+should speak to her.  You should so."
+
+"I will, Rose Ann."
+
+But worst of all were the quarrels between the coachman and the groom.
+The coachman was a fine, florid man, and the groom was a wizened little
+troll who had once been a jockey.  The coachman was always in decent
+black, the groom in corduroys.  They were forever arguing on
+everything, from politics to horses.  Once Lady Margery had come into
+the yard to see the groom stepping around like a bantam boxer, his
+hands up, his feet tapping the ground like a dancer's.
+
+"Put up your hands!" he was shouting.  "Put up your hands!"
+
+"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"
+
+"Come on if you 're fit!  Come on if you 're man enough!  I 'll give
+you a beating you 've been spoiling for for the last thirty years."
+
+"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"
+
+"I will not go 'way out o' that.  It's fight I want.  I 'm boiling mad
+for one clout at your ugly gob."
+
+"Will you whisht!"  The coachman had seen Lady Margery.
+
+"I will not whisht.  Put up your hands!  I 'll not stop till I 'm dug
+out of ye!"
+
+"Kelleher, Brady, what's this?"
+
+The groom dropped his fighting attitude and pulled off his cap.
+
+"'T is just a foolish wee argument we were having, m'lady.  I was
+telling this bloody old cod--begging your pardon, m'lady, for giving
+him his right name--that Lynchehaun the murderer was by rights a cousin
+to my mother's people, and he said that it was n't in either side of my
+family to produce a fine murdering man like the same Lynchehaun.  So I
+up and gives him a tip about himself and his drunken old mother...."
+
+"Kelleher!"
+
+"Not that I know anything about her, m'lady, but I just thought that if
+he had any pride, it would cut him to the quick!"
+
+
+IV
+
+Nobody in the world but herself, she thought often, could have kept
+them.  But if she sent them away, where would they go?  The old
+gardener--could he last away from the soil he had tended with the care
+of parents?
+
+And the maids would be lost in a modern world.  And for all that the
+two men in the stable fought, they loved each other in a strange way.
+She couldn't pension them off; and, also, they got their work done in a
+surprisingly efficient manner.
+
+And, besides, she could not see new servants in the old house.  The
+maids were as much part of the place as the portraits of dead Kytelers
+on the walls.  They had blended into a mellow composition.  They all
+loved her in their queer selfish way, depended on her for vitality.
+She could hardly go on visits any more, so much did they grumble.
+"Sure, it is n't to England you 'd be going, my lady, and the grand
+house you have of your own!"  And not only the servants but the old
+drowsing dog, Sheila, the little Scottie bitch, who was drawing on
+fourteen years old and nearly blind, and the foxhound puppies, who
+waited for her when she was n't there, and ancient Fenian, the old
+steeplechaser, who was near ending his days.  All these laid imploring
+hands on her.
+
+Her mother she had not known, the countess dying when Margery was not
+yet two; and the earl had never married again.  But the house had been
+a mother to her.  The deep drawing-room, the heavy formal dining-room,
+the little sitting-room so bright.  There was no place in the world so
+comfortable as the drawing-room of Mount Kyteler in the winter
+evenings, with the portraits blinking in the light of candles in their
+silver sticks and the glimmer of the sea-coal in the grate.  And her
+own room at night, on moonlight nights, whence she could see Dublin Bay
+shine silver and the dark trees bending in the breeze from Three Rock
+Mountain.
+
+Every tree she knew; every tree had for her a personality.  The copper
+beech was friendly and kindly, the rowan-trees aloof but kindly, the
+oaks majestic but clumsily kindly; the apple-trees were smiling.  All
+the flowers she knew, all the shrubs.  They had seen her stumble as a
+child of two, they had seen her rollick as a child of seven, they had
+seen her dream at ten, and grow ugly at twelve, and grow pretty in her
+late teens, and at twenty beautiful, and now beautiful and assured.
+
+In no other country than Ireland, in no other city than Dublin could
+such beauty and grace exist alone in an old house.  They would have
+fêted her, made merry with her, married her.  A young beauty in an
+ancient house with grizzled servants.  But in Ireland a great beauty
+has so many competitors for the songs of the poets, the passion of the
+young men.  There is the biting excitement of treason, politics charged
+with lightning.  There are the far places of the world calling to Irish
+adventurers.  There are careers calling for vitality and ambition.  And
+what young woman dare presume to bother poets when there are great
+purple mountains to enthrall them, and wooded glens and the crashing
+sea?  And winds like wine.  The crooning of great romantic ghosts.  And
+an Irish poet is not a pale man to be comforted by women, but a lithe,
+muscular man with a sword.
+
+Also, in Ireland is little marriage or giving in marriage, if we except
+the peasantry and the very poor.  The young men spread their wings to
+go abroad, and when they return it is usually with a foreign bride, so
+that there are convents innumerable in that country, also many mad
+women at large, as in politics.  Unless a girl is very rich she has
+little chance of a happy marriage.  A title may help her, curates and
+captains in the army having a belief that the daughters of earls will
+help them to preferment; also, it sounds well, they think--the Reverend
+Septimus and Lady Jones, Captain and Lady Plantagenet Murphy.  There
+are sadder things in Ireland than the weeping skies.
+
+But though the right of marriage may be often denied them, young Irish
+girls have always their inalienable right of dreams.  Soft winds and
+nodding flowers and sun going down on the western hills, and with the
+twilight comes always a love.  Out of the blue twilight and soft wind
+they weave a magical life of love that will be always young, of a world
+that will be ever kind, of little dark children and loyal friends, of
+the pageantry of foreign cities, of triumphs for their own beauty and
+the lover's ability.  The skies are always blue in their dreams, and
+tragedies there are none, nor any sordidness.  And they grow old so
+peacefully in their dreams, so gracefully, and death comes so gently,
+so kindly--the lover always by, always young, always loving....  Out of
+the blue twilight and soft wind they dream their dreams, and they never
+notice that the blue of the twilight has become a threatening black,
+and the soft wind has withdrawn in itself with the set sun, as a flower
+does, and all of a sudden it has grown cold, damp, and lonely and cold.
+
+The dream of Margery was around Mount Kyteler.  It seemed to her that
+the house, and the garden and the trees, and the old servants, and the
+drowsing dogs, and the ancient steeplechaser out to grass were all part
+of the French nursery, "_La Belle au Bois Dormant_," "The Beauty in the
+Sleeping Wood."  And one day the princely lover would come, breaking
+through the hedge of Irish stillness, and Mount Kyteler would bloom
+again.  The backs of the gardeners would straighten and the maids
+become young again.  And by some strange magical process the
+steeplechaser would again win races, and the old dog win ribbons, and
+children would stumble under the tall trees, as she had stumbled twenty
+years before.  All this would happen with the coming of the prince, all
+this she could see, but his features she could not plainly see.  Only
+she knew this, that his face would be shining with love and smiles.
+
+
+V
+
+So that when she met him she did not recognize him at first, nor for
+many days afterward.  On his face were puzzlement and a frown.  A
+clean-cut, red-headed man, he was standing in the road on a frosty
+November morning, when she was out walking a brace of foxhound puppies.
+The puppies seemed delighted at the sight of him, all but tearing the
+leash from her hand.
+
+"Could you tell me," he asked, "where Tallaght is?"  He pulled the ears
+of the foxhound puppies.
+
+"You 're in Tallaght," she said.
+
+He looked incredulously at the scattered houses.
+
+"Is this--"
+
+"Yes.  Is there any place in particular you 're looking for?"
+
+"No," he said, "just Tallaght."
+
+"Well, you have Tallaght."  She laughed a little at his rueful
+expression.  "You seem surprised."
+
+"I am," he laughed.  "For many years, when I was a child, I have been
+hearing about Tallaght, until it had assumed tremendous proportions for
+me, and now--"
+
+"Abroad?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Australia?"
+
+"No.  America."
+
+"What are you looking for?  The old homestead?"
+
+"No," he said; "I don't think there ever was an old homestead.  There
+might have been a little cabin somewhere, but it was n't here."  He
+laughed.  "I 'll tell you.  My father was an old Fenian, and he was at
+Tallaght when they gathered to descend on Dublin, but for some reason
+or other the battle was not fought, nor the enemy driven into the sea,
+nor anything.  And my father, with a lot of others, fled to America.
+But I had an impression of a mountain pass and camp fires and great
+guns."
+
+"It rained all night, did n't it?  Did your father say?"
+
+"No, he never mentioned the rain."
+
+She liked this man, she told herself directly.  The big, clean look of
+him, his gray eyes and red hair, his splendid teeth.  Also there was
+something about him so easy.  He was Irish; no mistaking that.  But
+pleasant, fine Irish.  It was not always you met them pleasant and
+sincere.  And this man was sincere.  This man was not inimical.  They
+would make a nice pair, she thought simply, he big and clear-eyed and
+red, herself slim and dark.
+
+"Could I bother you again?" he asked.  "How do I get to the railway
+station?"
+
+"I 'm going that way, if you care to come."
+
+There was a nice chivalry about him; she felt that as they walked
+together.  Was that American? she wondered.
+
+"May I ask you something?  Are most Americans like you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "of course."
+
+She was puzzled.  She had an impression that all Americans were called
+"Silas" and twanged, "I guess."  Also, they chewed gum.  There was
+something wrong.
+
+"You are n't called Silas, are you?"
+
+"No; Richard.  Did you think all Americans were called Silas?"
+
+"Something like that," she admitted.  And they looked at each other and
+laughed.  She had a joyous feeling that the maids at home would
+disapprove of this strongly.  And that the old gardeners would tremble
+with rage.  But the dogs approved.
+
+"What sort of time are you having in Ireland?"
+
+"Not so good," he admitted.  "I 've been here a week, and the only
+friends I 've made are cab-drivers.  Also, I have a bowing acquaintance
+with a head waiter."
+
+"Cab-drivers are good fun," she ruminated.
+
+They were at the station now.
+
+"Look here," she said suddenly as she was leaving: "if you are having a
+rotten time like that in Dublin, and know nobody, it must be lonely!  I
+wonder--"  She looked at him fearlessly.  "Look here: if you 'd care
+to, come out and see me at Mount Kyteler--my name 's Kyteler.  There
+are dogs and horses and an old house you might like to see."
+
+"May I?  Thanks.  My name's O'Conor.  I 'll come, then, Miss Kyteler."
+
+"Lady Margery Kyteler."
+
+"Do I call you all that?  Lady Margery Kyteler?"
+
+"No.  Just Lady Margery."
+
+"Lady Margery!  That's nice."
+
+When he came, he came with a great armful of flowers, which Margery
+received with a smile and courtesy, and turned over to Rose Ann.  He
+seemed scrubbed, so glistening was he.  How like an old friend he was,
+with his firm handshake and  laughing eyes.
+
+"Now," he said, "I 'd like the worst over."
+
+"What is the worst?"
+
+"Oh, meeting people.  Your relatives.  The Lady This and the Lady That,
+and the countess, and the duke.  Above all, the duke."
+
+"There are none," she said.  "I live here by myself."
+
+"All by yourself, in this big house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Might I ask, are you married?"
+
+"No-o-o," she pondered.  "Um, no."
+
+He looked at her incredulously.  He had never in his life seen any one
+so beautiful, he thought.  The small face, the soft and sweet and
+smiling dark eyes, the hair like a perfumed dark cap on a head whose
+sweet shape he could imagine.  And the supple figure in the frock that
+was close in the bosom and belled like a dancer's from the waist down.
+
+"Well, that beats--" he murmured.
+
+"Beats hell, doesn't it?"  She finished for him.
+
+"These old pictures, some of them are good."  She smiled.  "That's
+Gilles de Kyteler--not the one who came with Strongbow but a later one.
+And that's Fulke Kyteler, who rebelled with Silken Thomas, and tried to
+burn the Archbishop of Cashel in his own cathedral.  They were very
+disappointed when they found the archbishop had slipped out.  And
+that--" she pointed to a polished oval of black stone, framed in
+antique silver--"is Dame Alice Kyteler's magical mirror.  She was the
+greatest of the Irish witches."
+
+She gave him tea and listened to him talk of America and of his work
+there.  He was some sort of engineer, building bridges.  She got an
+impression of him standing on an artifice of some kind, with plans in
+his hand, directing a whole crowd of workmen.  He had been in Brazil
+and in China.
+
+"You must be a good engineer," she said in her direct way.
+
+"I 'm supposed to be a very good engineer," he laughed.
+
+"Do you make a great deal of money?"
+
+"A good deal.  Not a great deal."
+
+"I 'm glad," she said.  He looked at her in surprise.  She was dusting
+her fingers daintily, but her eyes smiled.  She was really glad.  And
+he said to himself, "My soul! we 're friends."
+
+She took him into the garden, and he laughed.
+
+"And I brought you flowers."  There was a little shade of
+disappointment in his laugh.
+
+"Indeed and indeed--" she looked him in the eyes and lied
+sweetly--"'Twas I needed them, for it's the devil and all for me to get
+any flowers out of my own garden.  My two old gardeners are that mean!
+Darby 'd begrudge me a daisy for fear it 'd leave an unsightly gap in
+the grass.  There he is, watching me for fear I 'll pull a leaf.
+Darby, this is Mr. O'Conor, and I 'm showing him the garden."
+
+"If he 'd come fifteen years ago, your Ladyship, or even ten years ago,
+he 'd have seen the like would have made his heart glad.  But in the
+latter years, with the bad weather that's in it, now too much rain and
+now not enough rain at all, and the wind that nothing is a shelter
+against, and the soil that's growing poor, for all the time that's
+spent on it, till it's hard to rear anything, even a head o' cabbage
+itself--m'lady, will you for God's sake leave off pulling at that
+hedge?"
+
+She took him to see old Fenian in the paddock, and she liked the way he
+pulled the jumper's ears, ran his firm hand down the fetlocks.
+
+"Was he a great horse?"
+
+"Nearly the greatest of his day," she answered.  "He never won a Grand
+National, but was third twice and second once.  He had a great heart.
+No horse tried harder.  The people loved him....  Kelleher, this is Mr.
+O'Conor, from America."
+
+"From America, is it, your Ladyship?  Oh, sure, they 've fine horses
+over there.  But they 've got to come to us for the hunters.  Begging
+your Ladyship's pardon, but was your Honor ever in Kansas City?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"D' your Honor ever meet a man named Hannigan out there?  Red Hannigan,
+they called him, a holy terror for bloody murder, the same man was."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"He was n't as red as your Honor--begging your pardon--but sandy like.
+And he carried his head on one side on account of a belt in the gob he
+got in a wee argument out at the Lamb Doyle's."
+
+"He must have gone when I got there."
+
+"He must have, your Honor, or you 'd have met him.  A genius for
+horses, the same Red.  'T was he cured Colonel Nolan's charger of
+biting.  'Roast a leg of lamb,' he told them, 'and take it out of the
+oven mad hot, and when he offers to bite,' says he, let him bite into
+that.  By God! he 'll never bite again.'  And he never did."
+
+Came at last the time for leaving.
+
+"I wonder," he ventured, "I wonder if I could get you to come in and
+have dinner and go to the theater.  I don't know what kind of a theater
+it is, but would you?"
+
+How like a flower she herself was, he thought--the white stalk of her
+dress, the sweet face, the dark head!  She frowned.  His heart sank.
+
+"I don't see how I could," she said.  "I 've got to get back here.  I
+usually take the dinners and theaters in a quarterly debauch of one
+week.  No, I don't see how ..."
+
+His heart sank a little farther.  Was this definitely good-by?
+
+"No, but I 'll tell you what you could do, if you 'd care to.  Come out
+on Saturday and take me to the Leopardstown races.  I 'm sick of going
+alone."
+
+His heart rose.
+
+"And come back and have dinner with me instead."
+
+His heart sang.
+
+Came now a day of wonder.  Day of Leopardstown, frosty morning and road
+glistening like pewter, and the grass crackling underfoot, stiff with
+hoar.  The little race-course at the foot of the mountains.  Crowds
+stamping in the friendly cold.  The horses jibbing, curving under their
+jockeys at the starting-wire.  Flash of jockeys' colors, gold and
+green, red and white, all sorts of blue--sky, sea, St. Patrick's.  The
+drop of the flag.  The flying wedge of stretching mounts and huddled
+riders.  Thunder of hoofs coming to jumps, hurdling, lightning spring
+and over, larruping canter toward the next, smack of crop, over, by
+Heaven!  The hedge now and the five-barred gate, and the stretch toward
+the judges' stand.  A mad cheering and the clanging of a great bell.
+The favorite 's won!
+
+A little hush, a rush to the ring to see the horses for the next race.
+She wore a great frieze coat, like a man's, and a riding-hat, like a
+man's too.  At a little distance she seemed like a boy in clothes too
+big for him, and as one came nearer, one noticed, between the collar
+and the brim of the hat, the sweet narrow neck and the hair gathered up
+like some very little girl's.  There was something heart-pulling in it,
+like a child's curled fingers.  And then she turned, and her face
+showed, pointed like a cub fox's.  The cheeks flushed with the cold,
+the lips with a merry smile, her eyes with a deeper smile--there were
+so many there who knew her, and to whom O'Conor was presented,
+including an Irish duchess, with a voice like a saw, who rasped; "H' a'
+yo?" and then wailed, "My God!  D' yo' ever see such a God-forsaken
+bunch o' mokes in all your life?"  And a tall, thin baronet who asked
+him was he one of the O'Conors of Baltimore, to which he replied, no,
+that he was one of the O'Conors of Forty-seventh Street and Seventh
+Avenue.  "Ah, yes!  Ah, yes!"  There was a French cavalry officer
+buying horses in Ireland, a dark, thin man with a heavy mustache, who
+looked more like a New York plain-clothes policeman than a hero of
+Algiers.  Also, there was Mr. Kelly.
+
+Margery had noticed a great rangy gelding in the ring.  He looked to
+have the power of a steam-engine.
+
+"See?"
+
+O'Conor nodded.
+
+"Flying Fish."
+
+A large red-faced man with a stout ash plant was passing.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kelly!"
+
+"Ah, sure, Lady Margery!"
+
+"Do you know anything of Flying Fish?"  She lowered her voice.  "Is he
+a good horse?"
+
+"He is.  And he is n't."
+
+"Might he win this race?"
+
+"He might.  And he might n't."
+
+"You 're not telling me much."
+
+"I am," he looked wise, "and I am n't," he looked wiser.
+
+"Good enough," she said.  "Come," she told O'Conor.
+
+Bookies crying raucously in the little ring.  Signaling of touts.
+Milling of people.
+
+"I 'll lay two to one the field," a booky was shouting.  His eyes were
+all but out of his cheeks.  His shoulders hunched with effort.  His
+voice exploded as though thrown against a wall, and he atomized a fine
+spray before him.  "I 'll lay three to one bar one; I'll lay four to
+one bar two.  I'll lay even money Munster Pride.  Even money Irish
+Dragoon.  Four to one Little Dorrit.  Seven to two Carnation.  Here,
+four to one Carnation.  Eight to one Murderer's Pet.  Twelve to one
+Irish Gentility.  I 'll lay twenty to one--twenty to one Thunderbolt.
+Twenty-five to one Flying Fish--"
+
+"How much, Joe Jack?"
+
+"Is it you, Lady Margery?  God love you.  I'll lay you thirty to one
+Flying Fish.  How much will you take?"
+
+"Ten pounds' worth."
+
+"Three hundred and ten pounds Flying Fish, Lady Margery Kyteler.  I
+hope you win, m'lady.  I do so there I 'll lay two to one the field.  I
+'ll lay three to one bar one.  I 'll lay four to one bar two--"
+
+Dropping of flag and clatter of bell.  There they were in the distance,
+flying down the regulation.  They rise to the ditch, three abreast.
+Canter again--the water jump.  The lump becomes a line.  And who's
+ahead?  Can you see?  Carnation!  Ah, my jewel Carnation!  And now the
+bank.  There's a horse down.  Thunderbolt!  Ah, be damned to the same
+Thunderbolt!  Is that the gray ahead?  It is so!  Is it Flying Fish is
+in it?  Flying Fish it is, and he running like a hare!  'T is win in a
+canter he will.  They 're coming to the hedge.  Ah! what is it, Mister?
+Flying Fish it is, and he stopping dead.  A dead stop he 's made, and
+the jockey pasting the ribs out of him.  Ah, he 's on now, but in the
+heel of the hunt he is!  Carnation wins.  Carnation--ah, my sweet wee
+lady!
+
+They passed the post, Flying Fish bringing up the rear with a
+supercilious arrogance.
+
+"Fish!"  Margery wrinkled her nose in disgust.  "Fish was good."
+
+And "There goes my new hat!" she wailed.  And who should pass by but
+Mr. Kelly.  Out of his red face peered an inquisitive gray eye.
+
+"You didn't?" he said.
+
+"I did."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Ten pounds."
+
+"Ah, well," he decided cruelly; "It'll teach you."  And he passed on.
+
+"Well, the devil scald you!" she called after him, "and your thick
+ignorance!"
+
+Last race and the end of the day.  He swung her lightly to the
+side-car.  Firm elbows, rounded arms, and how light she was, elastic!
+A woman in a shawl and a battered sailor-hat stood with folded arms and
+began a street ballad:
+
+  "Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Ireland!
+  Bold Robert Emmet, he died with a smile!
+  Farewell, my company-ions both loyal and loving!
+  A hero I 'll die for the Emerald Isle."
+
+
+Margery was grinning above the press of the people, O'Conor turned and
+dug his hand in his pocket.  Threw the woman a large silver coin.
+
+"Well, may God keep and preserve you, my fine noble red-headed man!
+And the sweet lady beside you--may God bless her!  And may you live
+comfortable and die happy, the both of you, and leave behind you a
+dozen of the finest children."
+
+"Drive on!  Drive on!" O'Conor implored.
+
+"Is it over the heads of the decent people you 'd have me drive, then?"
+asked the jarvey, in abrupt horror.
+
+"And of the twelve may six of them be like yourself, fine and
+red-headed, and six like herself, sweet and dark.  Ah, 't is the fine
+man you have, my sweet mistress!"
+
+O'Conor saw the scarlet of her face against the black hair.  Eh, Lord,
+how beautiful she was!
+
+
+VI
+
+The click of the wicket-gate and he was gone, and down the frosty road
+his firm step was echoing.  She stood at the long drawing-room window
+and listened.  Eh, what a moon!  And to-night the hare would be out on
+Three Rock Mountain, and the red fox pad toward the chicken-coops--the
+rogue of the world!  And on the mountain lakes southward there would be
+a lid of mist hovering, blue mist and dark mountains and the white moon!
+
+And under the moon her own garden, her own house lay so quietly
+sleeping.  Crisp lawn and the graveled paths and the high wall and the
+greenhouses glistening, and the yew-trees against the wall.  And the
+bigger trees of the garden, the oak and ash, and the rowan-trees--the
+mountain-ash, they called it in England--all the trees that were silent
+now, even the wind being still.  The low dining-room that spread out at
+right angles, and was thatched like an old-time cottage--how sweet it
+seemed from here!  And the stables, where the horses were in their
+stalls, and the coachman and groom slept.  The little lodge where the
+gardeners were, a huddle of ivy.  Oh, the sweet domain!
+
+It seemed to her, when the old place and the servants slept, and the
+dogs were curled up sleeping, and the horses in their stalls, that she
+somehow was the guardian and protector of all this.  The old servants
+were not afraid because a Kyteler still lived, and they knew they would
+be cared for, their whimsies understood.  There being no strong man to
+stand against the encroachments of the world, what was better than her
+own sweet virginity?  She could conceive of nothing harming the place
+or people when she was there.  Even the spirits of the hills would pass
+it by gently; the dark Irish things that frighten folk in their sleep,
+the rumble of the death-coach, the wailing banshee, the thud of the
+Pooka's terrible hooves--none of them had power while she was there.
+
+Would she always protect it--or would there be some one else? she
+mused.  A big man.  She turned from the window and went toward the
+fire.  The face she had seen all day in reality was with her now in
+vision of the fire--the face with the strong jaw, the gray eyes,
+bronzed head, and red curls.  How every one had looked at him, she
+remembered proudly, at the race-course to-day!  How fine he was!  How
+strong, too!  She had been a feather to him when he swung her up on the
+car.  And when his hands had caught her elbows and her feet left the
+ground, her heart jumped, fluttered....
+
+And how nice he was!  When the old rip of a battered singer had wished
+them a multitude of children, he had blushed like a girl.
+
+And when he had lifted her from the car, he had held her for the
+fraction of a second in the air.  He had thought she did n't notice
+it--and she had been afraid he would hear her heart beating, so loudly
+did it hammer in her breast.  When she had turned him over to Rose Ann,
+to take to her father's old room and turned and gone into her own, she
+had closed her door and leaned against it, and said to herself,
+"Margery, this man 's in love with you!" and then, in a lower, hushed
+tone, "And, Margery, you 're in love with him!"
+
+And all by herself she had blushed terribly and felt in a wild panic.
+"He will see it," she said; "he will know."  But then she said, "No, he
+will not; I won't let him."  And a song had come into her heart.  A
+great pride and wonder filled her.  She felt she should be dressed in
+soft scarlet robes, in some symbolic vestment of wonder and joy.  But
+she came down to dinner in a demure white frock, her hair done very
+demurely, her eyes demure.  And all the time her heart was bubbling
+with sweet, low laughter, and saying, "Do you know, Margery, this man
+'s in love with you, and he does n't know you know it.  And you 're in
+love with him, and he does n't know that either.  And we won't tell
+him, Margery, will we?  We 'll let him find out for himself."
+
+All through dinner and after, she got him to talk of where he had
+been--Brazil and China--and of New York, where he was born and which he
+loved.  She watched him over the sullen saffron candlelight, and she
+thought, "He 's got a noble head," and again irrelevently, "You could
+n't muss that hair of his, no matter how much you tried.  Those short
+red curls would spring back.  I 'd like to try."  And again she
+wondered, "Will he try to kiss me when he says good night?  And what
+shall I do?  Shall I kiss him back, or give him a piece of my mind?
+And if I give him a piece of my mind he may never come again.  And if I
+kiss him he 'll think very little of me.  It's awfully hard."  And
+again, "Ah, he won't try," she said.  "He would n't in my own house.
+And, besides, he 's really in love.  I know it."
+
+And he had only shaken hands with her, and said he was going soon, and
+might he come to see her before he went?  And her heart sank, and she
+said, yes, she 'd be very sorry if he did n't.  And he said, When?  And
+she pondered over a possible engagement that did n't matter at all, and
+said, Tuesday, then, and her heart murmured disconsolately.  Two long
+days.
+
+Through dinner and after she thought she had only been thinking of his
+strong, eager face, but now he was gone, all he had said she
+remembered.  And she thought of hot China, and the sun-baked South, and
+the yellow rivers.  And of Brazil with all its forests, and the
+speckled snakes, and the whistling monkeys, and the egrets standing by
+the fountains, and the little armadillo lumbering across the roads.
+And of New York, the vital city, with its houses challenging the
+thunder of summer skies, its explosion of light when evening came, its
+hurrying myriads, keen-eyed, alert.  Against all these backgrounds she
+could see his clean-cut, gray-eyed face, and she could see herself
+small and slight, looking up at him in wonder and pride.
+
+"I could go with him anywhere," she whispered.
+
+And then something seemed to call: "Margery!"
+
+She looked up.  There was nothing there, but the dimmed loved room
+obtruded itself upon her, and through the moonlit window she could see
+the antique trees, and the silver glint to the greenhouses, and in a
+clairvoyant instant she could see the old men sleeping after the day's
+work, and the ancient maids, and Fenian in his paddock, and poor
+Sheila, and the foxhounds.  She knew what called.
+
+"Margery!"
+
+"Yes, dears."
+
+"Oh, Lady Margery!"
+
+"Hush, now.  It's all right."
+
+She had thought that to-night she would sleep as a child sleeps, and
+try to recapture the magic day in dreams.  And be so happy.  But the
+voice of the trees, and the murmur of the old house, and the pleading
+eyes of dog and horse, and the wailing tyranny of the sleeping aging
+folk shocked her into the knowledge that there was a sterner thing than
+dreaming before her.  To-night she would not sleep.
+
+"Margery!  Lady Margery!"
+
+"Yes.  Yes."
+
+"You couldn't, little mistress, you couldn't.'
+
+"Hush, hearts, hush.  I will not go away."
+
+
+VII
+
+He was very handsome, very erect, very noble there, standing by the old
+fireplace.  He was not merry to-night, so he was going to ask her to
+marry him, she knew.  And in the black and white of evening things,
+bronzed face and curling hair, he looked the equal of any old Kyteler
+on the wall.  And he had more than they had, she felt--abounding
+energy.  She was very pretty herself to-night, too, she knew, and
+stately a little.
+
+He was hurting, hurting her badly, for he was speaking now of South
+Africa, where he was going.  And he was carefully telling her how
+wonderful he had heard that country was: the mass of Table Mountain and
+the rolling hills, the great acres of grapes, the miles of veldt with
+the white Boer farmhouses, the sun forever shining, hunting such as she
+had never dreamed of, great, majestic storms.
+
+"You 'd like it; you 'd like it ever so much."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she lied.  "Ireland is a lot to me."
+
+He was telling her clumsily, shamefacedly of another thing--of a lucky
+chance he had had in Brazil many years ago, a chance he had taken
+laughingly, and that had made him indecently rich, and he still a very
+young man.  She understood.
+
+She moved away, and began hunting for a piece of music, so that her
+back was to him.
+
+"Did you ever think," she said, "of settling down in Ireland?  You 're
+Irish, you know.
+
+"And it's not a bad place," she went on before he answered.  "It's a
+sort of sportsman's paradise.  Fishing and hunting and race-courses.
+And sailing.  And if you get tired you can run over to London, or
+Paris, or Madrid.
+
+"Oh, damn!" she said, "I can't find that thing at all!"  She was
+trembling from head to heel.  "Why don't you marry some nice Irish girl
+and settle down?"
+
+"Oh, I could n't settle down in Ireland."
+
+"No?"
+
+"There 's my work to do."
+
+"But you just said you were rich."
+
+"That's no excuse for not working."
+
+"I thought--I don't know."
+
+"No, I 'd be a very poor sort," he laughed, "if I stopped work because
+I was rich.  I 'd have no self-respect--"
+
+"No?" she said dully.  The trembling had passed now.  She was just
+numb, numb and dead.
+
+"But as to marrying an Irish girl, Lady Margery--Margery--"
+
+She stood up and turned about.  She was smiling quizzically.
+
+"You 're not proposing to marry me, are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't.  Don't, O'Conor," she said.  "Please don't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because of this--" she looked at him squarely--"I like you.  I like
+you immensely.  To me you 're everything a man should be, but just--I
+don't seem to see you that way.  I don't love--do you see?  And I don't
+think I ever could.  No.  I never could."
+
+"Well, that's straight.  Thanks."
+
+"Are we friends still?"
+
+"Of course, but--"  He smiled.  "Do you mind if I go?"
+
+"I 'll see you out myself.
+
+"O'Conor," she half whispered in the hall, "I'm an awful son of a gun.
+I should love you--you 're so fine, so decent, so--so everything--but I
+don't.  I 'm sure I could never love any one.  I 'm a very selfish
+woman, I sometimes think.  It wouldn't have been worth while marrying
+me."
+
+"You're not selfish, and you're very sweet, Margery."
+
+"No, no!  Shall I see you again?"
+
+"I 'm afraid not.  To-morrow I go to London, and from there to Africa."
+
+"O'Conor, will you do something for me because we are friends?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you send me pictures of South Africa, and an occasional one of
+you, because we are friends?"
+
+"Yes, Margery."
+
+"And, O'Conor, if twenty years from now you want to settle down, come
+to me and let me find you a nice girl to marry--oh! the nicest girl in
+the world--or if you are sick or crippled, come."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Promise me."
+
+"All right, Margery.  I will."  He put out his hand.
+
+"O'Conor," she said.  Again she was trembling, but her voice--thank
+God!--her voice was all right.  "I know you 're disappointed,
+and--O'Conor, would it help if you kissed me?"
+
+"No," he said, "I 'm afraid it would hurt more.  So I won't."
+
+"I suppose it would hurt more."  She stepped forward and put out her
+hand.  "I am always your friend, O'Conor, your assured friend.  And
+good-by now, O'Conor, and God bless you wherever you go!"
+
+"And you too, Margery."
+
+"You 'll come back, O'Conor, if you 're sick or hurt, or want to settle
+down, and talk to me about it--your friend, O'Conor, your little Irish
+friend.  You won't forget?"
+
+"I 'll never forget."
+
+He walked down the path under the cloud-touched moon.  Would he look
+back?  No, he would n't.  He did n't.  Oh, there went a man!
+
+
+VIII
+
+She heard the wicket-gate close, and in her heart she knew that she
+would never again see him.  No gray eyes any more, nor curly hair.  Her
+face had become now a white and quivering mask.  She snatched a cloak
+up and, wrapping it round her, she went blindly into the garden.
+
+She began to shake with great silent sobs.  Her face was wet now, and
+she could n't see.  She sank at the roots of the mountain-ash.
+
+"Rowan-tree, rowan-tree!" she cried, "I shall never see him any more!"
+
+And as she sobbed, a little breeze came from the Three Rock Mountain,
+and all the trees in the garden murmured gently.  The great ash unbent,
+the elm swayed, and the little apple-trees nodded with compassion.  All
+the shrubs in the garden rustled.
+
+_Hush--hush!  Hush--hush!  Hush--hush!_
+
+"Oh, rowan-tree! rowan-tree!"
+
+_Hush--hush!  Hush--hush!_
+
+The moon came gently from behind a great saffron-edged cloud and seemed
+to bend toward her.  Its rays poured sweetly toward the dark head.  A
+rabbit had come somehow into the garden and sat up near her, its ears
+lop, its pink nose twitching.
+
+_See--see!  See--see!  See--see!_  The trees were like kindly muses.
+The sobbing ceased as she watched, as a child's sobbing might.
+
+It scampered off now, for in the kennel the foxhound puppies had
+wakened--her step or some cry of hers, maybe--and were snuffling and
+whining to get at her.  And from the stables came the rap-rap of
+Fenian's hoofs, uneasy in his stall.
+
+"I must go in," she said.
+
+Her hand patted the bark of the rowan-tree, and she turned to go into
+the old house that had been there so many centuries and was there
+still, sheltering the complement of aging, tyrannous servants in their
+peaceful sleep, and was beckoning her, she felt, beckoning her to its
+wide lap....
+
+
+
+
+REYNARDINE
+
+I
+
+The big gray hunter caracoled under him, and with a vicious twitch of
+curb and snaffle Morgan brought him to stand.  He smacked the croup and
+touched the gelding's fore thigh with the toe of his riding boot until
+the great hunter stood like a horse in an illustration.  Then Morgan
+turned around.
+
+About him was the cold gray of an Irish morning in November.  Woolly,
+dull, frost on the roads and a touch of easting to the wind--a perfect
+day for hunting.  Forward of him a hundred and fifty yards the hounds
+were circling around the copse, while the leaders were inside, raising
+the red fox.  Through the gray branches of the wood, gaunt as witches'
+arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle
+back of a screen.  And here and there were knots of the hunt, talking
+to one another as neighbors talk.  There were the women's fluting
+voices; there was the men's deep laughter.  All were friendly, toward
+one another, toward the world, toward the red fox himself, friendly
+toward every one except Morgan.  Well, to blazes with them, Morgan
+swore to himself.  What the blazes did he care about them--a crowd of
+country squires and young army men, of stray farmers, and an occasional
+doctor or parson.  What did they amount to, anyway? he 'd like to know.
+
+And yet, he had thought they would be different.  It had all been
+twenty years ago, and he 'd been away all that time, and he 'd been
+only two days back.  But they 'd never forgotten.  What haters they
+were, these Irish!  What implacable enemies!  What brought him back,
+anyhow?  He could have been happy in America.  Or hunting in England.
+What he 'd come back for was the red Irish fox.
+
+"Steady, blast you!" he warned the big hunter.
+
+"There he goes!" some woman cried, and "No, Janet, no!" a friend
+laughed.  Janet!  That would be Janet Conyers.  And Janet Conyers must
+be forty now, and here she was still riding to hounds.  Yes, he
+recognized a full dozen of them.  Good Lord!  Did people live as long
+as that?  There was old Sir John Burroughs, spare as a lance, and old
+McGinty, who owned the Mill Farm.  Yes, and the Master of Munsterbeg
+was there, red-faced, hale, all of sixty.  And that Grecian
+profile--was n't that Di Connors, who was now Baroness Rothlin?  And
+the big gaunt man with the hook nose, was n't that Ian More Campbell of
+the Antrim glens?  Poet and soldier and horseman.  Morgan felt a tremor
+of fear before the great Ulster Scot.
+
+There was the yelp of a foxhound and a roar of anger.  The thundering
+master of the hounds was turning on an inoffensive stranger.
+
+"What the--what the--what the blazes do you mean, sir, riding over
+hounds in that manner?  What hunt do you belong to, anyhow?"
+
+"I don't belong to any hunt."
+
+"Well, what the--what did you come out here for, anyhow?"
+
+"My medical man told me I needed fresh air and exercise, and I
+thought--"
+
+"You thought!  You thought!  Why in blazes don't you buy a bellows and
+stick it up your nose?  You 'd get all the fresh air and exercise you
+want, but--"
+
+There was a roar of laughter from the field, and above it rose Morgan's
+deep basso, like the bourdon note of an organ.  But the instant the
+field noted his laughter, their laughter died.
+
+Morgan smothered a curse and moved fifty yards down where he could get
+a flying start away from the rush of hunting.  How they hated him,
+resented him, he felt, and yet he had killed no man, stolen no money,
+betrayed no woman.  They hated him as much as they had loved and
+admired his wife Reynardine.  Queer!  Queer!  He was the one they
+should love and she was the one they should have felt aloof toward.
+For he was the steeplechaser, the horseman, the hunter of foxes, and
+she was of a family whose tradition it was never to hunt or harry a
+fox, but to protect and aid it.  You would have thought it would be the
+other way around; that they would have liked him and been cool or
+indifferent toward Reynardine, these hunting women, these sporting men.
+But no!
+
+And that was twenty years ago, and they hated still.  Twenty years!
+War and famine and pestilence had raged through the world.  But they
+remained the same, these Irish gentlefolk.  Yes, it was all of twenty
+years, nearly to a day, since he had left for foreign parts, and
+Reynardine, his wife, had died.
+
+
+II
+
+"Cop forard away!" went the ringing formula of the huntsmen.  "Cop
+forard away!"  A long wail on the horn.  The covert had been drawn
+blank.
+
+Two sharp notes and a halloing.  "Yo ho, Tinker!  Yo ho!  Tim!  Forard,
+hounds, forard!"  And the pack of hounds began to move like a slow wave
+toward the distant woodland.  The hunt followed at a slow trot....
+
+Her name had been Petronilla, but through the country-side she was
+known as Reynardine, partly because of the Irish folk-song she could
+sing so well, with its haunting minors, its suggestion of superhuman
+music.  He could see her slight form still, spiritual, virginal in the
+Irish twilight.  He could hear her pulsating contralto voice:
+
+  "If by chance you look for me
+    Perhaps you 'll not me find,
+  For I 'll be in my castle--
+    Enquire for Reynardine."
+
+
+No, he would n't look for her, though he knew where she was.  She was
+in her castle, for sure!  Her deep and narrow castle in the ancient,
+disused Cistercian monastery where the Fitzpauls buried their dead.
+Tier on tier the old Norman-Irish family lay, with their strange names,
+Fulke and Gilles, Milo, Tortulf, Bertran.  There they lay with their
+carved effigies, dogs at their feet and swords at their side--old
+Crusaders.  There they lay, ancient harriers of the Irish clans, Arnold
+and Eudo.  There they lay, old peers of the Irish parliament, Robert,
+Gerald and Byssak.  There lay the newer landlords, Jenico and Maurice.
+There they lay, dead as their tradition.  There they lay, and be damned
+to them, Morgan thought!  All there was left of them now was one
+daughter, his and Reynardine's, whom he had seen only once, in
+swaddling-clothes, and whom, he trusted, he would never see again.
+
+"If by chance you look for me," her song had gone.  "Look for you,"
+Morgan sneered.  "I 'll be in my castle!"  "Well, you can stay there,
+wife!" he sneered.
+
+He 'd never look for her, even though he could see the monastery where
+she slept from where he sat on his horse's back....
+
+They had come to a woodland upwind and the hunt had slowed down to a
+walk.  The hounds were being urged in by the pink-coated huntsman.  He
+heard the short note of the huntsman to wake the fox, saw the pack pour
+in like a stream....
+
+
+III
+
+He had come out this morning, his second morning in the country, to
+hunt, to kill the fox, to enjoy the sport he loved with what had become
+a mania.  And now his day was being spoiled by old black memories.
+Perhaps it was the Abbey where Reynardine slept that nudged him with
+ghostly concentration, perhaps it was the field that ignored him as
+though he did not exist, perhaps it was the proximity of the fox
+itself--he had n't seen or hunted an Irish fox for twenty years.  But
+he was troubled as a man is troubled by imminent disaster.  He wished
+they 'd get on.
+
+"Wind him, boys.  Wind him.  Yooi, get him out.  Joyous!  Tinker!
+Marvan!  Leu in!"
+
+But there was naught but the crash of whins, and the whirring of
+pheasants as they rose.  There rose the huntsman's clear call:
+
+"Yo hote back.  Yooi over try back!"  And the blast of the horn as he
+turned to draw the woodland again.
+
+Twenty years ago!  Could it have been only twenty years ago that he had
+met and married and parted from Reynardine?  It was so misty, so vague,
+he had come to think of it as centuries before.  He had come north from
+Dublin, a boy of twenty-two, just out of Trinity, son of old Jasper
+Morgan who had made a half-dozen fortunes in remounts for the South
+African War, grandson of Ed Morgan who had been ostler and stableman
+and later livery-keeper at Kingstown.  And because he rode hard and
+well he was admitted everywhere.  There is no democracy as open as that
+of the Ulster clans.  A baron from William the Conqueror's invasion, or
+an Irish chieftain whose ancestors were Druidists yields precedence to
+any man who can do a thing better than he....  At a hunt ball young
+Morgan met Petronilla Fitzpaul, who was known through the country as
+Reynardine.
+
+She was just at the momentous instant when a girl turns woman, that
+strange first of three tides in a woman's life.  And the first tide
+breathlessly waited, curled, flowed in as he came.  Very slight, very
+dark-haired, very deep-eyed, she was spared the ancestral Norman
+traits.  She had n't the eagle beak of her brothers, or their intent
+scowling brows.  She was a little thing of kindliness and deep
+emotions.  One felt it in the face, somehow like a pansy, one felt it
+in her eyes, one felt it in her hands....
+
+She liked him.  He was new to her.  She liked his dash.  She liked, as
+gentlewomen will, the faint flavor of vulgarity in him.  It was new to
+her.  She liked the dash of his clothes.  His assurance overcame her.
+She liked him.  And she was at the mystic tide of her life.  She
+thought she loved him.
+
+And what intrigued Morgan was the spirit within.  Some faint conception
+of her beauty and mystery penetrated to him.  No man is interested in a
+woman bodily, no matter how much he thinks he is.  He is interested in
+cosmic womanhood, or in the one spiritual entity that actuates the
+body.  And before Morgan was a thread of flame that might lead him now
+down a formal garden, rhythmic with the murmur of bees, now through a
+woodland where the thrush sang in the branches, now through a Roman
+crypt, mysterious and sanctified.  He was like a barbarian who has
+found a great jewel, topaz or opal or sapphire, the light of which
+enthralls him, but of whose value and use he is ignorant....
+
+Her brothers and her father were not inclined to view a marriage
+between them with favor.  It was not because of his lack of lineage,
+but because the points of view were so different.  They saw a gulf.
+But Reynardine dissuaded them.
+
+"Brothers dear and my father, cannot I, cannot we all--" she put her
+hands out toward them--"make him see our way, take our things to his
+heart?"
+
+They were all great hulking men, her father and her brothers, Ulick,
+Garrett, Gilchrist, Kevin, and she was the only woman of them--her
+mother had died so long ago!--and she was so little, so pleading!  They
+were as wax in her hands.
+
+"You know, dears--" she hung her head--"I love this man."
+
+"Do what your heart says, Reynardine," they gave her the precept they
+obeyed themselves with such success and chivalry.  And they frowned the
+family frown.  "If she can do so much with us, what can't she do with
+him!" they reasoned in their simple way.  Alas! poor gentlemen!
+
+There was an immensity of pride in Morgan's heart, apart from pride in
+his young wife, to be allied to a family such as the Fitzpauls.  Twice
+they had refused duchies.  They were so old they went back into the
+mists of Norman tradition.  They had the quaint customs of their sort,
+and strange superstitions, such as all Irish families
+have--superstitions being but ancient mystic conceptions of nature, and
+customs observed so often through the centuries that their shadows
+became facts.
+
+But of all quaint customs, their friendship to the fox was strangest of
+all.  Their crest was a fox courant, and over no square foot of their
+lands could a fox be hunted.  Great horsemen they were, but none had
+ever followed the hounds in a hunt.  Perhaps some old Fitzpaul, seeing
+all people concentrated on ridding the land of the fox, had pitied the
+little red hunted one, and given it protection.  Perhaps by some
+accident of border warfare a fox had deflected the chase from a hunted
+Fitzpaul and so earned the family gratitude.  Perhaps this.  Perhaps
+that.  What did it matter?
+
+Yes, a quaint observance, this trait of the Fitzpauls.  An
+idiosyncrasy, a person might put it, such as a woman's objection to
+mice, or the energy of Henry Bergh--God rest him!--who fought that the
+law should protect horses from maltreatment.  But what was queerer
+still, was their power over the foxes.  Foxes greeted a Fitzpaul
+joyously, barking and wagging their tails like dogs--foxes, the most
+suspicious of all animals of the field.  The Fitzpauls had some strange
+rhythmic power over foxes, as some people have over dogs.  And yet,
+though this was mysterious, it was not so immensely mysterious.  Some
+trainers are born with power over man-eating tigers, some men can
+handle snakes, some can sooth stampeding cattle.  Morgan remembered
+hearing his father speak of Whistler Sullivan, who was called in when
+all hope of breaking a horse was gone.  A mean, ferret-faced man, he
+would steal into the stall where a man-eating horse was tied and
+hackled, closing the door behind him, and a half-hour later he would
+bring the horse out.  The horse would be coved and dripping with sweat,
+and never afterward would it balk or bolt or rear.  And the Whistler
+had never laid a hand on him.  He had only talked or hissed.  People
+were afraid of the Whistler; the peasantry declared he had bargained
+his soul with the devil; but he had only power over horses, as the
+Fitzpauls had over the foxes of the field.
+
+Well, that was all explicable, within the range of human knowledge.  It
+was extraordinary, but that was all.  But there was an eerier thing yet
+about that family.  Other families had their banshees, their ghostly
+pipes, their drummers on battlements to portend or announce approaching
+death.  But when a Fitzpaul died,--so went the tradition, so it had
+been attested by living men, so it had happened within a wheen of
+years,--the lawns were peopled with foxes at the dusk of day.  Not
+spectral things, but foxes of the field and wood who gathered to bid
+their protectors God-speed on their strange, strange journey.  They
+knew of death as bee-keepers say bees know.  They made no sound but for
+the rustle of the grass and the faint thudding of their pads.  But they
+were there.  And a passing peasant might see them and raise his hat.
+
+"God be good to the Fitzpauls," he would pray.  "'T is they are good to
+the poor!"
+
+A strange thing that of the foxes, a thing not understood.  How little,
+after all did we know of animals!  But to blazes with that!  Morgan
+swore.  Animals were n't here to be understood.  Animals were here to
+be used, a horse to be ridden; a hound to hunt with; a fox to be chased
+to the death--as he was here to ride and hunt and chase to-day; as he
+had done always; as he had done when Reynardine, his wife, lived....
+
+A bird rose shrieking from the copse, and suddenly a hound gave tongue,
+and then another, and then the pack cried as one dog.  There was a
+blast of the horn.
+
+"Gone away!" came the cheer of the huntsman.  "Away!  Away!"
+
+Then fifty horses thundered.
+
+
+IV
+
+First there was the minute red flash of the fox, slipping through the
+furze like a serpent, then the dappled flood of hounds, tails up,
+giving tongue like bells, then the master of the hunt on his great
+brown steeplechaser, then the huntsman, gay in pink, leather-faced with
+puckered eyes, on his little black mare.  Then came the bunched hunt,
+the crash of ditches, the crackle of brambles, the thunder over turf,
+the _splosh-splosh_ over plowed land.  There was the cheering of the
+country-side.
+
+There a woman was down at a fence and men stopped to help her.  There a
+riderless horse went by, mane tossing, stirrups flying.  Now a groan,
+now a curse.  The country-side flew by as in a motion picture.  Patch
+of brown, patch of green, patch of gray, like a crazy-quilt.  The crack
+of hunting crops, the _ppk_ of spurs.  "Tally-ho, boys! tally-ho!  On
+hounds!  On!"
+
+Morgan with certainty crept ahead of the field, not a hundred yards
+behind master and huntsman.  Beneath him the great gray moved like a
+steam-engine.  A little steadying forward, a rush and a thud, and they
+were over.  Now a ditch was taken with a clatter, now a fence cleared
+nicely, now through a blackthorn hedge, Morgan's arm up to protect his
+eyes.  Five minutes!  Seven.  Eight minutes!  Nine.  Ten, by the Lord
+Harry!  And suddenly they were at Kyle na Maroo--Dead Men's Wood.  And
+the hounds were sniffing, wailing, at check.
+
+An old earth-stopper, wizened, purple-lipped, like a grave-digger of
+"Hamlet," appeared like a troll.
+
+"Into the wood he went, your Honor," he addressed the master.  "Into
+the wood the Red One went, your Honor, like a man diving into his own
+house."
+
+"Are all the holes stopped, Mickey Dan?"
+
+"Stopped is it, your Honor.  Sure they 're stopped as if they were the
+burrows of the devil himself and the saints to be out hunting him on
+the judgment-day.  Stopped is it?  Sure, a worm itself could n't get in
+or out of them the way I 'm after stopping them with interest and grand
+care--"
+
+"All right, Mickey Dan!" The master interrupted.  "Hoick in!"  He
+ordered the huntsmen.
+
+"Leu in, boys, leu in.  Tinker!  David!  Dermot!  Ranger!  Tally in,
+beauties!  Tally in!"
+
+Morgan pulled up his hunter and turned around to watch the field come
+up, no longer bunched, but straggling now.  The burst to check had been
+too much for them.  His horse was still fresh, his seat easy.  He had
+done a notable thing, following so closely on the master's mount--the
+great racer that had won the Grand National--and the huntsman's mare,
+fleet as a greyhound, with so little weight up.  Morgan desired a word
+of commendation, even a look of envy.  But they took no notice of him.
+He might have been some old fox-hunter, invisible, long dead, riding a
+specter horse, over some well-remembered run, for all the attention
+they paid him.  To them he was n't there; he did n't exist.
+
+And because of Reynardine.
+
+And what had he done to Reynardine?  It was n't his fault.  It was
+hers.  She was in love with him, and then she turned and was not.  Was
+it his fault that a woman was fickle?
+
+Yes, she was in love with him.  He could even yet see her dark
+murmuring eyes in the golden light of the candles, as she set there in
+her white frock and sang to him, her beautifully cut ivory hands
+plucking haunting melody from a pianoforte as from some old-time
+clavichord.
+
+  "Sun and dark I followed her,
+    Her eyes did brightly shine:
+  She took me o'er the mountains,
+    Did my sweet Reynardine.
+  If by chance you look for me
+    Perhaps you'll not me find--"
+
+
+Oh, damn!  What did she ever come into his life for, anyway!  She
+didn't want a man.  She wanted a poet.  Crazy!  That's what she was,
+crazy as a coot.  He supposed her daughter--their daughter--was as
+crazy as she!
+
+First of all there 'd been the trouble about the hunting.  She never
+said a word about it, but her face had blanched the first morning he
+saddled up for the Lonth.  She had expected him, he laughed, to have
+the same crazy notions as her family.  And her face had been drawn with
+pain when he came back in the evening.  And she had said nothing.  Too
+proud.  Too damn crazy and too proud!
+
+That evening he had asked her to play "Reynardine"--not that he liked
+the tune; he'd rather have had something popular, something with body
+to it, none of your blasted wailing folk-songs.  But he just thought it
+might please her to have him ask.  She shook her head, and plunged into
+Chopin.
+
+"I don't think I could play--'Reynardine'--to-night," she said.
+
+And she had never played or sung "Reynardine" to him again.
+
+She and her folk had such darn queer notions.  They thought more of a
+horse under them than themselves.  They went to infinite pains and
+immense time to train a green horse or break in a dog where another
+person with a flick of spurs or, a crack of the whip could do it in
+half the time.  True, they did it well.  But, after all, you did n't
+make human friendships with animals.  You made them do what you wanted
+to; or if they did n't--  That was a man's way.
+
+But people are queer, some of them.  One man is proud that his horse
+whinnies in the stall when he hears the beloved footstep.  And some men
+give friendship to dogs they never give to women, and their hearts
+break when a hound dies.  And to some folk the birds of the air will
+come and eat out of their hand, so confident are the birds.  And the
+death of a rabbit is a great tragedy to children.  There is a virgin
+glade in nearly all folks' hearts where neither blood nor marriage
+wander, but the love of animals possesses.  It is some mystic link in
+the chain of creation.
+
+But he never had it.  Never could understand it, Morgan thought.  After
+all, man is the lord of creation, Morgan decided--that's true isn't
+it?--and all living things were for him to use.  He had all rights over
+them, even to life and death.  That was how some folks looked at
+it--not crazy people like the Fitzpauls.
+
+And Reynardine did n't like the way he broke horses.  Reynardine did
+n't like the way he shot pheasants.  She was a queer girl,
+but--God!--she was very beautiful!
+
+Well, that was the whole story of it; they did n't get on.  There grew
+a gulf between them, and was that his fault? he asked.  Was it his
+fault he was n't insane?  Was it his fault he was too much of a man for
+her?
+
+And when she was to have a child, she expected so much of him.  She
+never asked of course--oh, no!  She would never ask for anything, but
+she followed him with dumb eyes.  What did she expect, anyhow?  It was
+no man's job to hang around a gravid woman all the time, holding her
+hand.  A million women in the world were bearing children.  What was
+there to it, after all?  Every one did it.
+
+And then she had run home.  Let her run.  Crazy coot!
+
+And when she was dying and sent for him, did he refuse to go and see
+her, as many a man would have done?  No, he went.  He remembered well
+the soft April twilight; the dim white figure in the great bed, with
+the haunting eyes.  And her four big brothers standing around with set,
+grim faces.
+
+"My husband," she had said, "for anything I did to you here, for any
+way I hurt, will you please forgive me?"
+
+"That's all right, Reynardine," he said.  "We were just not suited.
+And I forgive you."  Then, awkwardly: "I'm sorry to see you this way,
+Reynardine."
+
+A light had gone out of her face:
+
+"Then--good-by!"  Her hand unclasped from his.
+
+"Good-by!" he had said uncomfortably, and turned to go.  He noticed
+three of the brothers look at the senior, Gilchrist, meaningly.
+Gilchrist turned to go after him.  A cold shiver had gone down Morgan's
+spine.  His knees trembled.  And then came the very soft voice:
+
+"Gilchrist, and brothers dear, in a minute maybe I 'll have gone with
+the twilight, and I shall not be able to talk to you again, ever again,
+with these human lips.  And I 'm going to ask you just one more favor,
+brothers dear, my brothers.  Please do it for your sister.  Let my--let
+this man go!"
+
+Then Gilchrist threw open the door.
+
+"This is no place for you," he had said.  "Go!"
+
+A crazy breed!  He had never heard from them again.  Never had they
+asked him to see or support his daughter.  He had even forgotten her
+name.  But he did n't want to see her.  He wanted to see no more of the
+Fitzpaul blood.  She was living in the old place, he understood, which
+was hers now.
+
+Well, let her--
+
+But--funny!  He could never get out of his mind's eye the vision of his
+wife sitting by the great piano, plucking out the ancient melody:
+
+  "If by chance you look for me
+    Perhaps you 'll not me find,
+  For I 'll be in my castle--"
+
+
+The hounds shifted, grew keen.  "Ay!  Ay!" came the tongue of the
+finder.  Scent was picked up again.  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!" went the pack,
+heads up, tails straight.  There was a red flash ahead in the grassy
+field.
+
+"Come up, Finn!" the master shoved his great horse onward.
+
+"Ay!  Ay!  Ay!"  They were off.  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!" Seventy hounds and
+forty horsemen.  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!"  And one red fox running for his life.
+"Ay!  Ay!"  A dead fox or a broken neck!  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!"
+
+
+V
+
+For years he had been looking forward to this first fox-hunt in
+Ireland, and now with the red speck ahead of him, and the flood of
+hounds following it, and the great gray between his knees, it occurred
+to him that he was not enjoying it.  Never was a morning better for
+hunting, never a keener scent, never a better pack; never had he pushed
+as powerful, as sure-footed a horse at a fence.  Behind him the field
+fell, was blown, dropped out, until there were hardly a half-dozen
+left.  And he was close on the master of the hunt, close on the
+huntsman, close on the pack.  Yet there was something in it that took
+the thrill away and left a leaden depression instead.
+
+She would n't go out of his mind, would Reynardine.  What was that
+daughter of hers--and his--like?  Like her mother, he 'd be bound,
+every inch of her a Fitzpaul.  Hardly any of his blood there.  His only
+were the mechanics of procreation; she was not his daughter.  Nothing
+lifeful of him had fused with the soul of Reynardine to perform the
+ineffable miracle.  No, she would be all her mother--all Fitzpaul.
+
+God! how he hated that name of Fitzpaul!  How he hated Reynardine, who
+had made him feel like a cur, though he wouldn't admit it!  How he had
+hated those four big brothers, who had made him feel afraid--an
+unforgivable thing!
+
+Well, they were dead, he laughed, all dead.  Gilchrist had died on
+Nevison's expedition to the pole, and he lay somewhere in the
+immaculate Arctic snows with the inscription his comrades had written
+on a simple cross: "Here lies a very gallant Irish gentleman."  And
+Kevin had died fighting the Turks in Asia.  And Ulick!  Ulick was
+somewhere in the depths of the Irish sea, where he went out with the
+coast-guards to rescue a vessel in distress.  And Garrett was funniest
+of all.  He was killed defending a woman of the people from her drunken
+husband in a Dublin slum.  All dead!  Serve them right, too.  They were
+always doing something that never got them anywhere.  Fools!
+
+He had hated them in life, and he hated them in death.  But now their
+bodies were in dissolution, there was nothing concrete to hate, and, by
+some strange symbolism, he had come to hate what in his mind was most
+closely allied to the family, the fox that was their crest, the fox
+that had their protection.  He hated it.  He hunted it.  He wanted to
+kill it.  The day on which a fox was killed was to him a red-letter
+day.  He felt somehow that he had killed a Fitzpaul.
+
+Foxes took on for him now a strange, sinister entity.  By thinking much
+of them, he had come to think of them as a quasi-human, supernormal
+race.  There was something strange about them, anyway.  Cleverest of
+all the beasts of the field, with their cunning they outwitted men.
+They were strange in their likes and dislikes.  Their only friend was
+the dull-witted badger, a dark personality, too, whose burrows they
+used, with whom they often lived.  They would eat fruit and shellfish.
+And though they killed birds, they would not touch a dead bird of prey.
+They had tabus as strict as a Maori's.  Strange, mystical laws.
+
+Very sinister they seemed to Morgan.  Once in America he had seen Michi
+Itow, the Japanese, dance his dance of the fox.  And there was
+something terrible in it, something so mysteriously awful that he all
+but rose in his seat, the cry of the pack ringing from his throat: "Ay!
+Ay!  Ay! ... Ay!  Ay!"
+
+And he had a dreadful waking dream, of an acre of foxes watching him in
+the twilight, never moving, still on their pads.  Just their pointed
+muzzles, their baleful, luminous eyes....
+
+He had hunted foxes everywhere since he left Ireland.  In Canada, where
+he had many a good kill.  In England, where the sport was too ladida,
+too much of a social gathering to please.  In America, in Maryland,
+where they hunted the gray fox, with hounds stag crossed with fox, but
+seldom killed.  He could n't stand their way of hunting.  The
+Marylanders did n't care to kill, and they had dubbed their favorite
+foxes with endearing nicknames.  No!  That was ridiculous!  What he
+wanted was an Irish hunt--fine horses and good riders, and keen hounds,
+and a dead fox at the end of the day.
+
+He looked up from the pack as they swung through a plowed field.  The
+fox had swung in a circle and was running to where it had started.
+There was Cashelshane, King John's castle.  There was Owana Ma ach Meg,
+the river of the little trout!  There was Crock Na Mero, the hill of
+the querns!  There was--there was the abbey where the Fitzpauls, where
+Reynardine slept.
+
+  "If by chance you look for me
+    Perhaps you 'll not me find,
+  For I 'll be in my castle--"
+
+
+A great castle that, he laughed, six feet underground....  Damn it!
+Were those hounds checked again?
+
+
+VI
+
+A piece of bog in process of reclamation--there the fox had taken
+refuge.  He might be lying in some clump of grass.  He might have
+slipped into one of the many drains the strong farmer had made in his
+attempt to make arable land of what was morass.  Here and there were
+green patches, still dangerous, where a whole hunt might be engulfed.
+Neither the master nor the huntsman cared to chance their mounts in
+that treacherous sward.  They halloed the hounds to and fro.
+
+"Leu in, lads, leu in!  Ranger, Rambler, Tinker, Tim!  On to him,
+beauties, on to him!"
+
+But the hounds were at fault, utterly.  They howled with baffled
+desire.  They went to and fro, sterns twitching, noses aground.  Two or
+three beaten hunters turned up, their horses gone, their fire quenched,
+sitting dully in the saddle, thankful for the respite of check.
+
+"We 've overrun," the huntsman grumbled.
+
+"I 'm afraid so, Willie John," the master nodded.  But some secondary
+sense told Morgan the fox was there.  He had gone to ground and the
+hounds had failed to mark him.
+
+"Try a short up-wind cast," the master directed.
+
+The hounds were halloed out, and as they swung to the left, Morgan
+noticed the red shadow flit along a ditch, slip through a hedge.  He
+spurred his horse in excitement.
+
+"Yoi doit!" Morgan called.  "View halloo!"  But some trick of wind
+muffled his voice.  Behind him three hundred yards away the hounds were
+following the huntsman about, heads up.
+
+The fox was tired, his brush heavy with mud and dragging as he ran.
+Behind him Morgan thundered alone.  He damned the huntsman.  He damned
+the hounds.
+
+"They 're going to miss, blast their stupid heads!"  But he kept on.
+His hope was that the fox would turn, and the huntsman and hounds see
+him, and coming up, finish the day's work.
+
+But the fox kept onward.  Now across a plowed field, now across fallow
+land.  Here a fence, here a ditch, here a hedge.  What was the use of
+following him, with no hounds?  But a mania arose in Morgan's brain,
+and he could n't bear to drop the chase now, so near to completion.  A
+vast anger arose in him.  He felt he had been betrayed.  Never was a
+huntsman so stupid.  Never hounds so bad.
+
+The fox ahead of him put on a new spurt, and Morgan dug his heels into
+his horse's flanks.  Where was it heading for?
+
+He looked up for a moment and saw the four-foot crumbling wall of the
+old abbey.  So there 's where it thought sanctuary might be found.  The
+fox sought the protection of the Fitzpauls, even now they were dead.
+
+A sinister grin passed over Morgan's face.  Of a sudden he felt
+diabolical.  Others might respect that sanctuary, but not he!  He was
+n't crazy with sentiment.  A hunter, he!  He 'd hunt it over the
+legions of dead Fitzpauls.  He 'd hunt it over Reynardine's grave, by
+God!  How would she like that?  Eh?  He 'd kill that fox if he had to
+run it blind and throttle it with his bare hands.
+
+"I 'll get you," he laughed.
+
+The fox gathered itself for a last effort.  He saw the whirl of its
+brush, saw it leap, disappear....
+
+Morgan steadied his hunter for an instant.  Suddenly gave it reins and
+spurs.  Looked up, as it flew toward the wall.
+
+From his height he could see within and his hair rose in a dreadful
+chill.  For standing there was a white figure, with a book in her hand.
+Against the white dress the red fox cowered.  The face was the face of
+Reynardine.  The years were the years of Reynardine.  The eyes were the
+eyes of Reynardine, black, deep, dilated with fear.
+
+"Reynardine!  Reynardine!"  A cry of terror broke from him.
+
+An immense panic seized him, and his hands checked the horse as it rose
+to the jump--a savage jerk on curb and snaffle.  The gray was already
+in the air.  Its hind legs came down uncertain.  Its great bulk fell
+backward.  Fear flooded him like cold water.  In an instant he knew his
+neck would be broken like a dry twig.  Christ!  There it went!  Snap!
+
+
+VII
+
+"Dark childeen, what is wrong with you?  What is wrong?  There was a
+wing in my heart until I saw you coming."
+
+"Nurse Ellen, there 's a man dead at the abbey.  I saw him die, with my
+two eyes."
+
+"_O alanna veg_!  Is it any one we know?  It isn't the master, is it,
+or Sir Maurice?"
+
+"No, Nurse Ellen, no!  It's no one I know.  I was sitting reading by
+Mother's grave, and a wee red fox, a wee hunted fox, ran up to me for
+help.  And then the man came jumping the wall, and his horse reared and
+he was killed.  I never saw him before, but we know him, Nurse Ellen.
+I know we do."
+
+"Why dotey child?  Why do you say so?"
+
+"He saw me and he took me for Mother, Nurse Ellen.  He called,
+'Reynardine!'"
+
+"Was he a dour, black man, child of grace?  Would you be afraid of him,
+and he alive?"
+
+"Yes, that's he, Nurse Ellen.  Who is it we know?"
+
+"It's no one we know, _a lanna_.  No one at all."
+
+"But he called, 'Reynardine!'"
+
+"You only think so, dark childeen, you trembling there and standing by
+your mother's grave.  A trick your mind played you, _machree dheelish_.
+He was no one you know, or nothing to you.  Only a strange man was it,
+a strange bad man."
+
+
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
+
+I
+
+It must be for the thousandth time now he was sitting down at the neat
+table looking out on the little lawn, and trying to get his ideas
+together, trying to get something new, something startling, that would
+awaken these hard-boiled men who had control of theaters, magazines,
+publishing houses to the sense that he was alive, worth while,
+valuable.  If he could only think up a new detective, or--or something.
+
+Any other than he would have given up the game long ago, but he knew he
+had talent--he would n't go quite so far as to say genius, but great
+talent.  It was no use their turning him down all the time.  He was
+certain they never read the stuff.
+
+He was certain, too, there was some trick, some knack he had n't
+discovered.  Just some little trick.  These men of national,
+international fame--he could see from their faces they had no especial
+brains, any more than he had.
+
+But just some little trick he could n't get.
+
+He had taken courses in writing, gone to schools of journalism, and
+here were all his manuscripts with neat rejection slips; here was what
+he thought the great American novel battered and dog-eared, a study of
+the temptations of a girl in the great city; and here was his crook
+drama, that some filthy reader had marked with the rim of a coffee cup.
+It was enough to make a man quit.
+
+But he would n't quit.  He 'd be as big as the biggest of them.  He,
+too, would have his pictures in the papers, not gaunt and bitter as
+most of them seemed, but pleasant, dignified, literary.  And his
+picture would look like an author's, with its well-marked features, its
+masculine little mustache, its intellectual glasses.  And he, too,
+would be interviewed.  And he, too, would sign contracts involving
+great sums of money.  And there would be gossip about him, too, in the
+papers, where in Florida he was spending the winter vacation, what he
+was doing in summer.
+
+He would n't quit.  Had n't they all said at school and college he was
+cut out to be a writer?  Had n't he gone to Europe for six months?
+And, what was more, had n't he the money his father, the hardware man,
+had left him?  Had n't he his home?  He could stick it out.
+
+His home!  His wife!  If instead of these few trees, this lawn, the
+outlook of the quiet sound, if instead of here he lived somewhere in
+the welter of affairs, wouldn't he be better?  Somewhere things
+changed, where one did not have to go three quarters of an hour in a
+train to the theater.  Down town in New York.  Only trees and grass and
+water and sky here.  Nothing to write about.
+
+And his wife, Berenice--oh, she was a sweet girl, a nice girl,
+but--hadn't he perhaps made a mistake?  She was so good and wholesome!
+Too much?  Would n't it have been better to be married to--to an
+actress, or a sculptress, or--or something.  Some one who could feel
+things; who would n't smile, and be nice.  Berenice was all right, but--
+
+And his mother.  She was a nice, darling person, but--she did n't just
+understand.  She was just a mother, like anybody's mother: If she could
+feel the great complex things!  But she was just loving, and everything
+he did was right.
+
+Berenice, and his mother ... the trees, the water ... essential
+barrenness of life ... nothing to write about ... so unfair.
+
+
+II
+
+Because Barry had hinted it annoyed him to have her in the house while
+he was trying to write, Berenice had decided to go out for an hour or
+so, to give the poor lad a chance.  And for a few minutes it bothered
+her to be idling, whereas there were so many little things that needed
+her attention.  A house became so weary.  It needed a flick of the hand
+here and there, a touch to flowers.  But the white road, and the
+arching blue-green trees, and the drift of the dogwood--a cloud, not a
+flower, did it seem, so delicately balanced was it in the May air--all
+these took her eyes, and the immense miracle of spring drew her
+thoughts from the gracious artifice of the house.  How gently, how
+imperceptibly it came, a little curling wave of the west wind, and the
+clearly pitched note of an adventuring bird!  It was like the moon,
+spring was; a clear thin line of silver in the gray sky, like the
+minute green of the waking willow-tree, and it grew ... under your eyes
+was its sweet benevolence.  And it was hard to go to sleep at night, so
+much was being accomplished, for fear you would miss some phase of the
+return of beauty.  Oh, the little birds ... so fussy, so intense about
+their nests.  The showers like great sheets of silver; and after each
+the slim trees were more like pretty ladies, and the great thick trees
+like pleasant stalwart men.  And the flowers came shyly, demurely, just
+as young girls might come; just as she herself, Berenice, felt, acted
+when she was fifteen, and was brought into a roomful of strange people.
+
+And she stopped for an instant at the dark pool where the little
+turtles were busy, swimming to and fro, a clear-cut, fine line on the
+dusky water, a minute head with crystalline beads of eyes, just showing
+... and if they thought you were watching them they dived--a flick and
+they were gone--and if you saw clearly enough you could notice their
+flippers waggle slowly as they made for the downy bed of the pool.  And
+some kept fearfully quiet, sitting on stones, or on logs, and at any
+quick movement you made, they plumped like stones.  And the great trees
+around so much alive, so patient...  She could understand how poets of
+an older, simpler age saw dryads in them.  Pan she could not
+understand, nor satyrs, but dryads were sib to her, young shy women in
+garments of apple-green.  You could tell a good picture of a tree from
+a bad one that way: some had dryads in them and some were only wood.
+
+So many thoughts were in her, so keenly did she feel a kinship with the
+trees, with the singing birds, with the west wind that cleared the air,
+that she wished she had some one to speak to about it.  But a great
+shyness...  And perhaps, even, it could n't be said in words, perhaps
+music.  Well, hardly even that.  She had tried to speak to Barry about
+it.  But Barry had kissed her and thought her a moonstruck kid, as he
+said.  Poor Barry!  Directors of periodicals were so hard on him!  It
+was dreadful to hurt him that way.  Though she confessed the treason
+with a shock to herself, she found it hard, well-nigh impossible, to
+read what he wrote.  It was hard for her to understand artificial women
+and noble men.  All she knew was nature, and that was not artificial.
+Nor was it noble, either, she thought; it had just a sweet, harmonious
+kindliness.  There could be nobility only where ignominy existed
+too--and in nature was no ignominy.  She wished she knew more about men
+and women, for Barry's sake, to understand these matters he wrote of,
+passion and crime.  But dramatic passion seemed so needless in her
+eyes, and crime was so sickly; she just felt a pity for it, a sense
+that they, poor people, must be crazy to do such things.  Oh, she
+wished she understood--could help him!  She remembered when, over a
+year ago, a little periodical had decided to print one of his writings,
+the letter came as the first snowflakes fell.  And she could not feel
+excited with him, because in her heart, beyond her control, was some
+strange rhythm.  The snow, the soft and harmonious snow ... and in her
+head was a picture of nursery days, of pine-trees under a delicate
+white weight, and old Saint Nicholas, whom little children called Santa
+Claus, driving through a fleecy world ... his red cheeks, his white
+beard, his reindeer with the silver tinkling bells.  And reindeer
+brought the thought to her of squat, hairy Laplanders, fishing solemnly
+near the Pole, through a little hole they had cut in the ice, while
+away in the background ambled a great polar bear.  A very terrible
+animal it must be, but one always thought of it as gentle as some big
+old dog.
+
+Oh, she wished she were a better woman, a woman who had her husband's
+interests at heart!  People said a woman could make a man.  She
+wondered how.  And it was said of some that their husbands owed their
+careers all to them.  How?  But how?  And even if she knew, her
+terrible shyness...  She could be intimate with dogs, and horses, and
+solemn, aloof kine.  But words did n't come to her somehow.  It was
+such a drawback!
+
+And when he was disappointed, she stood there, dumb as a stone.
+Nothing would formulate.  All she could think of was to lift his hand
+and kiss it quietly, and oftentimes a tear would come because he was
+hurt.  But she could say nothing that would make things seem easy.  All
+she could think of would be to take him out in the dusky night, and
+look in silence at the stars.  All the immensity of gleaming worlds ...
+so scattered, so varied, and not one ugliness.  And one felt drawn out
+of oneself toward the beautiful, terrific heavens, and all the worries
+and troubles seemed of less consequence than the droning of a bee.  A
+little sum of money lost, a petty ambition frustrated, a cheap man's
+jibe, those hurt for a moment, but how little they mattered under the
+clouds of stars!
+
+And if she could take him out and be silent with him, while the
+crickets sang and the little frogs croaked their funny dissonant
+harmony, and earth rolled along eastward under the arching heavens...
+But maybe he was right--she was only a funny dreaming kid.
+
+She had come to the sound now, and quiet as a lake the broad stretch of
+water was before her.  And here and there was a steamer, and southward
+a spluttering tug pulling a line of barges rigged with square auxiliary
+sails.  Her mind leaped forward to eight weeks from then, when the
+regattas would begin, and from all parts of the sound, from north of
+it, Marblehead even, the boats would come with white curving sails to
+fight for supremacy.  Great forty-footers, and the smaller thirties,
+and the fast P-boats with their immense Bermuda rigs, and little
+handicap sloops, and cat-boats manned by boys in bathing-suits, all
+scurrying, swishing, all in turn jibing, coming about, jockeying to go
+over the line with the gun.
+
+And then, too, soon the great blind porpoises would come gamboling,
+shining like negroes, follow-my-leader.  And the bluefish would run.
+And on the rocks the querulous bird population would screech and
+chatter.  And one would look out for the boats going to New Bedford and
+to Fall River ... their calm progress like a steady horse's, and their
+lights.  And the great lumber schooners would come down from Nova
+Scotia, with their blue-eyed, taciturn sailors, to anchor at City
+Island.
+
+A little quiver underneath her heart reminded her.  How should she tell
+Barry she was going to have a little baby?  When should she tell him,
+and what should she say?  She must be careful.  She must n't disturb
+his work.  And would he be happy about it?  Or would he--would he--she
+bit her lips suddenly--would he not be pleased?
+
+
+III
+
+It seemed to her that it was all one with the coming of the springtime,
+the budding of the flowers, and the westward wind--the miracle of the
+baby.  One was first one's own sentient self, bending to the wind with
+the trees, breasting the curling waves of summer, and patiently
+listening to the song of some ambitious bird, and, before you knew how,
+a little thing had come nestling under your wing.  The flowers had made
+you sister, and the wind protected you, and the grass was careful lest
+your foot should touch a stone.  Whence did it come, the little life
+that was delicate as the petal of the apple-blossom, soft as a little
+bird asleep in a nest?  In summer one felt it had come over the bending
+grasses and between the gentle rains, and the robins did it reverence.
+And in spring it was borne on the first generous, delicate wind, and
+the trees nodded their highest, newest boughs.  And in autumn the Brown
+Woman of the Woods brought it, while the little chipmunks stared.  In
+winter it came with a shaft of the loud, aggressive sun.  However?
+Wherever?  But one moment you were yourself, alone, with only your own
+problems.  And suddenly you had been trusted with something softer than
+flowers, more precious than diamonds, a little molecule of life itself.
+Such a trust!
+
+Every woman had a little dream about her child.  A woman of the
+tenements might see in a little parcel of flesh and blood a one-day
+president of her great republic.  And another might see in him a
+minister of God bearing a light to thousands.  And a third would see in
+a little daughter a voice that would gush forth in immense harmony.
+And some who knew the bitter tooth of want would dream of their
+children as powerful merchants, with great cars and yachts.  Such rosy
+stories do women think in their heads.
+
+But all Berenice could imagine was the little daughter of fair tresses
+in her small bed at the close of day, when the short Occidental
+twilight hovered like a bird, and night came trudging westward with dun
+feet.  Below in their drawing-room people would be assembled for dinner
+or for the playing of cards, laughter and candle-light, and the glow of
+an open hearth, and tobacco sending up bluish-gray smoke from little
+tubes.  But Berenice would be alone with the fair child in the dim
+nursery, putting her to sleep and teaching her the rhyme that is a
+child's first prayer and, at the same time, a charm against evil
+spirits; against great bulks in the darkness that make little children
+scream; against strange gray women who take small humans from the warm
+beds mothers put them in and whisk them to deep, underground burrows
+where trolls and misshapen demons are, replacing them with wizened,
+ill-natured changelings.  Against all the powers of darkness the little
+prayer was potent:
+
+  "Now I lay me down to sleep,
+  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
+  And if I die before I wake,
+  I pray the Lord my soul to take!"
+
+
+And then, reverently:
+
+  "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
+  Guard the bed that I lie on!"
+
+
+And when the small eyes were closed and the minute mouth had taken on
+the sweet smile of sleeping, and the hands had relaxed into white,
+starry flowers, she would steal downstairs to her guests, to the
+gracious room where sleek, well-bred women and kindly, burly men were
+gathered to dine in company or to play cards, where the bluish smoke
+rose in whorls from the white tubes of tobacco, and there was soft
+candle-light and tinkling glass.  And she would feel happy there,
+secure.  There would be no apprehension in her.  For above, at the four
+corners of the bed where the minute humanity slept were four figures of
+great power, four lumbering grizzled fisherman--Matthew, Mark, Luke,
+and John!
+
+
+IV
+
+The old lady watched Berenice walk down the road, pausing for a moment
+in her beautiful needlework to admire her young daughter-in-law's slim,
+willowy figure, the eager pose of her head, her brown, beautifully
+plaited hair.  The apple-green of her dress and the blue-green of the
+trees--she made such a beautiful picture, and the old lady shook her
+head and sighed.
+
+And one might imagine the old lady saying: When I was young I was as
+lissome as that, as pretty, had as eager a head.  Time flies, and we
+grow old.  Ah, the fine days of young womanhood!
+
+But that was not in her mind at all: she shook her head because she
+knew the heartaches, the difficulties, the terrors the young girl must
+go through before she attained to the reward of women--wisdom and peace.
+
+For they all came to that in the latter end, the old lady thought--the
+girls who started out dancing, and the girls whose eyes were troubled
+with thought, and the girls deep as rivers, and the shallow girls who
+angled for a honeyed word.  And life, like some deft schoolmistress,
+caught them and taught them and put wisdom in their heads, and in their
+hearts little modest flowers, like forget-me-nots.  And the sad girls
+learned laughter from little children on the floor, and the wayward
+ones learned loyalty from trouble, and great emotional currents put
+depths into the shallow ones.  And life seemed so hard, the present so
+brutal, the future terrible as an army with banners--but one day it was
+gone.  All was past.  And in retrospect it seemed so little pain to
+have had, to learn such a great lesson, to come to such a sweet place!
+If one came through it, it was so much worth while.
+
+The hazards one made so much of ... Oh!  Did n't she know!
+
+It seemed to her as she looked back now very strange that all the
+little tragedies of her life appeared to have faded and all the
+happiness intensified; and this was peculiar, for at the time the pain
+seemed so poignant and the happiness so diverse, so hard to grasp.  A
+night at a theater, for instance, twenty years ago, and a dinner before
+it, and a supper afterward--how queer one could remember all that!
+Even the tunes the orchestra played, the clothes one wore, what this
+man said, how this woman looked.  And one thought of the night young
+Barry, below, writing, was so near to death; and the utter terror, the
+tragedy of that time had faded.  And one remembered only how pretty he
+looked, how kind the doctor was, how Mr. Valance, her husband, had put
+his hand on her shoulder in his big, kindly way.
+
+If young people knew how these things came out, they would n't worry so
+much, but there was no use telling them.  They would have to find out
+for themselves.
+
+She had never been one to admire nature, had the old lady, but one
+thing she did know: she knew people and she knew life.  Berenice was
+all right, a very fine girl for all her romantic thoughts, but Barry
+worried her occasionally.  He was so intense about his career of
+writing.  And she felt in her heart that if was not going to be a
+success.  One knew, somehow.  For instance this: she could tell whether
+or not a novice was going to be a great pianist, because she could see
+him as a master, if he were ever to arrive; his power, his aloofness,
+his concentration.  She could see a merchant.  She supposed it was a
+gift, just feeling what people were.
+
+And her son Barry below--she could not see him.  And she was n't going
+to tell him, either.  Men were queer.  They bore grudges, even to their
+mothers.  It was better to let him fight himself out, and be conquered,
+drop; and then pick himself up, and think it over, and go to something
+else, with a pang and more wisdom.  And month by month the
+disappointment would pass, until the ramping of his early days was no
+more to him than a quaint gesture.  And years later he would meet some
+great author for a moment, and be very courteous, a little shy with
+him.  But he would never tell him of the struggle on his own account,
+never mention a word--ah, she knew, she knew!
+
+Barry would be all right.  Only--only he must be broken.  All humans
+must be broken, as Mr. Valance, her husband, had said horses are.  And
+some horses are great race-horses, and some are hacks, and some
+hunters, and some just simply for use.  But all have to be broken.  And
+they are nearly all kind, nearly all good, as human beings are.  For
+nearly all men and women are good, the old lady thought.  One had to
+know their hearts,--their appearance, their gestures meant
+nothing,--and their hearts ought to have a chance to grow.  And then
+they would all be good.  Those who were n't had had the growth of their
+hearts stunted somehow.  And they were n't to be hated, but pitied,
+poor things.
+
+If any one, any young person, were to know what her thoughts were--the
+old lady smiled--she would say she had known no trouble in life, was
+shallow, did not understand the tragedy of things.
+
+Well, she had had her share of life; her troubles as well as the rest
+of them.  She had been a very sensitive girl.  When she married Mr.
+Valance, her husband, she had hardly known him,--for such was the
+custom in her day, that he should satisfy her parents of his affection
+rather than herself,--and when the day came to leave her father and
+mother and her four brothers and her sisters, to leave the house she
+had known since she was born, to leave her own virginal room, and go
+away with a strange, terrifying, fascinating man--why, it was like
+jumping into the sea without knowing how to swim.  In those days young
+girls did not know, were scared.  And yet everything had been all
+right.  She loved Mr. Valance, her husband.  No two could ever have
+been closer than she and he.  And she smiled at the terror of her
+leaving the home.
+
+And before Barry was born--oh, the ghastly nights, the ghastly, ghastly
+nights, of lying awake and fearing, fearing, and the hideous
+unimaginable dreams!  And the birth itself, the surge of pain like some
+cruel, driving knife, and strength ebbing in a fast flood!  And came
+kind unconsciousness, and when she woke there was a sort of white peace
+in her, and the little dark-haired boy, by some beneficent magic, was
+on the nurse's broad lap.  And the strange miracle of how she had
+forgotten all the pain so soon ... how little it seemed, how natural!
+And how ready she would have been again.  A little daughter, she had
+thought--how nice it would be!  But it was n't to be.
+
+And when Mr. Valance, her husband, had died, for her had come, she
+thought, the end of the world.  Yet now all she could remember were the
+peace and trust in his quiet face, when all had gone.  And into the
+room where she was alone with him there came the quiet message that all
+was well.  And the hearts of people were so warm.  The doctor himself,
+who had seen so many die one would have thought he would have become
+callous, was so unaffectedly kind.  Even people one had thought were
+enemies--or not enemies but just careless of one--showed a warmth, an
+understanding.
+
+And she had thought it impossible for her ever to be on the world
+alone; but somewhence strength had come to her, and poise; and all the
+fears she had when Mr. Valance, her husband, was alive, were dead now,
+she a widow.  Lonely and down in grief at times, but afraid never!
+
+And she thought to herself, with a queer little smile, of the times
+when in the dark of the night, by the eerie Long Island waters, she had
+gone out, crying in a little misery, praying, wishing that Mr. Valance,
+her husband, would appear to her, that she might once more hear the
+beloved voice, sense the big dignity, perhaps feel the kindly hand upon
+her shoulder.  But she waited in vain.  Nothing came to her cries, her
+prayers, her wishes.  But when she came in again, she felt she had
+emptied her heart of longing and loneliness, and all the familiar
+furnishings of her rooms spoke to her tactfully and friendly.
+
+She smiled, because now she recognized--however she did it she did not
+know--that what she wanted could not possibly be granted.  Just for her
+alone an exception could not be made against the seemingly cruel,
+tremendously wise law that the dead should be silent.  Everything was
+so wise, so ordered.  And if one were to know exactly, the merchant
+would leave his shop, the seamstress her broidery, the workman his
+lathe.  So it was kept a curtain of mystery, with a little hedge of
+terror before it.
+
+All was well.  Life and death, all in good hands.
+
+She had often thought to herself, sitting there, as an old person
+might, that things did not seem as well as they were in her young days.
+But on second thoughts she discovered they were just the same.  Life
+was a constant, as Mr. Valance, her husband used to say of things.
+Oftentimes while she sat in a corner and heard young people talk, she
+was amused, for they seemed to think she knew nothing of modern life.
+And life could not be modern or ancient.  Life was a constant, as Mr.
+Valance, her husband, used to say.  They had only manufactured new
+terms, discovered new angles.  She smiled as she thought of their talks
+of psychoanalysis; of how one was very complex; and how one must get
+rid of obsessions by discovering them and talking about them to a
+specialist.  One did the same in her day.  One called the obsessions
+troubles, and on one's knees one poured one's heart out to God.  And
+their talk of psychic things--why, when she was a grown woman, did n't
+they have the queer Eddys in Vermont, and that strange Russian woman,
+Madame Blavatsky, and Home, the medium, who floated through a window,
+feet first!  And she was sure that when she was young there was just as
+intricate card games as bridge.  And their talk of Socialism and man's
+rights!  Did they forget that Lincoln freed the slaves?  Ah, the young!
+
+She remembered a man saying--an old man--that what was wrong with the
+new generation was this: they left nothing to God.  They wanted to do
+everything their own way.  Fifty years ago, he said, every one was
+cognizant of God.
+
+But were they? pondered the old lady.  Yes, they went to church.  But
+did n't they go just because one went, as nowadays one goes to the
+movies?  A habit.  And did the rounded sentences of the ministers mean
+anything to the young?  No.  And the hymns--they were just melodies.
+One sang them, as young boys sang college songs.  It was only when one
+was grown, man or woman tall, and the great wolves of the world harried
+one, harried until one could sense their white teeth, their red
+slavering mouths, and there was a blank wall and no escape--it was only
+then one felt the Immense Hand.  And rarely afterward did one speak of
+it.  It seemed like a strange secret order, being initiated to God.
+She was sure that it was like that to-day, as it was fifty years ago,
+as it must ever have been, as it must ever be.
+
+Looking up from her sewing an instant, she saw Berenice coming toward
+the house.  It must be later than she thought.  It must be lunch-time.
+They must make Barry, poor boy, stop now.  Brain work was so fatiguing
+and he should n't overdo it.
+
+She paused for a breath, watching the brown head, the apple-green
+dress.  She knew the girl's secret, though Berenice had never said
+anything, hinted at all about a baby.  But the little exalted look in
+the eyes--
+
+"I must say a prayer to-night," thought the old lady.
+
+
+He got up from the desk.  No! it was no use.  Nothing would come
+to-day.  Another fruitless morning.  If he could only find the trick
+those fellows had!
+
+Yes, but they all had something to write about, and he had nothing:
+this wretched urban setting, this calm, uninteresting sound.  And he
+knew nobody.  There was no encouragement, no inspiration.  His mother,
+dear old lady--she knew nothing, could tell him nothing.  And his
+wife--she was a dear girl, and he loved her, but--  Oh, there was
+nothing to write about; no drama; no people of drama.
+
+
+
+
+WISDOM BUILDETH HER HOUSE
+
+I
+
+Whilst her great train was picking its way carefully from the
+mountain-tops of Abyssinia, eight thousand treacherous feet of height,
+to the littoral of the Red Sea, the slim brown queen had experienced
+only impatience.  In the cool quietness of her mountain home it had
+seemed the most natural thing in the world to arise and visit the young
+king of the Jews.  On every step of the long journey downhill it had
+seemed natural.  In her own country it seemed right she should do as
+she had chosen.  But now they had left Abyssinia, left the great
+tropical forests with the gigantic candelabra trees, left the arid
+cactus-covered plains, left the pleasant green valleys where water
+trilled and the boxwood trees and wild roses and water cress grew, and
+had come to arid Ailet by the Red Sea.  And here were great stretches
+of sand and mimosa, here half-naked, cunning black men, here a heat
+like a pall, here the brooding mystery of Egypt, that knows all things
+and is silent to questioning.
+
+A different world, and in the different atmosphere there came a
+faltering, a waver into the heart of Balkis.  Was she a fool?  For two
+miles her royal train stretched.  First, the fighting men in their
+short white robes, graceful, powerful as cats; then the line of laden
+camels with tinkling bells; then the great black elephants with their
+gleaming black skin, their gleaming white tusks, their painted
+trappings; then the litters of her women; then her own litter; a welter
+of attendants, bearing the provisions of the journey and the present
+she was bringing to Solomon, the young king of the Jews: spices; and
+gold of Ophir; and large diamonds from the Abyssinian mines;
+apes--great red-faced baboons that had the strength of ten men, and
+delicate blue monkeys, pretty as birds; and peacocks that outdid
+precious stones in the shimmer of their colors; and tusks of ivory,
+large as the branches of great trees....  Her heart wavered, and for an
+instant it occurred to her in panic to go back.  But if she returned
+now, she would be dissatisfied all her life, and grow inward, and
+become maybe hard as a stone, and that was against nature, for all
+things grow outward, as a tree grows outward, to fill up the empty
+spaces of Death....
+
+"No! no!  I shall go on."
+
+Up in the cool mountains decision had seemed so natural, action so
+easy.  But below in humid Egypt subtleties of thought seemed native to
+the weak Nilotic breeze, and she could see herself as though she were
+another woman.  She could see her orphaned childhood, when the care of
+all her counselors was to have her gracious and kind, and sweet as a
+small bird's song.  They had instructed her that queens are not made by
+crowns, but by graciousness and strength and courtesy, so that any
+beholder might know she was a queen were she dressed in the garments of
+her humblest slave.  And she had grown older into young maidenhood, and
+wise old heads had helped her govern and take care of her wild mountain
+folk, and came a few years more and she was twenty-two, and the
+counselors were too old to counsel, being either querulous old men or
+dotards, living in forgotten days, and Balkis herself had to rule,
+being queen.  To be queen alone would have been simple.
+
+But being queen, she was lonely, and being gracious and just, she was
+wise, and being wise, questions arose in her like a spring of well
+water.  Thought rose like a hawk and swept in widening gyres, but
+arrived nowhere.  Thought and emotion were with her in the red Afric
+dawn.  Thought and emotion were with her like the flickering lightning
+and terrible thunder of the Abyssinian hills.  Thought and emotion came
+with blue mountainy twilight.  And there was none to share them.  None
+to ask.  None to satisfy.  Being a queen, there was none she might
+consort with but kings and queens, and the kings of the states about
+her were shrewd political men, who could not understand what a young
+girl felt, and her young womanhood quivering like the jessamy bough....
+Their eyes would be on the riches of Ethiopia; so they were out....
+And the queens of Africa, outside herself, were not queens, but tribal
+chieftainesses, half priestess and half prostitute, Amazonian,
+untutored....  She could not talk to them.
+
+And so she had decided there was nothing for her to do but to govern
+justly, to grow old gracefully, to weep a little in private, to find it
+hard to go asleep of nights, to look forward to death as a sentry
+awaits the dawn, until a swart Egyptian trader had brought word of the
+new king of the Jews, now David was gone.  A boy he was, they said, a
+strange dreaming boy, with none of his father's delight in war, and
+with a gift of strange inspired wisdom.  She was told the story of two
+women, that were harlots, and how they each claimed a certain child as
+theirs, and of Solomon's judgment.
+
+"And how old is the young king of the Jews?" Sheba asked.
+
+"Twenty-three or twenty-four."
+
+"A year or so older than I."
+
+And she was told how Hiram, King of Tyre, that shrewd man, was a friend
+to the young prince, and how the arrogant Pharaoh of Egypt conceived it
+worth his while to make a treaty with him.
+
+"And is he married?"
+
+"No, Sheba, he is not married," the trader vouched....
+
+
+II
+
+The girl in her said: "Go back.  They will think you are seeking love.
+They will think that with your white teeth, your sloe-black eyes, your
+color of fine bronze, your body, lithe and sleek and graceful as a
+cat's, you want love from the king of the Jews."  And all her face
+flushed at that thought, and she debated whether she should send for
+the captain general of the fighting men and tell him to face his troops
+about and return to her Ethiopia.  But the queen in her rose and said:
+"What care I what they say?  Does Sheba need the love of any lowland
+king, or plead for alliance?  Sheba is Sheba, and what Sheba does is
+Sheba's business."  And the woman of her brooded softly: "I will go on.
+Somewhere there is an answer to all the questions, and if he does n't
+know the answer, perhaps he can help me to find them."
+
+"And perhaps he has questions of his own," she said, "and I can help
+him answer those."  A sad boyhood, she had heard his was, with his
+father David droning psalms in his latter days, busy at his prayers as
+a potter at his lathe, calling for mercy for his own soul....  And his
+mother, the queen, who had once been wife to Uriah the Hittite, a
+strange, mad old woman who walked about the palace, gibbering to
+herself, her face and fingers twisting, all the white beauty that had
+dazzled David upon the roof of the king's house turned now to an
+awesome gray rugosity....  A house of fear, Sheba thought, a house of
+silence, and she understood how Solomon could have become so wise, for
+wisdom comes with the quiet tongue....
+
+Wisdom he had, according to all reporters, but the wisdom she had heard
+about was wisdom of the head and of the body.  Had he wisdom of the
+heart?  Did he understand why one was now quiet as a well, now
+turbulent as the sea?  Did he understand why peace should come in a
+soft blue garment, and suddenly irritation rise in angry red?  Did he
+understand what it was that dragged at the heart so, pulling it, it
+seemed, toward the furtherest star?  And could he resolve her what she
+was to do with herself?  Govern she must and govern wisely, but outside
+of that was she always to be so lonely--she who was so young and strong
+and beautiful?  The slave girl with the fatherless baby had more than
+she, the queen.  The housewife grinding the family corn.  Each could
+escape into some one else, had a refuge--all but Sheba, the queen....
+
+"I must go on."
+
+And so her great and gorgeous train went on through the desert, crunch
+of camels' pads, shuffle of marching men, thud of lumbering elephants,
+screaming of peacocks, chattering of apes....  They passed the
+shimmering sands, and came to the black high rocks.  They passed
+sluggish Nile, and came to the roaring cataracts.  They came to the
+city of hawks and the city of Venus and the city of sacred crocodiles.
+They came to Thebes with its gigantic figures, each of a single stone.
+They came into the desert again, steering at night by the stars as
+mariners do.  They came to the great Lake Moeris, which the Egyptians
+control by locks.  They came to Memphis.  They passed the giant
+labyrinth.  They passed the three great pyramids.  They passed the
+Sphinx.  They came to the Great Delta.  They crossed to Ais.  They came
+to Joppa.  They wended toward Jerusalem in the cool of the dawn....
+
+
+III
+
+She was in no wise impressed, somehow, by his ceremonial officers.
+They lacked dignity and were familiar.  Nor did Solomon's great
+captains please her.  They were not fighters; they were strategists.
+They played with companies as the Persians played chess with pawns.
+Her own men were her ideal of soldiers, copper-colored, muscled like
+panthers; they would crash into an opposing army like their native
+lightning, or they would die doggedly, their backs to the wall, their
+heads broken, the blood streaming into their eyes....  Nor did all the
+magnificence of the king's house please her....  There was too much,
+too quickly acquired, and jumbled, no composition.  The Egyptians had
+more magnificent things, and grouped them better.  Her eyes flickered
+from the hall to the pale young king on his throne.  Beside him,
+standing, was Nathan, the principal officer, and the king's friend, a
+great frame of a man, fanatical.  And there was silence.
+
+"I am Balkis, Queen of Sheba," she said and threw back her veil.
+Solomon cast an uneasy glance at the prophet by his side.
+
+"She is come to prove you with hard questions," Nathan spoke.
+
+For an instant Balkis all but laughed.  Behind her stood her fighting
+men, in exact ranks, rather contemptuous.  Around the hall the men of
+Judah and Israel fluttered.  Winked at, nudged one another.  "From
+Abyssinia she comes, to ask him questions.  See what a king we have!  A
+great people, we!"  It was so like a showman with a marvel to exhibit!
+"Ask him, ask him anything you like.  Go on.  Ask him."  The cadaverous
+prophet!  The white, young king.  A swift stab of pathos went into
+Sheba's heart.  Poor lad!  Poor king!  Poor mummer!
+
+She smiled in the corner of her veil.  She was supposed to ask
+questions, he to answer them.  Well, let the mummery go on!
+
+"O King," her voice rang out, "what is sweeter than honey?"
+
+"The love of pious children."
+
+"O King, what is sharper than poison?"
+
+"The tongue."
+
+"O King, what is the pleasantest of days?"
+
+"The day of profit on merchandise."
+
+"O King, what is the debt the most stubborn debtor denies not?"
+
+"The debt is death."
+
+"O King, what is death in life?"
+
+"It is poverty."
+
+"O King, what is the disease that may not be healed?"
+
+"It is evil nature."
+
+She was rather ashamed for herself and for him, and her great
+Ethiopians were puzzled.  But it was so evident that the poor white
+king's hold on his people was this trick of wisdom.  She must help him.
+She remembered quickly what history she knew of his folk.
+
+"O King," she asked, "what woman was born of man alone?"
+
+"Eve was born of Adam."
+
+"O King, what spot of lowland is it upon which the sun shone once, but
+will never again shine until judgment-day?"
+
+"The bottom of the Red Sea, which clave asunder for Moses.  Then the
+sun shone on the bottom and will never again shine until judgment-day."
+
+"O King, what thing was it whose first state was wood and whose last
+life?"
+
+"The rod of Aaron, which became a writhing serpent."
+
+She spread her slim copper hands, she bowed her sleek black head, as in
+homage.
+
+"It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of
+thy wisdom.
+
+"Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came and mine eyes had seen
+it, and behold the half was not told me; thy wisdom and prosperity
+exceedeth the fame which I heard.
+
+"Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants which stand
+continually before thee and that hear thy wisdom!"
+
+And all through the king's hall went the flutter of his subjects: "Did
+n't I tell you?  Did n't we say so?  A fine king we 've got.  All the
+way from Abyssinia she came to prove him.  And he answered her
+everything.  A great king!  A fine king!  Make no mistake!"
+
+She moved toward the troubled young king with a smile.
+
+"I would now commune with you on what is in my heart, great Solomon.
+Let us commune alone."
+
+His eyes probed her.  He saw her kindliness to him.  A fleeting little
+smile answered her smile.  He rose to meet her.  The giant prophet
+caught him by the wrist.
+
+"My son, attend unto my wisdom," he whispered fiercely....
+
+"The lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is
+smoother than oil.
+
+"But her end is bitter as wormwood--"
+
+She caught his whispered words, and her proud head went up, her
+sloe-black eyes flashed.
+
+"I am Balkis, Queen of Sheba."
+
+For an instant they regarded each other with hatred in their eyes.
+Sheba turned.
+
+"Men," she called to her bodyguard.
+
+The slim brown Ethiopes tensed their statue-like pose.  There was a
+_swish_ as the short Abyssinian swords came from the oxhide scabbards.
+
+"But I said nothing of you, great Balkis," Nathan suddenly fawned.  "I
+spoke only of bad women.  You are a good woman, Balkis, a virtuous
+woman.  And a virtuous woman is like a crown, great Balkis, of gold,
+yea of fine gold--"
+
+"So!"
+
+
+IV
+
+They went out alone into the garden of the figs and pomegranates.  The
+bright sun of early noon came down like a shower of gold.  The doves
+made their faint thunder.  The locust span his tiny wheel.  From afar
+off, where the temple was a-building, came the clink of hammer on
+stone, the thud of ax on wood, the yo-hoing, the grunts, the curses of
+the workmen as they hoisted a beam into place....  And Solomon was shy
+as a girl....
+
+"You are wondering why I came," Balkis said.  "Will you sit down with
+me?"  They sat under a great cedar-tree.  The pigeons thundered.  The
+bees droned among the apricots.  The lizard flashed upon the wall.  "I
+wonder myself....  But you can tell me, Solomon.  You are so wise."
+
+"Am I?"  There was a little note of bitterness in his voice.
+
+"Are n't you?"
+
+"I don't know," he said.  "I--I don't know."
+
+"But all the questions that are put, you answer them.  All the matters
+of judgment you pass on.  Of course you are wise, Solomon."
+
+"It is easy, Balkis, very easy, that sort of wisdom, for Nathan, as far
+back as I can remember, has been dinning precepts and examples into my
+ears.  And at times, when things are difficult, comes a little
+inspiration, like a little unpremeditated bar on a musician's psaltery.
+And the tricks of reading a riddle are no more than the mason's tricks
+of arranging stones.  If the clouds be full of rain, they empty
+themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south or
+toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall
+be.  And if that is wisdom, then I have wisdom.  But I know not what is
+the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her
+that is with child."
+
+"Poor Solomon!"
+
+"O Balkis, I wanted to go out with the young men, and to understand
+what they all understand and I do not understand: the way of an eagle
+in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; to hunt and fish with
+them and know the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.  But I never
+could, Balkis, for while still a boy Nathan made of me a man, an old
+wise man.  Woe to thee, O land, he prophesied, when thy king is a
+child, and thy princes eat in the morning!  So I 've always been a man,
+Balkis, a wise old man."
+
+"Dear, poor Solomon!  Never were young."
+
+"Never, dear Balkis, never.  I must never be young, never do a wild
+boyish thing.  Dead flies cause the ointment of an apothecary to send
+forth a stinking savor; so doth a little folly him that is in
+reputation for wisdom and honor.  O Balkis, the long wise days!"
+
+"Poor Solomon!  Poor dear Solomon!"
+
+"O Balkis," he cried suddenly, "you came from afar to hear my wisdom,
+and you heard a little mouse-like noise.  And you wanted to commune
+with me on what was in your heart, and I 've shown you my own heart,
+that is like a troubled pool.  Madness is in my heart while I live, and
+after that I go to the dead.  O Balkis, all is vanity and vexation of
+spirit."
+
+"Hush! hush dear Solomon!"
+
+And very suddenly his body broke in sobs, and his dark head fell on her
+leaning shoulder.  There was a mist in her Arab eyes as she held him,
+as she patted him:
+
+"Hush, dear Solomon!"
+
+
+V
+
+And in the dusk of day, when the master masons and their helpers had
+gone, he brought her to the temple he was building to his god, the
+great temple that Hiram, the trader king of Tyre, was embellishing for
+the reward of twenty cities in the land of Galilee.  And Balkis's eyes
+flashed with anger at the cunning of the Phoenician king.  It was such
+a shame to take advantage of the boy!  Poor wise-foolish king!  He was
+like a child showing his toys.
+
+"See these brass bases, Balkis, with the borders of lions and oxen and
+cherubim.  And the brazen wheels at each base.  They say there are
+cunning brass-workers in India, but surely there is no more beautiful
+work than this.  Surely they cannot beat this."
+
+"Of course not, my dearest.  Of course not."
+
+"And come with me, Balkis, to where the watchmen are, and I will show
+you marvels such as you never saw before: an altar of gold and a table
+of gold and ten candlesticks of pure gold with the flowers and the
+lamps and the tongs of gold; and bowls and snuffers and basins and the
+spoons and the censers of pure gold.  Come."
+
+They went toward the king's house.  On the way Solomon stopped suddenly
+and looked at his temple.
+
+"O Balkis," he asked, "you have come through Egypt.  How much bigger is
+my temple than the pyramids and labyrinth?  I 've heard so much of
+them."
+
+"Bigger?"
+
+"Yes, how much bigger?"
+
+She looked at the little building, twenty cubits broad, sixty cubits
+long.  Twelve paces one way, forty another.  For an instant laughter
+bubbled in her, but gave way to pathos, and her sloe-black eyes were
+wet again.  O poor lad!
+
+"Is it very much bigger than the pyramids, Balkis?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Oh, lots bigger.  Much."
+
+"Why, Balkis, you are crying.  Are you lonely?"
+
+"Yes, a little homesick," she lied again.
+
+He came toward her and kissed her, in kindness, but the touch of lips
+fired, startled them both, sent their blood pounding in the soft Syrian
+gloom.
+
+"O Balkis!" his voice trembled.  "O Balkis!"
+
+"Solomon!" she uttered softly.  "Dear Solomon!"
+
+
+VI
+
+Around the king's house the little winds of springtime hovered, the
+little moon of May was in the air.  Came the rustle of the grasses, and
+the minor of the frogs, and the barking of cub foxes.  All the
+constellations hung in a cloud and the sickled moon was in the
+west--stars and moon and purple night sky, like some rude mosaic.  And
+from the king's room came the pale gold of candles and the murmur of
+voices in exaltation.  And beneath the king's casement Nathan writhed
+in fear and anger and pain.
+
+"O Balkis," came Solomon's voice, "you are wonderful.  You are like a
+company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
+
+"Your cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, your neck with chains of
+gold."
+
+"O Solomon," her voice half whispered, half chanted, "a bundle of myrrh
+are you unto me.  My well beloved!  He shall lie all night betwixt my
+breasts.
+
+"My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of
+Engadi."
+
+"Balkis, you are fair, my beloved; behold, you are fair, you have
+dove's eyes ... fair, yea, pleasant...."
+
+"As the apple-trees among the trees of the wood, Solomon, so are you
+among the sons of man.  I sat down under your shadow with great
+delight, and your fruit was sweet to my taste.  O dear Solomon, your
+eyes are closing.  You are drowsy.  Sleep, heart.  O ye daughters of
+Jerusalem, I charge you by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that
+ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please."
+
+"I am not sleepy, Balkis; I am only thinking.  O beloved, if we could
+only go away from here.  Go away together--rise up, my love, my fair
+one, and come away.
+
+"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
+
+"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is
+come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
+
+"The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the
+tender grape give a good smell.  Arise my love, my fair one and come
+away."
+
+"O Solomon, if you only would," came Balkis's voice, pleading.
+"Listen, my beloved.  In Africa I have a great kingdom, and it could be
+greater did I want it so.  It is on a high mountain and its
+fortifications are the lightnings on the hills.  And from the hills my
+men can sweep down on all Africa.  And there is reverence for me from
+the giant Ethiops and from the pygmies of the warm forests.  Come with
+me, Solomon, come with me to a cooler, fairer kingdom.  In the lowlands
+there are vineyards, and the vines flourish, and the tender grapes
+appear, and the pomegranates put forth; there will I give thee my loves.
+
+"And the mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of
+pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my
+beloved.
+
+"O Solomon, come to Africa.  Come to Africa with Sheba."
+
+"O Balkis, what of my people, my poor people?"
+
+"They can come, too, Solomon.  There is welcome for them.  They crossed
+the Red Sea once; they can cross it again."
+
+"But my temple, Balkis?"
+
+"O Solomon, listen.  I will set the Abyssinian millions against the
+Pharaoh of Egypt, and they will make Egypt a waste land, as they did
+once before.  And they will bring back the Egyptians in bondage, and
+the Egyptians will build you a temple, Solomon, a temple worthy of you,
+for the Egyptians are cunning builders.  They will exceed their
+pyramids.  For you I will conquer Egypt, Solomon.
+
+"O Balkis, you are beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem.  But you
+are terrible, Balkis, terrible as an army with banners."
+
+"That is nothing, Solomon.  That is the smallest gage of love.  O
+Solomon, I have found something in my heart.  I have found love.  Many
+waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown love; if a man
+would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be
+contemned.
+
+"Come with me, Solomon.  Make haste, my beloved.  Be like to a roe or a
+young hart on the mountains of spices.  Come to Africa."
+
+He arose and paced the floor.  Without, Nathan could hear the troubled
+footsteps.
+
+"I am afraid, Balkis.  I am afraid."
+
+"Of what, dearest one?"
+
+"Afraid, just, Balkis.  Afraid of Nathan, afraid of the new strange
+land.  Afraid for the temple.  Afraid of God."
+
+"Afraid?  Do not be afraid, Solomon.  Awake, O north wind," she
+chanted, "and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices
+thereof may flow out.  Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his
+pleasant fruits."
+
+Solomon stood by the window in distress, eager, afraid.
+
+"Hiram, King of Tyre, will be angry."
+
+"The King of Tyre," Sheba laughed, "will not be angry with me.  Hiram
+is shrewd.  He is a trader, not a fighting man."
+
+"Are you sure, Sheba?"
+
+"Yes, certain."
+
+"Then I will--then I will--"
+
+The voice of Nathan rose under him in an angry whisper:
+
+"There was a young man void of understanding, ... and there met him a
+woman subtle of heart.
+
+"And she caught him and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto
+him:
+
+"'I have peace offerings with me....
+
+"'I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works,
+with fine linen of Egypt.
+
+"'I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon....'
+
+"With her fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of
+her lips she forced him.
+
+"He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as
+a fool to the correction of the stocks.
+
+"Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare,
+and knoweth not it is for his life...."
+
+"O Balkis, do you hear anything?  Do you hear anything without the
+window?  Do you hear a hissing as of a serpent aroused?"
+
+"I hear nothing, Solomon.  I hear nothing but the little murmur of the
+trees.  Come from the window.  Come over here and kiss me with the
+kisses of your mouth, for your love is better than wine.  Put your left
+hand under my head, Solomon, and let your right embrace me--"
+
+"Don't you hear anything, Balkis?  Are you sure?"
+
+"There is nothing, Solomon, O white and ruddy, O chiefest among ten
+thousand."
+
+"No, there is nothing.  I thought for a moment--"
+
+Again the voice of Nathan came like the strokes of a sword:
+
+"... O King, attend to the words of my mouth.
+
+"Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths.
+
+"For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been
+slain by her.
+
+"Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."
+
+"Oh!" went a long shudder from the king.
+
+"What is it, Solomon?  Does anything affright you?"
+
+"No, no, Balkis."
+
+"Then come over to me, Solomon.  Come where I can see your face.  Your
+countenance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.  Come."
+
+"Remember your father, David," came the voice beneath the window, "son
+of Jesse, turned from wisdom.  Remember how his chiefest joy, Absalom
+his son, died.  Remember how he stood against God, the prophet of the
+Lord, and the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even
+to the time appointed, three days' time; and there died of the people
+from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.
+
+"And the angel of the Lord stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to
+destroy it....  Remember!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"What is it, dearest?  What is wrong?  Have I done anything to offend
+you, to hurt you?"
+
+"Remember Samson, judge of Israel, and how he loved a woman in the
+valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah, and he told her all his heart.
+
+"And remember his end, how the Lord was departed from him, and the
+Philistines took him and put out his eyes--"
+
+"O-o-o-o-h!"
+
+"--and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass--"
+
+"A-a-a-a-h!"
+
+"Solomon, dearest Solomon, why do you cry?"
+
+"--and he did grind in the prison house ... and make them sport...."
+
+With a loud cry the young king burst from the room and fled down the
+corridors, his, feet pattering like the feet of foxes on the run, his
+heart crying out in sudden terror.  "Where are you going, Solomon?
+Where are you gone?" came the voice of the young queen.  "O head of
+most fine gold, O eyes of doves, O cheeks as a bed of spices, whither
+are you gone?  O lips like lilies, O hands as gold rings, why do you
+leave me?"  So all night long she cried, and wandered aimlessly.  "You
+called me your sister, your spouse, your love, your dove, your
+undefiled," she wept piteously, "and now you are gone."  She went
+through the garden, while Nathan crouched in the undergrowth.  "You
+were like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with
+all the powders of the merchant, and now you are gone."  She wandered
+through the dark streets.  "O locks that are curly and black as a
+raven, where are you now?"  And the dawn broke and the shadows fled
+away, and still she cried: "O Solomon, where are you, Solomon?  Make
+haste, my beloved!"  But he never came.  "Saw ye him whom my soul
+loveth?" she asked the watchman.  But they drove her away.  "O ye
+daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him, that I am sick
+of love..."  But he never came.
+
+
+VII
+
+Without, there were the grunts of her men as they strapped the packs of
+the elephants, the snarl of camels as they rose to their pads and
+turned to bite at their loads, the shuffle of the troops as they lined
+for the long night march, the quick gruff orders of the captains, the
+canter of horses.  Within, Sheba stood very erect in the great hall.
+The poor white king writhed on his throne.  Nathan stood by his side,
+erect and afraid.
+
+"And I said--" Sheba's voice was quiet--"oh, you who were as my
+brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find you
+without, I would kiss you, I would not be despised.
+
+"For I thought I was set as a seal upon your arm, and that your love
+was as strong as death.
+
+"I rose and went about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I
+sought you, whom I thought my soul loved, but I found you not.
+
+"The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they
+wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veils from me--
+
+"Me, Sheba!"  Her eyes flashed.  Solomon quailed in his seat.  The
+prophet made a propitiatory gesture.
+
+"Oh, do not fear, Nathan."  Sheba smiled.  "I came not to conquer, but
+to find wisdom.  I found it."
+
+She paused an instant.
+
+"Before I go, let me give you, Solomon, called the wise, some wisdom of
+the heart.  And you, Nathan the prophet, let me prophesy.  You might
+have had one woman, Solomon, to love you all your life, but the day
+will come when you will seek my face among a thousand women, and never
+have me.  You might have a temple that would have made the pyramids
+seem like outhouses, but one day your temple will be a little broken
+wall.  And your people might have been the conquerors of Africa, but
+one day they will be helots in the Babylonian land.  You have the
+wisdom of the shrewd and pious, Solomon, that can never meet the
+generous hand with the grateful heart."
+
+She turned and swept out of the hall.  At the gates she stopped and
+bowed mockingly.
+
+"O King, live forever!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+All afternoon the east wind had been blowing, cold, bitter as aloes,
+and a great cloud-bank raced after the sun westward, until only a
+little space in the western horizon was clear where the sun went down.
+The voices of the land were stilled, the minute thunder of the pigeons,
+the whirring of crickets.  Nor had the leaves of the trees their lively
+murmur, but stood fast and flat, like set sails.  One could hardly
+believe that the winter was past and summer coming, for all was dreary,
+dreary....
+
+Against the great red mushroom of the setting sun, the last of the
+homing caravan of Sheba showed.  In the mind's eyes of the young king
+and the old prophet as they stood by the unbeauty of stone and brick
+and gray mortar that was the unfinished temple, they could see the
+angry camels, the lumbering elephants, the dancing horses, the swinging
+men, and the brown comeliness of the young queen's handmaidens, the
+straight backs of her fighting men.  And the wind from the east blew
+through the land, blew through the heart of Solomon....  In a minute
+now they would disappear over the desert's edge.  All seemed somehow
+tragical, like sailors leaving a great stricken ship, or glory passing
+from the land of its abiding....
+
+"Oh, Nathan," pleaded the young king, "tell me she lied.  Tell me I
+shall not have a thousand women and be a bitter, loose old man."
+
+"O King, you shall find a virtuous woman.  And her price will be far
+above rubies."
+
+"Will she be as kind as Sheba was?"
+
+"She will arise while it is yet night, and give meat to her household,
+and a portion to her maidens....  She will consider a field and buy it:
+with the fruit of her hands she will plant a vineyard."
+
+"Will she be as well-favored, as beautiful as--as Sheba was?"
+
+"Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the
+Lord, she shall be praised."
+
+"I suppose so.  I suppose--you are right, Nathan, but--"  The last of
+the caravan disappeared over the edge of the desert, and as though it
+were accompanying them, being a friend to them, the sun disappeared,
+too.  A great coldness and darkness and dreariness came over the land,
+so that Solomon looked up in surprise.  There was no moon....
+
+
+
+
+THE PARLIAMENT AT THEBES
+
+All around us, now, is the occult night of Egypt, and we sense that we
+are in a place we have known in dreams and desires, and perhaps seen a
+drawing of in some childhood's book.  Before us we sense--we do not
+see, so little light does the moon behind the rolling clouds give
+us--an immensity of sand.  In some places there are little hills; and
+in others billows as of the sea, and here a rude terrace, and there a
+minute cliff.  Everywhere is the sand; live sand, not dead.  And
+westward, we know, it rolls onward like the sea, through the width of
+Africa, through the Sahara, reaches Timbuktu, the secret city, and the
+jungle takes up the land, and rolls to the Gold Coast, where the
+Atlantic booms in great, curling surf.
+
+And south of us is Africa, too, the crags of Abyssinia, the great belt
+of Rhodesia, and the plains where Kaffirs dig for diamonds, and the
+great veldts the Boers have tamed, and Table Mountain, that old
+navigators know, and the cape they have called Good Hope.  And
+southward and eastward is the pearly haze of Madagascar.
+
+And north of us the desert slopes away to where Alexandria was, to
+where the still Mediterranean is, which has no tides, and Tyre and
+Sidon flourished, that now are dead; and Carthage of the Phoenicians
+was, whence black Hannibal set forth against the eagles of Rome--and
+was conquered and yet lives, so great his name is.  And here was the
+empire of the Moors, the slim bronze people who struck Spain in a great
+shattering wave, and from whom Charlemagne got glory in battle.
+
+All these are dead now, and the moon shines over dead cities, dead
+heroes, and great empires that are dead, and buried under shifting
+silver sands.  But the land we are in is not dead; eternal Africa,
+eternal Egypt.
+
+And where we are now, it is old, the events of history being like the
+trivialities of a summer day.  We sense that Egypt is older than
+Mohammed, whose revelation is law there now, and older than the Little
+Lord who fled hither from Palestine with Joseph and Mary, older than
+the painted kings who sleep in pyramids; older than the pyramids
+themselves; older than the Hebrews who helped build them; older than
+Moses, who revolted and used black magic against the Pharaoh of his
+time; older than the tradition of yellow shaven priests; older than
+Isis and Osiris whom they worshiped with polished ritual--older, and
+younger, than this; eternal.
+
+Above our heads now there is an occasional beam of the moon, and in
+front of us the plain of sand that extends to the little hillocks and
+minute cliffs the wind has made.  And back of us is the broad and
+shallow Nile, where we hear an occasional lap of a little wave, and a
+splash as of some small fish jumping.  And here and there are isolated
+palm-trees.
+
+And there are no men, anywhere, but there is a sense of men.  We know
+there are men in the cities to the north of us, men and women dancing
+in great blazing hotels, men on great liners going eastward through the
+canal De Lesseps made, men south of us at camp fires in the jungle, men
+west of us on caravans to Timbuktu.  But here, and near here, men there
+are none.
+
+There is a pocket of clearness in the clouds for a second and the moon
+shines through, and we see on the plain before us such assembly of life
+as only Noah saw when he took the creatures of the world in seven by
+seven and two by two, on board his great ship.  In a great orderly
+gathering they are there, patient, silent.  The bears are there, the
+brown bear, and the little black bear.  And the moorland ponies, and
+the deer are there, great elks with horns like sails, and the little
+deer of parks, and they of the cat tribe, with sleek furs and green
+eyes, and the fox with his brush, and the lanky, wide-eyed hare, and
+the rabbit children do be loving.  They are all gathered there.
+
+And the kine of the field are there, patient, stupid-looking.  And the
+great monster of the river, the hippopotamus, and the armored creature
+that has the horn on its nose.  And the last of the buffaloes.  And the
+great springing thing of Australia that carries its young in a pouch,
+it is there.  And the solemn sheep.
+
+And back of that is an infinity of little creatures, the furry little
+creatures of the woods, who run when approached.  They are there.  All,
+all are silent, patient, a little puzzled, one fancies.
+
+In front of this gathering, forward and a little apart, is a manner of
+deputation.  The lion, who pads around a little, and in whose eyes
+there is anger.  The great black and amber tiger, who is still but for
+the significant movement of the immense tail, and the elephant, that
+seems like some gigantic carven thing.  And the crocodile lies in the
+sand, like some black sea-beaten log.  And the polar bear is there with
+black dots for eyes.  And the horse is still as in a stall.  And next
+to the elephant the dog sits.
+
+And they are all there, gathered for some occult reason, in the night
+of Egypt, under the thin twilight of the clouded moon.
+
+And another beam of moonlight comes, and we see that the Angel of the
+Lord has appeared somewhence and stands before them.
+
+As we see the Angel of the Lord, one of the illusions of our childhood
+vanishes.  He is not a shining figure armed with terror and majesty.
+True, he has wings and a sword and a white robe, and is of stature
+above mortal.  But, on the other hand, he has a great red beard, and
+his fingers are gnarled.  There is something shy in his appearance, and
+kindly.  And about him there is something of disappointment.  One gets
+the impression that once he was a very great angel indeed, but in
+latter centuries he has drifted into a sort of back-water.
+
+If he were a man and not an angel, with his red beard and gnarled
+fingers and shy ways, he might be an old-fashioned farmer who cared
+more for his land than for the price of corn, and who would allow no
+tractors or mechanical appliances on his place, still having faith in
+the firm hands of workmen, and the strength and canniness of horses.
+He is evidently embarrassed, and not quite at home, and it is easily
+seen that he is more accustomed to looking at the crack in a horse's
+frog, and tending sick ewes, and herding homeless dogs, than facing
+emotional tension such as seems to be present.
+
+He comes forward shyly, his brow wrinkled in an embarrassed smile.  And
+the dog smiles back at him, opening a laughing mouth and wagging its
+tail.  And the horse gives a little whinny.  But the rest are silent.
+The elephant regarding him with a sort of kindly contempt, and the
+crocodile watching him with ophidian distrust.  But the lion is warm
+with anger and the tiger dangerously cold with it.  The great white
+bear is serious.
+
+The Angel of the Lord speaks.  His voice is soft and his speech
+halting.  And we have a sudden chill of horror as we recognize his
+accent as Irish.  Not quite Southern Irish, and not distinguishably
+Northern Irish--neutral Irish.
+
+"Well, now, this is an unusual thing, an out-of-the-way thing, I might
+say....  I ... I hope I see you all well?"
+
+There is a rustle of the little creatures back of the deputation.  And
+in the circle before the angel the dog is wagging his tail, and the
+horse throwing up his head.  But silence.
+
+"I take it there is something on all your minds, so!  Well, let you
+speak up, now, and let me hear what it is.  It isn't the weather:
+that's elegant.  And it can't be the crops.  I was talking to the Angel
+of the Crops last night, and devil a better season has he seen since
+the night of the big wind."
+
+He gets no answer.
+
+"It's queer and shy you 've got all of a sudden.  And why should you be
+shy with me?  Sure there 's never anything come between us since I was
+put over you.  And have n't I always been your friend?  Let one of you
+speak up, now.  How about yourself?"  He turns to the lion.  "The king
+of beasts, they call you.  Let you be speaking, now, for the crowd."
+
+All around us now is the occult night of Egypt.  Live sand and the
+little wind among the hillocks, and back of us the antique Nile.  Here
+first was magic.  And here first the half-gods were worshiped under the
+guise of beasts; of the cat and of the crocodile, and of others.  And
+here is the monument of the half-god, the Sphinx, that is woman and
+animal, beauty and terror.
+
+And as we listen, the beasts speak, and to our human mechanics the deep
+vibrations are translated into human sounds, and the voice of the lion
+is as the voice of some great one of our race speaking in anger.  And
+in the deep rumble we can hear thunder:
+
+"In the place where I live by the great lake there is lately come a
+man."  So the lion!  "He is a trading man.  His legs are bandy.  He is
+rarely shaven.  In the morning his eyes are bleary.  He blinks at the
+green light of dawn.
+
+"And in the green glade where he is come he has builded a house.  He
+has littered the ground with mangled boughs of trees, with papers, with
+tin cans which are emptied of his food.  And the winds cannot clean
+that place, nor the rains wash the obscenity away.
+
+"And all day long this man sits behind his counter in the little shop
+and barters with the black man, giving knives and beads and cloth for
+the skins of the animals whom it is allotted to the black man to kill.
+And giving him white man's liquor.
+
+"And the white man drinks his own liquor, and when his heart is high
+with it, he takes his rifle and comes to seek me--for he has to seek
+me; I and all the clean things of the land avoid him, so little kin is
+he to us.
+
+"And if he kills me for his sport, my lioness will come and he will
+kill her, too, and what shall become of our little tawny cubs?
+
+"Why should this man come into our clean land, and make unbeautiful the
+dells, and stalk me that he may boast to other drinking men: 'I have
+killed the king of beasts'?"
+
+"Ay!  Ay!"  The angel is disturbed.  "He does make the place look bad.
+And true for you, he does go after you.  I understand.  I understand
+fully, but--"
+
+And now the tiger has arisen, and his speech comes sibilant, with a
+little snarl:
+
+"They who come up the Hooghly are not unshaved but clean.  They are
+precise, languid men.  They come for gain in the country.  They do not
+barter in shops, but gain comes to them.  They govern, and for being
+governed the brown men of India pay tribute and tax.
+
+"And when the languid men from over the sea grow tired of governing,
+they go out to seek adventure.  They send out the brown Indian men on
+foot to rouse me from the jungle sleep.  And they follow with guns on
+our brother the elephant, and when I am driven into the open, and stand
+there dazed with the sun, they shoot at me from the back of our brother
+the elephant.
+
+"And was it for this I was made, given great emerald eyes, given amber
+skin with great black stripes, given silken muscles, and claws like
+knives, to be driven out of my warm green jungle into the blinding sun,
+and be killed by languid men?"
+
+"Well, now, you know what they say; if they did n't kill you, you 'd
+kill them."
+
+"How many have I killed, except in defense?  Is it sport for me to
+leave the cool, moonlit glades, and come to the hot cities to kill men?
+If I want fighting, are there not the wild boar and my brother the
+elephant?  And if I want food, is man as succulent as the young kid?"
+
+"Ay, there 's a lot in that.  And what is your complaint?"  He turned
+to the great carven elephant.
+
+"I am the wisest, the strongest, the most dignified of all.  I live on
+the shoots of young trees, and raid sometimes the crops, but I kill
+nothing except in terror or defense.  And once they sought me out in
+the secret places for great ivory teeth, and there was great danger.
+And it was either kill or be killed.
+
+"And now they trap me with cunning.  Now there are helot elephants
+trained to decoy the brethren of the warm woods, and traps to hold us.
+And when they have made us fast they starve us cruelly.  And they bring
+us across waters and exhibit us, and the clown and the yokel pay their
+copper pennies to gaze at the wise and strong in captivity.  And some
+greasy man pouches the wages of our prison.  Was it for this we were
+made wise and kindly and strong?"
+
+The angel is embarrassed.  He looks right and left.  He turns in relief
+to the great white bear:
+
+"Sure, now, what complaint can you have?  There 's nobody going to
+shoot at you from the back of the elephant.  And there's no man going
+to open a shop where you are.  Begor, 't is few customers he 'd have
+barring the sea-gulls.  And whenever you get killed, 't is your own
+fault.  It's your curiosity brings you to where they can get a shot at
+you.  If you 'd stick around your icebergs you 'd be better off.  Sure,
+you lead the life of a lord's lady.  What brings you here at all?"
+
+"I come for the little seals, and our sister the whale.  They cannot
+walk.  And they are in great trouble."
+
+"I know.  I know.  Sure, my heart's just in chains for them."
+
+"The seals huddle on the rocks with their young.  They huddle and
+tremble, and each sinister boat in the Arctic seas is a menace.  And
+the seas are wide, and the patrols are few."
+
+"I know.  I know."
+
+"The black boats come, and the men with rifles."
+
+"Ah, now, don't be talking!  Don't I know!"
+
+"And our sister the whale skulks in black seas--she who once greeted
+the sun in the morning.  And now seldom appears--who once loved to bask
+like a cat.  She is haunted in her own ocean until she cannot show her
+steaming fountains.  And as a people, she is a slender people, and will
+soon die."
+
+"A great and terrible loss, surely.  Sure, I 'm trying to forget, and
+you 're reminding me.  And you?"
+
+"I have no complaint," uttered the crocodile.  "They rarely kill me
+with guns.  They seldom capture me.  And there are always small black
+children bathing in the Nile.  And boats get upset often.  I have no
+complaint," he leered.
+
+"Do you know--" the angel is severe--"I never liked you.  And what use
+you are on this earth is more than I can see.  Do you know," he said,
+"I 've half a mind to hoof you back into the river.  I have so.  Now,
+here 's one has a complaint."  He turned to the horse.  But the horse
+shook its head.
+
+"No complaint, and you the hardest-worked of them all!  And the rest of
+these lazy devils doing nothing but lolling around in the sun.  And
+you, my darling?"
+
+The dog uttered a joyous bark.
+
+"You have no complaints, either."
+
+"Except," the dog pleaded, "that they should n't muzzle me in the heat
+of the day."
+
+"Well, now, boys--" the angel was awkward with his hands--"I take it
+you 've all got a complaint to make against man.  You object, I infer,
+to his shooting at you with guns, except, as he is entitled to, in
+self-defense.  And I take it our friend the elephant also objects to
+being exhibited.  On the whole, you object to the present attitude of
+man.  Now, what do you want me to do?"
+
+"We want you," the lion said, "to have God make man stop attacking us."
+
+"Well, now--" the angel shifts from one foot to the other--"well, now,
+you 've touched on a very delicate situation.  On all subjects, of
+course, you 'll find God kind--I might say, to a degree.  But the
+subject of Man is just a wee bit touchy.
+
+"God, you know, is very much interested in Man.  He thinks a lot of
+man, and He is very much inclined to let man have his own way.
+
+"So whether He 'd listen to a complaint against man or not, I don't
+rightly know.  Personally, between me and you, I think it might be
+dangerous to put it that way.
+
+"But I 'll tell you what I 'll do.  I 'll wait until some fine day when
+they tell me He 's in good humor, when He's pleased about Man having
+thought out some new fine scheme, or made a discovery, and then I 'll
+tackle Him, nice and easy.
+
+"Yes, I 'll take it up some day, and I 'll see what I can do.  I 'm
+sure if I can get Him in a good humor, I can do something.  Will that
+satisfy you?"
+
+"It will not," said the animals.
+
+"Well, then, what do you want me to do?"
+
+"We want you," the tiger's sibilant purr came, "to go from us to God
+now, to-night."
+
+"Och! have sense!  You don't know what you 're asking.  I suppose you
+think I 've only got to knock at the door and ask God to come out and
+talk it over, and offer Him a pinch of snuff, maybe, and ask Him how
+the weather 's agreeing with Him.  Do you know this wee earth is only
+one of a million?  Of course you can't comprehend that, being only
+animals and having no reason."
+
+There is something like a snort from the elephant.  The Angel of the
+Lord ventures a timid glance in that direction, but says nothing.  The
+angel is rather in awe of the elephant, as a mother might be of a
+genius child.  He switches to a different point:
+
+"Besides, I suppose you think there are only a few angels of us in
+it--myself and the Angel of the Changing Seasons, and the Angel of the
+Growing Crops, and the Angel of the Rivers and Streams, and the Angel
+of the Five Oceans.  Well, let me tell you, there's archangels, and
+there's powers and dominions, and cherubim and seraphim, and God knows
+what else.  And there's angels you never heard of: there's the Angel of
+the Progress of Education, and there 's the Angel of Economic
+Conditions, and the Angel of Atomic Energy.  All very clever
+fellows--geniuses, you might say.  And there 's the Angel of Arts and
+Crafts, a sloppy-looking lad I would n't be caught talking to.
+
+"And there 's English angels, all very superior, and Italian angels,
+slick as be-damned; and Russian angels are always sighing and groaning
+and drinking tea; and American angels, brisk lads would convince a
+dying man he was the devil and all for strength and energy.  And me
+nothing but a poor sort of fellow that knows nothing but animals; you
+see, I 'd better be keeping my mouth shut in that kind of assembly.
+
+"I 'll tell you what I will do.  I 'll get through my work early, and
+contrive to hang around the squares and gardens of heaven, and any one
+of these days the Grand Man Himself will be passing by and He 'll see
+the glint of my old red whiskers, and He 'll stop the archangels and
+the powers and dominions, and come over, so kindly He is."
+
+"'Where have you been hiding yourself, Michael John?' He 'll say.  'And
+how's all your care?'
+
+"'They 're fine, Sir.  They 're grand,' I 'll say.  'Sure, 't is to the
+queen's taste they are--barring a wee bit of trouble that's not worth
+mentioning.'
+
+"'And, sure, what's troubling you, my poor lad?'
+
+"''T is not worth troubling your Deity about.  'T is not so!'
+
+"'Out with it now, Michael John!' Himself will say.
+
+"''T is that my little people, Sir, do be worrying hard that man is
+after them a bit strong, and if Yourself would just direct him to be a
+wee bit easy'--and I 'll tell Him what you all say.
+
+"Is n't that the jewel of a plan?  Is n't that the great scheme
+entirely?"
+
+"We think it's rotten!" champed the crocodile.
+
+"Well, that's all I can do," the angel told them.  "If you 've got a
+better plan--"
+
+"We have decided," the lion rumbled, "that if you could do nothing, we
+could.  We can stalk man as he stalks us.  We will not wait for him to
+come out; we will descend upon him.  We will lie in wait for him in the
+way.  I shall come to the villages with my kind and the spotted
+leopards that purr like the rumbling of drums, and the striped hissing
+snakes; and the rhinoceros shall lumber through the streets, and the
+great river-horse shall no longer avoid his frail boats but seek them."
+
+"And my brother the elephant will crush him beneath his terrible
+knees," the tiger snarled, "and trample his little houses.  And the
+wild boar with tusks like knives will strike at him from the ground.
+And from the jungle I will come forth with the moon, and when dawn
+comes there will be wailing, if any are left to wail, and the small
+winged things of the jungle will assault him night and day, and there
+will be terror through the land."
+
+"And there will be terror through the sea," the white bear prophesied.
+"Our sister the whale will no longer flee but fight, and the sails of
+ships will quiver and the bulwarks give.  And we will push icebergs in
+the paths of iron ships.  The millions and millions of herring and cod
+will help.  And the swordfish will founder the life-boats.  And out of
+the gray-green depths of the sea the devil-fish will arise, his long,
+seeking tentacles over the gunnels--"
+
+"Oh, childer, childer dear!" the angel implored.
+
+"And our cousins the birds will help us," the lion took up the litany.
+"The eagle and the hawk in their strength, and even the little sparrows
+in their number.  They will buffet with wings, they will peck with
+their sharp beaks, the innumerable folk of the air."
+
+"And from the North," the tiger promised, "the wolves will come out
+with their red eyes, their slavering fangs, and the fox will revolt,
+with his teeth sharp as a dog's."
+
+"And the things of the field will revolt," the bear went on, "the
+patient kine, the sheep and goats, and the vibrations of battle will
+put panic on the horse so that he will smash his traces with his hoofs,
+and smash men's heads.  And the turmoil will craze the dog, so that he
+will attack those he loves."
+
+"For God's sake, children dear, will you stop breaking my heart!"
+
+"Death and terror on the land!" prophesied the lion.
+
+"Death and terror on the sea!" promised the great white bear.
+
+"My dears, will you let me put sense at you?  Will you listen to me a
+moment?" the angel pleaded.  "'T is for your own sakes I ask.  Will you
+just listen?
+
+"What will become of you if you do all this?
+
+"Don't you know that man will come against you with all his weapons and
+mechanical contrivances, his poison gas and his torpedoes, and wipe you
+off the face of your own earth?  Childer dear, you have no idea of the
+terrible fellow he is at all.  Myself, angel and all as I am, when I
+see some of those fellows coming hell-for-leather in their motor-cars,
+I leap like a hare out of their way, I do so.  And oftentimes I 'm
+shaking in the legs for hours after it.  I don't mind telling you.  He
+'ll kill you surely, childer dear."
+
+"He 'll kill us anyway," fluted the elephant.  "What matter to-day or
+to-morrow or a century from now?  We die.  What of the Irish elk, with
+horns like banners, so proud in his green pastures?  What of the great
+buffalo, lord of the plains?--where is he?  If we die, let us die
+together, fighting shoulder to shoulder!"
+
+"Besides, maybe it's worse than man you 'd have."
+
+"What is worse than man?"
+
+"Maybe God Himself would come down against you, maybe," the angel's
+voice falls to a sacred whisper; "maybe He will uncover His face!"
+
+There is a movement of awe, or terror among the animals.  The silent
+multitude back of the speakers rustles like leaves.  The lion speaks:
+
+"Even that we will brave, if we cannot have justice."
+
+For a little while they look at one another in awed tension.  The
+animals are frightened, the angel is frightened.  One would think they
+were terrified by their temerity, and were awaiting the avenging
+thunder of God.  The angel plucks up courage.  He gives a little
+nervous laugh.
+
+"Now, here we are, my dear little people, making fools of ourselves as
+usual; letting our feelings run away with us.  You 'd think it was at a
+political meeting you were, with you giving out manifestos and
+ultimatums, and wanting to die.
+
+"Let us get down, now, to facts.  Let us examine what material we have,
+and draw deductions.
+
+"We were all agreed that we are here by the wisdom of God, and being
+here in that wise, are subject to his wishes in every way.  Even old
+Go-by-the-ground--" he looks at the crocodile--"knows that."
+
+"Now, from what I 've heard from the angels who are higher up,--from
+them, let me tell you, that are absolutely on the inside,--God designs
+to make out of man the perfect being.  He intends to combine your
+bravery--" he turns to the lion--"and your wisdom--" to the
+elephant--"with your beauty"; he is addressing the tiger.
+
+"What about me?" champs the crocodile.
+
+"Och, be damned to you!  Man," he goes on didactically, "is essentially
+a creature of progress.  He is the only being that builds houses--"
+
+From the background comes a shrill squeak from the beaver.
+
+"I mean houses with rooms--"
+
+There is the angry droning of bees.
+
+"What I mean is this: houses with fireplaces and pots and pans and what
+not.  None of us will deny," he finishes lamely, "the enormous progress
+of man."
+
+"I deny it," the lion stormed.  "Can I forget the great black armies of
+the South, the glistening men with the silver armlets and the short
+keen spears?  Not even of me were they afraid, those!  Their drums
+resounded through veldt and plain, They asked only of the earth what
+they needed for their good.  And when they hunted they hunted fair.
+They matched their strength against our speed.  And their knowledge
+against our knowledge.  And at night they sang and they danced beneath
+the moon.
+
+"And now they are farm servants to the men who come overseas.  They are
+not clean, as they once were.  Their bodies that once were naked and
+glistening are caked with mud and covered with rags.  And some of them
+are driven into the bowels of the earth, and the sunlight and the
+moonlight they were born to is kept from them.  And they dig diamonds
+for men who are not satisfied with the luster of stars.  And they who
+once fought me in the open with a spear now skulk with a gun."
+
+"I remember an India that was," the tiger snarled, "a land of rajahs
+and temples, of brown dancing girls and men who played little flutes.
+They grew the green sugar-cane, and cotton they might spin on great
+wooden wheels.  And their smiths hammered brass into strange antique
+shapes.  And they worshiped God with singing and dancing in cool
+temples.
+
+"What are the rajahs now, that once were the wonder of the earth, but
+little helot princes?  And the ranees--the cinnamon-colored queens with
+the minute silver bells upon their bud-like toes--but despised native
+women?  Are the bazaars filled with the quaint work of smiths?  No, but
+with the meretricious trinkets of the West.  And black-coated men seek
+to turn them from native immemorial gods.  And the machine that throws
+pictures the mummers make, fights against the music and the dancing and
+the temple bells.
+
+"The beauty I stand for is passing away."
+
+"In Burma, whence I come," said the elephant, "there are jungles deeper
+than the jungle of Africa, or the Indian jungles.  Great mossy trees,
+and painted flowers, and great brown rivers rolling to the sea.  And
+the men there are beautiful as women, and the women beautiful as
+flowers.
+
+"And once they paddled down the great brown river in glistening black
+canoes.  They wore great gaudy sashes and had a flower in their teeth
+or a flower in their hair.  Under the shadow of the great trees they
+paddled.  And when they saw me they made reverence, saying, 'Our lord,
+the elephant!'  On little reeds they made sweet, plaintive music.
+
+"And now the great ancient trees are being cut down, and floated on the
+bosom of the hurt brown rivers.  And the peace of the jungle is
+disturbed with the cough of the motor-boat, and oil is heavy on the
+warm jungle smells.  And the men, beautiful as women, are clothed in
+soiled white garments; the rounded child-like bodies of the brown women
+chafe under a huddle of clothes.  And when I am observed, the white man
+asks, demands, the help of the little brown men to hunt me, to whom
+they once did reverence, and I seem to hear no more sweet, plaintive
+music.
+
+"From the quiet river I have seen the painted barges of the Pharaohs
+move along under the sweeps of the negro slaves.  Color and majesty and
+dignity.  And the shaven priests chanted their litanies at the change
+of the moon.  And from the Sahara the desert tribes brought tribute and
+treasure to Egypt, the men with the white horses and the black tents.
+And the nodding dromedaries and camels and their tinkling bells.  And
+the kings raised their pyramids, and the multitude of men like ants
+listened at sunrise to the great masonic prayer.  And they left the
+Sphinx to denote their mystery.  And Cleopatra, who was Lilith reborn,
+played with Rome for a doll.
+
+"All these things have I seen: the magic of great Moses, and the flight
+of the Little God of Galilee; the perfumed Pharaohs; the sinister
+yellow priests; the gnarled masons at their secret prayers; and
+Cleopatra brown as a berry, magnificent as jewels, venomous as a snake;
+and the sculptor at work on the Sphinx.
+
+"And now tourists unwrap the great kings, and hucksters chaffer where
+once the trains of the prince-merchants of Tyre passed, and we shall
+never see a Cleopatra any more.
+
+"But I am not complaining.  Men do not swim as well as in the elder
+days, nor handle a boat as surely."
+
+"I know nothing of painted Pharaohs," said the great white bear, "nor
+anything of Indian queens.  In the North are neither kings nor masons,
+but day and night and ice, and a little people.  In summer is the great
+sun, white light, and grass that is green for a little, and the thunder
+of breaking bergs, and in winter no sun but the flaming aurora and the
+white illimitable miles!
+
+"And the swarthy little people were happy then.  In the long nights
+they sang, and they bowed to the gods in boulder and stream, and set
+out in the little kayaks on the Arctic seas to hunt the great solemn
+walrus, or they set off in sledges through the pathless wastes.  They
+were a brave people, a healthy people.
+
+"And came the boats hunting our sister the whale, and the whales taught
+the little swarthy people progress, and everywhere now they are cunning
+and degraded and crusted with sin, and a great plague makes them spit
+blood, and waste to nothingness, and die."
+
+They all looked at the horse, but the horse was silent.
+
+"Look back in the folds of your memory," the lion prompted.  "Look back
+well!  Can you not remember the great races in the Roman circus?
+Listen a little!  Can you not hear the trumpets of Agincourt?"
+
+"And you, little brother--" the bear swung his ponderous head toward
+the dog--"was there not a time when you lay before a fire in a
+rush-strewn hall?  And now the houses are too little.  They tell me--I
+do not know.  And did you not once run barking joyously beside man on
+his horse?  And now horses are out of fashion, are they not, little
+comrade?  And the cars are too fast for your short legs."
+
+There is another silence, and the angel looks at them piteously.
+
+"I wish to my God I had some of them clever fellows here could argue
+with you.  I never was much good in an argument, anyway, never having
+had the education.  But let me tell you there 's angels could prove to
+you you 're all wrong.  I wish they 'd come here and talk to you, but I
+don't suppose they 'd care much about us and our wee affairs.  But--but
+how about music," he hazarded, "and poetry?  Ay, and poetry."
+
+"As to music--" the elephant threw up his trunk in a sneer--"what music
+can he make comparable to the birds of summer--the sun going down, and
+each bird with its separate song, blending into a gently-colored
+symphony, and the chime of the waves with it, and the rustle of the
+branches in the sundown breeze?"
+
+"Ay, but poetry."
+
+"It will need poetry," thundered the lion, "more poetry than can be
+ever written, to equalize the making ugly of earth.  The great cliffs
+shamed by mean houses, and the splendid glades ruined that a train may
+pass.  And the mouths of rivers spoiled by the slag of mills.  And
+great noble trees hacked down.  How many an epic to pay for a great
+forest dying, shepherd?  How many a lyric for a tree where little
+trusting birds had their home?"
+
+The angel throws out his hands abruptly.
+
+"You have me," he says.  "You have me!"
+
+He braces with decision, rises to his full height, and suddenly there
+is nobleness.
+
+"Well, which is it to be?" he asked.  "Will you follow my plan, or do
+you insist I go immediately?"
+
+"We insist."
+
+He pauses an instant.
+
+"Very well.  I 'll go," he says.  "I 'll go."
+
+He looks all around the gathering.  In spite of his decision, and his
+bracing, there is a great emotion brewing in him.
+
+"Now, before I go, let me tell some of you something.  Do you,
+Philip--" he turns to the bear--"be getting back North as fast as you
+can.  You poor fellow, you must be murdered with the heat entirely, and
+you with the Arctic furs on.  You 'll catch your death here.  And as
+for you," he warns the crocodile, "don't be obstinate, there 's a good
+fellow!  Keep to the water, and you 'll be all right.  It's only when
+you get out, they can get after you.  And my little friends the
+beavers--where are they?  Childer, can you hear me?"
+
+"But what's all this about?" asks the elephant.
+
+"It's just for fear I 'm not coming back."
+
+"But why aren't you coming back?" the lion growls.
+
+"Och, it's just a notion.  Are the beavers there at all, at all?"
+
+"No, just a moment!"  The tiger is on his feet.  "I want to hear more
+of this.  What do you mean by notion?  You aren't thinking of leaving
+us?"
+
+There is a quick commotion, a little shudder among all the animals in
+the background.
+
+"Well, now--" the angel is embarrassed--"it's a hard errand I have
+before me, and what will be at the end of the chapter no one knows.  I
+to be arguing with the Great Man, and demanding your rights, and He to
+be losing His temper with me--there 's no knowing.  So to be on the
+safe side, I 'll just say good-by to you now.  Many 's the pleasant
+hour we 've known and springtime coming, and many's the little day we
+'ve spent together and winter roaring through the chilly air."
+
+"But He never loses His temper, does he?  He 's always mild."
+
+"Oh, childer dear, ye little know!  You all know the Black Man, and
+when you get the cold wind of his coming you scurry away.  He was an
+angel once, the greatest of them all.  Lucifer, they called him, so I
+'ve heard old angels say, and the Hebrew or something for Him who does
+be bearing light, such a gorgeous angel he was.  But one day he and
+some of his lads began to argue with the Great Man, and before the
+words were half out of their mouths they were tumbling through the blue
+spaces of the stars, condemned to eternal hell-fire.  Sure, you see
+them yourselves on Hallowe'en, and them roaring up and down the world,
+and screeching fit to split the sky."
+
+A moan of terror ran through the massed animals.  The dog raised his
+head and howled.
+
+"And the wee half-god we all know, him with the horns of the goat, that
+does the piping in the valleys of spring--sure, he was an angel once.
+But something went contrary on him, and now he dare n't show his face
+on heaven or earth, but hides in the branches as wild as a squirrel."
+
+And a little shudder of pity arose.
+
+"Ay, and there was others.  There was a crowd of reckless fellows in
+the days before the flood--or after it; I don't know which--and they
+came from heaven to court the daughters of men, such grand women they
+had in those days.  And the Lord God heard of it, and He stood up and
+looked at them, and he said just one word.  They 've never been heard
+of since.  One minute they were there, and the next was emptiness.
+
+"Mind you, I 'm not saying anything like that will happen to me, for
+Himself has always been kindness to me.  It's always 'How are you,
+Michael John?' and 'Don't you ever take a rest at all?' and 'Sometime I
+'ll have to take a day and come down and see yourself and the wee
+ones!'  But just, if I don't come back, don't think I 've taken a
+better job.  Sure, I 'd never desert you, my wee darlings.  It's just
+maybe I 'm getting a wee bit of discipline."
+
+"I think--" the elephant seemed husky in the throat--"your own plan
+might be best--to wait for an opportunity and just suggest."
+
+"Better say nothing at all," growled the lion.
+
+"No, childer dear; I 'd better just go ahead.  I will confess it was
+timid of me not to go in the first place.  It was thinking of my old
+skin I was, and I should be ashamed of myself.  Sure, there 's no
+disgrace in asking for fair play, and you 've been sorely tried.  I 'll
+go."
+
+"No, no, no!" wailed the animals.
+
+"No, your own plan was wise," the elephant insisted.  "If anything
+happened to you, what would become of us?"
+
+"Yes, what would become of us?" the little ones wailed.
+
+"Do you honestly think my own plan's wiser?  You 're not saying that to
+save me from trouble?"
+
+"We're not," the lion said.  And "Of course not," added the tiger.
+
+"Just slip in a word when you can," from the elephant.
+
+"Honestly, now, it would be best."  The angel was relieved.  "I can
+talk about your loyalty; and, sure, I can remind him of the kine that
+gave shelter to the Wee Relative in Bethlehem, and the donkey that was
+proud to carry His weight; and I 'll remind Him, too, that I 've never
+asked a favor yet, and if He could just see His way--"
+
+"Well," the elephant thought aloud, "I 've got to be getting back to
+Burma."
+
+"I 'm going your way," said the tiger.
+
+"There 's nothing to keep me up further," said the lion.
+
+"I 'm very much obliged to you all--" the angel was abashed with
+emotion--"for not insisting.  And it's lucky I am," said he, "to have
+decent beasts to deal with and not man.  For man would have insisted I
+'d go, and not given a tinker's curse what would have happened me."
+
+"Ay, man!" sneers the great white bear.
+
+"For God's sake Philip, will you be getting home out of this, before I
+have you sick on my hands!  And as for you, Go-by-the-Ground, get back
+to the river or I 'll sink my foot in your tail.  Go on now!  Be off
+with you!"
+
+There is a _shuff-shuff-shuff_ over the sand as the beasts scatter,
+going east, north, west, and south.  The angel stands watching them as
+they go.  Only the horse and the dog remain, the horse nudges him on
+the shoulder with its mouth, the dog puts a cold nose into his hand.
+
+"Och, my darlings!"
+
+
+
+
+DELILAH, NOW IT WAS DUSK
+
+I
+
+Beneath her balcony, in the delicate spring night, the life of Gaza
+flowed gently as a calm river.  Eastward the green hills of Canaan
+were, Delilah knew, and in imagination she could see the soft blue down
+of the budding corn, the clouds of flowers, the piping green of the
+vines, the darkness of the olive-trees.  And in the west a little moon
+was, while as yet the sun had not gone down, a little blade of silver,
+like one sweet note on a flute.  It made one wish to be young again, to
+be a child....
+
+The lamps of Gaza were not lighted.  None was eager to go within, and
+below there was still the jingle of camel bells, the padding of
+donkeys, the nervous clatter of some horse's hoofs as a desert rider
+sought to guide his mount in the filled streets.  Languid, supercilious
+Egyptians strolled in the provincial ways; desert men, their eyes
+suspicious as hawk's, moved warily hither and thither; her own
+countrymen, the squat, cheerful Philistines, half townsman and half
+mariner, walked briskly; mysterious, aloof Phoenicians; an occasional
+strange seaman from Gaul, come eastward with his ship for a cargo from
+Asia Minor; and now came the "Hough-hough!  Hough-hough!" of herdsmen,
+and dappled kine went by, belabored with sticks, and as she looked,
+Delilah saw the group of Israelites who owned them.
+
+From the street they saw her, and their eyes blazed fury.  They pointed
+her out to one another, with quick, wide gestures, and she could hear
+the gutturals of their denunciation....  Oh, yes, they remembered
+Samson, after twenty years!  Remembered him almost as well as she!
+
+
+II
+
+She had been thinking of him only that minute, too.  It was strange,
+but at this time, each year, his memory, his image came to her, so that
+she could say in winter, "On the second moon of spring there will be
+flowers, and an air like wine, and the Mediterranean fishers will
+overhaul their gear, and I shall think of Samson," and she was the only
+person in Philistia who could remember him clearly.
+
+Some old magistrate perhaps, or captain of civic guard might, their
+memory jogged, recall the Hebrew rebel, and say: "Wasn't there a Samson
+once, a great red-bearded man, who was supposed to have killed a lion
+with his bare hands?  Or perhaps I am thinking of some of the black
+African giants, wrestlers or circus men.  I don't know.  But I seem to
+recall the name."
+
+And about him, among his own people, had arisen a great myth, as will
+arise among desert peoples and they telling stories by the fire.  The
+old guerilla captain had become a national hero to them, and they had
+magnified his raids out of all proportion to reality.
+
+And when they thought in the desert tents of the destiny of their
+people, and longed for the day when the then rich southwestern country
+would be theirs by either conquest or penetration, they said, "If
+Samson had lived...  If Samson had n't gone wrong..."
+
+And Delilah they cursed bitterly, even after twenty years, and they saw
+her not as Samson's wife, but as some strange perfumed woman who had
+enticed him and sold him to his enemies.  Even the little children were
+taught to curse her.  And all she had done was to adore him, and love
+him, and to care for and pity him when he had grown old and blind and
+astray in the head.
+
+Oh well, what did it matter what they said!
+
+Three men there had been in her life: her childhood's sweetheart in her
+native valley of Sorek, the slim lad who was to have married her and
+settled down in the valley to lead the idyllic life of country lovers.
+But he had gone to Egypt, and been infested with ambition, and they had
+grown apart and never married.  And now in Egypt he was a suave
+administrator, very close to the Pharoah, a great man.
+
+And there had been Samson.
+
+And there was her present husband, small, hawk-eyed, taciturn, the
+greatest of the Oriental sea-captains, who knew the Mediterranean as
+other men knew the lake of Galilee, who had passed through the straits
+known to the Greeks as the pillars of Hercules, and been north to
+Ibernia, the land of forests and savage, hairy Celts, and bearded druid
+priests with sinister eyes, and to other lands where the Phoenicians
+had great tin mines.  A quiet, efficient man, he!
+
+To her husband she gave admiration and a fond devotion.  To the boy of
+her youth she had given her heart in a burst of virginal music.  But to
+the rough Hebrew rebel, a stranger to her race, in religion, in every
+mode of life, she had given an immensity of love....
+
+
+III
+
+In her face now, that once had a proud, singing beauty, were dignity
+and power and wisdom.  Strands of gray in her hair and shadows near her
+eyes.  In all Gaza, in all Philistia, there was not one to refuse her
+reverence, excepting, of course, the strange gipsy people who contended
+she had ruined their champion and lord.
+
+A queer people, they!  A strange, inimical folk, who had come into
+Canaan out of Egypt, headed by magicians who had cloven the Red Sea--so
+they claimed--and their hand was against the dwellers in Canaan.  For
+centuries now they had been an irritating minor political problem, and
+when the question of relations with Egypt sagged, or there was a lull
+in the discussion of the great trade route to the East, the matter of
+the Israelites always arose.  Here they had harried a town; there
+squatted on a public common.  And war on a large scale was impossible
+against them.  Send armies to subdue them, and they became separate
+desert units, like any other tribes.  And before the armies had
+returned to their garrisons, the Israelites were back.  The
+Philistines, with their suave Egyptian tolerance, could only smile.
+What could one do against a people of that kind?
+
+For centuries now, they had remained turbulent, cunning, breakers of
+the peace, with Philistia rather contemptuous of them, rather proud,
+not unaffectionate.  No nation in the world had a problem quite like
+them.  And the more kindly, more tolerant Philistia became, the greater
+the hatred of the Israelites.  For years they would dwell at peace in
+Philistine cities, then a strange national pique would come on them,
+and they would march out into the desert chanting to their harsh God,
+blaming themselves cruelly for having lived in comfort, and prophets
+would arise among them who said bitter things, lashing them with a
+white fury, and agitators would preach war, and it was then Philistia
+had to be careful and send troops out, for one never knew the moment
+that the young men would make a raid on a township or an estate of
+vineyards.  A sharp clash, a little guerilla warfare, and all would be
+over.  Wise old politicians claimed that every time the Israelites were
+defeated, they gained a little more ground, but politicians were always
+pessimists.  And, also, what matter if they did?
+
+Delilah remembered that as a child in her father's house in the valley
+Sorek she had been brought up to the belief that all Israelites were
+riotous, dissatisfied.  They were splendid herdsmen, but beyond that
+they had no virtues.  And the little Hebrew children were looked down
+upon, because they were so poor.  Oh! the cruel snobbishness of little
+children!  A race apart, an inferior race, Delilah thought in her
+youth, and had smiled at the thought of their crude, melodramatic god,
+of whom they walked in fear.  Their god was so limited, so concrete.
+None of the symbolism of Daigon, half man and half fish, whom the
+Mediterranean sailors thanked when the great silver draughts weighed
+down their nets; none of Baal, god of the sun, the fecund divinity who
+increased the herds of kine, and whose rays nurtured the soil and
+brought forth the sweet blue grass; none of the grace of Ashtoreth, the
+goddess of the dusky night, the terror and the delight and the mystery,
+the goddess of the ripe breasts and great passionate eyes....
+
+So Delilah viewed them with little interest and not a little contempt,
+a turbulent, annoying, ignorant, clever people; their quaint folk-songs
+and dances, their peculiar religious revivals, their passionate
+hatreds...  Undependable--that is what they were.
+
+Came her youth and her growing into womanhood....  She wondered
+sometimes if he of her young days, for all his closeness to the Pharaoh
+of Egypt, his Egyptian palace, his Egyptian wife, ever remembered the
+warm green days of Sorek, and how they had grown together from fifteen
+to twenty-three.
+
+Nothing had ever been said between them of marriage, but it was
+accepted by them that they would marry, as it was accepted that the sun
+shines, and with night come the stars.  They might have been two girls
+together, or they might have been two boys, so sweet was the friendship
+between them.
+
+The adventure of life unclosing itself came to them together--all the
+beauty of the world, the wild smiling flowers, the sun dropping over
+the hills, the clamor of birds in spring as they raided the seeded
+fields, the little fish that jumped in the pools when the winds stilled
+and evening came--all that was a tremendous bond.  Even now when she
+thought of places in the valley of her childhood she could picture them
+only as background for his calm young face.  They seemed natural, the
+blossoming of apple-trees and her young lover's face.
+
+And Delilah's dreams--five years of dreaming, of the governing of a
+house, and the regiment of maid-servants, of little children.  Five
+years dreaming!  And he had gone into Egypt and had never come back.
+Only stories returned, of his success, of his offices, of his wife....
+
+She had thought, being a young woman then, that what was killed with
+such a tremendous shock was her love, but she knew now, now that she
+was nine-and-forty years, that what had died was a dream.  She had been
+shocked, disoriented, and her life, which had been so carefully
+planned, suddenly had no more meaning.
+
+It had made a woman of her, though, and made her proud.  She must have
+something to do, to think about.  Love and all thoughts of love she put
+aside.  In order to escape from herself she began to study people,
+questions of the day, this, that.  It was probably the woman loving the
+underdog that turned her eyes on the question of the poor Hebrew,
+rather than to the glory of Egypt, or the power of the merchant cities.
+
+She became their friend, and they came to know her.  Probably they
+robbed her a little, but the cost was so small compared to the luxury
+of escape....  All her friends smiled at her hobby and spoke of the
+Israelites as "Delilah's Hebrews," and they wondered how a woman of her
+looks and standing should bother with these things.  Why did n't she
+get married, they asked?  Or was she becoming queer?  One of these
+strange women who took more interest in public affairs than a home.  So
+many of them were becoming that way.
+
+But Delilah only smiled.  They were her anodyne.  She liked their
+strange folk-dances; their wailing, nostalgic songs.  And their
+legends--there was about them a quaintness and simplicity she
+loved--Adam and Eve in the garden; the story of Noah and his ark; the
+naïve legend of Babel; and the newer history of the leader who had been
+found by the Egyptian princess in the bulrushes--what was his name?
+Moses!  That was it....  How simple they were, how refreshingly simple,
+the dear things!
+
+
+IV
+
+It had often seemed to her a strange thing, as she sat thinking, how
+all one labors to learn passes easily away, and what one feels remains,
+welcome or no.  All the book-learning of her early years had gone, but
+there would never go the memory of her first blushing kiss, and though
+it was six-and-twenty years since he had gone from her life, yet the
+thought of the Philistine boy who was now a grandee of Egypt--that
+remained.
+
+So, likewise, all she had learned of the Hebrews was gone; now a
+legend, now a saying would come back to her, some proverb or a piece of
+ritual, but like a bar from a tune one has forgotten.  But everything
+she felt, everything she had known of great Samson remained with her.
+One learns things and one lives things.  The things written in the head
+fade out and die, but the words on the heart bite deeper and deeper....
+She could remember every kiss he had given, the immense madness he had
+evoked....  O God, was it possible that she, so calm now, so respected,
+so wise, had once shaken like a leaf at his voice?  Her knees had
+trembled; her heart had fought in her breast like a caged bird; her
+throat had gone dry....
+
+Before she met him, she knew him by repute, a huge, turbulent man of
+immense strength, who had often been in trouble with the Philistine
+authorities....  In the tribal troubles, some years before, his name
+had been very prominent.  He had married a Philistine girl in Timnath,
+and there had been a riot at the wedding, over a question of dowry, or
+something of the kind, and some of the girl's Philistine relations had
+been killed.  A sort of vendetta had arisen and Samson had declared war
+against the nation.  He had proceeded to burn the corn stacked in the
+fields; there was a strange rumor that he had captured an immensity of
+foxes and, tying burning brands to their tails, had loosed them among
+the harvest.
+
+Then, of course, from a family quarrel it had become a national affair
+and Samson was proscribed.  Prodigious stories were told of his
+strength and valor, of his defeating patrols single-handed, and
+refuging on the rocks of Etom.  The Hebrews were asked to give him up
+to authority, and brought him to Lehi bound.  But there he burst his
+cords, such immense strength had he, and escaped after slaying twenty
+men in a hand-to-hand fight.  Then he had become a bandit of the hills
+on whose head a price was set.
+
+Around him a romance grew, as will about all mountain chiefs, to which
+Samson lived up most gallantly.  Careless of disguise, careless of
+danger, he had come, with his great red beard and his hair floating to
+his hips, into Gaza itself once, to see a woman.  The watchmen were
+told, and the city gates were locked while they searched for him, but
+he crashed through the gates with his terrific shoulders and made his
+way to Hebron.  It was said he carried parts of the ironwork with him
+to make weapons.
+
+All this had happened years before, and all the border warfare was
+over, and Samson was no longer a proscribed bandit but a great man of
+the Hebrews, leaping suddenly into fame and holding fame and power as
+such men will.  He no longer raided harvests and kine, nor came to Gaza
+secretly, but now he walked like a conqueror.  It was said that it
+irked him that everything was so peaceful and quiet, and he regretted
+the old roaming days.  To the Hebrews he was a great figure, a champion.
+
+Delilah had never understood how they made a champion out of this
+guerilla fighter, but when she saw him for the first time she
+understood.  He came to thank her for the interest she had taken in his
+race.
+
+"You have been good to my people," his voice thundered.  "I thank you."
+
+Herself, a tall woman, had to look up like a child to him, and herself,
+no small woman, felt a reed beside that vast muscular bulk.  She had
+two impressions of him, his immense masculine quality, and his
+tremendously arrogant manner.  For everything Philistine he seemed to
+hold a tremendous contempt.  He had beaten the Philistines, and
+physically he thought little enough of them.
+
+It seemed a little flaunting to her, at first, that great cape of red
+hair, of which he was so very proud, so very careful.  In a smaller man
+it would have been effeminate, but in him it was a trait of virility,
+like a lion's mane.  Beside him his followers, his clansmen, seemed so
+frail, so puny.  No wonder they watched him with those adoring eyes.
+No wonder they exhibited him, so proud they were.
+
+To Delilah, it was a wonder and an irritation that she should be so
+moved, so thrown off her axis mentally and emotionally by the presence
+of this great hairy man.  All her senses were jangled suddenly.  One
+part of her, the Philistine lady, smiled in a little patronizing
+contempt for the unconcealed boastfulness of his words, for his
+insulting glance at the passers-by.
+
+But another, a strange Delilah clamored:
+
+"No matter what he says, let him speak on.  My heart opens at his
+voice....  Let him contemn all men with his arrogant eye, but let him
+not contemn me!"
+
+The Philistine lady had a little disgust for the way he laid his hand
+on the heads and the shoulders of his followers, pawing them clumsily.
+But the new Delilah clamored:
+
+"If he lays his hand on me, I shall faint to the ground and die!"  And
+a burning shame rose in her, and her face reddened.  And she said to
+herself, "God!  God!  I have suddenly gone mad!"
+
+All her culture, her tradition, all the fine conventions of her life,
+seemed suddenly to vanish, become nothing, before this immense male.
+All the men of her life, friends, her young false lover, relatives
+seemed like puppets beside him--their shaven faces, their polished
+speech, their carefulness of dress and demeanor.  The rufous giant had
+appeared, and "Away," he seemed to have cried, and they had whirled
+off, like blown feathers.
+
+If she were troubled, he was troubled too.  The directness of him read
+her perturbation.  A great desire rose in the turbulent hillsman to be
+near her, to know her body and soul.  He was accustomed to women, to
+love women, but never had he known a woman such as this--a beautiful
+groomed lady who possessed all that was a wonder to him, riches and
+foreign breeding and a strange, sweet culture.  His wife of Timneth had
+been only a country girl, and his sweethearts of the hills had been
+tribeswomen, agile, angry as cats, like some hard, harsh fruit, and the
+women he had known in Gaza were venal women, for every man.  But this
+was a great lady--and she loved him.  A great pride, and a great
+wonder, and desire rose in him.  He was stupefied as she.
+
+They looked at each other, each reading the other's thought, until
+their throats became dry, and all words were just trivial sounds,
+meaning nothing.  Dumb and wondrous he was, and she dumb and bowing
+with shame.  How they parted was to her a mystery, but that their hands
+touched, and at the touch all her bone and flesh seemed to go liquid,
+and her knees trembled as with an immensity of fear.  And nothing
+seemed stable in the world but his great hot hand, that trembled too....
+
+Bowed with shame she was, troubled, blind in purpose, all the familiar
+things of her house and lands were now unfamiliar, unimportant.  The
+long day dragged, and in her heart was a storm, like a hot wind from
+the desert.  She refuged in her inner rooms, in the coolness of her
+inner rooms, but that brought no relief, and restlessly she must come
+out again.  The Asian sun crept slowly from east to west, but Delilah
+remained in a dull maze.  "Am I ill?" she asked.  "Am I stricken with
+some strange disease?"  But no.  "I am insane," she thought.  "I must
+put it out of my head.  I must n't think."  Slowly, slowly the day
+wheeled by; but out of her head it would not go.  And her face went
+white and slowly she whispered to herself: "I am a bad woman.  I never
+knew before.  Oh, shame, shame and woe!  I am an evil woman!"
+
+The Asian sun dropped into the hissing sea, and came the soft Syrian
+dusk, and the swift coolth of the night.  The heat of mind and body
+went with the heat of the day.  There remained only a deep longing,
+that seemed to be a nostalgia of the infinite.  Without, the night was
+blue, there was only a little wind among the apple-trees, and all the
+flowers had closed until dawn should come, but the birds were unsilent
+and the earth itself was restless, now spring was here.
+
+The night wind cooled her sweet brow and ruffled the dark perfumed hair
+at her temples.  The cool night wind, like cool water.  Then arose in
+Delilah a desire for it, and she wandered out among the vines and
+apple-trees, touching them, as she passed, in sympathy, for it seemed
+to her that they must share her yearning.  Though all was darkness, yet
+all was not rest.  Somewhere the sheep were grazing, and she could
+imagine the gods of the nearer East walking the earth, the passionate,
+seeking gods, the ever-young ones; they walked beside her, their slim,
+brown, beautiful bodies, their liquid eyes.  All the longing of the
+night came to her lips in a little song--an air, and faltering,
+unthought words.
+
+"O Spring, which begins now," went the throbbing contralto.
+
+There was a rustle among the trees.  Her heart stopped beating.
+
+"Is some one there?  Who is there?  Who?"  But she knew well who was
+there.
+
+"Who is it?  Who is it?"
+
+She saw the great bulk in the blue night, like a giant, like some great
+giant of the earth.
+
+"It is I--Samson."
+
+"What--how--"  Words would not come to her.  Nor would words mean
+anything.  "Why--"
+
+She put out her hands--she knew not for what reason, perhaps to thrust
+him away--her slim white hands in the dusk.  He seized them.  Once
+again she throbbed from head to foot, and her knees became weak, and
+all of her melted.  And she fell forward, will having left her, on the
+great bearded chest.
+
+"I am dying," she murmured.  "O my God, I die!"
+
+
+V
+
+Now they were married; and he had come to live in her house, the low,
+pleasant house in the valley of Sorek, the white and cool house....
+Without, the Syrian flowers grew in the garden, the white and blue and
+little red flowers, the bees droned....  Cool dairies and enclosures
+with great stacks of corn; and in the meadows the dappled kine grazed,
+and on the hillsides the heavy-fleeced sheep.  Within, her hand maidens
+tended the whirring spinning-wheels, and all the graciousness of a
+great house was there, cool water-jars that Persian potters had made,
+and stuffs from Damascus, and rugs on the walls from cunning Eastern
+looms, and furniture fashioned by the proud Syrian craftsmen.  Her
+house had been a house loved by all, the young Philistine poets and
+elder statesmen and calm, subtle priests.  And the strain and weariness
+of affairs had come on them, they would say: "Let us go out to
+Delilah's house at Sorek, and rest in the orchard of the bees." ... But
+now, now Samson was there, and things were different.
+
+Through all Philistia the news had gone, that Delilah had become
+infatuated with and married the guerilla leader, and the young men
+stormed.  Was she mad?  Or what had he done to her?  And an immense
+disgust arose in them.  Delilah, to marry that!  Delilah, of all women!
+Delilah, beautiful, gifted, with all her tradition, to be bound to this
+ragamuffin warrior!  This fatuous boaster, with his red hair of comedy,
+and yokel whiskers!  How disgusting, how degrading!  And they had
+offered her all their hearts and poetry, and she had chosen this.  O
+Delilah!  Delilah!
+
+Older men and women said nothing.  Some of them understood.  The
+freakish and terrible lightning that passion is, and how it strikes.
+In some women that is what strong drink is to men, a mocker and a
+raging thing.  A pity, though, Delilah...  And the priests shook their
+heads.  It will not last, they said, and her heart will be broken.
+
+Though it was pain to them, still they came to see her, to let her know
+that nothing mattered, she was their friend always....  They had to
+suffer seeing the great red one at the head of the table, hearing his
+jokes and reminiscences.  And solemnly he would speak of his birth, and
+claim supernatural happenings at it, angels appearing and going up in
+pillars of fire....  And the company made awkward comments, and Delilah
+lowered her eyes....
+
+Sometimes a great rage against the Philistines would take him, and he
+would give vent to it by telling at the table of his fight at
+Ramath-leki when he had annihilated the Philistine patrol with the
+first weapon to hand, a great bone he had found in the desert sands.
+After many years and much telling he had exaggerated the deed out of
+all proportion, until from ten it had become a thousand men.
+
+"And do you know what that bone was?"  He would put his immense hands
+on the table and lean forward.
+
+"The jawbone of an ass," he roared with the thunderous laughter.  "Ho!
+ho!  The jawbone of an ass.  With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon
+heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men."
+
+But worse than his rage and boasting was his good humor.  When they
+spoke to Delilah of some new poet in Tyre, or of some subtle new
+writings of the Egyptians he would break in with his terrible question:
+"Did they know any riddles?"  And without waiting for an answer he
+would tell them of the sinister conundrum he had propounded on the
+occasion of his first marriage.  It seems, as he told it, that when he
+was courting his first wife, who they all knew "had turned out no
+good," he explained as he patted Delilah's hand, he met a young lion at
+Timnath, and it roared at him, and he caught it up and rent it, "and I
+had nothing but my two hands."  He transacted his business, and went
+home, and when he was coming for the wedding, he looked to see if the
+lion's carcass was there where he had thrown it, and it was still
+there, and a swarm of bees and honey were in it, and the honey was
+good.  "Fine eating," he told them.
+
+At the marriage feast he proposed a riddle, wagering thirty fine linen
+sheets and thirty changes of garments that the guests would not answer
+in seven days.  "And if you can't find it out, you pay me thirty sheets
+and thirty changes of garments," he laughed.  "They were all
+Philistines, and all thought themselves clever fellows.
+
+"So I said: 'Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong
+came forth sweetness.  Expound me that,' said I, 'or pay up.  Or pay
+up,' said I."
+
+And he looked around the table, silent, a great grin under his red
+beard.
+
+"And did they expound it?"  Some one asked at length.
+
+"They did.  'What is sweeter than honey?' they answered, with a smile
+on their faces, 'and what is stronger than a lion?'  They got around
+the wife, do you see, and she gave them the answer.'  I told them that,
+too.  'If you had not plowed with my heifer,' said I, 'you had not
+found out my riddle.'  So I lost the wager."
+
+"And did you pay up?"
+
+"I did.  And that's funnier than the riddle.  I went down to Ashkelon,
+and killed thirty men there, and took their belongings, and gave the
+thirty changes of garments to them that found out the riddle.  So it
+cost me nothing, do you see, and I kept my word.
+
+"But I never looked at the wife after.  I could n't.  I took a kind of
+hate against her.  She married another fellow."
+
+A great embarrassment arose among all the company, so full of shame
+were they for their hostess; but over her fine, sweet face no shadow
+passed.  She might have been married to a king, so calm and dignified
+she was.  A great lady, she!
+
+She understood now, looking back, how pathetic a figure the red giant
+was, had she only had the eyes, the wisdom to see then.  He was so lost
+among the suave, sophisticated Philistines, who could hurt more with a
+word than he could with his great brawny hands.  Beneath his swelling
+thews he was only a child.  He wanted to be as important as the guests
+in her house.  Feeling they despised him for his origin, and his
+manners, his boastfulness and his arrogance were only a defense.
+
+Little by little now Delilah's friends disappeared, and she was glad of
+it, for she hated to see Samson despised, disliked and their pitying
+looks for her hurt her terribly.  And the days of peace were dreadful
+to him; his, too, the tragedy of the soldier now that war was over, and
+no more exhilaration, keenness, importance.  The tolerance of his old
+enemies was an insult to him.  On their hatred he had thriven.  Their
+hatred made him important.  If their hatred went, he would no longer be
+the great Samson, he would only be a giant of the hills.
+
+He could n't believe they did n't hate him--how could they do
+otherwise, he having killed so many?--and a great suspicion arose in
+him.  They were a noted race for stratagems, these Philistines, and
+might they not now be planning something against him?  Delilah, for
+instance!  It was strange, he thought, how a woman of her standing
+should marry him like that.  He could n't understand.  He must watch
+her.
+
+He was forever, also, meeting his old tribesmen, seeing them more now
+than ever, for he would run to them when oppressed by the Philistine
+atmosphere.  And the Philistines as a whole they regarded as deadly
+enemies.  They never believed in their peaceful intentions.  Though
+they were in a way proud of Samson's great marriage, yet they
+distrusted it.  And by hint and innuendo they sought to put him on his
+guard.  He nodded importantly.  He did n't need to be told about the
+Philistines, he said; he'd keep his eye on them.  "Had anything...?"
+they crowded around him.  Well, he wasn't saying, but he was watching;
+he smiled.  His wife?  Let them not worry; he did n't trust women very
+far.
+
+And relieved, and once more raised in importance and self-esteem, he
+would swagger back to the house.
+
+Sometimes, too, in Delilah's place, he would be seized with a great
+desire to make friends with the young Philistines; and when Delilah
+wasn't there, he would show off his immense strength, felling an ox
+with one blow of his fist.  Once he had himself bound with seven green
+withes, stouter than rope, stronger than chains, and with a cruel burst
+of strength stood free, snapping them as though they were threads.  And
+once he had his arms bound with new rope, breaking the bond without any
+effort.  But his greatest triumph was having his hair woven into a
+great spinning-wheel and fastened to the pin, and walking away took
+with him the pin of the beam, and the web.  But the Philistines had
+seen more intricate and showy feats of strength by the Egyptians' black
+slaves.  And it did not impress them over-much.  No matter what he did,
+he could not get into sympathy with them.  He was a stranger in his
+wife's house.  Also he could not understand why she should seem
+humiliated by these displays.  Did not a woman love a strong man?
+Shouldn't she be proud?  Well, why was n't she?
+
+Somehow the story of these trials of strength reached the Hebrew
+settlements, and they construed it that the Philistines were seeking to
+take him.  When he came among them, magniloquent, magnificent, they
+questioned him and he gave no answer, letting them believe that his old
+enemies were spreading nets for him.  A great terror arose in them.
+And they tried to persuade him to come back to them.  But he would n't.
+He was equal to all their stratagems, he hinted.  "But the women!" they
+said, "nothing passes the cunning of a woman.  Better leave her,
+Samson; better leave her now."
+
+"The woman pleases me well."  And he would n't be moved.
+
+The woman pleased him, but he did n't love her; and he displeased her,
+but she loved him.  In Delilah's heart was so much aching love for him,
+such depth of passion, that at times she was ashamed.  It seemed to her
+that she had given everything in her to this man.  No matter how
+displeased she was, no matter how humiliated by his boastings, by his
+circus tricks, when night came, and he put out his hand to her, all the
+irritation of the day passed, and her being sang.
+
+She had chosen her husband, and what she had chosen was her own
+business.  No matter how queer he was, she could n't have him laughed
+at....  So they stayed away, and she was glad of it and little by
+little the great wonder of her marriage provoked no more passion, no
+more discussion.  Only when a stranger appeared, or some old friend,
+and asked in the public assemblies of Delilah, and the incongruous
+marriage was once more brought up and discussed.  Shoulders shrugged.
+
+"And is she happy?"
+
+"We don't know.  We don't see much of her any more."
+
+A new strange element came up in this isolation: Samson did n't like
+being left alone by the Philistines.  Somewhere in his mind arose the
+theory that it was a new insult, a new harm.  He grew short with his
+wife; became irritable; nothing pleased him.  He was not a farmer, a
+warrior he! he complained.  He was entitled to relaxation, amusement,
+conversation.  He was no vegetable--
+
+"Then, Samson, you would like people here?"
+
+He did n't like to be left alone, as though he had the plague, or
+treated as though he were nobody, by God!
+
+"Then they shall come, Samson."
+
+But ah! there was something, he objected.  He did n't like this damned
+superciliousness, this accursed Philistine superiority--
+
+"You imagine it, Samson.  You are too sensitive, my big lover."
+
+"Then they are not superior? are not better than I?"
+
+"Of course not, great Samson.  In every way you are as good as they,
+the same as they.  You would look the same as they, only
+better-looking, more magnificent, if only--"
+
+"If only what?"
+
+"Oh, don't be angry with me, lover, if I tell you.  There is only one
+thing remarkable about you; one thing they can criticize.  If only your
+hair--"
+
+"Ha! my hair!"
+
+"O Lover, without it, you would look so great and splendid, and
+dignified.  There would be nothing to criticize."
+
+"But Delilah, my strength is in my hair."
+
+"O lover, lover, don't be silly!"
+
+"Also, my parents took a vow--"
+
+"But darling, your parents never knew you were to be such a great man,
+and that you would have to command respect from the nation--"
+
+"Of course, of course.  But, Delilah, if my strength goes--"
+
+"Dearest, it won't go.  How could it?"
+
+"And they won't have anything to criticize then!  Ha!  Then off it
+comes!"
+
+She was so happy, the tears came into her eyes.  This strange desire to
+wear his hair long as a woman's had been a bugbear to her.  This
+foppishness, freakishness, superstition, whatever it was, it made him
+remarkable.  She could n't suffer to have men smile at him.
+
+"If you only knew how happy you make me!"
+
+He was ludicrously nervous as she shore off the great red braids.  He
+was more, he was frightened.  The burden gone, he strolled casually
+around, picked up a little bar of iron at the fireplace, twisted it to
+form a loop, was satisfied.  Glanced at himself in the long metal
+mirror, smiled.
+
+"I think it suits me well."
+
+A thrill of delight came to Delilah, a new, a younger Samson had
+appeared.  Her heart went pit-a-pat....  A great dignity sat on him
+now, and he weighed his words at the table.  Gone with his hair was his
+old arrogance, and seemingly his race hatred....  The Philistines spoke
+among themselves, wondering how she had done it.  This quiet,
+well-groomed man, remarkable only for his size and height, could this
+be the same red rebel whom they had known a few short months ago?  A
+wonderful woman.
+
+But when the Hebrews heard of it, a great chill fell on their hearts,
+and they wrung their hands.  "They have cut off our Samson's hair.  Oh,
+woe!" they cried.  "The woman enticed him, and he a Nazarite unto God
+from his mother's womb.  Oh, woe!  Oh, woe!  Gone is his strength now,
+and gone is glory!"  But the red one, all agog with his new
+worldliness, paid no heed to them, went never near them.
+
+For some brief weeks Delilah knew happiness such as she never believed
+possible in earth or heaven....  So fine, so strong he looked, so
+greatly he acted, so--so fully he loved....  Of course it could n't
+have lasted, she knew now.  How fast catastrophe!
+
+Quietly he said one day: "How soon it gets dark!  Night falls faster
+than it used.  An hour ago the sun was shining, and now it is dark."
+
+She felt as if some cruel fingers had seized her heart, her throat.
+She froze to the ground.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I say, why don't the maidens bring lights?"
+
+"Not yet, dear heart....  Let us stay in the warm dusk.  Wait, I take
+your hand."
+
+A few days later he stumbled and all but fell, was clumsy.  She flew to
+his side.
+
+"My eyes," he said, "a touch of sun.  Nothing particular."  But she
+sent for a physician.
+
+"It's nothing," Samson said.  "Something I 've eaten.  I 'll go to
+sleep."
+
+"Dear Samson, to please me."  The physician examined his eyes.
+
+"Well?"  Delilah drew him aside.
+
+"The early days in the desert....  He is going blind."
+
+"Is there no hope, no cure?"
+
+"None."
+
+A little laugh of agony came from her.  Great Samson blind!  The little
+lover blind!...  Oh, God!...
+
+"Shall we tell him?"
+
+"No, no!" she burst out.  Maybe there was some mistake!  "No.  We
+sha'n't tell him."
+
+A few days later came a great bellow from the garden!
+
+"The sun has gone out of the sky," she heard him exalt.  "The day of
+wrath is on us.  The God of the Hebrews will judge the just and the
+unjust.  O Philistines, your day has come.  The sun has gone out of the
+sky."
+
+She flew to him, her feet hardly touching the grass.
+
+"The sun has gone out of the sky," he chanted; "now is silence, but
+soon the mountains will rend, the cliffs fall, and the Lord God of
+Hosts will appear in thunder!"
+
+"Oh, Samson, Samson!"  Her face was a wet mask of tears.  Her arms went
+quickly about him.  "Listen, Samson!"
+
+"Delilah, the sun has gone out of the sky!"
+
+"Samson, Samson, you are great, you are big, you are brave.  Be brave
+now, heart of hearts--"
+
+"The Day of Days is here.  The sun has gone out of the sky."
+
+"Worse, my darling, worse.  Worse than that the sun should be gone from
+the sky.  The sun, Samson, the sun--the sun has gone out of your eyes!"
+
+
+VI
+
+"Then I am blind," he said quietly, after a little while.
+
+"Dearest, I shall be eyes for you, watching, wary.  Oh, poor, poor
+Samson, put your head on my shoulder, your eyes close to my heart.  You
+shall see with my heart.  I give it to you to see with....  Cry,
+Samson, if you must, cry on my shoulder."  She sought to draw him
+closer to the haven of her breast.  But he had stiffened, and his great
+hand and arm had stiffened.  He just moved her ponderously aside....
+He raised his head to the autumn sky, and a great bellow came from his
+chest.
+
+"The Philistines are upon me.  They have put out my eyes."
+
+"Samson!  Dear heart, listen--"
+
+"They have shaven the seven locks of my head.  They have taken my
+strength from me.  They have put out my eyes."
+
+"Samson, Samson, listen.  It is I, Delilah.  Don't you know me?"
+
+His great roar had brought out the household, and men from the
+hillside, and stopped folk on the road.  And they all came running now
+thinking some murder was being done.
+
+"I know you, Delilah.  I know you well.  The Lords of the Philistines
+gave you silver to entice me.  I knew you, and the Lord departed from
+me."
+
+"Samson, don't!  Don't, Samson!"
+
+"Away, harlot!"  And he struck at her blindly.  Only the tips of his
+fingers touched her shoulder, but the force of them sent her to the
+ground.  Her household crouched to spring.
+
+"For God's sake, no!" she almost screamed at them.
+
+"The Philistines are upon me.  They have put out my eyes!" he roared.
+He went stumbling piteously through the orchard, the trunks of the
+trees hurtling him, the branches striking his defenseless face.
+Somehow he gained the road: "Delilah, the great whore, enticed me, and
+the Lords of the Philistines put out my eyes--" his piteous bellow was
+like the crying of some stricken animal.  Delilah called a serving-lad.
+
+"Go after my lord Samson," she said, "and lead him whithersoever he
+wishes."
+
+All afternoon and evening, and late into the night she sat white and
+stricken, waiting for his step, waiting for news of him.  In the
+darkness a horse galloped up.  An officer of the Philistines sought her.
+
+"Have you news of Samson?"
+
+"Yes, Delilah.  He is in Gaza, in the prison-house."
+
+"In the prison-house!  What has he done?"
+
+"He has done nothing, Delilah, he is--he is mad and blind, and would
+come in.  We tried to send him home to you, but he wouldn't come.  And
+he would n't go to the Hebrews.  We were afraid of something happening
+to him, so we took him in....  What shall we do, Delilah?"
+
+"Would you--would you let him stay?"
+
+"If you wish it, Delilah."
+
+"He will be least unhappy there."
+
+She knew somehow, in her heart, that never again would she lie in his
+arms, never again be wife to the husband in him.  She would take him
+back, take him back gladly.  Though no longer had she great passion for
+him--that had died when he struck and insulted her before her servants.
+She had a great pity and affection for the poor driven man.  She was
+the only one who understood him.  "Ah, poor man! poor man!" she cried.
+And in some ways he was only a child.
+
+In a few days she went down to the prison house.  The officials brought
+her to where he was grinding corn in the yard.
+
+"We put him at it, Delilah, to keep his mind off his trouble."  She
+nodded.
+
+"Samson," she called.  He moved his head slightly.
+
+"Don't you know me, Samson?"
+
+"I know you.  You are the harlot Delilah, who enticed me, and gave me
+into the hands of the Lords of the Philistines.  Delilah, I know you
+well."
+
+"Samson, will you come home to my house?  Let me make you comfortable
+there."
+
+"You would put out my tongue, Delilah, and burn off my hands, as you
+put out my eyes.  I know you, Delilah!"
+
+"Then will you go to the Hebrews?"
+
+"No!" he replied sullenly.
+
+A sudden rush of tears to her eyes made her go out.  She could no
+longer bear to look upon him.  He had been so strong once, so
+courageous.  He had looked in the sun's eye.  And now, blind and
+broken--oh, poor dear! ... She stumbled as she went.
+
+At the door of the prison house the governor shuffled uncomfortably:
+"We shall be very good to him, Delilah, as kind as we know how," he
+uttered.
+
+There was a great lump in her throat, so she could say nothing.  But he
+got his thanks from her twisted smile, her wet eyes....
+
+
+VII
+
+And now she was alone in her house, and to her mute surprise,
+everything went on: grasses grew, cows lowed at the milking hour, the
+fleece grew on sheep and had to be sheared, the grapes ripened on the
+vines.  And she lived, still.  Her hair did not become gray, nor her
+face take on any mark of tragedy, only a new sweetness, and strength.
+And her love and her marriage was now nothing but a strange story of a
+strange woman and a strange man.  Not quite a story, even, but a
+collection of incidents that might be important and again might not.
+And the great love she had experienced had become nebulous, was
+drifting away, so that she could hardly believe she had not seen it in
+others, but for its intimacy, its great intimacy....  And he was more
+nebulous to her than if he were dead....
+
+She heard of him.  She heard that from the prison walls he harangued
+his white-faced, scared tribesmen, reviling his hosts, and above all
+reviling her, telling the secrets of her love as the machinations of
+some evil woman, and referring to her visit, saying that her heart was
+merry and that she had come to have him make her sport....  But after a
+little while none paid attention to him, so stale become miracles,
+except his own tribesmen.  It was only the chatter of some crazed
+religious patriot; people shrugged their shoulders, and forgot soon who
+Delilah was, never imagining the great lady of Sorek as having been
+wife and lover to this poor crazed giant, though they had known it to
+be true.  Everything strange grows commonplace with days, and with more
+days grows negligible.
+
+So passed a year....
+
+Just when she had become reconciled to this strange situation, herself
+honored and in luxury, her husband mad and blind and insisting on being
+a prisoner of the Philistines, just when she had striven to make and
+succeeded in making this seem a normal, a usual thing, a courier from
+Gaza came....  What his business was she never imagined.
+
+"Delilah, Samson is dead!"
+
+"Samson!"  It never even chilled her, so ridiculous did such a
+statement seem.  "Samson is in Gaza."
+
+"I come from Gaza, Delilah, and Samson is dead."
+
+"Samson dead?"  That turbulent temperament, that immense vitality, that
+gigantic frame,--surely there was one whom Death could not touch, at
+least for nearly a century, when he would be old and weak and tired.
+But not now!  No!  "What do you mean?"
+
+"Delilah, Samson was wandering through the town.  He had asked the
+master of the prison-house if he might go to see the new temple of
+Daigon.  Though he could n't see, he wanted to feel it, its pillars and
+stone.  A little lad brought him.  And there was a scaffolding in front
+on which three men were working, and he knocked against it, and felt
+the pillars, and stopped....
+
+"And he put his hands on two of the pillars of the scaffolding, and
+listened to the workmen above, and then called out: 'O Lord God,
+remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this
+once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my
+eyes.'
+
+"And he took hold of the two middle pillars of the scaffolding--"
+
+"Oh!" Delilah's voice came in a long moan.  "Oh! my poor love! my poor
+lord! oh! ... The workmen," she asked, "were they--killed?"
+
+"One was lamed and one bruised and one had a shoulder smashed, but only
+Samson, Delilah, is dead."
+
+"Samson is dead!" she said dully.  And then she quickened.  "Are you
+sure that he isn't only stunned?"
+
+"No, Delilah; Samson is dead."
+
+"I shall go with you...."
+
+They had taken him into a cool corner of the temple, and when she saw
+him there was no longer doubt in her, or--or hope.  He lay there with a
+great dignity, a new majesty, all the pain and baffledness had gone
+from his face and the poor empty eyes were closed....
+
+And she sank to her knees, and took his head on them, she saw with a
+little glad wringing of the heart that once more the great golden cloak
+of hair had grown ...
+
+"Delilah, where is he to--stay?"  The captain of the guards leaned
+toward her.
+
+"Not with us, kinsman.  He might n't rest.  He will sleep with his own."
+
+"Then shall I tell his brethren, and the house of his father to come?"
+
+"Do, kinsman," she said.  She turned her head to the shadows.  "Tell
+them to come and take him," she said.
+
+She was like a woman in stone but for her strained voice, and for the
+fingers twisting, twisting, twisting under the red-gold cloak of hair.
+"Go now and tell them," she said.  "Tell them, but don't let them
+come," she said, "for--for just a little while...."
+
+And now night had come, and the little lamps of Gaza burned clear in
+the blue softness.  The sun had gone down in the west, and the silver
+blade of the moon had all but followed.  Delilah felt cold and stiff,
+and there were tears in her heart that would not come to her eyes for
+relief.  The heaviness of an old sorrow, it never went, and she did n't
+know if she wanted it to go....  She rose to go within.
+
+"Delilah, the great harlot," a raucous voice accused her from the
+blackness of the street.  "She enticed our lord Samson and made him
+sleep on her knees--and she pressed him daily with her words and urged
+him, so that his soul was vexed unto death--"
+
+She stopped and listened.  Venom was sprayed against her from the
+street.  Hatred arose like a pillar.  Suddenly the tears came, the
+welcome tears, and gratitude went in a white shaft from her to the
+bitter men in the streets, for this: that after so many years great
+Samson was not forgotten, that he lived in their mind and hearts still,
+as in hers.
+
+
+
+
+A QUATRAIN OF LING TAI FU'S
+
+Because of his perfect, or nearly perfect, English there were many who
+believed that Li Sin was only masquerading as a Chinaman.  Because of
+the slightly slit Mongol eyes, and the swarthy color of his skin, there
+were others who explained his enigma by guessing he was a half-breed.
+It never occurred to either party that Li Sin had been sent to Eton, in
+England, at the age of thirteen, and that from Eton he had gone to
+Oxford.  They would not have believed it if you told them.  There is a
+dogma abroad to the effect that every Chinaman must of necessity speak
+English like a Cantonese laundryman or like an attendant at a chop-suey
+restaurant.
+
+It never occurred to them, either, that Li Sin was a Manchu duke, with
+a genealogy that extended back to the days of Tang.  It never occurred
+to them that the slant-eyed Manchu was as big a physician as any of the
+high-priced practitioners on the Avenue.  To the descendants of
+fur-peddlers and deck-scrubbers who graced the Social Register, or to
+the millionaires of Long Island who had soared into the financial
+heavens on an accidental oil-spout or who had amassed their fortunes by
+the less reputable forms of mine-grabbing--to these, and to their wives
+and daughters, Li Sin was merely a tradesman or shopkeeper.  It did not
+particularly matter to them that his shop on Fifth Avenue was filled
+with little gold Buddhas whose eyes were fine emeralds, with pieces of
+lacquer which it had taken an artist his lifetime to do, with peachblow
+vases transparent as a hand against the sun, with porcelains sheer as
+fine silks, with cloisonne jars that made staid experts rave like men
+in liquor.  But the strictures of the ignorant did not worry Li Sin in
+the least.  He would only raise his eyebrows and smile his bland,
+inscrutable smile.
+
+Li Sin has left Fifth Avenue now, and in his store, which was in those
+days a temple of truth as well as a temple of beauty, a very lying and
+exceedingly dishonest Armenian reigns.  In his own city of Tientsin the
+Manchu lives in stately leisure.  He has reverted to his own name,
+Hsien Po, which is great in Manchu annals.  He has reverted to his
+Manchu dress of brocaded blouse and silken trousers, to his mandarin's
+cap with its mandarin's button.  He is very proud of his pear gardens,
+and he divides his time between walking in them, reading the analects
+of Confucius, and giving the benefit of his marvelous medical knowledge
+gratuitously to the poor.  He is happy, I hope, for if ever a man
+deserved to be happy, it is he.
+
+He is gone now, is Li Sin, but I can see him as plainly as though he
+were standing beside me.  A rather squat sort of man, with a squarish
+face and high cheek-bones.  His shining black hair was parted smoothly
+at the side, and there was a look of health in the transparent quality
+of his brown skin and in the whites of his slanting eyes.  There was
+always a quiet smile on his lips, and he wore the tweed and broadcloth
+of America with as much ease as the blouse and silken trousers of his
+own land.  The only Oriental hint in his clothes was the suppressed
+gorgeousness of his neckties.  He roamed about the great store, passing
+an occasional word with the attendants or stopping to greet a favorite
+customer, which was an honor.  The customers were much in awe of Li
+Sin.  There were incidents that had taught them to respect him.
+
+There was the incident of the amateur pottery expert who happened to be
+also a millionaire.  He noticed a vase of delicate blue jade.
+
+"Oh, Li Sin," he said, "I want that.  That's a wonderful piece of Ming."
+
+"It's not Ming," the Manchu told him.
+
+"I tell you it is Ming!" the young millionaire insisted.  "I 'll buy
+it."
+
+"I 'm afraid you won't, Mr. Rensselaer," the Manchu answered blandly.
+"I won't sell it to you."
+
+"Then you 'll sell me nothing, ever again," Rensselaer decreed in a
+passion.
+
+"Oh, very well," Li Sin smiled.
+
+To Morganstern, the munitions magnate, he was much shorter.  The bulky
+financier rushed into the store rolling a cigar about his fat lips.  He
+wanted a rug, he said, an expensive one, the best in the store.  Li Sin
+smiled a trifle cynically and pointed out something on the wall.
+
+"A Persian thirteenth-century," he explained curtly.  "Used to belong
+to a shah of Persia.  It costs seventeen thousand dollars."
+
+"I 'll take it," Morganstern nodded.  "I want something for the bedroom
+floor."
+
+"But, dear sir," Li Sin expostulated, "one does n't put that on the
+floor.  One hangs it on a wall."
+
+"I don't care a damn."  The munitions man drew out his check-book.
+"Anything good enough for the shah of Persia's wall is good enough for
+my feet."
+
+"My good sir--" Li Sin's voice was as bland as ever--"you are making a
+mistake.  There are several grass-rug emporiums on Second Avenue.  Go
+into the next drug store and look one up in a telephone-book.  Take a
+trolley across Fifty-ninth Street.  They 'll sell you one, and you can
+carry it home beneath your arm."  And abruptly he left Morganstern.
+
+These things created a legend about Li Sin that will never die on the
+Avenue.  Cynics say that it was good advertising, and brought people
+who liked to be insulted.  But we, who knew the Manchu, were certain
+that was the last thing he had in mind.  Peculiar as Li Sin's business
+habits were, more peculiar still were his friends.  Among them might be
+counted a European ambassador in Washington, a great heavy-weight
+wrestler, a little Roman Catholic priest, a head waiter in a
+restaurant.  All of these people he liked for some quality that his
+shrewd eyes had discovered.  And last but not least was Irene Johns.
+
+She had come into the store one soft spring morning, looking for a
+birthday present for her mother, something inexpensive, she said, about
+two dollars, all--she laughed merrily--she could afford.  Perhaps it
+was that gurgling laugh of hers, that limpid, hurried, harmonious
+scale, that drew Li Sin's attention.  But he came forward with a
+suggestion when she and the salesman became nonplused at the problem of
+finding something pretty, good and worth two dollars.
+
+"Perhaps I can help," he smiled.
+
+She impressed him with her appearance as much as with her laugh.  There
+was something so ethereal about her that she seemed less a being of
+flesh and blood than the disembodied spirit of spring.  Her fair hair,
+her starlit purple eyes, her eager, half-closed small mouth with its
+glint of little teeth, her slim neck stood out against her heather
+costume and black, sweeping hat like a softly modulated light.  She was
+so little, so slender, that she seemed as delicate as a snowflake.  She
+moved with the lightness of a feather stirring along the ground.  And
+yet, Li Sin saw with his physician's eye, she was not fragile.  She was
+as healthy as an athlete.
+
+"I think I can find you something," he said.
+
+He did.  In the rear of the store he discovered a roughly hammered
+silver brooch from Bokhara, a marvel of intricacy and sweeping lines;
+he had bought it in Bokhara himself for two rubles.  The thing had
+interested him.
+
+"But this must be more than two dollars!" She spoke in wonder.
+
+"I paid one dollar for it in Bokhara, and I am exacting a dollar profit
+for it, which is not too little," the Manchu answered gravely.
+
+By what peculiar, invisible steps their friendship ripened it would be
+impossible to detail; but ripen it did.  The fresh, fair American
+beauty, slim and beautiful as a Tanagra figurine, and the squat,
+middle-aged Mongol liked each other, came to appreciate each other.
+She had an inborn love for beautiful things, and he was never weary of
+showing her the treasures of his store.  He showed her strange, exotic
+jewels, collected by dead kings and queens--chrysoberyls that were at
+times the strange green of olives and at other times red like a setting
+sun, topazes with the yellow of aged wine, sunstones that glowed with a
+tremulous golden red, carbuncles that flashed into explosive stars of
+scarlet, peridots and milky moonstones, a ruby that the King of Ceylon
+had owned, and an emerald that had once belonged to the unhappy Queen
+of Scots.  Irene Johns would gasp at the sight of these things.
+
+"They 're so beautiful!" she would say.  "They make the tears come to
+my eyes!"
+
+That was enough for Li Sin, that gasp of appreciation.  He loved the
+things so much himself.  He had hunted his treasures up and down the
+earth and to and fro in it, and he wanted them to be gazed on with the
+appreciative eye rather than with the cold look of barter and exchange.
+He liked this little twenty-year-old woman, because she had the spirit
+of beauty within her, and because she seemed so fair and fresh and
+unprotected.  And she liked the swarthy Mongol, not for his strange,
+exotic setting, but for the sheer kindliness of him, the great,
+expansive benevolence and his consummate courtesy, which after all was
+nothing but the birthright of a Manchu prince.
+
+There could be no question of love between them, for many reasons, and
+never a thought of it passed their minds.  She might have been
+something like a niece to him, and he her benevolent uncle.  They never
+met outside his store.
+
+He drew from her the story of what of life she had known, carefully,
+gently, like the skilled surgeon extracting a splinter from flesh.  The
+daughter of a naval surgeon who had died while she was still
+young,--and who, Li Sin shrewdly guessed, had been somewhat of a
+blackguard,--she lived poorly with her mother, on a meager pension.
+She had been brought up decently, educated well, at what must have been
+a terrible expense to the mother.  She had not been married, beautiful
+as she was, because she had not mixed with people who were to be
+regarded as beneath her in social rank.  The people of her own station
+were too poor to marry offhand--but there was a young ensign she
+mentioned as having met once or twice, and there was a faint blush on
+her cheeks as she spoke of it.  For the illustrious and the moneyed she
+had either too little fortune or too little lineage.  And that was all.
+
+"Too bad!" Li Sin murmured to himself, and his thoughts would have done
+credit to the most adroit of schatchen.  "Too bad!"
+
+She would breeze in, if such a word may be used of her who was as
+gentle as a zephyr, bringing always with her the sweetness of spring.
+
+"Good morning!" she would greet him eagerly.  "I wonder if we could
+find something--I want a clasp for my hair, for evening wear--something
+frightfully inexpensive."
+
+"I think we might find it."  Li Sin would smile, and he would find it.
+He took her money, and gave her the article at a just profit on what he
+had paid for it.  The only thing gratuitous he gave her was the travel
+and the adventure necessary to pick his wonderful trifles up.  Of this
+he said nothing, and she was none the wiser.
+
+There came the day when she entered a little excited, a little afraid,
+a little nervous.  She wanted something more expensive than usual.  She
+was going out that night, she explained, with somebody.
+
+"I am going to be married soon," she blurted out.  "I am engaged."
+
+"To whom?" Li Sin asked quietly.
+
+"A friend of my father's," she answered blushingly.  "Roderick
+Dreghorn, the ivory-hunter."
+
+"I wonder if I might ask you to do something," Li Sin said slowly, "and
+that is: will you bring your fiancé here some day so that I may
+congratulate him?"
+
+"I should love to," she said; and she left him, excitedly happy, Li Sin
+saw; but he also noticed that she seemed a little terrified, a little
+aghast.
+
+I have told the story of Li Sin to many people, now that he is gone to
+his own home and is happy there with his poor and his pear-trees, and
+some of them have believed me because they know China and the manner of
+man Li Sin is, and some of them have believed me because they know I
+abhor lies as I abhor the devil.  But many cannot understand it.  They
+cannot see why a Manchu duke should become a merchant on Fifth Avenue.
+
+"And if he is as great a doctor as you say--" they object.
+
+There is a passage in Isaiah, I believe, which speaks of Tyre, "whose
+merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the
+earth."  Marco Polo, that ancient Venetian, says of Cathay, that there,
+of all professions the most esteemed is that of merchant.  It is above
+arms, he says, above learning.  And what obtained in the Yellow Empire
+when Hoang-ti led his people across the desert in the misty dawn of
+time obtains to-day, from the outer sea to the confines of Mongolia.
+An ancient and honorable thing it is, a fit profession for princes, a
+thing pregnant with ideals of honesty and fair dealing, a clean thing.
+There is nothing anomalous to the eye in Li Sin, a Manchu duke,
+unearthing the treasures of forgotten days for the New World, and
+exacting a just profit for the work.
+
+As for the medicine, that was another matter.  I could no more imagine
+Li Sin accepting money for his healing art than I can imagine him
+stealing alms from a blind beggar.  The thing was far too holy for him.
+There in that glass-topped studio in his house on Fifth Avenue, above
+the great treasure-store, he studied his science with the enthusiasm of
+an amateur pursuing a hobby.  A queer place it was, with its retorts
+and vials, its glinting instruments, its Rontgen-ray apparatus, its
+tubes of deadly serum and of healing drugs.  And beside these were the
+quaint adjuncts of Oriental healing: the twisted tubes of herbs,
+instruments that seemed like an alchemist's dream, medicines of black,
+occult art as well as of benevolence, secret, untraceable poisons,
+liquids which, it is whispered, would bring the dead to life for
+minutes, which would drive men mad.
+
+Ask the taciturn Lee Fong, on Mott Street, that slant-eyed millionaire.
+Ask the leaders of the Hip Sing.  At the Five Companies of San
+Francisco, inquire.  They will speak of Li Sin as a demigod of medicine.
+
+One has n't to go as far as that to find out.  There is a
+tenement-house on Hudson Street, where the Bracalellos live.  There is
+a romping child there called Beata.  For years she was an object of
+research to physicians in hospitals, because of her twisted spine.
+Nothing could be done, they decided.  They were wrong.  Li Sin saw the
+white-cheeked child carried in the subway on a horrible metal
+stretcher, strapped to it.  It hurt him--the illnesses of children
+always hurt him.  He took charge of her.  She romps about now as other
+children do.  There are many cases of that kind.
+
+But above all in my mind there is the tragic case of Mrs. Madge Eaton,
+who is now happy as a woman farmer on Long Island.  Li Sin discovered
+her creeping up an alleyway to die from hunger, shame, and heartbreak.
+Against all protestation he took her home.  Her story was tragic and
+very sordid.  She had married John Eaton, a man who had come up to
+Maine for a holiday.  He had brought her to New York.  In a month he
+had sent her out to work.  She fell ill.  Eaton deserted her, taking
+with him all her jewelry, all her money, all her clothes.  When she was
+discovered, she was sent to a hospital, and when she emerged from
+there, she found herself without courage to kill herself and without
+the wherewithal to live.  The police sent her to jail two weeks later.
+When she came out, Li Sin found her, broken, hungry, terrified, wanting
+to die and yet without courage to face the river.
+
+He cured her.  He brought her back to life and hope and strength.  By
+some means he instilled into that frail and timid heart the courage of
+a lioness.  But he did one thing, unknown to her, of which she might
+not have approved.
+
+There was a tripartite function of Li Sin's: Firstly there was that of
+the merchant, whose duty it was to discover and barter rare and costly
+things.  Secondly came the physician's, to heal body and mind.  Thirdly
+came that of the Manchu prince, to dispense justice.
+
+He called Hong Kop, his body-servant, to him--that subtle and
+inscrutable Cantonese.  He looked at the card on which he had scribbled
+an address, an address he had extracted from Mrs. Eaton.
+
+"Hong Kop, you will go at once to Colon, in Panama," he announced.
+
+The Cantonese nodded.
+
+"You will go to this address--a gambling-house--and there you will pick
+up the trail of John Eaton.  You will pick up the trail and follow it
+until you find him.  And when you do find him--"
+
+He paused for an instant.  Again the Cantonese bowed.
+
+"You will kill him, Hong Kop."
+
+
+Six feet tall, spare as a lance, tanned to a deep brown, hatchet-faced
+and yet handsome in some daredevil, hypnotic way, with eyes that
+glinted with the vindictive sheen of a rifle-barrel, mouth twisted
+slightly,--enough to show the cruelty hidden within--Roderick Dreghorn
+lounged into the store with Irene Johns.  There was an amused smile on
+his powerful face, as though it pleased him whimsically to accompany
+his fiancée on a shopping expedition, to meet her queer friends.
+
+"Li Sin," she said, "this is the man I am going to marry."
+
+The Manchu smiled gravely.  Dreghorn watched him with an amused,
+contemptuous glance.
+
+"There is no need to wish felicity," said Li Sin, courteously, "to the
+future husband of Miss Johns."  And Dreghorn nodded in an offhand way.
+The hunter turned to the girl.
+
+"Didn't you want to get something here?" he asked, "some silk or
+something?"  Li Sin noted beneath the man's soft tones the concealed
+edge that could cut on occasion like a rawhide whip.  Rapidly Li Sin
+was summing the man up in his mind: forty-five, he decided, a man of
+the world, a gentleman born, an utter blackguard, a man who had done
+and seen evil things.  He had money, too--witness the plain but
+expensive cut of his brown tweeds.  Li Sin noted quickly a faint scar
+on the temple that he knew to be an old bullet-wound, and a weal across
+the fingers of the right hand that only a long knife could have made.
+
+"Would you care to come and help Miss Johns select the silk?" Li Sin
+asked.  Dreghorn smiled, and there was a lift to the left corner of his
+mouth that showed the teeth.  It was like a dog's threatening snarl.
+
+"I don't think so," he drawled.  "I am not interested in any products
+of the yellow or black countries."
+
+"Indeed!" Li Sin murmured.
+
+Excitedly, at the end of the store, Irene Johns told her story.
+Dreghorn--in a moment of boredom, Li Sin judged--had dropped in to see
+the family of the man he had known fifteen years before in Hongkong.
+He had heard of Mrs. Johns and her daughter from some casual
+acquaintance.  Li Sin smiled; the casual acquaintance had spoken of the
+daughter's beauty, most probably.  Mr. Dreghorn had been so kind to all
+of them!  He had taken them out, had showered presents on them, had in
+the end asked her to marry him.
+
+"Indeed!" Li Sin thought, and he encouraged her to go on.
+
+He was so big, so powerful, she hinted.  He had done big things, had
+had great adventures.  She seemed a little aghast as she mentioned
+that.  He was so compelling, she said.
+
+"She is not in love," thought Li Sin.  "She is hypnotized."
+
+He was going on one more expedition, she told the Manchu.  After that,
+he was coming home to settle down.  They would have a house in the
+country, a farm.
+
+"Agh!" Li Sin exclaimed to himself.  So that was it.  The old, old
+story, as old as Cain: the rake, the scoundrel, after sucking the world
+dry of wickedness, wanted a wife, home, and children.  Li Sin could
+understand how the girl's purity, her lightness, her youth, had
+appealed to the world-worn rascal.  He could understand the visions the
+man had--the sweet, hawthorn-scented dreams.  It was like a murderer
+seeking to wash the blood from his hands with God's pure water.
+
+They left.  Li Sin escorted them courteously to the door.
+
+"Good-by!" he wished them.
+
+"Good-by, my yellow friend," Dreghorn answered contemptuously.  Irene
+Johns did not hear it.
+
+Li Sin went above to his apartment.  He clapped his hands for Hong Kop.
+
+"You will go down to where you know, Hong Kop, to the house of Ling Wah
+Lee--"
+
+The Cantonese made his eternal bow.
+
+"And you will have him find out for me, Hong Kop, all there is to be
+known about Roderick Dreghorn, hunter of ivory, with a bullet-mark on
+the forehead and a weal on the right hand, the weal of a Burmese knife."
+
+There is a doctrine in one of the faiths that man is born in original
+sin, and that unless he is cleansed by sacrament he is until the end of
+time the property of the evil one.  There is an article of dogma in the
+same faith that one may become possessed of demons.  If this is true,
+then never a sacrament was said over Dreghorn, nor ever was he
+confronted with the exorcist's mystic and terrible formula.  Hell
+seemed to have employed him all his life and to have made him its brain
+and hand.  The first of the story was bad enough, with its record of
+treachery, of gainful crimes in the dark lands, of murders concealed
+and never explained.  Even Li Sin's worldly-wise mind was shocked by
+Hong Kop's report.  There was the incident in the Belgian Congo when
+Dreghorn, allied with a corrupt Belgian official, burned a village with
+all the inhabitants, shooting down those who tried to escape from the
+flames.  They had not produced enough ivory.
+
+"Even madness will not explain that!"  Li Sin shook his head.
+
+There was the incident during the period of the Boxer chaos in
+Yuen-Lau, when Dreghorn and an associate had tortured an old mandarin,
+hoping to make him unearth treasure.  They had given him the torture of
+the bowstring, and the water torture, and the torture of red metal at
+his feet.
+
+"And he an old man," Li Sin thought, "four-score and five!"
+
+There was the incident in Mombasaland when the fiendish natives had
+captured a lone hunter of ivory, had crucified him on the ground,
+smeared with honey for the ants, delirious under the smashing sun.
+Dreghorn could have rescued him, for he was well armed and had a large
+party of natives.  But he contented himself with stealing the man's
+ivory and leaving him there to die.
+
+"That is one thing for which there is no punishment," Li Sin thought.
+"No punishment is equal in horror."
+
+Li Sin read another incident, and he read no farther.  It was the story
+of Marie Tirlemont, called _Flancs-de-neige_, whom Dreghorn had brought
+with him from Maxim's in Paris, down to the Congo.  She had ceased to
+amuse Dreghorn a hundred miles south of Leopoldville, and he had
+abandoned her alone, in a village of black beasts.
+
+And now Dreghorn, Li Sin mused, wanted to marry.  He wanted to marry
+this fair little American girl, pure and delicate as the petal of a
+primrose, light and shimmering and gay as iridescence on water--to make
+a home with her, to have her bear children.
+
+He called for Hong Kop.
+
+"What is the profit of crime, Hong Kop?" he asked.
+
+The Cantonese thought for a moment.
+
+"The profit of crime is death," he answered.
+
+"Death is a sweet and gentle thing, Hong Kop," his master mused.  "It
+comes to the old like a gentle and sweet-scented sleep.  It comes to
+the suffering like a grateful anodyne.  On others it falls so quickly
+and surely that there is no pain.  It is not the profit of crime, Hong
+Kop, except for those who wish much to live."
+
+He mused again, joining his finger-tips together and knitting his brows.
+
+"Unless, instead of being a sweet sleep, it is a nightmare, Hong Kop!
+Unless, instead of being an anodyne, it is a horror!  Unless it comes
+accompanied by a huge and monstrous fear, a terror that clutches the
+heartstrings, a fear that kills!"
+
+He was going away on the morrow, Dreghorn said.  He would be away for
+six months, and then he would return, and they would be married.  He
+wanted to buy her something before he left, a ring or a bracelet.
+
+"But she wanted to buy it here," he sneered at Li Sin.
+
+
+"I wanted to buy it here," she replied warmly, "because here I can get
+the most beautiful things in the world."
+
+"If you care for that yellow junk," Dreghorn laughed shortly.
+
+"Roderick!" she protested quickly.  She was pained through and through.
+Li Sin smiled reassuringly at her.  But Dreghorn wandered on.
+
+"Anything you want," he told Irene; "anything that pleases you."
+
+As he watched him, Li Sin became convinced that the man was in love,
+head over heels in, as a boy might be.  The hunter became garrulous,
+under his feelings, as under the influence of a drug.
+
+"She spoke of getting the house at Huntingdon decorated in some
+Oriental style," Dreghorn laughed.  "She can have it if she wants it.
+But I don't see why she could n't have it done in honest white style."
+
+Li Sin smiled blandly as ever.  He might have been receiving a
+compliment.
+
+"You don't seem to have a high opinion of Asia or Africa," he remarked
+casually.
+
+"I have no use for any color except white," Dreghorn answered brutally.
+"Black, yellow, brown, or red."
+
+"It is a harsh thing," Li Sin reproved him.  Irene Johns stood by,
+pale, nervous, and hurt.  "It is a grievous thing to wound the body,
+but it is a more grievous thing to wound the soul.  And to wound it
+unjustly is more grievous still."
+
+"I deal in facts," Dreghorn laughed.
+
+"May I show you a fact?" Li Sin went on.  "You have been in China, and
+if I mistake not, you read Chinese."
+
+"Among my many accomplishments," Dreghorn sneered, "is the reading of
+Chinese."
+
+Irene looked at him with a sort of fearful agony in her eyes.  She had
+never seen his brutality creep out before, and she was shocked at the
+sight of him lolling across the counter and striving his utmost to hurt
+the smiling Manchu.  Li Sin took up a book from behind him, a broad,
+thin book, the stiff parchment pages of which were edged with gold.  He
+opened it carefully.  The leaves had the stiffness of steel.
+
+"These are the verses of Ling Tai Fu, of Tientsin," the Manchu said, "a
+poet of the last century who had traveled into Russia.  He complains
+bitterly of the same prejudice, and he deals with facts, which you deal
+with.  Here is his poem 'The Return.'  Perhaps you will translate it."
+
+Dreghorn looked down the page smilingly.
+
+  "They have laughed at me, they of the North--me, of the race of Chang!
+  Because of my skin like an autumn leaf, because of my slitted eyes,
+  Because they were white as the sun, they said, white as light!
+  And yet--whiter than white is the leper.
+
+  White is the hibiscus tree with fluttering blossoms, white as they!
+  But whiter than it is the snow which numbs its roots in the ground!
+  White are the men of the North as the sun, white as light!
+  And yet--whiter than white is the leper."
+
+
+Dreghorn laughed easily.  Irene shivered with a shock of horror.  Li
+Sin smiled.
+
+"Those are facts," the Manchu said.
+
+"Is there any more of this?" the hunter asked.  He turned over the leaf.
+
+"No more," Li Sin answered.  "I should have warned you about those
+leaves.  You have cut your hand."
+
+Dreghorn looked at his left thumb.  The edge of the book-leaf had
+sheared into it as sharp and as painlessly as the edge of a razor.  A
+few minute drops of blood showed on the skin.
+
+"You had better have a little peroxide," Li Sin suggested.
+
+"I 'm not a child," Dreghorn laughed.  "It is n't anything.  Come on,
+Irene."
+
+They left the store together, and, as was his wont with favored
+customers, Li Sin saw them to the door.  The girl was flushed deep with
+mortification, and she shot the Manchu a mute appeal of apology.
+Dreghorn smiled again.
+
+"_Au revoir_, my poetical friend," he laughed.
+
+"Good-by!" answered Li Sin, gravely.
+
+Li Sin saw little of Irene Johns for the next six weeks.  Once she came
+into the store, but she was nervous and flushed, as though she thought
+the Manchu would hold against her the insults Dreghorn had offered him.
+But he took pains to show her that he and she were as close friends as
+ever.  She was silently grateful, but still nervous.
+
+"Mr. Dreghorn will be back in six months?" the Manchu said.
+
+"In six months," she answered listlessly.  "He is gone to Abyssinia."
+
+"And you will be married soon after?"
+
+"Immediately he comes back, he insists," she said.
+
+The glamour and hypnotism and force of the man's presence no longer
+enthralled her, Li Sin could see.  She was fearful of the step she was
+taking.  But she was certain it was going to take place.  Once Dreghorn
+returned, the quality of his masterfulness would grind down all
+opposition, even were she to show any.
+
+"I want you to come in soon," Li Sin told her.  "I have some things
+coming from Peking that I want you to see."
+
+But she did not come in.  In place of her there entered the store, six
+weeks after Dreghorn had sailed, a tall, heavily built young man with a
+tanned face, heavy jaw, and gray eyes.  He asked for Mr. Sin.
+
+"I am Li Sin," the Manchu told him.
+
+"My name is Gray, surgeon on the Cunarder Hibernia, between New York
+and Algiers.  Miss Johns asked me to tell you something, and she would
+like to see you, if it is not asking too much.  She is prostrated at
+home.  Her fiancé is dead."
+
+"Mr. Dreghorn is dead!" Li Sin commented simply.  "How?"
+
+"He came out of the smoking-room one night, after talking to me about
+his intended," the surgeon went on glibly.  He seemed to be repeating
+something he had rehearsed.  "We were off Algiers, and though the night
+was fine, a cross-sea was running.  He said he would not turn in for a
+half-hour yet, and the last I saw of him he was leaning against the
+starboard rail of the boat-deck.  We never saw anything more of him.
+There can be no doubt that he fell overboard."
+
+Li Sin studied him for a few minutes silently.
+
+"Dr. Gray," he said simply, "you will pardon a man who is twenty years
+older than you, and who has seen much of the world and much of life,
+but--that is not what happened.  Dr. Gray, how did Dreghorn die?"
+
+He continued looking at the young surgeon.  The man was evidently under
+a great strain.
+
+"I know Miss Johns," Li Sin went on, "and I knew Dreghorn."
+
+"If you know Miss Johns," the young surgeon blurted out suddenly, "you
+know the best and most beautiful woman I have ever seen; and if you
+knew Dreghorn, you knew the damnedest scoundrel unhanged."
+
+"That, too, I know," said Li Sin.
+
+He waited an instant.  The surgeon was uncomfortably silent.
+
+"Dr. Gray," the Manchu insisted, "of what did Dreghorn die?"
+
+"If you want to know, and have the right to know," Gray burst out
+savagely, "the man died because he had contracted the most virulent
+case of leprosy I have ever seen in the tropics.  How he did it, God
+only knows.  He was quite well when he left New York except for a rash
+on his left hand.  He must have been impregnated with some horrible
+virus.  In a few days I had to manacle him in his cabin.  For a week
+the man was a shrieking maniac.  I thought something might be done when
+we got to port.  There was no chance.  In Algiers they would have put
+him in the leper colony.  So one night I took him up to the boat-deck
+and let him go overboard."
+
+There was an instant's silence.
+
+"I knew of the man," the doctor said bitterly, "and I can't even pray
+to God for his soul!"
+
+"But I must!" said Li Sin.
+
+"You will go up and see Miss Johns," the surgeon reminded him.  "She
+will get over it."
+
+"She will get over it, and be happy, and marry a good man," the Manchu
+told him.  "I will go to see her."  And they parted.
+
+He went upstairs to his apartment, very slowly, very calmly.  He sat
+down and thought for a while.  Softly he clapped his hands.  The silent
+Cantonese came.
+
+"Hong Kop," he asked, "tell me, Hong Kop, you who are young, how does
+love come?"
+
+In fluting, sibilant Cantonese the servant answered:
+
+"There is beauty," he said, "and it calls to manliness with the call of
+cymbals.  They meet and wing upward, as Chung Tzu wrote, 'like a hymn
+recited softly at the death of day.'"
+
+"There is beauty, and there is manliness!" the Manchu mused.  "There is
+Irene Johns, and there is--"  He smiled an instant, and became as grave
+as ever again.  "You will go to Brooklyn, to the Navy Yard, Hong Kop,
+and you will find for me an ensign called Nelson.  You will find where
+he is, Hong Kop....
+
+"I am getting old, Hong Kop, I am getting old.  The pear gardens of
+Tientsin are bursting into silver and mauve.  Birds from the outer sea
+are winging northward.  Again with the spring the musicians tune their
+lutes of jade.  The throbbing chords do not awaken me, Hong Kop.  Hong
+Kop, I am old."
+
+He rose wearily.
+
+"Call the gray limousine, Hong Kop," he directed, "and then go on your
+errand."
+
+He stretched his arms out for his fur coat, but suddenly he remembered
+something.  He went upstairs to the glass-roofed laboratory; taking a
+parcel from a bronze chest, and unwrapping the antiseptic-soaked
+coverings, he brought out a book, a broad, thin book, the stiff
+parchment pages of which were edged with gold.  Carefully he lighted
+the muffle-furnace, and carefully he placed the volume in it.  And
+while he waited for the volume to be consumed, softly he began to
+recite a quatrain from it, a quatrain of Ling Tai Fu's:
+
+  "White is the hibiscus tree with fluttering blossoms, white as they!
+  But whiter than it is the snow which numbs its roots in the ground!
+  White are the men of the North as the sun, white as light!
+  And yet--whiter than white is the leper."
+
+
+
+
+"IRISH"
+
+Eastward the line of Twenty-fourth Street flowed evenly like a sluggish
+river, hazy, dim, antique, mottled by the lights of the little shops,
+of blotches and shafts of yellow illumination from the glass panels of
+the old houses, iron railings, and small scrofulous gardens.  Past the
+old houses, at the juncture of Seventh Avenue and the street, came an
+irregular blaze, a sort of ocher ray from a cellar where an Italian had
+a coal, ice, and wood business; the glare of the cigar store; the thin
+ray of the news-stand kept by the fat, rather dirty old German woman;
+the pale, sinister windows of the Chinese restaurant, and the arrogant
+blaze from Slavin's saloon.
+
+At no time did the street appear so well as it did now, in the dusk of
+the early New York spring.  The darkness, which was not full darkness
+but a sort of blue mantle, threw a veil of illusion over it, and
+through the veil the lights came softly.  Before the dusk it was crude
+realism, and when night fell there would be sinister shadows.  But now
+it had a little beauty.  It was like a picture a painter might have
+done some centuries ago, an unimportant and rather brutal picture, and
+time and grime and proper lighting had given it such value that one
+would pause before it for an instant, not knowing why the charm.
+
+The old man sitting in the doorway of one of the little houses with the
+yellowish patch of grass surrounded by a warped iron railing hated the
+street, with the dull, cold hatred of old men.  Yet he could n't get
+away from it.  Often his son had suggested, and his wife when she was
+alive had suggested that they move to the country.  "Yerra, do ye call
+that country?" he had snarled at the mention of Westchester, and Long
+and Staten islands; and that had killed the suggestion and they had
+tried to have him move up-town, to Harlem, but, "Yerra, what would I be
+doing up there?" he had rasped.  The son had spoken of the pleasant
+places in Brooklyn, out Flatbush way.  "Yerra, is it Brooklyn?"  What
+impression he had of that worthy borough is hard to imagine, but he
+spoke with devastating contempt.
+
+The truth was, the old man was wedded to Twenty-fourth Street.  He was
+like some of his race who have ancient, uncomely wives whom they
+despise and hate but without whom they cannot live.  There was the
+place it was fated for him to be.  There was the shop where he got
+shaved every morning.  There was the saloon where he had his three
+drinks a day, regular as the clock--one before lunch, one before
+dinner, and one before he went to bed.  There was the news-stand where
+he snapped the daily paper from the hands of the old German woman.  If
+an elevated train on Seventh Avenue were late, he would notice it.  He
+had decided to be there, and there he remained.
+
+To the eye the old man was a forbidding, a cold figure.  It was more
+this forbidding and cold quality that made him old, rather than years.
+He could not have been much over fifty.  But this fixity of habit, this
+impression of being a monument, had endowed him with antiquity.  He was
+not a big man, but he gave the impression of size, of importance.  His
+hair was gray, and that gave him dignity.  His eye was of a colorless,
+aloof blue, the blue of ice.  His gaunt, clean-shaven face had
+something ecclesiastical about it.  His clothes were always a decent
+and expensive black, and a heavy gold watch-chain spanned his vest.  He
+had always a stick by his side.  His shoes were good and roomy, and
+somewhat old-fashioned.  His hat was of black, hard felt, not a derby,
+nor yet a high hat, but one of those things that suggest property and
+respectability, and somehow land.  His name was Mr. McCann.
+
+The social standing of Mr. McCann on Twenty-fourth Street was something
+of a phenomenon.  Every one accorded him a sort of a terrified respect.
+The Italian coal-and-wood man; the German newsdealer; the man in the
+cigar store where he indulged in his only vulgarity, plug tobacco,
+which he cut with a penknife and crumbled in the palm of his hand; the
+bartender in Slavin's who fixed his drinks to a nicety and had a cheery
+and respectful "Well, Mr. McCann?" for his each entry.  The street
+recognized he was of them, but immensely superior.  He was not a
+gentleman, so the respect was not from caste to caste but something
+much more real.  None ever became familiar with him, nor would any sane
+man think of insulting him.  Aloof and stern, with terrible dignity, he
+moved through the street.  Even the children hushed as he drew near.
+
+None in the street ever examined their hearts or minds as to why he was
+paid their tribute of respect.  If they had they would have found no
+reason for it, but they would have paid it to him all the same.  He was
+Mr. McCann.
+
+And this was all the more strange because he was father of Irish Mike
+McCann, between whom and the middle-weight boxing championship of the
+world there stood only two men.  Irish they loved; were proud of.  But
+it was n't to the father of Irish that the respect was paid.  It was to
+Mr. McCann.
+
+
+A very strange thing about Mr. McCann was this: that he could only know
+time and space and circumstances in relation to himself.  As thus:
+Seventh Avenue was not Seventh Avenue to him, a muscular, grimy street
+that plodded for a space on the west side of Manhattan, crashed
+northward through the Twenties, galloped toward Forty-second, crossed
+Broadway recklessly, and at Fifty-ninth met the armed front of the
+park, died.  To Mr. McCann it was only an artery that crossed his
+street.  Also, winter was not winter, not the keenness of frost, the
+tumbling, swirling miracle of the snow, but just the time when he put
+on his overcoat.  Nor did summer mean the blossoming of the boughs to
+him nor the happy population on the river and the beach, and the little
+Italians with their ice-cream carts, nor children crooning over great
+segments of watermelon, but just a time when it was oppressively hot.
+And great national events only marked points in his life.  He would not
+say, for instance, that he was married about the time of the war with
+Spain, but that the Maine was sunk about the time he was married.
+
+All his life was under his eyes, like a map one knows perfectly--a
+rectangular pattern.  There were no whorls, no arabesques.  There were
+no delicate shadings, no great purple splash, but precise black and
+white.  There were no gaps he had jumped, to be a mystery in his latter
+years.  All was evident.
+
+He could see himself in his boyhood on the Irish hills, among the plain
+farmer family he was born of.  He could place his father, plain old
+tiller of the soil, always smoking a clay pipe; his mother,
+warm-hearted, bustling, a great one for baking bread; his brothers and
+sisters, honest clods.  But he himself seemed to have been born
+superior, was superior.  There was no mystery.  It was a fact.  He
+accepted it.  And from him his mother accepted it.
+
+And by his mother it was impressed on the whole family that their son
+and brother Dennis was superior.  For him better clothes, easier work,
+and when he decided that farm life was not for him, no objection was
+made to the sending of him to college in Cork.  But after a couple of
+years there he had made no progress with studies, and it seemed to him
+that the studies were not worth while.  And he returned home.
+
+They had tried to get a government office for him then, a very small
+one.  But that also required examinations, which he did not seem able
+to pass.  So that a great contempt for books grew up within him.  And
+then he grew convinced that Ireland had not enough opportunity for him.
+And the family got the money to send him to America.
+
+The years at the college in Cork had intensified his sense of
+superiority so that when he came to America he felt that the Irish he
+met there were a very inferior people.  And nothing about the city
+pleased him; everything was much better in Ireland, he decided, and he
+said Ireland was a wonderful country--the only thing wrong with it was
+the people.  And the queer thing about it was that the Irish in New
+York agreed with him.  His few years at Cork gave them the impression
+he had accumulated learning, and the race has a medieval respect for
+books and writing.
+
+"True for you, Mr. McCann, true for you," they would answer his remarks
+on the inferiority of the Irish Irish.  "But what can you expect and
+the centuries of oppression they have been under?"
+
+"If they had independence enough, there would have been no oppression."
+"Ay, there 's a lot in what you say, Mr. McCann."
+
+His superiority disarmed them, cowed them.  If one of themselves, or a
+foreigner had uttered the words, I can imagine the rush, the dull thud,
+the door being taken from its hinges, the mournful procession to the
+widow's house.
+
+This aloofness, this superiority helped him, or, rather, made him, in
+the business he had chosen--life-insurance.  The wisdom he uttered
+about life and death to a race who considers life only as the
+antechamber of eternity impressed his hearers, and they were afraid,
+too, not to take out policies from this superior, frigid, and evidently
+authoritative young man.
+
+His superiority also brought him a wife, a timid, warm-hearted girl who
+brought a tidy sum of money as a fortune, which he spent upon himself.
+
+She was terrified of him and very much in love with him for years.  And
+then the love went and the terror remained.  She bore him three
+children, two sons and a daughter.  And in due time she died.  But not
+until life had run pleasantly and respectfully for her husband, for all
+that he despised it, not as vanity and affliction of spirit but as
+inferiority and irritation.
+
+And one son died, and a while after her mother's death Moyra, the
+daughter, ran away, contracting a very inferior marriage with a
+brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad.  And the time came when the old
+man had to retire from the field of insurance, new methods, new
+companies coming in.  The native Irish died of consumption and
+pneumonia, and the Irish-Americans cared not a tinker's curse for
+superiority.  So his kingdom vanished.  And Poles, and French, and
+Italians, and the folk who came from Palestine by way of Russia, and
+even Chinese, jostled him.  And he was left with a great sense of
+superiority and a growing sense of futility and one son, "the brilliant
+Irish-American middle-weight, contender for the world's championship,
+'Irish' Mike McCann!"
+
+All that was needed now, the old man felt, to crown a useful and
+superior life was a material reward.  Money he did n't care for--he had
+all he wanted, decent clothes, a house, tobacco, his three drinks a
+day; and "The Advocate," an Irish weekly, he read for news of people in
+Cork, puzzling out this genealogy and that.  As, for instance, he would
+read of a Patrick Murphy fined for drunkenness at Youghal, and he would
+say: "I wonder now, would that be a son of ould James Murphy of
+Ballinure.  Sure, I would n't put it past him.  A damned drunken family
+they always were."  Or a name in litigation would strike him.  "Them
+Hamiltons were always the ones for going to law.  A dirty connection!"
+If a pier or a piece of public property were being builded, his comment
+was: "I wonder who's getting the money out of that."  If a political
+speech were reported he would sneer: "Yerra, John Redmond and them
+fellows ought to be ashamed of themselves, and them plundering the
+people, with their tongue in their cheek."  "The Advocate" was a great
+comfort to him.
+
+He often thought, as he was reading it, of how much he would like to
+return to Ireland and show the ignorant the fruits of a superior life
+led in hard work and wisdom.  But for that he would have to show
+something tangible--even money would not be enough, so queer those
+people were.  To impress them at all he would have to have a title of
+some kind: Alderman, or Judge, or Sheriff, "the Honorable Dennis
+McCann," and to have that he would need to have gone into politics, and
+that was not a career for him.  To succeed there he would have to be
+able to mix with the common people, drink with them, be
+hail-fellow-well-met with a crowd of the dirtiest kind of Irish.  No,
+he could never have done that.
+
+No, but his son might have.  Sure, why could n't he?  Wasn't he reared
+right among them?  And though he came from a superior house, sure, that
+would only be an advantage.  They would look up to him as well as be
+friends with him.  And with the brains he ought to have, considering
+his father, there was no office in the land for which he could n't be
+fitted.  Surrogate, or mayor, or governor, even!  What was to prevent
+him if he 'd been the sort of child he ought to have been?
+
+And if he had been that, there would have been a monument for the old
+man.  There would have been a justification for his life--not that he
+felt he needed any, but just to show.  And people would have recognized
+how much the young one owed to the old one.  Then he could have gone
+back to Ireland for a visit; he would n't have stayed there; it was a
+good country to come from, as he always said.  But even the ignorant
+common people would have given him credit.  He could hear them now
+talking to his son: "Ah, sure, if your Honor's father had had the
+chances you had, sure it is n't Mayor of New York he 'd be, but
+President of America."  "Yerra, 't is easy to see where you got the
+brains, my lad.  A chip of the ould block."  "Dennis McCann's son and
+him governor of the Empire State.  Well, you can thank God for your
+father, my bould boyo."
+
+There would have been an evidence for him, an evidence he was entitled
+to.
+
+And look you the dirty trick had been played on him.  Instead of the
+son who would crown his gray hairs with honor, who would justify him,
+he was father to a common prize-fighter, a man who was not looked on
+with respect by any.  The idol, perhaps, of the New York Irish, but of
+the ignorant Irish.  True, he was a good boy; he didn't drink.  But
+neither did his father except in reason.  He was generous with his
+money, but, after all, what was money?  Always smiling, always
+laughing.  "Sonny" they called him and "Irish"; that was no way to
+attain dignity.  Even the Italian coal-ice-and-wood man called him
+"Irish."  The old man would like to see any one call himself "Irish."
+
+And he could n't listen to any reason.  The old man had an opening for
+him in business up-town.  A friend of his, an undertaker, a very
+superior man, who only did the best kind of trade, had offered young
+Michael a chance.  But the prize-fighter had laughed.
+
+"In a way I 'm in that line of business myself.  Why change?"
+
+The old man had shaken with rage.
+
+"Get out of my sight, you impertinent pup!"
+
+What were they thinking of him in Ireland at all, at all?  Some one, of
+course, would write home and tell all about it.  And if his name, that
+should be treated with respect, came up, some one would laugh: "Ould
+Dennis McCann!  Ah, sure, what's he, anyway?  Sure, his son's only a
+common fighter."
+
+He could never get away from it; was never let get away from it.  Why,
+even to-night now, not a half-mile away at Madison Square Garden,
+Michael was fighting.  And a great fuss they were making about it, too.
+Some Italian he was fighting, and if he won he was to get a fight with
+the champion.  He 'd probably win--he always did--and beat the
+champion, too.  And the end of it would be the honorable name would be
+dragged more through the dirt of the newspapers.
+
+"I wonder will he forget to bring home 'The Advocate,'" the old man
+thought.  "He 'd better not."
+
+
+Before the bell had gone for the first round, before the referee had
+called them together for instructions, before even the gloves were
+laced on him, "Irish" knew he was a beaten man.
+
+Below him--he could see from his corner of the ring--the great garden
+was packed, a yellowish gray foam of faces above the dark liquid of
+bodies.  Above those the galleries were great ovals lined with faces.
+And here and there were little tendrils of smoke.  And the red caps of
+attendants.  And occasionally the flash of metal buttons as police and
+firemen hovered in the aisles.
+
+And at the shelf around the ringside reporters with their pencils and
+paper, and telegraphers with their clicking instruments.  The
+timekeeper, fingering watch and gong.  In another corner of the ring
+the thin, lugubrious referee--himself once a famous lightweight.  And
+everywhere lights, that in a minute or so would go out, and there would
+be only a great blue one over the ring.  And over the house was the
+rippling hush that at any instant would burst into a great volume of
+cheers; a deep roar as of gunnery.
+
+Across the ring, in his corner, the Italian middle-weight lolled,
+chatting with his seconds.  Irish could occasionally glimpse the olive
+body; the dark hair and eyes; the even, grim face, unmarked save for
+the marred left ear and the minute flattening of the nose.
+
+"... between the leading contenders of the world's middleweight
+championship, Nick Chip [so they had Americanized Niccolo Chiapetta] of
+Buffalo, and Irish Mike McCann...." and the sentence was lost in the
+roar of the Garden.
+
+As he came to the center of the ring for the referee's instructions, to
+hear the interpretation of the rules of hitting while holding and about
+what was and what was not a clinch, he studied the alert, smiling
+Italian.  Yes, Chip was far and away the best man he had ever met; too
+good for him, much too good.  If he had only waited a year, waited six
+months, even; five or six months more of stiff, good fighting and he
+could have taken the Italian easily.  A little more experience and a
+little more confidence if he could only have waited.
+
+But he could n't wait; he could n't afford to.  Neither he nor the old
+man could afford to.
+
+They shook hands and returned to their corners.  The whistle blew,
+ordering the seconds out.
+
+"Don't box him, Irish.  Stay with him.  Get in close, and when you get
+him open, bam!  See, just bam!" Old Maher, his trainer, whispered as he
+ducked out.  "See, no fancy stuff.  Just sock him.  How are you
+feeling, Irish?"
+
+"Fine."
+
+"At 'a baby!"
+
+_Bong-g-h!_  He turned and walked to the center of the ring.
+
+The Italian had dropped into his usual unorthodox pose.  His open right
+glove fiddling gently at the air, his left arm crooked, the glove
+resting against his left thigh.  He moved around the ring gently, like
+a good woman dancer.  About him was an immense economy of movement.  He
+seemed wide open--a mark for any boxer's left hand.  But Irish knew
+better.  The Latin would sway back from the punch and counter like
+lightning.  The old champion was wise to lie low and not to fight this
+man until he was compelled to.
+
+If he could only spar him into a corner and rush him there, taking the
+punches on the chance of smashing him on the ropes....  But the Italian
+glided around like a ghost.  He might have been some sort of a wraith
+for shadow-boxing, except for the confident, concentrated eyes.
+
+A minute's fiddling, shifting of position, light sparring.  The
+creaking of the boards the _shuff-shuff-shuff_ of feet.
+
+"Ah, why don't you walk in and kill him, Irish?  He's only a Guinea!"
+came a voice from the gallery.
+
+"He 's a yellow.  He 's a yellow, da Irish," an Italian supporter
+jeered.
+
+"Irish" could wait no longer.  He feinted with his left, feinted again.
+The left shot out, missed the jaw, came home high on the head.  The
+right missed the ribs and crashed on the Latin's back.  A punch jarred
+Irish on the jaw.  An uppercut ripped home under his heart.  At close
+quarters the Italian was slippery as an eel.  The garden roared delight
+at the Irish lad's punches, but Irish knew they were not effective.
+And the Italian had hurt him; slightly, but hurt him.
+
+A spar, another pawing rush; light, smart blows on the ropes.  "Break!
+break!" the cry of the referee.  Creaking of ropes and whining of
+boards.  A patter of applause as the round came to an end.  A chatter
+of voices as the light went up.  The clicking of telegraph instruments.
+
+"At 'a boy!  Keep after him," Maher greeted.
+
+As he sat down in his corner Irish was grim.  Yes, the Italian was too
+good for him; he had been afraid of this: that the Italian would
+outgeneral him into attacking all the time.  A little more experience,
+the fights that mean a hundred times the theory, and he would have lain
+back and forced Chip to stand up and face him instead of sniping him on
+the run.  The confidence of six or seven more fights and it would n't
+have mattered to him what the gallery was shouting, what the ringside
+thought.  He could have made Chip stand up and fight, and in a round or
+so the Garden would have been with him.
+
+If he had only had a little more experience--if only he had been able
+to wait!
+
+Ah, well, what was the use of grousing!  He was here to fight.
+
+"Can't you rough him up a little in the clinch, Irish?" Maher whispered.
+
+"No, I 'll fight him fair."
+
+"Just a little to get his goat."
+
+"No."
+
+The lights went out, leaving only the great glare of the ring.  The
+whistle blew; clatter of buckets and bottles.  The seconds clambered
+down.  The gong clashed shudderingly.  The second round.
+
+He walked slowly forward over the white canvas under the bluish white
+arc-light, to meet his man, and then suddenly from his walk he jumped,
+as some jungle thing might jump.  He jumped without setting, without
+any boxer's poise.  Right for the poised, alive body he jumped.  And
+his hands hooked for drive and uppercut.  He could feel the sense of
+shock as they both went home, but to unvital points.  The left hand
+thudded on the neck.  The right crashed on the Italian's left arm.  He
+was in close now, driving short lefts and rights to the body, but he
+was handling something that bent and sprang back like a whalebone, that
+moved, swayed with suppleness like some Spanish or Argentine dancer,
+and soon elbows locked his arms subtly, and he could do nothing.
+
+"Come on, break!"  The referee was trotting about the ring like a
+working terrier.  Peering, moving from right to left.  "Break!  Break!"
+His voice had the peculiar whine of a dog on a scent.
+
+He stood back, sparred a moment.  Again Irish rushed.  He felt on
+either side of his face sharp pains as of slaps with the open hand on
+the cheeks.  Irritating things.  He could feel the Latin shake as the
+left hand caught him flush on the ear.  A tattoo like taps of little
+hammers played at his body.  Irish's right glove came full into the
+Italian's ribs.  He could feel the rush of air through the Italian's
+teeth.  He brought the hand up with a short chop on the Italian's neck.
+A scuffle; a semi-wrestle.  And again his arms were locked.
+
+"Come on, boys!  Come on!  Break quick!"
+
+They stood apart, sparred.  Irish feinted with the left hand.  Feinted
+with the right.  Changed feet quickly, right foot foremost now.
+Pivoted home with the left hand--Joe Walcott's punch.  The Italian
+side-stepped, and caught him on the ear as he swung to the ropes.
+Irish turned quickly.  A flurry of gloves.  Light lead and counter.
+Clinch.
+
+"You're good, Nick!"
+
+"Y 'ain't so bad yourself, Irish."
+
+As the bell finished the round and he walked toward his corner, he was
+surprised, looking down at himself, to find angry red welts on his body
+where what he thought was a light tattoo had been beaten....
+
+Yes, he thought between rounds, another little while, another pound of
+experience, and for all his cunning, his generalship, he could have
+beaten Nick.  And then between him and the championship there would
+have been only the champion, and the old champion's day was past.  He
+was getting fat, and satisfied, and drinking--and that was bad!  And
+going around the country to Boston and New Orleans and Seattle, beating
+third-raters and then mainly on points, and lying low, very low indeed,
+whenever Nick Chip's name was mentioned, or even his, Irish Mike
+McCann's.  Only another six months and he could have taken on the men
+the champion had beaten: Paul Kennedy of Pittsburgh, and the clever
+Jewish lad who went by the Irish name of Al Murphy--that fight would
+have taught him a lot--and the Alabama Kid, the hunched Negro
+middle-weight who hit like a flail, and Chicago Johnny Kelly--who
+fought with his right hand first, a hard lad to reach, but he could
+have beaten him.  Could have beaten them all.
+
+He wanted to be champion--knew he could be, with time and experience.
+And what there was for him in the championship was not personal glory
+and not money, but a strange pride of ease that was hard to explain.
+All he could do well was this athletic feat of fighting with gloves.
+There was intuition, a sort of gift.  His body balanced right.  His
+left hand moved easily.  His right was always in position.  All his
+fights he had won easily.  But he had never been up against any one as
+good as this Italian veteran.
+
+It seemed to him only right that an Irishman--or an Irish-American,
+which was better still--should hold the middle-weight and heavy-weight
+championships.  Fighting--clean, hard struggle--was the destiny
+apportioned to them.  He knew enough of the history of his race to
+remember they had fought under every banner in Europe--the Irish
+Brigade at Fontenoy, and the men who were in the Pope's Zouaves, and
+Russia and Germany knew them, and the great regiments the English had,
+Munsters and Leinsters and Enniskillen Dragoons, and in New York was
+the beloved Sixty-ninth, the Fighting Sixty-ninth.
+
+Vaguely in his mind there were thoughts which he could not translate
+into words, it not being his craft, that there was some connection
+between the men who fought in a padded ring with gloves and the men who
+went gallantly into battle with two flags above their heads, the flag
+they served faithfully and the little wisp of green they loved.  The
+men in the ring stood for the green in the field, perhaps.  And we
+should see in the Irish boxer what the cheering ranks of Irish going
+into battle were.  Fight squarely in the ring, fight gallantly, fight
+to the last drop, and win gallantly and lose gallantly.  And let no man
+say: There is a dirty or mean fighter.  And let no man say: There is a
+coward.
+
+There were Irish names in the ring that made old men's hearts flutter
+and young men wish they had been born years before.  Old John L.
+Sullivan (God rest the gallant battered bones!) and Tom Sharkey of
+Dundalk, who never knew when he was beaten, and old Peter Maher, who
+was somewhere in the house.  And there was another name in the mist of
+past days, the name of a middle-weight champion who had been greatest
+and most gallant of them all, the elder Jack Dempsey, the Non-pareil.
+None like him, none!  Irish of the Irish, most gallant of them all, he
+sleeps in a green grave in the West somewhere, and in all men's hearts.
+
+And Irish had thought humbly to fill the Non-pareil's shoes, to fight
+as hard as he fought, to win as chivalrously, to lose as well, and in
+his corner as he fought the ghost of the great Nonpareil would be.  And
+the roar of the house as he would walk out at the referee's call, the
+champion, Irish-American, in his tights of green, and around his waist
+the starry Western flag.
+
+Ah, well!
+
+The shrill cut of the whistle, and the chief second leaned forward and
+wiped his face.
+
+"Fift' round, Irish.  Keep at him, boy!"
+
+The gong, and the hushed house.
+
+He noticed now that the Italian fighter was no longer resting his left
+hand semi-casually on his hip, kept up no longer his poise of an
+Argentine dancer.  The Buffalo man's left hand was extended like an
+iron bar, his shoulder hunched to his jaw for a shield, his head sunk
+low, as a turtle's head is half-drawn under its carapace; his feet well
+apart.  The man's oily black hair was a tangled mop, and on his ribs
+were red blotches.  His lips were set in a wide line.  His black,
+ophidian eyes snapped and glowed.  His poised right hand flickered like
+a snake's tongue.
+
+And he was punching, punching as hard as he could, hitting squarely
+with knuckles and every ounce of weight--careless of the economy of the
+ring that tells a man to save his hands, for a boxer's hands are a
+boxer's life, and every hurt sinew, every broken knuckle, every jarred
+delicate bone counts in the long run.  The Italian was hitting, hitting
+like a trip-hammer, hitting for his title.
+
+They faced each other, the Italian poised, drawn like a bowstring,
+aiming like a sharpshooter, Irish, jigging on his toes, careless of
+guarding, feinting with the right hand, breaking ground, feinting with
+the left, feinting with the right again, and then a sudden plunging
+rush.  The jar to his neck as the Italian's straight left caught him
+flush on the mouth, the whirling crash of infighting, the wrestling
+clinch.  No longer the referee called, "Break! break!" but tore at them
+with hysterical hands.  A tacit understanding grew between them to
+protect at all times, and as they drew apart they hooked and
+uppercutted, Irish with an insane mood of fighting, the Italian with a
+quick deliberation: _Snap!  Snap!_ the punches.
+
+Patter of feet, and creak of the boards, and little whine of the ropes.
+The great blue light overhead, the click of the telegraph instruments
+below.  The running feet of the referee and the nervous patting of his
+hands, _clop! clop!_  The seconds with their eyes glued on the fighting
+men, and their hands sparring in sympathy.  The mooing roar of the
+crowd and their louder tense silence.  And the regular gong, the short
+respite, hardly a second it seemed, though the interval was a
+minute--and the gong again.
+
+Once they were so carried away they paid no attention to it, but fought
+on.  Only the referee parted them.  Irish held out his glove in apology
+and they shook hands.  The garden seemed to shake to the cheering.
+
+
+Whip of lead in the tenth round, crash of counter, deep sock of
+infighting.  Clinch; break.  A half-second's inattention on the
+Italian's part, and the left hand of Irish crashed home to the jaw.
+
+Himself did not understand what had happened until he noticed the
+crumpled figure on the boards and heard the referee:
+
+"Get back, McCann.  Get back! ... One! ... two..."  An immense hysteria
+of sound filled the house.  Men jumped on seats.  The telegraph
+instruments clattered madly.  Somewhere near the ring was a fist fight.
+
+"Three!"
+
+The crumpled figure twitched.  At four it was dragging itself to its
+hands.  The glazed eyes blinked.  Life returned.  The Italian shook his
+head.  At seven he was on his hands and knees, his head clearing.  At
+eight he was kneeling on one knee, one glove resting on boards.  God!
+how long the seconds were, Irish thought.
+
+"Nine!"  Slowly the Italian rose.
+
+The Garden was no longer filled with human beings but with instruments
+of baritone sound.  It hit the roof, rebounded, whirled, surged.  All
+about Irish was sound, sound.  In front of him the Italian weak at the
+knees.  The referee hunched like a bowler.  Irish jumped in, fists
+swinging.  His fists met crossed arms, elbows, shoulders, but not jaw
+or head.  And suddenly the Italian was clinging to him, as a terrified
+cat will cling--he could n't tear himself loose.  It took the referee
+and him to tear the Italian away.
+
+Insane with the din, blind with excitement, he rushed again to meet the
+beautiful diagonal coverup, left arm across heart and plexus, right
+crooked about throat and jaw.  Again the clinging of the cat.  And he
+felt the Italian growing stronger.  It was like a dead man coming to
+life again.  Life was flowing slowly back to shoulders, from shoulders
+to arms and hands, to hips and knees.
+
+He stood back to consider this miracle, to think what to do next.  Two
+shaking lefts caught him in the face.
+
+And the gong rang and his chance was gone.
+
+Yes another six months and he could have won.  He would have known how
+to keep his head, how to finish the Italian crisply.  He had him out,
+out clean.  Another punch would have finished it.  And he had n't
+experience enough--another six months.
+
+Well, what was the use of grousing!  It could n't be helped.  He could
+n't pass the fight up when it was offered to him.  Right at home, and
+so much money.
+
+The money had been needed for the home and the old man.  It was funny
+how much a home cost even on Twenty-fourth Street, and the old man was
+used to a certain way of living.  He liked to have a cook, and a girl
+to do the work around the house.  That was the way it was in Ireland.
+And the old man needed his decent clothes and his spending money for
+his little drink and his tobacco and papers, and things like that.  He
+couldn't very well put the old man in lodgings.  He wasn't accustomed
+to that.  He wanted his home and the cook and girl.  He always was
+accustomed to it, and why should n't he have it?
+
+But a house took an awful lot of money.  For what the house cost he and
+the old man could have stayed at a swell hotel.  But the old man liked
+to be by himself.  You could n't blame him; the old man was entitled to
+a home.  He was a queer, crusty sort, the old man.  No harm in him, you
+know, but just could n't get on.
+
+And for all that people thought, a boxer's money was n't easy.  A
+middle-weight did n't get the money light-weights and heavy-weights
+got.  If he 'd won the championship--ah, that was all right!  Let it
+go!  But when you split fifty-fifty with your manager, there was only
+half of what you fought for; and there was expenses, too.  You had to
+travel a lot, and be nice to people, too.  You had to spend a lot in
+saloons, though you never drank yourself.  Keep your end up with the
+crowd.  And there was always old fighters out of luck, and some of them
+had families, too.  You could n't refuse them even if you 'd wanted to.
+And who 's going to help out a fighter except a fighter?  And there was
+always a lot of poor folks.
+
+It seemed a pity, even for the money end, not to have waited.  If he 'd
+waited he 'd have had the championship, and then he 'd have been fixed
+for life.
+
+If his old man had been a different kind of old man he 'd have gone to
+him and said: "Hey, old timer, how about going easy on the jack for a
+while, hey?  Just lay off a bit until I get things right.  Gi' me
+another half-dozen fights under my belt, see, and I 'll drop this
+Guinea cold.  And then the champion 'll have to give me a fight--the
+papers 'll make him, and you know what he is.  He 's a bum.  So what do
+you say we get us a couple o' rooms, hey, and go easy for a while?
+What do you say?"
+
+A different kind of old man would have said: "Sure.  We 'll take our
+time, and we 'll knock this Guinea for a row of jam-jars.  And as for
+the champion, it's a cinch."
+
+But he was n't that kind of old man.  He did n't hold with this
+fighting, nohow.  He had no use for it.  And he was n't the kind of old
+guy you could talk to.  Irish thought he must have had a hard time in
+his life.
+
+Ah, well; he was entitled to a good time now.  Let him have his own
+way.  Irish could always make money.  It did n't matter so much, after
+all, did it?  The only thing that hurt him was that he would never draw
+the Stars and Stripes through the green Irish tights....
+
+And he could have, if he 'd had only six months.
+
+
+Irish was aware now as he answered the bell that his bolt was shot.
+The high pitch of concentration had gone.  With the dropping of the
+Italian, and the Italian's escape, he had reached the high point of his
+fighting, and now must go down.  His punch would be heavy still, but it
+would lack the terrific speed, the speed of shock, that carries a
+knock-out.  And the effect of the cumulation of blows from the Italian
+sharpshooter was beginning to tell.  Through the bruises on his body
+and neck and the puffiness of his face, energy was flowing out of him
+like water from some pierced vessel.  The stinging lefts to his face
+had made it hard for him to breathe, and his hands were swollen inside
+his gloves, and all of a sudden his legs were tired.
+
+Into ten rounds of whirlwind fighting he had foolishly put everything,
+gambled energy and hands and brain.
+
+And he sensed with a great sinking of his heart that Chip was drawing
+ahead of him now, drawing away from him in the contest, with the
+inevitableness of the winner drawing away from the beaten man, forging
+ahead while the other plods hopelessly on....  With the quick telepathy
+of the ring the Italian knew Irish had cracked, that he was gone.  And
+now the energy he had saved by making his man come to him he could use,
+he must use.  For that knock-down in the tenth was a high score of
+points against him.  And he was afraid of a draw.  He would have to
+fight Irish again.  Not again!  He must knock him out.
+
+He met the futile rushes with stinging lefts.  At close quarters he
+ripped home his hands mercilessly.  As they drew apart he stalked his
+man.  _Smack!  Smack!_  It was no hard matter to avoid the rushing of
+Irish.  God! what a glutton Irish was!  What he could take without
+going down!
+
+Mechanically, stolidly, dully, Irish boxed.  All about him now was the
+hoarse murmur of speculation, and the din of it dazed him a little, and
+the light.  And from a cut in his forehead the blood was running into
+his eyes.
+
+Four times the gong crashed, the end and opening of a round, and the
+end and opening of another round.  Dully he went to his corner.  The
+splash of water in his face did not revive him, nor the current from
+the whipping towels, nor the slapping of his legs.
+
+"Don't let him knock you out, Irish.  Hold him.  Only two more rounds.
+Don't let him knock you out."  Maher's fierce whisper hit at his
+ear-drums.  So it was as bad as that, hey?
+
+"Hold on to him, kid.  Don't fight him.  Hold him."
+
+The bell rang.  They pushed him to his seat.  Wearily he moved toward
+the center of the ring.
+
+"Look out!" some one called.
+
+The Italian had sprung from his corner with the spring of a cat.  And
+Irish felt surprisedly that he had been struck with two terrific
+hammers on the jaw.  And as he wondered who had hit him his knees
+buckled surprisingly, and he was on his hands and knees on the floor.
+
+And he heard some one say: "... three ... four..."  He struggled to his
+feet.  Somewhere Maher was shouting.  "Take the count, Irish."  Irish
+dully wondered what he meant.
+
+And now Chip was in front of him, concentrated, poised.  And once more
+the hammer crashed on the jaw.  And he tumbled to the boards on his
+side.
+
+He was very dull, very dazed.  For a while he knew nothing.  And then
+he understood; the referee pumping his hand up and down, and the roar
+of the crowd.
+
+"Eight!"
+
+As he moved he felt the ropes, and blindly he groped for them, pulling
+himself to his feet somehow.  About him the din surged.  The referee
+stepped back.  The Italian was pawing at the referee's arm, protesting.
+Irish understood.  Chip wanted the fight stopped, did n't want to hit
+him any more.  Ah, he was a good kid, Chip was.
+
+And then the ring slithered underneath him; the hand grasping the rope
+grew lifeless, let go; and the lights went out for him; and Irish
+crashed forward on his face.
+
+
+The old man looked at the battered face above the blue serge suit.
+
+"Well," he said, "it must have been a grand fight entirely!"
+
+"It was a great fight," Irish grinned, "and a good man won."
+
+"Meaning yourself?"
+
+"No, meaning the Guinea."
+
+"So you were beat, eh?" the old man jeered.  "I never thought you were
+much good at it."
+
+"Ah, I don't know."  And Irish grinned again.
+
+"Tell me," the old man snapped, "did you bring me 'The Advocate'?"
+
+"I did."  And Irish handed it over.
+
+"'T is a wonder you remembered it," the old man snarled.  "And the fine
+lacing you 're after taking!"
+
+And Irish grinned again.  Wasn't he a queer, grumpy old man!
+
+
+
+
+BY ORDEAL OF JUSTICE
+
+Very much as though he were entering a disreputable place, Matthew
+Kerrigan slipped furtively from the taxicab into the hallway of the old
+New York mansion made over into an apartment-house.  He stood at the
+door, portly, important, wrapped in his fur coat.  He pushed the button
+marked "Mr. Sergius."  A young Russian butler admitted him.
+
+"Just say a Mr. Smith," Kerrigan announced importantly.  Across the
+Russian boy's harsh features there was the shadow of contempt.  He
+reappeared in an instant and held open a door for Kerrigan.
+
+Kerrigan had been expecting something of the dark, perfumed, cheap
+interior of a palmist's studio; or the meretricious mystery of a
+clairvoyant apartment with its crystal glass on faded velvet.  Even
+Kerrigan's untrained Broadwayish mind was awe-struck by the huge,
+somber living-room into which he was ushered.  He sensed, rather than
+understood, the richness of the pictures and hangings, the beautiful
+ceiling.  Only in books and papers had he seen anything like the great
+white borzoi lying before the roaring fireplace like a patient cat.
+The man he had come to see was sitting by the fire; dead-white features
+against a black background.  Lean, emaciated, with his full black
+beard, black cassock, and high black headdress of the Greek monk, he
+seemed more spirit than body.  He looked at Kerrigan with the insolence
+of a prince.
+
+"Yes?"  He did not ask Kerrigan to sit down.
+
+Kerrigan had planned a neat speech, somewhat humorous, cynical,
+patronizing, but it had fled from his memory.  He felt a sort of vague
+terror, as though this man were probing, uninvited, inside his soul and
+mind.
+
+"I heard--down-town--" he muttered.
+
+"Yes!" the monk said impatiently.  "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I wondered, Mr.--ah, Mr.--"
+
+"Brother Sergius!"
+
+"I wondered, Brother Sergius, if it were possible to hold converse--or
+see--or have some communication--some certain communication--with a
+person who 's been dead some time, some fourteen years--"
+
+The monk was looking at him keenly.  What had this well-fed business
+man, with the sweeping mustache and obviously massaged face, to do with
+the dim inhabitants of Death?
+
+"How did this man die?" the monk Sergius asked.
+
+"By accident," Matthew Kerrigan answered.  "He drowned himself."
+
+"What interest have you in him?"
+
+"They say he killed himself on account of me," Kerrigan's voice broke
+out as though he were pleading to a judge.  "It's not true!"
+
+"You don't know whether it's true or not?"  The Greek monk was studying
+Kerrigan's terrified features.
+
+"Can it be done?" Kerrigan was surprised at himself, so hoarse his
+voice sounded, so sincere his tones.  "I must know about it.  Can it be
+done?"
+
+"It can be done."  The monk nodded.
+
+"If there 's any fee--" Kerrigan suggested.
+
+"There is no fee."  The monk laughed contemptuously.  "I act for the
+good of souls, when it is necessary."  He watched Kerrigan intently for
+some minutes.  "On Monday morning--at two in the morning--if the
+weather is clear, I will send for you.  Leave your name and address
+with the butler."  And he turned again to the book he was reading,
+oblivious of Kerrigan, as a great lord might be of the peasant standing
+awkward and awe-stricken in his presence.
+
+
+Financial agents admire Matthew Kerrigan.  He is the sort of person who
+gives them no trouble.  They are more cordial toward him than they are
+toward great bankers or great Wall Street men.  For great
+bank-presidents and stock-manipulators wage terrific and lyrical
+battles on the terrain of commerce, and though there are great Leipzigs
+and Jenas, there are also great Waterloos.  But Kerrigan is safe.  He
+takes no chances.  His factories in Yonkers purr, day in, day out,
+making by the million that simple fastening device for women's corsets
+that has made him several fortunes.
+
+"That's the way to make money," they will tell you.  "Just hit upon
+something simple and necessary, like a hair-pin or a shoe-horn, that no
+other person has thought of.  Make it and sell it to the public and
+bank your money in gilt-edged securities.  Look at Matthew Kerrigan!
+And not fifteen years ago he was a clerk in an accountant's office."
+
+Along Broadway, too, he is known favorably, in that happy-go-easy
+circle of minor actors, wine-merchants, and women aspirants for the
+stage and movies.  Head waiters are deferential, and slightly
+contemptuous toward him.  He is a good spender, and yet--  There is
+something repulsive, unhealthy in the way he enjoys food and drink and
+looks at women.
+
+"Six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven, which are an abomination
+unto him": and the first is haughty eyes.  I cannot conceive that as
+denoting the light that shines from eyes lit from a sense of high and
+noble lineage, of chivalrous ideals, of just power.  I translate it by
+the eyes of Matthew Kerrigan--those gray, full orbs which look about a
+room stating that there is no man present whose equal and superior
+Kerrigan is now.  Eyes which tell you Kerrigan has money, and is
+prepared to spend money for what he wants.  You know that man will get
+good measure for his money--shrewdness and sophistication gleam from
+them in a wary, reptilian way.
+
+"They may call this the Rube City," Morgenthal, the little real-estate
+broker, announced at the Elks' Club, "but, believe me, there 's one guy
+in town they can't put anything over on, and that's Kerrigan.  He 's
+wise.  I tell you, boy, he 's wise.  Did you hear about that baby at
+the Winter Garden that tried to pull that hard-luck story on him?  You
+didn't, eh?  Well, let me tell you something: She got hers...."
+
+There is one other place you may collect facts about Matthew Kerrigan
+and that is the down-town lunch-rooms of the financial
+district--uncomfortable, clattering places where you eat on a high
+stool at a counter and compute the price of your meal to the cashier as
+you go out.  There is a race of clerks there, old men, natty but shabby
+of dress, pinched in the face, gray-headed, stoop-shouldered.  Some of
+them are bitter and many are garrulous.  They specialize in the early
+histories of well-known men.
+
+"I remember him when he was a bum in the street," they will tell you of
+nearly all of them; "when he had n't got a nickle for a shoe-shine.
+Did you ever hear how he got on his feet?"  And then will follow either
+a sordid or a criminal story.  And from them you can learn the story of
+Matthew Kerrigan and Leonard Holt.
+
+An office friend had told Kerrigan of an eccentric inventor who lived
+out in his home town of Englewood, a poor, poverty-stricken,
+scatter-brained mechanic who plodded in a broken-down cottage on the
+outskirts of Englewood at magnificent and foolish dreams, such as
+aviation and perpetual motion.  When Kerrigan went out to see his
+friend he was taken, on a rainy afternoon, to pass the dull hours, on a
+visit to the man Holt.  Beyond an occasional dunning tradesman, who
+sneered at him, and an occasional equally poor friend who remonstrated
+with him and urged him to take a position in a factory, Holt saw no
+one.  And when Kerrigan was introduced, he talked like a starved
+fanatic.  Tall; loosely built, as though his jointures were precarious;
+stooped; with great greasy hands; sandy-haired; with burning blue eyes
+and a high forehead, and a listless mouth and chin--one might have been
+pardoned for believing him an impractical fool.  He pointed out a large
+system of wheels and pulleys, of weights and springs.  It was the
+perpetual-motion model on which he was working.
+
+"But I thought perpetual motion had been given up as impossible,"
+Kerrigan objected.
+
+"They have been making strides toward it," Holt answered.  "The
+_Struttapparat_ was a great advance.  Of course a small quantity of
+radium is necessary.  But, still, energy may be--it is just
+possible--created mechanically.  They disprove perpetual motion by the
+hypothesis of the conservation of energy, which is not proven--"
+
+And so he went on at great length in his jerky sentences, while
+Kerrigan listened, picking up things and dropping them boredly--a
+Bunsen burner, a pair of pliers, a tripod--what not.  He lifted two
+pieces of asbestos, clamped queerly together by two long pieces of
+flexible metal.  As he toyed with it the thing came apart in his hands.
+A snap, and it was together again.  Kerrigan looked up in interest.
+
+"What's this for?"
+
+"A little fastening trick.  Of no practical use--except, perhaps, for
+women's corsets!"  Holt laughed.  Kerrigan was silent.
+
+"Patented?" he suggested, after a while.
+
+"Everything I have is patented," Holt said with a touch of pride.
+
+"May I bring it along," Kerrigan asked, "to show it to a friend?"
+
+"Why, certainly!" Holt nodded.  "Now, if you understand that the energy
+develops in geometric progression--"
+
+And very efficiently did Matthew Kerrigan show Holt's fastening device
+to his friend--a prominent banker who had never heard of Kerrigan
+before, but had always money to sink, at a price, in worthy
+enterprises.  Kerrigan returned to Holt.
+
+"There may be something in that little thing of yours.  Will you take a
+hundred dollars for it outright?"
+
+But that intuition which sometimes warns the unworldly minded, and that
+mulish obstinacy which some men have, made Holt stand out for a share
+of the profits, and unwillingly Kerrigan and his associate had to allow
+it.
+
+"It's a hold-up," they complained to each other bitterly, "but we can't
+do anything about it!"
+
+So Holt was admitted to the profits of his patent, and for a while he
+dreamed dreams of wealth untellable; a wealth that would enable him to
+send his motherless three-year-old daughter to boarding-school and
+college and leave him in peace to work, with all appliances to
+hand--_Stuttapparat_ and radium and everything--at the problem which
+had baffled scientific dreamers since the dawn of intelligence.
+
+"The model on a big scale," he figured, "would cost ten thousand
+dollars--" and on his visions went, unhampered, unselfish, unpractical.
+He wanted to benefit the world by his discovery--and to get a little
+applause, a little credit.
+
+I don't know how they do these things, but they do them, and they must
+do them skilfully, for they evade the law, the iron law which insists
+on justice for all men.  Kerrigan laid his hand feelingly on Holt's
+shoulder.
+
+"I 'm sorry, old man," he said with that sincere stop in his voice.
+"We made a mistake.  It's not practical."
+
+Holt had received many blows, and was nearly impervious to them.  He
+smiled wistfully.
+
+"Perhaps I can do something," Kerrigan continued.  "I might get a
+little for your rights from some one who will take a chance.  I should
+like you to get something for it.  I led you to believe so much in it--"
+
+They were very generous, for they knew there were millions ahead of
+them, so they gave Holt a thousand dollars, and he buckled to again at
+his grotesque machine.  A few weeks later some well-intentioned
+Christian told him the truth and commented fulsomely on what a fool
+Holt was.  The last blow was the fatal one.  It split his heart in two.
+
+Methodically he made arrangements for his child to be brought up in a
+convent, and he left what money he had for the purpose.  He took the
+train to New York and crossing on the ferry-boat he climbed to the
+upper deck.  He sat huddled up in a corner, gray and shabby of clothes,
+gray and shabby of face, until the boat was half-way over.  He stood up
+on the seat and jumped, and the noise his jump made was drowned in the
+clatter of the paddles.
+
+Tall, lank, oblivious, unpractical--your economist will tell you that
+the man was of no value to the community, and was better dead.  And
+your religious person will tell you that the crime of suicide merits
+hell-fire.  But somehow I feel that for these poor men with the light
+heads and the light bodies, and the heavy, heavy hearts, there is
+somewhere Understanding and Great Tenderness....
+
+All this they will tell you, the garrulous and bitter old men, and
+while they inveigh against Kerrigan, you see somewhere in their eyes a
+glint of admiration and of envy.  The arena of Wall Street differs
+little from the arena of Neronic Rome; _væ victis_ is the motto and the
+rule of the game.  And before you can leave them in contemptuous horror
+they will tap you on the knee, gloatingly dramatic.
+
+"And now Kerrigan is going to marry Holt's daughter!  Can you beat it?
+Can you beat that?"
+
+
+He had gone--perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of the depths of
+sentimentality that men of his type have somewhere in the bottom of
+their hearts--with his cousin, the chubby little minister of religion,
+to the prize-giving at the convent in Newark.  The bishop was there,
+and a play of Dunsany's was given; a few poems recited, and a song or
+two sung.
+
+His eye had been attracted all through the exercises by a tall girl in
+a white dress with a blue sash--a slim girl with hazel eyes and
+light-brown hair who in the distance had the profile of a Saint
+Cecilia--a Saint Cecilia with a somewhat broad, honest mouth and good
+firm teeth.
+
+"That's an attractive girl," he told his cousin.
+
+The little cherubic minister, who worried in secret about his cousin's
+soul, was delighted.  He dreamed often of having his cousin Matthew
+reformed by the influence of some sweet woman.  A Dominican religious
+brought her forward.
+
+"Miss Holt, Miss Agnes Holt."  Kerrigan was introduced to her.  He
+talked banalities to her for a half-hour, when she shyly took her leave
+of him, blushing furiously under the glances of her schoolmates.  When
+he was alone Kerrigan smiled queerly, with a distant look in his eyes.
+
+At forty-five there comes always to a man of Kerrigan's type, with the
+first gray hairs, the fear of age.  There will be an inevitable day
+when he will no longer attract women, and when, in the bars and about
+the clubs, he will be referred to as an old man of another generation,
+and there arises in his mind the fear of loneliness in the fifties and
+the sixties, with Death hurrying breathlessly toward him day by day.
+The only thing to do then is to begin anew with a young wife, far away
+from the swirl of the city.
+
+"It's the only life," they say pathetically; "a wife and kiddies, a
+little bit of land somewhere, away from all this stuff."  And they wave
+their hands at the gleaming glasses and the pictures on the bar-room
+walls.  "There's nothing to it," they aver; and they drink up and have
+another one.
+
+He met the religious as he was going away.
+
+"That Miss Holt," he said, "is a very attractive girl."  It was the
+only adjective he knew to fit her.
+
+"Yes," the nun agreed.  "We all like her.  She 's been with us nearly
+all her life.  Her father died when she was young.  He was an inventor;
+Leonard Holt was his name."
+
+"The name is familiar."  Kerrigan was shocked, but his self-restraint
+was superb.  "Died after some business depression, if I remember
+aright?"
+
+"He was murdered!"  The little religious's eyes flashed magnificently.
+"Murdered!  In the way of business!"
+
+Kerrigan had heard that word used of Holt's end more than once.  But
+the fourteen years had been full ones, and the matter had not troubled
+him much--things like that happened so often.  And, besides, it was not
+true.  A murder predicates a murderer, and he was no murderer.  It was
+all a business arrangement.  And the man could n't stand the gaff.
+That was all!
+
+"All rotten foolishness!" he swore.  But somehow, this last time,
+perhaps on account of the dramatic meeting with the daughter, it would
+not go out of his head.
+
+And no more would go out of his head the thought and picture of Agnes
+Holt in her white dress and blue sash, with her Saint Cecilia profile.
+She haunted him night and day.  At that period, peculiar in a man as
+the late thirties are in women, he fell in love, or in what for him
+would pass for love.  In all his selfish business career he had known
+intimately no woman like her, and her aloof, unrifled virginity struck
+him like a blinding flash of light.
+
+"After all," he said, in the manner of his kind, "there is nothing on
+God's earth like a sweet, pure woman!"
+
+And for days he thought about her and about love, not as a young man
+might, in a burning equation with factors of living flame, but in the
+smoldering symbols of maturity, which are so long in the consuming and
+so hard to quench.  He would go away from Broadway--"quit the whole
+condemned shooting-match," as he weirdly termed it--and take a place in
+Westchester or Long Island, a good, comfortable house with grounds to
+it.  They would be glad to have him in such a community.  He would be
+one of the village trustees; run for president.  And he would fashion a
+new life there with a young and beautiful bride, whom everybody would
+envy him.  There would be children, too.  Undoubtedly there would be
+children.
+
+"She 'll be glad to get away from the convent," he thought shrewdly.
+And, after all, perhaps he had treated Holt a bit shabbily.  He would
+make up for it in the way he would treat his daughter.  She should wear
+diamonds.
+
+"I 'm thinking of marrying and settling down, Father John," he told the
+little clergyman one day.
+
+"I 'm glad to hear of it, Cousin Matthew," he said, rubbing his plump
+little hands, his cherub's face beaming benignantly.  "I 'm delighted.
+I am so!"  He shook his finger waggishly.  "And I think I know the
+young lady, too."
+
+"It's the little Holt girl we met at the convent that day."
+
+"You must come over and meet her again," Father John planned.  "I 'll
+talk to the Mother Superior."
+
+And so, with due chaperonage, Kerrigan met Agnes Holt several times,
+and each time he became more impressed with her.  She would say little,
+blushing mostly, and playing with something in her lap.  She understood
+vaguely that this portly, mustached man was thinking of marrying her,
+but that denoted nothing to her, so cloistered had her life been.
+
+"Yes," or "No," or "Thank you," was nearly the limit of her
+conversation, and she had difficulty in not adding "sir."  At times she
+would accompany him, with Father John, to a matinée in New York to see
+a carefully chosen family production, or to have tea at the
+less-worldly restaurants.  Occasionally she would burst out with a
+naïve exclamation.
+
+"I once rode in a Fifth Avenue bus with Sister Mary Joseph," was the
+sort of thing she would vouchsafe.
+
+"If you were n't to marry her," Father John said, "she would enter the
+convent as a lay sister."
+
+More and more as he met her Kerrigan's mind was taken up by the idea of
+her father.  The contour of her face; a certain look of her eye; a
+light in her hair when the sun shone on it, would recall the inventor,
+and immediately within him would rise a measure of uneasiness which he
+could not get rid of.  He once asked her if she remembered him.
+
+"He died when I was young, very young," she said.  "An accident in a
+ferry-boat.  I have spent all my life with the sisters."
+
+As he went to and from the convent, he often met the religious who had
+spoken of Holt's death as murder.  And as often as he met her, so often
+would his mind revert to that sinister word, and he would find himself
+arguing about it internally, as though he were defending himself in a
+court of law.  He would try to shake off the mood.
+
+"Of all the blamed foolishness!" he would tell himself angrily.
+
+But the idea would persist, and, growing morbid about it, he found
+himself reading carefully the charges of judges in cases of homicide.
+He went to the public library and conned upon the subject in
+encyclopedias.  He read of the magnificent fair play in trial by jury.
+
+"I guess that settles it," he told himself.  "There 's nothing to it."
+
+He went on, however, and, reading farther, he came on the ancient
+custom of trial by ordeal of justice--of the test of a man's innocence
+by touching the dead body of a murdered man.  If the person suspected
+were guilty, blood would exude from the corpse.  A couplet of
+Shakespeare's was quoted--from the play of "Richard III":
+
+  O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds
+  Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh!
+
+The thing made his flesh creep.  He read of the grisly test of the dead
+hand, and of the ordeal by fire and the ordeal by poison.
+
+"There 's no sense to that!" he muttered angrily, and little beads of
+perspiration gathered on his brow.  Even the innocent would waver under
+such a test.  Trial by jury--that was the sensible way.
+
+And then, one day, in a bleak sitting-room in the convent, he proposed
+to Agnes Holt.
+
+"Agnes--" he cleared his throat, and he was honestly husky--"I suppose
+you have understood that my intentions toward you had a wedding in
+view.  I can make you very happy."
+
+"I must talk to the Mother Superior," she said, blushing furiously, her
+voice low.
+
+He took her hand, and, opening a case, put a ring on her finger.
+
+"I have talked to the Mother Superior, myself," he told her, "and that
+is all right."  He drew her toward him, trembling a little, and on her
+forehead, with his mustached lips, he kissed her.  He was suddenly
+still, and strangely cold.  The touch of that skin reminded him of his
+last hand-shake with Leonard Holt.
+
+"I must put an end to this obsession!" he told himself angrily, that
+night at his hotel, and he poured himself stiff drinks of Bourbon.
+Should he tell Father John?  No! he decided.  He knew Father John well
+for a relative and a friend and a genial companion with lovable
+peccadillos.  But he knew, too, that the little clergyman could thunder
+with the thunder of Sinai.  Marry the daughter of a man in whose death
+he was implicated!  Never would Father John consent.  The cleric would
+not understand.  What could a priest know of business?
+
+"It's no use going to him," Kerrigan decided.
+
+He stopped a moment, thinking.  And, half-laughing and half-nervous, he
+remembered a conversation with a friend of his, a great Wall Street
+operator, who combined the shrewdness of his kind with his kind's
+superstition, and had recourse in moments of tension to clairvoyants
+and tarot cards.  He told Kerrigan of M. Sergius.
+
+"He's a Greek monk--been expelled from Mount Athos for practising
+magic.  What that man can tell you--"
+
+"I suppose the next thing you 'll tell me is that he raises spirits."
+
+"Listen!  You just ask Cabot Montgomery how they found that will of Van
+Vleet's.  Just ask him."
+
+"There's one born every minute," Kerrigan laughed, "and some of 'em
+live."
+
+"Listen, brother," Kerrigan was told, "this man does it for nothing.
+Do you get me?  For nothing!  If it's important enough he 'll do it.
+If not, outside.  This is none of your country-fair crystal-gazers."
+
+In Kerrigan, too, was that strain of superstition that all men laugh at
+and all men have.  And right now as he sat in a mental, spiritual
+whirlwind, the memory of that conversation came to him as a preserver.
+After all, if he put things to the test--  Of course it was foolish; it
+was ridiculous, but still--  Nothing could come of it, by any manner of
+means, and yet--
+
+"What's the harm?" he laughed.
+
+At his time of life, he smiled, to put himself in the hands of a
+charlatan, to conjure up a spirit!  In this century, with the telephone
+by his bedside, with the electric light overhead, to patronize a
+mumming magician!  Nothing would, could happen.
+
+But that nothing would be his answer.  It would mean that his life was
+free forever, purged of the foolish innuendos, the lunatic accusations
+of outsiders; the morbid worries of his own abnormal mind.  Free to go
+ahead and be married, and to live happily ever after.
+
+
+When the butler had come for him silently, in the big blue limousine,
+one fine night of stars, he had gone with a little tremor in his veins.
+What would Father John and the gentle nuns and his little betrothed
+think of this mad excursion?  Well, he had thrown down a gauntlet to
+Fate, and he would go through with it, regardless of the empty issue.
+There was a witticism on his lips as he entered the apartment; but the
+witticism froze.
+
+Silently the butler ushered him into a dim room lighted by tapers.  In
+a corner, silent, were Sergius and four young men.  In the middle of
+the floor was a strange geometric design of circles and squares.
+
+"Your butler just came for me--" Kerrigan felt the need of saying
+something, no matter how banal.  In a sort of awe Kerrigan noted the
+white garments of the former monk, and of his disciples; the white
+shoes embroidered in red; the white crowns with the Hebrew letters.
+
+"Do you still wish to go ahead with this?" the Russian asked him.
+
+"Of course," Kerrigan uttered.  His own voice seemed strange in his
+ears.
+
+"You are to obey me in all things."  The ex-monk's voice had a terrible
+hidden menace in it, "and if you move out of that circle you are worse
+than a dead man!  Follow me."
+
+They moved forward through an opening into the strange geometric
+design, and behind them on silent feet came the four attendants.
+Kerrigan noticed in a sort of daze the sword they carried, the trumpet,
+the book, and the lighted taper.  About him, outside the circle, were
+strange paper symbols that seemed to cut him off from the world of sane
+and living men.  The Magus lit a circle of censers about the outer
+square.  He closed the circle and lifted one on high.  He swung it
+toward the four corners of the square.  An attendant handed him a
+sword.  He stuck it in the ground.  Another handed him a trumpet.  He
+blew it brazenly.
+
+"O Lord!  Hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto Thee...."
+
+Queer little whorls of smoke mounted through the air from the censers.
+The attendants had retired to the four points of the compass.  The
+Magus raised the bare sword.  His voice vibrated like an organ:
+
+"O ye spirits!  Ye I conjure by the power, wisdom, and virtue of the
+Spirit of God ... by the Holy Name of God Eheith ... by which Adam,
+having invoked, acquired the knowledge of all created things ... by the
+invisible name Yod, which had Abel invoked he would have escaped from
+the hand of Cain, his brother...."
+
+It seemed to Kerrigan, standing there that about this circle was
+something that was not life, and that it was cut off from the security
+of things without as an island is cut off by water.  About it the
+incense rose in shadowy vapors.  The lights of the candles became
+dulled to a pale, diaphanous gold.  There was something terrible about
+it all.  He had imagined a grisly, morbid thing of quackery.  This he
+could have stood smiling.  But cold, stern majesty of ritual made his
+heart contract, as it might be oppressed in the nave of some great
+cathedral.
+
+"... By the Two Tables of the Law; by the Seven Burning Candlesticks;
+by the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest may go..."
+
+He wanted to raise his voice, to tell the man to stop this mummery.  He
+wanted to walk to the door and slam it contemptuously, and to walk home
+through the cool mundane air.  That would be an end for him of all this
+morbidness.  But somehow he could not go.  It was as though he were
+held by hypnosis to the spot.
+
+"... That spirit who was known here as Leonard Holt, and with whom this
+man, for a sufficient reason, would converse.  I conjure and invoke him
+in the name of the Lord Adonai.  I conjure him in the name of the god
+El, strong and powerful...."
+
+Fear arose in Kerrigan like a cold marsh vapor.  He had come there in a
+braggadocio test of fate, to something whose being and name he knew
+not; to face it man to man, and to abide by the result.  But he seemed
+now to be, as it were, in a dock, not to argue but to be judged, by
+that vagueness against which he had thrown down the gauntlet.
+
+The Magus had fallen to his knees.  Before him a disciple held an open
+book and a taper.
+
+"In the name of Him who hath made the heavens and the earth, and who
+hath measured them in the hollow of His hand, enclosing the earth in
+three of His fingers..."
+
+Without those circles now, Kerrigan imagined, things were hovering with
+a force as of a great wind.  Things hurtled themselves against the
+mystic, powerful symbols like troopers against an impregnable
+fortalice.  No longer was he certain that nothing could happen.  If in
+a minute now, at any instant, the Thing that was being called would
+come, not the vacuous, impractical body, but a terrible being armed
+with the awful majesty of the dead, standing before him accusingly,
+with terrible eyes--standing like a flaming weapon between Kerrigan and
+the daughter who was flesh of him, who they said was murdered ... If!
+If!  If!  If!  His skin contracted in a tense horripilation.  His
+breath came shallow and panting, like that of a strained dog.
+
+The Magus stood up.  Again the sword flashed in his hand.  He laid his
+hand on his heart.  His voice rang vibrant with power.  The acolytes
+bowed their heads.
+
+"Here be the symbols of secret things--the standards, the banners, the
+ensigns of God the Conqueror; the arms of the Almighty One to compel
+the aerial potencies.  I command absolutely--"
+
+Across Kerrigan's mind thoughts raced like skipping rabbits; like reels
+of living pictures.  He was being tried!  His wrists shook as the blood
+pulsed through.  Tried!  Tried by ordeal of justice!  By the terrible
+thing that made a dead man's wounds open when you touched him.  By
+ordeal of justice!  That was it.  He felt his face contract into a
+horrible grimace.  By ordeal of justice!  There was a weight on his
+chest of as huge granite blocks, very cold.  He could n't breathe.
+Through his heart there ran a pain like a knife....
+
+"... By their power and virtue that he come near to us, into our
+presence from whatsoever part of the world he may be in--"
+
+"Master!"  An acolyte stepped forward and touched the exorcist's white
+samite sleeve.  He pointed to the crumpled figure in the circle.
+"Master, this man is dead!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Changeling and Other Stories, by Donn Byrne
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
+
+<LINK REL="coverpage" HREF="images/img-cover.jpg">
+
+<TITLE>
+Changeling and Other Stories, by Donn Byrne
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
+       text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.t1 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 200%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+P.t2 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 150%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+P.t3 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 100%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+P.t4 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 80%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+P.t5 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 50%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%; }
+
+P.letter {text-indent: 0%;
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.footnote {text-indent: 0% ;
+            font-size: 80%;
+            margin-left: 10% ;
+            margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.intro {font-size: 90% ;
+         text-indent: 0% ;
+         margin-left: 10% ;
+         margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.finis { font-size: larger ;
+          text-align: center ;
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+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Changeling and Other Stories, by Donn Byrne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Changeling and Other Stories
+
+Author: Donn Byrne
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2019 [EBook #59892]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHANGELING AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t1">
+CHANGELING
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+AND OTHER STORIES
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+BY
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+DONN BYRNE
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+Author of "The Wind Bloweth," "Messer Marco Polo," etc.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t3">
+<I>New York &amp; London</I>
+<BR>
+THE CENTURY CO.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+Copyright, 1923, by
+<BR>
+The Century Co.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t4">
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+DEDICATION
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So you are going to bring out a book of your stories, said the Old Poet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I think I am, sir, said I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I'm sorry for it, said the Old Poet, for it won't have a friend in the
+world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When it comes to the publishing of books, people are always
+pessimistic, and, in my case, always right.  Success, I am sufficient
+of a heretic to believe, matters little, but friendship a great deal.
+And I could as little think of sending a story friendless into the
+world as I would of sending a child, or horse, or dog.  So "Changeling"
+itself I will put under the friendly hand of the Right Honorable the
+Lord Justice O'Connor, who will find law treated in it in a <I>dégagé</I>
+manner that will surprise even him.  And "The Parliament at Thebes" I
+dedicate to Addison and Josephine Hanan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For Bulmer and Clare Hobson, near Three-Rock Mountain, is "Delilah, Now
+It Was Dusk," and for Brinsley MacNamara, that splendid Irish novelist,
+"Wisdom Buildeth Her House."  And "In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler"
+for Arthur Somers Roche, in memory of a chivalrous kindness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Reynardine" for Miss OEnone Somerville and in memory of Martin
+Ross&mdash;their pens were one of the lost Irish glories.  "Irish" for
+Jeffrey Farnol&mdash;none more than he loves and understands the Ring.  And
+I am sorry there is not a story of war and its intricacies in the
+collection to dedicate to my friend Lieutenant-General J. J. O'Connell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have not by hundreds come to the end of those whom I love to think my
+friends; but so many of them are sportsmen that to dedicate stories to
+them would be like giving a two-year-old racer to a maiden and
+church-going lady, loading her with responsibility and embarrassment,
+so that&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So that the rest of the stories can go out and make friends for
+themselves, and if they can't, 't was surely a poor hand that wrote
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Donn Byrne.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+By the Cinque Ports,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;England.  1923.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="t2">
+Contents
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap0101">Changeling</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap02">The Barnacle Goose</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap03">Belfasters</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap04">The Keeper of the Bridge</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap05">In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap06">Reynardine</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap07">Dramatis Personæ</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap08">Wisdom Buildeth Her House</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap09">The Parliament at Thebes</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap10">Delilah, Now It Was Dusk</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap11">A Quatrain Of Ling Tai Fu's</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap12">"Irish"</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap13">By Ordeal of Justice</A>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0101"></A>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHANGELING AND OTHER STORIES
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHANGELING
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+To outward appearance the whole of the courtroom scene was drab,
+ordinary.  There was the stuffy rectangle of a room, half dark in the
+January dusk, for all that the electric lights glowed with meager
+incandescence.  There was the judge, in his robe, at the desk of the
+court.  There were the jurymen, solemn as in church.  There the court
+stenographers, bald, active as ants.  There the men of the daily
+journals, more aloof, more judicial than the judge.  There the press of
+morbid spectators, leaning forward like runners on the mark.  There the
+policemen, court attendants, whatnot, relaxed of body, concentrated of
+eye, jealous of the dignity of the court as a house-dog of its master's
+home.  Through the windows of the court could be seen the bulk of the
+Tombs, heavy, hopeless, horrible as the things whence it takes its
+chilly name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The case of the people <I>versus</I> Anna Janssen for the murder of Alastair
+de Vries droned on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The district attorney, youngish, slim, lithe, a little sinister&mdash;the
+impression of a hunting-dog all over him&mdash;was examining a witness, a
+rat-faced man who had something of the old-time bartender or private
+detective about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was your business, as attendant at the Oriental Garden, to see that
+order was kept?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was no semblance of disorder at all until you heard the shot
+fired?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. De Vries was at a table with a party?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You heard the shot and you saw Mr. De Vries fall forward?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir.  Crumpled up, sort of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you ran to him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You saw the woman Janssen back of the hall with a revolver?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was she doing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was laughing."
+
+</P>
+
+<P>
+
+"Was she drunk?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The laugh sounded drunk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was she very much under the influence of liquor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She could n't have been, else she would n't have got away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are certain that it was the prisoner?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All eyes in the court-room were turned to the prisoner in the dock.
+And there was in the sordid trial chamber a sense of great disturbance
+in the air, though, from the minds and personalities of all gathered
+there, there rose in gray tendrils a haze of doubt, of disbelief, of
+mystery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sat in the dock, in the sordid court-room, among the unseemly
+officers and the public, as a statue in some public square might stand
+above the rabble.  Mature, magnificent, the prisoner seemed almost like
+some goddess from a Norse mythology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First, her strange coloring made all catch their breath.  Her face was
+tanned to an absolutely golden hue, and out of this work of delicate
+bronze there looked, calm and confident, two eyes that were blue as
+sea-water.  Her eyebrows, her hair, were bleached by the sun until her
+eyebrows were two half-moons of silver, until her hair was the pale,
+beautiful gold of honey in dark lights and like vivid strands of live
+silver when the light fell on it.  She had the strange, exotic
+appearance of the women of Saba Isle, the ancient colony of Holland
+sailors and Carib Indian belles, a small dot in the West Indies where
+there is a town on the top of a mountain, and life is as in the garden
+of the Hesperides.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not alone her coloring, her splendid face.  From her there came
+such an aura of health, of spiritual strength, it seemed impossible
+that this woman was the chorus girl Janssen who had been the cast-off
+mistress of the rake and spendthrift De Vries, who had been drunk, who
+attended cabarets with wine-merchants and Broadway belles.  This woman!
+Impossible!  In her own calm eyes there seemed also a look that said
+more: "This is ridiculous.  I can't have done this.  Why am I here?
+Why don't they get up and let me go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even the rat-faced witness was perturbed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The prisoner in the dock?" he said with a sense of puzzled wonder.
+"The prisoner in the dock?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, don't mind the prisoner in the dock, then.  It was the woman
+Janssen you saw."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were well acquainted with her appearance.  You couldn't have been
+mistaken?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, sir, I could not have been mistaken.  She was often at the
+Oriental with Mr. De Vries.  Sometimes every night for a week.  I could
+not have been mistaken.  It was she shot Mr. De Vries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The district attorney sat down, with a gesture of his hand toward
+Howard Donegan, the prisoner's counsel.  With his massive body, with
+his massive head, with his cruel jurist's face, Howard Donegan was as
+much a part of the attraction for the public as was the prisoner, the
+notoriety of the ten-year-old case, the romantic capture of Annette
+Janssen.  The great Irish-American was the foremost criminal lawyer of
+his day, all but invincible when defending a man or a woman with the
+slightest chance of escape, and right on his side.  As a cross-examiner
+he was dreaded as the plague.  The public would get the thrill of
+seeing a superbly cruel and magnificent performance when Donegan arose.
+Even now the rat-faced witness shook as with ague as Donegan turned
+casually toward him, with hooded eyes.  But Donegan shook his head.  He
+did not wish to cross-examine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even the judge was surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I hear aright?"  He leaned forward, his fine mystic's face in
+lines of doubt and worry.  "The counsel for the prisoner does not wish
+to cross-examine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Honor heard aright.  I will not cross-examine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through the big chamber there was a buzz of comment, of doubt, of all
+but horror.  Was there nothing to be done for this woman?  Even if she
+did kill De Vries, give her a sporting chance for her life!  "What is
+Donegan doing?" the public, the attendants, the newspaper reporters
+asked themselves with mistrust.  Was he throwing her down?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a tensing in court, a tightening, as of drama.  Already there
+was a sense in every one's chilled veins of the horrible harness of the
+electric chair.  But Donegan only drowsed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can step down," the Court told the witness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rat-faced man crept from the witness-box, white, shaking still with
+the fear of Donegan's eye.  He tried to get a seat in the benches, but
+none would make room for him.  And though he had only done his duty,
+and that at command of the law, there was about him, as he slunk from
+the room, the look there was about him who was surnamed Iscariot, as he
+crept from the garden on the Mount of Olives, on the world's most
+tragic dawn....  Like a story from some old book there unrolled before
+the public the history of Anna Janssen of ten, or twelve, or fifteen
+years before, in a New York we know no longer, so changed is it in that
+brief space.  Then it was a riotous spendthrift, a glorious waster,
+hell-roaring, somehow lovable, and now it is a burgess of standing,
+with all the burgess virtues.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the eyes of the court-room glistened as old names appeared like
+Falstaffian ghosts.  The Poodle Dog, the German Village, the Holland
+House, the Knickerbocker.  Gorgeous, blowsy, out of a dim past they
+rose for an instant.  Baron Wilkins's and Nigger Mike's.  And there was
+the thin clink of glasses across forgotten bars.  And at three o'clock
+of a morning the flying wedge at Pat's was hurling some truculent guest
+to the sidewalk.  And gunmen were gunmen then, not strike-breakers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old days, great days, and only a dozen years before.  And John
+Barrymore was not <I>Richard III</I> but the comedian of "Are You a Mason?"
+And Mr. Chambers had written "The Danger Mark," and Lieutenant Becker
+still patrolled the streets.  And Mannie Chappelle and Diamond Jim were
+still alive and merry, who are now dust, God rest them!  And cops
+grafted and politics were corrupt, after the old and pleasant
+tradition.  And out of the side door of saloons came the old-fashioned
+drunkard, who with the old-fashioned ghost-story and the old-fashioned
+Christmas is laid to rest forevermore.  And the voice of Dr. Parkhurst
+was heard through the land.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ichabod!  Gone is glory!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The night life of Paris was hectic, hysterical.  The night life of
+Berlin was heavy, somehow sinister.  But, lush, extravagant, now
+joyous, now <I>macabre</I>, the foam of New-World liquor, the night life of
+New York challenged the heavens with streaming rays, retiring only
+before the chaste, armored dawn.  Like some Thousand and One Nights of
+some writer of the people, it challenged the imagination, it intrigued,
+it repelled.  Overdone not seldom, often in bad taste, but virile,
+rude, and unabashed, it claimed recognition with brazen clamor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And on this stage, and against this background, now leading woman to De
+Vries, now being supported by a caste of wasters, brokers, men about
+town, there moved Anna Janssen, the Swedish Beauty.  Cast in the form
+and figure of a Norse goddess, fit for great epics, she was a figurante
+in a debauched side-show.  Her eyes, which were blue as the sea and
+should have been pure and passionate as the sea, were drenched with
+wine, and her mouth, with its clear-cut outlines as of a woman of the
+painter Zorn's, which should have been firm as a budding flower, was
+relaxed and wet from kissing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A woman of Broadway, hungered after and yet despised, she might have
+gone the accustomed path that leads from the chattering magnificence of
+Broadway to the sinister silence of Potter's Field.  Down the old
+beaten decline toward sordid Death she could have gone, and none would
+have tried to stay her, none to help.  And then the end.  And the only
+result would have been a little chilling in the hearts of the newer
+Beauties of Broadway, a ghost whispering in their hearts the most
+terrible of epitaphs: The wages of sin is death.  For a moment only.
+And some celebrity of Broadway might feel sad for an hour, with easy
+sentiment: "Poor Anna!  And I knew her when she wore diamonds, and New
+York was at her feet!"  Or some respectable citizen in his warm home
+might treasure secret, ashamed memories, and never avow them.  And some
+one might even seek out her grave to say a hurried prayer and make an
+offering of flowers.  And the rest would be silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that, in a mood of drunken pique, she shot and killed Alastair de
+Vries!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of her life there is little to be said.  It is a life that a thousand
+girls have lived.  Admit the evidence which satisfied a judge in a
+trial of murder and it boils down to this: The daughter of a Brooklyn
+mechanic, she got a place in the chorus of a big musical comedy, and
+was flattered and courted by the blades of Broadway.  And the one to
+whom she fell victim was Alastair de Vries, who had forsaken Fifth
+Avenue to travel westward to Broadway.  Of the old patroon stock which
+had settled New Amsterdam and been lords of the manor along the Hudson
+before the English came, bankers and traders, soldiers and explorers,
+all there remained of them was one moneyed boy who saw adventure only
+in ruining the daughters of tradesmen where his forebears had seen it
+in hacking out the destiny of a New World.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Blond, rather chubby, not yet thirty, Alastair de Vries had already had
+a large biography in the Sunday papers and weeklies of gossip in New
+York.  Annette Janssen was one of perhaps twenty conquests and she was
+not the last.  She was the all but last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took her from the chorus, gave her everything she desired, made her
+for her brief life the semiannual queen of Broadway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then a small brunette came along, acclaimed as the Queen of the
+Ponies, and, turning like a flash, De Vries hurried to conquer the new
+arrival.  And Anna shot him, not because of jealousy, not because she
+loved him, but just to make trouble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There's her life for you.  There are what the dazzling facts of her
+queendom of Broadway amount to.  There they are, without their glitter
+and romance.  Through the black magic of Sinister Alley they shine like
+fireflies, but, like fireflies, in the calm sanity of daytime they are
+nothing but grubby crawling things we flick from our palms with a
+<I>moue</I> of distaste....
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Day followed day, and witness witness, and item by item the sordid
+chronicle was written.  Each fact attested and proved to the
+satisfaction of the court, to the satisfaction of the public.  It was a
+sort of journey toward a definite objective&mdash;a journey on which the
+public was invited to see Justice hearken to the call of the people of
+the State of New York.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no doubt about it.  Coldly, callously, for a whim, in a
+moment of piqued vanity, a chorus girl had shot a gentleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then in the mind of every one there loomed, as it approached nearer
+until its horrible lines, its terrifying aura were visible, the
+objective of the voyage&mdash;the dreadful electric chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why does n't Donegan do something?  Why?  Why?  Why does n't he put up
+a fight at least?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Donegan drowsed on.  Only when the prisoner in the dock threw him a
+swift look of appeal, as she did occasionally when some damning point
+was raised, did he drop the granite mask.  Now and then her face would
+blanch under the tan, and her mouth quiver.  And then would come a
+miracle in Donegan.  Those harsh bulldog features would relax, the
+glinting eyes open, and over the hated face would play the smile
+of&mdash;oh, forty years ago&mdash;when he was just an innocent, likable Irish
+boy, and not a great jurist, whom communion with the sinister qualities
+of the law, and battles for life and liberty, and knowledge of strange
+strata in the minds of men, which is good for none to know, had
+transformed into a dark angel with a protective and flaming sword.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the smile did n't reassure the public.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, he 's smiling.  He 's confident, all right.  But why does n't he
+do something?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had the people in the court-room read of this trial in their
+homes&mdash;read the bare facts, the testimony of witnesses, there was not
+one who would have wasted a second thought on Anna Janssen.  Perhaps in
+the hearts of one or two there would have lingered the feeling that it
+was not right she should be strapped horribly in the chair.  But that
+would have been chivalry, not justice.  One and all would have said:
+"That is what the death penalty is for&mdash;to remove from human contact
+one who has no right to God's sunshine, and who has arrogated to her
+vile and puny self the right of the Creator, the disposal of human
+life.  Muffle her up.  Hustle her away.  Throw on the current and hide
+her in quicklime.  Life is not for such as she!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But between the woman whom the witnesses had drawn in black, sinister
+colors and the lady in the dock there was a continent of difference.
+True, she was the same height, the same figure, but for a healthy
+development of years.  True, such marks of identification as Anna
+Janssen the chorus girl had, might be noted on the body of her who was
+a prisoner at the bar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the body of Anna Janssen the chorus girl was soft and white and
+made for sinister loving, while that of the woman in the dock was
+healthy and hard and tanned, after the fashion of Eve, whom the Lord
+God made in the garden.  And Anna Janssen's had swayed alluringly with
+provocative sophistication, while the carriage of this woman was erect
+and of great dignity.  And the eyes of the chorus girl had been full of
+evil knowledge and unhealthy flame, but this woman's had wistfulness
+and a strange mystery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And in the heart of every one there rose a cry: "This is not the same
+woman.  This is a good woman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a theory of an old medical school whose name&mdash;not that it
+matters&mdash;I regret to have forgotten.  And it is this: that every seven
+years the human body changes.  We have not the same bones, nor the same
+skin, the same muscles at thirty-five that we had at twenty-eight.
+They are worn out and are eliminated, and new tissue takes their place.
+It may be wrong, but it is a very taking theory.  It explains to us how
+the track athlete of some years ago becomes the paunchy, bald-headed,
+repulsive man of to-day.  It explains how the well-fed man of the world
+may turn into a harsh-faced monk.  It explains to us how the soft,
+succubine chorus girl of a dozen years before became the splendid
+amazon that Anna Janssen is to-day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet this may be wrong about the body.  But about the mind (and
+there you have the inner person) there is one thing certain, not a
+theory but a fact&mdash;that people change completely.  Like a child's
+slate, the mind is, on which a thousand things are written.  The young
+take so much for granted; the old know.  And gallantly they write this
+for a fact, that for a falsehood.  But day by day they live and learn,
+as the old saw goes.  And simple equations become quadratic.  And the
+writing on the slate is altered month by month, as new factors of life
+are realized.  All is a correction, a readjustment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This is gradual, but occasionally, very occasionally, by some mental or
+spiritual cataclysm all on the slate is sponged clear.  And a new and
+startling departure takes its place.  As we see in the inner
+personality of Anna Janssen the change from the petty arithmetic of
+Broadway, the venal crooked sums of Sinister Street, to the gigantic
+calculus of life as the Lord God conceived it, when He formed man of
+the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
+life; and man became a living soul....
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The district attorney turned from his last witness to the twelve men in
+the box.  "Gentlemen," he said, in the manner of a workman well
+satisfied with the progress of the job in hand, "I have proved the
+crime and proved the perpetrator, the circumstances, the setting, the
+motive.  There is but one more thing to be done to clinch this case
+home like a nail in a horse's shoe.  It is now ten years between the
+time this murder was committed and the bringing of the prisoner to the
+bar of justice.  There is but one more thing to do to remove the
+smallest iota of doubt that the prisoner at the bar and Anna Janssen,
+Alastair de Vries's mistress, are one and the same person.  And to
+prove this I shall call to the witness-stand the detective who arrested
+Anna Janssen in Tahiti, and in whose custody the prisoner has been from
+that day until she was brought to justice here&mdash;a period of nine years
+and four months in all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy to the stand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The public craned forward, and with that strange shifting sound that
+betokens an immensity of interest they settled themselves in their
+seats for the recital of the detective.  Here was the great attraction
+of the trial&mdash;the story of McCarthy and Anna Janssen alone on a desert
+island, a murderess and the officer who arrested her.  More than the
+morbid interest of the killing of De Vries, more than the realistic
+tale of old New York that was, more than the spectacle of a woman
+dicing for her life, more than the prospect of watching Donegan, the
+greatest of criminal lawyers, harass the court, and pound the battered
+witnesses, and at last possibly and probably carry off the prisoner as
+in an old-time rescue from Tyburn, was the promised recital of the
+adventure in the lonely Southern sea.  There had been one romantic
+story of it in one day of the papers, and then no more, for the matter
+would have called forth intense comment from the papers, arousing
+sympathy or hatred, and the case was <I>sub judice</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that one story stirred the imagination of the public.  And the
+sordid tale told of a woman killing her fickle lover in an attack of
+offended vanity faded into a golden haze of romance.  The scented smell
+of the tropics came to their nostrils, and their eyes saw golden sands
+and phosphorescent seas.  And here the palms murmured with a rustle as
+of exotic silks, and the Bird of Paradise winged its iridescent flight
+through the opaque Marquesan dusk.  And the spirits of strange gods
+moved upon the face of the waters....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here was a setting for Scheherazade and here characters for a master
+writer: a patrolman of New York, young, athletic, unspoiled, canny with
+the knowledge of his native city, brave as only his kind is brave; and
+here a woman from the sloughs of the Tenderloin, an admitted beauty, a
+proven murderess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What drama had happened in that isle of dreams, in that immense act of
+nine rolling years?  And did she love him, or did she hate him?  And
+had he succumbed to her, as Adam to Lilith in Eden, before Eve was?  Or
+had he resisted her as Anthony of Egypt resisted the succuba in the
+desert near Fayum?  And did she wheedle him with words sweeter than
+honey?  Or did she curse him with strange black blasphemies?  Or was it
+just one long, dumb vigil of hatred?  Or had they become friends,
+hunter and hunted, marooned now on the islands of strange dead gods?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In God's name, what?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At any rate they would soon know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy, this way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, of a sudden, up rose Howard Donegan.  The judge on his bench, the
+jurymen, the prosecuting attorney, the court, the prisoner herself, all
+looked at him with a hesitant surprise.  Somehow his action was
+surprisingly dramatic.  He stood up slowly and said nothing, but looked
+around.  Into the drama of crime and romance, there was injected a new
+element, powerful, sluggish, but immensely sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it please the Court," went his heavy, significant voice, "may I say
+a few words?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is hardly regular, at this period, Mr. Donegan," the judge said,
+puzzled.  "Surely you will have an opportunity later on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The opportunity is opportune only now."  Like some strange gargoyle in
+an old cathedral the great animal appeared.  His eyes, under their
+threatening hoods, were black and beady like the eyes of some
+malevolent creature of the jungle.  His mouth, a wide, thin slit,
+pouted like the mouth of a fish.  His sedentary body was massive and
+grotesque like some monster of a mad artist's drawing.  His voice
+creaked like unoiled machinery.  But&mdash;God!&mdash;what power was there!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Honor, men of the jury, and Mr. District Attorney, at any point I
+could have obstructed the course of this trial until all of you were
+weary in your chairs.  I could have obfuscated facts and motives and
+testimony until you were as uncertain of truth as Pilate.  The woman
+Wilkins&mdash;I could have shown that her word was no more to be depended on
+than the word of the village idiot.  Mr. Howland Christy, De Vries's
+relative&mdash;I could have shaken him on the stand until he would have been
+uncertain of his testimony, for he is an honest man.  And the usher of
+the cabaret&mdash;if I had concentrated on him, I could have made that
+whisky-sodden brain, that broken will, contradict everything he had
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I did none of these things.  I made no haze of doubt out of honest
+facts.  For why?  Because these facts are true.  I grant them freely!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were a rustle and a murmur in the room.  The public was suddenly
+aghast.  What was this from Donegan?  Treachery?  Who ever heard of a
+counsel granting things like that?  Good Lord! what was the man doing?
+The murmuring went on in spite of the judge's gavel, the attendants'
+cries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Donegan swept the room with his black, minatory glance, and the
+murmuring died.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Honor, Mr. District Attorney, men of the jury, a crime is not an
+instantaneous action.  What goes before a crime is important, and not
+less important is what follows it.  Has the affair been brooded over,
+or has it been the result of momentary passion, and has the deed been
+regarded with smug satisfaction, or with quaking horror?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what effect has this had on the prisoner, on the world, on its
+time?  So many things have to be taken into consideration when we are
+adjudging the crime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen, the law and legal procedure are as easy to comprehend as a
+child's primer.  The office of the district attorney is to see that a
+malefactor is brought to justice.  The office of the jury is to decide
+whether that action was or was not done.  The object of the judge is to
+weigh, decide, and in the name of the people say what shall be done
+with a member of the community who has hurt the interests of the
+community by his or her action.  The duty of the counsel for the
+prisoner is to see that his client is not traduced by false witnesses,
+nor his or her liberty endangered by unfacts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the object of all in the court-room is to see that justice is
+done, though the heavens crumble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have examined no witnesses.  I shall examine none.  But I ask this
+in the latitude of the Court, and in the name of that Justice whose
+servants we one and all are, as much myself, advocate for the prisoner,
+as the district attorney for the people of the State of New York, as
+the jury in the box, as the judge on his bench: that the next witness,
+Thomas McCarthy, shall be allowed to tell his own story in his own way,
+relating facts which may not seem germane to the case, but which I
+claim are as pertinent as the pistol with which the crime was committed
+or the <I>corpus delicti</I> itself.  I ask this of the Court and I request
+the Court so to direct."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is hardly regular, Mr. Donegan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ask this in the name of Justice!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is a court of Justice, Mr. Donegan."  The judge's manner had a
+slight rebuke.  "But if the district attorney is agreeable&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The district attorney, a little nettled, but rather awed before the
+tremendous purpose of Donegan, shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well, Mr. Donegan," the judge nodded.  "The district attorney&mdash;"
+Donegan addressed the jury&mdash;"is calling Thomas McCarthy to prove the
+identity of Anna Janssen.  He is an officer of the City of New York, a
+witness for the State of New York.  The attorney has called him to
+prove that the prisoner in the dock is Anna Janssen.  I shall not
+examine him.  But when he has given his testimony for the district
+attorney he will have given his testimony for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I shall have proven that the chorus girl who killed Alastair de
+Vries is not the woman who stands in the dock!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was an instant's sighing from the courtroom, a momentary
+relaxation.  So Donegan had fought and won his first fight, and now
+they were going to hear the History of the Spicy Isles.  Now all the
+mystery would be lifted that had been hanging about the court-room like
+a necromancer's mist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call Thomas McCarthy!" Donegan barked from the side of his mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Officer Thomas McCarthy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thomas McCarthy to the stand!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he stood in the witness-box, McCarthy seemed to bulk tremendously in
+the room.  As Anna Janssen seemed to fill the court spiritually, so he
+seemed to fill it physically.  Emanations of strength, emanations of
+power came from him like current from a battery.  He was not six feet
+tall, but so erect did he stand, so free was his carriage that he
+seemed to tower above all in the court-room.  He was not a big man, but
+he suggested tremendous strength, so easily with the smallest movement
+did the sinews ripple beneath his coat.  Brown as copper, his face had
+not the strange mystery of Anna Janssen's, because his eyes and hair
+were black, where hers were fair.  Yet he was strange.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was principally that he was out of place in his city clothes.  One
+could have imagined him easily as some young athlete in the Olympic
+games, hurling the discus possibly, or flinging himself over the high
+jump.  Or one might have suffered him in the clothes of summer in the
+country, soft rolling collar and roomy sport coat.  But in the
+"business suit" of some department-store, he seemed like an actor some
+inept stage manager had dressed.  Grotesquely, a police badge was
+pinned to the lapel of his coat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he entered the box, Anna Janssen turned toward him with a swift
+outpouring of her eyes.  It might have been interest, but it was warmer
+than interest.  It might have been appeal, but it was more confident
+than appeal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are plain-clothes officer Thomas McCarthy?" the district attorney
+examined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir.  Number eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Attached to police headquarters?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell us the circumstances under which you arrested the prisoner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Commissioner&mdash;the Commissioner&mdash;"  McCarthy began, faltered,
+suddenly stopped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, the Commissioner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But McCarthy seemed struck by sudden panic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes!" the district attorney became irritable.  "The
+Commissioner&mdash;"  He rapped the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Donegan rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"McCarthy," he explained gently, "has had no one to talk to for seven
+years but my client.  He finds it hard to get his words right.  Take
+your time, McCarthy," he told the witness.  "Close your eyes.  Say it
+as if you were saying it to yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prisoner threw him a look of gratitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was on the vice squad under Inspector O'Gara."  The witness found
+words at last.  "One morning the Commissioner sends for me.  It was
+when the trouble was on about the graft in the Raines-law hotels.  The
+Commissioner looks at me kind of hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Are you on the square, McCarthy?' he says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes, Commissioner, I 'm on the square,' I tells him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's news to me they 's any one on the square,' the Commissioner
+laughs kind o' mean.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tell me, McCarthy, were you ever mixed up with a woman?'  I gets
+chilled all over, because I thinks some one's trying to frame me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No, sir.  Never,' I answers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Then why were n't you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I don't know,' I says, 'except it was my people were from Ireland and
+brought me up their own way.  When I was a kid, Commissioner, I could
+go to confession without holding out, and I guess I can do it to-day.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, you 're one of them good Irish cops,' he sneers.  'I heard tell
+on them, but I never met one before.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, you meet him now.'  I looks him cold in the eye.  And then I 'm
+sorry, because I sees he means nothing.  He 's just sore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, square cop,' he says, 'I got a job for you.  Anna Janssen,' he
+says, 'is found.  A rich guy hides her and brings her to Tahiti on his
+yacht.  She's there now.  The French authorities,' he says, 'have made
+a pinch.  Go get her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All right,' I says, and turns to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Just a moment, McCarthy,' he says.  'I said: "Get her."  You
+understand?  Get her.  And keep her.  Was a man to try and escape on
+you, what would you do?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'd shoot,' I says.  'I 'd bring him in, alive or dead.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, shoot her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, gee, Chief!' I says.  'I can't shoot a woman.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, then, shoot yourself,' he says.  'At any rate, if you come home
+alone, come home cold storage.  I 'll pay the freight.  And that 'll be
+all,' he says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I goes to Paris, and from Paris to Marseilles&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, McCarthy," the district attorney waived.  "It does
+n't matter how you went.  Tell us what happened at Tahiti."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In Tahiti something tells me all is not right.  The steamer I come on
+docks in the morning and leaves that afternoon, and I hopes to make it
+with Janssen.  Maybe it's because I can't get their French and our
+consul is not a well man, but they delay me until the steamer goes and
+then I 'm left flat.  The extradition papers must be in order, they
+say.  But there is too much of this belle-prisoner stuff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, all's finished and they takes me to her.  'Well, Janssen,' I
+says, 'we got you.'  'Now that you got me, what are you going to do
+with me?' she laughs; and every one laughs.  Right away I see they 're
+all rooting for her, and they like me like a souse likes water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Honest, Judge, I don't blame them.  They's few white women in that
+place and, such as they are, they 're not lookers.  And the Kanaka
+girls, for all they are pretty as a picture, they ain't human and they
+<I>ain't</I> healthy, you know, as we white people think.  Anna certainly
+had the looks, and was white, and had the pep, and they were all crazy
+about her.  The Frenchmen are daffy about women, and they don't think
+nothing about a woman shooting a man&mdash;nothing at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they smiles at me and they says, 'You must see our beautiful island
+before you sail away with the belle prisoner!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Your island is fine,' I tells them, 'and, no offense meant, but it's
+got nothing on Manhattan Island.  And as for the belle prisoner,' I
+says, 'ain't you folks forgetting something?  This dame is as nifty a
+little murderess as ever I sees.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It was a crime passional,' they says, and they shrugs their shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tell that to the judge,' I says.  'I 'm only the copper.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well,' they say, 'unfortunately Monsieur will have to enjoy our
+island for three weeks.  The next liner will not be here until then.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, is that so?' I laughs.  'Well, let me tell you something.  While
+you guys was examining the papers for your belle prisoner, I was doing
+a little scouting around the harbor.  And they's a schooner leaving
+to-night for San Francisco.  I guess that 'll do us all right.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Impossible!'  They go wild.  'A lady cannot travel&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Cut the lady stuff,' I says.  'She's my prisoner.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was a trading schooner, dealing in copra, oranges, cotton,
+mother-of-pearl, and such like, but once she must have been a fine
+yacht.  There were state-rooms still aboard her, though now they were
+filled with junk for trading, but I made a deal with the captain and he
+cleans one out and fixes it up for Janssen.  And then I takes Janssen
+down to the docks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Judge, you'd 'a' thought she'd saved the country instead of killing De
+Vries, the way they acted about that woman.  They lined up on the docks
+of Papeete, all the men and a good many women, too.  And they sang and
+they danced and they said good-by.  'When you get off, come back,' they
+says to her.  They got on my nerves so much, I had all I could do not
+to laugh dirty, when they says that about getting off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Janssen looks at the boat, and looks at the people.  And she goes
+crazy-mad.  'Damn you, damn you!'  She turns on me.  'Only for you, I
+'d not be going back!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yeh, only for me,' I says, 'you would n't have killed De Vries.  It's
+all my fault, hey?  Now, listen to me, Janssen.  You 're my prisoner,
+and my prisoner you 'll remain.  You had the game; now pay up, and stop
+hollering.  You and I are from the same town, and I know you.  You
+ought to know me a little better.  I would n't have been sent for you
+if I had n't been able to take care of myself.  All your French friends
+won't save you from a New York cop, once he 's out to get you.  You 're
+beat, Janssen,' I tells her; 'you might as well give in.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She looks at me a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm not beat yet,' she says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The captain tells us he's going to stop at Nukahivo and a few other
+islands to take cargo aboard.  He 's an old guy and sensible, and
+Janssen plays up to him to beat the band, so I takes no risks and keeps
+close.  Even if he is an old guy and has n't any ambition, still and
+all, nobody likes a copper, and every one hates to see a prisoner taken
+home, especially if it's a woman.  So I give Janssen and him no chance
+for private conversation.  Once clear of the islands, I think, and all
+will be well.  Janssen sees my game.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You don't give me much chance with the old fellow.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No, ma'am,' I laughs.  'That's your business.  I give you no chance.
+You 're beat, Janssen.  What's the use of fooling yourself?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, I 've still got an ace in the hole.  I 'm not beat yet!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She turns in early.  'I suppose you 're going to lock the door?' she
+asks me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What's the use?  They's other keys.  The islands are near at hand,
+and they could put you off in a boat.  I 'm not going to lock the
+door,' I tells her, 'but I 'm going to sleep outside it, up against it.
+It opens out, and the smallest movement will wake me up.  You 're beat.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All right!  I 'm beat,' she says, and she turns in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I puts myself against the door, and falls asleep on the deck.  It
+might have been ten minutes after it, but it was really hours, the door
+opens.  It's the middle of the night, for the stars are high, and there
+'s nothing to be seen, and the waves keep lapping the bow of the
+schooner and she dips pretty like a cantering horse.  And suddenly I 'm
+awake and lonely and wet with dew.  I looks up and there 's Janssen
+above me, big and handsome and her eyes like the stars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 're not comfortable there, McCarthy,' she whispers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I can't say as I 'm on a bed of roses,' I tells her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why don't you come inside?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I don't know what you mean,' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Never mind what I mean,' she laughs.  'Come on in.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I think I 'll stay where I am,' I says kind of short.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm not accustomed to having invitations like this refused.'  There
+was a kind of jar in her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'They 's lots of things you 're not accustomed to, you better get
+accustomed to right away,' I says.  'You 're accustomed to fine hotels.
+Now you got to get used to the Tombs.  You 're accustomed to lying down
+on couches.  Now you got to get accustomed to sitting up, very
+straight, in a chair at Sing Sing.'  I did n't want to be brutal toward
+her, Judge, but I did n't want her to be making passes like that at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What she says to me then I could n't tell, Judge.  But she closes the
+door with a slam and leaves me be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I notices the wind is getting kind o' high, and that when the schooner
+pitches she sort of jars, and that under the green light on the
+starboard sight of the boat the water is rushing past very quick.  The
+boat is lying over and the sailors pass me quick as lightning and in
+the cordage the air is whining like a broken fiddle-string, but over it
+all I can hear Janssen cursing in her cabin, cursing just like the
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0102"></A>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+As Officer McCarthy paused for an instant in
+his story the eyes of the court-room seemed
+by common consent to turn to Anna Janssen in the
+dock.  The jury looked at her with knitted brows;
+the spectators with puzzled glances.  It seemed
+impossible that this calm, majestic figure could once
+have acted the siren of the streets to the officer
+bringing her from her Tahitian sanctuary.
+Immobile, somehow immaculate, with strange
+superhuman dignity, she did not blush, she did not smile.
+Only a genre shadow of pain was about her eyes,
+such as creeps about the eyes of some one who
+remembers old, all-but-forgotten painful things of
+phases of life long by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out of those firm lips like a rose in bloom could
+blasphemy have flowed in a sluggish lecherous
+stream?  Out of that glorious bronze throat, fit
+for Magnificats?  It seemed impossible, was impossible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The judge looked at her with moved, understanding
+eyes.  The district attorney cast at her puzzled
+glances.  Donegan looked neither at her, nor at
+anything.  He just drowsed like a dog....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All next day," McCarthy went on, "the blow
+grew worse.  They reefed down sail until we were
+flying along under top and foresails.  The funny
+thing was that here and there the sky was blue.
+You 'd have thought all was going to get fair in
+an hour or two, but it did n't.  And the captain
+stood by the man at the wheel and looked worried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You had to shout to make yourself heard.
+'Ain't it going to calm down, Captain?' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I don't know,' he says.  'I wish to God I was
+out of these islands,' he says.  'If I was all alone
+in the middle of the Pacific, I would n't give a damn,
+but these here coral insects,' he says, 'they 're
+always building, and they sure do bother me.  And
+these charts of the Marquesas,' he says, 'they ain't
+worth a damn.  I wish I was out of these islands,'
+he says; 'I sure do.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, you 'll be all right, Cap,' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You get for'a'd out o' here,' he barks at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'll talk to you later about that,' I says, but I
+goes off, because I see he 's worried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All we get to eat that day is a cup of coffee and
+a sandwich.  And night comes and we 're still
+plunging on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then we hear thunder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Janssen won't turn in.  She 's scared, she says,
+and she sticks by me.  And the thunder keeps up,
+and comes closer, and it gets very dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What's that?' Janssen says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It strikes me it is n't thunder at all.  It's some
+boat in distress firing a gun,' I tells her.  'It's too
+bad we can't do anything for them.  But I don't
+think we can.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm afraid, McCarthy,' Janssen says.  'That's
+no gun.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Maybe it's a lot of guns,' I says.  'Maybe
+it's the French navy practising.  They take a
+funny night for it,' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm scared, McCarthy,' she whimpers, and
+comes close.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'We 'll be all right,' I tells her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm scared,' she cries.  'Put your arms around
+me, McCarthy, please.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, come off!' I tells her.  That game don't
+go, Janssen.  What's the use?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm scared, honest.  They's something going
+to happen.'  The boat does a little jazz step, and
+the guns is right in our ears.  And overhead,
+Judge, the stars were out.  'Please take me in your
+arms, McCarthy&mdash;just like I was your sister.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, you ain't just like you was my sister.
+And they 's been too many arms around you for me
+to put mine.  But you can hold on to me,' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then my teeth come together with a jar and
+my spine is near driven through my skull, and
+something hits me on the head.  And all the water in the
+world comes over me.  And I know nothing."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The witness, it seemed, here underwent a strange
+dramatic transformation.  Until now in his recital,
+his story had been a story all could understand, a
+policeman's story, told in a policeman's voice, in a
+policeman's words.  To the court-room he was a
+figure within their ken, a person to warm the hearts
+of burgesses.  Honest, homely, speaking in dialect,
+he stood in their eyes for the typical and honored
+defender of city families and city homes.  Great
+figures, those men!  They make heroism casual.
+We may call the New York police grafters; we
+may call them brutes and tyrants; we may call them
+the scum of Ireland.  We can never call them cowards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is on record the case of&mdash;shall I say
+O'Kelly?  A homicidal maniac, armed to the teeth,
+took refuge in a cellar.  "And then what?"  "I
+goes down into the cellar and I gets him out."  "Good
+God!  You went down alone into that dark
+hole after&mdash;"  "Oh, that was not'in'; he was easy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You can have your great regiments&mdash;your Old
+Guard at Waterloo; your Rough Riders of San
+Juan Hill, your Black Watch, your Bashi-Bazouks;
+your Bersaglieri.  Give me the New York police!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Up to now McCarthy had been only a New York
+policeman, telling in a dry way the facts of a case.
+But a new dignity arose in him of a sudden.  He
+was no longer dealing with the processes of his
+profession but with big human phenomena.  Until
+now he had been deferential to court and officers,
+a cog in the legal machine.  Suddenly he assumed
+individuality, poise, dignity.  He became bigger
+than the personnel of the case, as big as the woman
+in the dock.  And curiously his language changed
+to fit the newer individuality, turning from the
+idioms of the sidewalks of New York to what we
+term, in that archaic phrase which has so much of
+dignity, the King's English.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I came to," he resumed.  "At first it was blackness
+and a terrible headache, and the thought in my
+brain: 'Where is Janssen?  I've lost Janssen.'  And
+then my head cleared, and my eyes opened.
+And I was lying on the sand in the dawn, and
+Janssen was bathing my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'So there you are!' I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then it struck me.  Where 's the ship?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I got up on my elbow and looked around.  We
+were on a strand, with trees behind us and a bay in
+front and the sun just coming up, bright as a golden
+eagle.  In front of us was a sort of bay where the
+water was still and sparkling, like wine sparkles.
+And then I look out further.  And there 's a sort
+of wall of crags between the bay and the sea, and
+on the other side of it the sea is pounding, pounding,
+pounding, like a man crazy with anger.  <I>Swish!
+Crash!  Boom!</I>  And then I notice pieces of
+timber, a bale, a piece of cloth in the lagoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The schooner 's gone, I understand.  There 's
+been a wreck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Where are the rest?' I ask Janssen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'There are no rest.'  She throws her arms out.
+'Just you and I!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then after a while I said: 'We 're in a pretty
+bad way here&mdash;shipwrecked; without anything to
+eat; with a very small chance of rescue.  We 're up
+against it.  There is n't even water.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she only laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'We 're not so bad as you 'd think,' she says.
+'There 's water.  I found it when I looked for
+something to bathe that cut on your head.  And as
+for food, I 'd been in these islands a while before
+they put me in the&mdash;place&mdash;at Papeete.  There 's
+bananas, and there 's cocoanuts, and there 's
+breadfruit.  And that cove is full of fish.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You can't eat fish raw,' I tell her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm turning out my pockets then, leaving
+things in the sun to dry&mdash;my gun, with the shells
+out in a row; my watch; my knife; my pocketbook.
+She points at the watch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You can make a fire with the crystal of that,'
+she says.  'Your bananas 'll do for the present.
+I 'll go off and get some.  You need n't worry,' she
+says as she notices me looking at her.  'I can't get
+off the island.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After a while she comes back and sits down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Do you know how you got ashore, McCarthy?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I don't,' I answer.  'I know nothing.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'When the boat struck,' she tells me, 'you and I
+were washed over the reef.  Something hit you on
+the head.  But I pulled you in, McCarthy.  You
+went down.  You were out cold.  I had a job, too,'
+she laughs nervously.  'Your hair is awfully short.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, I got to thank you,' I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Don't mind thanking me,' she said.  'Tell me
+this!'  She 's awfully serious.  'Don't you think a
+life is worth a life?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say nothing to that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Don't you, McCarthy?' she pleads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm sorry,' I tell her.  'I 'm awfully, awfully
+sorry, but I 've got to bring you in.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 're a hard man, McCarthy.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm not a hard man.  I 'm just a man sworn
+in to do my job.  I 'm just a man a big trust's been
+put in, and I can't fall down.  Sis, you missed your
+chance,' I told her.  'You ought to have let me go
+down, when you saw me going.  Then you 'd have
+been free.  You ought to have stood clear and let
+me drown.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, I could n't do that!' she says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Neither could I let you go!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the afternoon I go around the island to see
+where we are.  But from no point can I see land
+or a sail or anything.  We are just on one of those
+Pacific atolls, as they call them, away from the line
+of everything but sailing-ships trading from isle to
+isle.  I look everywhere&mdash;north, east, south, and
+west&mdash;and there is nothing but boiling sea, white,
+muddy, with birds fluttering, or floating in the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The island itself is not more than ten miles
+square and there are rocks everywhere about it
+except around the cove where we landed, and that
+has a coral breakwater.  The sand is bright and
+yellow like new gold, and on the island itself there
+is greenness that is nearly black.  And you can see
+cocoanut-trees and banana-trees and oranges.  And
+while I 'm standing there a little pig breaks through
+the underbrush and looks at me, and then flies off
+with a squeal.  And for a moment my heart goes
+pit-a-pat because I think there are people on this
+island.  A pig is a human thing.  It's always been
+so near humans, it's nearly human itself.  But a
+moment later something in me tells me there 's no
+one here.  It's been put ashore, it and others, by
+some of the old whaling-ships that are gone now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I look around and I see the island, the sand like
+gold, the clean wind, the water in the cove as
+transparent as water in a glass; the fish in the
+water and the animals on the island, and the fruit
+on the trees.  And the sun is bright and warm and
+full of life, and in the distance I can see Janssen.
+She has let her hair down and it covers her to the
+knees in a great shining cloak, like some wonderful
+fur cloak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I think: There's many 's the old cop in
+New York&mdash;there 's many 's the millionaire,
+even&mdash;would like to finish his life alone in this paradise
+island, away from all trouble and worry and having
+everything he needs in sunshine that's more like
+wine than light, and with Janssen with him, when
+she has let down her hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I says to myself: You needn't think that
+way.  You 're not old, nor disappointed.  You 've
+got no reason to idle your life away.  You 've got
+a job on hand.  You 're a detective officer, and
+you 've got a prisoner, and you 're going to bring
+her home!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I return to where Janssen is by the cove and I
+look for my knife and watch and gun.  But my
+gun is n't there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Do you know where my gun is?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wheels around on me suddenly and points it
+at my head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'your word's good with
+me.  Either tell me now you 'll let me go when
+we 're rescued or I 'll kill you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I can't,' I said.  'I won't.  Now give me my
+gun and be sensible.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I mean it,' she said.  'Let me off or I 'll kill
+you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I would n't be the first.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Will you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No!' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm watching the gun, to grab it if I can.  Then
+I see a spat of fire like a match lighting.  Then
+something burns my ear like red-hot iron.  I hear
+the shot.  I 'm sprung halfway round.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I face up again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You made a better job with De Vries,' I says,
+stupid-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm expecting the finisher, but she walks up to
+me and hands me the gun.  She just looks at me,
+and her throat works, and then suddenly from her
+eyes run two big tears down to the corners of her
+mouth and I turn away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm going to fix you a bed of banana-leaves,
+and then I 'm going to light a fire.  Forget
+your troubles for a while.  Think of this as a
+picnic.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the tears still run down her face and she
+says nothing.  I go off and get busy because I can't
+stand the sight of It.  I 'm not feeling any too like
+a comedy, myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'We 're sitting that night at a fire on the beach,
+and the thin new moon is up.  A light breeze is in
+shore.  Suddenly she turns to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 're religious, McCarthy,' she says to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm not exactly religious,' I say.  'I 'm like
+every one, I guess.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You believe in God, McCarthy?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody likes to talk much about things of
+that kind.  You think about them, but you don't
+say them.  And particularly you don't talk about
+them to a prisoner who 's up for murder, unless
+you 're one of those Holy Willie boys.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Who does n't?' I spars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You believe&mdash;' her voice is serious&mdash;'that God
+takes care of you on this island?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what they say.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Do you believe, McCarthy, that He knows me,
+takes care of me, cares for me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say nothing&mdash;because I can't see it.  She 's
+too far out of the pale.  I 'd like to tell her
+'yes.'  But I can't.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You don't believe, then, McCarthy&mdash;' her voice
+is just a husky whisper&mdash;'that there is any caring
+for me, anywhere.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, what's the use of bothering about that?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You don't, then,' she said.  'You think I 'm
+too bad for&mdash;even&mdash;that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I get up and shake myself.  'Maybe there's
+nothing to it, after all,' I tell her.  But all of a
+sudden she is crying, her face down to the sand, as
+though her heart would break.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I move away, because I 'm no good to her, and
+go down the strand a bit.  The water laps the
+strand, and whispers in the trees, but I can hear
+Janssen crying still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I walk on and on.  I hear the sea rumble on the
+rocks, and the whisper of the trees is louder.  A
+turtle pluds into the water, and a cocoanut falls with
+a thud, but over it all I still can hear the voice of
+Janssen crying, little tearing cries, as though pieces
+of silk were being ripped from the main fabric with
+shrill protesting tragedy.  It struck me that she
+herself was flaying her heart with brutal knout-like
+strokes, and that every red shred was moaning in
+protest: 'Don't, don't, don't!'...
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"The new moon became the full moon, and
+waned and died," McCarthy went on.  "But no help came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was nothing to do but wait, and a policeman
+does n't mind waiting.  All his life is waiting,
+except for a hint of action now and then.  But I
+worried about Janssen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Janssen gave me no trouble.  We talked just as
+friendly strangers might talk, waiting on a railroad
+platform.  She got the bananas and the cocoanuts
+and the breadfruit, gathering them as they fell.  I
+managed to kill a suckling pig now and then, and I
+rigged up a fishing-line from a piece of rope I
+unraveled that had come ashore from the wreck of the
+boat, and a pin Janssen gave me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's nothing I like to do better than fish,
+and I sit there and fish and think all the time.  And
+little things come to me of the life in New York, and
+I worry over them.  I never was a grafter.  I
+never took a penny from any one when I was on the
+vice squad, in the way of protection, but there 's
+little things that worry me.  As, for instance, when
+I go into a saloon for a drink, they never take my
+money.  When an arrest is made, sometimes I find
+a bailsman for the prisoner, and they give me
+something as a favor.  Or I sell tickets for this benefit
+or another, and nobody wants them, but nobody
+dares refuse.  And I sit there in a few acres of
+coral in the Pacific Ocean and the sun rises in the
+east way over New York, and the moon sets in the
+west down China way.  And the winds blow south
+from Japan or north from the edge of the world.
+And I think: It's very small.  It's not worth a
+man's while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And while I 'm thinking Janssen is thinking,
+too.  But what she 's thinking about, I can't figure.
+She 's very silent.  And at times her mouth is n't
+hard at all, nor her eyes, either.  And when she
+speaks her eyes are on the ground and she 's very
+serious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What are you thinking about, Janssen?' I ask.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'did you ever, after a
+hard day's work, disappointed, clogged with dirt,
+come in and turn on a cold shower and suddenly feel
+better and cleaner&mdash;and be happy again?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That's the only thing to do, on a day like that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, I feel,' she said, 'as if this island
+were that bath after the awful day of my life,' she
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At times I think, myself, that it must be getting
+on her nerves, this place.  She 'll want the lights,
+the gaiety, the people, if only for a little space,
+before she faces her trial.  Even the chair must be
+better for her than this waiting, I think.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Are n't you getting lonely, Janssen?' I ask.
+'Does n't this get on your nerves&mdash;having nobody
+to talk to?'  We never speak any more about the
+murder or the trial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Why, no, McCarthy!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I should have thought,' I say, 'that after the
+gaiety you knew you 'd find this a terrible trial.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'McCarthy,' she said suddenly, 'were you ever
+at Saranac?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 've passed through it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Did you ever see the poor people there, quiet,
+waiting, glad to be alive, just being healed?  Well,
+I 'm like those.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't notice for a while the change that is
+coming over Janssen.  I see things on the outside
+of people.  I don't see them on the inside.  I 'm
+a detective.  I just think maybe she 's got the blues,
+Maybe she's worried.  But one afternoon she
+comes to me and springs a new one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'would you mind every
+afternoon keeping away for an hour or so from the
+cove?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What's the idea?' I says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, I used to be a good swimmer,' she says,
+'and I 'm going to practise, and I have n't got any
+bathing-suit,' she says, 'not even tights.  So you 'd
+better keep away.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think to myself: 'This is a queer thing for
+any one as tough as they tell me Janssen is, to come
+out with.'  And I wonder if she means exactly the
+opposite of what she says.  She wants me, I half
+figure, to hang around.  And maybe she thinks
+I 'll fall for her.  And if I do, she has me, I say to
+myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then I look up at her, and I see her eyes,
+and I never was so ashamed before or since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'All right, Janssen,' I say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Thanks, McCarthy!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A week later she borrows my knife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'My clothes are in rags, McCarthy,' she says,
+'so it's back to the Garden of Eden for me.  I got
+to dress up like these wahinies down here.  Don't
+laugh at me, McCarthy; promise me you won't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Not too much Garden of Eden, now,' I warn her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Don't worry!' she laughs.  And next morning
+you could have knocked me down with a straw, as
+they say.  She has strung together big green
+banana-leaves with fiber, and made a knee-length
+skirt of them.  And under her arms and about her
+is a little closed jacket of leaves, and that great
+golden cloak of her hair falls around, rippling and
+shimmering.
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+"'How do I look, McCarthy?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You look fine,' I tell her.  'You look like a
+picture, you sure do.  You might be in a stage play,'
+I tell her, 'only you 're so fine and modest.'  She
+blushes pretty as a girl of sixteen, until it was a
+shock to me to remember that she was my prisoner
+for the crime of murder.  And I look at myself,
+feel my chin, see how my suit is going.  'You make
+me feel like a bum.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The months pass and two sails go by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One I see in the early evening.  A few very
+fleecy clouds shuttle in and out before the sun, and
+the great sea is purple, and the sand takes on a
+deep hue like the color of a gold coin that's been in
+circulation for years, mellow and reddish-like.
+And the green of the trees is so green you can feel
+it.  And on the horizon is a native boat with a
+lateen sail that is orange-colored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see it.  I make no effort.  I can do nothing.
+But it seems to me that it is unreal.  It is not there.
+It is just a dream.  It is unreal as the island is to
+me, unreal as my old life is to me, unreal as
+everything is&mdash;except Janssen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But a week later another boat comes, and this
+time it is n't unreal.  Squat and bulky, it is a tramp
+steamer headed down New Zealand way.  It passes
+not more than three miles off, and very ugly it is
+upon the sea, its funnel belching out black smoke
+that is like an insult to the shining seas.  I have a
+bonfire ready-made and go to it with my burning-glass.
+And Janssen stands by and looks at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Do I have to go back, McCarthy?' she asks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You got to go back and face the music,
+Janssen.'  And I lights the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I get everything ready to board, but the
+steamer pays no attention.  They go straight
+ahead.  Maybe they think it's just natives, but at
+any rate they don't put about or anything.  I go to
+the edge of the water and shout to them.  I go into
+it up to my waist and whistle and snap my fingers
+and call to it, as I would to a dog, but they pay no
+attention.  And then I give up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'm sorry, McCarthy,' Janssen says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What are you sorry for?' I asks her.  'You
+ought to be glad.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I am glad,' she says.  'I 'm glad for myself,
+but I 'm sorry for your sake, McCarthy.  I 'm
+really sorry.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One night we 're setting by the fire in the
+moonlight, and I 'm trying to figure out how the natives
+build their huts, because I want to build one for
+Janssen.  There 's a queer sort of rain in these
+islands.  Sometimes in a bright sky a cloud will
+pass, very high, very quick, and the rain comes
+down like bullets.  You can hear it thunder in the
+leaves, and rattle over the sea like pistol shots.
+And it's not so pleasant after a while.  It's over
+in a minute or so, but Janssen ought to have some
+place when it comes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Janssen is sitting there as quiet as anything,
+making figures in the sand and saying nothing.
+She turns to me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'McCarthy,' she says, 'did I really kill Alec de Vries?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You killed him dead.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It seems like a dream to me, a bad dream in
+the night.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'If you had waited and looked at that corpse,
+you 'd have known it was no dream.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'And because I killed a man that was no use to
+any one I 've got to go back.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 've got to go back, all right,' I tell her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, do you know, it's only fair,' she says.
+'You 've called the tune, and danced it, and you 've
+got to pay the fiddler.  But I 'm scared, McCarthy.
+I 'm terribly scared.  It would be very easy for me
+to jump in the water or borrow your gun some night.
+Think of it.  They put metal on your legs and strap
+you into a chair, and they put a cap over your head.
+And, then a man, as human as yourself, pushes a
+switch, and just as if he were putting out a light, he
+puts out the light of your life, the same light that's
+in himself....  And all in the cold gray morning....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tell you something, kid&mdash;'  I had this on my
+mind for a while.  'I don't think they 'll burn you.
+We 'll get you a good lawyer when we go back and
+you 'll get off with a long stretch up the river.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But don't you see, McCarthy,' she laughs
+nervously, 'that that's worse still?  A person does
+something, as I 've done, because his mind and
+his&mdash;his self&mdash;are full of nooks and crannies, dust and
+cobwebs, bad feelings, passions.  And he flies away.
+And maybe in the desert or the mountains a great
+wind comes and cleanses him.  And he mends the
+shattered self together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But the silly judge and the silly police go after
+him, and they send him to prison, and he sits there
+in the darkness and the wheels of his head go
+around.  And the cobwebs collect again, and the
+grime from the other people comes off on him.
+And in the end he is worse than he was in the beginning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'd rather die, McCarthy&mdash;die, all in the cold
+gray morning.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A month after this Janssen falls ill.  Perhaps
+it's a gust of rain that's made her ill.  Perhaps it's
+some of the berries or the fish or something.  But
+at any rate, there she lies, white and near dead, all
+the life gone from her.  There 's nothing I can do
+for her much but try to cheer her up and move her
+when she 's tired of lying in one position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 've got to get well, Janssen,' I say to her.
+'You 've got to make an effort.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But why?' she asks.  'Why shouldn't I die?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That's no way to talk.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What has life got for me?' she asks bitterly.
+'The electric chair?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 've got nothing to worry about,' I say.
+'It 'll be only a few years up the river and then out
+again, and the good old days.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I won't live for that,' she says.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, listen,' I joke with her.  'You 're not
+going to make me come all the way across the world
+for you, and then not bring you home.  You 're not
+going to throw me down, kid; be game.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I 'd like to oblige you, McCarthy,' she smiles;
+'but even for that I won't stay alive.  Can't you
+think of any other reason?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It would be awful lonely, if you were to go,'
+I say; and I mean it.  'Awful, awful lonely.  I 'm
+getting very fond of you, Janssen.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That's better,' she says, and pats my hand.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap0103"></A>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Without, the gray January dusk had crept into the cañons of New York
+and given the narrow streets, the crenelated buildings, the moving
+trucks, the pedestrians a semblance of unreality, as though they were
+being seen through a mist raised by some necromancer at the call of a
+wretched man.  Through the windows of the court-room the Tombs were
+
+still evident, but the building had become unreal.  It was like some
+ogre's castle in a fairy-tale for children, very terrible, but not
+really there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The judge, the jury, the attendants, all the court had somehow lost
+entity as a court.  It was no more a court than a house in a play is a
+house.  It was just a formula embracing a hundred or so human beings.
+And one felt also that this was not in New York.  There was no
+atmosphere of New York.  New York might be a cloak and a disguise, but
+the minds and personalities of all were on a golden island on shining
+seas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And they didn't see McCarthy in the witness-box, nor Janssen in the
+dock, but by the cove where the water was so translucent that one could
+see, fathom on fathom deep, the rainbow fish below....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She gets better day by day, and I 'm so glad I could sing," continued
+the officer, speaking more easily as practice came after his seven
+years of silence.  "She sits on the beach and health comes to her with
+the wind, and little by little the flush comes in her cheek, and life
+ferments, and her hair that has become dank ripples and flows, as a
+still sea stirs up with a breeze.  And soon she 's swimming again.  But
+there 's little of the old Janssen left.  All her movements are grave.
+At times she sits thinking, and her brow is working with thought.  At
+other times she smiles.  Just a dignified little smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And soon after she gets well, she saves my life a second time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is how it happens.  I 'm fishing one day and my line and hook get
+caught down in the coral.  And I don't want to lose that hook.  Hooks
+are n't easy to make.  So I says: 'I 'll go down after that hook.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shoot in and go swimming down through the water, and I hang on to
+the coral with one hand, and unloose the hook with the other.  I 'm
+about ready to come up when in the water between me and the sun I can
+see a shadow like a boat.  For a moment I think it's a boat, and come
+up with a rush.  But half-way up I know it's no boat.  And in the warm
+water I go cold as ice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm more than half-way up, and I have no chance of shouting,
+splashing, making a noise, the way you frighten them off.  And suddenly
+I know the big fellow sees me.  I can feel the vibration of his swirl
+in the water as he turns off to a point where he can come rushing at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's good-by, McCarthy!' I say to myself, and turn to face him.  And
+then I hear a <I>plung-h</I> into the water the moment he's ready to turn
+over and come at me.  And Janssen comes shooting down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has a stone or something in her hand drawn back and lets him have
+it just on the soft point of the nose, the only place you can hurt
+those fellows.  One crack!  And the big coward turns and slinks off
+just like a dog that's been kicked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When we get ashore I 'm just as mad as I can be.  The idea of her
+taking a chance like that!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Haven't you got any sense at all?' I bawl her out.  'What do you
+mean, taking a chance like that?  What do you think a shark is?  A
+mackerel?  Maybe you think he wouldn't touch you?  Maybe you think he's
+a gentleman?  He's not.  If brains were money,' I say, 'I don't think
+you could buy a subway ticket.  Never do that, or anything like that
+again.  Mind your own business!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she 's crying and laughing together.  She walks off, now sobbing,
+now laughing.  I run after her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Not that from the bottom of my heart I 'm not grateful to you, but
+you must never again&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she laughs and she sobs:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Go away, McCarthy.  Go away.  Please go away!'
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"All this time I know I 'm very fond of Janssen, and something tells me
+Janssen is of me, though God knows why.  But we say nothing.  At times
+it's hard to talk.  And I look at her and think.  If things were only
+different, how I could love that girl!  But here she is, a prisoner,
+and I 'm her keeper.  It's a pity.  It's a pity, even, she's changed.
+It makes it awful hard for me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I can't keep my eyes off her.  She stands on the beach, the wind
+rustling her green garment, and rippling her hair.  Very beautiful.
+And a little butterfly, from God knows where, is fluttering about her.
+Now it's in her hair, now about her throat.  And curiously it comes to
+light on her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You look awfully pretty, Janssen,' I say, 'with that butterfly.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She smiles at me, kind of queerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You 're a brave man, McCarthy,' she says, 'the bravest man I ever
+knew.  You 're strong.  You 're tremendous.  Yes, you 're brave.  But
+this little butterfly, that in all its body has n't the strength of one
+single hair of your head, whose brief life is but a single day, is
+braver than you, McCarthy, braver far than you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I don't understand you, Janssen.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I understand her all right.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"And the days roll by, roll by, and nothing changes, nothing comes to
+us.  Once or twice we see sails.  Once a full-rigged ship under bare
+poles runs before a gale.  And once in the distance we see a schooner
+heeling to the breeze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are not speaking much to each other.  There is a feeling of
+strangeness in the air.  And at night I 'm worried-like.  The trees
+rustle.  The waves lap.  There is great darkness.  And for all we are
+the only two people in that island, yet I feel at night somehow we are
+not alone.  Unseen, shadowy people are about us, in the sea, in the
+air.  Once there were millions on these islands and now there are few.
+Once they were a great strong race, and now they are a timid handful.
+And I imagine that in the dark of the moon the brown tribes reassemble
+and put to sea in their war-canoes, and walk on the beaches that are so
+like Paradise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And there are great temples on these islands, but their gods are no
+more.  And may they not too walk in the night-time with terrible,
+silent stride?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Cross of Christ is between me and all harm.  I believe that, and I
+know it, and I am not afraid.  But I am unquiet, nevertheless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if I am unquiet, what of Janssen, wide-eyed through the night?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At last one night I take my courage in both hands.  Janssen is sitting
+in the moonlight by the cove, and for the first time I ever heard her
+she is singing a little something.  Her voice is somehow like a boy's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Janssen!'  I stand and look at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes, McCarthy.'  She turns and looks at me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Janssen, when we go back,' I say, 'and when what has to be will be
+done, and when all is over, the morning you are free, I 'll be waiting
+at the gate for you.  I 'll want you to marry me and come to me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You love me, McCarthy?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes,' I said, 'I love you, Janssen.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I love you, too, McCarthy.  I suppose you know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All this time she never looks at me, but out on the moonlit cove.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But if we never get off this island,' she says after a little while,
+'we never get married.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'How can we?' I say.  'There is none to marry us.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is speaking slowly, seriously, in the moonlight, and every word
+she says has the weight of sincerity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Do you believe, McCarthy, that the church and all the people there
+and the organ and the rice make a marriage?  Are all these necessary,
+McCarthy?  Tell me, please.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No.'  I think it out.  'The only one necessary is the clergyman.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Because he is the representative of&mdash;God?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yes,' I say in a minute or so, 'because he is there for&mdash;God.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'And yet God is everywhere?  Knows all?  Sees everything?  Reads the
+inside of our hearts as easily as the clergyman reads our faces?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'That is what they say, Janssen.  That is&mdash;what&mdash;we believe&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is silence.  Then she sinks to her knees in the sand in the
+moonlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Kneel down, McCarthy, and give me your hands.'  I kneel and give her
+my hands without protest&mdash;her voice is so commanding, so sincere.  And
+there is a strange thing between us now.  All the time before if I
+touch her I feel strength flowing from me to her, but to-night when I
+hold her hands there is an even level.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'If God wishes to hear us to-night, then we are married.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But,' I say, 'Janssen, how do we know if He hears us, gives His
+consent?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her eyes wander over the island, over the sea.  She points suddenly to
+the lagoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'See, McCarthy.  See, under the moon there, that big turtle.  He is
+uncertain where to go.'  I look and I see the little black head like a
+dot on the water and the widening ripple as he swims around.  'See the
+boatswain bird's rock.'  I saw the flat square surface in the cove.
+'If he swims to and mounts that rock, then it will be a sign we have
+been heard and&mdash;He has given His consent.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But he will never come to the rock, dear Janssen,' I say.  'He is
+going out with the tide.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'McCarthy,' she says a little scornfully, 'you are the good man, the
+untarnished one, the one who was brought up to believe, and you do not.
+And I, the bad woman, the murderess, the worse than Magdalen because I
+never loved until now, I believe.  I believe and know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then her belief came to me and I turned to see the great turtle.
+He swam around and around and the moon shot the little ripples in
+gleaming silk.  And at last I could bear it no longer, and I lowered my
+head; but Janssen still watched with her head high.  And I could feel
+her hands tremble, and then crisp, and then tremble, and suddenly grow
+firm and fine and powerful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Look, McCarthy, look!'  Her voice rang like a bell.  'He is come
+to&mdash;he is on the rock.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I raised my head, too, and I saw the Miracle of the Turtle....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so we were married, and dwelt as happy as we could be, until the
+brig <I>Angela Scofield</I> put in for water and rescued us, and I brought
+Janssen back to the bar of justice, as I was bound under oath to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here McCarthy stopped, and all knew he would say no more.  Indeed, it
+seemed as if he could physically say no more, for the man seemed
+overcome.  All the tenseness of him was gone and the prisoner and he
+looked at each other in a strange, pathetic, and trusting way, smiling
+with dry mouths and wet eyes.  All in the court-room felt suddenly
+abashed, as a cynic might feel before the eyes of a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And suddenly in every one's mind there were translated his simple
+words, "And so we were married, and dwelt as happy as we could be,"
+into pictures that were not pictures but chords, harmony and
+counterpoint, not for the mind's eye but for the heart's feeling.
+There they had been by a cove on Paradise Island, loving each other not
+joyously but simply and sincerely and with great strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They could see them, strong and fine, by the translucent water of the
+cove, under the golden sun on the golden sands, in a place as beautiful
+as the garden the Lord God planted in Eden.  And as over that first
+garden, so over this one did a storm brood like an owl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What terror she must have gone through, with the prison gate
+continually before her!  What temptations must he have undergone with
+his wife by him, and the thought in his head that one day he must bring
+her back to stand trial for the killing of a man!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In God's name, what was the use to them of shining seas and golden
+sands, trees green as green banners, moons of Paradise and scented
+tropic winds, while tragedy was in the air, electric as a storm?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can step down, McCarthy," the district attorney said.  And turning
+to the court he spread out his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The case of the people rests."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The case for Anna Janssen rests," countered Howard Donegan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a long time there was a pause, that was accentuated into
+uncomfortable drama by the ticking of the court clock.  It was as
+though an angel of silence were passing.  The jury looked
+uncomfortable.  The district attorney bit his nails.  The spectators
+looked at one another in mental disorientation.  It might have been the
+first bar of justice with no precedent to follow, no set of rules, so
+suddenly had all the machinery stalled.  Only Howard Donegan drowsed
+an....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The judge was the first to come to himself.  He rustled papers.  He
+rapped for order.  He turned to the jury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen," he began, "the case for the people rests and the counsel
+for the prisoner rests his case also.  It has now arrived to make a
+decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You jurymen have only one duty to perform, and a bounden duty it is.
+You have got to decide one fact.  Did Anna Janssen kill Alastair de
+Vries?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were Anna Janssen before you, the lowest of the low, gutter-soiled,
+evil, a menace to the community, and did not kill De Vries, then you
+would have to bring in a verdict of 'not guilty,' no matter how much
+enmity you felt to her.  No matter what she is before you now, no
+matter what sympathy you feel for her, you must bring in a verdict of
+'guilty' if you are certain she killed De Vries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, gentlemen, there can be no reasonable doubt of this.  Even the
+prisoner herself admits it.  So I must instruct you to bring in a
+verdict of guilty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The jury looked at one another, amazed, a little scared.  They turned
+to the foreman, a fine, florid personage, with a fan-shaped red beard,
+a man who ought to be equal to every occasion, so it seemed.  They
+turned to him as a sheep turns to a bellwether.  He rose to his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But this woman is changed," he objected.  "She is not the same&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is not germane to your offices," the judge answered severely.
+"You weigh facts.  I weigh justice, Your affair is between Alastair de
+Vries and Anna Janssen.  De Vries is now in the hands of his God.
+Janssen is in mine.  Though I am the arbiter of legal form, yet also I
+am the personation of Equity.  God has judged De Vries; I, with the
+voice of God, shall judge Anna Janssen.  Consider your verdict."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If we bring in a verdict of 'not guilty&mdash;'" the foreman suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you do&mdash;" the judge was cold as steel&mdash;"you have done an
+unpardonable thing.  You have betrayed the people of New York, whose
+representatives you are.  You have brought into disrepute the law of
+your city.  And women will kill men with the hope of obtaining lax
+verdicts.  Moreover, on legal grounds, I shall declare this no trial.
+And the prisoner will go through the ordeal again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if that's the way&mdash;"  The foreman looked around embarrassedly at
+the jury.  The jury seemed to put implicit faith in him.  "We will not
+have to leave the box!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Clerk of the Court," called the judge....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prisoner, look on the jury.  Jury, look on the prisoner.  What say ye,
+have ye arrived at a verdict?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What say ye: is the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, this woman killed De Vries, but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guilty or not guilty?" judge demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Guilty!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prisoner&mdash;" the judge turned to Janssen&mdash;"you have committed a murder.
+You have been adjudged guilty of it by a jury of your peers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is now my duty to sentence you to a punishment not fitting the
+crime of murder but fitting such circumstances before and after as come
+within the scope of the foresight of Equity.  You have taken a life and
+your life is hostage to the law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It now rests with me to decide what I shall do with this life that is
+in my hands and forfeit to the justice of the community; not only what
+is the best thing for the community, but what is the best thing for
+you.  Shall I extinguish it, that it shall be no longer a danger to
+living men, a danger to your own immortal soul?  Or shall I dispose of
+it otherwise, as my inspiration directs?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prisoner, I give you back that life, but I sentence you to
+imprisonment for its natural term."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a moment's pregnant silence in the court.  Then a quick
+bourdon hum of anger.  Suddenly came riot.  The prisoner wilted.  The
+jury stood up in protest.  The spectators rose on threatening feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The judge raised his hand.  He was suddenly clothed in the majesty of
+Solomon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prisoner, I have made inquiries and there is owing to your husband his
+salary for ten years, which he will collect.  He will then take you and
+have this marriage made legal.  He will then take you from the place
+where you now are to the place whence you came, to your island down the
+Pacific, and you will live there, happy ever after, is the wish of this
+court of justice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came suddenly from the throats of all a mighty cheering.  For an
+instant the attendants sought to keep order, but they soon desisted,
+themselves to join the joyous clamor.  The sound bellied from the
+court-room and into the street.  Pedestrians stopped and horses
+started.  All looked at one another in amazement.  Out of the
+court-room of tragedy had issued springtime carnival.  One expected at
+any moment to hear chiming bells.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE BARNACLE GOOSE
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+He might have been a hundred years away, he thought, as he sped along
+the road on the jaunting-car; he might have been a hundred years away
+instead of a meager dozen, so strange did everything appear to him.
+Every turn of the way, every stone, every smoking farm-house, every
+green field, was new.  Even the sea to the right of him, beside which
+he had played for nineteen years, was dramatically unexpected.  Faintly
+the whole landscape came back to him; hazily, as though he were seeing
+for the first time a scene that had been inadequately described in a
+book.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First, there was the road itself, broad, undulating, rising and
+falling, like an artist's fancy.  Then, right and left, fields of
+delicate blue-green corn, soft as no carpet could be; and great meadows
+of hay, sprinkled with white and red clover; long stretches of potatoes
+with delicate pink and mauve flowers; and here and there a gnarled
+apple orchard.  Huge chestnut trees lined the way, and mellow
+farm-houses showed cozily, with their dun thatched roofs.  Cows grazed
+in the distance&mdash;shining, mottled Jerseys and stocky Kerrys, black as
+ink.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the background the purple Mourne Mountains loomed like strange
+giants; and beside him the sea plashed musically, with a sound
+reminiscent of the chiming of bells.  It was all surprisingly mellow,
+surprisingly rich, like the land which the spies of Joshua reported to
+lie past the Jordan's banks.  Grant's eyebrows raised in puzzlement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The brick-faced driver looked at him with a horseman's shrewd eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew you the first time I put eyes on you," he said in his clipped
+Ulster accent.  "You 're Thomas Grant's son&mdash;Willie John&mdash;that went
+away to America twelve years ago last March.  And why should n't I know
+you?  Many 's the time I drove you when you were that high."  He gave
+the dapper little mare a flick of the whip.  "I suppose you 'll be
+settling down and staying at home now?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I don't think I will," Grant answered; and he smiled as he heard
+his voice slip into the musical singsong it had n't known for many
+years.  "I 'll be going back in a month or so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They whipped along past the sea for another mile, the little mare's
+hoofs striking the white road as true and as staccato as drumsticks.  A
+strip of salt-marsh spun toward them.  Eastward, over the sea, a flock
+of birds hove.  Their wings flapped wearily, and as they flew landward
+they uttered faint whimpering cries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The wild geese."  The driver pointed them out with his whip.  "They're
+coming back to the marsh.  They 're queer birds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grant watched them as they came.  Their cries came sharp and
+complaining through the air, high-pitched, querulous, turbulent.  And
+still there seemed to be something satisfied in them, like the sobbing
+of a child who has received what he wants but cannot stop for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I often heard my grandfather say&mdash;and it's little he did n't know
+about birds," the driver went on "that there is n't a queerer bird in
+the world than the barnacle goose.  The moment they can fly they 'll
+leave the country.  My grandfather saw them in Egypt, and he saw them
+in France, traveling all the time; but they can never get the taste of
+the Irish marshes out of their mouths, and they come back.  The young
+ones go and the old ones stay.  Even a bird does n't get sense until
+it's taught."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They swept from the highway into a narrower road, and Grant's heart
+jumped a little, for he recognized it, broader though it was, and
+greener its hedges and smoother its surface than he had thought it.
+The sun was going down and a soft bronze twilight was beginning to
+settle.  A little river ran past to the sea through the lush
+meadowland, and for an instant he saw the shimmer of a trout as it
+leaped for a fly.  And from everywhere came the scent of clover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had turned, almost before he noticed it, into the yard of the
+farm-house, and again the sense of surprise struck Grant like a blow.
+Of course he remembered everything now&mdash;the long white-washed
+farm-house, thatched with golden straw, with the sweet-pea and ivy
+clustering about its walls; the massive slated stable and byre; the
+barn to the rear of that, in the orchard; the white dairy near the big
+iron gates with its cinder churning table; the giant ricks of hay back
+of it all; the dogs running in the yard&mdash;sheep-dog and setter and
+greyhound&mdash;the two farm-hands stopping to look at him solemnly as he
+came through the gates; the thick servant-girl hurrying out of the
+front door as she heard the grinding of wheels.  It was so different
+from what he had thought it was that he caught his breath in shamed
+embarrassment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A tall young fellow with red hair and a humorous twist to his mouth
+came strolling from the stables.  He wore a tweed coat and
+riding-breeches and boots.  He stopped short and looked at the car.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Willie John!" he shouted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He swung across the yard like a flash and grasped Grant's hand in
+something that felt like a vise.  He slammed his returned brother a
+terrific blow on the shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Willie John!  I 'm glad to see you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grant's father came out of the house, a spare Titan of a man, hair shot
+through with gray and a great bronzed hawk's face.  He pushed Joe aside
+and caught Grant by the shoulders.  He was inarticulate for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're back again, Willie John," he said simply and quietly; but
+behind the simple words Grant felt there was a wealth of welcome and of
+pleasure that David could not psalm.  The elder Grant looked round
+toward the house.  "Sarah Ann," he called, "here 's Willie John!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She came out through the door with a quick, trembling step, a very
+little woman to be the mother of two such powerful men and the wife of
+a giant&mdash;a little woman of fifty, with the face of a russet apple, with
+fine lacework about the corners of her eyes, hair a delicate gray, like
+rich silk, and a girl's mouth and eyes.  She had Grant in her arms in
+an instant, as though he were no more than a boy.  Slowly she looked at
+him.  "My son!  Willie John!" she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They took him into the house, and they looked at him again; and they
+talked to him for hours, the mother with her eyes shining like stars,
+the father with that steadfast, proud expression on his face, the
+brother Joe in his riotous, loud-voiced way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a welcome that overwhelmed Grant; that took him off his feet,
+like a great wave, and sent him spinning; that warmed him with a flame,
+setting his heart alight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was something disappointing and strange about it all.  They
+were just content and happy to have him.  He had come back to their
+hearts after twelve years.  They did n't care where he had been or how
+he had prospered.  He might have just come from the next townland.  He
+might have come back a pauper.  Their welcome would have been the same
+warm, hearty thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he had imagined something so very different!  He had pictured the
+land he was returning to as a thriftless waste.  His own home he had
+never thought of as the richly comfortable place it was.  He had seen
+himself returning in triumph from beyond the seas, laden with treasure,
+like Columbus returning with the wealth of Borinquen, or like the
+legendary Irish lad who married the Spanish king's daughter and
+returned to his impoverished people in a coach-and-four.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had imagined himself telling them of the wonders of New York,&mdash;tales
+as marvelous as any of the thousand and one told in Oriental
+bazaars,&mdash;of the buildings that tower as high as the Irish mountains;
+of the river of light that is Broadway; of the shop windows on Fifth
+Avenue, each of which holds a king's ransom; of the motley throngs in
+New York, greater in number than all Ireland holds; of the struggle and
+competition in which he, their son and brother, had won a sound
+business worth ten thousand dollars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wanted to tell them of his own epic.  He wanted to be questioned; to
+be admired.  And they did none of that.  They were only glad to have
+him back.  And he was disappointed!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+It was after the March fairs, twelve years ago, that he had gone to
+America.  He had taken over a drove of cattle to Liverpool for his
+father and uncles, had delivered them and received the purchase money.
+There was one small venture of his own among the lot&mdash;a calf that he
+had raised to be a personable heifer, and that brought him in nine
+pounds.  Along the docks he saw a liner bound for New York, a great
+leviathan, like a city.  The thing hypnotized him by its vastness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm going to America," he said out loud on the pier; and in a great
+glow he took his passage and sent home the purchase money for the
+cattle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not know at the time what the impulse was that sent him abroad,
+and he did not trouble to analyze it.  Later he found a motive, and it
+was a false one.  He might have asked his father, who had gone in an
+ancient high moment to fight as a Papal Zouave against the onrush of
+the Neapolitan cohorts on Rome.  He might have asked his red- and
+curly-headed brother Joe, who had once shipped from Newry to Iceland,
+and to Archangel, in Russia, and to Vladivostok, coming home by way of
+the China Seas.  And, again, he might have asked the downy young of the
+barnacle goose, who wing their way down southward when the first black
+frost comes.  All these could have told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had very little difficulty in finding something to do in New York,
+for a stocky, healthy man, with honesty written all over a clean-cut
+face and looking unabashed from clear gray eyes, is an acquisition to
+any employer.  They put him to work on a street-car, conducting and
+taking in the fares with assiduous honesty.  The ten or twelve dollars
+a week he made, and what he got for them, compared very unfavorably
+with the healthful comfort and clean sea air of home.  But the
+adventure of the New World held his attention until home became an
+affectionate and dull memory.  And letters to and from Ireland were
+rare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood, in his stocking feet, as fine a specimen of strength and
+health as there is outside the ranks of professional athletes; he was
+good-looking in an impersonal way; to doubt his honesty was impossible
+against the evidence of those gray eyes; but he had been allotted no
+more than the usual share of brains.  Wherefore, it took three years
+for the New York idea to get home, which was to put money in his purse.
+He went about it in the way one should expect of him.  He sought a
+position that gave reasonable promise of advancement.  A great chain of
+grocery stores gave him an assistantship in one of its shops.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hard work, and saving your money," he said to himself, "that's the way
+you get on in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he got on, with his dogged persistence.  Six years of that, with
+the money he had saved, and he had set himself up in business on his
+own account, in an out-of-the-way avenue, on the road to Coney
+Island&mdash;a squat two-story building with an apartment upstairs and his
+shop below.  A long, bare street, newly bedded, with grayish-white
+apartment-houses on each hand, so new that the mortar still lay in ugly
+flecks about the sidewalk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Opposite him a newly fitted chemist's shop showed garishly with its
+green and red lights.  A valet's store was beside him, and here and
+there in the avenue gaps showed where the real-estate men had not yet
+found capitalists to erect stores or flats.  It was very bleak and new,
+and somehow lonely; but in his own store he was happy and busy all day
+long.  He had had his name put on the glass window&mdash;William J.
+Grant&mdash;in angular gold letters; and inside he and his assistant, a
+sallow Scotch boy, attended customers, a lean but constant string.
+They took loaves from the glass case on the counter, or dug butter from
+the cool, moist vat, or ground coffee in the red mill that suggested a
+ceremonial vessel in a Hindu temple.  He wished the people in Ireland
+could see him now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay!" he would say.  "I think this would open their eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had heard much about Ireland and talked much about it since he came
+to America&mdash;a great deal more than he had ever heard or talked about it
+at home.  And in his eyes now it had taken on a dim, distorted shape
+and spirit.  The physical contours of it he had forgotten&mdash;the lush
+green hillsides, the fruitful orchards, the kine heavy with fat, the
+dim, warm houses&mdash;all these were to him as though they had never been.
+Instead of them, he saw a frail, worn country, with a vague spiritual
+light emanating from it, like the light from the face of a man who
+knows that death is near him and is resigned to it.  The people about
+him mentioned it with sympathetic voices.  They spoke of the poverty of
+it, with a sort of contemptuous affection.  And little by little Grant
+came to think of it in that way, too, as one thinks of a poor but
+worthy relative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's no doubt to it," he would say to himself; "a man doesn't get
+a chance there.  He has to come over here."  And he would look about
+his store with proud satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began to think even of his own home as a place that the poisonous
+finger of poverty had touched; and for a year now, and more, he had
+thought of returning to see it.  Maybe he could do something for the
+people at home.  A few pounds would come in useful.  And, apart from
+that, he could tell them some things that would help them along.  He
+would make them "get a move on," as the New York phrase went.  Perhaps
+he would take Joe, his brother, out and give him a chance to show what
+he had in him.  Perhaps they might all come out with him&mdash;the father
+and mother too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay!  Why not!" he would argue.  "Why shouldn't they?  What's there for
+them in Ireland?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ruminated over the idea every day as he came from work to the brown
+stone boarding-house where he lived, in Schermerhorn Street, a dingy,
+unpalatable sort of place that had become a home to him.  There were
+employees of department-stores there; and an occasional theatrical
+couple stayed a week in it, a week electric with criticism.  In the
+summer evenings the boarders sat on the stoop, and in the winter they
+congregated inside to be played to in insufficient light on a tinkling
+piano.  For Grant the place had a metropolitan quality that others
+sought in the great hotels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, with the same care he had used in mapping out his business career,
+he watched for somebody to marry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found her in the boarding-house&mdash;a trim and rather pale girl, who
+acted as though she were twenty and looked twenty-eight, but whom the
+Vital Statistics Bureau had registered as having been born thirty years
+before.  Her hair was black and glossy, and her eyes were big and black
+and lustrous; her face, outside those features, was the face of a
+hundred others.  But what captivated Grant about her was her chicness,
+her quality of being up-to-the-minute in dress and deed and word.
+Grant liked the flare of her wide skirts and the gray suede shoes
+lacing up the sides.  He liked the faint powder on her face, and her
+carefully cultured eyebrows.  He liked her talk of skating and of the
+new theatrical pieces, and her ability to do the latest twirls in the
+one-step.  Her name was Miss Levine&mdash;Ada Levine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not every man could have a wife like that!" he told himself; and
+he thought of the awe in which his people in Ireland would behold her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She talked to him interestedly of his prospects and the trend of
+business in his direction; and that pleased him, for, what with that
+interest and with the training she received in the department-store
+where she worked, she would be exactly what he needed to get on in the
+world.  He told her of his intention of going back home for a month, of
+putting the store in the care of a friend of his from the old business
+where he had worked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when I come back," he said, "I 'd like to say something to you."
+She sat on the steps quietly and lowered her eyes demurely.  "That is,"
+he continued, "if nobody gets there before me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked up at him and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a date," she agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His heart expanded blithely.  Everything was settled now.  Life showed
+in front of him like a straight line.  A wife like that!  And his
+thriving business!  Now he would go back to Ireland and show them
+something!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+He had been home for a month and he had made no move toward
+returning&mdash;not that it was ever out of his mind for an instant, but it
+pleased him to stay there and savor the ripe mellow ness of everything
+as he might savor a fruit.  Summer was fairly in and the yellow
+blossoms had fallen from the gorse, but roses were blooming in every
+garden, great creamy ones and others with the vivid red of an autumn
+sunset.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The horse-chestnuts were heavy with balloons of white flowers, and
+every evening the bees returned drowsy from the heather of the purple
+mountains.  There was something in it all that he had missed for years
+and that he was greedy for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first he had gone about, a splendid figure, in the clothes he had
+brought with him from America: suits of fine broadcloth, and buttoned
+shoes, and a watch that was held in place by a fob.  But nobody seemed
+impressed by this splendor and a few were covertly amused; and suddenly
+he had discarded it in a sort of shame, returning to the rich tweeds of
+his own people.  He had helped a little about the farm, finding again a
+lost aptitude in milking a cow and in handling a horse in a dog-cart.
+He had gone to the fairs and put in a shrewd word here and there on the
+price of a colt.  He had gaped in wonder at the antics of the
+Punch-and-Judy show and had listened to the croon of the ballad-singer.
+He lost sixpences with the trick-of-the-loop man and with the artist of
+the three cards.  All through it he tried to keep in his mind and on
+his face the attitude of a grown-up who is playing a child's game, a
+patronizing superiority.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If they could only see this at Coney Island," he thought, "they would
+laugh their heads off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he tried to remember as enjoyable the days he had spent there in
+search of amusement, returning in the evening a battered and limp and
+irritated rag.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the evening of the Newry Fair when he began to think seriously
+of returning.  They were all sitting in the great stone-flagged kitchen
+of the farm-house.  From the long deal table in the middle of the room
+a huge lamp filled the space with creamy light, and in the lighted
+fireplace a kettle purred, hanging from its crane.  The kitchen rafters
+were black and amber from the smoke of four generations, and below them
+hung at intervals long flitches of bacon.  Over the mantel were the
+guns he remembered from his boyhood&mdash;his father's double-barreled
+fowling-piece with the long, true barrels; his grandfather's old
+musket; and the flintlock his great-grandfather had borne when he went
+out with Lord Edward in '98.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His father sat by the table, reading a paper diligently, and he was
+surprised to see how hale the old man looked; he was sixty now and
+looked fifteen years younger.  His mother fussed about with a pannikin
+of milk, followed by three mewing kittens, while in a corner of the
+room Joe was binding whipcord about the handle of a fishing-rod,
+occasionally making it swish through the air with a keen sibilant sound
+like the hiss of a snake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I 'll be going back soon," Grant said suddenly.  "I think I 'd
+better be getting along."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His mother looked at him sharply, but said nothing.  Joe lowered his
+rod.  His father raised his eyes from his paper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what would you be doing that for?" he asked slowly.  "Sure, I
+thought you were going to stay with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't be doing that," Grant answered easily.  "I 've got my business
+over there.  And I 've got to be making my way in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And why can't you stay and do it here?" the old man went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, sure, what would I be doing here?" Grant began impatiently.
+"There 's nothing for a man here.  On the other side I 've got a place
+of my own, made by my own hands in twelve years.  That's something, is
+n't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's no use talking to you," his father said resignedly.  "If you
+must go, you must go.  But if you were wise, Willie John, you would
+take whatever money you 've made in America and buy that place of Peter
+McKenna's down the road.  You 'd get it cheap now.  And after I 'm gone
+the farm goes to you and Joe.  If you have n't got enough money I 'll
+lend it to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, thank you," Grant replied a little surlily.  "I 'll get back to my
+own place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, well&mdash;" his father turned back to his paper&mdash;"have it your own
+way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Joe sent the rod swishing through the air a couple of times.  He turned
+to Grant with a quick smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not back to your business you want to be getting, Willie John,"
+he laughed.  "You want to be getting back to where the good times are.
+In a week or two you 'll be walking up Broadway, looking at the big
+buildings you do be telling about.  Or going down Fifth Avenue, maybe,
+riding in a motor-car.  Or hanging round all day drinking highballs
+with the millionaires.  That's what you will be after.  Business!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grant turned on him with a sudden gust of anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to tell you something, Joe," he whipped back: "I'm up in the
+morning at half-past six.  I 've got the place open by eight.  It's
+seldom I 'm through before ten at night&mdash;and twelve of a Saturday
+night.  Do you know, this is the first holiday I 've had for twelve
+years, barring Sundays and bank holidays!  And on them I 'm too tired
+to do anything.  I 'm as hard worked as you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm afraid you 're worse," the brother replied.  He looked keenly at
+the hitch of the whipcord to the haft of the rod.  "It's seldom we
+can't get a day off when there 's a fair on, or a good horse-race, or a
+coursing-match.  What would life be if we couldn't?"  He swished the
+rod through the air again.  "And as for your father&mdash;" he took a
+sidelong smiling look at the old man&mdash;"he 's hardly ever at home now
+since they elected him to the County Council."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To get on in the world," Grant said sententiously, "you 've got to
+work night, noon, and morning.  There's no time for flying round to
+places of amusement, and chucking away hard-earned money.  That's
+what's wrong with all this country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Joe looked up at the rafters heavy with flitches of bacon; at the
+kettle purring on its crane.  He glanced through the window to where
+the full haggard lay.  His ever-ready smile crept about his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I hardly think we 'll starve for a while," he laughed.  "Will we,
+mother?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little old lady with the kittens smiled and shook her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm not saying anything," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the sound of a gate clanging and the chime of voices.  A dog
+growled and then broke into a bark of welcome.  The voices came nearer
+to the door.  Joe rose to open it.  The mother put her head on one side
+to listen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know who that is, Willie John?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+"No," Grant answered, "I do not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It 's Eunice Doran," she said.  She waited an instant.  A smile crept
+over her face.  "Larry Doran's daughter, from beyond the hill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, to be sure; I remember her," Grant smiled back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course he did&mdash;a lank, gray-eyed girl, with a habit of staring you
+out of countenance.  The last time he had seen her she was fifteen,
+with long arms and legs that seemed eternally in the way; and he
+recalled, with a smile, how in those days he had been a little in love
+with her, and they had passed many queer, awkward moments together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A funny, pathetic thing!  And as he thought of it a shutter in his mind
+opened and he saw again the girl he had left on the stoop in
+Schermerhorn Street, with her chic way and flashing eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wondered what she would think if she knew he had once had a boyish
+affair with this simple thing from his own townland; and he blushed in
+imagining her teasing laughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He warmed with a glow of pride as he thought of her,&mdash;of Miss Levine,
+as he somehow always called her to himself,&mdash;of her marvelous clothes,
+of her manicured hands and wonderful eyebrows, of her appreciation of
+the latest effort of a cinematograph comedian, and her up-to-dateness
+with the last flivver joke.  He smiled, too, as he thought of the
+wonder with which this poor country girl would regard the metropolitan
+divinity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She came into the room slowly; and, though he could distinguish little
+of her features or form, he felt a sense of shock, for somehow he had
+expected a lanky, overgrown girl with arms and hands like the awkward
+legs of a foal&mdash;and what he saw was a tall woman, as tall as he, who
+moved with the slow dignity of a queen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She threw her cloak off and Joe took it from her, and as it fell Grant
+caught one instantaneous glimpse of her that effectually wiped the
+Brooklyn girl from his mind, like a sponge passing over a chalked
+slate.  He saw first the great mass of black hair knotted at the back
+of her head, which seemed less like hair than a splash of dim, vivid
+color; and from a side view he saw the small nose, with the sensitive
+nostrils, as clearly cut as the nose on an intaglio; and the line of
+chin sweeping down, as it were, in one soft, firm stroke.  That was all
+he saw for a minute&mdash;that and the flush on her cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How are you?" she said to his mother.  "And how are you, Mr. Grant?
+And Joe?"  She turned to Grant, looked at him for an instant and put
+out her hand.  "And this is Willie John," she said.  "You 've been a
+long time away, Willie John."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw, as he looked at her, how very gray her eyes were, and how very
+deep&mdash;like orifices through which light shone&mdash;and how very steady.  He
+noticed that her mouth was firm, and that she seemed to have lived each
+instant of her twenty-seven years; and still she was a woman with the
+first flush of beauty on her.  She turned away to talk to his mother
+and he saw for the first time that her servant-girl was with her.  So
+engrossed had he been with her entry, and so shocked by seeing her
+beauty, that he had seen only her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm going to have the flax pulled on the ten-acre," she was
+saying&mdash;and Grant felt every syllable of her low contralto strike him
+clear and compelling&mdash;"so I 'm asking the neighbors fair and early.  My
+father 's dead, Willie John&mdash;" she turned to Grant for a moment&mdash;"and I
+'ve the place on my hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay; I heard that, Eunice," he said.  "I was sorry to hear it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 'll be going back soon?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll be going back very soon now," he said.  "In a couple of weeks at
+most."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've been wanting him to stay and settle down," his father broke in;
+"but there 's no use talking to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, there's nothing for a man here," he answered disgustedly.  "It's
+on the other side a man gets his chance&mdash;ay, and a woman, too, for that
+matter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that so?" Eunice uttered; and she caught him with her serious gray
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was Joe Carragher's daughter, from Balleek," he instanced; "you
+knew her well.  She went over six years ago and now she 's a lady's
+maid in one of the big houses on Fifth Avenue.  A grand position!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that so?" she repeated; her eyes had narrowed a little and she was
+studying him intently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then there was Patrick Hagan, the brother of the captain in the Dublin
+Fusiliers.  He 's got a saloon on Third Avenue and does a grand
+business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the devil's business, Willie John," his mother said quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the first time since he came back that he had seen her without a
+smile on her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's different on the other side, I tell you," Grant commented with
+asperity.  "And there's Barney Doyle, that went over before me; he 's
+head waiter in one of the big places on Broadway.  Do you know that
+fellow makes as much as seventy dollars a week in tips?  Seventy
+dollars!  Fourteen pounds!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His father was a great lawyer."  Old Grant shook his head.  "God be
+good to him!  They called him the Star of the North."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fourteen pounds a week&mdash;in tips!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grant thought he could detect a chill, contemptuous tone in the Doran
+girl's voice; but he put the thought out of his head, for why should
+she be contemptuous?  She drew her blue cloak about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I 'll be going," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll leave you a bit of the road," Grant offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They went out and down the loaning.  Overhead a great white moon
+showed, a great silver plate of a thing whose beams scintillated in
+minute gossamer threads.  Before them the road ran, as white as the
+moon, and everything showed in a faint purple&mdash;trees, fields, the
+singing river on the left of them, and the hill that rose between them
+and the sea.  A little breeze was stirring and they could hear a soft
+soughing from the trees and a murmur from the beach.  Somewhere behind
+them, on the Yellow Road probably, a corn-crake was venting its
+harmoniously raucous cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stopped and looked about them.  Beneath them the great plain of
+Louth lay, which Maeve of Connaught had once raided at the head of a
+hundred thousand men.  And as Grant looked at it in the subtle
+moonlight the memory of forgotten legends came to him in vague
+uncoördinated fragments.  There was Slieve Gullion behind him, where
+Cuala, the great artificer, hammered on his magic anvil night and day,
+and up whose slopes Finn MacCool had pursued the white deer without
+horns.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And in front of him was the sea, where for thrice three hundred years
+the Children of Lir had mourned in the guise of white swans.  And on
+the hill beside him was the fortress of Bricriu of the poisoned tongue,
+whose satires killed men and withered the leaves on the green trees.
+Suddenly he heard Eunice's voice addressing him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose you 've done well for yourself, Willie John?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay; I 've done well," he told her.  "I 've got a business over there
+worth ten thousand dollars.  And I 've built it up in twelve years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten thousand dollars!" she mused.  "Two thousand pounds; that's a good
+deal.  That's half as much as your brother Joe made, and it's a great
+deal more than I have myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brother Joe made!" he muttered in a tone of amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;your brother Joe made," she answered naïvely.  "He 's made as
+much as four thousand pounds trading in cattle between here and
+England, and buying horses for the Italian Government."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty thousand dollars!" Grant said, dumb-founded.  "Brother Joe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you 've more than I have," she continued mercilessly.  "The Cliff
+Farm is worth only eighteen hundred pounds.  That's only nine thousand
+of your dollars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He answered nothing, for a quick sense of shame suddenly suffused him
+when he remembered how much he had talked, and the others keeping so
+dumb.  Something began tumbling very fast about him.  They went up the
+hill and suddenly the sea stretched before them, sheer through to
+England, a vast surface of shimmering ripples, where the moon touched,
+and here and there white curling waves.  And beneath them it murmured
+on the beach in a steady crooning.  The breeze blew landward and
+pressed about them firmly in a cool, even motion.  To the right the
+Cliff Farm lay, softly white, and a faint scent came down from its
+orchard.  The servant-girl passed through the gate and up toward the
+house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"America 's a great country!" Grant said aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not know why he said it.  Perhaps it was because he could find
+nothing else to say, and perhaps it was a sort of incantation,
+conjuring away the doubts that were rising in his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eunice made no answer.  And as he looked at her, standing there in the
+moonlight and the breeze, the old affection he had for her a dozen
+years ago rose within him, and he wondered whether he should n't put
+his arm about her and kiss her for old times' sake.  But the idea left
+him as soon as it came, for the thought of trifling with her seemed a
+desecration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a great place!" he said again lamely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She swung around upon him suddenly, savagely, her head tilted, her eyes
+flashing.  The cloak behind her stood backward with the breeze; and as
+he watched her, amazed, petrified almost, the thought of dead ancient
+Irish women flashed through his brain&mdash;Maeve, the fighting queen of
+Connaught; and Deirdre, who dashed herself dead against a rock; and
+Grainne, the king's daughter, who fled to follow Diarmuid of the Spears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why don't you stay there?" she uttered passionately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't I stay there?" he repeated blankly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you stay there?" she said again.  "You come back here&mdash;you
+and your like&mdash;with a smile on your mouth and a sneer in your eye.  You
+come back here in your fine clothes, that you 've sweated day and night
+for, and taken charity to get&mdash;ay, charity!  What's tips but
+charity?&mdash;And you lord it round for a while and tell us what fools we
+are&mdash;and patronize us.  Patronize us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She swung round and fronted the low-lying land with the faint blue heat
+haze of summer over it, touched into silver in the June moon.  The
+muscles of her throat were throbbing.  She was poised on her feet like
+a bird ready for flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look down there at your father's farm," she told him.  Her hand
+stretched toward it and her gray eyes blazed in his face.  "Look at it
+well!  Look at the corn that's green, and the rye ripening, and the
+stacked haggard.  Look at the trees in the orchard and the fruit
+hanging from them, and the river alive with trout, and the mountain
+with its grouse and hares.  And then go back to your grand business and
+fumble the halfpence in your greasy till!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said nothing.  Mechanically his eyes followed her hand where it
+pointed, and every word ate its meaning into his brain as if etched by
+strong acid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay!" he said dully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you eyes to see, man?"  She bent toward him with her hands
+outstretched and her face aflame with anger.  "Or have you ears to
+hear?  Or has groping for coppers made you blind like a mole?  Or the
+tinkle of tuppences deafened you the like of a bat?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've got eyes," he answered sullenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Use them, then!" she snapped.  "And when you go back to your grand
+business, stop making a poor mouth about Ireland.  Don't whine the like
+of a beggar in the street.  Stop your talk about poverty-stricken
+Ireland, and oppressed Ireland and lazy Ireland.  We 've got money here
+as well as you, for all your grand business; and we've got pride; and
+we 've got strength.  And we don't want anybody talking about our
+sorrows, and the nations pitying us in the four corners of the earth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said nothing, but his face had gone white; and every now and then he
+winced, as though he had been caught by a whip.  He wished to Heaven
+she would stop; and still, back in him, something had awakened that
+yearned to be lashed into life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard you wanted your father and mother to go back to America with
+you and partake of the grand business.  Look at that farm-house again.
+Your grandfather built that with granite hewn from his own quarry.  And
+you want them to leave that and to go off with you and grub in a
+huckster's booth!  God's glory and the blue sky over us!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the rapid flapping of wings and they saw a wedge of birds in
+the moonlight.  Suddenly they caught the shrill clamor of the barnacle
+goose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even the birds," she uttered with scorn, "even the birds have sense.
+They 're happy when they get back from roving.  Not like you and your
+like, Willie John.  If you want to go, go!  And God go with you!  If
+you want to stay, stay&mdash;and you're welcome.  But don't come back for a
+while, croaking like a magpie chattering over a ruined hearth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to him, and the agitation and passion seemed to leave her by
+a great effort of will.  Her hands unclenched and her voice grew calm,
+with even a queer crooning melody in it; but her bosom heaved
+tumultuously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I liked you once, Willie John," she said.  "I thought there was the
+makings of a big man in you.  I mind the time at the football, and you
+running down the field like a hare, and no one to catch or trip you.
+And at the fairs I mind you putting the horses through their paces like
+a jockey born.  And at throwing the weight there was no one of your
+size or years that could best you.  Ay!  I mind you, and your dogs
+following you, and your head high up in the air.  I thought well of you
+that time, Willie John.  I thought there was no one like you."  She
+raised herself to her full height and looked at him squarely.  "But
+now," she said, "I 'd rather have a stray tinker that does be traveling
+the roads."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And scornfully she left him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+He came into the kitchen, two evenings later, from the parlor.  His
+father sat by the table, reading his paper.  His mother pottered about
+the turf fire, teasing it into flame.  In a corner Joe sat, polishing
+the barrel of a breech-loading fowling-piece with an old rag.  His
+father caught the glimpse of paper in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were you writing, Willie John?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay," Grant answered; "I was writing a letter to America."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He moved toward the fireplace and turned slowly about again to his
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were saying," he asked, "that that place of McKenna's was for
+sale.  I wonder how much he 'd want for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 'd take four thousand pounds," his father answered.  "Maybe less."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm afraid I have n't got that much."  Grant shook his head.  "I 've
+only two thousand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can lend you the difference, Willie John," Joe broke in.  He
+squinted down the barrel of the rifle.  "Can't we, Dad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay sure!" his father answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm much obliged to both of you," Grant said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He reached for his hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you going out, Willie John?" his mother asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I 'd go up and call on Eunice Doran," Grant answered her.
+"I might as well be neighborly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went out, and there was silence in the kitchen for a few minutes.
+Joe clicked the lock of the gun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mind that wild gander I put a ring on three years ago?" he
+asked his father.  "It's back again.  I saw it over the marshes to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It 'll take a mate and settle down in the marsh now."  His father
+nodded.  "It took it three years to find out that home is a good place.
+It's a queer, silly bird&mdash;the barnacle goose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little ripple of laughter came from the mother's lips as she stood
+over and poked the turf.  The elder Grant looked up, astonished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you laughing at, Sarah Ann?" he inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was thinking," she answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was it you were thinking about?" he pursued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh nothing!" she parried.  "I was just thinking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she went on teasing the fire, while a subtle, affectionate smile
+played about the corners of her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BELFASTERS
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="intro">
+"Oh, I'll go down unto Belfast to see that seaport gay."&mdash;A COUNTRY
+POET.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+To him the whole conversation, the whole setting, the whole event, was
+unreal as ghosts are unreal, or objects on a foggy night.  Here was
+this woman, who had been so nigh to him, and to whom he had been so
+much, talking of leaving him, in as matter-of-fact a manner as though
+she were speaking of taking a street-car.  Here was the murk of a
+February evening in Belfast, the minute rain yellowing the
+street-lamps; the cable-cars rushing by brusquely and short-temperedly,
+a "get out of the way and be damned to you!" in their crashing, abrupt
+passage.  She was thinking of leaving him, she was thinking of leaving
+him for good, all because of a strike, mind you! just for nothing more
+than a strike!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I 'd best be going," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well&mdash;"  He shifted from one foot to the other.  "I think it's very
+foolish of you," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled, as he looked at her, that strange secret smile of hers that
+meant she had drawn into herself.  He knew every expression on her
+face&mdash;for a year now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it you want me to do?" he asked for the fourth time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give the workers in the mill what they want.  They ask only bare
+justice.  A couple o' shillings a week!  What is it to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not."  He shook his head.  His great red beard shook too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're a hard man, Aleck," she said softly.  "You 're no' exactly
+human.  And you 're getting on, Aleck.  You 're no' young any more.  Be
+a wee bit soft, man.  It's no shame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, well!"  She stepped toward the curb, ready to signal a car.  He
+followed her with his look.  Of all the women in his life she had been
+most to him:&mdash;she, just a working-girl!  He was fond of her.  He was
+more than in love with her.  His feeling towards her was no phenomenon
+but an accepted fact.  He admired her, too, which was more than he did
+any woman, though she had been more to him than any but a wife should
+be.  He admired her for that too&mdash;she had gone into the relation so
+calmly, so open-mindedly, so fearlessly.  He admired her; in her was no
+slight, common blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Jennie, I can't leave you like that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to face him.  He was abashed by her steadfast brown eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why for no'?" she asked.  "Aleck, I 'm no lassie that's been fooled.
+What is between us, Aleck, is because I liked you and I knew you liked
+me.  Don't let that bother your head.  I 've done you no hurt, Aleck,
+nor you me.  That's our own affair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why break like this?  What for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For this, Aleck.  You 're the owner and the master.  I 'm a worker.  I
+'ve always been a worker.  You mind I 've never taken a thing from you,
+Aleck.  I 'm one of the people you 're fighting, Aleck, and I stick by
+my folks.  While this fight's on, Aleck, you and I are finished.
+That's the way I feel, Aleck.  I can't change it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're foolish!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I am."  This time she signaled the car.  It stopped with
+its ill-tempered, hurried air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When'll I see you again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you do what my folks ask in justice, Aleck, and not before."  And
+she was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood for a few minutes in the rain.  A touch of panic seized him.
+For a year he had not been so lonely.  He felt he was on the verge of
+doing a foolish thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not!" he said doggedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned down the road sullenly.  A great desire was on him to catch
+the next car and intercept her at a changing-station.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop making a fool o' yourself," he said to himself.  "You 'll do no
+such thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He plugged on steadily, unmindful of where he was going.  He was aboil
+with perturbation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ha'e gi'en them a couple o' raises this year a'ready!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was blind to everything but the action of the workers of his mill,
+of his father's mill, of his grandfather's mill, defying him openly and
+stubbornly.  And now they had to take Jeanie Lindsay from him, the only
+woman he had liked wholly in all his days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To hell with them!" he said savagely.  His red beard bristled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped suddenly.  He shook his fist at an arc-lamp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll close the mill," he muttered aloud.  "I 'll close down.  I will
+so.  I 've just had enough o' it.  They ha'e no softie in Aleck
+Robe'son.  I 'll close it.  Be damned but I will!  I will!  I will so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From Aleck Robertson's earliest infancy he had been bred to the mill,
+as his father had been by his father before him.  It is a small,
+compact building, off the Falls Road, the Robertson mill is, harboring
+not more than four hundred employees.  But their fame is not in Belfast
+alone.  Many the royal house in Europe before the war had its bride's
+linen from the Robertson factory.  It is a small mill, as it should be,
+with a small door, and on a by-street is the lintel with the name
+"Robert Robertson &amp; His Son, Founded 1803."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A queer family, these Robertsons of Belfast, very solid, very stubborn.
+In five generations there has been but one son to the family, and no
+daughters.  "The Scottish weaver-bird, laying but one egg," some dry
+doctor dubbed them.  So they be.  They are a tall, solid dynasty,
+marrying toward middle age a bride solid as themselves.  Young Aleck,
+red-bearded and rangy, could remember his father, as tall and rangy as
+he, and bearded, too, as his grandfather was, both silent, speculative
+men, students of the Shorter Catechism, and shrewd observers of life,
+possessors of the trust of glossy linen.  They had their duties: to
+mind their own business; to take care of the mill, and to make fine
+cloth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They can see the linen in the flax, they Robertsons!" a workman of
+theirs once boasted, and it was true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At Portrush golf-club you may hear about him.  "The championship of
+Ireland," they tell me, "Captain Macneill got it then and he held it
+for three years and then your Uncle Simon for a year, and then Mr.
+Campbell o' Kilkee, and then&mdash;who was it, then?&mdash;the linen man of
+Belfast&mdash;what the deuce is his name?  Robson?  Robinson?  Robertson,
+that's it!  You'd hardly remember him; he was not a showy player, not
+an affable man, but sound!  Ah, damned sound!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At his school they have difficulty in recalling him.  The president
+remembers him vaguely as a solemn youth with freckles and gigantic
+hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They seem to have gone through life, he and his mill, with one object
+in the world&mdash;to produce linen that is the pride of Ulster.  They have
+each their worthy, definite place in the world.  On him there rests the
+mill, a legacy as important and dynastic in its way as one of the
+former German principalities.  He toured Ireland studying flax.  He saw
+it raise its bluish green stems in spring, soft as down.  He saw it
+rise and the wind ruffle and bend it, like still water.  He saw the
+strange blue flower break out on it, as blue as a near star.  It was
+plucked from the ground in summer time, acres and acres of it plucked
+carefully by a numerous population, and stacked like corn.  And the
+nights after the flax-pulling there would be great joy-making in the
+villages, dancing and singing and drinking and love-making under the
+inscrutable Irish stars.  It was taken then to the dikes and left
+rotting in the water, while mephitic gases rolled over the
+country-side.  It was then scutched in the scutch-mills, where wheels
+run by water, by men with querulous dispositions and hacking
+consumptive coughs.  To him and his like it came then, in soft, glossy,
+whitish strands, like the hair of Scandinavian women.  He turned it
+over to his operatives, weavers and throwsters and pickers, men
+hunchbacked from bending over their looms, and women very free in their
+ways and not often pretty.  Now it covered the stubborn hills of Ulster
+and soon it covered the groaning tables of kings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's an unco thing, the flax!" his Scots-Irish workmen used to say.
+Aleck Robertson had the same thought, when he considered, though he
+never phrased it, that the prosperity and good fame and management of
+his linen-mill was his religion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Life for him flowed by in a groove as regular and as well fitting as
+one of the bands on his own looms.  Since his father died, ten years
+ago, he had been following the same routine, getting up in the morning,
+in the club where he stayed, and going to work, taking a
+street-car&mdash;though the Robertson firm was famous, it was not
+rich&mdash;attending to the work, and coming back in the evenings to spend
+the time with a few friends over a tumbler of Scotch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why for do you no' take a wife and settle down, Aleck?" an occasional
+friend asked him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Och, I 'm all right as I am," he would answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Life at thirty-eight had become for Aleck Robertson a succession of
+minor hedonisms.  He liked the sting of the shower-bath in the morning,
+the goodly taste of breakfast.  He liked to hear the bustle and rumble
+of the works as he entered.  He liked his lunch.  He enjoyed his game
+of golf, and his occasional holidays in Scotland, or France, where he
+patronized the bathing-beaches, and played for small stakes at <I>petits
+chevaux</I>.  Every week he attended a music-hall, and occasionally he was
+seen as escort to a minor actress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aleck!" some of his cronies said.  "He's a card!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had, for such girls as were not frightened by his beard and his
+position, a queer, provocative glint in his eye, which they would savor
+and giggle at.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's a pleasant fellow, Mr. Robertson," they agreed.  "He could be
+fine and pleasant to a girl he liked, I 'll warrant you!  They do
+say&mdash;" and here some immaterial scandal was told.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was strange how he ran across Jean Lindsay, for he made it a rule to
+have nothing to do socially&mdash;if one could call it socially&mdash;with the
+girls in the mill.  He had noticed her a few times about the place&mdash;a
+stately sort of girl with calm brow and eyes.  He admired the fine
+figure she had&mdash;the shapely arms and rich bosom.  A woman, that!  None
+of your fragile dolls!  And twice he had seen her leave the works at
+quitting time, a figure in a Paisley shawl and skirt and blouse, none
+of the cheap finery of the mill worker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yon 's a fine girl!" he thought, and forgot her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was one night on Cave Hill he discovered her again, a soft June
+night with a half-moon in the sky.  He had been out for a tramp and sat
+down to watch the city beneath him.  He heard a rustle in the heather
+beside him.  He got up immediately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I beg your pardon."  He noticed suddenly a girl looking at him, seated
+not ten yards away.  "I did n't know there was any one here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all right, Mr. Robertson."  The voice was calm and self-possessed
+as that of any woman of the great world.  He had to look a few instants
+before he recognized her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 've seen me at the works," she explained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course I have," he remembered.  "What are you doing here all
+alone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I like to come up of an evening among the heather," she told him.
+"It's a bonny wee flower.  I don't wonder the bees love it.  The
+Danes," she added slowly, "used to make a heather ale, but that's gone
+now.  It must have tasted fine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a queer hour to come here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a lot of other time I have," she replied, "and I tending your
+weavers from all but dawn until the fall o' day!  I like it this time,
+though, for you see things now you would n't see in the daytime.  You
+can hear the plover at night, calling like children.  And just now a
+badger passed me, gray as a gaffer.  I bees waiting, too," she said,
+and she smiled, "when the moon comes up to see the fairies dancing on
+the hillside.  There must be a lot o' the child in me," she explained,
+"because I do be thinking long."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's not many girls come up here their lonesome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's none think me beauty enough to come with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thon 's a town of blind men."  And they both laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe I 'm not missing much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By God!  You are!"  And he leaned forward and kissed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night when he went home, thinking over the kissing and the
+laughing and the gentle caresses, the thing that impressed him most was
+how natural it all had been.  She had received it all, and he had given
+it, as though it were just like the scented heather, and the wind and
+the moon.  He met her another night by careful chance, and again there
+was all of the child in her, eagerness and pensiveness and artless
+kissing and bubbling laughter.  He could feel her eyes laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met her a third time on the great hill above the town, and this time
+it was by appointment.  She had become a great pleasantness to him, a
+greater pleasantness than he could ever have imagined before, there was
+something so apart from the world.  The thought of meeting that night
+made his great chest heave involuntarily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That night he sensed, when he met her, she was all woman, not child
+alone.  He kissed her and they sat down in the springy heather bells.
+She was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's been a long day," she said at length, "a long, long day."  She
+looked at him and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to catch her up to him.  She held him at the length of her
+arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is your name?" she asked.  "Your first name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aleck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean true, Aleck?"  Not only her mouth, but her eyes, her whole
+being was questioning.  "Aleck, do you mean true?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay!  I mean true."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he had became her lover, her secret lover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For one whole year she was a delight and a mystery to him.  There was
+not in him, though, the whirling passion that makes for love epics.  It
+was just good for him to know her.  Had he been twenty he would have
+married her, nor been content until he had her bound by candle, book,
+and bell.  But he was in his thirties now, and steady and solid and
+wise.  She asked nothing of him.  She accompanied him here and there,
+to Bangor, to Antrim Glens, dressed in modest decency.  Their relation
+she accepted with dignity.  She was not possessive, as a commoner woman
+might be.  She was not fulsome in her affection for him.  It was very
+restrained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like you well, Aleck," was all she uttered.  "I like you fine, my
+big red man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the works she never noticed him, nor he her.  Once, indeed, he had
+wanted her to leave and take a little house somewhere, but her eyes had
+flashed terribly at the first words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm sorry, Jeanie," he faltered.  "I 'm queer and sorry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You hurt me," she confessed.  "You did so."  She relented at his
+distress.  "Ah, sure, don't take on about it.  A wee word&mdash;it comes out
+so easy.  I should not have looked so fierce.  But I know you did n't
+mean to belittle me, Aleck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could never quite understand her.  No woman in his life had ever
+acted so.  There had been venal women, and foolish women, and women
+whom other women would instinctively recognize as evil.  But Jean was a
+mixture of the opposites of these things, and she was also Jean.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He loved to stand and watch her.  She reminded him of a picture he had
+once seen&mdash;one of a series of four depicting the seasons; and Jean
+resembled the one called "Autumn," a figure of a woman in a purple
+Grecian robe walking through a wood of falling leaves, a mature woman,
+with kindliness and wisdom in her eyes, and a certain proud grace to
+her.  Jean often looked like that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She thought, too, in a simple way.  Her opinions were definite as rocks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no' right, Aleck!"  She would raise her brown eyes calmly and
+fearlessly to him, discussing a manner of trading or a phase of
+municipal politics.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had only one fault to find with him.  She would pat his head and
+say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's only one thing about you, Aleck, you 're not exactly human.
+There 's a wee thing missing somewhere, red fellow.  They workers of
+yours, they 're no more in your eye than the machinery they handle.  I
+'d like to have you a wee bit softer, Aleck.  I would so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm soft enough toward you," he would object.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no' the same thing, mannie.  You 're soft toward me because I 'm
+close to you.  But outside that you 're hard.  You don't see people.
+You must n't think with the head, Aleck.  You must think a wee bit wi'
+the heart.  Na, na!  Toward every one, I mean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He often regretted, in his club at night, after leaving her, that she
+was not the sort of person he could marry.  It would be so pleasant to
+have a house with her in it, the fine big woman, with the wise head and
+the warm heart, with the temperament rich as wine.  She would go well
+in a house of her own, fitting in it naturally, as some fine old clock
+would, or some mellow furniture of long ago.  And to be greeted by her
+in the evening&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be queer and pleasant," he thought in his stilted Belfast
+idiom.  "Och, ay!  It would that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she was not the manner of woman the Robertsons married.  His dead
+fathers would turn in their graves were he to pick a wife from out the
+mill-hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The august and chaste and cold assembly of the Robertson wives had no
+room in it for anything as warm and handsome and as plebeian as Jean.
+The wives the Robertsons chose were of their own rank, meager spinsters
+with a little money, with the accomplishments of gentlewomen, the
+playing of certain tunes on the piano, the knitting of afghans, the
+speaking of a prim English instead of Belfast Scots&mdash;an acidulous
+gentility.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ay!  If it hadn't been so!
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The interview with the foreman had been stormy.  It became furious.  It
+had ended disastrously, so disastrously he did n't care a tinker's
+curse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ha'e gi'en you two raises a'ready, and here you 're back for more.
+Be damned to it, men, is it the king's mint you take me for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, you ha' gi'en us the raises, Mister Aleck, but the rents ha'
+raised again.  There 's no place to flit to tha' 's cheaper.  The price
+o' food is unchristian&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that my fault?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Na!  Na!  It's no' your fault.  It's just the times.  And there 's
+childer comin'&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that my fault?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, Mister Aleck, be reasonable!  We got to live.  Down at
+Richardson's mill they 're gi'en the third raise.  And at the United&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, listen to me, men," he roared like a maddened bull.  "You 've got
+to make a choice.  Either get on with what you have, or I 'll close the
+mill.  I swear to my God I 'll close the mill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 've got to live," the men said sullenly.  An old workman stepped
+out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mister Aleck," he pleaded, "I 've worked for your da all my life, and
+I was a wee nipper when your grandfa'er was here.  I mind him well.
+You 've got neither chick nor child, and if you have n't, the mill goes
+wi' you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Good God!  So it did.  He had never thought of that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;so it is n't as though you wanted the money&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not!"  One part of his brain formulated the reply and his lips
+uttered it.  The other part was busy on this new discovery, that with
+him the mills died.  Of course they did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, be damned to you!  Close your mill!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be damned to the whole lot of you!  Take your week's notice from the
+day.  Saturday week the mill closes, and I swear to my God it never
+opens again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why should it, he asked himself when they were gone, why should it?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat back after they had left him and for an instant the magnitude of
+the thought that there would be no successor shook him physically, left
+him all of a tremble.  He had never thought of it before, incredible as
+that may seem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  There'll be no other.  I'm the last."  He lighted a match to put
+to his pipe, but he let it go out.  "I 'm the last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All his life, at this moment, seemed shattered&mdash;the comfortable running
+order of it junked into a grotesque and cold puzzle, as a complicated
+engine will be ruined by a thunderbolt.  The mills were gone, for he
+would not give in to any raise, and Jeanie Lindsay too&mdash;she was so much
+to him, so much that she obtruded herself on every thought he had.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time in his existence, sitting on the ruin, it occurred
+to him after all what a poor thing this complicated mechanism had been.
+He could remember his boyhood, a drear Sabbatical term of years, spent
+with a bearded father and a thin, acidulous mother.  At school he had
+not been liked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was no' so pleasant, now that I come to think of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was supposed to approach a strict spinster in marriage, that the
+destiny of the Robertsons should be accomplished; to be intimate with a
+frigid stranger, that another lonely and not-liked boy would be brought
+into the world, between a dour father and a mother of marked gentility,
+in a house that was cold no matter how warm the summer, and dark though
+the sun shone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The face of the Lindsay girl came between him and the tepid vision he
+had conjured, as in some motion-picture device.  And he saw her warmth
+and bonniness, her slow laughter, her calm eyes.  Why, under God's
+name, must she be born in a region where the Robertson tradition did
+not pick?  Why must she be so desirable, and eligible wives so insipid?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, be damned to her!" he snapped viciously.  "The whole thing can go
+to the de'il.  It's a dog's life, that's what it is, and I 'm through.
+Ay, I am so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a year he wandered across Europe, and to and fro in it.  He saw
+Denmark and Jutland, and though he had sworn good-by to linen, he could
+not help examining the quality of the flax grown there, and he did n't
+think much of it&mdash;as no good Belfast man should.  He visited Holland
+and approved the industrious population, but adjudged them "o'er
+pleased wi' themsel's."  Paris he knew before, but it palled on him
+now.  One of his old dreams had been to go there with Jeanie Lindsay.
+"It's kind o' empty," he thought.  England rather irritated him.
+People there, knowing he came from Ireland, wished to know what he
+thought of Home Rule and were shocked when they heard it.  He went
+north to Scotland for golf, and the flat Scot accent made him homesick
+for Belfast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I 'll just run over to see how the old town 's getting on."
+The truth was, though he would n't acknowledge it to himself, he wanted
+to get news of Jeanie Lindsay.  How was she?  And was she the same as
+ever?  And was she&mdash;the thought stabbed him strangely&mdash;laughing her
+slow laugh and looking her calm look for some other than he?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+News he got of her quickly and with a vengeance.  Going across Donegal
+Place he was tapped on the arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'd like a wee word wi' you, Mr. Aleck Robertson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw beside him a compact figure with a set jaw and savage eyes.  He
+was mostly cognizant of the eyes.  They blazed at him with unconcealed
+hatred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And who may you be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 'll know me fine afore I 'm through with you, Aleck Robertson.  I
+'m Tom Lindsay, Jeanie Lindsay's brother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Robertson forgot the eyes in the question that jumped to his lips.  He
+held out his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ha'e heard her speak o' you.  You 're the one that went to
+Newcastle, to the shipbuilding.  And how 's Jean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lindsay struck the proffered hand down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 's the way you left her, wi' this difference: There 's a bastard
+o' yours on her arm this four months.  And do you know what I 'm going
+to do to you for that, Aleck Robertson?  I 'm going to kill you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wi' a baby!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wi' a baby o' yours!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wi' a baby o' mine!"  Robertson was plainly dazed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were no' expecting that, maybe?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  I was no' expecting that."  The big man tried to pull his
+faculties together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And where is she now?  She 's no' gone away, is she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  She 's no' gone away.  And she 's not where she might be, for all
+you did&mdash;in the poor-house!  Nor tramping the streets, selling matches!
+No!  She 's at home.  In her father's house&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At home, you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 's at home."  Tom Lindsay put himself in Robertson's way.  "And,
+now, listen to me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The red-bearded man shoved Tom aside as though he were a troublesome
+bush in the path.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you get to hell out o' my way," he roared, "afore I gi'e you a
+clout on the lug?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He started at breakneck speed down the street.  The brother looked
+after him silently, his jaw loose with wonder.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+He pushed aside the little gate in front of the garden and though he
+knocked at the door, he tried it, so impatient was he for entry, and
+finding it on the latch, he opened it as a gust of wind might.  In the
+hall he met her coming to answer the knock, and suddenly as he saw her,
+all the bluster and the heartiness went out of him, and his knees
+turned to water and there was a great catch in his throat.  He wanted
+to see her only, but the baby she had on her arm was she also, both of
+them one.  It suddenly occurred to him that he too was a part of her,
+all three of them one.  And he felt suddenly as Saul must have felt
+when, going toward Damascus, he was stricken to the earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled at his perturbation.  "I 'm glad to see you, Aleck."  Calmly
+she shifted the child to her left arm.  She put out her hand to him and
+he caught it and held on to it as a foundering sailor hangs on to a
+thrown line.  She led him to the parlor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you no word," she smiled, "for me and this wee fellow o' yours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at the both of them, she more like Ceres, the autumn spirit,
+than ever, buxom and wise and calmly happy, and the little thing of
+down and fluttering life in her arms, soft as a newly hatched chick, he
+sensed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When," he asked, and his voice in his own ears was hoarse as the
+cawing of a rook, "when are you going to marry me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm no' so sure," she said calmly, "that I 'm going to marry you at
+all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're going to marry me, Jeanie, and I 'll start the mill again, and
+we 'll all be fine&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you 'll gi'e the working people the raises they're entitled to?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not," he flashed out suddenly, as of old.  "They 're entitled
+to nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I'll ha' nothing to do wi' you."  She looked at him calmly.  "Nor
+will this wee fellow.  I 'm a working-woman, Aleck, and he 's a
+working-woman's son.  We 're no' your kind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw the baby's face now, crumpled with sleep.  Very like an old
+man's face it seemed to him, and yet there was something indefinably
+pulling about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The wee workin'-fellow!"  There was such a pathetic touch to the idea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By God!" he blurted suddenly.  "I'll gi'e them the mill!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled again.  "The wee thing then was missing in you, Aleck&mdash;I
+think you got it now.  And I 'll marry you, Aleck, just when you say.
+It's no' too soon," she added simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a minute he was sunk in abstraction while she patted his hand with
+the old, familiar gesture.  He raised his head and spoke with
+conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know, Jeanie, you know, it's queer to think that an hour ago I had
+no idea of all this.  You and thon wee fellow, and the mill's working
+again and a' right between me and the men.  I had made an end, and now
+there 'll be no end.  You know, it seems ordained in a manner of
+speaking.  Ay, as it were, ordained.  It does," he said.  "It does
+that.  Ay, indeed.  It does so."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Every time he came back, after a brief visit in the South American
+capital, to the gorge where he was building the great bridge, Lovat's
+heart would throb and his throat swell with pride as he looked at the
+great stone structure spanning the Andean chasm.  First the little
+train would come puffing and straining up the grade, on the iron path
+between the lavish tropic greenery.  Then there were the peaks of
+mountains, daring the sky, their tops lightly muffled with snow.
+<I>Nevada</I>, went the Spanish word, soft as the snow itself.  Then,
+imminent, one felt, was the drop of the gorge, a dramatic descent that
+stopped the heart in its rhythmic beating.  "Here is the end!" one
+said.  And then the bridge!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soaring, splendid, slender, strong, its arches spanning the tumbling
+river beneath, the great bridge ran like a rainbow from mountain to
+mountain.  Lovat thought of it, with its lightness, its perfection, its
+spurning of the ground, as a spirit that crossed with winged unwetted
+feet the challenging river beneath.  It suggested, somehow, Artemis in
+the dusk, with a tongue of fire above her proud brow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wonder and the miracle of it never failed to thrill him.  All the
+harsh practical details of his work, details of thrust and strain, of
+fitting springer to pier, and voussoir to springer, of the curve of
+intrados, of the strength of abutments, never took away from him the
+sense that he had done, was doing, a great and practical thing.  These
+mountains, that composition of jungle, that smashing drop to the
+turbulent river, the snarling waters themselves&mdash;all these were the
+work of the Great Mason, the detail of his Divine Hand.  So they were
+when and so they had remained since the heavens and the earth were
+finished and all the host of them, and He rested on the seventh day
+from all the work which He had made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But a day would come, the Master of the Masons knew and had ordained,
+when the welter of passionate nature would subside, and the small race
+of mankind He had fashioned would reach a place of progress in their
+journey when this would have to be bridged.  Then one of His prentice
+men would do it.  And Lovat experienced a sense of holiness that he had
+been the chosen one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lovat looked at the bridge with wonder and with pride each time he
+returned, but each time he returned he felt somehow that the bridge had
+been jealous of his absence, resented it, became temperamental as a
+woman.  Whilst he was there everything was right.  There were
+accidents, of course, but they were the recognized risks of a great
+venture, the ordinary failure of the human factor in a Titanic
+equation.  But when he was away strange things happened.  Now an
+unaccountable error in laying this or that, now a sudden collapse of
+machinery, now a terrible accident to the native workmen.  But when he
+was there, all was well.  It seemed as if the bridge demanded all his
+time, all his talent, all his attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to him there was a sort of contest between him and the
+bridge, a sort of quiet, deadly fight, as between a man and a spirited
+horse he is riding in a steeplechase.  He felt, too, that all the
+strange things about him knew it&mdash;the surly river, the whispering
+jungle, the majestic mountains, the cold observant stars.  These could
+tell him what it was, for they had observed all things, seeing history
+begin and peoples fade and nations rise.  They had seen great
+prehistoric animals flap wings terrible and dark as a demon's.  They
+had seen these things die and be forgotten.  They were of nature and
+knew humanity, and they could tell him, if they wished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But they told nothing.  They observed the cruel law of silence, which
+all nature knows and dead men learn.  The business was his and the
+bridge's.  Let the twain fight it out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm getting morbid, up here in the mountains," Lovat complained, and
+he turned abruptly to think of a month from now, when Cecily would come
+south from New York to marry him in Cartagena, and to be with him for
+the last days before the bridge was opened.  Her dark, serious eyes and
+cloudy hair and serious smiling mouth were before him, but the shadow
+of the bridge rose between him and the vision of her like a barred
+door....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+There were two mysteries in Simon Lovat's life.  One was how he, a poor
+Highland Scots-born boy, reared in abject poverty, had ever come to be
+the great architect he was.  And the other was how he had become
+engaged to Cecily Stanford, Gamaliel Stanford's only daughter, and
+Gamaliel Stanford was a millionaire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He hated to think of his infancy in the little Argyle town where he was
+born.  He hated even to think of his boyhood in New York.  People, he
+felt, would n't understand it.  They might talk of being hungry, but
+did they know what hunger for years was, abject hunger, malnutrition?
+Did these well-fed men who talked of hardship know, could they conceive
+of a family to whom for years a nickel meant the difference between
+butter on bread and dry bread?  They talked of slums, and dirt, and
+poverty, but he kept his mouth closed.  Were he to tell them what he
+knew of these&mdash;he himself&mdash;might they not draw back from him as they
+would draw back with a shudder from a man who had been close to lepers?
+Fine words mean so little in this world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All his life until seven years ago, when he was twenty-five, had been a
+succession of cold ill-fed days, relieved by the magic thrill of
+bridges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There had been a viaduct here, a railroad span there, an Egyptian arch
+somewhere else in Argyle that would vibrate some chord within him.  A
+rainbow would flush him with sudden beauty.  And in New York the wonder
+of the bridges made up for heartburnings and disappointments.  The
+gossamer span to Brooklyn affected him like a long note on a
+hunting-horn.  At times human weaknesses would boil within him, as when
+he thought with rage that other boys and men must be uplifted by the
+prizes and scholarships they won, feeling the pride of combat and of
+victory, but to him they meant only the wherewithal to live for himself
+and his mother and sisters.  Other boys were welcomed with feastings
+when they had achieved success, but success meant to him only the
+filling of famished hands&mdash;not that he grudged it, God knows! but one
+hungers for a little praise, a little recognition, as one hungers for
+food.  And then had come the days of obscurity, working for others
+until Gamaliel Stanford, the big, bluff builder, had recognized his
+genius and given him his chance.  He did fine work for Stanford.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stanford, the self-made millionaire, wished after the fashion of his
+kind to patronize the genius he had found, and so he brought him here,
+brought him there, to his club, to golf-links, to his house.  And there
+Lovat met Cecily, Stanford's daughter....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+At thirty-one Lovat met people with ease, for they meant little to him,
+men or women.  Men, outside his own profession, were mere figures to
+him.  They did n't count.  He spoke to them in the chit-chat of the
+day, and when they mentioned architecture, he changed the subject
+deftly.  The alembication of engineering and art they could n't
+understand, so why talk of it?  Women he didn't mind so much.  They had
+a soft place in his heart, because they had been good to him as a boy
+and child whom there had been few to care for....  And he had had his
+little love-affairs, natural as the phases of the moon&mdash;calf-love,
+sentiment, adoration, passion.  They had loitered, knocked, passed by.
+None had ever touched that inmost self of him to whom God had once
+called and said seriously: "You are to build bridges."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then he saw Cecily Stanford coming toward him with her serious
+shining eyes.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+She did not say to him the ordinary, obvious things a woman says when
+she meets a man.  She held his hand for an instant and looked at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I saw the bridge you built at Indian Ford," she told him, "I was
+afraid to meet you.  Afraid I might be disappointed in what you were.
+You might have been a chunky, merry man who treats his genius as a
+favorite, halloing to it when needed, proud of it, patronizingly
+modest.  Or you might have been an angular, unsure man, jealous of his
+talent's fame, comparing it as one compares horses.  But you are just
+you, Simon Lovat, and your bridge is you, and you are your bridge.  I
+'m blessed to see you this day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he watched her he seemed to be watching not a woman but some fine
+spirit that struck a silver note in its movement.  Like a silver flame
+in the dusk she appeared to him.  There was so much spirit to her that
+nothing else really mattered.  The strain of Highland mysticism in him
+gave him an uncanny power of seeing people as they were, not as they
+seemed to the outward eye.  He could look at a certain man and say to
+himself with certainty, "At death that man dies," or at some
+sweet-faced woman, repressed, waiting, and know, "At death this woman's
+life begins."  He saw Cecily Stanford and said: "This woman endures
+forever.  She lives now and she will live always."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then from the spirit within his eyes went to the body without, as
+one might look first at some gracious womanhood and be all eyes for her
+presence, forgetting for the nonce the queenly satins that clothed it.
+He saw her hair, like a blue cloud.  Her eyes he knew.  He saw the
+skilful symmetry of face, a little, longish face with lips half open,
+eagerly.  He sensed the littleness of her figure, the long, firm line
+from knee to ankle, the small bosom, the loveliness of arms.  He saw
+the firm, sensitive hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet she might have been nothing to him but a gracious memory, as of
+some splendid day, but that she was whole-heartedly interested in and
+understood the importance of bridges.  Some generous arch, or some line
+of a writer's might have turned her heart that way once, and set her on
+that broad masonic road the charm of which endures a lifetime.  A book
+may trouble or a picture inspire one, but those are of the spirit.  But
+a bridge is of spirit and body.  One sees the architect, one sees the
+art, one sees the courage and grandeur and beauty.  A history of
+bridges is a history of the world, of its wars, its commerce, its
+progress.  And the thoughts about it are without end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she could speak of all that to him.  She understood the mystic
+errand of the builder of bridges, which is to be the servant of unborn
+men.  Old wisdom that had been lost was reborn in her.  She could feel
+why the heads of a great religion should call themselves proudly
+sovereign pontiffs&mdash;pontiff, <I>pontifex</I>, builder of bridges.  She could
+understand the reverence that stirred in Highlanders when they crossed
+a bridge and removed their bonnets.  "God bless the builder of the
+bridge!" their prayer went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could understand the ideals of an ancient age, when a community of
+monks called themselves the Pontist Brothers, the <I>Frères Pontifes</I>.
+Modest, white-robed, they built bridges of great fame, they operated
+ferry-boats, they fed and housed pilgrims.  But their greatest care was
+the building and upkeep of bridges.  Before Pius II suppressed them,
+they built the Pont Saint-Esprit over the Rhone, one of the largest
+stone bridges in the world; a thousand meters long, it is, with
+twenty-six great arches.  Surely their spirits guard it still!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could understand the arrogant cry of the Roman architect when he
+finished the great Alcantare over the Tagus.  "<I>Pontem perpetui
+mansurum in saecula mundi</I>," Lacer smiled.  "It shall see the end of
+the world."  The Saracen trampled and Charles V rebuilt it.
+Wellington's troops blew it up, and the Carlists fought on its Titanic
+arches.  All these causes are forgotten now.  But the bridge, the
+bridge remains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And because she understood these things, she understood Simon Lovat,
+and got close to his heart, which none had ever been near.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Lovat told her his fear that never again would great stone bridges be
+built.  The days of beauty in bridges were past, like the days of
+chivalry.  Long steel suspension bridges, with their infinity of metal
+triangles, or marvels of carpentry, such as the Portage Bridge over the
+Genesee.  But never again would they build bridges such as the Romans
+did, like the dreadful Pont du Gard at Nîmes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They will, Simon," she told him.  "You will build like that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never, Cecily.  Never again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Simon.  I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All those days are gone, Cecily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not for you."  The conviction would shine from her eyes.  "I know it
+here&mdash;" she touched her head&mdash;"and here&mdash;" she touched her bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was persuaded somehow that she was right, though his head told
+him she could not be, for cement and steel are cheaper and quicker, and
+only cheapness and rapidity obtain now that people no longer dream of
+to-morrow.  And the soldier's honor and the sailor's courage, and the
+writer's fire and the builder's genius&mdash;yes, and the dreams of great
+merchants, too, Lovat grimaced&mdash;are curbed and roweled by the
+huckster's purse.  Impossible!  But somehow because she believed it,
+the thought took form and substance in his heart, that one day he would
+build a great bridge&mdash;of stone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How they came so close to each other, neither knew.  It was just as
+natural as a tree growing out of the green ground.  They came so close
+that they could be silent, each with the other, for a long time, each
+knowing, feeling what the other thought.  Then they would smile at each
+other with a strange seriousness....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One afternoon, in the December dusk, his heart opened suddenly, and
+all, all the horror of his early years came rushing like a flood from a
+broken dam.  Why he told her he didn't know.  He didn't believe it
+possible to tell any one.  Yet here he was, standing by the window of
+the drawing-room, looking out at the street glistening with fog, while
+she sat huddled in a great arm-chair by the log fire.  And out of his
+lips in harsh staccato sentences came the sordidness of his infant
+days....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... We were pleased when we found it.  And Joan took it under a shawl
+and went out.  But we had forgotten that the pawnbroker closed at six.
+So there was nothing to eat until he should open in the morning....  We
+all cried...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was interrupted by her terrible fit of sobbing.  Suddenly he came
+out of his tragic vision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm sorry I should have horrified you," he said, aghast.  "I don't
+know what came over me to tell such things.  I 'll go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she was in his arms, weeping bitterly.  "To think that you and I
+should have been in the same city!  And I had everything, and you
+nothing.  You hungry!  Cold!  Oh, Simon!  Simon!"  Though they were as
+close as this, as close as birds in a nest are, yet there had never
+been between them any talk of marriage, any talk of life other than
+they were leading that week.  He knew he loved her tremendously, but
+fear of refusal and Scots pride because he was poor kept the question
+in his heart.  And she, because she was modest as she was brave, never
+said anything, though she knew, she knew...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last the miracle happened.  Two South American commonwealths, with
+the hearts of children and the bravery of men, decided to span the
+Andes with an immense bridge.  They saw only peaceful progress in front
+of them, not war.  The bridge was to be of stone, because stone was
+plentiful and labor cheap, and to bring steel up the mountain gorge
+would be a wasteful undertaking.  First a German architect was to have
+the work, for they had the foothold there, and then an Englishman
+stepped in confidently.  But old Gamaliel Stanford had his friends in
+New York, heads of great fruit companies and immense
+agricultural-machinery syndicates, and banks powerful as nations.  So
+Simon Lovat was chosen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he and Cecily were told, he was dumb.  She said nothing, but her
+shining eyes spoke, and she sat and watched the proud throw of his head
+as he thought of arches as powerful as the Romans', of great spans one
+hundred and fifty feet in width, of voussoirs weighing each eighty tons
+of stone.  Suddenly he knew her eyes were showering him with joy and
+confidence, and he put out his hand fearfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When this is done, Cecily&mdash;" he was red as a school-boy&mdash;"would
+you&mdash;could you&mdash;will you marry me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whom else could I marry, dearest one?" she answered simply.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Now they were married and moved into their house, a cool bungalow on
+the green hills.  Love and passion abode with them, silent and strong
+and clean as the winds on the great bridge below.  Above them of nights
+was the immense mosaic of the stars&mdash;the stars of the North, and the
+stars Northerners knew not; the Southern Cross, the false cross and the
+True, and an infinity of little worlds to southward yet unnamed, and
+which mariners had marked with quaint Greek letters in their charts.
+When the moon arose it was tremendously near, as near as Africa, so
+they could distinguish the immense blue mountains and the dips and
+whorls of her to whom poets had given fanciful, colorful names: the Bay
+of Rainbows, the Green Lagoon.  And all about them at night were
+movement and mystery,&mdash;the screeching of parakeets, the chattering and
+whistling of monkeys,&mdash;and in the dark green jungle there was rustling,
+as of pied serpents, and crackling, as of jaguars with limbs of flame.
+
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then the dawn would come, and the earth, a mysterious womanhood by
+night, would enter with the sun as a gracious lady.  Clothed in
+glistening green, and jeweled with humming-birds and the sheen of
+parrots, she was like some barbaric princess of ancient days, such as
+Balkis, Queen of Sheba, must have been when she went forth from Arabia
+Felix to view the magnificence of Solomon the king.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was mystery at night and there was majesty in the daytime, and
+that all of nature, and then a little path of the mountainside, a
+little turn, a pace a big man could make, and there arose suddenly
+concentration and genius, the bridge.  One felt stunned at seeing it; a
+man might catch his breath and swear, a woman might cry, so great was
+its drama.  Arch by white arch it spanned the tropic gulf, and above
+it, straight as an arrow, ran the line of roadway.  Superb and splendid
+and slender, it joined the green-clad mountains, as the web of a master
+spider joins two branches of a tree.  Very high it was, "so high that
+it was dreadful," the words of Ezekiel came to one's mind, and beneath
+it now swirled, now weltered the tropic river, on its way to join the
+Amazon, greatest of waters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet somehow the bridge loitered, refused to be finished, brooded,
+sulked.  So much did it fight against him that had it not been for his
+wife Cecily, time and time again Lovat would have lost heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she was there with him, and in some hidden mystical way she had to
+do with the bridge.  One look at her, one touch of her, and he regained
+courage and patience.  Silently and strong she moved by his side, by
+day in her man's breeches and gaiters and sport coat, by night in her
+dark-blue garment with its rolling collar of white, somehow like a
+monk's but of line and beauty.  Very like a flower she was, a Northern
+flower, straight and slender and supple and velvety, and strong.  Yes,
+she had to do with the bridge, for he had only to look into her serious
+smiling eyes, and to him, through her, out of somewhere, flowed
+strength and wisdom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, she had to do with the bridge, he knew.  Her being here was not
+fortuitous.  That she was a young bride on her honeymoon in an
+enchanted land, was not, as it is to most women, the only thing in the
+world.  They were two lovers, but they were oblivious of all things,
+sympathized with by all things.  The bridge was there.  And between him
+and her and the bridge there existed some strange link of destiny.
+There were three of them.  Two of them were happy, but the bridge was
+sullen.  Two of them were uncertain, but the bridge was sure.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Out of dumb rock and lifeless iron the bridge arose.  First these were
+only amorphous objects, and then through the fire of genius was evoked
+an entity.  The bridge had a personality strong as a man's, as houses
+have personalities, and some trees.  It rose there strong and slim and
+beautiful and of use to men, but terrible as an army with banners.  And
+though Simon Lovat and his wife Cecily said nothing to each other about
+it, yet there arose in both their minds that the bridge demanded and
+needed something.  And ancient lore of bridges came to them in
+lightning flashes of memory&mdash;old stories of terror that told of human
+sacrifice before a bridge would stand.  What ancient mysticism made the
+priests of the Pons Sublicius of olden Rome throw dummies of human
+beings into the Tiber on festal days?  What horror of old made British
+Vortigern build his castle over the dead body of a murdered boy?  Even
+in China of to-day, a pig was thrown into the river in times of flood,
+that the bridge should hold.  And gnarled old masons told tales....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Old wives' tales!  Ancient vile superstition!  And yet, what wisdom had
+departed from the world since ancient days!  Not spiritual wisdom alone
+but material wisdom.  How were the great blocks of the pyramids raised?
+We were n't certain of that!  The mighty things of Easter Island, yes,
+and the great stone legacies of the Incas!  We did n't know.  And the
+progress of the world was not spiritual.  It was material.  And we were
+n't even certain of material things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why did they do it, Lovat pondered!  Was it a sacrifice to the bridge
+itself?  A tribute to the idol they had made with their own hands?
+Hardly!  For that would be the idea of barbarians, and barbarians never
+built great bridges.  Was it a sacrifice to the cruelty of the great
+elements that might endanger the bridge?  Possibly.  And yet storm was
+so powerful and so cruel when it felt that way that nothing would
+hinder it.  What was it?  He did n't know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet the bridge demanded, needed something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cecily felt it,, too, he knew, for she spoke one evening in the
+lamplight, with averted eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest one, it sounds a silly question, but why are you building the
+bridge?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because it's my work, Cecily, to build bridges."  He felt what she
+meant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest one, if the bridge were to fall, you would be heartbroken,
+would n't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm afraid I should, Cecily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, dearest one?  Is it because you are proud of your bridge?  That
+you want generations to remember you by your bridge?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Cecily," he thought seriously, "it is n't that.  I&mdash;I 'm just a
+helper of the Master Mason, and if the bridge were to fall, I should
+feel I was a poor, an unworthy helper.  That's how I feel, Cecily.
+That's why I should be heart-broken."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put down the sewing work she was doing, and came to him, her eyes
+misty.  She took his hands.  She knelt by his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know, my lover," she whispered, a little huskily, "but your bridge
+will never fall.  Believe it, dearest one.  Believe it night and day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the bridge bothered him.  And all her wise courage could not still
+its silent clamor.  He could watch the ant-like battalions of men as
+they laid stone on stone, chanting in the guttural Chibcha as the
+bridge-builders of Persia chanted when they built the Perl-i-Khaju at
+Ispahan.  But above their voices came the silent voice of the bridge,
+loud as thunder.  Until he could stand it no longer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it you want?  In God's name what do you want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ta-wak knew when he builded the great wall of China."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"King Cheops knew when he builded his great pyramid at Ghizeh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Romans knew when they raised the bridges of Gaul.  You know,
+building me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know.  I won't know."  Lovat broke from the place, his
+forehead damp with perspiration.  And as he went toward his cottage, it
+seemed to him that the jungle and the mountains and all the creatures
+of the wilds were watching with their inhuman apathetic eyes the
+Titanic struggle between himself and the thing he had conceived into
+being, out of lifeless iron and dumb stone.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VIII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+For two days in the South American city Lovat now raged like a madman,
+now was limp and gray as if all life had left.  The storm crashed like
+artillery.  The wind swirled in terrific outshoots of uncontrolled
+power.  Rain whorled like a water-burst.  And all the time there ran
+through Lovat's head the unending, pounding rhythm: "The bridge!  The
+bridge is down!  Is down!  The bridge!  The bridge is down!"  Statesmen
+and ministers looked at him in pity, forgetting the country's loss in
+the great grief of the artist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cecily he was n't worried about.  He knew she was all right.  There was
+an army to take care of her there, and their home was solid, would last
+against the deluge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Three days ago and no warning of this cataclysm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now, to-day!  To-day was like the Day of Judgment.  To be sure, a
+half-crazy astronomer had predicted the end of the world, and sane
+scientists had pooh-poohed it, saying that there might be bad weather
+from the stellar conjunctions, but outside of that&mdash;nothing.  And then,
+suddenly, this immensity of flood.  Down in the lowlands, on the shore
+of the Caribbees, there had been havoc past imagining.  Whole towns
+were swept away.  There had been no chance of getting in touch with the
+bridge.  All telegraph wires were down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now it was Wednesday, and on Sunday he had left to discuss some details
+of the opening with the ministry and he had asked Cecily to come with
+him, but she would not go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lover, no," she had said; "I would rather stay here by the bridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Cecily, you have n't been away from here in two months.  Would
+n't you like to come to the city?  There 'll be clothes to buy and
+people to see, and an opera from Madrid.  Come, Cecily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest one, no!" she had refused.  She smiled.  "One of us must stay
+by the bridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Cecily&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!  No!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She loved the bridge as much as he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the little platform of the working railroad station he had said
+good-by to her.  The train started and she ran alongside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop the train!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled the emergency cord.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Cecily?  Changing your mind?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest one, I just want to kiss you again before you go.  Just once
+more.  I 'm a silly woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come with me, Cecily.  Come as you are.  We can get you clothes in
+town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, lover.  I must stay and take care of your bridge.  I don't mind
+who 's looking, lover.  Just&mdash;kiss me again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had she some premonition of the disaster?  Did that spiritual wisdom
+which we call intuition, tell her of ruin that was hovering like a
+hawk?  Poor Cecily!  How heartbroken she'd be.  Her eyes, her poor
+eyes, would be burnt with crying.  Poor Cecily!  Perhaps he could make
+her believe it did n't matter.  Nothing mattered so long as he had her.
+Ah, but it did!  He would never build another bridge.  He might do
+mighty structures of iron and cement, immense feats of engineering, but
+never a great stone bridge again.  Never again!...  Poor Cecily!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IX
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+He had steeled himself to see it all, and on Saturday when the storm
+had subsided, and the little train started up the mountainside, his
+face was a gray mask, and the nearer the top he came, the more
+impassive, the grayer was his face.  A little turn of a boulder and he
+knew he 'd see the ruin.  A few piles and the welter of the swollen
+river attacking them.  His eyes were open, but he saw nothing.  The
+official beside him suddenly screamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!  Excellency!  The bridge!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I know.  The bridge is down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The bridge is there.  Excellency, the bridge is there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All Lovat could do was to laugh, a vacant laugh.  Yes, it was there.
+But it was so impossible.  The sun suddenly flashed behind it, and he
+saw the arrogant white structure soar like a bird, joining green hill
+to green hill.  Beneath it rolled an unknown river, not the tumbling,
+snarling river of a week before, but a brown concave current, become
+gigantic, flying northward to the greatest of waters and carrying on
+its thewed back death and desolation.  There was something that looked
+like a man and then an ox.  And here was the wreckage of a homestead.
+And there was a jaguar and here was a great serpent of the jungle, and
+now a horse and here a gigantic tree.  But the bridge spurned the
+river, floated on it like a swan.  Lovat jumped off on the platform.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It holds!  It stays!" he cried exultantly.  He rushed toward the
+house.  "Cecily, it holds!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he felt, as he flung open the door, that the house was empty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cecily!  Where are you, Cecily?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no one there but a weeping, terrified maid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is Madame?  Where is your señora?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she only wept and wrung her hands.  Lovat, half crazy, yanked her
+to her feet, and shook her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is Madame?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cecily!  Cecily!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ran outside.  It suddenly occurred to him that all his men had made
+way for him from the station, with silent pitying eyes.  Why, they
+should have been cheering, too, but for something&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cecily!  Cecily!"  He ran around the little house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the big Inca foreman detached himself from a standing group, and
+stood in front of the frenzied man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excellency," he said, "there's no good calling Madame.  Madame has
+left us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Left us?  What do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excellency&mdash;" the big Indian threw his hands toward the river&mdash;"the
+bridge is there, but Madame has left us.  Don't you understand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With numbing force the blow descended on Lovat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The bridge took her, you mean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, señor.  She left us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lovat suddenly straightened up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mason, what do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Señor, when the wind came and the flood, the men quit.  The wind
+shrieked through the arches.  The river rose and attacked the piers.
+And the bridge groaned, and we left.  It was the will of God, we
+thought.  He did n't want this chasm joined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I came up toward your house, señor, to see if everything was right
+there.  I met Madame on the path.  She had her big black cloak on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You had better go back, señora,' I said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I am going to the bridge,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'But it is growing black as night, señora; you had better go back.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Stand aside, Vicente,' was all she said.  And there was something in
+her eyes that made me give way.  She went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excellency, I loved Madame, as did every one here.  And she liked me.
+And I was your man.  I followed her down the path.  I caught up to her
+at the bridge.  It was blue dark, like twilight.  The bridge was
+quivering.  I caught the edge of her cape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What are you going to do, señora?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Stand aside, Vicente.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You are crazy, señora!' I cried out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No, Vicente, I am wise.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You must n't, señora!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I must, Vicente.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Let me, señora,' I pleaded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Vicente,' she said, 'you 've done your work on the bridge.  Now I
+must do mine.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could n't stop her, Excellency.  Something in the face, in the
+eyes&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I dropped on my knees.  She moved over the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excellency, from the time she was on it the bridge stopped quivering,
+the wind hushed.  I saw her drop her cloak as she stood in the center.
+I saw her step forward, sure, unafraid.  And for an instant I saw her,
+like a blossom in the wind....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so, Excellency, the bridge stands, will always stand...."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+X
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+So there it was, all finished, all done, and for the last time Lovat
+looked at it, saw the green mountains, the tumbling river, the white
+span of the bridge.  But the bridge and he were finished now.  His work
+was done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little Latin-American official touched his elbow deferentially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excellency, the train!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, the train," Lovat repeated mechanically.  His companion looked at
+him with grave sympathy.  Only three months ago Lovat was a young and
+happy bridegroom.  To-day the builder was a grave gray-haired man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, the bridge was done, Lovat knew.  A little while ago it was just
+the product of his hand and genius and will, a thing of himself.  But
+now it was a fulfilled entity, with its own duties, its own uses, its
+own destiny.  Over it went trains joining country to country and sea to
+sea.  Over it went the loping Latin people.  Over it went the little
+patient burros, pannier-laden.  In confidence all went over it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will stand."  Lovat knew.  "It will always stand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was no high note of proud achievement in his thought.  It
+would not stand because of skill in building or strength in masonry.
+But because there guarded it one whose pleading sacrificial fingers
+would unclench the angry hand of God.  Flood and thunder and immense
+winds would spare it because of that guardian like a white flame, to
+whose unselfishness selfish nature must do reverence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The official ventured to recall him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excellency!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just one more moment!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had a vision of her for the moment, and his throat quivered and his
+eyes were uncertain.  He saw her in her white, billowing gown, with her
+dark head and face like a flower.  Two brown shy little children were
+standing fearful of the bridge, and she knelt to them.  "Come,
+darlings," he could hear the deep remembered voice.  She led them
+confidently across his bridge, and as she led them she smiled to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, he must go.  There was other work to be done, other bridges to
+build, until the time the Master of the Masons told him to rest.  He
+must be about his work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All our life is work," he said to himself as he boarded the train.
+"All our love is comradeship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, there was work to be done, and there was comradeship.  She would
+always be with him now, being dead....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN PRAISE OF LADY MARGERY KYTELER
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+All those things I dreamed about, and I thousands of miles away, are
+there still: the house, half farm-house and half castle, at one end an
+ancient military tower, at the other a thatched cottage; all the
+trees&mdash;the ash, the elms, the chestnut with the dark-green foliage and
+the prickly bulb containing the polished mahogany fruit, the
+rowan-trees with the gallant red berries, bitter as death, the copper
+beech with the foliage of lace and the fuzzy brown nuts, the apple- and
+pear-trees, and the trees of cherries that the birds do be ever after.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lawns that were once shaven so closely are now rectangles of high
+sweet grass where the bees are seeking.  And the tennis-courts, where
+once was the laughter of young girls&mdash;those, too, are knee-high in
+grass, swaying in the soft Irish wind.  And here and there is a gallant
+yew-tree, blackly green.  Roses still cling to the wall, and around all
+the walls are riots of flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The low greenhouses are still there, under whose glass roofs grew great
+purple grapes, and where row on row of exotic flowers grew and delicate
+ferns whose names are unknown to me, so much closer are men and horses
+to me than flowers and ferns.  Ivy is on the walls, soft-looking as
+velvet, and the winds and rains have been kind to the lodge and the
+stables.  The walls are still white and a little moss is on the slates
+of them, and a soft and gentle grass is between the cobbled stones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the deep well is there.  And everywhere are birds and bees.  The
+bees are wild now, who once lived in skips of yellow straw, and their
+nests are in the long grass, and there, too, is the meadowlark, and
+under the eaves the swallows flit.  And here the robin is safe with his
+impudent eye, and the blackbird of the yellow bill.  And everywhere the
+throaty murmur of the wood-pigeons, the thrum of their wings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eh!  There it is all still, at the foot of the soft and purple
+mountains&mdash;the Sugarloaves, the Big Sugarloaf and the Little, and the
+hill called Kitty Gallagher's, and the Scalp with its slender tower and
+the sweet shoulder of Three Rock Mountain.  And below&mdash;one could pitch
+a stone nearly&mdash;is Dublin, the abiding city.  There the Liffey,
+rippling gently to the sea.  And one can almost see St. Patrick's,
+where great Swift was Dean, and Trinity, where poor Goldsmith and
+fearless Burke were students.  The broad streets, the princely squares.
+And there Robert Emmet was hanged for treason against our Sovereign
+Lord the King, His Crown and Majesty, and Lord Edward, the rebel
+Geraldine, was stabbed.  And there is Clontarf, where Brian the High
+King fought the red Danes, fought and died, but fought and conquered.
+And there Howth, where Iseult, the Dublin princess, sailed to marry
+Mark in rugged Cornwall, sailed with Tristram....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eh!  There from Mount Kyteler one can see it all&mdash;the soft dreaming
+mountains, the sad weeping city.  And here where was once the laughter
+of young women, the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the
+shouting of lads&mdash;here is silence, but for the husky note of the
+wood-pigeon, the little thunder of his wings, and the droning of the
+seeking bees.  All, all are dead, but here is no desolation.  There is
+the sweet gentleness of remembered twilights, and the copper beech
+rustles, and the rowan nods, and the apple-trees murmur with their
+antique boughs: "Is it yourself is in it, Ronnie?  Is it yourself, long
+lad?  And it is long you've stayed away from us in foreign lands and
+bitter seas.  And it's Lady Margery you 're looking for?  And Paddy the
+Pipes?  You mind him, do you so?  And Jacky Sullivan&mdash;ah, the great
+lad!  Sure, they 've just left this minute, laughing fellow.  Gone to
+see the old earl, they have.  Sure, you'll be following them, and
+seeing them all soon.  Over the mountains they went, a wee ways.  You
+'ll see them all soon, very soon, a wheen of years...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not for long will be this sweet silence, this soft, dim loneliness.
+Soon will be business of courts, justices sitting in wig and gown.  And
+Mount Kyteler will die, and its name be forgotten.  Sad history will
+pass and affairs proceed in their inexorable ordinance.  And where once
+great Norman fighters charged in mail, and Elizabethan nobles ruffled,
+and the old red-faced earl swore when the gout was on him, and of late
+Lady Margery moved over lawns and walks with her sweet, sad-faced
+dignity, will be three or four little farms, their smoke blue against
+the purple of Three Rock Mountain.  And the lawns will turn to fields
+of blue corn, and fat cattle will graze where once was a maze of
+flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And all the crops will prosper there.  And the children that are born
+of the farmer folk will be happy as the birds in the trees.  There will
+be no blight on the milk the cows give, and there will be great luck on
+the stock of the kindly land.  Always will there be prodigal bees and
+the dancing of swallows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There are houses and lands that are kindly, and places that are
+sinister, fields that are surly, meadows that are sweetly generous.
+Old things, if we watch them, have a very human quality, and that is
+because they have been intimately connected with people who have these
+qualities themselves.  One influences one's surroundings so much.
+Whirling sparks of personality fall from us and charge what we have
+usually by us.  On all the estate came such a current of sweetness that
+even the thieving wood-pigeons grew generous, leaving the young trees
+alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Will she ever come back here when Mount Kyteler is gone, and the little
+whitewashed farmhouses are an outpost against the heather of Three Rock
+Mountain?  I think she will.  She will have so much beauty to know, now
+she is dead, that she will not begrudge the loss of the flower gardens
+and the courts where tennis was played.  Apple-trees and flowers will
+be hers wherever she is, and perhaps the same ones&mdash;who can say no?
+Yet I can see her come to visit the whitewashed houses in the hushed
+summer twilight, when the daisies have tucked in their modest heads and
+only the great foam of the hawthorn billows over the country-side.  On
+some warm little breeze from Three Rock Mountain she will come.  And
+horses in their stalls will know her, and the kine will turn their
+heads to her, lowing gently, and the dogs will bark joyously, and some
+little child on the floor will stand up suddenly and run forward, its
+arms outstretched, bubbles of laughter beating from the tiny lips....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Now when the last Lord Kyteler died, there was very little fuss made.
+Another poverty-stricken Irish peer gone.  He had n't been rich enough
+to own an estate large enough for tenants to squabble on.  A few farms
+here and there through the country, Mount Kyteler itself, not worth a
+tremendous amount.  He was the last lord of one of these very, very old
+families who had been lost in the back-wash of Irish history.  Once
+Kytelers had fought in the Holy Land under Richard the Lion-Hearted and
+had fought later under Irish viceroys against the O'Bernes and O'Tooles
+and O'Moores of the Wicklow hills; and antiquarians remembered that
+Dame Alice Kyteler was the most sinister witch of all Ireland, and was
+burned at the stake in Kilkenny many centuries before.  But it was a
+matter of politics more than demonology, though undoubtedly Dame Alice
+was second only to Gilles de Rais, murderer and Marshal of France, in
+worship of evil idols and in sinister sacrifice....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was one of these old names that should have died out, when the
+medieval chivalry of Europe died, Knights Templar and sporting Norman
+bishops and morbid medieval ladies.  But it existed, as many things
+exist in Ireland and are forgotten in Europe and never known in
+America,&mdash;strange Christian customs, strange pagan beliefs,&mdash;and "It"
+the most horrible of all horrible ghosts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were a poor family, as poor is understood in Ireland.  That is,
+they had money enough for all necessities and many luxuries.  They had
+money enough for food, for clothes, for a few good horses for
+conveyance and hunting, and they could go to the viceregal court at
+Dublin Castle and be decent figures there.  But they could not keep
+racehorses, which is really a great hardship if you are Irish, and they
+could not afford to live in London as an Irish nobleman should live,
+which should be as a very great nobleman indeed.  They were as well off
+as a rich farmer, and they had a title, and they were not intolerably
+proud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If you were to meet a very red-faced man in tweeds and with a heavy
+stick, at the Curragh races, betting modest sovereigns, and were told
+that he was the Earl of Mount Kyteler, you would feel that there was
+something wrong.  He had not that terrible courtesy of the earls and
+better sort of dukes which makes you feel like a clodhopper, no matter
+from which particular Irish king you claim direct descent.  He was too
+human, too decent an old skate; you chuckled when you thought of a
+coronet cocked rakishly over that red, weather-beaten face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, but Lady Margery! that was different!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her appearance I could describe to you: the close-bound black hair, the
+face like some rain-washed flower, the dark luminous eyes and laughing
+lips, the balanced neck, the body that was half boy's and half young
+woman's.  All that means nothing, but if I say that when she appeared
+there was a chime like an old silver bell, such antique sweetness came
+upon the air ... the feet that never seemed to touch the ground, her
+long, white, quiet hands.  How that old-world title fitted her,
+described her!  Not demure miss, not buxom mistress, but the Lady
+Margery Kyteler.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How important it is for me to bring her back, to have her real for an
+instant in the clear air!  But not as a necromancer under the
+glittering stars, with circle and acolyte, fire, sword, and crown,
+saying terrible words&mdash;Here be the symbols of secret things, the flags
+and banners of God the Conqueror, the weapons to compel the aerial
+potencies&mdash;and have that sweet face come white and fearful in the gray
+dawn.  I would have her seen with her merry smile, her feet that moved
+lightly, as to hidden music, her long quiet hands.  For all her boyish
+strong body, there was such harmony and light, one knew that beyond the
+body was something that would not die with the years&mdash;no more than the
+sun dies when it drops into the sea, or the sweet, friendly moon.  To
+see her was more than miracles; she convinced better than the fathers
+of the church.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very unconsciously she did all this.  And very embarrassed she would
+have been and a little mad she would have thought one, had she been
+told she was an argument for eternity.  Know her to be eternal, but see
+her playing with a terrier, pulling its tail, its ears, and clipping it
+deftly under the jaw as it snapped playfully.  Or stroking the sleek
+neck of a horse, and talking to it as horses love to be talked to, or
+kneeling to comfort some crying child of the people, and wooing it back
+to happiness by being very happy herself....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Now by the ordinance of time and nature the old earl was quietly
+gathered to his forbears&mdash;to Gilles de Kyteler, who came over to
+Ireland with Strongbow; to Piers Kyteler, who could run against a horse
+for five miles; to Dame Alice Kyteler, whose name is still used to
+frighten little children; to Fulke, or the bastard Kyteler, who joined
+with Silken Thomas in rebellion; Hugh, who lost the family money in the
+South Sea Bubble; to another Pierce, who backed Boxer Donelly, the
+Irishman, against the English champion, Cooper, for a thousand
+pounds&mdash;and won!&mdash;to Hugh, who grew rare tulips, and to Patrick, of
+whom it was said he was the stupidest man in Ireland.  Some one has
+written a book about the family; possibly it's worth reading, probably
+not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now of the family of the Earls of Mount Kyteler there was only one
+left, the Lady Margery Kyteler, and she was alone in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Except for the ordinary natural grief for the old earl, whom she loved
+and liked, she did n't mind being alone.  Mount Kyteler had now only
+seven servants, an ancient cook and two equally ancient maids, a
+gardener so ancient as to need an assistant, who was himself so verging
+on the ancient that it was a puzzle as to what assistance he could
+give.  There were a couple of lads in the stable, lads of fifty, a
+groom, and a coachman, the coachman assuming the livery of butler on
+great occasions, such as in Horse Show Week.  Ancient grumbling people
+they all were, who were united only in this, that they loved her.
+Among themselves there were always ancient grudges, present fights.
+And instead of her ruling them, they ruled her with a terrible tyranny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old cook below-stairs was forever complaining of the great work to
+be done, and refusing to have any help given her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it bringing in another you 'd be and me here child and woman for
+fifty years?  Twelve years old I was when they brought me into the
+pantry and set me to cleaning knives, and now it's on top of me you 'd
+be bringing some streel you 'd be getting out of a register's office, a
+woman does be following the tinkers to the Country Wicklow, mad with
+love.  Och, to think of the insult put on me this day!  <I>Wirra, is
+thrue</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure, it 's only to help you, Peggy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what help would I be needing, me that's the fine, supple woman, in
+the prime o' my years!  Ne'er a day over sixty I am, and thirty hard
+years' work in me still."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you were complaining, Peggy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure, 't was only to keep my mind active I was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old gardener could be terrible, with his face like an apple and his
+bent back.  He watched her as he might watch a thieving boy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, if it's a thing you 'd be wanting chrysanthemums, my lady, would
+n't it be the right and proper thing for you to be coming to me, that's
+the head gardener of this garden, and if it's a thing there 's
+chrysanthemums in it, you 'll get them, and if it's a thing there 's no
+chrysanthemums in it, you won't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I 'd save you trouble, Darby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what trouble would you be saving me, my Lady, by destroying the
+symmetry of the design?  All the work that 's on me, and ne'er a hand's
+turn do I get from the young fellow that's the assistant.  Devil the
+hand's turn he 's done in all the forty-three years he 's been here,
+barring playing the bagpipes in the greenhouse and talking about the
+good ould times.  I mind the time your grandfather was in it, my
+Lady&mdash;a real gentleman him.  He would n't put a hand on an apple, or a
+gooseberry itself, without asking the head gardener's permission."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Also were the two ancient maids problems in their way.  They were
+forever sniffing at each other, and complaining of each other to
+Margery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If your Ladyship would be so kind as to give Rose Ann a tip about her
+conduct, 't would be a mercy so.  For the queer way she does be acting
+with the postman is no credit to this house at all.  New ribbons in her
+cap, indeed, looking for love, when she ought to be making her peace
+with God and man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Rose Ann had the same story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If your Ladyship pleases, a wee word to Ellen would not be out of the
+way.  'T is the postman, your Ladyship, has been complaining bitterly.
+'Ma'am,' says he to me, 'would you be telling a secret?'  'If so be as
+I know it,' says I, 'I will.'  'Is that one,' says he, 'right in her
+head?'  'Is it Ellen you mean?' says I.  ''T is that same,' says he.
+''T is that has been puzzling myself, but why do you ask?' say I.  ''T
+is the dirty look she has in her eye,' says he, 'and the queer
+conversation is at her.  "'T is the world's wonder you never married,"
+she does be telling me, "and you the fine lad you are."'  Your Ladyship
+should speak to her.  You should so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will, Rose Ann."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But worst of all were the quarrels between the coachman and the groom.
+The coachman was a fine, florid man, and the groom was a wizened little
+troll who had once been a jockey.  The coachman was always in decent
+black, the groom in corduroys.  They were forever arguing on
+everything, from politics to horses.  Once Lady Margery had come into
+the yard to see the groom stepping around like a bantam boxer, his
+hands up, his feet tapping the ground like a dancer's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put up your hands!" he was shouting.  "Put up your hands!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on if you 're fit!  Come on if you 're man enough!  I 'll give
+you a beating you 've been spoiling for for the last thirty years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not go 'way out o' that.  It's fight I want.  I 'm boiling mad
+for one clout at your ugly gob."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you whisht!"  The coachman had seen Lady Margery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not whisht.  Put up your hands!  I 'll not stop till I 'm dug
+out of ye!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kelleher, Brady, what's this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The groom dropped his fighting attitude and pulled off his cap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'T is just a foolish wee argument we were having, m'lady.  I was
+telling this bloody old cod&mdash;begging your pardon, m'lady, for giving
+him his right name&mdash;that Lynchehaun the murderer was by rights a cousin
+to my mother's people, and he said that it was n't in either side of my
+family to produce a fine murdering man like the same Lynchehaun.  So I
+up and gives him a tip about himself and his drunken old mother...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kelleher!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not that I know anything about her, m'lady, but I just thought that if
+he had any pride, it would cut him to the quick!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Nobody in the world but herself, she thought often, could have kept
+them.  But if she sent them away, where would they go?  The old
+gardener&mdash;could he last away from the soil he had tended with the care
+of parents?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the maids would be lost in a modern world.  And for all that the
+two men in the stable fought, they loved each other in a strange way.
+She couldn't pension them off; and, also, they got their work done in a
+surprisingly efficient manner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And, besides, she could not see new servants in the old house.  The
+maids were as much part of the place as the portraits of dead Kytelers
+on the walls.  They had blended into a mellow composition.  They all
+loved her in their queer selfish way, depended on her for vitality.
+She could hardly go on visits any more, so much did they grumble.
+"Sure, it is n't to England you 'd be going, my lady, and the grand
+house you have of your own!"  And not only the servants but the old
+drowsing dog, Sheila, the little Scottie bitch, who was drawing on
+fourteen years old and nearly blind, and the foxhound puppies, who
+waited for her when she was n't there, and ancient Fenian, the old
+steeplechaser, who was near ending his days.  All these laid imploring
+hands on her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her mother she had not known, the countess dying when Margery was not
+yet two; and the earl had never married again.  But the house had been
+a mother to her.  The deep drawing-room, the heavy formal dining-room,
+the little sitting-room so bright.  There was no place in the world so
+comfortable as the drawing-room of Mount Kyteler in the winter
+evenings, with the portraits blinking in the light of candles in their
+silver sticks and the glimmer of the sea-coal in the grate.  And her
+own room at night, on moonlight nights, whence she could see Dublin Bay
+shine silver and the dark trees bending in the breeze from Three Rock
+Mountain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every tree she knew; every tree had for her a personality.  The copper
+beech was friendly and kindly, the rowan-trees aloof but kindly, the
+oaks majestic but clumsily kindly; the apple-trees were smiling.  All
+the flowers she knew, all the shrubs.  They had seen her stumble as a
+child of two, they had seen her rollick as a child of seven, they had
+seen her dream at ten, and grow ugly at twelve, and grow pretty in her
+late teens, and at twenty beautiful, and now beautiful and assured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In no other country than Ireland, in no other city than Dublin could
+such beauty and grace exist alone in an old house.  They would have
+fêted her, made merry with her, married her.  A young beauty in an
+ancient house with grizzled servants.  But in Ireland a great beauty
+has so many competitors for the songs of the poets, the passion of the
+young men.  There is the biting excitement of treason, politics charged
+with lightning.  There are the far places of the world calling to Irish
+adventurers.  There are careers calling for vitality and ambition.  And
+what young woman dare presume to bother poets when there are great
+purple mountains to enthrall them, and wooded glens and the crashing
+sea?  And winds like wine.  The crooning of great romantic ghosts.  And
+an Irish poet is not a pale man to be comforted by women, but a lithe,
+muscular man with a sword.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Also, in Ireland is little marriage or giving in marriage, if we except
+the peasantry and the very poor.  The young men spread their wings to
+go abroad, and when they return it is usually with a foreign bride, so
+that there are convents innumerable in that country, also many mad
+women at large, as in politics.  Unless a girl is very rich she has
+little chance of a happy marriage.  A title may help her, curates and
+captains in the army having a belief that the daughters of earls will
+help them to preferment; also, it sounds well, they think&mdash;the Reverend
+Septimus and Lady Jones, Captain and Lady Plantagenet Murphy.  There
+are sadder things in Ireland than the weeping skies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But though the right of marriage may be often denied them, young Irish
+girls have always their inalienable right of dreams.  Soft winds and
+nodding flowers and sun going down on the western hills, and with the
+twilight comes always a love.  Out of the blue twilight and soft wind
+they weave a magical life of love that will be always young, of a world
+that will be ever kind, of little dark children and loyal friends, of
+the pageantry of foreign cities, of triumphs for their own beauty and
+the lover's ability.  The skies are always blue in their dreams, and
+tragedies there are none, nor any sordidness.  And they grow old so
+peacefully in their dreams, so gracefully, and death comes so gently,
+so kindly&mdash;the lover always by, always young, always loving....  Out of
+the blue twilight and soft wind they dream their dreams, and they never
+notice that the blue of the twilight has become a threatening black,
+and the soft wind has withdrawn in itself with the set sun, as a flower
+does, and all of a sudden it has grown cold, damp, and lonely and cold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dream of Margery was around Mount Kyteler.  It seemed to her that
+the house, and the garden and the trees, and the old servants, and the
+drowsing dogs, and the ancient steeplechaser out to grass were all part
+of the French nursery, "<I>La Belle au Bois Dormant</I>," "The Beauty in the
+Sleeping Wood."  And one day the princely lover would come, breaking
+through the hedge of Irish stillness, and Mount Kyteler would bloom
+again.  The backs of the gardeners would straighten and the maids
+become young again.  And by some strange magical process the
+steeplechaser would again win races, and the old dog win ribbons, and
+children would stumble under the tall trees, as she had stumbled twenty
+years before.  All this would happen with the coming of the prince, all
+this she could see, but his features she could not plainly see.  Only
+she knew this, that his face would be shining with love and smiles.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+So that when she met him she did not recognize him at first, nor for
+many days afterward.  On his face were puzzlement and a frown.  A
+clean-cut, red-headed man, he was standing in the road on a frosty
+November morning, when she was out walking a brace of foxhound puppies.
+The puppies seemed delighted at the sight of him, all but tearing the
+leash from her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could you tell me," he asked, "where Tallaght is?"  He pulled the ears
+of the foxhound puppies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're in Tallaght," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked incredulously at the scattered houses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is this&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Is there any place in particular you 're looking for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said, "just Tallaght."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you have Tallaght."  She laughed a little at his rueful
+expression.  "You seem surprised."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am," he laughed.  "For many years, when I was a child, I have been
+hearing about Tallaght, until it had assumed tremendous proportions for
+me, and now&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Abroad?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Australia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  America."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you looking for?  The old homestead?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said; "I don't think there ever was an old homestead.  There
+might have been a little cabin somewhere, but it was n't here."  He
+laughed.  "I 'll tell you.  My father was an old Fenian, and he was at
+Tallaght when they gathered to descend on Dublin, but for some reason
+or other the battle was not fought, nor the enemy driven into the sea,
+nor anything.  And my father, with a lot of others, fled to America.
+But I had an impression of a mountain pass and camp fires and great
+guns."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It rained all night, did n't it?  Did your father say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, he never mentioned the rain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She liked this man, she told herself directly.  The big, clean look of
+him, his gray eyes and red hair, his splendid teeth.  Also there was
+something about him so easy.  He was Irish; no mistaking that.  But
+pleasant, fine Irish.  It was not always you met them pleasant and
+sincere.  And this man was sincere.  This man was not inimical.  They
+would make a nice pair, she thought simply, he big and clear-eyed and
+red, herself slim and dark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could I bother you again?" he asked.  "How do I get to the railway
+station?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm going that way, if you care to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a nice chivalry about him; she felt that as they walked
+together.  Was that American? she wondered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask you something?  Are most Americans like you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he said, "of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was puzzled.  She had an impression that all Americans were called
+"Silas" and twanged, "I guess."  Also, they chewed gum.  There was
+something wrong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are n't called Silas, are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; Richard.  Did you think all Americans were called Silas?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something like that," she admitted.  And they looked at each other and
+laughed.  She had a joyous feeling that the maids at home would
+disapprove of this strongly.  And that the old gardeners would tremble
+with rage.  But the dogs approved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What sort of time are you having in Ireland?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so good," he admitted.  "I 've been here a week, and the only
+friends I 've made are cab-drivers.  Also, I have a bowing acquaintance
+with a head waiter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cab-drivers are good fun," she ruminated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were at the station now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here," she said suddenly as she was leaving: "if you are having a
+rotten time like that in Dublin, and know nobody, it must be lonely!  I
+wonder&mdash;"  She looked at him fearlessly.  "Look here: if you 'd care
+to, come out and see me at Mount Kyteler&mdash;my name 's Kyteler.  There
+are dogs and horses and an old house you might like to see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I?  Thanks.  My name's O'Conor.  I 'll come, then, Miss Kyteler."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Margery Kyteler."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I call you all that?  Lady Margery Kyteler?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  Just Lady Margery."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Margery!  That's nice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he came, he came with a great armful of flowers, which Margery
+received with a smile and courtesy, and turned over to Rose Ann.  He
+seemed scrubbed, so glistening was he.  How like an old friend he was,
+with his firm handshake and  laughing eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," he said, "I 'd like the worst over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the worst?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, meeting people.  Your relatives.  The Lady This and the Lady That,
+and the countess, and the duke.  Above all, the duke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are none," she said.  "I live here by myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All by yourself, in this big house?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Might I ask, are you married?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No-o-o," she pondered.  "Um, no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at her incredulously.  He had never in his life seen any one
+so beautiful, he thought.  The small face, the soft and sweet and
+smiling dark eyes, the hair like a perfumed dark cap on a head whose
+sweet shape he could imagine.  And the supple figure in the frock that
+was close in the bosom and belled like a dancer's from the waist down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that beats&mdash;" he murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beats hell, doesn't it?"  She finished for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These old pictures, some of them are good."  She smiled.  "That's
+Gilles de Kyteler&mdash;not the one who came with Strongbow but a later one.
+And that's Fulke Kyteler, who rebelled with Silken Thomas, and tried to
+burn the Archbishop of Cashel in his own cathedral.  They were very
+disappointed when they found the archbishop had slipped out.  And
+that&mdash;" she pointed to a polished oval of black stone, framed in
+antique silver&mdash;"is Dame Alice Kyteler's magical mirror.  She was the
+greatest of the Irish witches."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gave him tea and listened to him talk of America and of his work
+there.  He was some sort of engineer, building bridges.  She got an
+impression of him standing on an artifice of some kind, with plans in
+his hand, directing a whole crowd of workmen.  He had been in Brazil
+and in China.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must be a good engineer," she said in her direct way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm supposed to be a very good engineer," he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you make a great deal of money?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A good deal.  Not a great deal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm glad," she said.  He looked at her in surprise.  She was dusting
+her fingers daintily, but her eyes smiled.  She was really glad.  And
+he said to himself, "My soul! we 're friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took him into the garden, and he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I brought you flowers."  There was a little shade of
+disappointment in his laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed and indeed&mdash;" she looked him in the eyes and lied
+sweetly&mdash;"'Twas I needed them, for it's the devil and all for me to get
+any flowers out of my own garden.  My two old gardeners are that mean!
+Darby 'd begrudge me a daisy for fear it 'd leave an unsightly gap in
+the grass.  There he is, watching me for fear I 'll pull a leaf.
+Darby, this is Mr. O'Conor, and I 'm showing him the garden."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he 'd come fifteen years ago, your Ladyship, or even ten years ago,
+he 'd have seen the like would have made his heart glad.  But in the
+latter years, with the bad weather that's in it, now too much rain and
+now not enough rain at all, and the wind that nothing is a shelter
+against, and the soil that's growing poor, for all the time that's
+spent on it, till it's hard to rear anything, even a head o' cabbage
+itself&mdash;m'lady, will you for God's sake leave off pulling at that
+hedge?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took him to see old Fenian in the paddock, and she liked the way he
+pulled the jumper's ears, ran his firm hand down the fetlocks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was he a great horse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nearly the greatest of his day," she answered.  "He never won a Grand
+National, but was third twice and second once.  He had a great heart.
+No horse tried harder.  The people loved him....  Kelleher, this is Mr.
+O'Conor, from America."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From America, is it, your Ladyship?  Oh, sure, they 've fine horses
+over there.  But they 've got to come to us for the hunters.  Begging
+your Ladyship's pardon, but was your Honor ever in Kansas City?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"D' your Honor ever meet a man named Hannigan out there?  Red Hannigan,
+they called him, a holy terror for bloody murder, the same man was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was n't as red as your Honor&mdash;begging your pardon&mdash;but sandy like.
+And he carried his head on one side on account of a belt in the gob he
+got in a wee argument out at the Lamb Doyle's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must have gone when I got there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must have, your Honor, or you 'd have met him.  A genius for
+horses, the same Red.  'T was he cured Colonel Nolan's charger of
+biting.  'Roast a leg of lamb,' he told them, 'and take it out of the
+oven mad hot, and when he offers to bite,' says he, let him bite into
+that.  By God! he 'll never bite again.'  And he never did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Came at last the time for leaving.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder," he ventured, "I wonder if I could get you to come in and
+have dinner and go to the theater.  I don't know what kind of a theater
+it is, but would you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How like a flower she herself was, he thought&mdash;the white stalk of her
+dress, the sweet face, the dark head!  She frowned.  His heart sank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see how I could," she said.  "I 've got to get back here.  I
+usually take the dinners and theaters in a quarterly debauch of one
+week.  No, I don't see how ..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His heart sank a little farther.  Was this definitely good-by?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but I 'll tell you what you could do, if you 'd care to.  Come out
+on Saturday and take me to the Leopardstown races.  I 'm sick of going
+alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His heart rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And come back and have dinner with me instead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His heart sang.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Came now a day of wonder.  Day of Leopardstown, frosty morning and road
+glistening like pewter, and the grass crackling underfoot, stiff with
+hoar.  The little race-course at the foot of the mountains.  Crowds
+stamping in the friendly cold.  The horses jibbing, curving under their
+jockeys at the starting-wire.  Flash of jockeys' colors, gold and
+green, red and white, all sorts of blue&mdash;sky, sea, St. Patrick's.  The
+drop of the flag.  The flying wedge of stretching mounts and huddled
+riders.  Thunder of hoofs coming to jumps, hurdling, lightning spring
+and over, larruping canter toward the next, smack of crop, over, by
+Heaven!  The hedge now and the five-barred gate, and the stretch toward
+the judges' stand.  A mad cheering and the clanging of a great bell.
+The favorite 's won!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little hush, a rush to the ring to see the horses for the next race.
+She wore a great frieze coat, like a man's, and a riding-hat, like a
+man's too.  At a little distance she seemed like a boy in clothes too
+big for him, and as one came nearer, one noticed, between the collar
+and the brim of the hat, the sweet narrow neck and the hair gathered up
+like some very little girl's.  There was something heart-pulling in it,
+like a child's curled fingers.  And then she turned, and her face
+showed, pointed like a cub fox's.  The cheeks flushed with the cold,
+the lips with a merry smile, her eyes with a deeper smile&mdash;there were
+so many there who knew her, and to whom O'Conor was presented,
+including an Irish duchess, with a voice like a saw, who rasped; "H' a'
+yo?" and then wailed, "My God!  D' yo' ever see such a God-forsaken
+bunch o' mokes in all your life?"  And a tall, thin baronet who asked
+him was he one of the O'Conors of Baltimore, to which he replied, no,
+that he was one of the O'Conors of Forty-seventh Street and Seventh
+Avenue.  "Ah, yes!  Ah, yes!"  There was a French cavalry officer
+buying horses in Ireland, a dark, thin man with a heavy mustache, who
+looked more like a New York plain-clothes policeman than a hero of
+Algiers.  Also, there was Mr. Kelly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margery had noticed a great rangy gelding in the ring.  He looked to
+have the power of a steam-engine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+O'Conor nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flying Fish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A large red-faced man with a stout ash plant was passing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Kelly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, sure, Lady Margery!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know anything of Flying Fish?"  She lowered her voice.  "Is he
+a good horse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is.  And he is n't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Might he win this race?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He might.  And he might n't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're not telling me much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am," he looked wise, "and I am n't," he looked wiser.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good enough," she said.  "Come," she told O'Conor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bookies crying raucously in the little ring.  Signaling of touts.
+Milling of people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll lay two to one the field," a booky was shouting.  His eyes were
+all but out of his cheeks.  His shoulders hunched with effort.  His
+voice exploded as though thrown against a wall, and he atomized a fine
+spray before him.  "I 'll lay three to one bar one; I'll lay four to
+one bar two.  I'll lay even money Munster Pride.  Even money Irish
+Dragoon.  Four to one Little Dorrit.  Seven to two Carnation.  Here,
+four to one Carnation.  Eight to one Murderer's Pet.  Twelve to one
+Irish Gentility.  I 'll lay twenty to one&mdash;twenty to one Thunderbolt.
+Twenty-five to one Flying Fish&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much, Joe Jack?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it you, Lady Margery?  God love you.  I'll lay you thirty to one
+Flying Fish.  How much will you take?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten pounds' worth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three hundred and ten pounds Flying Fish, Lady Margery Kyteler.  I
+hope you win, m'lady.  I do so there I 'll lay two to one the field.  I
+'ll lay three to one bar one.  I 'll lay four to one bar two&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dropping of flag and clatter of bell.  There they were in the distance,
+flying down the regulation.  They rise to the ditch, three abreast.
+Canter again&mdash;the water jump.  The lump becomes a line.  And who's
+ahead?  Can you see?  Carnation!  Ah, my jewel Carnation!  And now the
+bank.  There's a horse down.  Thunderbolt!  Ah, be damned to the same
+Thunderbolt!  Is that the gray ahead?  It is so!  Is it Flying Fish is
+in it?  Flying Fish it is, and he running like a hare!  'T is win in a
+canter he will.  They 're coming to the hedge.  Ah! what is it, Mister?
+Flying Fish it is, and he stopping dead.  A dead stop he 's made, and
+the jockey pasting the ribs out of him.  Ah, he 's on now, but in the
+heel of the hunt he is!  Carnation wins.  Carnation&mdash;ah, my sweet wee
+lady!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They passed the post, Flying Fish bringing up the rear with a
+supercilious arrogance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fish!"  Margery wrinkled her nose in disgust.  "Fish was good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And "There goes my new hat!" she wailed.  And who should pass by but
+Mr. Kelly.  Out of his red face peered an inquisitive gray eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten pounds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, well," he decided cruelly; "It'll teach you."  And he passed on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, the devil scald you!" she called after him, "and your thick
+ignorance!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Last race and the end of the day.  He swung her lightly to the
+side-car.  Firm elbows, rounded arms, and how light she was, elastic!
+A woman in a shawl and a battered sailor-hat stood with folded arms and
+began a street ballad:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Ireland!<BR>
+Bold Robert Emmet, he died with a smile!<BR>
+Farewell, my company-ions both loyal and loving!<BR>
+A hero I 'll die for the Emerald Isle."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Margery was grinning above the press of the people, O'Conor turned and
+dug his hand in his pocket.  Threw the woman a large silver coin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, may God keep and preserve you, my fine noble red-headed man!
+And the sweet lady beside you&mdash;may God bless her!  And may you live
+comfortable and die happy, the both of you, and leave behind you a
+dozen of the finest children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drive on!  Drive on!" O'Conor implored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it over the heads of the decent people you 'd have me drive, then?"
+asked the jarvey, in abrupt horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And of the twelve may six of them be like yourself, fine and
+red-headed, and six like herself, sweet and dark.  Ah, 't is the fine
+man you have, my sweet mistress!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+O'Conor saw the scarlet of her face against the black hair.  Eh, Lord,
+how beautiful she was!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The click of the wicket-gate and he was gone, and down the frosty road
+his firm step was echoing.  She stood at the long drawing-room window
+and listened.  Eh, what a moon!  And to-night the hare would be out on
+Three Rock Mountain, and the red fox pad toward the chicken-coops&mdash;the
+rogue of the world!  And on the mountain lakes southward there would be
+a lid of mist hovering, blue mist and dark mountains and the white moon!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And under the moon her own garden, her own house lay so quietly
+sleeping.  Crisp lawn and the graveled paths and the high wall and the
+greenhouses glistening, and the yew-trees against the wall.  And the
+bigger trees of the garden, the oak and ash, and the rowan-trees&mdash;the
+mountain-ash, they called it in England&mdash;all the trees that were silent
+now, even the wind being still.  The low dining-room that spread out at
+right angles, and was thatched like an old-time cottage&mdash;how sweet it
+seemed from here!  And the stables, where the horses were in their
+stalls, and the coachman and groom slept.  The little lodge where the
+gardeners were, a huddle of ivy.  Oh, the sweet domain!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to her, when the old place and the servants slept, and the
+dogs were curled up sleeping, and the horses in their stalls, that she
+somehow was the guardian and protector of all this.  The old servants
+were not afraid because a Kyteler still lived, and they knew they would
+be cared for, their whimsies understood.  There being no strong man to
+stand against the encroachments of the world, what was better than her
+own sweet virginity?  She could conceive of nothing harming the place
+or people when she was there.  Even the spirits of the hills would pass
+it by gently; the dark Irish things that frighten folk in their sleep,
+the rumble of the death-coach, the wailing banshee, the thud of the
+Pooka's terrible hooves&mdash;none of them had power while she was there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Would she always protect it&mdash;or would there be some one else? she
+mused.  A big man.  She turned from the window and went toward the
+fire.  The face she had seen all day in reality was with her now in
+vision of the fire&mdash;the face with the strong jaw, the gray eyes,
+bronzed head, and red curls.  How every one had looked at him, she
+remembered proudly, at the race-course to-day!  How fine he was!  How
+strong, too!  She had been a feather to him when he swung her up on the
+car.  And when his hands had caught her elbows and her feet left the
+ground, her heart jumped, fluttered....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And how nice he was!  When the old rip of a battered singer had wished
+them a multitude of children, he had blushed like a girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when he had lifted her from the car, he had held her for the
+fraction of a second in the air.  He had thought she did n't notice
+it&mdash;and she had been afraid he would hear her heart beating, so loudly
+did it hammer in her breast.  When she had turned him over to Rose Ann,
+to take to her father's old room and turned and gone into her own, she
+had closed her door and leaned against it, and said to herself,
+"Margery, this man 's in love with you!" and then, in a lower, hushed
+tone, "And, Margery, you 're in love with him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And all by herself she had blushed terribly and felt in a wild panic.
+"He will see it," she said; "he will know."  But then she said, "No, he
+will not; I won't let him."  And a song had come into her heart.  A
+great pride and wonder filled her.  She felt she should be dressed in
+soft scarlet robes, in some symbolic vestment of wonder and joy.  But
+she came down to dinner in a demure white frock, her hair done very
+demurely, her eyes demure.  And all the time her heart was bubbling
+with sweet, low laughter, and saying, "Do you know, Margery, this man
+'s in love with you, and he does n't know you know it.  And you 're in
+love with him, and he does n't know that either.  And we won't tell
+him, Margery, will we?  We 'll let him find out for himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All through dinner and after, she got him to talk of where he had
+been&mdash;Brazil and China&mdash;and of New York, where he was born and which he
+loved.  She watched him over the sullen saffron candlelight, and she
+thought, "He 's got a noble head," and again irrelevently, "You could
+n't muss that hair of his, no matter how much you tried.  Those short
+red curls would spring back.  I 'd like to try."  And again she
+wondered, "Will he try to kiss me when he says good night?  And what
+shall I do?  Shall I kiss him back, or give him a piece of my mind?
+And if I give him a piece of my mind he may never come again.  And if I
+kiss him he 'll think very little of me.  It's awfully hard."  And
+again, "Ah, he won't try," she said.  "He would n't in my own house.
+And, besides, he 's really in love.  I know it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he had only shaken hands with her, and said he was going soon, and
+might he come to see her before he went?  And her heart sank, and she
+said, yes, she 'd be very sorry if he did n't.  And he said, When?  And
+she pondered over a possible engagement that did n't matter at all, and
+said, Tuesday, then, and her heart murmured disconsolately.  Two long
+days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through dinner and after she thought she had only been thinking of his
+strong, eager face, but now he was gone, all he had said she
+remembered.  And she thought of hot China, and the sun-baked South, and
+the yellow rivers.  And of Brazil with all its forests, and the
+speckled snakes, and the whistling monkeys, and the egrets standing by
+the fountains, and the little armadillo lumbering across the roads.
+And of New York, the vital city, with its houses challenging the
+thunder of summer skies, its explosion of light when evening came, its
+hurrying myriads, keen-eyed, alert.  Against all these backgrounds she
+could see his clean-cut, gray-eyed face, and she could see herself
+small and slight, looking up at him in wonder and pride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I could go with him anywhere," she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then something seemed to call: "Margery!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked up.  There was nothing there, but the dimmed loved room
+obtruded itself upon her, and through the moonlit window she could see
+the antique trees, and the silver glint to the greenhouses, and in a
+clairvoyant instant she could see the old men sleeping after the day's
+work, and the ancient maids, and Fenian in his paddock, and poor
+Sheila, and the foxhounds.  She knew what called.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Margery!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, dears."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Lady Margery!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, now.  It's all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had thought that to-night she would sleep as a child sleeps, and
+try to recapture the magic day in dreams.  And be so happy.  But the
+voice of the trees, and the murmur of the old house, and the pleading
+eyes of dog and horse, and the wailing tyranny of the sleeping aging
+folk shocked her into the knowledge that there was a sterner thing than
+dreaming before her.  To-night she would not sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Margery!  Lady Margery!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You couldn't, little mistress, you couldn't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, hearts, hush.  I will not go away."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+He was very handsome, very erect, very noble there, standing by the old
+fireplace.  He was not merry to-night, so he was going to ask her to
+marry him, she knew.  And in the black and white of evening things,
+bronzed face and curling hair, he looked the equal of any old Kyteler
+on the wall.  And he had more than they had, she felt&mdash;abounding
+energy.  She was very pretty herself to-night, too, she knew, and
+stately a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was hurting, hurting her badly, for he was speaking now of South
+Africa, where he was going.  And he was carefully telling her how
+wonderful he had heard that country was: the mass of Table Mountain and
+the rolling hills, the great acres of grapes, the miles of veldt with
+the white Boer farmhouses, the sun forever shining, hunting such as she
+had never dreamed of, great, majestic storms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 'd like it; you 'd like it ever so much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know," she lied.  "Ireland is a lot to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was telling her clumsily, shamefacedly of another thing&mdash;of a lucky
+chance he had had in Brazil many years ago, a chance he had taken
+laughingly, and that had made him indecently rich, and he still a very
+young man.  She understood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She moved away, and began hunting for a piece of music, so that her
+back was to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever think," she said, "of settling down in Ireland?  You 're
+Irish, you know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And it's not a bad place," she went on before he answered.  "It's a
+sort of sportsman's paradise.  Fishing and hunting and race-courses.
+And sailing.  And if you get tired you can run over to London, or
+Paris, or Madrid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, damn!" she said, "I can't find that thing at all!"  She was
+trembling from head to heel.  "Why don't you marry some nice Irish girl
+and settle down?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I could n't settle down in Ireland."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's my work to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you just said you were rich."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's no excuse for not working."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought&mdash;I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I 'd be a very poor sort," he laughed, "if I stopped work because
+I was rich.  I 'd have no self-respect&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?" she said dully.  The trembling had passed now.  She was just
+numb, numb and dead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But as to marrying an Irish girl, Lady Margery&mdash;Margery&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood up and turned about.  She was smiling quizzically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're not proposing to marry me, are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't.  Don't, O'Conor," she said.  "Please don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because of this&mdash;" she looked at him squarely&mdash;"I like you.  I like
+you immensely.  To me you 're everything a man should be, but just&mdash;I
+don't seem to see you that way.  I don't love&mdash;do you see?  And I don't
+think I ever could.  No.  I never could."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that's straight.  Thanks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are we friends still?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, but&mdash;"  He smiled.  "Do you mind if I go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll see you out myself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O'Conor," she half whispered in the hall, "I'm an awful son of a gun.
+I should love you&mdash;you 're so fine, so decent, so&mdash;so everything&mdash;but I
+don't.  I 'm sure I could never love any one.  I 'm a very selfish
+woman, I sometimes think.  It wouldn't have been worth while marrying
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're not selfish, and you're very sweet, Margery."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no!  Shall I see you again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm afraid not.  To-morrow I go to London, and from there to Africa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O'Conor, will you do something for me because we are friends?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you send me pictures of South Africa, and an occasional one of
+you, because we are friends?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Margery."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And, O'Conor, if twenty years from now you want to settle down, come
+to me and let me find you a nice girl to marry&mdash;oh! the nicest girl in
+the world&mdash;or if you are sick or crippled, come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Promise me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, Margery.  I will."  He put out his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O'Conor," she said.  Again she was trembling, but her voice&mdash;thank
+God!&mdash;her voice was all right.  "I know you 're disappointed,
+and&mdash;O'Conor, would it help if you kissed me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said, "I 'm afraid it would hurt more.  So I won't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose it would hurt more."  She stepped forward and put out her
+hand.  "I am always your friend, O'Conor, your assured friend.  And
+good-by now, O'Conor, and God bless you wherever you go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you too, Margery."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 'll come back, O'Conor, if you 're sick or hurt, or want to settle
+down, and talk to me about it&mdash;your friend, O'Conor, your little Irish
+friend.  You won't forget?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll never forget."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked down the path under the cloud-touched moon.  Would he look
+back?  No, he would n't.  He did n't.  Oh, there went a man!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VIII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+She heard the wicket-gate close, and in her heart she knew that she
+would never again see him.  No gray eyes any more, nor curly hair.  Her
+face had become now a white and quivering mask.  She snatched a cloak
+up and, wrapping it round her, she went blindly into the garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She began to shake with great silent sobs.  Her face was wet now, and
+she could n't see.  She sank at the roots of the mountain-ash.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rowan-tree, rowan-tree!" she cried, "I shall never see him any more!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as she sobbed, a little breeze came from the Three Rock Mountain,
+and all the trees in the garden murmured gently.  The great ash unbent,
+the elm swayed, and the little apple-trees nodded with compassion.  All
+the shrubs in the garden rustled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Hush&mdash;hush!  Hush&mdash;hush!  Hush&mdash;hush!</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, rowan-tree! rowan-tree!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Hush&mdash;hush!  Hush&mdash;hush!</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The moon came gently from behind a great saffron-edged cloud and seemed
+to bend toward her.  Its rays poured sweetly toward the dark head.  A
+rabbit had come somehow into the garden and sat up near her, its ears
+lop, its pink nose twitching.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>See&mdash;see!  See&mdash;see!  See&mdash;see!</I>  The trees were like kindly muses.
+The sobbing ceased as she watched, as a child's sobbing might.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It scampered off now, for in the kennel the foxhound puppies had
+wakened&mdash;her step or some cry of hers, maybe&mdash;and were snuffling and
+whining to get at her.  And from the stables came the rap-rap of
+Fenian's hoofs, uneasy in his stall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must go in," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her hand patted the bark of the rowan-tree, and she turned to go into
+the old house that had been there so many centuries and was there
+still, sheltering the complement of aging, tyrannous servants in their
+peaceful sleep, and was beckoning her, she felt, beckoning her to its
+wide lap....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+REYNARDINE
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The big gray hunter caracoled under him, and with a vicious twitch of
+curb and snaffle Morgan brought him to stand.  He smacked the croup and
+touched the gelding's fore thigh with the toe of his riding boot until
+the great hunter stood like a horse in an illustration.  Then Morgan
+turned around.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About him was the cold gray of an Irish morning in November.  Woolly,
+dull, frost on the roads and a touch of easting to the wind&mdash;a perfect
+day for hunting.  Forward of him a hundred and fifty yards the hounds
+were circling around the copse, while the leaders were inside, raising
+the red fox.  Through the gray branches of the wood, gaunt as witches'
+arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle
+back of a screen.  And here and there were knots of the hunt, talking
+to one another as neighbors talk.  There were the women's fluting
+voices; there was the men's deep laughter.  All were friendly, toward
+one another, toward the world, toward the red fox himself, friendly
+toward every one except Morgan.  Well, to blazes with them, Morgan
+swore to himself.  What the blazes did he care about them&mdash;a crowd of
+country squires and young army men, of stray farmers, and an occasional
+doctor or parson.  What did they amount to, anyway? he 'd like to know.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet, he had thought they would be different.  It had all been
+twenty years ago, and he 'd been away all that time, and he 'd been
+only two days back.  But they 'd never forgotten.  What haters they
+were, these Irish!  What implacable enemies!  What brought him back,
+anyhow?  He could have been happy in America.  Or hunting in England.
+What he 'd come back for was the red Irish fox.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Steady, blast you!" he warned the big hunter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There he goes!" some woman cried, and "No, Janet, no!" a friend
+laughed.  Janet!  That would be Janet Conyers.  And Janet Conyers must
+be forty now, and here she was still riding to hounds.  Yes, he
+recognized a full dozen of them.  Good Lord!  Did people live as long
+as that?  There was old Sir John Burroughs, spare as a lance, and old
+McGinty, who owned the Mill Farm.  Yes, and the Master of Munsterbeg
+was there, red-faced, hale, all of sixty.  And that Grecian
+profile&mdash;was n't that Di Connors, who was now Baroness Rothlin?  And
+the big gaunt man with the hook nose, was n't that Ian More Campbell of
+the Antrim glens?  Poet and soldier and horseman.  Morgan felt a tremor
+of fear before the great Ulster Scot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the yelp of a foxhound and a roar of anger.  The thundering
+master of the hounds was turning on an inoffensive stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What the&mdash;what the&mdash;what the blazes do you mean, sir, riding over
+hounds in that manner?  What hunt do you belong to, anyhow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't belong to any hunt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what the&mdash;what did you come out here for, anyhow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My medical man told me I needed fresh air and exercise, and I
+thought&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You thought!  You thought!  Why in blazes don't you buy a bellows and
+stick it up your nose?  You 'd get all the fresh air and exercise you
+want, but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a roar of laughter from the field, and above it rose Morgan's
+deep basso, like the bourdon note of an organ.  But the instant the
+field noted his laughter, their laughter died.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Morgan smothered a curse and moved fifty yards down where he could get
+a flying start away from the rush of hunting.  How they hated him,
+resented him, he felt, and yet he had killed no man, stolen no money,
+betrayed no woman.  They hated him as much as they had loved and
+admired his wife Reynardine.  Queer!  Queer!  He was the one they
+should love and she was the one they should have felt aloof toward.
+For he was the steeplechaser, the horseman, the hunter of foxes, and
+she was of a family whose tradition it was never to hunt or harry a
+fox, but to protect and aid it.  You would have thought it would be the
+other way around; that they would have liked him and been cool or
+indifferent toward Reynardine, these hunting women, these sporting men.
+But no!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And that was twenty years ago, and they hated still.  Twenty years!
+War and famine and pestilence had raged through the world.  But they
+remained the same, these Irish gentlefolk.  Yes, it was all of twenty
+years, nearly to a day, since he had left for foreign parts, and
+Reynardine, his wife, had died.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+"Cop forard away!" went the ringing formula of the huntsmen.  "Cop
+forard away!"  A long wail on the horn.  The covert had been drawn
+blank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two sharp notes and a halloing.  "Yo ho, Tinker!  Yo ho!  Tim!  Forard,
+hounds, forard!"  And the pack of hounds began to move like a slow wave
+toward the distant woodland.  The hunt followed at a slow trot....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her name had been Petronilla, but through the country-side she was
+known as Reynardine, partly because of the Irish folk-song she could
+sing so well, with its haunting minors, its suggestion of superhuman
+music.  He could see her slight form still, spiritual, virginal in the
+Irish twilight.  He could hear her pulsating contralto voice:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"If by chance you look for me<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps you 'll not me find,<BR>
+For I 'll be in my castle&mdash;<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Enquire for Reynardine."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+No, he would n't look for her, though he knew where she was.  She was
+in her castle, for sure!  Her deep and narrow castle in the ancient,
+disused Cistercian monastery where the Fitzpauls buried their dead.
+Tier on tier the old Norman-Irish family lay, with their strange names,
+Fulke and Gilles, Milo, Tortulf, Bertran.  There they lay with their
+carved effigies, dogs at their feet and swords at their side&mdash;old
+Crusaders.  There they lay, ancient harriers of the Irish clans, Arnold
+and Eudo.  There they lay, old peers of the Irish parliament, Robert,
+Gerald and Byssak.  There lay the newer landlords, Jenico and Maurice.
+There they lay, dead as their tradition.  There they lay, and be damned
+to them, Morgan thought!  All there was left of them now was one
+daughter, his and Reynardine's, whom he had seen only once, in
+swaddling-clothes, and whom, he trusted, he would never see again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If by chance you look for me," her song had gone.  "Look for you,"
+Morgan sneered.  "I 'll be in my castle!"  "Well, you can stay there,
+wife!" he sneered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He 'd never look for her, even though he could see the monastery where
+she slept from where he sat on his horse's back....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had come to a woodland upwind and the hunt had slowed down to a
+walk.  The hounds were being urged in by the pink-coated huntsman.  He
+heard the short note of the huntsman to wake the fox, saw the pack pour
+in like a stream....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+He had come out this morning, his second morning in the country, to
+hunt, to kill the fox, to enjoy the sport he loved with what had become
+a mania.  And now his day was being spoiled by old black memories.
+Perhaps it was the Abbey where Reynardine slept that nudged him with
+ghostly concentration, perhaps it was the field that ignored him as
+though he did not exist, perhaps it was the proximity of the fox
+itself&mdash;he had n't seen or hunted an Irish fox for twenty years.  But
+he was troubled as a man is troubled by imminent disaster.  He wished
+they 'd get on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wind him, boys.  Wind him.  Yooi, get him out.  Joyous!  Tinker!
+Marvan!  Leu in!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was naught but the crash of whins, and the whirring of
+pheasants as they rose.  There rose the huntsman's clear call:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yo hote back.  Yooi over try back!"  And the blast of the horn as he
+turned to draw the woodland again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twenty years ago!  Could it have been only twenty years ago that he had
+met and married and parted from Reynardine?  It was so misty, so vague,
+he had come to think of it as centuries before.  He had come north from
+Dublin, a boy of twenty-two, just out of Trinity, son of old Jasper
+Morgan who had made a half-dozen fortunes in remounts for the South
+African War, grandson of Ed Morgan who had been ostler and stableman
+and later livery-keeper at Kingstown.  And because he rode hard and
+well he was admitted everywhere.  There is no democracy as open as that
+of the Ulster clans.  A baron from William the Conqueror's invasion, or
+an Irish chieftain whose ancestors were Druidists yields precedence to
+any man who can do a thing better than he....  At a hunt ball young
+Morgan met Petronilla Fitzpaul, who was known through the country as
+Reynardine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was just at the momentous instant when a girl turns woman, that
+strange first of three tides in a woman's life.  And the first tide
+breathlessly waited, curled, flowed in as he came.  Very slight, very
+dark-haired, very deep-eyed, she was spared the ancestral Norman
+traits.  She had n't the eagle beak of her brothers, or their intent
+scowling brows.  She was a little thing of kindliness and deep
+emotions.  One felt it in the face, somehow like a pansy, one felt it
+in her eyes, one felt it in her hands....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She liked him.  He was new to her.  She liked his dash.  She liked, as
+gentlewomen will, the faint flavor of vulgarity in him.  It was new to
+her.  She liked the dash of his clothes.  His assurance overcame her.
+She liked him.  And she was at the mystic tide of her life.  She
+thought she loved him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what intrigued Morgan was the spirit within.  Some faint conception
+of her beauty and mystery penetrated to him.  No man is interested in a
+woman bodily, no matter how much he thinks he is.  He is interested in
+cosmic womanhood, or in the one spiritual entity that actuates the
+body.  And before Morgan was a thread of flame that might lead him now
+down a formal garden, rhythmic with the murmur of bees, now through a
+woodland where the thrush sang in the branches, now through a Roman
+crypt, mysterious and sanctified.  He was like a barbarian who has
+found a great jewel, topaz or opal or sapphire, the light of which
+enthralls him, but of whose value and use he is ignorant....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her brothers and her father were not inclined to view a marriage
+between them with favor.  It was not because of his lack of lineage,
+but because the points of view were so different.  They saw a gulf.
+But Reynardine dissuaded them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brothers dear and my father, cannot I, cannot we all&mdash;" she put her
+hands out toward them&mdash;"make him see our way, take our things to his
+heart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were all great hulking men, her father and her brothers, Ulick,
+Garrett, Gilchrist, Kevin, and she was the only woman of them&mdash;her
+mother had died so long ago!&mdash;and she was so little, so pleading!  They
+were as wax in her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know, dears&mdash;" she hung her head&mdash;"I love this man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do what your heart says, Reynardine," they gave her the precept they
+obeyed themselves with such success and chivalry.  And they frowned the
+family frown.  "If she can do so much with us, what can't she do with
+him!" they reasoned in their simple way.  Alas! poor gentlemen!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was an immensity of pride in Morgan's heart, apart from pride in
+his young wife, to be allied to a family such as the Fitzpauls.  Twice
+they had refused duchies.  They were so old they went back into the
+mists of Norman tradition.  They had the quaint customs of their sort,
+and strange superstitions, such as all Irish families
+have&mdash;superstitions being but ancient mystic conceptions of nature, and
+customs observed so often through the centuries that their shadows
+became facts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But of all quaint customs, their friendship to the fox was strangest of
+all.  Their crest was a fox courant, and over no square foot of their
+lands could a fox be hunted.  Great horsemen they were, but none had
+ever followed the hounds in a hunt.  Perhaps some old Fitzpaul, seeing
+all people concentrated on ridding the land of the fox, had pitied the
+little red hunted one, and given it protection.  Perhaps by some
+accident of border warfare a fox had deflected the chase from a hunted
+Fitzpaul and so earned the family gratitude.  Perhaps this.  Perhaps
+that.  What did it matter?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, a quaint observance, this trait of the Fitzpauls.  An
+idiosyncrasy, a person might put it, such as a woman's objection to
+mice, or the energy of Henry Bergh&mdash;God rest him!&mdash;who fought that the
+law should protect horses from maltreatment.  But what was queerer
+still, was their power over the foxes.  Foxes greeted a Fitzpaul
+joyously, barking and wagging their tails like dogs&mdash;foxes, the most
+suspicious of all animals of the field.  The Fitzpauls had some strange
+rhythmic power over foxes, as some people have over dogs.  And yet,
+though this was mysterious, it was not so immensely mysterious.  Some
+trainers are born with power over man-eating tigers, some men can
+handle snakes, some can sooth stampeding cattle.  Morgan remembered
+hearing his father speak of Whistler Sullivan, who was called in when
+all hope of breaking a horse was gone.  A mean, ferret-faced man, he
+would steal into the stall where a man-eating horse was tied and
+hackled, closing the door behind him, and a half-hour later he would
+bring the horse out.  The horse would be coved and dripping with sweat,
+and never afterward would it balk or bolt or rear.  And the Whistler
+had never laid a hand on him.  He had only talked or hissed.  People
+were afraid of the Whistler; the peasantry declared he had bargained
+his soul with the devil; but he had only power over horses, as the
+Fitzpauls had over the foxes of the field.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, that was all explicable, within the range of human knowledge.  It
+was extraordinary, but that was all.  But there was an eerier thing yet
+about that family.  Other families had their banshees, their ghostly
+pipes, their drummers on battlements to portend or announce approaching
+death.  But when a Fitzpaul died,&mdash;so went the tradition, so it had
+been attested by living men, so it had happened within a wheen of
+years,&mdash;the lawns were peopled with foxes at the dusk of day.  Not
+spectral things, but foxes of the field and wood who gathered to bid
+their protectors God-speed on their strange, strange journey.  They
+knew of death as bee-keepers say bees know.  They made no sound but for
+the rustle of the grass and the faint thudding of their pads.  But they
+were there.  And a passing peasant might see them and raise his hat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God be good to the Fitzpauls," he would pray.  "'T is they are good to
+the poor!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A strange thing that of the foxes, a thing not understood.  How little,
+after all did we know of animals!  But to blazes with that!  Morgan
+swore.  Animals were n't here to be understood.  Animals were here to
+be used, a horse to be ridden; a hound to hunt with; a fox to be chased
+to the death&mdash;as he was here to ride and hunt and chase to-day; as he
+had done always; as he had done when Reynardine, his wife, lived....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A bird rose shrieking from the copse, and suddenly a hound gave tongue,
+and then another, and then the pack cried as one dog.  There was a
+blast of the horn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone away!" came the cheer of the huntsman.  "Away!  Away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then fifty horses thundered.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+First there was the minute red flash of the fox, slipping through the
+furze like a serpent, then the dappled flood of hounds, tails up,
+giving tongue like bells, then the master of the hunt on his great
+brown steeplechaser, then the huntsman, gay in pink, leather-faced with
+puckered eyes, on his little black mare.  Then came the bunched hunt,
+the crash of ditches, the crackle of brambles, the thunder over turf,
+the <I>splosh-splosh</I> over plowed land.  There was the cheering of the
+country-side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There a woman was down at a fence and men stopped to help her.  There a
+riderless horse went by, mane tossing, stirrups flying.  Now a groan,
+now a curse.  The country-side flew by as in a motion picture.  Patch
+of brown, patch of green, patch of gray, like a crazy-quilt.  The crack
+of hunting crops, the <I>ppk</I> of spurs.  "Tally-ho, boys! tally-ho!  On
+hounds!  On!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Morgan with certainty crept ahead of the field, not a hundred yards
+behind master and huntsman.  Beneath him the great gray moved like a
+steam-engine.  A little steadying forward, a rush and a thud, and they
+were over.  Now a ditch was taken with a clatter, now a fence cleared
+nicely, now through a blackthorn hedge, Morgan's arm up to protect his
+eyes.  Five minutes!  Seven.  Eight minutes!  Nine.  Ten, by the Lord
+Harry!  And suddenly they were at Kyle na Maroo&mdash;Dead Men's Wood.  And
+the hounds were sniffing, wailing, at check.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An old earth-stopper, wizened, purple-lipped, like a grave-digger of
+"Hamlet," appeared like a troll.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Into the wood he went, your Honor," he addressed the master.  "Into
+the wood the Red One went, your Honor, like a man diving into his own
+house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are all the holes stopped, Mickey Dan?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stopped is it, your Honor.  Sure they 're stopped as if they were the
+burrows of the devil himself and the saints to be out hunting him on
+the judgment-day.  Stopped is it?  Sure, a worm itself could n't get in
+or out of them the way I 'm after stopping them with interest and grand
+care&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, Mickey Dan!" The master interrupted.  "Hoick in!"  He
+ordered the huntsmen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leu in, boys, leu in.  Tinker!  David!  Dermot!  Ranger!  Tally in,
+beauties!  Tally in!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Morgan pulled up his hunter and turned around to watch the field come
+up, no longer bunched, but straggling now.  The burst to check had been
+too much for them.  His horse was still fresh, his seat easy.  He had
+done a notable thing, following so closely on the master's mount&mdash;the
+great racer that had won the Grand National&mdash;and the huntsman's mare,
+fleet as a greyhound, with so little weight up.  Morgan desired a word
+of commendation, even a look of envy.  But they took no notice of him.
+He might have been some old fox-hunter, invisible, long dead, riding a
+specter horse, over some well-remembered run, for all the attention
+they paid him.  To them he was n't there; he did n't exist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And because of Reynardine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And what had he done to Reynardine?  It was n't his fault.  It was
+hers.  She was in love with him, and then she turned and was not.  Was
+it his fault that a woman was fickle?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, she was in love with him.  He could even yet see her dark
+murmuring eyes in the golden light of the candles, as she set there in
+her white frock and sang to him, her beautifully cut ivory hands
+plucking haunting melody from a pianoforte as from some old-time
+clavichord.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Sun and dark I followed her,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her eyes did brightly shine:<BR>
+She took me o'er the mountains,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Did my sweet Reynardine.<BR>
+If by chance you look for me<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps you'll not me find&mdash;"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Oh, damn!  What did she ever come into his life for, anyway!  She
+didn't want a man.  She wanted a poet.  Crazy!  That's what she was,
+crazy as a coot.  He supposed her daughter&mdash;their daughter&mdash;was as
+crazy as she!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First of all there 'd been the trouble about the hunting.  She never
+said a word about it, but her face had blanched the first morning he
+saddled up for the Lonth.  She had expected him, he laughed, to have
+the same crazy notions as her family.  And her face had been drawn with
+pain when he came back in the evening.  And she had said nothing.  Too
+proud.  Too damn crazy and too proud!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That evening he had asked her to play "Reynardine"&mdash;not that he liked
+the tune; he'd rather have had something popular, something with body
+to it, none of your blasted wailing folk-songs.  But he just thought it
+might please her to have him ask.  She shook her head, and plunged into
+Chopin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I could play&mdash;'Reynardine'&mdash;to-night," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she had never played or sung "Reynardine" to him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She and her folk had such darn queer notions.  They thought more of a
+horse under them than themselves.  They went to infinite pains and
+immense time to train a green horse or break in a dog where another
+person with a flick of spurs or, a crack of the whip could do it in
+half the time.  True, they did it well.  But, after all, you did n't
+make human friendships with animals.  You made them do what you wanted
+to; or if they did n't&mdash;  That was a man's way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But people are queer, some of them.  One man is proud that his horse
+whinnies in the stall when he hears the beloved footstep.  And some men
+give friendship to dogs they never give to women, and their hearts
+break when a hound dies.  And to some folk the birds of the air will
+come and eat out of their hand, so confident are the birds.  And the
+death of a rabbit is a great tragedy to children.  There is a virgin
+glade in nearly all folks' hearts where neither blood nor marriage
+wander, but the love of animals possesses.  It is some mystic link in
+the chain of creation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he never had it.  Never could understand it, Morgan thought.  After
+all, man is the lord of creation, Morgan decided&mdash;that's true isn't
+it?&mdash;and all living things were for him to use.  He had all rights over
+them, even to life and death.  That was how some folks looked at
+it&mdash;not crazy people like the Fitzpauls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Reynardine did n't like the way he broke horses.  Reynardine did
+n't like the way he shot pheasants.  She was a queer girl,
+but&mdash;God!&mdash;she was very beautiful!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, that was the whole story of it; they did n't get on.  There grew
+a gulf between them, and was that his fault? he asked.  Was it his
+fault he was n't insane?  Was it his fault he was too much of a man for
+her?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when she was to have a child, she expected so much of him.  She
+never asked of course&mdash;oh, no!  She would never ask for anything, but
+she followed him with dumb eyes.  What did she expect, anyhow?  It was
+no man's job to hang around a gravid woman all the time, holding her
+hand.  A million women in the world were bearing children.  What was
+there to it, after all?  Every one did it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then she had run home.  Let her run.  Crazy coot!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when she was dying and sent for him, did he refuse to go and see
+her, as many a man would have done?  No, he went.  He remembered well
+the soft April twilight; the dim white figure in the great bed, with
+the haunting eyes.  And her four big brothers standing around with set,
+grim faces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My husband," she had said, "for anything I did to you here, for any
+way I hurt, will you please forgive me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, Reynardine," he said.  "We were just not suited.
+And I forgive you."  Then, awkwardly: "I'm sorry to see you this way,
+Reynardine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A light had gone out of her face:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then&mdash;good-by!"  Her hand unclasped from his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-by!" he had said uncomfortably, and turned to go.  He noticed
+three of the brothers look at the senior, Gilchrist, meaningly.
+Gilchrist turned to go after him.  A cold shiver had gone down Morgan's
+spine.  His knees trembled.  And then came the very soft voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gilchrist, and brothers dear, in a minute maybe I 'll have gone with
+the twilight, and I shall not be able to talk to you again, ever again,
+with these human lips.  And I 'm going to ask you just one more favor,
+brothers dear, my brothers.  Please do it for your sister.  Let my&mdash;let
+this man go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Gilchrist threw open the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is no place for you," he had said.  "Go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A crazy breed!  He had never heard from them again.  Never had they
+asked him to see or support his daughter.  He had even forgotten her
+name.  But he did n't want to see her.  He wanted to see no more of the
+Fitzpaul blood.  She was living in the old place, he understood, which
+was hers now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, let her&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But&mdash;funny!  He could never get out of his mind's eye the vision of his
+wife sitting by the great piano, plucking out the ancient melody:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"If by chance you look for me<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps you 'll not me find,<BR>
+For I 'll be in my castle&mdash;"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The hounds shifted, grew keen.  "Ay!  Ay!" came the tongue of the
+finder.  Scent was picked up again.  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!" went the pack,
+heads up, tails straight.  There was a red flash ahead in the grassy
+field.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come up, Finn!" the master shoved his great horse onward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay!  Ay!  Ay!"  They were off.  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!" Seventy hounds and
+forty horsemen.  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!"  And one red fox running for his life.
+"Ay!  Ay!"  A dead fox or a broken neck!  "Ay!  Ay!  Ay!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+For years he had been looking forward to this first fox-hunt in
+Ireland, and now with the red speck ahead of him, and the flood of
+hounds following it, and the great gray between his knees, it occurred
+to him that he was not enjoying it.  Never was a morning better for
+hunting, never a keener scent, never a better pack; never had he pushed
+as powerful, as sure-footed a horse at a fence.  Behind him the field
+fell, was blown, dropped out, until there were hardly a half-dozen
+left.  And he was close on the master of the hunt, close on the
+huntsman, close on the pack.  Yet there was something in it that took
+the thrill away and left a leaden depression instead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She would n't go out of his mind, would Reynardine.  What was that
+daughter of hers&mdash;and his&mdash;like?  Like her mother, he 'd be bound,
+every inch of her a Fitzpaul.  Hardly any of his blood there.  His only
+were the mechanics of procreation; she was not his daughter.  Nothing
+lifeful of him had fused with the soul of Reynardine to perform the
+ineffable miracle.  No, she would be all her mother&mdash;all Fitzpaul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+God! how he hated that name of Fitzpaul!  How he hated Reynardine, who
+had made him feel like a cur, though he wouldn't admit it!  How he had
+hated those four big brothers, who had made him feel afraid&mdash;an
+unforgivable thing!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, they were dead, he laughed, all dead.  Gilchrist had died on
+Nevison's expedition to the pole, and he lay somewhere in the
+immaculate Arctic snows with the inscription his comrades had written
+on a simple cross: "Here lies a very gallant Irish gentleman."  And
+Kevin had died fighting the Turks in Asia.  And Ulick!  Ulick was
+somewhere in the depths of the Irish sea, where he went out with the
+coast-guards to rescue a vessel in distress.  And Garrett was funniest
+of all.  He was killed defending a woman of the people from her drunken
+husband in a Dublin slum.  All dead!  Serve them right, too.  They were
+always doing something that never got them anywhere.  Fools!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had hated them in life, and he hated them in death.  But now their
+bodies were in dissolution, there was nothing concrete to hate, and, by
+some strange symbolism, he had come to hate what in his mind was most
+closely allied to the family, the fox that was their crest, the fox
+that had their protection.  He hated it.  He hunted it.  He wanted to
+kill it.  The day on which a fox was killed was to him a red-letter
+day.  He felt somehow that he had killed a Fitzpaul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Foxes took on for him now a strange, sinister entity.  By thinking much
+of them, he had come to think of them as a quasi-human, supernormal
+race.  There was something strange about them, anyway.  Cleverest of
+all the beasts of the field, with their cunning they outwitted men.
+They were strange in their likes and dislikes.  Their only friend was
+the dull-witted badger, a dark personality, too, whose burrows they
+used, with whom they often lived.  They would eat fruit and shellfish.
+And though they killed birds, they would not touch a dead bird of prey.
+They had tabus as strict as a Maori's.  Strange, mystical laws.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very sinister they seemed to Morgan.  Once in America he had seen Michi
+Itow, the Japanese, dance his dance of the fox.  And there was
+something terrible in it, something so mysteriously awful that he all
+but rose in his seat, the cry of the pack ringing from his throat: "Ay!
+Ay!  Ay! ... Ay!  Ay!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he had a dreadful waking dream, of an acre of foxes watching him in
+the twilight, never moving, still on their pads.  Just their pointed
+muzzles, their baleful, luminous eyes....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had hunted foxes everywhere since he left Ireland.  In Canada, where
+he had many a good kill.  In England, where the sport was too ladida,
+too much of a social gathering to please.  In America, in Maryland,
+where they hunted the gray fox, with hounds stag crossed with fox, but
+seldom killed.  He could n't stand their way of hunting.  The
+Marylanders did n't care to kill, and they had dubbed their favorite
+foxes with endearing nicknames.  No!  That was ridiculous!  What he
+wanted was an Irish hunt&mdash;fine horses and good riders, and keen hounds,
+and a dead fox at the end of the day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked up from the pack as they swung through a plowed field.  The
+fox had swung in a circle and was running to where it had started.
+There was Cashelshane, King John's castle.  There was Owana Ma ach Meg,
+the river of the little trout!  There was Crock Na Mero, the hill of
+the querns!  There was&mdash;there was the abbey where the Fitzpauls, where
+Reynardine slept.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"If by chance you look for me<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perhaps you 'll not me find,<BR>
+For I 'll be in my castle&mdash;"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+A great castle that, he laughed, six feet underground....  Damn it!
+Were those hounds checked again?
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+A piece of bog in process of reclamation&mdash;there the fox had taken
+refuge.  He might be lying in some clump of grass.  He might have
+slipped into one of the many drains the strong farmer had made in his
+attempt to make arable land of what was morass.  Here and there were
+green patches, still dangerous, where a whole hunt might be engulfed.
+Neither the master nor the huntsman cared to chance their mounts in
+that treacherous sward.  They halloed the hounds to and fro.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leu in, lads, leu in!  Ranger, Rambler, Tinker, Tim!  On to him,
+beauties, on to him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the hounds were at fault, utterly.  They howled with baffled
+desire.  They went to and fro, sterns twitching, noses aground.  Two or
+three beaten hunters turned up, their horses gone, their fire quenched,
+sitting dully in the saddle, thankful for the respite of check.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 've overrun," the huntsman grumbled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm afraid so, Willie John," the master nodded.  But some secondary
+sense told Morgan the fox was there.  He had gone to ground and the
+hounds had failed to mark him.
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+"Try a short up-wind cast," the master directed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hounds were halloed out, and as they swung to the left, Morgan
+noticed the red shadow flit along a ditch, slip through a hedge.  He
+spurred his horse in excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yoi doit!" Morgan called.  "View halloo!"  But some trick of wind
+muffled his voice.  Behind him three hundred yards away the hounds were
+following the huntsman about, heads up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fox was tired, his brush heavy with mud and dragging as he ran.
+Behind him Morgan thundered alone.  He damned the huntsman.  He damned
+the hounds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 're going to miss, blast their stupid heads!"  But he kept on.
+His hope was that the fox would turn, and the huntsman and hounds see
+him, and coming up, finish the day's work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the fox kept onward.  Now across a plowed field, now across fallow
+land.  Here a fence, here a ditch, here a hedge.  What was the use of
+following him, with no hounds?  But a mania arose in Morgan's brain,
+and he could n't bear to drop the chase now, so near to completion.  A
+vast anger arose in him.  He felt he had been betrayed.  Never was a
+huntsman so stupid.  Never hounds so bad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fox ahead of him put on a new spurt, and Morgan dug his heels into
+his horse's flanks.  Where was it heading for?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked up for a moment and saw the four-foot crumbling wall of the
+old abbey.  So there 's where it thought sanctuary might be found.  The
+fox sought the protection of the Fitzpauls, even now they were dead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sinister grin passed over Morgan's face.  Of a sudden he felt
+diabolical.  Others might respect that sanctuary, but not he!  He was
+n't crazy with sentiment.  A hunter, he!  He 'd hunt it over the
+legions of dead Fitzpauls.  He 'd hunt it over Reynardine's grave, by
+God!  How would she like that?  Eh?  He 'd kill that fox if he had to
+run it blind and throttle it with his bare hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll get you," he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fox gathered itself for a last effort.  He saw the whirl of its
+brush, saw it leap, disappear....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Morgan steadied his hunter for an instant.  Suddenly gave it reins and
+spurs.  Looked up, as it flew toward the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From his height he could see within and his hair rose in a dreadful
+chill.  For standing there was a white figure, with a book in her hand.
+Against the white dress the red fox cowered.  The face was the face of
+Reynardine.  The years were the years of Reynardine.  The eyes were the
+eyes of Reynardine, black, deep, dilated with fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Reynardine!  Reynardine!"  A cry of terror broke from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An immense panic seized him, and his hands checked the horse as it rose
+to the jump&mdash;a savage jerk on curb and snaffle.  The gray was already
+in the air.  Its hind legs came down uncertain.  Its great bulk fell
+backward.  Fear flooded him like cold water.  In an instant he knew his
+neck would be broken like a dry twig.  Christ!  There it went!  Snap!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+"Dark childeen, what is wrong with you?  What is wrong?  There was a
+wing in my heart until I saw you coming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nurse Ellen, there 's a man dead at the abbey.  I saw him die, with my
+two eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>O alanna veg</I>!  Is it any one we know?  It isn't the master, is it,
+or Sir Maurice?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Nurse Ellen, no!  It's no one I know.  I was sitting reading by
+Mother's grave, and a wee red fox, a wee hunted fox, ran up to me for
+help.  And then the man came jumping the wall, and his horse reared and
+he was killed.  I never saw him before, but we know him, Nurse Ellen.
+I know we do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why dotey child?  Why do you say so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He saw me and he took me for Mother, Nurse Ellen.  He called,
+'Reynardine!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was he a dour, black man, child of grace?  Would you be afraid of him,
+and he alive?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that's he, Nurse Ellen.  Who is it we know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no one we know, <I>a lanna</I>.  No one at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he called, 'Reynardine!'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You only think so, dark childeen, you trembling there and standing by
+your mother's grave.  A trick your mind played you, <I>machree dheelish</I>.
+He was no one you know, or nothing to you.  Only a strange man was it,
+a strange bad man."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+It must be for the thousandth time now he was sitting down at the neat
+table looking out on the little lawn, and trying to get his ideas
+together, trying to get something new, something startling, that would
+awaken these hard-boiled men who had control of theaters, magazines,
+publishing houses to the sense that he was alive, worth while,
+valuable.  If he could only think up a new detective, or&mdash;or something.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Any other than he would have given up the game long ago, but he knew he
+had talent&mdash;he would n't go quite so far as to say genius, but great
+talent.  It was no use their turning him down all the time.  He was
+certain they never read the stuff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was certain, too, there was some trick, some knack he had n't
+discovered.  Just some little trick.  These men of national,
+international fame&mdash;he could see from their faces they had no especial
+brains, any more than he had.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But just some little trick he could n't get.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had taken courses in writing, gone to schools of journalism, and
+here were all his manuscripts with neat rejection slips; here was what
+he thought the great American novel battered and dog-eared, a study of
+the temptations of a girl in the great city; and here was his crook
+drama, that some filthy reader had marked with the rim of a coffee cup.
+It was enough to make a man quit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he would n't quit.  He 'd be as big as the biggest of them.  He,
+too, would have his pictures in the papers, not gaunt and bitter as
+most of them seemed, but pleasant, dignified, literary.  And his
+picture would look like an author's, with its well-marked features, its
+masculine little mustache, its intellectual glasses.  And he, too,
+would be interviewed.  And he, too, would sign contracts involving
+great sums of money.  And there would be gossip about him, too, in the
+papers, where in Florida he was spending the winter vacation, what he
+was doing in summer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would n't quit.  Had n't they all said at school and college he was
+cut out to be a writer?  Had n't he gone to Europe for six months?
+And, what was more, had n't he the money his father, the hardware man,
+had left him?  Had n't he his home?  He could stick it out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His home!  His wife!  If instead of these few trees, this lawn, the
+outlook of the quiet sound, if instead of here he lived somewhere in
+the welter of affairs, wouldn't he be better?  Somewhere things
+changed, where one did not have to go three quarters of an hour in a
+train to the theater.  Down town in New York.  Only trees and grass and
+water and sky here.  Nothing to write about.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And his wife, Berenice&mdash;oh, she was a sweet girl, a nice girl,
+but&mdash;hadn't he perhaps made a mistake?  She was so good and wholesome!
+Too much?  Would n't it have been better to be married to&mdash;to an
+actress, or a sculptress, or&mdash;or something.  Some one who could feel
+things; who would n't smile, and be nice.  Berenice was all right, but&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And his mother.  She was a nice, darling person, but&mdash;she did n't just
+understand.  She was just a mother, like anybody's mother: If she could
+feel the great complex things!  But she was just loving, and everything
+he did was right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Berenice, and his mother ... the trees, the water ... essential
+barrenness of life ... nothing to write about ... so unfair.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Because Barry had hinted it annoyed him to have her in the house while
+he was trying to write, Berenice had decided to go out for an hour or
+so, to give the poor lad a chance.  And for a few minutes it bothered
+her to be idling, whereas there were so many little things that needed
+her attention.  A house became so weary.  It needed a flick of the hand
+here and there, a touch to flowers.  But the white road, and the
+arching blue-green trees, and the drift of the dogwood&mdash;a cloud, not a
+flower, did it seem, so delicately balanced was it in the May air&mdash;all
+these took her eyes, and the immense miracle of spring drew her
+thoughts from the gracious artifice of the house.  How gently, how
+imperceptibly it came, a little curling wave of the west wind, and the
+clearly pitched note of an adventuring bird!  It was like the moon,
+spring was; a clear thin line of silver in the gray sky, like the
+minute green of the waking willow-tree, and it grew ... under your eyes
+was its sweet benevolence.  And it was hard to go to sleep at night, so
+much was being accomplished, for fear you would miss some phase of the
+return of beauty.  Oh, the little birds ... so fussy, so intense about
+their nests.  The showers like great sheets of silver; and after each
+the slim trees were more like pretty ladies, and the great thick trees
+like pleasant stalwart men.  And the flowers came shyly, demurely, just
+as young girls might come; just as she herself, Berenice, felt, acted
+when she was fifteen, and was brought into a roomful of strange people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she stopped for an instant at the dark pool where the little
+turtles were busy, swimming to and fro, a clear-cut, fine line on the
+dusky water, a minute head with crystalline beads of eyes, just showing
+... and if they thought you were watching them they dived&mdash;a flick and
+they were gone&mdash;and if you saw clearly enough you could notice their
+flippers waggle slowly as they made for the downy bed of the pool.  And
+some kept fearfully quiet, sitting on stones, or on logs, and at any
+quick movement you made, they plumped like stones.  And the great trees
+around so much alive, so patient...  She could understand how poets of
+an older, simpler age saw dryads in them.  Pan she could not
+understand, nor satyrs, but dryads were sib to her, young shy women in
+garments of apple-green.  You could tell a good picture of a tree from
+a bad one that way: some had dryads in them and some were only wood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So many thoughts were in her, so keenly did she feel a kinship with the
+trees, with the singing birds, with the west wind that cleared the air,
+that she wished she had some one to speak to about it.  But a great
+shyness...  And perhaps, even, it could n't be said in words, perhaps
+music.  Well, hardly even that.  She had tried to speak to Barry about
+it.  But Barry had kissed her and thought her a moonstruck kid, as he
+said.  Poor Barry!  Directors of periodicals were so hard on him!  It
+was dreadful to hurt him that way.  Though she confessed the treason
+with a shock to herself, she found it hard, well-nigh impossible, to
+read what he wrote.  It was hard for her to understand artificial women
+and noble men.  All she knew was nature, and that was not artificial.
+Nor was it noble, either, she thought; it had just a sweet, harmonious
+kindliness.  There could be nobility only where ignominy existed
+too&mdash;and in nature was no ignominy.  She wished she knew more about men
+and women, for Barry's sake, to understand these matters he wrote of,
+passion and crime.  But dramatic passion seemed so needless in her
+eyes, and crime was so sickly; she just felt a pity for it, a sense
+that they, poor people, must be crazy to do such things.  Oh, she
+wished she understood&mdash;could help him!  She remembered when, over a
+year ago, a little periodical had decided to print one of his writings,
+the letter came as the first snowflakes fell.  And she could not feel
+excited with him, because in her heart, beyond her control, was some
+strange rhythm.  The snow, the soft and harmonious snow ... and in her
+head was a picture of nursery days, of pine-trees under a delicate
+white weight, and old Saint Nicholas, whom little children called Santa
+Claus, driving through a fleecy world ... his red cheeks, his white
+beard, his reindeer with the silver tinkling bells.  And reindeer
+brought the thought to her of squat, hairy Laplanders, fishing solemnly
+near the Pole, through a little hole they had cut in the ice, while
+away in the background ambled a great polar bear.  A very terrible
+animal it must be, but one always thought of it as gentle as some big
+old dog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, she wished she were a better woman, a woman who had her husband's
+interests at heart!  People said a woman could make a man.  She
+wondered how.  And it was said of some that their husbands owed their
+careers all to them.  How?  But how?  And even if she knew, her
+terrible shyness...  She could be intimate with dogs, and horses, and
+solemn, aloof kine.  But words did n't come to her somehow.  It was
+such a drawback!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when he was disappointed, she stood there, dumb as a stone.
+Nothing would formulate.  All she could think of was to lift his hand
+and kiss it quietly, and oftentimes a tear would come because he was
+hurt.  But she could say nothing that would make things seem easy.  All
+she could think of would be to take him out in the dusky night, and
+look in silence at the stars.  All the immensity of gleaming worlds ...
+so scattered, so varied, and not one ugliness.  And one felt drawn out
+of oneself toward the beautiful, terrific heavens, and all the worries
+and troubles seemed of less consequence than the droning of a bee.  A
+little sum of money lost, a petty ambition frustrated, a cheap man's
+jibe, those hurt for a moment, but how little they mattered under the
+clouds of stars!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And if she could take him out and be silent with him, while the
+crickets sang and the little frogs croaked their funny dissonant
+harmony, and earth rolled along eastward under the arching heavens...
+But maybe he was right&mdash;she was only a funny dreaming kid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had come to the sound now, and quiet as a lake the broad stretch of
+water was before her.  And here and there was a steamer, and southward
+a spluttering tug pulling a line of barges rigged with square auxiliary
+sails.  Her mind leaped forward to eight weeks from then, when the
+regattas would begin, and from all parts of the sound, from north of
+it, Marblehead even, the boats would come with white curving sails to
+fight for supremacy.  Great forty-footers, and the smaller thirties,
+and the fast P-boats with their immense Bermuda rigs, and little
+handicap sloops, and cat-boats manned by boys in bathing-suits, all
+scurrying, swishing, all in turn jibing, coming about, jockeying to go
+over the line with the gun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, too, soon the great blind porpoises would come gamboling,
+shining like negroes, follow-my-leader.  And the bluefish would run.
+And on the rocks the querulous bird population would screech and
+chatter.  And one would look out for the boats going to New Bedford and
+to Fall River ... their calm progress like a steady horse's, and their
+lights.  And the great lumber schooners would come down from Nova
+Scotia, with their blue-eyed, taciturn sailors, to anchor at City
+Island.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little quiver underneath her heart reminded her.  How should she tell
+Barry she was going to have a little baby?  When should she tell him,
+and what should she say?  She must be careful.  She must n't disturb
+his work.  And would he be happy about it?  Or would he&mdash;would he&mdash;she
+bit her lips suddenly&mdash;would he not be pleased?
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to her that it was all one with the coming of the springtime,
+the budding of the flowers, and the westward wind&mdash;the miracle of the
+baby.  One was first one's own sentient self, bending to the wind with
+the trees, breasting the curling waves of summer, and patiently
+listening to the song of some ambitious bird, and, before you knew how,
+a little thing had come nestling under your wing.  The flowers had made
+you sister, and the wind protected you, and the grass was careful lest
+your foot should touch a stone.  Whence did it come, the little life
+that was delicate as the petal of the apple-blossom, soft as a little
+bird asleep in a nest?  In summer one felt it had come over the bending
+grasses and between the gentle rains, and the robins did it reverence.
+And in spring it was borne on the first generous, delicate wind, and
+the trees nodded their highest, newest boughs.  And in autumn the Brown
+Woman of the Woods brought it, while the little chipmunks stared.  In
+winter it came with a shaft of the loud, aggressive sun.  However?
+Wherever?  But one moment you were yourself, alone, with only your own
+problems.  And suddenly you had been trusted with something softer than
+flowers, more precious than diamonds, a little molecule of life itself.
+Such a trust!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every woman had a little dream about her child.  A woman of the
+tenements might see in a little parcel of flesh and blood a one-day
+president of her great republic.  And another might see in him a
+minister of God bearing a light to thousands.  And a third would see in
+a little daughter a voice that would gush forth in immense harmony.
+And some who knew the bitter tooth of want would dream of their
+children as powerful merchants, with great cars and yachts.  Such rosy
+stories do women think in their heads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But all Berenice could imagine was the little daughter of fair tresses
+in her small bed at the close of day, when the short Occidental
+twilight hovered like a bird, and night came trudging westward with dun
+feet.  Below in their drawing-room people would be assembled for dinner
+or for the playing of cards, laughter and candle-light, and the glow of
+an open hearth, and tobacco sending up bluish-gray smoke from little
+tubes.  But Berenice would be alone with the fair child in the dim
+nursery, putting her to sleep and teaching her the rhyme that is a
+child's first prayer and, at the same time, a charm against evil
+spirits; against great bulks in the darkness that make little children
+scream; against strange gray women who take small humans from the warm
+beds mothers put them in and whisk them to deep, underground burrows
+where trolls and misshapen demons are, replacing them with wizened,
+ill-natured changelings.  Against all the powers of darkness the little
+prayer was potent:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Now I lay me down to sleep,<BR>
+I pray the Lord my soul to keep.<BR>
+And if I die before I wake,<BR>
+I pray the Lord my soul to take!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And then, reverently:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,<BR>
+Guard the bed that I lie on!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And when the small eyes were closed and the minute mouth had taken on
+the sweet smile of sleeping, and the hands had relaxed into white,
+starry flowers, she would steal downstairs to her guests, to the
+gracious room where sleek, well-bred women and kindly, burly men were
+gathered to dine in company or to play cards, where the bluish smoke
+rose in whorls from the white tubes of tobacco, and there was soft
+candle-light and tinkling glass.  And she would feel happy there,
+secure.  There would be no apprehension in her.  For above, at the four
+corners of the bed where the minute humanity slept were four figures of
+great power, four lumbering grizzled fisherman&mdash;Matthew, Mark, Luke,
+and John!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The old lady watched Berenice walk down the road, pausing for a moment
+in her beautiful needlework to admire her young daughter-in-law's slim,
+willowy figure, the eager pose of her head, her brown, beautifully
+plaited hair.  The apple-green of her dress and the blue-green of the
+trees&mdash;she made such a beautiful picture, and the old lady shook her
+head and sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And one might imagine the old lady saying: When I was young I was as
+lissome as that, as pretty, had as eager a head.  Time flies, and we
+grow old.  Ah, the fine days of young womanhood!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that was not in her mind at all: she shook her head because she
+knew the heartaches, the difficulties, the terrors the young girl must
+go through before she attained to the reward of women&mdash;wisdom and peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For they all came to that in the latter end, the old lady thought&mdash;the
+girls who started out dancing, and the girls whose eyes were troubled
+with thought, and the girls deep as rivers, and the shallow girls who
+angled for a honeyed word.  And life, like some deft schoolmistress,
+caught them and taught them and put wisdom in their heads, and in their
+hearts little modest flowers, like forget-me-nots.  And the sad girls
+learned laughter from little children on the floor, and the wayward
+ones learned loyalty from trouble, and great emotional currents put
+depths into the shallow ones.  And life seemed so hard, the present so
+brutal, the future terrible as an army with banners&mdash;but one day it was
+gone.  All was past.  And in retrospect it seemed so little pain to
+have had, to learn such a great lesson, to come to such a sweet place!
+If one came through it, it was so much worth while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hazards one made so much of ... Oh!  Did n't she know!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to her as she looked back now very strange that all the
+little tragedies of her life appeared to have faded and all the
+happiness intensified; and this was peculiar, for at the time the pain
+seemed so poignant and the happiness so diverse, so hard to grasp.  A
+night at a theater, for instance, twenty years ago, and a dinner before
+it, and a supper afterward&mdash;how queer one could remember all that!
+Even the tunes the orchestra played, the clothes one wore, what this
+man said, how this woman looked.  And one thought of the night young
+Barry, below, writing, was so near to death; and the utter terror, the
+tragedy of that time had faded.  And one remembered only how pretty he
+looked, how kind the doctor was, how Mr. Valance, her husband, had put
+his hand on her shoulder in his big, kindly way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If young people knew how these things came out, they would n't worry so
+much, but there was no use telling them.  They would have to find out
+for themselves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had never been one to admire nature, had the old lady, but one
+thing she did know: she knew people and she knew life.  Berenice was
+all right, a very fine girl for all her romantic thoughts, but Barry
+worried her occasionally.  He was so intense about his career of
+writing.  And she felt in her heart that if was not going to be a
+success.  One knew, somehow.  For instance this: she could tell whether
+or not a novice was going to be a great pianist, because she could see
+him as a master, if he were ever to arrive; his power, his aloofness,
+his concentration.  She could see a merchant.  She supposed it was a
+gift, just feeling what people were.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And her son Barry below&mdash;she could not see him.  And she was n't going
+to tell him, either.  Men were queer.  They bore grudges, even to their
+mothers.  It was better to let him fight himself out, and be conquered,
+drop; and then pick himself up, and think it over, and go to something
+else, with a pang and more wisdom.  And month by month the
+disappointment would pass, until the ramping of his early days was no
+more to him than a quaint gesture.  And years later he would meet some
+great author for a moment, and be very courteous, a little shy with
+him.  But he would never tell him of the struggle on his own account,
+never mention a word&mdash;ah, she knew, she knew!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barry would be all right.  Only&mdash;only he must be broken.  All humans
+must be broken, as Mr. Valance, her husband, had said horses are.  And
+some horses are great race-horses, and some are hacks, and some
+hunters, and some just simply for use.  But all have to be broken.  And
+they are nearly all kind, nearly all good, as human beings are.  For
+
+nearly all men and women are good, the old lady thought.  One had to
+know their hearts,&mdash;their appearance, their gestures meant
+nothing,&mdash;and their hearts ought to have a chance to grow.  And then
+they would all be good.  Those who were n't had had the growth of their
+hearts stunted somehow.  And they were n't to be hated, but pitied,
+poor things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If any one, any young person, were to know what her thoughts were&mdash;the
+old lady smiled&mdash;she would say she had known no trouble in life, was
+shallow, did not understand the tragedy of things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, she had had her share of life; her troubles as well as the rest
+of them.  She had been a very sensitive girl.  When she married Mr.
+Valance, her husband, she had hardly known him,&mdash;for such was the
+custom in her day, that he should satisfy her parents of his affection
+rather than herself,&mdash;and when the day came to leave her father and
+mother and her four brothers and her sisters, to leave the house she
+had known since she was born, to leave her own virginal room, and go
+away with a strange, terrifying, fascinating man&mdash;why, it was like
+jumping into the sea without knowing how to swim.  In those days young
+girls did not know, were scared.  And yet everything had been all
+right.  She loved Mr. Valance, her husband.  No two could ever have
+been closer than she and he.  And she smiled at the terror of her
+leaving the home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And before Barry was born&mdash;oh, the ghastly nights, the ghastly, ghastly
+nights, of lying awake and fearing, fearing, and the hideous
+unimaginable dreams!  And the birth itself, the surge of pain like some
+cruel, driving knife, and strength ebbing in a fast flood!  And came
+kind unconsciousness, and when she woke there was a sort of white peace
+in her, and the little dark-haired boy, by some beneficent magic, was
+on the nurse's broad lap.  And the strange miracle of how she had
+forgotten all the pain so soon ... how little it seemed, how natural!
+And how ready she would have been again.  A little daughter, she had
+thought&mdash;how nice it would be!  But it was n't to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when Mr. Valance, her husband, had died, for her had come, she
+thought, the end of the world.  Yet now all she could remember were the
+peace and trust in his quiet face, when all had gone.  And into the
+room where she was alone with him there came the quiet message that all
+was well.  And the hearts of people were so warm.  The doctor himself,
+who had seen so many die one would have thought he would have become
+callous, was so unaffectedly kind.  Even people one had thought were
+enemies&mdash;or not enemies but just careless of one&mdash;showed a warmth, an
+understanding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she had thought it impossible for her ever to be on the world
+alone; but somewhence strength had come to her, and poise; and all the
+fears she had when Mr. Valance, her husband, was alive, were dead now,
+she a widow.  Lonely and down in grief at times, but afraid never!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she thought to herself, with a queer little smile, of the times
+when in the dark of the night, by the eerie Long Island waters, she had
+gone out, crying in a little misery, praying, wishing that Mr. Valance,
+her husband, would appear to her, that she might once more hear the
+beloved voice, sense the big dignity, perhaps feel the kindly hand upon
+her shoulder.  But she waited in vain.  Nothing came to her cries, her
+prayers, her wishes.  But when she came in again, she felt she had
+emptied her heart of longing and loneliness, and all the familiar
+furnishings of her rooms spoke to her tactfully and friendly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled, because now she recognized&mdash;however she did it she did not
+know&mdash;that what she wanted could not possibly be granted.  Just for her
+alone an exception could not be made against the seemingly cruel,
+tremendously wise law that the dead should be silent.  Everything was
+so wise, so ordered.  And if one were to know exactly, the merchant
+would leave his shop, the seamstress her broidery, the workman his
+lathe.  So it was kept a curtain of mystery, with a little hedge of
+terror before it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All was well.  Life and death, all in good hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had often thought to herself, sitting there, as an old person
+might, that things did not seem as well as they were in her young days.
+But on second thoughts she discovered they were just the same.  Life
+was a constant, as Mr. Valance, her husband used to say of things.
+Oftentimes while she sat in a corner and heard young people talk, she
+was amused, for they seemed to think she knew nothing of modern life.
+And life could not be modern or ancient.  Life was a constant, as Mr.
+Valance, her husband, used to say.  They had only manufactured new
+terms, discovered new angles.  She smiled as she thought of their talks
+of psychoanalysis; of how one was very complex; and how one must get
+rid of obsessions by discovering them and talking about them to a
+specialist.  One did the same in her day.  One called the obsessions
+troubles, and on one's knees one poured one's heart out to God.  And
+their talk of psychic things&mdash;why, when she was a grown woman, did n't
+they have the queer Eddys in Vermont, and that strange Russian woman,
+Madame Blavatsky, and Home, the medium, who floated through a window,
+feet first!  And she was sure that when she was young there was just as
+intricate card games as bridge.  And their talk of Socialism and man's
+rights!  Did they forget that Lincoln freed the slaves?  Ah, the young!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered a man saying&mdash;an old man&mdash;that what was wrong with the
+new generation was this: they left nothing to God.  They wanted to do
+everything their own way.  Fifty years ago, he said, every one was
+cognizant of God.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But were they? pondered the old lady.  Yes, they went to church.  But
+did n't they go just because one went, as nowadays one goes to the
+movies?  A habit.  And did the rounded sentences of the ministers mean
+anything to the young?  No.  And the hymns&mdash;they were just melodies.
+One sang them, as young boys sang college songs.  It was only when one
+was grown, man or woman tall, and the great wolves of the world harried
+one, harried until one could sense their white teeth, their red
+slavering mouths, and there was a blank wall and no escape&mdash;it was only
+then one felt the Immense Hand.  And rarely afterward did one speak of
+it.  It seemed like a strange secret order, being initiated to God.
+She was sure that it was like that to-day, as it was fifty years ago,
+as it must ever have been, as it must ever be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Looking up from her sewing an instant, she saw Berenice coming toward
+the house.  It must be later than she thought.  It must be lunch-time.
+They must make Barry, poor boy, stop now.  Brain work was so fatiguing
+and he should n't overdo it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused for a breath, watching the brown head, the apple-green
+dress.  She knew the girl's secret, though Berenice had never said
+anything, hinted at all about a baby.  But the little exalted look in
+the eyes&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must say a prayer to-night," thought the old lady.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+He got up from the desk.  No! it was no use.  Nothing would come
+to-day.  Another fruitless morning.  If he could only find the trick
+those fellows had!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, but they all had something to write about, and he had nothing:
+this wretched urban setting, this calm, uninteresting sound.  And he
+knew nobody.  There was no encouragement, no inspiration.  His mother,
+dear old lady&mdash;she knew nothing, could tell him nothing.  And his
+wife&mdash;she was a dear girl, and he loved her, but&mdash;  Oh, there was
+nothing to write about; no drama; no people of drama.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+WISDOM BUILDETH HER HOUSE
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Whilst her great train was picking its way carefully from the
+mountain-tops of Abyssinia, eight thousand treacherous feet of height,
+to the littoral of the Red Sea, the slim brown queen had experienced
+only impatience.  In the cool quietness of her mountain home it had
+seemed the most natural thing in the world to arise and visit the young
+king of the Jews.  On every step of the long journey downhill it had
+seemed natural.  In her own country it seemed right she should do as
+she had chosen.  But now they had left Abyssinia, left the great
+tropical forests with the gigantic candelabra trees, left the arid
+cactus-covered plains, left the pleasant green valleys where water
+trilled and the boxwood trees and wild roses and water cress grew, and
+had come to arid Ailet by the Red Sea.  And here were great stretches
+of sand and mimosa, here half-naked, cunning black men, here a heat
+like a pall, here the brooding mystery of Egypt, that knows all things
+and is silent to questioning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A different world, and in the different atmosphere there came a
+faltering, a waver into the heart of Balkis.  Was she a fool?  For two
+miles her royal train stretched.  First, the fighting men in their
+short white robes, graceful, powerful as cats; then the line of laden
+camels with tinkling bells; then the great black elephants with their
+gleaming black skin, their gleaming white tusks, their painted
+trappings; then the litters of her women; then her own litter; a welter
+of attendants, bearing the provisions of the journey and the present
+she was bringing to Solomon, the young king of the Jews: spices; and
+gold of Ophir; and large diamonds from the Abyssinian mines;
+apes&mdash;great red-faced baboons that had the strength of ten men, and
+delicate blue monkeys, pretty as birds; and peacocks that outdid
+precious stones in the shimmer of their colors; and tusks of ivory,
+large as the branches of great trees....  Her heart wavered, and for an
+instant it occurred to her in panic to go back.  But if she returned
+now, she would be dissatisfied all her life, and grow inward, and
+become maybe hard as a stone, and that was against nature, for all
+things grow outward, as a tree grows outward, to fill up the empty
+spaces of Death....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No! no!  I shall go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Up in the cool mountains decision had seemed so natural, action so
+easy.  But below in humid Egypt subtleties of thought seemed native to
+the weak Nilotic breeze, and she could see herself as though she were
+another woman.  She could see her orphaned childhood, when the care of
+all her counselors was to have her gracious and kind, and sweet as a
+small bird's song.  They had instructed her that queens are not made by
+crowns, but by graciousness and strength and courtesy, so that any
+beholder might know she was a queen were she dressed in the garments of
+her humblest slave.  And she had grown older into young maidenhood, and
+wise old heads had helped her govern and take care of her wild mountain
+folk, and came a few years more and she was twenty-two, and the
+counselors were too old to counsel, being either querulous old men or
+dotards, living in forgotten days, and Balkis herself had to rule,
+being queen.  To be queen alone would have been simple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But being queen, she was lonely, and being gracious and just, she was
+wise, and being wise, questions arose in her like a spring of well
+water.  Thought rose like a hawk and swept in widening gyres, but
+arrived nowhere.  Thought and emotion were with her in the red Afric
+dawn.  Thought and emotion were with her like the flickering lightning
+and terrible thunder of the Abyssinian hills.  Thought and emotion came
+with blue mountainy twilight.  And there was none to share them.  None
+to ask.  None to satisfy.  Being a queen, there was none she might
+consort with but kings and queens, and the kings of the states about
+her were shrewd political men, who could not understand what a young
+girl felt, and her young womanhood quivering like the jessamy bough....
+Their eyes would be on the riches of Ethiopia; so they were out....
+And the queens of Africa, outside herself, were not queens, but tribal
+chieftainesses, half priestess and half prostitute, Amazonian,
+untutored....  She could not talk to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so she had decided there was nothing for her to do but to govern
+justly, to grow old gracefully, to weep a little in private, to find it
+hard to go asleep of nights, to look forward to death as a sentry
+awaits the dawn, until a swart Egyptian trader had brought word of the
+new king of the Jews, now David was gone.  A boy he was, they said, a
+strange dreaming boy, with none of his father's delight in war, and
+with a gift of strange inspired wisdom.  She was told the story of two
+women, that were harlots, and how they each claimed a certain child as
+theirs, and of Solomon's judgment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And how old is the young king of the Jews?" Sheba asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Twenty-three or twenty-four."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A year or so older than I."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she was told how Hiram, King of Tyre, that shrewd man, was a friend
+to the young prince, and how the arrogant Pharaoh of Egypt conceived it
+worth his while to make a treaty with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And is he married?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Sheba, he is not married," the trader vouched....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The girl in her said: "Go back.  They will think you are seeking love.
+They will think that with your white teeth, your sloe-black eyes, your
+color of fine bronze, your body, lithe and sleek and graceful as a
+cat's, you want love from the king of the Jews."  And all her face
+flushed at that thought, and she debated whether she should send for
+the captain general of the fighting men and tell him to face his troops
+about and return to her Ethiopia.  But the queen in her rose and said:
+"What care I what they say?  Does Sheba need the love of any lowland
+king, or plead for alliance?  Sheba is Sheba, and what Sheba does is
+Sheba's business."  And the woman of her brooded softly: "I will go on.
+Somewhere there is an answer to all the questions, and if he does n't
+know the answer, perhaps he can help me to find them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And perhaps he has questions of his own," she said, "and I can help
+him answer those."  A sad boyhood, she had heard his was, with his
+father David droning psalms in his latter days, busy at his prayers as
+a potter at his lathe, calling for mercy for his own soul....  And his
+mother, the queen, who had once been wife to Uriah the Hittite, a
+strange, mad old woman who walked about the palace, gibbering to
+herself, her face and fingers twisting, all the white beauty that had
+dazzled David upon the roof of the king's house turned now to an
+awesome gray rugosity....  A house of fear, Sheba thought, a house of
+silence, and she understood how Solomon could have become so wise, for
+wisdom comes with the quiet tongue....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wisdom he had, according to all reporters, but the wisdom she had heard
+about was wisdom of the head and of the body.  Had he wisdom of the
+heart?  Did he understand why one was now quiet as a well, now
+turbulent as the sea?  Did he understand why peace should come in a
+soft blue garment, and suddenly irritation rise in angry red?  Did he
+understand what it was that dragged at the heart so, pulling it, it
+seemed, toward the furtherest star?  And could he resolve her what she
+was to do with herself?  Govern she must and govern wisely, but outside
+of that was she always to be so lonely&mdash;she who was so young and strong
+and beautiful?  The slave girl with the fatherless baby had more than
+she, the queen.  The housewife grinding the family corn.  Each could
+escape into some one else, had a refuge&mdash;all but Sheba, the queen....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so her great and gorgeous train went on through the desert, crunch
+of camels' pads, shuffle of marching men, thud of lumbering elephants,
+screaming of peacocks, chattering of apes....  They passed the
+shimmering sands, and came to the black high rocks.  They passed
+sluggish Nile, and came to the roaring cataracts.  They came to the
+city of hawks and the city of Venus and the city of sacred crocodiles.
+They came to Thebes with its gigantic figures, each of a single stone.
+They came into the desert again, steering at night by the stars as
+mariners do.  They came to the great Lake Moeris, which the Egyptians
+control by locks.  They came to Memphis.  They passed the giant
+labyrinth.  They passed the three great pyramids.  They passed the
+Sphinx.  They came to the Great Delta.  They crossed to Ais.  They came
+to Joppa.  They wended toward Jerusalem in the cool of the dawn....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+She was in no wise impressed, somehow, by his ceremonial officers.
+They lacked dignity and were familiar.  Nor did Solomon's great
+captains please her.  They were not fighters; they were strategists.
+They played with companies as the Persians played chess with pawns.
+Her own men were her ideal of soldiers, copper-colored, muscled like
+panthers; they would crash into an opposing army like their native
+lightning, or they would die doggedly, their backs to the wall, their
+heads broken, the blood streaming into their eyes....  Nor did all the
+magnificence of the king's house please her....  There was too much,
+too quickly acquired, and jumbled, no composition.  The Egyptians had
+more magnificent things, and grouped them better.  Her eyes flickered
+from the hall to the pale young king on his throne.  Beside him,
+standing, was Nathan, the principal officer, and the king's friend, a
+great frame of a man, fanatical.  And there was silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Balkis, Queen of Sheba," she said and threw back her veil.
+Solomon cast an uneasy glance at the prophet by his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is come to prove you with hard questions," Nathan spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant Balkis all but laughed.  Behind her stood her fighting
+men, in exact ranks, rather contemptuous.  Around the hall the men of
+Judah and Israel fluttered.  Winked at, nudged one another.  "From
+Abyssinia she comes, to ask him questions.  See what a king we have!  A
+great people, we!"  It was so like a showman with a marvel to exhibit!
+"Ask him, ask him anything you like.  Go on.  Ask him."  The cadaverous
+prophet!  The white, young king.  A swift stab of pathos went into
+Sheba's heart.  Poor lad!  Poor king!  Poor mummer!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled in the corner of her veil.  She was supposed to ask
+questions, he to answer them.  Well, let the mummery go on!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King," her voice rang out, "what is sweeter than honey?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The love of pious children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what is sharper than poison?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The tongue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what is the pleasantest of days?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The day of profit on merchandise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what is the debt the most stubborn debtor denies not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The debt is death."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what is death in life?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is poverty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what is the disease that may not be healed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is evil nature."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was rather ashamed for herself and for him, and her great
+Ethiopians were puzzled.  But it was so evident that the poor white
+king's hold on his people was this trick of wisdom.  She must help him.
+She remembered quickly what history she knew of his folk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King," she asked, "what woman was born of man alone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eve was born of Adam."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what spot of lowland is it upon which the sun shone once, but
+will never again shine until judgment-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The bottom of the Red Sea, which clave asunder for Moses.  Then the
+sun shone on the bottom and will never again shine until judgment-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, what thing was it whose first state was wood and whose last
+life?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The rod of Aaron, which became a writhing serpent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She spread her slim copper hands, she bowed her sleek black head, as in
+homage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of
+thy wisdom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came and mine eyes had seen
+it, and behold the half was not told me; thy wisdom and prosperity
+exceedeth the fame which I heard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants which stand
+continually before thee and that hear thy wisdom!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And all through the king's hall went the flutter of his subjects: "Did
+n't I tell you?  Did n't we say so?  A fine king we 've got.  All the
+way from Abyssinia she came to prove him.  And he answered her
+everything.  A great king!  A fine king!  Make no mistake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She moved toward the troubled young king with a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would now commune with you on what is in my heart, great Solomon.
+Let us commune alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes probed her.  He saw her kindliness to him.  A fleeting little
+smile answered her smile.  He rose to meet her.  The giant prophet
+caught him by the wrist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My son, attend unto my wisdom," he whispered fiercely....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is
+smoother than oil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But her end is bitter as wormwood&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She caught his whispered words, and her proud head went up, her
+sloe-black eyes flashed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Balkis, Queen of Sheba."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant they regarded each other with hatred in their eyes.
+Sheba turned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men," she called to her bodyguard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The slim brown Ethiopes tensed their statue-like pose.  There was a
+<I>swish</I> as the short Abyssinian swords came from the oxhide scabbards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I said nothing of you, great Balkis," Nathan suddenly fawned.  "I
+spoke only of bad women.  You are a good woman, Balkis, a virtuous
+woman.  And a virtuous woman is like a crown, great Balkis, of gold,
+yea of fine gold&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+They went out alone into the garden of the figs and pomegranates.  The
+bright sun of early noon came down like a shower of gold.  The doves
+made their faint thunder.  The locust span his tiny wheel.  From afar
+off, where the temple was a-building, came the clink of hammer on
+stone, the thud of ax on wood, the yo-hoing, the grunts, the curses of
+the workmen as they hoisted a beam into place....  And Solomon was shy
+as a girl....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are wondering why I came," Balkis said.  "Will you sit down with
+me?"  They sat under a great cedar-tree.  The pigeons thundered.  The
+bees droned among the apricots.  The lizard flashed upon the wall.  "I
+wonder myself....  But you can tell me, Solomon.  You are so wise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Am I?"  There was a little note of bitterness in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are n't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," he said.  "I&mdash;I don't know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But all the questions that are put, you answer them.  All the matters
+of judgment you pass on.  Of course you are wise, Solomon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is easy, Balkis, very easy, that sort of wisdom, for Nathan, as far
+back as I can remember, has been dinning precepts and examples into my
+ears.  And at times, when things are difficult, comes a little
+inspiration, like a little unpremeditated bar on a musician's psaltery.
+And the tricks of reading a riddle are no more than the mason's tricks
+of arranging stones.  If the clouds be full of rain, they empty
+themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south or
+toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall
+be.  And if that is wisdom, then I have wisdom.  But I know not what is
+the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her
+that is with child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor Solomon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis, I wanted to go out with the young men, and to understand
+what they all understand and I do not understand: the way of an eagle
+in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; to hunt and fish with
+them and know the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.  But I never
+could, Balkis, for while still a boy Nathan made of me a man, an old
+wise man.  Woe to thee, O land, he prophesied, when thy king is a
+child, and thy princes eat in the morning!  So I 've always been a man,
+Balkis, a wise old man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear, poor Solomon!  Never were young."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never, dear Balkis, never.  I must never be young, never do a wild
+boyish thing.  Dead flies cause the ointment of an apothecary to send
+forth a stinking savor; so doth a little folly him that is in
+reputation for wisdom and honor.  O Balkis, the long wise days!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor Solomon!  Poor dear Solomon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis," he cried suddenly, "you came from afar to hear my wisdom,
+and you heard a little mouse-like noise.  And you wanted to commune
+with me on what was in your heart, and I 've shown you my own heart,
+that is like a troubled pool.  Madness is in my heart while I live, and
+after that I go to the dead.  O Balkis, all is vanity and vexation of
+spirit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush! hush dear Solomon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And very suddenly his body broke in sobs, and his dark head fell on her
+leaning shoulder.  There was a mist in her Arab eyes as she held him,
+as she patted him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, dear Solomon!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+And in the dusk of day, when the master masons and their helpers had
+gone, he brought her to the temple he was building to his god, the
+great temple that Hiram, the trader king of Tyre, was embellishing for
+the reward of twenty cities in the land of Galilee.  And Balkis's eyes
+flashed with anger at the cunning of the Phoenician king.  It was such
+a shame to take advantage of the boy!  Poor wise-foolish king!  He was
+like a child showing his toys.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See these brass bases, Balkis, with the borders of lions and oxen and
+cherubim.  And the brazen wheels at each base.  They say there are
+cunning brass-workers in India, but surely there is no more beautiful
+work than this.  Surely they cannot beat this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not, my dearest.  Of course not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And come with me, Balkis, to where the watchmen are, and I will show
+you marvels such as you never saw before: an altar of gold and a table
+of gold and ten candlesticks of pure gold with the flowers and the
+lamps and the tongs of gold; and bowls and snuffers and basins and the
+spoons and the censers of pure gold.  Come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They went toward the king's house.  On the way Solomon stopped suddenly
+and looked at his temple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis," he asked, "you have come through Egypt.  How much bigger is
+my temple than the pyramids and labyrinth?  I 've heard so much of
+them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bigger?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, how much bigger?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at the little building, twenty cubits broad, sixty cubits
+long.  Twelve paces one way, forty another.  For an instant laughter
+bubbled in her, but gave way to pathos, and her sloe-black eyes were
+wet again.  O poor lad!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it very much bigger than the pyramids, Balkis?" he asked eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, lots bigger.  Much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Balkis, you are crying.  Are you lonely?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, a little homesick," she lied again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He came toward her and kissed her, in kindness, but the touch of lips
+fired, startled them both, sent their blood pounding in the soft Syrian
+gloom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis!" his voice trembled.  "O Balkis!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Solomon!" she uttered softly.  "Dear Solomon!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Around the king's house the little winds of springtime hovered, the
+little moon of May was in the air.  Came the rustle of the grasses, and
+the minor of the frogs, and the barking of cub foxes.  All the
+constellations hung in a cloud and the sickled moon was in the
+west&mdash;stars and moon and purple night sky, like some rude mosaic.  And
+from the king's room came the pale gold of candles and the murmur of
+voices in exaltation.  And beneath the king's casement Nathan writhed
+in fear and anger and pain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis," came Solomon's voice, "you are wonderful.  You are like a
+company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, your neck with chains of
+gold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Solomon," her voice half whispered, half chanted, "a bundle of myrrh
+are you unto me.  My well beloved!  He shall lie all night betwixt my
+breasts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of
+Engadi."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Balkis, you are fair, my beloved; behold, you are fair, you have
+dove's eyes ... fair, yea, pleasant...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As the apple-trees among the trees of the wood, Solomon, so are you
+among the sons of man.  I sat down under your shadow with great
+delight, and your fruit was sweet to my taste.  O dear Solomon, your
+eyes are closing.  You are drowsy.  Sleep, heart.  O ye daughters of
+Jerusalem, I charge you by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that
+ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not sleepy, Balkis; I am only thinking.  O beloved, if we could
+only go away from here.  Go away together&mdash;rise up, my love, my fair
+one, and come away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is
+come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the
+tender grape give a good smell.  Arise my love, my fair one and come
+away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Solomon, if you only would," came Balkis's voice, pleading.
+"Listen, my beloved.  In Africa I have a great kingdom, and it could be
+greater did I want it so.  It is on a high mountain and its
+fortifications are the lightnings on the hills.  And from the hills my
+men can sweep down on all Africa.  And there is reverence for me from
+the giant Ethiops and from the pygmies of the warm forests.  Come with
+me, Solomon, come with me to a cooler, fairer kingdom.  In the lowlands
+there are vineyards, and the vines flourish, and the tender grapes
+appear, and the pomegranates put forth; there will I give thee my loves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of
+pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my
+beloved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Solomon, come to Africa.  Come to Africa with Sheba."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis, what of my people, my poor people?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They can come, too, Solomon.  There is welcome for them.  They crossed
+the Red Sea once; they can cross it again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But my temple, Balkis?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Solomon, listen.  I will set the Abyssinian millions against the
+Pharaoh of Egypt, and they will make Egypt a waste land, as they did
+once before.  And they will bring back the Egyptians in bondage, and
+the Egyptians will build you a temple, Solomon, a temple worthy of you,
+for the Egyptians are cunning builders.  They will exceed their
+pyramids.  For you I will conquer Egypt, Solomon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis, you are beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem.  But you
+are terrible, Balkis, terrible as an army with banners."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is nothing, Solomon.  That is the smallest gage of love.  O
+Solomon, I have found something in my heart.  I have found love.  Many
+waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown love; if a man
+would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be
+contemned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come with me, Solomon.  Make haste, my beloved.  Be like to a roe or a
+young hart on the mountains of spices.  Come to Africa."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He arose and paced the floor.  Without, Nathan could hear the troubled
+footsteps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid, Balkis.  I am afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of what, dearest one?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Afraid, just, Balkis.  Afraid of Nathan, afraid of the new strange
+land.  Afraid for the temple.  Afraid of God."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Afraid?  Do not be afraid, Solomon.  Awake, O north wind," she
+chanted, "and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices
+thereof may flow out.  Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his
+pleasant fruits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Solomon stood by the window in distress, eager, afraid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hiram, King of Tyre, will be angry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The King of Tyre," Sheba laughed, "will not be angry with me.  Hiram
+is shrewd.  He is a trader, not a fighting man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure, Sheba?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, certain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I will&mdash;then I will&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The voice of Nathan rose under him in an angry whisper:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a young man void of understanding, ... and there met him a
+woman subtle of heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she caught him and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto
+him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I have peace offerings with me....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works,
+with fine linen of Egypt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With her fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of
+her lips she forced him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as
+a fool to the correction of the stocks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare,
+and knoweth not it is for his life...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Balkis, do you hear anything?  Do you hear anything without the
+window?  Do you hear a hissing as of a serpent aroused?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hear nothing, Solomon.  I hear nothing but the little murmur of the
+trees.  Come from the window.  Come over here and kiss me with the
+kisses of your mouth, for your love is better than wine.  Put your left
+hand under my head, Solomon, and let your right embrace me&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you hear anything, Balkis?  Are you sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is nothing, Solomon, O white and ruddy, O chiefest among ten
+thousand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, there is nothing.  I thought for a moment&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the voice of Nathan came like the strokes of a sword:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... O King, attend to the words of my mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been
+slain by her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" went a long shudder from the king.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Solomon?  Does anything affright you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, Balkis."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then come over to me, Solomon.  Come where I can see your face.  Your
+countenance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.  Come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remember your father, David," came the voice beneath the window, "son
+of Jesse, turned from wisdom.  Remember how his chiefest joy, Absalom
+his son, died.  Remember how he stood against God, the prophet of the
+Lord, and the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even
+to the time appointed, three days' time; and there died of the people
+from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the angel of the Lord stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to
+destroy it....  Remember!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, dearest?  What is wrong?  Have I done anything to offend
+you, to hurt you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remember Samson, judge of Israel, and how he loved a woman in the
+valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah, and he told her all his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And remember his end, how the Lord was departed from him, and the
+Philistines took him and put out his eyes&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O-o-o-o-h!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A-a-a-a-h!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Solomon, dearest Solomon, why do you cry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;and he did grind in the prison house ... and make them sport...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a loud cry the young king burst from the room and fled down the
+corridors, his, feet pattering like the feet of foxes on the run, his
+heart crying out in sudden terror.  "Where are you going, Solomon?
+Where are you gone?" came the voice of the young queen.  "O head of
+most fine gold, O eyes of doves, O cheeks as a bed of spices, whither
+are you gone?  O lips like lilies, O hands as gold rings, why do you
+leave me?"  So all night long she cried, and wandered aimlessly.  "You
+called me your sister, your spouse, your love, your dove, your
+undefiled," she wept piteously, "and now you are gone."  She went
+through the garden, while Nathan crouched in the undergrowth.  "You
+were like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with
+all the powders of the merchant, and now you are gone."  She wandered
+through the dark streets.  "O locks that are curly and black as a
+raven, where are you now?"  And the dawn broke and the shadows fled
+away, and still she cried: "O Solomon, where are you, Solomon?  Make
+haste, my beloved!"  But he never came.  "Saw ye him whom my soul
+loveth?" she asked the watchman.  But they drove her away.  "O ye
+daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him, that I am sick
+of love..."  But he never came.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Without, there were the grunts of her men as they strapped the packs of
+the elephants, the snarl of camels as they rose to their pads and
+turned to bite at their loads, the shuffle of the troops as they lined
+for the long night march, the quick gruff orders of the captains, the
+canter of horses.  Within, Sheba stood very erect in the great hall.
+The poor white king writhed on his throne.  Nathan stood by his side,
+erect and afraid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I said&mdash;" Sheba's voice was quiet&mdash;"oh, you who were as my
+brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find you
+without, I would kiss you, I would not be despised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For I thought I was set as a seal upon your arm, and that your love
+was as strong as death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I rose and went about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I
+sought you, whom I thought my soul loved, but I found you not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they
+wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veils from me&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me, Sheba!"  Her eyes flashed.  Solomon quailed in his seat.  The
+prophet made a propitiatory gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, do not fear, Nathan."  Sheba smiled.  "I came not to conquer, but
+to find wisdom.  I found it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused an instant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Before I go, let me give you, Solomon, called the wise, some wisdom of
+the heart.  And you, Nathan the prophet, let me prophesy.  You might
+have had one woman, Solomon, to love you all your life, but the day
+will come when you will seek my face among a thousand women, and never
+have me.  You might have a temple that would have made the pyramids
+seem like outhouses, but one day your temple will be a little broken
+wall.  And your people might have been the conquerors of Africa, but
+one day they will be helots in the Babylonian land.  You have the
+wisdom of the shrewd and pious, Solomon, that can never meet the
+generous hand with the grateful heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned and swept out of the hall.  At the gates she stopped and
+bowed mockingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, live forever!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VIII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+All afternoon the east wind had been blowing, cold, bitter as aloes,
+and a great cloud-bank raced after the sun westward, until only a
+little space in the western horizon was clear where the sun went down.
+The voices of the land were stilled, the minute thunder of the pigeons,
+the whirring of crickets.  Nor had the leaves of the trees their lively
+murmur, but stood fast and flat, like set sails.  One could hardly
+believe that the winter was past and summer coming, for all was dreary,
+dreary....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Against the great red mushroom of the setting sun, the last of the
+homing caravan of Sheba showed.  In the mind's eyes of the young king
+and the old prophet as they stood by the unbeauty of stone and brick
+and gray mortar that was the unfinished temple, they could see the
+angry camels, the lumbering elephants, the dancing horses, the swinging
+men, and the brown comeliness of the young queen's handmaidens, the
+straight backs of her fighting men.  And the wind from the east blew
+through the land, blew through the heart of Solomon....  In a minute
+now they would disappear over the desert's edge.  All seemed somehow
+tragical, like sailors leaving a great stricken ship, or glory passing
+from the land of its abiding....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Nathan," pleaded the young king, "tell me she lied.  Tell me I
+shall not have a thousand women and be a bitter, loose old man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O King, you shall find a virtuous woman.  And her price will be far
+above rubies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will she be as kind as Sheba was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will arise while it is yet night, and give meat to her household,
+and a portion to her maidens....  She will consider a field and buy it:
+with the fruit of her hands she will plant a vineyard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will she be as well-favored, as beautiful as&mdash;as Sheba was?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the
+Lord, she shall be praised."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose so.  I suppose&mdash;you are right, Nathan, but&mdash;"  The last of
+the caravan disappeared over the edge of the desert, and as though it
+were accompanying them, being a friend to them, the sun disappeared,
+too.  A great coldness and darkness and dreariness came over the land,
+so that Solomon looked up in surprise.  There was no moon....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE PARLIAMENT AT THEBES
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+All around us, now, is the occult night of Egypt, and we sense that we
+are in a place we have known in dreams and desires, and perhaps seen a
+drawing of in some childhood's book.  Before us we sense&mdash;we do not
+see, so little light does the moon behind the rolling clouds give
+us&mdash;an immensity of sand.  In some places there are little hills; and
+in others billows as of the sea, and here a rude terrace, and there a
+minute cliff.  Everywhere is the sand; live sand, not dead.  And
+westward, we know, it rolls onward like the sea, through the width of
+Africa, through the Sahara, reaches Timbuktu, the secret city, and the
+jungle takes up the land, and rolls to the Gold Coast, where the
+Atlantic booms in great, curling surf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And south of us is Africa, too, the crags of Abyssinia, the great belt
+of Rhodesia, and the plains where Kaffirs dig for diamonds, and the
+great veldts the Boers have tamed, and Table Mountain, that old
+navigators know, and the cape they have called Good Hope.  And
+southward and eastward is the pearly haze of Madagascar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And north of us the desert slopes away to where Alexandria was, to
+where the still Mediterranean is, which has no tides, and Tyre and
+Sidon flourished, that now are dead; and Carthage of the Phoenicians
+was, whence black Hannibal set forth against the eagles of Rome&mdash;and
+was conquered and yet lives, so great his name is.  And here was the
+empire of the Moors, the slim bronze people who struck Spain in a great
+shattering wave, and from whom Charlemagne got glory in battle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All these are dead now, and the moon shines over dead cities, dead
+heroes, and great empires that are dead, and buried under shifting
+silver sands.  But the land we are in is not dead; eternal Africa,
+eternal Egypt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And where we are now, it is old, the events of history being like the
+trivialities of a summer day.  We sense that Egypt is older than
+Mohammed, whose revelation is law there now, and older than the Little
+Lord who fled hither from Palestine with Joseph and Mary, older than
+the painted kings who sleep in pyramids; older than the pyramids
+themselves; older than the Hebrews who helped build them; older than
+Moses, who revolted and used black magic against the Pharaoh of his
+time; older than the tradition of yellow shaven priests; older than
+Isis and Osiris whom they worshiped with polished ritual&mdash;older, and
+younger, than this; eternal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Above our heads now there is an occasional beam of the moon, and in
+front of us the plain of sand that extends to the little hillocks and
+minute cliffs the wind has made.  And back of us is the broad and
+shallow Nile, where we hear an occasional lap of a little wave, and a
+splash as of some small fish jumping.  And here and there are isolated
+palm-trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there are no men, anywhere, but there is a sense of men.  We know
+there are men in the cities to the north of us, men and women dancing
+in great blazing hotels, men on great liners going eastward through the
+canal De Lesseps made, men south of us at camp fires in the jungle, men
+west of us on caravans to Timbuktu.  But here, and near here, men there
+are none.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a pocket of clearness in the clouds for a second and the moon
+shines through, and we see on the plain before us such assembly of life
+as only Noah saw when he took the creatures of the world in seven by
+seven and two by two, on board his great ship.  In a great orderly
+gathering they are there, patient, silent.  The bears are there, the
+brown bear, and the little black bear.  And the moorland ponies, and
+the deer are there, great elks with horns like sails, and the little
+deer of parks, and they of the cat tribe, with sleek furs and green
+eyes, and the fox with his brush, and the lanky, wide-eyed hare, and
+the rabbit children do be loving.  They are all gathered there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the kine of the field are there, patient, stupid-looking.  And the
+great monster of the river, the hippopotamus, and the armored creature
+that has the horn on its nose.  And the last of the buffaloes.  And the
+great springing thing of Australia that carries its young in a pouch,
+it is there.  And the solemn sheep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And back of that is an infinity of little creatures, the furry little
+creatures of the woods, who run when approached.  They are there.  All,
+all are silent, patient, a little puzzled, one fancies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In front of this gathering, forward and a little apart, is a manner of
+deputation.  The lion, who pads around a little, and in whose eyes
+there is anger.  The great black and amber tiger, who is still but for
+the significant movement of the immense tail, and the elephant, that
+seems like some gigantic carven thing.  And the crocodile lies in the
+sand, like some black sea-beaten log.  And the polar bear is there with
+black dots for eyes.  And the horse is still as in a stall.  And next
+to the elephant the dog sits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And they are all there, gathered for some occult reason, in the night
+of Egypt, under the thin twilight of the clouded moon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And another beam of moonlight comes, and we see that the Angel of the
+Lord has appeared somewhence and stands before them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As we see the Angel of the Lord, one of the illusions of our childhood
+vanishes.  He is not a shining figure armed with terror and majesty.
+True, he has wings and a sword and a white robe, and is of stature
+above mortal.  But, on the other hand, he has a great red beard, and
+his fingers are gnarled.  There is something shy in his appearance, and
+kindly.  And about him there is something of disappointment.  One gets
+the impression that once he was a very great angel indeed, but in
+latter centuries he has drifted into a sort of back-water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he were a man and not an angel, with his red beard and gnarled
+fingers and shy ways, he might be an old-fashioned farmer who cared
+more for his land than for the price of corn, and who would allow no
+tractors or mechanical appliances on his place, still having faith in
+the firm hands of workmen, and the strength and canniness of horses.
+He is evidently embarrassed, and not quite at home, and it is easily
+seen that he is more accustomed to looking at the crack in a horse's
+frog, and tending sick ewes, and herding homeless dogs, than facing
+emotional tension such as seems to be present.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He comes forward shyly, his brow wrinkled in an embarrassed smile.  And
+the dog smiles back at him, opening a laughing mouth and wagging its
+tail.  And the horse gives a little whinny.  But the rest are silent.
+The elephant regarding him with a sort of kindly contempt, and the
+crocodile watching him with ophidian distrust.  But the lion is warm
+with anger and the tiger dangerously cold with it.  The great white
+bear is serious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Angel of the Lord speaks.  His voice is soft and his speech
+halting.  And we have a sudden chill of horror as we recognize his
+accent as Irish.  Not quite Southern Irish, and not distinguishably
+Northern Irish&mdash;neutral Irish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, this is an unusual thing, an out-of-the-way thing, I might
+say....  I ... I hope I see you all well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a rustle of the little creatures back of the deputation.  And
+in the circle before the angel the dog is wagging his tail, and the
+horse throwing up his head.  But silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I take it there is something on all your minds, so!  Well, let you
+speak up, now, and let me hear what it is.  It isn't the weather:
+that's elegant.  And it can't be the crops.  I was talking to the Angel
+of the Crops last night, and devil a better season has he seen since
+the night of the big wind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gets no answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's queer and shy you 've got all of a sudden.  And why should you be
+shy with me?  Sure there 's never anything come between us since I was
+put over you.  And have n't I always been your friend?  Let one of you
+speak up, now.  How about yourself?"  He turns to the lion.  "The king
+of beasts, they call you.  Let you be speaking, now, for the crowd."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All around us now is the occult night of Egypt.  Live sand and the
+little wind among the hillocks, and back of us the antique Nile.  Here
+first was magic.  And here first the half-gods were worshiped under the
+guise of beasts; of the cat and of the crocodile, and of others.  And
+here is the monument of the half-god, the Sphinx, that is woman and
+animal, beauty and terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as we listen, the beasts speak, and to our human mechanics the deep
+vibrations are translated into human sounds, and the voice of the lion
+is as the voice of some great one of our race speaking in anger.  And
+in the deep rumble we can hear thunder:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the place where I live by the great lake there is lately come a
+man."  So the lion!  "He is a trading man.  His legs are bandy.  He is
+rarely shaven.  In the morning his eyes are bleary.  He blinks at the
+green light of dawn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And in the green glade where he is come he has builded a house.  He
+has littered the ground with mangled boughs of trees, with papers, with
+tin cans which are emptied of his food.  And the winds cannot clean
+that place, nor the rains wash the obscenity away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And all day long this man sits behind his counter in the little shop
+and barters with the black man, giving knives and beads and cloth for
+the skins of the animals whom it is allotted to the black man to kill.
+And giving him white man's liquor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the white man drinks his own liquor, and when his heart is high
+with it, he takes his rifle and comes to seek me&mdash;for he has to seek
+me; I and all the clean things of the land avoid him, so little kin is
+he to us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if he kills me for his sport, my lioness will come and he will
+kill her, too, and what shall become of our little tawny cubs?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why should this man come into our clean land, and make unbeautiful the
+dells, and stalk me that he may boast to other drinking men: 'I have
+killed the king of beasts'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay!  Ay!"  The angel is disturbed.  "He does make the place look bad.
+And true for you, he does go after you.  I understand.  I understand
+fully, but&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now the tiger has arisen, and his speech comes sibilant, with a
+little snarl:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They who come up the Hooghly are not unshaved but clean.  They are
+precise, languid men.  They come for gain in the country.  They do not
+barter in shops, but gain comes to them.  They govern, and for being
+governed the brown men of India pay tribute and tax.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when the languid men from over the sea grow tired of governing,
+they go out to seek adventure.  They send out the brown Indian men on
+foot to rouse me from the jungle sleep.  And they follow with guns on
+our brother the elephant, and when I am driven into the open, and stand
+there dazed with the sun, they shoot at me from the back of our brother
+the elephant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And was it for this I was made, given great emerald eyes, given amber
+skin with great black stripes, given silken muscles, and claws like
+knives, to be driven out of my warm green jungle into the blinding sun,
+and be killed by languid men?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, you know what they say; if they did n't kill you, you 'd
+kill them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How many have I killed, except in defense?  Is it sport for me to
+leave the cool, moonlit glades, and come to the hot cities to kill men?
+If I want fighting, are there not the wild boar and my brother the
+elephant?  And if I want food, is man as succulent as the young kid?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, there 's a lot in that.  And what is your complaint?"  He turned
+to the great carven elephant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am the wisest, the strongest, the most dignified of all.  I live on
+the shoots of young trees, and raid sometimes the crops, but I kill
+nothing except in terror or defense.  And once they sought me out in
+the secret places for great ivory teeth, and there was great danger.
+And it was either kill or be killed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now they trap me with cunning.  Now there are helot elephants
+trained to decoy the brethren of the warm woods, and traps to hold us.
+And when they have made us fast they starve us cruelly.  And they bring
+us across waters and exhibit us, and the clown and the yokel pay their
+copper pennies to gaze at the wise and strong in captivity.  And some
+greasy man pouches the wages of our prison.  Was it for this we were
+made wise and kindly and strong?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The angel is embarrassed.  He looks right and left.  He turns in relief
+to the great white bear:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure, now, what complaint can you have?  There 's nobody going to
+shoot at you from the back of the elephant.  And there's no man going
+to open a shop where you are.  Begor, 't is few customers he 'd have
+barring the sea-gulls.  And whenever you get killed, 't is your own
+fault.  It's your curiosity brings you to where they can get a shot at
+you.  If you 'd stick around your icebergs you 'd be better off.  Sure,
+you lead the life of a lord's lady.  What brings you here at all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I come for the little seals, and our sister the whale.  They cannot
+walk.  And they are in great trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know.  I know.  Sure, my heart's just in chains for them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The seals huddle on the rocks with their young.  They huddle and
+tremble, and each sinister boat in the Arctic seas is a menace.  And
+the seas are wide, and the patrols are few."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know.  I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The black boats come, and the men with rifles."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, now, don't be talking!  Don't I know!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And our sister the whale skulks in black seas&mdash;she who once greeted
+the sun in the morning.  And now seldom appears&mdash;who once loved to bask
+like a cat.  She is haunted in her own ocean until she cannot show her
+steaming fountains.  And as a people, she is a slender people, and will
+soon die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A great and terrible loss, surely.  Sure, I 'm trying to forget, and
+you 're reminding me.  And you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no complaint," uttered the crocodile.  "They rarely kill me
+with guns.  They seldom capture me.  And there are always small black
+children bathing in the Nile.  And boats get upset often.  I have no
+complaint," he leered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know&mdash;" the angel is severe&mdash;"I never liked you.  And what use
+you are on this earth is more than I can see.  Do you know," he said,
+"I 've half a mind to hoof you back into the river.  I have so.  Now,
+here 's one has a complaint."  He turned to the horse.  But the horse
+shook its head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No complaint, and you the hardest-worked of them all!  And the rest of
+these lazy devils doing nothing but lolling around in the sun.  And
+you, my darling?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dog uttered a joyous bark.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have no complaints, either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except," the dog pleaded, "that they should n't muzzle me in the heat
+of the day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now, boys&mdash;" the angel was awkward with his hands&mdash;"I take it
+you 've all got a complaint to make against man.  You object, I infer,
+to his shooting at you with guns, except, as he is entitled to, in
+self-defense.  And I take it our friend the elephant also objects to
+being exhibited.  On the whole, you object to the present attitude of
+man.  Now, what do you want me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We want you," the lion said, "to have God make man stop attacking us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now&mdash;" the angel shifts from one foot to the other&mdash;"well, now,
+you 've touched on a very delicate situation.  On all subjects, of
+course, you 'll find God kind&mdash;I might say, to a degree.  But the
+subject of Man is just a wee bit touchy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God, you know, is very much interested in Man.  He thinks a lot of
+man, and He is very much inclined to let man have his own way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So whether He 'd listen to a complaint against man or not, I don't
+rightly know.  Personally, between me and you, I think it might be
+dangerous to put it that way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I 'll tell you what I 'll do.  I 'll wait until some fine day when
+they tell me He 's in good humor, when He's pleased about Man having
+thought out some new fine scheme, or made a discovery, and then I 'll
+tackle Him, nice and easy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I 'll take it up some day, and I 'll see what I can do.  I 'm
+sure if I can get Him in a good humor, I can do something.  Will that
+satisfy you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will not," said the animals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, what do you want me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We want you," the tiger's sibilant purr came, "to go from us to God
+now, to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Och! have sense!  You don't know what you 're asking.  I suppose you
+think I 've only got to knock at the door and ask God to come out and
+talk it over, and offer Him a pinch of snuff, maybe, and ask Him how
+the weather 's agreeing with Him.  Do you know this wee earth is only
+one of a million?  Of course you can't comprehend that, being only
+animals and having no reason."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is something like a snort from the elephant.  The Angel of the
+Lord ventures a timid glance in that direction, but says nothing.  The
+angel is rather in awe of the elephant, as a mother might be of a
+genius child.  He switches to a different point:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besides, I suppose you think there are only a few angels of us in
+it&mdash;myself and the Angel of the Changing Seasons, and the Angel of the
+Growing Crops, and the Angel of the Rivers and Streams, and the Angel
+of the Five Oceans.  Well, let me tell you, there's archangels, and
+there's powers and dominions, and cherubim and seraphim, and God knows
+what else.  And there's angels you never heard of: there's the Angel of
+the Progress of Education, and there 's the Angel of Economic
+Conditions, and the Angel of Atomic Energy.  All very clever
+fellows&mdash;geniuses, you might say.  And there 's the Angel of Arts and
+Crafts, a sloppy-looking lad I would n't be caught talking to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And there 's English angels, all very superior, and Italian angels,
+slick as be-damned; and Russian angels are always sighing and groaning
+and drinking tea; and American angels, brisk lads would convince a
+dying man he was the devil and all for strength and energy.  And me
+nothing but a poor sort of fellow that knows nothing but animals; you
+see, I 'd better be keeping my mouth shut in that kind of assembly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll tell you what I will do.  I 'll get through my work early, and
+contrive to hang around the squares and gardens of heaven, and any one
+of these days the Grand Man Himself will be passing by and He 'll see
+the glint of my old red whiskers, and He 'll stop the archangels and
+the powers and dominions, and come over, so kindly He is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Where have you been hiding yourself, Michael John?' He 'll say.  'And
+how's all your care?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'They 're fine, Sir.  They 're grand,' I 'll say.  'Sure, 't is to the
+queen's taste they are&mdash;barring a wee bit of trouble that's not worth
+mentioning.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'And, sure, what's troubling you, my poor lad?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"''T is not worth troubling your Deity about.  'T is not so!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Out with it now, Michael John!' Himself will say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"''T is that my little people, Sir, do be worrying hard that man is
+after them a bit strong, and if Yourself would just direct him to be a
+wee bit easy'&mdash;and I 'll tell Him what you all say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is n't that the jewel of a plan?  Is n't that the great scheme
+entirely?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We think it's rotten!" champed the crocodile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that's all I can do," the angel told them.  "If you 've got a
+better plan&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have decided," the lion rumbled, "that if you could do nothing, we
+could.  We can stalk man as he stalks us.  We will not wait for him to
+come out; we will descend upon him.  We will lie in wait for him in the
+way.  I shall come to the villages with my kind and the spotted
+leopards that purr like the rumbling of drums, and the striped hissing
+snakes; and the rhinoceros shall lumber through the streets, and the
+great river-horse shall no longer avoid his frail boats but seek them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And my brother the elephant will crush him beneath his terrible
+knees," the tiger snarled, "and trample his little houses.  And the
+wild boar with tusks like knives will strike at him from the ground.
+And from the jungle I will come forth with the moon, and when dawn
+comes there will be wailing, if any are left to wail, and the small
+winged things of the jungle will assault him night and day, and there
+will be terror through the land."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And there will be terror through the sea," the white bear prophesied.
+"Our sister the whale will no longer flee but fight, and the sails of
+ships will quiver and the bulwarks give.  And we will push icebergs in
+the paths of iron ships.  The millions and millions of herring and cod
+will help.  And the swordfish will founder the life-boats.  And out of
+the gray-green depths of the sea the devil-fish will arise, his long,
+seeking tentacles over the gunnels&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, childer, childer dear!" the angel implored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And our cousins the birds will help us," the lion took up the litany.
+"The eagle and the hawk in their strength, and even the little sparrows
+in their number.  They will buffet with wings, they will peck with
+their sharp beaks, the innumerable folk of the air."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And from the North," the tiger promised, "the wolves will come out
+with their red eyes, their slavering fangs, and the fox will revolt,
+with his teeth sharp as a dog's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the things of the field will revolt," the bear went on, "the
+patient kine, the sheep and goats, and the vibrations of battle will
+put panic on the horse so that he will smash his traces with his hoofs,
+and smash men's heads.  And the turmoil will craze the dog, so that he
+will attack those he loves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake, children dear, will you stop breaking my heart!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Death and terror on the land!" prophesied the lion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Death and terror on the sea!" promised the great white bear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dears, will you let me put sense at you?  Will you listen to me a
+moment?" the angel pleaded.  "'T is for your own sakes I ask.  Will you
+just listen?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What will become of you if you do all this?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you know that man will come against you with all his weapons and
+mechanical contrivances, his poison gas and his torpedoes, and wipe you
+off the face of your own earth?  Childer dear, you have no idea of the
+terrible fellow he is at all.  Myself, angel and all as I am, when I
+see some of those fellows coming hell-for-leather in their motor-cars,
+I leap like a hare out of their way, I do so.  And oftentimes I 'm
+shaking in the legs for hours after it.  I don't mind telling you.  He
+'ll kill you surely, childer dear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 'll kill us anyway," fluted the elephant.  "What matter to-day or
+to-morrow or a century from now?  We die.  What of the Irish elk, with
+horns like banners, so proud in his green pastures?  What of the great
+buffalo, lord of the plains?&mdash;where is he?  If we die, let us die
+together, fighting shoulder to shoulder!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besides, maybe it's worse than man you 'd have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is worse than man?"
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+"Maybe God Himself would come down against you, maybe," the angel's
+voice falls to a sacred whisper; "maybe He will uncover His face!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a movement of awe, or terror among the animals.  The silent
+multitude back of the speakers rustles like leaves.  The lion speaks:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even that we will brave, if we cannot have justice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a little while they look at one another in awed tension.  The
+animals are frightened, the angel is frightened.  One would think they
+were terrified by their temerity, and were awaiting the avenging
+thunder of God.  The angel plucks up courage.  He gives a little
+nervous laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, here we are, my dear little people, making fools of ourselves as
+usual; letting our feelings run away with us.  You 'd think it was at a
+political meeting you were, with you giving out manifestos and
+ultimatums, and wanting to die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us get down, now, to facts.  Let us examine what material we have,
+and draw deductions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were all agreed that we are here by the wisdom of God, and being
+here in that wise, are subject to his wishes in every way.  Even old
+Go-by-the-ground&mdash;" he looks at the crocodile&mdash;"knows that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, from what I 've heard from the angels who are higher up,&mdash;from
+them, let me tell you, that are absolutely on the inside,&mdash;God designs
+to make out of man the perfect being.  He intends to combine your
+bravery&mdash;" he turns to the lion&mdash;"and your wisdom&mdash;" to the
+elephant&mdash;"with your beauty"; he is addressing the tiger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about me?" champs the crocodile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Och, be damned to you!  Man," he goes on didactically, "is essentially
+a creature of progress.  He is the only being that builds houses&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the background comes a shrill squeak from the beaver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean houses with rooms&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is the angry droning of bees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I mean is this: houses with fireplaces and pots and pans and what
+not.  None of us will deny," he finishes lamely, "the enormous progress
+of man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I deny it," the lion stormed.  "Can I forget the great black armies of
+the South, the glistening men with the silver armlets and the short
+keen spears?  Not even of me were they afraid, those!  Their drums
+resounded through veldt and plain, They asked only of the earth what
+they needed for their good.  And when they hunted they hunted fair.
+They matched their strength against our speed.  And their knowledge
+against our knowledge.  And at night they sang and they danced beneath
+the moon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now they are farm servants to the men who come overseas.  They are
+not clean, as they once were.  Their bodies that once were naked and
+glistening are caked with mud and covered with rags.  And some of them
+are driven into the bowels of the earth, and the sunlight and the
+moonlight they were born to is kept from them.  And they dig diamonds
+for men who are not satisfied with the luster of stars.  And they who
+once fought me in the open with a spear now skulk with a gun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember an India that was," the tiger snarled, "a land of rajahs
+and temples, of brown dancing girls and men who played little flutes.
+They grew the green sugar-cane, and cotton they might spin on great
+wooden wheels.  And their smiths hammered brass into strange antique
+shapes.  And they worshiped God with singing and dancing in cool
+temples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are the rajahs now, that once were the wonder of the earth, but
+little helot princes?  And the ranees&mdash;the cinnamon-colored queens with
+the minute silver bells upon their bud-like toes&mdash;but despised native
+women?  Are the bazaars filled with the quaint work of smiths?  No, but
+with the meretricious trinkets of the West.  And black-coated men seek
+to turn them from native immemorial gods.  And the machine that throws
+pictures the mummers make, fights against the music and the dancing and
+the temple bells.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The beauty I stand for is passing away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In Burma, whence I come," said the elephant, "there are jungles deeper
+than the jungle of Africa, or the Indian jungles.  Great mossy trees,
+and painted flowers, and great brown rivers rolling to the sea.  And
+the men there are beautiful as women, and the women beautiful as
+flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And once they paddled down the great brown river in glistening black
+canoes.  They wore great gaudy sashes and had a flower in their teeth
+or a flower in their hair.  Under the shadow of the great trees they
+paddled.  And when they saw me they made reverence, saying, 'Our lord,
+the elephant!'  On little reeds they made sweet, plaintive music.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now the great ancient trees are being cut down, and floated on the
+bosom of the hurt brown rivers.  And the peace of the jungle is
+disturbed with the cough of the motor-boat, and oil is heavy on the
+warm jungle smells.  And the men, beautiful as women, are clothed in
+soiled white garments; the rounded child-like bodies of the brown women
+chafe under a huddle of clothes.  And when I am observed, the white man
+asks, demands, the help of the little brown men to hunt me, to whom
+they once did reverence, and I seem to hear no more sweet, plaintive
+music.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From the quiet river I have seen the painted barges of the Pharaohs
+move along under the sweeps of the negro slaves.  Color and majesty and
+dignity.  And the shaven priests chanted their litanies at the change
+of the moon.  And from the Sahara the desert tribes brought tribute and
+treasure to Egypt, the men with the white horses and the black tents.
+And the nodding dromedaries and camels and their tinkling bells.  And
+the kings raised their pyramids, and the multitude of men like ants
+listened at sunrise to the great masonic prayer.  And they left the
+Sphinx to denote their mystery.  And Cleopatra, who was Lilith reborn,
+played with Rome for a doll.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All these things have I seen: the magic of great Moses, and the flight
+of the Little God of Galilee; the perfumed Pharaohs; the sinister
+yellow priests; the gnarled masons at their secret prayers; and
+Cleopatra brown as a berry, magnificent as jewels, venomous as a snake;
+and the sculptor at work on the Sphinx.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now tourists unwrap the great kings, and hucksters chaffer where
+once the trains of the prince-merchants of Tyre passed, and we shall
+never see a Cleopatra any more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I am not complaining.  Men do not swim as well as in the elder
+days, nor handle a boat as surely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know nothing of painted Pharaohs," said the great white bear, "nor
+anything of Indian queens.  In the North are neither kings nor masons,
+but day and night and ice, and a little people.  In summer is the great
+sun, white light, and grass that is green for a little, and the thunder
+of breaking bergs, and in winter no sun but the flaming aurora and the
+white illimitable miles!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the swarthy little people were happy then.  In the long nights
+they sang, and they bowed to the gods in boulder and stream, and set
+out in the little kayaks on the Arctic seas to hunt the great solemn
+walrus, or they set off in sledges through the pathless wastes.  They
+were a brave people, a healthy people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And came the boats hunting our sister the whale, and the whales taught
+the little swarthy people progress, and everywhere now they are cunning
+and degraded and crusted with sin, and a great plague makes them spit
+blood, and waste to nothingness, and die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They all looked at the horse, but the horse was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look back in the folds of your memory," the lion prompted.  "Look back
+well!  Can you not remember the great races in the Roman circus?
+Listen a little!  Can you not hear the trumpets of Agincourt?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you, little brother&mdash;" the bear swung his ponderous head toward
+the dog&mdash;"was there not a time when you lay before a fire in a
+rush-strewn hall?  And now the houses are too little.  They tell me&mdash;I
+do not know.  And did you not once run barking joyously beside man on
+his horse?  And now horses are out of fashion, are they not, little
+comrade?  And the cars are too fast for your short legs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is another silence, and the angel looks at them piteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish to my God I had some of them clever fellows here could argue
+with you.  I never was much good in an argument, anyway, never having
+had the education.  But let me tell you there 's angels could prove to
+you you 're all wrong.  I wish they 'd come here and talk to you, but I
+don't suppose they 'd care much about us and our wee affairs.  But&mdash;but
+how about music," he hazarded, "and poetry?  Ay, and poetry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As to music&mdash;" the elephant threw up his trunk in a sneer&mdash;"what music
+can he make comparable to the birds of summer&mdash;the sun going down, and
+each bird with its separate song, blending into a gently-colored
+symphony, and the chime of the waves with it, and the rustle of the
+branches in the sundown breeze?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, but poetry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will need poetry," thundered the lion, "more poetry than can be
+ever written, to equalize the making ugly of earth.  The great cliffs
+shamed by mean houses, and the splendid glades ruined that a train may
+pass.  And the mouths of rivers spoiled by the slag of mills.  And
+great noble trees hacked down.  How many an epic to pay for a great
+forest dying, shepherd?  How many a lyric for a tree where little
+trusting birds had their home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The angel throws out his hands abruptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have me," he says.  "You have me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He braces with decision, rises to his full height, and suddenly there
+is nobleness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, which is it to be?" he asked.  "Will you follow my plan, or do
+you insist I go immediately?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We insist."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pauses an instant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well.  I 'll go," he says.  "I 'll go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looks all around the gathering.  In spite of his decision, and his
+bracing, there is a great emotion brewing in him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, before I go, let me tell some of you something.  Do you,
+Philip&mdash;" he turns to the bear&mdash;"be getting back North as fast as you
+can.  You poor fellow, you must be murdered with the heat entirely, and
+you with the Arctic furs on.  You 'll catch your death here.  And as
+for you," he warns the crocodile, "don't be obstinate, there 's a good
+fellow!  Keep to the water, and you 'll be all right.  It's only when
+you get out, they can get after you.  And my little friends the
+beavers&mdash;where are they?  Childer, can you hear me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what's all this about?" asks the elephant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just for fear I 'm not coming back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why aren't you coming back?" the lion growls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Och, it's just a notion.  Are the beavers there at all, at all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, just a moment!"  The tiger is on his feet.  "I want to hear more
+of this.  What do you mean by notion?  You aren't thinking of leaving
+us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a quick commotion, a little shudder among all the animals in
+the background.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, now&mdash;" the angel is embarrassed&mdash;"it's a hard errand I have
+before me, and what will be at the end of the chapter no one knows.  I
+to be arguing with the Great Man, and demanding your rights, and He to
+be losing His temper with me&mdash;there 's no knowing.  So to be on the
+safe side, I 'll just say good-by to you now.  Many 's the pleasant
+hour we 've known and springtime coming, and many's the little day we
+'ve spent together and winter roaring through the chilly air."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But He never loses His temper, does he?  He 's always mild."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, childer dear, ye little know!  You all know the Black Man, and
+when you get the cold wind of his coming you scurry away.  He was an
+angel once, the greatest of them all.  Lucifer, they called him, so I
+'ve heard old angels say, and the Hebrew or something for Him who does
+be bearing light, such a gorgeous angel he was.  But one day he and
+some of his lads began to argue with the Great Man, and before the
+words were half out of their mouths they were tumbling through the blue
+spaces of the stars, condemned to eternal hell-fire.  Sure, you see
+them yourselves on Hallowe'en, and them roaring up and down the world,
+and screeching fit to split the sky."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A moan of terror ran through the massed animals.  The dog raised his
+head and howled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the wee half-god we all know, him with the horns of the goat, that
+does the piping in the valleys of spring&mdash;sure, he was an angel once.
+But something went contrary on him, and now he dare n't show his face
+on heaven or earth, but hides in the branches as wild as a squirrel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And a little shudder of pity arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, and there was others.  There was a crowd of reckless fellows in
+the days before the flood&mdash;or after it; I don't know which&mdash;and they
+came from heaven to court the daughters of men, such grand women they
+had in those days.  And the Lord God heard of it, and He stood up and
+looked at them, and he said just one word.  They 've never been heard
+of since.  One minute they were there, and the next was emptiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind you, I 'm not saying anything like that will happen to me, for
+Himself has always been kindness to me.  It's always 'How are you,
+Michael John?' and 'Don't you ever take a rest at all?' and 'Sometime I
+'ll have to take a day and come down and see yourself and the wee
+ones!'  But just, if I don't come back, don't think I 've taken a
+better job.  Sure, I 'd never desert you, my wee darlings.  It's just
+maybe I 'm getting a wee bit of discipline."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think&mdash;" the elephant seemed husky in the throat&mdash;"your own plan
+might be best&mdash;to wait for an opportunity and just suggest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better say nothing at all," growled the lion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, childer dear; I 'd better just go ahead.  I will confess it was
+timid of me not to go in the first place.  It was thinking of my old
+skin I was, and I should be ashamed of myself.  Sure, there 's no
+disgrace in asking for fair play, and you 've been sorely tried.  I 'll
+go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, no!" wailed the animals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, your own plan was wise," the elephant insisted.  "If anything
+happened to you, what would become of us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, what would become of us?" the little ones wailed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you honestly think my own plan's wiser?  You 're not saying that to
+save me from trouble?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're not," the lion said.  And "Of course not," added the tiger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just slip in a word when you can," from the elephant.
+</P>
+
+
+<P>
+"Honestly, now, it would be best."  The angel was relieved.  "I can
+talk about your loyalty; and, sure, I can remind him of the kine that
+gave shelter to the Wee Relative in Bethlehem, and the donkey that was
+proud to carry His weight; and I 'll remind Him, too, that I 've never
+asked a favor yet, and if He could just see His way&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," the elephant thought aloud, "I 've got to be getting back to
+Burma."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm going your way," said the tiger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's nothing to keep me up further," said the lion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm very much obliged to you all&mdash;" the angel was abashed with
+emotion&mdash;"for not insisting.  And it's lucky I am," said he, "to have
+decent beasts to deal with and not man.  For man would have insisted I
+'d go, and not given a tinker's curse what would have happened me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, man!" sneers the great white bear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake Philip, will you be getting home out of this, before I
+have you sick on my hands!  And as for you, Go-by-the-Ground, get back
+to the river or I 'll sink my foot in your tail.  Go on now!  Be off
+with you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a <I>shuff-shuff-shuff</I> over the sand as the beasts scatter,
+going east, north, west, and south.  The angel stands watching them as
+they go.  Only the horse and the dog remain, the horse nudges him on
+the shoulder with its mouth, the dog puts a cold nose into his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Och, my darlings!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DELILAH, NOW IT WAS DUSK
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Beneath her balcony, in the delicate spring night, the life of Gaza
+flowed gently as a calm river.  Eastward the green hills of Canaan
+were, Delilah knew, and in imagination she could see the soft blue down
+of the budding corn, the clouds of flowers, the piping green of the
+vines, the darkness of the olive-trees.  And in the west a little moon
+was, while as yet the sun had not gone down, a little blade of silver,
+like one sweet note on a flute.  It made one wish to be young again, to
+be a child....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lamps of Gaza were not lighted.  None was eager to go within, and
+below there was still the jingle of camel bells, the padding of
+donkeys, the nervous clatter of some horse's hoofs as a desert rider
+sought to guide his mount in the filled streets.  Languid, supercilious
+Egyptians strolled in the provincial ways; desert men, their eyes
+suspicious as hawk's, moved warily hither and thither; her own
+countrymen, the squat, cheerful Philistines, half townsman and half
+mariner, walked briskly; mysterious, aloof Phoenicians; an occasional
+strange seaman from Gaul, come eastward with his ship for a cargo from
+Asia Minor; and now came the "Hough-hough!  Hough-hough!" of herdsmen,
+and dappled kine went by, belabored with sticks, and as she looked,
+Delilah saw the group of Israelites who owned them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the street they saw her, and their eyes blazed fury.  They pointed
+her out to one another, with quick, wide gestures, and she could hear
+the gutturals of their denunciation....  Oh, yes, they remembered
+Samson, after twenty years!  Remembered him almost as well as she!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+She had been thinking of him only that minute, too.  It was strange,
+but at this time, each year, his memory, his image came to her, so that
+she could say in winter, "On the second moon of spring there will be
+flowers, and an air like wine, and the Mediterranean fishers will
+overhaul their gear, and I shall think of Samson," and she was the only
+person in Philistia who could remember him clearly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some old magistrate perhaps, or captain of civic guard might, their
+memory jogged, recall the Hebrew rebel, and say: "Wasn't there a Samson
+once, a great red-bearded man, who was supposed to have killed a lion
+with his bare hands?  Or perhaps I am thinking of some of the black
+African giants, wrestlers or circus men.  I don't know.  But I seem to
+recall the name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And about him, among his own people, had arisen a great myth, as will
+arise among desert peoples and they telling stories by the fire.  The
+old guerilla captain had become a national hero to them, and they had
+magnified his raids out of all proportion to reality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And when they thought in the desert tents of the destiny of their
+people, and longed for the day when the then rich southwestern country
+would be theirs by either conquest or penetration, they said, "If
+Samson had lived...  If Samson had n't gone wrong..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Delilah they cursed bitterly, even after twenty years, and they saw
+her not as Samson's wife, but as some strange perfumed woman who had
+enticed him and sold him to his enemies.  Even the little children were
+taught to curse her.  And all she had done was to adore him, and love
+him, and to care for and pity him when he had grown old and blind and
+astray in the head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh well, what did it matter what they said!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Three men there had been in her life: her childhood's sweetheart in her
+native valley of Sorek, the slim lad who was to have married her and
+settled down in the valley to lead the idyllic life of country lovers.
+But he had gone to Egypt, and been infested with ambition, and they had
+grown apart and never married.  And now in Egypt he was a suave
+administrator, very close to the Pharoah, a great man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there had been Samson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there was her present husband, small, hawk-eyed, taciturn, the
+greatest of the Oriental sea-captains, who knew the Mediterranean as
+other men knew the lake of Galilee, who had passed through the straits
+known to the Greeks as the pillars of Hercules, and been north to
+Ibernia, the land of forests and savage, hairy Celts, and bearded druid
+priests with sinister eyes, and to other lands where the Phoenicians
+had great tin mines.  A quiet, efficient man, he!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To her husband she gave admiration and a fond devotion.  To the boy of
+her youth she had given her heart in a burst of virginal music.  But to
+the rough Hebrew rebel, a stranger to her race, in religion, in every
+mode of life, she had given an immensity of love....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+In her face now, that once had a proud, singing beauty, were dignity
+and power and wisdom.  Strands of gray in her hair and shadows near her
+eyes.  In all Gaza, in all Philistia, there was not one to refuse her
+reverence, excepting, of course, the strange gipsy people who contended
+she had ruined their champion and lord.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A queer people, they!  A strange, inimical folk, who had come into
+Canaan out of Egypt, headed by magicians who had cloven the Red Sea&mdash;so
+they claimed&mdash;and their hand was against the dwellers in Canaan.  For
+centuries now they had been an irritating minor political problem, and
+when the question of relations with Egypt sagged, or there was a lull
+in the discussion of the great trade route to the East, the matter of
+the Israelites always arose.  Here they had harried a town; there
+squatted on a public common.  And war on a large scale was impossible
+against them.  Send armies to subdue them, and they became separate
+desert units, like any other tribes.  And before the armies had
+returned to their garrisons, the Israelites were back.  The
+Philistines, with their suave Egyptian tolerance, could only smile.
+What could one do against a people of that kind?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For centuries now, they had remained turbulent, cunning, breakers of
+the peace, with Philistia rather contemptuous of them, rather proud,
+not unaffectionate.  No nation in the world had a problem quite like
+them.  And the more kindly, more tolerant Philistia became, the greater
+the hatred of the Israelites.  For years they would dwell at peace in
+Philistine cities, then a strange national pique would come on them,
+and they would march out into the desert chanting to their harsh God,
+blaming themselves cruelly for having lived in comfort, and prophets
+would arise among them who said bitter things, lashing them with a
+white fury, and agitators would preach war, and it was then Philistia
+had to be careful and send troops out, for one never knew the moment
+that the young men would make a raid on a township or an estate of
+vineyards.  A sharp clash, a little guerilla warfare, and all would be
+over.  Wise old politicians claimed that every time the Israelites were
+defeated, they gained a little more ground, but politicians were always
+pessimists.  And, also, what matter if they did?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delilah remembered that as a child in her father's house in the valley
+Sorek she had been brought up to the belief that all Israelites were
+riotous, dissatisfied.  They were splendid herdsmen, but beyond that
+they had no virtues.  And the little Hebrew children were looked down
+upon, because they were so poor.  Oh! the cruel snobbishness of little
+children!  A race apart, an inferior race, Delilah thought in her
+youth, and had smiled at the thought of their crude, melodramatic god,
+of whom they walked in fear.  Their god was so limited, so concrete.
+None of the symbolism of Daigon, half man and half fish, whom the
+Mediterranean sailors thanked when the great silver draughts weighed
+down their nets; none of Baal, god of the sun, the fecund divinity who
+increased the herds of kine, and whose rays nurtured the soil and
+brought forth the sweet blue grass; none of the grace of Ashtoreth, the
+goddess of the dusky night, the terror and the delight and the mystery,
+the goddess of the ripe breasts and great passionate eyes....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Delilah viewed them with little interest and not a little contempt,
+a turbulent, annoying, ignorant, clever people; their quaint folk-songs
+and dances, their peculiar religious revivals, their passionate
+hatreds...  Undependable&mdash;that is what they were.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Came her youth and her growing into womanhood....  She wondered
+sometimes if he of her young days, for all his closeness to the Pharaoh
+of Egypt, his Egyptian palace, his Egyptian wife, ever remembered the
+warm green days of Sorek, and how they had grown together from fifteen
+to twenty-three.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing had ever been said between them of marriage, but it was
+accepted by them that they would marry, as it was accepted that the sun
+shines, and with night come the stars.  They might have been two girls
+together, or they might have been two boys, so sweet was the friendship
+between them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The adventure of life unclosing itself came to them together&mdash;all the
+beauty of the world, the wild smiling flowers, the sun dropping over
+the hills, the clamor of birds in spring as they raided the seeded
+fields, the little fish that jumped in the pools when the winds stilled
+and evening came&mdash;all that was a tremendous bond.  Even now when she
+thought of places in the valley of her childhood she could picture them
+only as background for his calm young face.  They seemed natural, the
+blossoming of apple-trees and her young lover's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Delilah's dreams&mdash;five years of dreaming, of the governing of a
+house, and the regiment of maid-servants, of little children.  Five
+years dreaming!  And he had gone into Egypt and had never come back.
+Only stories returned, of his success, of his offices, of his wife....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had thought, being a young woman then, that what was killed with
+such a tremendous shock was her love, but she knew now, now that she
+was nine-and-forty years, that what had died was a dream.  She had been
+shocked, disoriented, and her life, which had been so carefully
+planned, suddenly had no more meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had made a woman of her, though, and made her proud.  She must have
+something to do, to think about.  Love and all thoughts of love she put
+aside.  In order to escape from herself she began to study people,
+questions of the day, this, that.  It was probably the woman loving the
+underdog that turned her eyes on the question of the poor Hebrew,
+rather than to the glory of Egypt, or the power of the merchant cities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She became their friend, and they came to know her.  Probably they
+robbed her a little, but the cost was so small compared to the luxury
+of escape....  All her friends smiled at her hobby and spoke of the
+Israelites as "Delilah's Hebrews," and they wondered how a woman of her
+looks and standing should bother with these things.  Why did n't she
+get married, they asked?  Or was she becoming queer?  One of these
+strange women who took more interest in public affairs than a home.  So
+many of them were becoming that way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Delilah only smiled.  They were her anodyne.  She liked their
+strange folk-dances; their wailing, nostalgic songs.  And their
+legends&mdash;there was about them a quaintness and simplicity she
+loved&mdash;Adam and Eve in the garden; the story of Noah and his ark; the
+naïve legend of Babel; and the newer history of the leader who had been
+found by the Egyptian princess in the bulrushes&mdash;what was his name?
+Moses!  That was it....  How simple they were, how refreshingly simple,
+the dear things!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+It had often seemed to her a strange thing, as she sat thinking, how
+all one labors to learn passes easily away, and what one feels remains,
+welcome or no.  All the book-learning of her early years had gone, but
+there would never go the memory of her first blushing kiss, and though
+it was six-and-twenty years since he had gone from her life, yet the
+thought of the Philistine boy who was now a grandee of Egypt&mdash;that
+remained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, likewise, all she had learned of the Hebrews was gone; now a
+legend, now a saying would come back to her, some proverb or a piece of
+ritual, but like a bar from a tune one has forgotten.  But everything
+she felt, everything she had known of great Samson remained with her.
+One learns things and one lives things.  The things written in the head
+fade out and die, but the words on the heart bite deeper and deeper....
+She could remember every kiss he had given, the immense madness he had
+evoked....  O God, was it possible that she, so calm now, so respected,
+so wise, had once shaken like a leaf at his voice?  Her knees had
+trembled; her heart had fought in her breast like a caged bird; her
+throat had gone dry....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before she met him, she knew him by repute, a huge, turbulent man of
+immense strength, who had often been in trouble with the Philistine
+authorities....  In the tribal troubles, some years before, his name
+had been very prominent.  He had married a Philistine girl in Timnath,
+and there had been a riot at the wedding, over a question of dowry, or
+something of the kind, and some of the girl's Philistine relations had
+been killed.  A sort of vendetta had arisen and Samson had declared war
+against the nation.  He had proceeded to burn the corn stacked in the
+fields; there was a strange rumor that he had captured an immensity of
+foxes and, tying burning brands to their tails, had loosed them among
+the harvest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, of course, from a family quarrel it had become a national affair
+and Samson was proscribed.  Prodigious stories were told of his
+strength and valor, of his defeating patrols single-handed, and
+refuging on the rocks of Etom.  The Hebrews were asked to give him up
+to authority, and brought him to Lehi bound.  But there he burst his
+cords, such immense strength had he, and escaped after slaying twenty
+men in a hand-to-hand fight.  Then he had become a bandit of the hills
+on whose head a price was set.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Around him a romance grew, as will about all mountain chiefs, to which
+Samson lived up most gallantly.  Careless of disguise, careless of
+danger, he had come, with his great red beard and his hair floating to
+his hips, into Gaza itself once, to see a woman.  The watchmen were
+told, and the city gates were locked while they searched for him, but
+he crashed through the gates with his terrific shoulders and made his
+way to Hebron.  It was said he carried parts of the ironwork with him
+to make weapons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All this had happened years before, and all the border warfare was
+over, and Samson was no longer a proscribed bandit but a great man of
+the Hebrews, leaping suddenly into fame and holding fame and power as
+such men will.  He no longer raided harvests and kine, nor came to Gaza
+secretly, but now he walked like a conqueror.  It was said that it
+irked him that everything was so peaceful and quiet, and he regretted
+the old roaming days.  To the Hebrews he was a great figure, a champion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Delilah had never understood how they made a champion out of this
+guerilla fighter, but when she saw him for the first time she
+understood.  He came to thank her for the interest she had taken in his
+race.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have been good to my people," his voice thundered.  "I thank you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Herself, a tall woman, had to look up like a child to him, and herself,
+no small woman, felt a reed beside that vast muscular bulk.  She had
+two impressions of him, his immense masculine quality, and his
+tremendously arrogant manner.  For everything Philistine he seemed to
+hold a tremendous contempt.  He had beaten the Philistines, and
+physically he thought little enough of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed a little flaunting to her, at first, that great cape of red
+hair, of which he was so very proud, so very careful.  In a smaller man
+it would have been effeminate, but in him it was a trait of virility,
+like a lion's mane.  Beside him his followers, his clansmen, seemed so
+frail, so puny.  No wonder they watched him with those adoring eyes.
+No wonder they exhibited him, so proud they were.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Delilah, it was a wonder and an irritation that she should be so
+moved, so thrown off her axis mentally and emotionally by the presence
+of this great hairy man.  All her senses were jangled suddenly.  One
+part of her, the Philistine lady, smiled in a little patronizing
+contempt for the unconcealed boastfulness of his words, for his
+insulting glance at the passers-by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But another, a strange Delilah clamored:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No matter what he says, let him speak on.  My heart opens at his
+voice....  Let him contemn all men with his arrogant eye, but let him
+not contemn me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Philistine lady had a little disgust for the way he laid his hand
+on the heads and the shoulders of his followers, pawing them clumsily.
+But the new Delilah clamored:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he lays his hand on me, I shall faint to the ground and die!"  And
+a burning shame rose in her, and her face reddened.  And she said to
+herself, "God!  God!  I have suddenly gone mad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All her culture, her tradition, all the fine conventions of her life,
+seemed suddenly to vanish, become nothing, before this immense male.
+All the men of her life, friends, her young false lover, relatives
+seemed like puppets beside him&mdash;their shaven faces, their polished
+speech, their carefulness of dress and demeanor.  The rufous giant had
+appeared, and "Away," he seemed to have cried, and they had whirled
+off, like blown feathers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she were troubled, he was troubled too.  The directness of him read
+her perturbation.  A great desire rose in the turbulent hillsman to be
+near her, to know her body and soul.  He was accustomed to women, to
+love women, but never had he known a woman such as this&mdash;a beautiful
+groomed lady who possessed all that was a wonder to him, riches and
+foreign breeding and a strange, sweet culture.  His wife of Timneth had
+been only a country girl, and his sweethearts of the hills had been
+tribeswomen, agile, angry as cats, like some hard, harsh fruit, and the
+women he had known in Gaza were venal women, for every man.  But this
+was a great lady&mdash;and she loved him.  A great pride, and a great
+wonder, and desire rose in him.  He was stupefied as she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They looked at each other, each reading the other's thought, until
+their throats became dry, and all words were just trivial sounds,
+meaning nothing.  Dumb and wondrous he was, and she dumb and bowing
+with shame.  How they parted was to her a mystery, but that their hands
+touched, and at the touch all her bone and flesh seemed to go liquid,
+and her knees trembled as with an immensity of fear.  And nothing
+seemed stable in the world but his great hot hand, that trembled too....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bowed with shame she was, troubled, blind in purpose, all the familiar
+things of her house and lands were now unfamiliar, unimportant.  The
+long day dragged, and in her heart was a storm, like a hot wind from
+the desert.  She refuged in her inner rooms, in the coolness of her
+inner rooms, but that brought no relief, and restlessly she must come
+out again.  The Asian sun crept slowly from east to west, but Delilah
+remained in a dull maze.  "Am I ill?" she asked.  "Am I stricken with
+some strange disease?"  But no.  "I am insane," she thought.  "I must
+put it out of my head.  I must n't think."  Slowly, slowly the day
+wheeled by; but out of her head it would not go.  And her face went
+white and slowly she whispered to herself: "I am a bad woman.  I never
+knew before.  Oh, shame, shame and woe!  I am an evil woman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Asian sun dropped into the hissing sea, and came the soft Syrian
+dusk, and the swift coolth of the night.  The heat of mind and body
+went with the heat of the day.  There remained only a deep longing,
+that seemed to be a nostalgia of the infinite.  Without, the night was
+blue, there was only a little wind among the apple-trees, and all the
+flowers had closed until dawn should come, but the birds were unsilent
+and the earth itself was restless, now spring was here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The night wind cooled her sweet brow and ruffled the dark perfumed hair
+at her temples.  The cool night wind, like cool water.  Then arose in
+Delilah a desire for it, and she wandered out among the vines and
+apple-trees, touching them, as she passed, in sympathy, for it seemed
+to her that they must share her yearning.  Though all was darkness, yet
+all was not rest.  Somewhere the sheep were grazing, and she could
+imagine the gods of the nearer East walking the earth, the passionate,
+seeking gods, the ever-young ones; they walked beside her, their slim,
+brown, beautiful bodies, their liquid eyes.  All the longing of the
+night came to her lips in a little song&mdash;an air, and faltering,
+unthought words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Spring, which begins now," went the throbbing contralto.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a rustle among the trees.  Her heart stopped beating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is some one there?  Who is there?  Who?"  But she knew well who was
+there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is it?  Who is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She saw the great bulk in the blue night, like a giant, like some great
+giant of the earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is I&mdash;Samson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What&mdash;how&mdash;"  Words would not come to her.  Nor would words mean
+anything.  "Why&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put out her hands&mdash;she knew not for what reason, perhaps to thrust
+him away&mdash;her slim white hands in the dusk.  He seized them.  Once
+again she throbbed from head to foot, and her knees became weak, and
+all of her melted.  And she fell forward, will having left her, on the
+great bearded chest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am dying," she murmured.  "O my God, I die!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Now they were married; and he had come to live in her house, the low,
+pleasant house in the valley of Sorek, the white and cool house....
+Without, the Syrian flowers grew in the garden, the white and blue and
+little red flowers, the bees droned....  Cool dairies and enclosures
+with great stacks of corn; and in the meadows the dappled kine grazed,
+and on the hillsides the heavy-fleeced sheep.  Within, her hand maidens
+tended the whirring spinning-wheels, and all the graciousness of a
+great house was there, cool water-jars that Persian potters had made,
+and stuffs from Damascus, and rugs on the walls from cunning Eastern
+looms, and furniture fashioned by the proud Syrian craftsmen.  Her
+house had been a house loved by all, the young Philistine poets and
+elder statesmen and calm, subtle priests.  And the strain and weariness
+of affairs had come on them, they would say: "Let us go out to
+Delilah's house at Sorek, and rest in the orchard of the bees." ... But
+now, now Samson was there, and things were different.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through all Philistia the news had gone, that Delilah had become
+infatuated with and married the guerilla leader, and the young men
+stormed.  Was she mad?  Or what had he done to her?  And an immense
+disgust arose in them.  Delilah, to marry that!  Delilah, of all women!
+Delilah, beautiful, gifted, with all her tradition, to be bound to this
+ragamuffin warrior!  This fatuous boaster, with his red hair of comedy,
+and yokel whiskers!  How disgusting, how degrading!  And they had
+offered her all their hearts and poetry, and she had chosen this.  O
+Delilah!  Delilah!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Older men and women said nothing.  Some of them understood.  The
+freakish and terrible lightning that passion is, and how it strikes.
+In some women that is what strong drink is to men, a mocker and a
+raging thing.  A pity, though, Delilah...  And the priests shook their
+heads.  It will not last, they said, and her heart will be broken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Though it was pain to them, still they came to see her, to let her know
+that nothing mattered, she was their friend always....  They had to
+suffer seeing the great red one at the head of the table, hearing his
+jokes and reminiscences.  And solemnly he would speak of his birth, and
+claim supernatural happenings at it, angels appearing and going up in
+pillars of fire....  And the company made awkward comments, and Delilah
+lowered her eyes....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes a great rage against the Philistines would take him, and he
+would give vent to it by telling at the table of his fight at
+Ramath-leki when he had annihilated the Philistine patrol with the
+first weapon to hand, a great bone he had found in the desert sands.
+After many years and much telling he had exaggerated the deed out of
+all proportion, until from ten it had become a thousand men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And do you know what that bone was?"  He would put his immense hands
+on the table and lean forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The jawbone of an ass," he roared with the thunderous laughter.  "Ho!
+ho!  The jawbone of an ass.  With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon
+heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But worse than his rage and boasting was his good humor.  When they
+spoke to Delilah of some new poet in Tyre, or of some subtle new
+writings of the Egyptians he would break in with his terrible question:
+"Did they know any riddles?"  And without waiting for an answer he
+would tell them of the sinister conundrum he had propounded on the
+occasion of his first marriage.  It seems, as he told it, that when he
+was courting his first wife, who they all knew "had turned out no
+good," he explained as he patted Delilah's hand, he met a young lion at
+Timnath, and it roared at him, and he caught it up and rent it, "and I
+had nothing but my two hands."  He transacted his business, and went
+home, and when he was coming for the wedding, he looked to see if the
+lion's carcass was there where he had thrown it, and it was still
+there, and a swarm of bees and honey were in it, and the honey was
+good.  "Fine eating," he told them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the marriage feast he proposed a riddle, wagering thirty fine linen
+sheets and thirty changes of garments that the guests would not answer
+in seven days.  "And if you can't find it out, you pay me thirty sheets
+and thirty changes of garments," he laughed.  "They were all
+Philistines, and all thought themselves clever fellows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I said: 'Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong
+came forth sweetness.  Expound me that,' said I, 'or pay up.  Or pay
+up,' said I."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he looked around the table, silent, a great grin under his red
+beard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And did they expound it?"  Some one asked at length.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They did.  'What is sweeter than honey?' they answered, with a smile
+on their faces, 'and what is stronger than a lion?'  They got around
+the wife, do you see, and she gave them the answer.'  I told them that,
+too.  'If you had not plowed with my heifer,' said I, 'you had not
+found out my riddle.'  So I lost the wager."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And did you pay up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did.  And that's funnier than the riddle.  I went down to Ashkelon,
+and killed thirty men there, and took their belongings, and gave the
+thirty changes of garments to them that found out the riddle.  So it
+cost me nothing, do you see, and I kept my word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I never looked at the wife after.  I could n't.  I took a kind of
+hate against her.  She married another fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great embarrassment arose among all the company, so full of shame
+were they for their hostess; but over her fine, sweet face no shadow
+passed.  She might have been married to a king, so calm and dignified
+she was.  A great lady, she!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She understood now, looking back, how pathetic a figure the red giant
+was, had she only had the eyes, the wisdom to see then.  He was so lost
+among the suave, sophisticated Philistines, who could hurt more with a
+word than he could with his great brawny hands.  Beneath his swelling
+thews he was only a child.  He wanted to be as important as the guests
+in her house.  Feeling they despised him for his origin, and his
+manners, his boastfulness and his arrogance were only a defense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Little by little now Delilah's friends disappeared, and she was glad of
+it, for she hated to see Samson despised, disliked and their pitying
+looks for her hurt her terribly.  And the days of peace were dreadful
+to him; his, too, the tragedy of the soldier now that war was over, and
+no more exhilaration, keenness, importance.  The tolerance of his old
+enemies was an insult to him.  On their hatred he had thriven.  Their
+hatred made him important.  If their hatred went, he would no longer be
+the great Samson, he would only be a giant of the hills.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could n't believe they did n't hate him&mdash;how could they do
+otherwise, he having killed so many?&mdash;and a great suspicion arose in
+him.  They were a noted race for stratagems, these Philistines, and
+might they not now be planning something against him?  Delilah, for
+instance!  It was strange, he thought, how a woman of her standing
+should marry him like that.  He could n't understand.  He must watch
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was forever, also, meeting his old tribesmen, seeing them more now
+than ever, for he would run to them when oppressed by the Philistine
+atmosphere.  And the Philistines as a whole they regarded as deadly
+enemies.  They never believed in their peaceful intentions.  Though
+they were in a way proud of Samson's great marriage, yet they
+distrusted it.  And by hint and innuendo they sought to put him on his
+guard.  He nodded importantly.  He did n't need to be told about the
+Philistines, he said; he'd keep his eye on them.  "Had anything...?"
+they crowded around him.  Well, he wasn't saying, but he was watching;
+he smiled.  His wife?  Let them not worry; he did n't trust women very
+far.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And relieved, and once more raised in importance and self-esteem, he
+would swagger back to the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes, too, in Delilah's place, he would be seized with a great
+desire to make friends with the young Philistines; and when Delilah
+wasn't there, he would show off his immense strength, felling an ox
+with one blow of his fist.  Once he had himself bound with seven green
+withes, stouter than rope, stronger than chains, and with a cruel burst
+of strength stood free, snapping them as though they were threads.  And
+once he had his arms bound with new rope, breaking the bond without any
+effort.  But his greatest triumph was having his hair woven into a
+great spinning-wheel and fastened to the pin, and walking away took
+with him the pin of the beam, and the web.  But the Philistines had
+seen more intricate and showy feats of strength by the Egyptians' black
+slaves.  And it did not impress them over-much.  No matter what he did,
+he could not get into sympathy with them.  He was a stranger in his
+wife's house.  Also he could not understand why she should seem
+humiliated by these displays.  Did not a woman love a strong man?
+Shouldn't she be proud?  Well, why was n't she?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somehow the story of these trials of strength reached the Hebrew
+settlements, and they construed it that the Philistines were seeking to
+take him.  When he came among them, magniloquent, magnificent, they
+questioned him and he gave no answer, letting them believe that his old
+enemies were spreading nets for him.  A great terror arose in them.
+And they tried to persuade him to come back to them.  But he would n't.
+He was equal to all their stratagems, he hinted.  "But the women!" they
+said, "nothing passes the cunning of a woman.  Better leave her,
+Samson; better leave her now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The woman pleases me well."  And he would n't be moved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman pleased him, but he did n't love her; and he displeased her,
+but she loved him.  In Delilah's heart was so much aching love for him,
+such depth of passion, that at times she was ashamed.  It seemed to her
+that she had given everything in her to this man.  No matter how
+displeased she was, no matter how humiliated by his boastings, by his
+circus tricks, when night came, and he put out his hand to her, all the
+irritation of the day passed, and her being sang.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had chosen her husband, and what she had chosen was her own
+business.  No matter how queer he was, she could n't have him laughed
+at....  So they stayed away, and she was glad of it and little by
+little the great wonder of her marriage provoked no more passion, no
+more discussion.  Only when a stranger appeared, or some old friend,
+and asked in the public assemblies of Delilah, and the incongruous
+marriage was once more brought up and discussed.  Shoulders shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And is she happy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We don't know.  We don't see much of her any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A new strange element came up in this isolation: Samson did n't like
+being left alone by the Philistines.  Somewhere in his mind arose the
+theory that it was a new insult, a new harm.  He grew short with his
+wife; became irritable; nothing pleased him.  He was not a farmer, a
+warrior he! he complained.  He was entitled to relaxation, amusement,
+conversation.  He was no vegetable&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, Samson, you would like people here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did n't like to be left alone, as though he had the plague, or
+treated as though he were nobody, by God!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then they shall come, Samson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But ah! there was something, he objected.  He did n't like this damned
+superciliousness, this accursed Philistine superiority&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You imagine it, Samson.  You are too sensitive, my big lover."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then they are not superior? are not better than I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not, great Samson.  In every way you are as good as they,
+the same as they.  You would look the same as they, only
+better-looking, more magnificent, if only&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If only what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't be angry with me, lover, if I tell you.  There is only one
+thing remarkable about you; one thing they can criticize.  If only your
+hair&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ha! my hair!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Lover, without it, you would look so great and splendid, and
+dignified.  There would be nothing to criticize."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Delilah, my strength is in my hair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O lover, lover, don't be silly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Also, my parents took a vow&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But darling, your parents never knew you were to be such a great man,
+and that you would have to command respect from the nation&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, of course.  But, Delilah, if my strength goes&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest, it won't go.  How could it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they won't have anything to criticize then!  Ha!  Then off it
+comes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was so happy, the tears came into her eyes.  This strange desire to
+wear his hair long as a woman's had been a bugbear to her.  This
+foppishness, freakishness, superstition, whatever it was, it made him
+remarkable.  She could n't suffer to have men smile at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you only knew how happy you make me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was ludicrously nervous as she shore off the great red braids.  He
+was more, he was frightened.  The burden gone, he strolled casually
+around, picked up a little bar of iron at the fireplace, twisted it to
+form a loop, was satisfied.  Glanced at himself in the long metal
+mirror, smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it suits me well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A thrill of delight came to Delilah, a new, a younger Samson had
+appeared.  Her heart went pit-a-pat....  A great dignity sat on him
+now, and he weighed his words at the table.  Gone with his hair was his
+old arrogance, and seemingly his race hatred....  The Philistines spoke
+among themselves, wondering how she had done it.  This quiet,
+well-groomed man, remarkable only for his size and height, could this
+be the same red rebel whom they had known a few short months ago?  A
+wonderful woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when the Hebrews heard of it, a great chill fell on their hearts,
+and they wrung their hands.  "They have cut off our Samson's hair.  Oh,
+woe!" they cried.  "The woman enticed him, and he a Nazarite unto God
+from his mother's womb.  Oh, woe!  Oh, woe!  Gone is his strength now,
+and gone is glory!"  But the red one, all agog with his new
+worldliness, paid no heed to them, went never near them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some brief weeks Delilah knew happiness such as she never believed
+possible in earth or heaven....  So fine, so strong he looked, so
+greatly he acted, so&mdash;so fully he loved....  Of course it could n't
+have lasted, she knew now.  How fast catastrophe!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quietly he said one day: "How soon it gets dark!  Night falls faster
+than it used.  An hour ago the sun was shining, and now it is dark."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She felt as if some cruel fingers had seized her heart, her throat.
+She froze to the ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, why don't the maidens bring lights?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet, dear heart....  Let us stay in the warm dusk.  Wait, I take
+your hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few days later he stumbled and all but fell, was clumsy.  She flew to
+his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My eyes," he said, "a touch of sun.  Nothing particular."  But she
+sent for a physician.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's nothing," Samson said.  "Something I 've eaten.  I 'll go to
+sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Samson, to please me."  The physician examined his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"  Delilah drew him aside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The early days in the desert....  He is going blind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there no hope, no cure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little laugh of agony came from her.  Great Samson blind!  The little
+lover blind!...  Oh, God!...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall we tell him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no!" she burst out.  Maybe there was some mistake!  "No.  We
+sha'n't tell him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few days later came a great bellow from the garden!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The sun has gone out of the sky," she heard him exalt.  "The day of
+wrath is on us.  The God of the Hebrews will judge the just and the
+unjust.  O Philistines, your day has come.  The sun has gone out of the
+sky."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She flew to him, her feet hardly touching the grass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The sun has gone out of the sky," he chanted; "now is silence, but
+soon the mountains will rend, the cliffs fall, and the Lord God of
+Hosts will appear in thunder!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Samson, Samson!"  Her face was a wet mask of tears.  Her arms went
+quickly about him.  "Listen, Samson!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delilah, the sun has gone out of the sky!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+
+"Samson, Samson, you are great, you are big, you are brave.  Be brave
+now, heart of hearts&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Day of Days is here.  The sun has gone out of the sky."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Worse, my darling, worse.  Worse than that the sun should be gone from
+the sky.  The sun, Samson, the sun&mdash;the sun has gone out of your eyes!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+"Then I am blind," he said quietly, after a little while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dearest, I shall be eyes for you, watching, wary.  Oh, poor, poor
+Samson, put your head on my shoulder, your eyes close to my heart.  You
+shall see with my heart.  I give it to you to see with....  Cry,
+Samson, if you must, cry on my shoulder."  She sought to draw him
+closer to the haven of her breast.  But he had stiffened, and his great
+hand and arm had stiffened.  He just moved her ponderously aside....
+He raised his head to the autumn sky, and a great bellow came from his
+chest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Philistines are upon me.  They have put out my eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson!  Dear heart, listen&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They have shaven the seven locks of my head.  They have taken my
+strength from me.  They have put out my eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson, Samson, listen.  It is I, Delilah.  Don't you know me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His great roar had brought out the household, and men from the
+hillside, and stopped folk on the road.  And they all came running now
+thinking some murder was being done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you, Delilah.  I know you well.  The Lords of the Philistines
+gave you silver to entice me.  I knew you, and the Lord departed from
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson, don't!  Don't, Samson!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Away, harlot!"  And he struck at her blindly.  Only the tips of his
+fingers touched her shoulder, but the force of them sent her to the
+ground.  Her household crouched to spring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake, no!" she almost screamed at them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Philistines are upon me.  They have put out my eyes!" he roared.
+He went stumbling piteously through the orchard, the trunks of the
+trees hurtling him, the branches striking his defenseless face.
+Somehow he gained the road: "Delilah, the great whore, enticed me, and
+the Lords of the Philistines put out my eyes&mdash;" his piteous bellow was
+like the crying of some stricken animal.  Delilah called a serving-lad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go after my lord Samson," she said, "and lead him whithersoever he
+wishes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All afternoon and evening, and late into the night she sat white and
+stricken, waiting for his step, waiting for news of him.  In the
+darkness a horse galloped up.  An officer of the Philistines sought her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you news of Samson?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Delilah.  He is in Gaza, in the prison-house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the prison-house!  What has he done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has done nothing, Delilah, he is&mdash;he is mad and blind, and would
+come in.  We tried to send him home to you, but he wouldn't come.  And
+he would n't go to the Hebrews.  We were afraid of something happening
+to him, so we took him in....  What shall we do, Delilah?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you&mdash;would you let him stay?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you wish it, Delilah."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will be least unhappy there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knew somehow, in her heart, that never again would she lie in his
+arms, never again be wife to the husband in him.  She would take him
+back, take him back gladly.  Though no longer had she great passion for
+him&mdash;that had died when he struck and insulted her before her servants.
+She had a great pity and affection for the poor driven man.  She was
+the only one who understood him.  "Ah, poor man! poor man!" she cried.
+And in some ways he was only a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a few days she went down to the prison house.  The officials brought
+her to where he was grinding corn in the yard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We put him at it, Delilah, to keep his mind off his trouble."  She
+nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson," she called.  He moved his head slightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you know me, Samson?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know you.  You are the harlot Delilah, who enticed me, and gave me
+into the hands of the Lords of the Philistines.  Delilah, I know you
+well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson, will you come home to my house?  Let me make you comfortable
+there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would put out my tongue, Delilah, and burn off my hands, as you
+put out my eyes.  I know you, Delilah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then will you go to the Hebrews?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" he replied sullenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sudden rush of tears to her eyes made her go out.  She could no
+longer bear to look upon him.  He had been so strong once, so
+courageous.  He had looked in the sun's eye.  And now, blind and
+broken&mdash;oh, poor dear! ... She stumbled as she went.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the door of the prison house the governor shuffled uncomfortably:
+"We shall be very good to him, Delilah, as kind as we know how," he
+uttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a great lump in her throat, so she could say nothing.  But he
+got his thanks from her twisted smile, her wet eyes....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+And now she was alone in her house, and to her mute surprise,
+everything went on: grasses grew, cows lowed at the milking hour, the
+fleece grew on sheep and had to be sheared, the grapes ripened on the
+vines.  And she lived, still.  Her hair did not become gray, nor her
+face take on any mark of tragedy, only a new sweetness, and strength.
+And her love and her marriage was now nothing but a strange story of a
+strange woman and a strange man.  Not quite a story, even, but a
+collection of incidents that might be important and again might not.
+And the great love she had experienced had become nebulous, was
+drifting away, so that she could hardly believe she had not seen it in
+others, but for its intimacy, its great intimacy....  And he was more
+nebulous to her than if he were dead....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She heard of him.  She heard that from the prison walls he harangued
+his white-faced, scared tribesmen, reviling his hosts, and above all
+reviling her, telling the secrets of her love as the machinations of
+some evil woman, and referring to her visit, saying that her heart was
+merry and that she had come to have him make her sport....  But after a
+little while none paid attention to him, so stale become miracles,
+except his own tribesmen.  It was only the chatter of some crazed
+religious patriot; people shrugged their shoulders, and forgot soon who
+Delilah was, never imagining the great lady of Sorek as having been
+wife and lover to this poor crazed giant, though they had known it to
+be true.  Everything strange grows commonplace with days, and with more
+days grows negligible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So passed a year....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just when she had become reconciled to this strange situation, herself
+honored and in luxury, her husband mad and blind and insisting on being
+a prisoner of the Philistines, just when she had striven to make and
+succeeded in making this seem a normal, a usual thing, a courier from
+Gaza came....  What his business was she never imagined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delilah, Samson is dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson!"  It never even chilled her, so ridiculous did such a
+statement seem.  "Samson is in Gaza."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I come from Gaza, Delilah, and Samson is dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson dead?"  That turbulent temperament, that immense vitality, that
+gigantic frame,&mdash;surely there was one whom Death could not touch, at
+least for nearly a century, when he would be old and weak and tired.
+But not now!  No!  "What do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delilah, Samson was wandering through the town.  He had asked the
+master of the prison-house if he might go to see the new temple of
+Daigon.  Though he could n't see, he wanted to feel it, its pillars and
+stone.  A little lad brought him.  And there was a scaffolding in front
+on which three men were working, and he knocked against it, and felt
+the pillars, and stopped....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he put his hands on two of the pillars of the scaffolding, and
+listened to the workmen above, and then called out: 'O Lord God,
+remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this
+once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my
+eyes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he took hold of the two middle pillars of the scaffolding&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" Delilah's voice came in a long moan.  "Oh! my poor love! my poor
+lord! oh! ... The workmen," she asked, "were they&mdash;killed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One was lamed and one bruised and one had a shoulder smashed, but only
+Samson, Delilah, is dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Samson is dead!" she said dully.  And then she quickened.  "Are you
+sure that he isn't only stunned?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Delilah; Samson is dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall go with you...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had taken him into a cool corner of the temple, and when she saw
+him there was no longer doubt in her, or&mdash;or hope.  He lay there with a
+great dignity, a new majesty, all the pain and baffledness had gone
+from his face and the poor empty eyes were closed....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she sank to her knees, and took his head on them, she saw with a
+little glad wringing of the heart that once more the great golden cloak
+of hair had grown ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delilah, where is he to&mdash;stay?"  The captain of the guards leaned
+toward her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not with us, kinsman.  He might n't rest.  He will sleep with his own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then shall I tell his brethren, and the house of his father to come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do, kinsman," she said.  She turned her head to the shadows.  "Tell
+them to come and take him," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was like a woman in stone but for her strained voice, and for the
+fingers twisting, twisting, twisting under the red-gold cloak of hair.
+"Go now and tell them," she said.  "Tell them, but don't let them
+come," she said, "for&mdash;for just a little while...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now night had come, and the little lamps of Gaza burned clear in
+the blue softness.  The sun had gone down in the west, and the silver
+blade of the moon had all but followed.  Delilah felt cold and stiff,
+and there were tears in her heart that would not come to her eyes for
+relief.  The heaviness of an old sorrow, it never went, and she did n't
+know if she wanted it to go....  She rose to go within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Delilah, the great harlot," a raucous voice accused her from the
+blackness of the street.  "She enticed our lord Samson and made him
+sleep on her knees&mdash;and she pressed him daily with her words and urged
+him, so that his soul was vexed unto death&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stopped and listened.  Venom was sprayed against her from the
+street.  Hatred arose like a pillar.  Suddenly the tears came, the
+welcome tears, and gratitude went in a white shaft from her to the
+bitter men in the streets, for this: that after so many years great
+Samson was not forgotten, that he lived in their mind and hearts still,
+as in hers.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A QUATRAIN OF LING TAI FU'S
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Because of his perfect, or nearly perfect, English there were many who
+believed that Li Sin was only masquerading as a Chinaman.  Because of
+the slightly slit Mongol eyes, and the swarthy color of his skin, there
+were others who explained his enigma by guessing he was a half-breed.
+It never occurred to either party that Li Sin had been sent to Eton, in
+England, at the age of thirteen, and that from Eton he had gone to
+Oxford.  They would not have believed it if you told them.  There is a
+dogma abroad to the effect that every Chinaman must of necessity speak
+English like a Cantonese laundryman or like an attendant at a chop-suey
+restaurant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It never occurred to them, either, that Li Sin was a Manchu duke, with
+a genealogy that extended back to the days of Tang.  It never occurred
+to them that the slant-eyed Manchu was as big a physician as any of the
+high-priced practitioners on the Avenue.  To the descendants of
+fur-peddlers and deck-scrubbers who graced the Social Register, or to
+the millionaires of Long Island who had soared into the financial
+heavens on an accidental oil-spout or who had amassed their fortunes by
+the less reputable forms of mine-grabbing&mdash;to these, and to their wives
+and daughters, Li Sin was merely a tradesman or shopkeeper.  It did not
+particularly matter to them that his shop on Fifth Avenue was filled
+with little gold Buddhas whose eyes were fine emeralds, with pieces of
+lacquer which it had taken an artist his lifetime to do, with peachblow
+vases transparent as a hand against the sun, with porcelains sheer as
+fine silks, with cloisonne jars that made staid experts rave like men
+in liquor.  But the strictures of the ignorant did not worry Li Sin in
+the least.  He would only raise his eyebrows and smile his bland,
+inscrutable smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Li Sin has left Fifth Avenue now, and in his store, which was in those
+days a temple of truth as well as a temple of beauty, a very lying and
+exceedingly dishonest Armenian reigns.  In his own city of Tientsin the
+Manchu lives in stately leisure.  He has reverted to his own name,
+Hsien Po, which is great in Manchu annals.  He has reverted to his
+Manchu dress of brocaded blouse and silken trousers, to his mandarin's
+cap with its mandarin's button.  He is very proud of his pear gardens,
+and he divides his time between walking in them, reading the analects
+of Confucius, and giving the benefit of his marvelous medical knowledge
+gratuitously to the poor.  He is happy, I hope, for if ever a man
+deserved to be happy, it is he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He is gone now, is Li Sin, but I can see him as plainly as though he
+were standing beside me.  A rather squat sort of man, with a squarish
+face and high cheek-bones.  His shining black hair was parted smoothly
+at the side, and there was a look of health in the transparent quality
+of his brown skin and in the whites of his slanting eyes.  There was
+always a quiet smile on his lips, and he wore the tweed and broadcloth
+of America with as much ease as the blouse and silken trousers of his
+own land.  The only Oriental hint in his clothes was the suppressed
+gorgeousness of his neckties.  He roamed about the great store, passing
+an occasional word with the attendants or stopping to greet a favorite
+customer, which was an honor.  The customers were much in awe of Li
+Sin.  There were incidents that had taught them to respect him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the incident of the amateur pottery expert who happened to be
+also a millionaire.  He noticed a vase of delicate blue jade.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Li Sin," he said, "I want that.  That's a wonderful piece of Ming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not Ming," the Manchu told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you it is Ming!" the young millionaire insisted.  "I 'll buy
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm afraid you won't, Mr. Rensselaer," the Manchu answered blandly.
+"I won't sell it to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you 'll sell me nothing, ever again," Rensselaer decreed in a
+passion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, very well," Li Sin smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Morganstern, the munitions magnate, he was much shorter.  The bulky
+financier rushed into the store rolling a cigar about his fat lips.  He
+wanted a rug, he said, an expensive one, the best in the store.  Li Sin
+smiled a trifle cynically and pointed out something on the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Persian thirteenth-century," he explained curtly.  "Used to belong
+to a shah of Persia.  It costs seventeen thousand dollars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll take it," Morganstern nodded.  "I want something for the bedroom
+floor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, dear sir," Li Sin expostulated, "one does n't put that on the
+floor.  One hangs it on a wall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care a damn."  The munitions man drew out his check-book.
+"Anything good enough for the shah of Persia's wall is good enough for
+my feet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My good sir&mdash;" Li Sin's voice was as bland as ever&mdash;"you are making a
+mistake.  There are several grass-rug emporiums on Second Avenue.  Go
+into the next drug store and look one up in a telephone-book.  Take a
+trolley across Fifty-ninth Street.  They 'll sell you one, and you can
+carry it home beneath your arm."  And abruptly he left Morganstern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These things created a legend about Li Sin that will never die on the
+Avenue.  Cynics say that it was good advertising, and brought people
+who liked to be insulted.  But we, who knew the Manchu, were certain
+that was the last thing he had in mind.  Peculiar as Li Sin's business
+habits were, more peculiar still were his friends.  Among them might be
+counted a European ambassador in Washington, a great heavy-weight
+wrestler, a little Roman Catholic priest, a head waiter in a
+restaurant.  All of these people he liked for some quality that his
+shrewd eyes had discovered.  And last but not least was Irene Johns.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had come into the store one soft spring morning, looking for a
+birthday present for her mother, something inexpensive, she said, about
+two dollars, all&mdash;she laughed merrily&mdash;she could afford.  Perhaps it
+was that gurgling laugh of hers, that limpid, hurried, harmonious
+scale, that drew Li Sin's attention.  But he came forward with a
+suggestion when she and the salesman became nonplused at the problem of
+finding something pretty, good and worth two dollars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps I can help," he smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She impressed him with her appearance as much as with her laugh.  There
+was something so ethereal about her that she seemed less a being of
+flesh and blood than the disembodied spirit of spring.  Her fair hair,
+her starlit purple eyes, her eager, half-closed small mouth with its
+glint of little teeth, her slim neck stood out against her heather
+costume and black, sweeping hat like a softly modulated light.  She was
+so little, so slender, that she seemed as delicate as a snowflake.  She
+moved with the lightness of a feather stirring along the ground.  And
+yet, Li Sin saw with his physician's eye, she was not fragile.  She was
+as healthy as an athlete.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I can find you something," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did.  In the rear of the store he discovered a roughly hammered
+silver brooch from Bokhara, a marvel of intricacy and sweeping lines;
+he had bought it in Bokhara himself for two rubles.  The thing had
+interested him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But this must be more than two dollars!" She spoke in wonder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I paid one dollar for it in Bokhara, and I am exacting a dollar profit
+for it, which is not too little," the Manchu answered gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By what peculiar, invisible steps their friendship ripened it would be
+impossible to detail; but ripen it did.  The fresh, fair American
+beauty, slim and beautiful as a Tanagra figurine, and the squat,
+middle-aged Mongol liked each other, came to appreciate each other.
+She had an inborn love for beautiful things, and he was never weary of
+showing her the treasures of his store.  He showed her strange, exotic
+jewels, collected by dead kings and queens&mdash;chrysoberyls that were at
+times the strange green of olives and at other times red like a setting
+sun, topazes with the yellow of aged wine, sunstones that glowed with a
+tremulous golden red, carbuncles that flashed into explosive stars of
+scarlet, peridots and milky moonstones, a ruby that the King of Ceylon
+had owned, and an emerald that had once belonged to the unhappy Queen
+of Scots.  Irene Johns would gasp at the sight of these things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 're so beautiful!" she would say.  "They make the tears come to
+my eyes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was enough for Li Sin, that gasp of appreciation.  He loved the
+things so much himself.  He had hunted his treasures up and down the
+earth and to and fro in it, and he wanted them to be gazed on with the
+appreciative eye rather than with the cold look of barter and exchange.
+He liked this little twenty-year-old woman, because she had the spirit
+of beauty within her, and because she seemed so fair and fresh and
+unprotected.  And she liked the swarthy Mongol, not for his strange,
+exotic setting, but for the sheer kindliness of him, the great,
+expansive benevolence and his consummate courtesy, which after all was
+nothing but the birthright of a Manchu prince.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There could be no question of love between them, for many reasons, and
+never a thought of it passed their minds.  She might have been
+something like a niece to him, and he her benevolent uncle.  They never
+met outside his store.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew from her the story of what of life she had known, carefully,
+gently, like the skilled surgeon extracting a splinter from flesh.  The
+daughter of a naval surgeon who had died while she was still
+young,&mdash;and who, Li Sin shrewdly guessed, had been somewhat of a
+blackguard,&mdash;she lived poorly with her mother, on a meager pension.
+She had been brought up decently, educated well, at what must have been
+a terrible expense to the mother.  She had not been married, beautiful
+as she was, because she had not mixed with people who were to be
+regarded as beneath her in social rank.  The people of her own station
+were too poor to marry offhand&mdash;but there was a young ensign she
+mentioned as having met once or twice, and there was a faint blush on
+her cheeks as she spoke of it.  For the illustrious and the moneyed she
+had either too little fortune or too little lineage.  And that was all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too bad!" Li Sin murmured to himself, and his thoughts would have done
+credit to the most adroit of schatchen.  "Too bad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She would breeze in, if such a word may be used of her who was as
+gentle as a zephyr, bringing always with her the sweetness of spring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good morning!" she would greet him eagerly.  "I wonder if we could
+find something&mdash;I want a clasp for my hair, for evening wear&mdash;something
+frightfully inexpensive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think we might find it."  Li Sin would smile, and he would find it.
+He took her money, and gave her the article at a just profit on what he
+had paid for it.  The only thing gratuitous he gave her was the travel
+and the adventure necessary to pick his wonderful trifles up.  Of this
+he said nothing, and she was none the wiser.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came the day when she entered a little excited, a little afraid,
+a little nervous.  She wanted something more expensive than usual.  She
+was going out that night, she explained, with somebody.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to be married soon," she blurted out.  "I am engaged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To whom?" Li Sin asked quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A friend of my father's," she answered blushingly.  "Roderick
+Dreghorn, the ivory-hunter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder if I might ask you to do something," Li Sin said slowly, "and
+that is: will you bring your fiancé here some day so that I may
+congratulate him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should love to," she said; and she left him, excitedly happy, Li Sin
+saw; but he also noticed that she seemed a little terrified, a little
+aghast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have told the story of Li Sin to many people, now that he is gone to
+his own home and is happy there with his poor and his pear-trees, and
+some of them have believed me because they know China and the manner of
+man Li Sin is, and some of them have believed me because they know I
+abhor lies as I abhor the devil.  But many cannot understand it.  They
+cannot see why a Manchu duke should become a merchant on Fifth Avenue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if he is as great a doctor as you say&mdash;" they object.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a passage in Isaiah, I believe, which speaks of Tyre, "whose
+merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the
+earth."  Marco Polo, that ancient Venetian, says of Cathay, that there,
+of all professions the most esteemed is that of merchant.  It is above
+arms, he says, above learning.  And what obtained in the Yellow Empire
+when Hoang-ti led his people across the desert in the misty dawn of
+time obtains to-day, from the outer sea to the confines of Mongolia.
+An ancient and honorable thing it is, a fit profession for princes, a
+
+thing pregnant with ideals of honesty and fair dealing, a clean thing.
+There is nothing anomalous to the eye in Li Sin, a Manchu duke,
+unearthing the treasures of forgotten days for the New World, and
+exacting a just profit for the work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As for the medicine, that was another matter.  I could no more imagine
+Li Sin accepting money for his healing art than I can imagine him
+stealing alms from a blind beggar.  The thing was far too holy for him.
+There in that glass-topped studio in his house on Fifth Avenue, above
+the great treasure-store, he studied his science with the enthusiasm of
+an amateur pursuing a hobby.  A queer place it was, with its retorts
+and vials, its glinting instruments, its Rontgen-ray apparatus, its
+tubes of deadly serum and of healing drugs.  And beside these were the
+quaint adjuncts of Oriental healing: the twisted tubes of herbs,
+instruments that seemed like an alchemist's dream, medicines of black,
+occult art as well as of benevolence, secret, untraceable poisons,
+liquids which, it is whispered, would bring the dead to life for
+minutes, which would drive men mad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ask the taciturn Lee Fong, on Mott Street, that slant-eyed millionaire.
+Ask the leaders of the Hip Sing.  At the Five Companies of San
+Francisco, inquire.  They will speak of Li Sin as a demigod of medicine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One has n't to go as far as that to find out.  There is a
+tenement-house on Hudson Street, where the Bracalellos live.  There is
+a romping child there called Beata.  For years she was an object of
+research to physicians in hospitals, because of her twisted spine.
+Nothing could be done, they decided.  They were wrong.  Li Sin saw the
+white-cheeked child carried in the subway on a horrible metal
+stretcher, strapped to it.  It hurt him&mdash;the illnesses of children
+always hurt him.  He took charge of her.  She romps about now as other
+children do.  There are many cases of that kind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But above all in my mind there is the tragic case of Mrs. Madge Eaton,
+who is now happy as a woman farmer on Long Island.  Li Sin discovered
+her creeping up an alleyway to die from hunger, shame, and heartbreak.
+Against all protestation he took her home.  Her story was tragic and
+very sordid.  She had married John Eaton, a man who had come up to
+Maine for a holiday.  He had brought her to New York.  In a month he
+had sent her out to work.  She fell ill.  Eaton deserted her, taking
+with him all her jewelry, all her money, all her clothes.  When she was
+discovered, she was sent to a hospital, and when she emerged from
+there, she found herself without courage to kill herself and without
+the wherewithal to live.  The police sent her to jail two weeks later.
+When she came out, Li Sin found her, broken, hungry, terrified, wanting
+to die and yet without courage to face the river.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He cured her.  He brought her back to life and hope and strength.  By
+some means he instilled into that frail and timid heart the courage of
+a lioness.  But he did one thing, unknown to her, of which she might
+not have approved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a tripartite function of Li Sin's: Firstly there was that of
+the merchant, whose duty it was to discover and barter rare and costly
+things.  Secondly came the physician's, to heal body and mind.  Thirdly
+came that of the Manchu prince, to dispense justice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He called Hong Kop, his body-servant, to him&mdash;that subtle and
+inscrutable Cantonese.  He looked at the card on which he had scribbled
+an address, an address he had extracted from Mrs. Eaton.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hong Kop, you will go at once to Colon, in Panama," he announced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Cantonese nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will go to this address&mdash;a gambling-house&mdash;and there you will pick
+up the trail of John Eaton.  You will pick up the trail and follow it
+until you find him.  And when you do find him&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused for an instant.  Again the Cantonese bowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will kill him, Hong Kop."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Six feet tall, spare as a lance, tanned to a deep brown, hatchet-faced
+and yet handsome in some daredevil, hypnotic way, with eyes that
+glinted with the vindictive sheen of a rifle-barrel, mouth twisted
+slightly,&mdash;enough to show the cruelty hidden within&mdash;Roderick Dreghorn
+lounged into the store with Irene Johns.  There was an amused smile on
+his powerful face, as though it pleased him whimsically to accompany
+his fiancée on a shopping expedition, to meet her queer friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Li Sin," she said, "this is the man I am going to marry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Manchu smiled gravely.  Dreghorn watched him with an amused,
+contemptuous glance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no need to wish felicity," said Li Sin, courteously, "to the
+future husband of Miss Johns."  And Dreghorn nodded in an offhand way.
+The hunter turned to the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't you want to get something here?" he asked, "some silk or
+something?"  Li Sin noted beneath the man's soft tones the concealed
+edge that could cut on occasion like a rawhide whip.  Rapidly Li Sin
+was summing the man up in his mind: forty-five, he decided, a man of
+the world, a gentleman born, an utter blackguard, a man who had done
+and seen evil things.  He had money, too&mdash;witness the plain but
+expensive cut of his brown tweeds.  Li Sin noted quickly a faint scar
+on the temple that he knew to be an old bullet-wound, and a weal across
+the fingers of the right hand that only a long knife could have made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you care to come and help Miss Johns select the silk?" Li Sin
+asked.  Dreghorn smiled, and there was a lift to the left corner of his
+mouth that showed the teeth.  It was like a dog's threatening snarl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think so," he drawled.  "I am not interested in any products
+of the yellow or black countries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed!" Li Sin murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Excitedly, at the end of the store, Irene Johns told her story.
+Dreghorn&mdash;in a moment of boredom, Li Sin judged&mdash;had dropped in to see
+the family of the man he had known fifteen years before in Hongkong.
+He had heard of Mrs. Johns and her daughter from some casual
+acquaintance.  Li Sin smiled; the casual acquaintance had spoken of the
+daughter's beauty, most probably.  Mr. Dreghorn had been so kind to all
+of them!  He had taken them out, had showered presents on them, had in
+the end asked her to marry him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed!" Li Sin thought, and he encouraged her to go on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was so big, so powerful, she hinted.  He had done big things, had
+had great adventures.  She seemed a little aghast as she mentioned
+that.  He was so compelling, she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is not in love," thought Li Sin.  "She is hypnotized."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was going on one more expedition, she told the Manchu.  After that,
+he was coming home to settle down.  They would have a house in the
+country, a farm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agh!" Li Sin exclaimed to himself.  So that was it.  The old, old
+story, as old as Cain: the rake, the scoundrel, after sucking the world
+dry of wickedness, wanted a wife, home, and children.  Li Sin could
+understand how the girl's purity, her lightness, her youth, had
+appealed to the world-worn rascal.  He could understand the visions the
+man had&mdash;the sweet, hawthorn-scented dreams.  It was like a murderer
+seeking to wash the blood from his hands with God's pure water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They left.  Li Sin escorted them courteously to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-by!" he wished them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-by, my yellow friend," Dreghorn answered contemptuously.  Irene
+Johns did not hear it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Li Sin went above to his apartment.  He clapped his hands for Hong Kop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will go down to where you know, Hong Kop, to the house of Ling Wah
+Lee&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Cantonese made his eternal bow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you will have him find out for me, Hong Kop, all there is to be
+known about Roderick Dreghorn, hunter of ivory, with a bullet-mark on
+the forehead and a weal on the right hand, the weal of a Burmese knife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is a doctrine in one of the faiths that man is born in original
+sin, and that unless he is cleansed by sacrament he is until the end of
+time the property of the evil one.  There is an article of dogma in the
+same faith that one may become possessed of demons.  If this is true,
+then never a sacrament was said over Dreghorn, nor ever was he
+confronted with the exorcist's mystic and terrible formula.  Hell
+seemed to have employed him all his life and to have made him its brain
+and hand.  The first of the story was bad enough, with its record of
+treachery, of gainful crimes in the dark lands, of murders concealed
+and never explained.  Even Li Sin's worldly-wise mind was shocked by
+Hong Kop's report.  There was the incident in the Belgian Congo when
+Dreghorn, allied with a corrupt Belgian official, burned a village with
+all the inhabitants, shooting down those who tried to escape from the
+flames.  They had not produced enough ivory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even madness will not explain that!"  Li Sin shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the incident during the period of the Boxer chaos in
+Yuen-Lau, when Dreghorn and an associate had tortured an old mandarin,
+hoping to make him unearth treasure.  They had given him the torture of
+the bowstring, and the water torture, and the torture of red metal at
+his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he an old man," Li Sin thought, "four-score and five!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was the incident in Mombasaland when the fiendish natives had
+captured a lone hunter of ivory, had crucified him on the ground,
+smeared with honey for the ants, delirious under the smashing sun.
+Dreghorn could have rescued him, for he was well armed and had a large
+party of natives.  But he contented himself with stealing the man's
+ivory and leaving him there to die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is one thing for which there is no punishment," Li Sin thought.
+"No punishment is equal in horror."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Li Sin read another incident, and he read no farther.  It was the story
+of Marie Tirlemont, called <I>Flancs-de-neige</I>, whom Dreghorn had brought
+with him from Maxim's in Paris, down to the Congo.  She had ceased to
+amuse Dreghorn a hundred miles south of Leopoldville, and he had
+abandoned her alone, in a village of black beasts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now Dreghorn, Li Sin mused, wanted to marry.  He wanted to marry
+this fair little American girl, pure and delicate as the petal of a
+primrose, light and shimmering and gay as iridescence on water&mdash;to make
+a home with her, to have her bear children.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He called for Hong Kop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is the profit of crime, Hong Kop?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Cantonese thought for a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The profit of crime is death," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Death is a sweet and gentle thing, Hong Kop," his master mused.  "It
+comes to the old like a gentle and sweet-scented sleep.  It comes to
+the suffering like a grateful anodyne.  On others it falls so quickly
+and surely that there is no pain.  It is not the profit of crime, Hong
+Kop, except for those who wish much to live."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He mused again, joining his finger-tips together and knitting his brows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless, instead of being a sweet sleep, it is a nightmare, Hong Kop!
+Unless, instead of being an anodyne, it is a horror!  Unless it comes
+accompanied by a huge and monstrous fear, a terror that clutches the
+heartstrings, a fear that kills!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was going away on the morrow, Dreghorn said.  He would be away for
+six months, and then he would return, and they would be married.  He
+wanted to buy her something before he left, a ring or a bracelet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she wanted to buy it here," he sneered at Li Sin.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"I wanted to buy it here," she replied warmly, "because here I can get
+the most beautiful things in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you care for that yellow junk," Dreghorn laughed shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Roderick!" she protested quickly.  She was pained through and through.
+Li Sin smiled reassuringly at her.  But Dreghorn wandered on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anything you want," he told Irene; "anything that pleases you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he watched him, Li Sin became convinced that the man was in love,
+head over heels in, as a boy might be.  The hunter became garrulous,
+under his feelings, as under the influence of a drug.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She spoke of getting the house at Huntingdon decorated in some
+Oriental style," Dreghorn laughed.  "She can have it if she wants it.
+But I don't see why she could n't have it done in honest white style."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Li Sin smiled blandly as ever.  He might have been receiving a
+compliment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't seem to have a high opinion of Asia or Africa," he remarked
+casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no use for any color except white," Dreghorn answered brutally.
+"Black, yellow, brown, or red."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a harsh thing," Li Sin reproved him.  Irene Johns stood by,
+pale, nervous, and hurt.  "It is a grievous thing to wound the body,
+but it is a more grievous thing to wound the soul.  And to wound it
+unjustly is more grievous still."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I deal in facts," Dreghorn laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I show you a fact?" Li Sin went on.  "You have been in China, and
+if I mistake not, you read Chinese."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Among my many accomplishments," Dreghorn sneered, "is the reading of
+Chinese."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Irene looked at him with a sort of fearful agony in her eyes.  She had
+never seen his brutality creep out before, and she was shocked at the
+sight of him lolling across the counter and striving his utmost to hurt
+the smiling Manchu.  Li Sin took up a book from behind him, a broad,
+thin book, the stiff parchment pages of which were edged with gold.  He
+opened it carefully.  The leaves had the stiffness of steel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These are the verses of Ling Tai Fu, of Tientsin," the Manchu said, "a
+poet of the last century who had traveled into Russia.  He complains
+bitterly of the same prejudice, and he deals with facts, which you deal
+with.  Here is his poem 'The Return.'  Perhaps you will translate it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dreghorn looked down the page smilingly.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"They have laughed at me, they of the North&mdash;me, of the race of Chang!<BR>
+Because of my skin like an autumn leaf, because of my slitted eyes,<BR>
+Because they were white as the sun, they said, white as light!<BR>
+And yet&mdash;whiter than white is the leper.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+White is the hibiscus tree with fluttering blossoms, white as they!<BR>
+But whiter than it is the snow which numbs its roots in the ground!<BR>
+White are the men of the North as the sun, white as light!<BR>
+And yet&mdash;whiter than white is the leper."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Dreghorn laughed easily.  Irene shivered with a shock of horror.  Li
+Sin smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Those are facts," the Manchu said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there any more of this?" the hunter asked.  He turned over the leaf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more," Li Sin answered.  "I should have warned you about those
+leaves.  You have cut your hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dreghorn looked at his left thumb.  The edge of the book-leaf had
+sheared into it as sharp and as painlessly as the edge of a razor.  A
+few minute drops of blood showed on the skin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You had better have a little peroxide," Li Sin suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm not a child," Dreghorn laughed.  "It is n't anything.  Come on,
+Irene."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They left the store together, and, as was his wont with favored
+customers, Li Sin saw them to the door.  The girl was flushed deep with
+mortification, and she shot the Manchu a mute appeal of apology.
+Dreghorn smiled again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Au revoir</I>, my poetical friend," he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-by!" answered Li Sin, gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Li Sin saw little of Irene Johns for the next six weeks.  Once she came
+into the store, but she was nervous and flushed, as though she thought
+the Manchu would hold against her the insults Dreghorn had offered him.
+But he took pains to show her that he and she were as close friends as
+ever.  She was silently grateful, but still nervous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Dreghorn will be back in six months?" the Manchu said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In six months," she answered listlessly.  "He is gone to Abyssinia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you will be married soon after?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Immediately he comes back, he insists," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The glamour and hypnotism and force of the man's presence no longer
+enthralled her, Li Sin could see.  She was fearful of the step she was
+taking.  But she was certain it was going to take place.  Once Dreghorn
+returned, the quality of his masterfulness would grind down all
+opposition, even were she to show any.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want you to come in soon," Li Sin told her.  "I have some things
+coming from Peking that I want you to see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she did not come in.  In place of her there entered the store, six
+weeks after Dreghorn had sailed, a tall, heavily built young man with a
+tanned face, heavy jaw, and gray eyes.  He asked for Mr. Sin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Li Sin," the Manchu told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My name is Gray, surgeon on the Cunarder Hibernia, between New York
+and Algiers.  Miss Johns asked me to tell you something, and she would
+like to see you, if it is not asking too much.  She is prostrated at
+home.  Her fiancé is dead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Dreghorn is dead!" Li Sin commented simply.  "How?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He came out of the smoking-room one night, after talking to me about
+his intended," the surgeon went on glibly.  He seemed to be repeating
+something he had rehearsed.  "We were off Algiers, and though the night
+was fine, a cross-sea was running.  He said he would not turn in for a
+half-hour yet, and the last I saw of him he was leaning against the
+starboard rail of the boat-deck.  We never saw anything more of him.
+There can be no doubt that he fell overboard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Li Sin studied him for a few minutes silently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Gray," he said simply, "you will pardon a man who is twenty years
+older than you, and who has seen much of the world and much of life,
+but&mdash;that is not what happened.  Dr. Gray, how did Dreghorn die?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued looking at the young surgeon.  The man was evidently under
+a great strain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know Miss Johns," Li Sin went on, "and I knew Dreghorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you know Miss Johns," the young surgeon blurted out suddenly, "you
+know the best and most beautiful woman I have ever seen; and if you
+knew Dreghorn, you knew the damnedest scoundrel unhanged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That, too, I know," said Li Sin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He waited an instant.  The surgeon was uncomfortably silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dr. Gray," the Manchu insisted, "of what did Dreghorn die?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you want to know, and have the right to know," Gray burst out
+savagely, "the man died because he had contracted the most virulent
+case of leprosy I have ever seen in the tropics.  How he did it, God
+only knows.  He was quite well when he left New York except for a rash
+on his left hand.  He must have been impregnated with some horrible
+virus.  In a few days I had to manacle him in his cabin.  For a week
+the man was a shrieking maniac.  I thought something might be done when
+we got to port.  There was no chance.  In Algiers they would have put
+him in the leper colony.  So one night I took him up to the boat-deck
+and let him go overboard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was an instant's silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew of the man," the doctor said bitterly, "and I can't even pray
+to God for his soul!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I must!" said Li Sin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will go up and see Miss Johns," the surgeon reminded him.  "She
+will get over it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will get over it, and be happy, and marry a good man," the Manchu
+told him.  "I will go to see her."  And they parted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went upstairs to his apartment, very slowly, very calmly.  He sat
+down and thought for a while.  Softly he clapped his hands.  The silent
+Cantonese came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hong Kop," he asked, "tell me, Hong Kop, you who are young, how does
+love come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In fluting, sibilant Cantonese the servant answered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is beauty," he said, "and it calls to manliness with the call of
+cymbals.  They meet and wing upward, as Chung Tzu wrote, 'like a hymn
+recited softly at the death of day.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is beauty, and there is manliness!" the Manchu mused.  "There is
+Irene Johns, and there is&mdash;"  He smiled an instant, and became as grave
+as ever again.  "You will go to Brooklyn, to the Navy Yard, Hong Kop,
+and you will find for me an ensign called Nelson.  You will find where
+he is, Hong Kop....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am getting old, Hong Kop, I am getting old.  The pear gardens of
+Tientsin are bursting into silver and mauve.  Birds from the outer sea
+are winging northward.  Again with the spring the musicians tune their
+lutes of jade.  The throbbing chords do not awaken me, Hong Kop.  Hong
+Kop, I am old."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rose wearily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call the gray limousine, Hong Kop," he directed, "and then go on your
+errand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stretched his arms out for his fur coat, but suddenly he remembered
+something.  He went upstairs to the glass-roofed laboratory; taking a
+parcel from a bronze chest, and unwrapping the antiseptic-soaked
+coverings, he brought out a book, a broad, thin book, the stiff
+parchment pages of which were edged with gold.  Carefully he lighted
+the muffle-furnace, and carefully he placed the volume in it.  And
+while he waited for the volume to be consumed, softly he began to
+recite a quatrain from it, a quatrain of Ling Tai Fu's:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"White is the hibiscus tree with fluttering blossoms, white as they!<BR>
+But whiter than it is the snow which numbs its roots in the ground!<BR>
+White are the men of the North as the sun, white as light!<BR>
+And yet&mdash;whiter than white is the leper."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+"IRISH"
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Eastward the line of Twenty-fourth Street flowed evenly like a sluggish
+river, hazy, dim, antique, mottled by the lights of the little shops,
+of blotches and shafts of yellow illumination from the glass panels of
+the old houses, iron railings, and small scrofulous gardens.  Past the
+old houses, at the juncture of Seventh Avenue and the street, came an
+irregular blaze, a sort of ocher ray from a cellar where an Italian had
+a coal, ice, and wood business; the glare of the cigar store; the thin
+ray of the news-stand kept by the fat, rather dirty old German woman;
+the pale, sinister windows of the Chinese restaurant, and the arrogant
+blaze from Slavin's saloon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At no time did the street appear so well as it did now, in the dusk of
+the early New York spring.  The darkness, which was not full darkness
+but a sort of blue mantle, threw a veil of illusion over it, and
+through the veil the lights came softly.  Before the dusk it was crude
+realism, and when night fell there would be sinister shadows.  But now
+it had a little beauty.  It was like a picture a painter might have
+done some centuries ago, an unimportant and rather brutal picture, and
+time and grime and proper lighting had given it such value that one
+would pause before it for an instant, not knowing why the charm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man sitting in the doorway of one of the little houses with the
+yellowish patch of grass surrounded by a warped iron railing hated the
+street, with the dull, cold hatred of old men.  Yet he could n't get
+away from it.  Often his son had suggested, and his wife when she was
+alive had suggested that they move to the country.  "Yerra, do ye call
+that country?" he had snarled at the mention of Westchester, and Long
+and Staten islands; and that had killed the suggestion and they had
+tried to have him move up-town, to Harlem, but, "Yerra, what would I be
+doing up there?" he had rasped.  The son had spoken of the pleasant
+places in Brooklyn, out Flatbush way.  "Yerra, is it Brooklyn?"  What
+impression he had of that worthy borough is hard to imagine, but he
+spoke with devastating contempt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The truth was, the old man was wedded to Twenty-fourth Street.  He was
+like some of his race who have ancient, uncomely wives whom they
+despise and hate but without whom they cannot live.  There was the
+place it was fated for him to be.  There was the shop where he got
+shaved every morning.  There was the saloon where he had his three
+drinks a day, regular as the clock&mdash;one before lunch, one before
+dinner, and one before he went to bed.  There was the news-stand where
+he snapped the daily paper from the hands of the old German woman.  If
+an elevated train on Seventh Avenue were late, he would notice it.  He
+had decided to be there, and there he remained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the eye the old man was a forbidding, a cold figure.  It was more
+this forbidding and cold quality that made him old, rather than years.
+He could not have been much over fifty.  But this fixity of habit, this
+impression of being a monument, had endowed him with antiquity.  He was
+not a big man, but he gave the impression of size, of importance.  His
+hair was gray, and that gave him dignity.  His eye was of a colorless,
+aloof blue, the blue of ice.  His gaunt, clean-shaven face had
+something ecclesiastical about it.  His clothes were always a decent
+and expensive black, and a heavy gold watch-chain spanned his vest.  He
+had always a stick by his side.  His shoes were good and roomy, and
+somewhat old-fashioned.  His hat was of black, hard felt, not a derby,
+nor yet a high hat, but one of those things that suggest property and
+respectability, and somehow land.  His name was Mr. McCann.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The social standing of Mr. McCann on Twenty-fourth Street was something
+of a phenomenon.  Every one accorded him a sort of a terrified respect.
+The Italian coal-and-wood man; the German newsdealer; the man in the
+cigar store where he indulged in his only vulgarity, plug tobacco,
+which he cut with a penknife and crumbled in the palm of his hand; the
+bartender in Slavin's who fixed his drinks to a nicety and had a cheery
+and respectful "Well, Mr. McCann?" for his each entry.  The street
+recognized he was of them, but immensely superior.  He was not a
+gentleman, so the respect was not from caste to caste but something
+much more real.  None ever became familiar with him, nor would any sane
+man think of insulting him.  Aloof and stern, with terrible dignity, he
+moved through the street.  Even the children hushed as he drew near.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+None in the street ever examined their hearts or minds as to why he was
+paid their tribute of respect.  If they had they would have found no
+reason for it, but they would have paid it to him all the same.  He was
+Mr. McCann.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And this was all the more strange because he was father of Irish Mike
+McCann, between whom and the middle-weight boxing championship of the
+world there stood only two men.  Irish they loved; were proud of.  But
+it was n't to the father of Irish that the respect was paid.  It was to
+Mr. McCann.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+A very strange thing about Mr. McCann was this: that he could only know
+time and space and circumstances in relation to himself.  As thus:
+Seventh Avenue was not Seventh Avenue to him, a muscular, grimy street
+that plodded for a space on the west side of Manhattan, crashed
+northward through the Twenties, galloped toward Forty-second, crossed
+Broadway recklessly, and at Fifty-ninth met the armed front of the
+park, died.  To Mr. McCann it was only an artery that crossed his
+street.  Also, winter was not winter, not the keenness of frost, the
+tumbling, swirling miracle of the snow, but just the time when he put
+on his overcoat.  Nor did summer mean the blossoming of the boughs to
+him nor the happy population on the river and the beach, and the little
+Italians with their ice-cream carts, nor children crooning over great
+segments of watermelon, but just a time when it was oppressively hot.
+And great national events only marked points in his life.  He would not
+say, for instance, that he was married about the time of the war with
+Spain, but that the Maine was sunk about the time he was married.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All his life was under his eyes, like a map one knows perfectly&mdash;a
+rectangular pattern.  There were no whorls, no arabesques.  There were
+no delicate shadings, no great purple splash, but precise black and
+white.  There were no gaps he had jumped, to be a mystery in his latter
+years.  All was evident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could see himself in his boyhood on the Irish hills, among the plain
+farmer family he was born of.  He could place his father, plain old
+tiller of the soil, always smoking a clay pipe; his mother,
+warm-hearted, bustling, a great one for baking bread; his brothers and
+sisters, honest clods.  But he himself seemed to have been born
+superior, was superior.  There was no mystery.  It was a fact.  He
+accepted it.  And from him his mother accepted it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And by his mother it was impressed on the whole family that their son
+and brother Dennis was superior.  For him better clothes, easier work,
+and when he decided that farm life was not for him, no objection was
+made to the sending of him to college in Cork.  But after a couple of
+years there he had made no progress with studies, and it seemed to him
+that the studies were not worth while.  And he returned home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had tried to get a government office for him then, a very small
+one.  But that also required examinations, which he did not seem able
+to pass.  So that a great contempt for books grew up within him.  And
+then he grew convinced that Ireland had not enough opportunity for him.
+And the family got the money to send him to America.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The years at the college in Cork had intensified his sense of
+superiority so that when he came to America he felt that the Irish he
+met there were a very inferior people.  And nothing about the city
+pleased him; everything was much better in Ireland, he decided, and he
+said Ireland was a wonderful country&mdash;the only thing wrong with it was
+the people.  And the queer thing about it was that the Irish in New
+York agreed with him.  His few years at Cork gave them the impression
+he had accumulated learning, and the race has a medieval respect for
+books and writing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"True for you, Mr. McCann, true for you," they would answer his remarks
+on the inferiority of the Irish Irish.  "But what can you expect and
+the centuries of oppression they have been under?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If they had independence enough, there would have been no oppression."
+"Ay, there 's a lot in what you say, Mr. McCann."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His superiority disarmed them, cowed them.  If one of themselves, or a
+foreigner had uttered the words, I can imagine the rush, the dull thud,
+the door being taken from its hinges, the mournful procession to the
+widow's house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This aloofness, this superiority helped him, or, rather, made him, in
+the business he had chosen&mdash;life-insurance.  The wisdom he uttered
+about life and death to a race who considers life only as the
+antechamber of eternity impressed his hearers, and they were afraid,
+too, not to take out policies from this superior, frigid, and evidently
+authoritative young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His superiority also brought him a wife, a timid, warm-hearted girl who
+brought a tidy sum of money as a fortune, which he spent upon himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was terrified of him and very much in love with him for years.  And
+then the love went and the terror remained.  She bore him three
+children, two sons and a daughter.  And in due time she died.  But not
+until life had run pleasantly and respectfully for her husband, for all
+that he despised it, not as vanity and affliction of spirit but as
+inferiority and irritation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And one son died, and a while after her mother's death Moyra, the
+daughter, ran away, contracting a very inferior marriage with a
+brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad.  And the time came when the old
+man had to retire from the field of insurance, new methods, new
+companies coming in.  The native Irish died of consumption and
+pneumonia, and the Irish-Americans cared not a tinker's curse for
+superiority.  So his kingdom vanished.  And Poles, and French, and
+Italians, and the folk who came from Palestine by way of Russia, and
+even Chinese, jostled him.  And he was left with a great sense of
+superiority and a growing sense of futility and one son, "the brilliant
+Irish-American middle-weight, contender for the world's championship,
+'Irish' Mike McCann!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All that was needed now, the old man felt, to crown a useful and
+superior life was a material reward.  Money he did n't care for&mdash;he had
+all he wanted, decent clothes, a house, tobacco, his three drinks a
+day; and "The Advocate," an Irish weekly, he read for news of people in
+Cork, puzzling out this genealogy and that.  As, for instance, he would
+read of a Patrick Murphy fined for drunkenness at Youghal, and he would
+say: "I wonder now, would that be a son of ould James Murphy of
+Ballinure.  Sure, I would n't put it past him.  A damned drunken family
+they always were."  Or a name in litigation would strike him.  "Them
+Hamiltons were always the ones for going to law.  A dirty connection!"
+If a pier or a piece of public property were being builded, his comment
+was: "I wonder who's getting the money out of that."  If a political
+speech were reported he would sneer: "Yerra, John Redmond and them
+fellows ought to be ashamed of themselves, and them plundering the
+people, with their tongue in their cheek."  "The Advocate" was a great
+comfort to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He often thought, as he was reading it, of how much he would like to
+return to Ireland and show the ignorant the fruits of a superior life
+led in hard work and wisdom.  But for that he would have to show
+something tangible&mdash;even money would not be enough, so queer those
+people were.  To impress them at all he would have to have a title of
+some kind: Alderman, or Judge, or Sheriff, "the Honorable Dennis
+McCann," and to have that he would need to have gone into politics, and
+that was not a career for him.  To succeed there he would have to be
+able to mix with the common people, drink with them, be
+hail-fellow-well-met with a crowd of the dirtiest kind of Irish.  No,
+he could never have done that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No, but his son might have.  Sure, why could n't he?  Wasn't he reared
+right among them?  And though he came from a superior house, sure, that
+would only be an advantage.  They would look up to him as well as be
+friends with him.  And with the brains he ought to have, considering
+his father, there was no office in the land for which he could n't be
+fitted.  Surrogate, or mayor, or governor, even!  What was to prevent
+him if he 'd been the sort of child he ought to have been?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And if he had been that, there would have been a monument for the old
+man.  There would have been a justification for his life&mdash;not that he
+felt he needed any, but just to show.  And people would have recognized
+how much the young one owed to the old one.  Then he could have gone
+back to Ireland for a visit; he would n't have stayed there; it was a
+good country to come from, as he always said.  But even the ignorant
+common people would have given him credit.  He could hear them now
+talking to his son: "Ah, sure, if your Honor's father had had the
+chances you had, sure it is n't Mayor of New York he 'd be, but
+President of America."  "Yerra, 't is easy to see where you got the
+brains, my lad.  A chip of the ould block."  "Dennis McCann's son and
+him governor of the Empire State.  Well, you can thank God for your
+father, my bould boyo."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There would have been an evidence for him, an evidence he was entitled
+to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And look you the dirty trick had been played on him.  Instead of the
+son who would crown his gray hairs with honor, who would justify him,
+he was father to a common prize-fighter, a man who was not looked on
+with respect by any.  The idol, perhaps, of the New York Irish, but of
+the ignorant Irish.  True, he was a good boy; he didn't drink.  But
+neither did his father except in reason.  He was generous with his
+money, but, after all, what was money?  Always smiling, always
+laughing.  "Sonny" they called him and "Irish"; that was no way to
+attain dignity.  Even the Italian coal-ice-and-wood man called him
+"Irish."  The old man would like to see any one call himself "Irish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he could n't listen to any reason.  The old man had an opening for
+him in business up-town.  A friend of his, an undertaker, a very
+superior man, who only did the best kind of trade, had offered young
+Michael a chance.  But the prize-fighter had laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In a way I 'm in that line of business myself.  Why change?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man had shaken with rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get out of my sight, you impertinent pup!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What were they thinking of him in Ireland at all, at all?  Some one, of
+course, would write home and tell all about it.  And if his name, that
+should be treated with respect, came up, some one would laugh: "Ould
+Dennis McCann!  Ah, sure, what's he, anyway?  Sure, his son's only a
+common fighter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could never get away from it; was never let get away from it.  Why,
+even to-night now, not a half-mile away at Madison Square Garden,
+Michael was fighting.  And a great fuss they were making about it, too.
+Some Italian he was fighting, and if he won he was to get a fight with
+the champion.  He 'd probably win&mdash;he always did&mdash;and beat the
+champion, too.  And the end of it would be the honorable name would be
+dragged more through the dirt of the newspapers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder will he forget to bring home 'The Advocate,'" the old man
+thought.  "He 'd better not."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Before the bell had gone for the first round, before the referee had
+called them together for instructions, before even the gloves were
+laced on him, "Irish" knew he was a beaten man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Below him&mdash;he could see from his corner of the ring&mdash;the great garden
+was packed, a yellowish gray foam of faces above the dark liquid of
+bodies.  Above those the galleries were great ovals lined with faces.
+And here and there were little tendrils of smoke.  And the red caps of
+attendants.  And occasionally the flash of metal buttons as police and
+firemen hovered in the aisles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And at the shelf around the ringside reporters with their pencils and
+paper, and telegraphers with their clicking instruments.  The
+timekeeper, fingering watch and gong.  In another corner of the ring
+the thin, lugubrious referee&mdash;himself once a famous lightweight.  And
+everywhere lights, that in a minute or so would go out, and there would
+be only a great blue one over the ring.  And over the house was the
+rippling hush that at any instant would burst into a great volume of
+cheers; a deep roar as of gunnery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Across the ring, in his corner, the Italian middle-weight lolled,
+chatting with his seconds.  Irish could occasionally glimpse the olive
+body; the dark hair and eyes; the even, grim face, unmarked save for
+the marred left ear and the minute flattening of the nose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... between the leading contenders of the world's middleweight
+championship, Nick Chip [so they had Americanized Niccolo Chiapetta] of
+Buffalo, and Irish Mike McCann...." and the sentence was lost in the
+roar of the Garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he came to the center of the ring for the referee's instructions, to
+hear the interpretation of the rules of hitting while holding and about
+what was and what was not a clinch, he studied the alert, smiling
+Italian.  Yes, Chip was far and away the best man he had ever met; too
+good for him, much too good.  If he had only waited a year, waited six
+months, even; five or six months more of stiff, good fighting and he
+could have taken the Italian easily.  A little more experience and a
+little more confidence if he could only have waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he could n't wait; he could n't afford to.  Neither he nor the old
+man could afford to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They shook hands and returned to their corners.  The whistle blew,
+ordering the seconds out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't box him, Irish.  Stay with him.  Get in close, and when you get
+him open, bam!  See, just bam!" Old Maher, his trainer, whispered as he
+ducked out.  "See, no fancy stuff.  Just sock him.  How are you
+feeling, Irish?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At 'a baby!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Bong-g-h!</I>  He turned and walked to the center of the ring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Italian had dropped into his usual unorthodox pose.  His open right
+glove fiddling gently at the air, his left arm crooked, the glove
+resting against his left thigh.  He moved around the ring gently, like
+a good woman dancer.  About him was an immense economy of movement.  He
+seemed wide open&mdash;a mark for any boxer's left hand.  But Irish knew
+better.  The Latin would sway back from the punch and counter like
+lightning.  The old champion was wise to lie low and not to fight this
+man until he was compelled to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he could only spar him into a corner and rush him there, taking the
+punches on the chance of smashing him on the ropes....  But the Italian
+glided around like a ghost.  He might have been some sort of a wraith
+for shadow-boxing, except for the confident, concentrated eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A minute's fiddling, shifting of position, light sparring.  The
+creaking of the boards the <I>shuff-shuff-shuff</I> of feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, why don't you walk in and kill him, Irish?  He's only a Guinea!"
+came a voice from the gallery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's a yellow.  He 's a yellow, da Irish," an Italian supporter
+jeered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Irish" could wait no longer.  He feinted with his left, feinted again.
+The left shot out, missed the jaw, came home high on the head.  The
+right missed the ribs and crashed on the Latin's back.  A punch jarred
+Irish on the jaw.  An uppercut ripped home under his heart.  At close
+quarters the Italian was slippery as an eel.  The garden roared delight
+at the Irish lad's punches, but Irish knew they were not effective.
+And the Italian had hurt him; slightly, but hurt him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A spar, another pawing rush; light, smart blows on the ropes.  "Break!
+break!" the cry of the referee.  Creaking of ropes and whining of
+boards.  A patter of applause as the round came to an end.  A chatter
+of voices as the light went up.  The clicking of telegraph instruments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At 'a boy!  Keep after him," Maher greeted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he sat down in his corner Irish was grim.  Yes, the Italian was too
+good for him; he had been afraid of this: that the Italian would
+outgeneral him into attacking all the time.  A little more experience,
+the fights that mean a hundred times the theory, and he would have lain
+back and forced Chip to stand up and face him instead of sniping him on
+the run.  The confidence of six or seven more fights and it would n't
+have mattered to him what the gallery was shouting, what the ringside
+thought.  He could have made Chip stand up and fight, and in a round or
+so the Garden would have been with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he had only had a little more experience&mdash;if only he had been able
+to wait!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, well, what was the use of grousing!  He was here to fight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't you rough him up a little in the clinch, Irish?" Maher whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I 'll fight him fair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just a little to get his goat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lights went out, leaving only the great glare of the ring.  The
+whistle blew; clatter of buckets and bottles.  The seconds clambered
+down.  The gong clashed shudderingly.  The second round.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked slowly forward over the white canvas under the bluish white
+arc-light, to meet his man, and then suddenly from his walk he jumped,
+as some jungle thing might jump.  He jumped without setting, without
+any boxer's poise.  Right for the poised, alive body he jumped.  And
+his hands hooked for drive and uppercut.  He could feel the sense of
+shock as they both went home, but to unvital points.  The left hand
+thudded on the neck.  The right crashed on the Italian's left arm.  He
+was in close now, driving short lefts and rights to the body, but he
+was handling something that bent and sprang back like a whalebone, that
+moved, swayed with suppleness like some Spanish or Argentine dancer,
+and soon elbows locked his arms subtly, and he could do nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, break!"  The referee was trotting about the ring like a
+working terrier.  Peering, moving from right to left.  "Break!  Break!"
+His voice had the peculiar whine of a dog on a scent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood back, sparred a moment.  Again Irish rushed.  He felt on
+either side of his face sharp pains as of slaps with the open hand on
+the cheeks.  Irritating things.  He could feel the Latin shake as the
+left hand caught him flush on the ear.  A tattoo like taps of little
+hammers played at his body.  Irish's right glove came full into the
+Italian's ribs.  He could feel the rush of air through the Italian's
+teeth.  He brought the hand up with a short chop on the Italian's neck.
+A scuffle; a semi-wrestle.  And again his arms were locked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, boys!  Come on!  Break quick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stood apart, sparred.  Irish feinted with the left hand.  Feinted
+with the right.  Changed feet quickly, right foot foremost now.
+Pivoted home with the left hand&mdash;Joe Walcott's punch.  The Italian
+side-stepped, and caught him on the ear as he swung to the ropes.
+Irish turned quickly.  A flurry of gloves.  Light lead and counter.
+Clinch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're good, Nick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Y 'ain't so bad yourself, Irish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the bell finished the round and he walked toward his corner, he was
+surprised, looking down at himself, to find angry red welts on his body
+where what he thought was a light tattoo had been beaten....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, he thought between rounds, another little while, another pound of
+experience, and for all his cunning, his generalship, he could have
+beaten Nick.  And then between him and the championship there would
+have been only the champion, and the old champion's day was past.  He
+was getting fat, and satisfied, and drinking&mdash;and that was bad!  And
+going around the country to Boston and New Orleans and Seattle, beating
+third-raters and then mainly on points, and lying low, very low indeed,
+whenever Nick Chip's name was mentioned, or even his, Irish Mike
+McCann's.  Only another six months and he could have taken on the men
+the champion had beaten: Paul Kennedy of Pittsburgh, and the clever
+Jewish lad who went by the Irish name of Al Murphy&mdash;that fight would
+have taught him a lot&mdash;and the Alabama Kid, the hunched Negro
+middle-weight who hit like a flail, and Chicago Johnny Kelly&mdash;who
+fought with his right hand first, a hard lad to reach, but he could
+have beaten him.  Could have beaten them all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wanted to be champion&mdash;knew he could be, with time and experience.
+And what there was for him in the championship was not personal glory
+and not money, but a strange pride of ease that was hard to explain.
+All he could do well was this athletic feat of fighting with gloves.
+There was intuition, a sort of gift.  His body balanced right.  His
+left hand moved easily.  His right was always in position.  All his
+fights he had won easily.  But he had never been up against any one as
+good as this Italian veteran.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to him only right that an Irishman&mdash;or an Irish-American,
+which was better still&mdash;should hold the middle-weight and heavy-weight
+championships.  Fighting&mdash;clean, hard struggle&mdash;was the destiny
+apportioned to them.  He knew enough of the history of his race to
+remember they had fought under every banner in Europe&mdash;the Irish
+Brigade at Fontenoy, and the men who were in the Pope's Zouaves, and
+Russia and Germany knew them, and the great regiments the English had,
+Munsters and Leinsters and Enniskillen Dragoons, and in New York was
+the beloved Sixty-ninth, the Fighting Sixty-ninth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Vaguely in his mind there were thoughts which he could not translate
+into words, it not being his craft, that there was some connection
+between the men who fought in a padded ring with gloves and the men who
+went gallantly into battle with two flags above their heads, the flag
+they served faithfully and the little wisp of green they loved.  The
+men in the ring stood for the green in the field, perhaps.  And we
+should see in the Irish boxer what the cheering ranks of Irish going
+into battle were.  Fight squarely in the ring, fight gallantly, fight
+to the last drop, and win gallantly and lose gallantly.  And let no man
+say: There is a dirty or mean fighter.  And let no man say: There is a
+coward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were Irish names in the ring that made old men's hearts flutter
+and young men wish they had been born years before.  Old John L.
+Sullivan (God rest the gallant battered bones!) and Tom Sharkey of
+Dundalk, who never knew when he was beaten, and old Peter Maher, who
+was somewhere in the house.  And there was another name in the mist of
+past days, the name of a middle-weight champion who had been greatest
+and most gallant of them all, the elder Jack Dempsey, the Non-pareil.
+None like him, none!  Irish of the Irish, most gallant of them all, he
+sleeps in a green grave in the West somewhere, and in all men's hearts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Irish had thought humbly to fill the Non-pareil's shoes, to fight
+as hard as he fought, to win as chivalrously, to lose as well, and in
+his corner as he fought the ghost of the great Nonpareil would be.  And
+the roar of the house as he would walk out at the referee's call, the
+champion, Irish-American, in his tights of green, and around his waist
+the starry Western flag.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, well!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shrill cut of the whistle, and the chief second leaned forward and
+wiped his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fift' round, Irish.  Keep at him, boy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gong, and the hushed house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He noticed now that the Italian fighter was no longer resting his left
+hand semi-casually on his hip, kept up no longer his poise of an
+Argentine dancer.  The Buffalo man's left hand was extended like an
+iron bar, his shoulder hunched to his jaw for a shield, his head sunk
+low, as a turtle's head is half-drawn under its carapace; his feet well
+apart.  The man's oily black hair was a tangled mop, and on his ribs
+were red blotches.  His lips were set in a wide line.  His black,
+ophidian eyes snapped and glowed.  His poised right hand flickered like
+a snake's tongue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was punching, punching as hard as he could, hitting squarely
+with knuckles and every ounce of weight&mdash;careless of the economy of the
+ring that tells a man to save his hands, for a boxer's hands are a
+boxer's life, and every hurt sinew, every broken knuckle, every jarred
+delicate bone counts in the long run.  The Italian was hitting, hitting
+like a trip-hammer, hitting for his title.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They faced each other, the Italian poised, drawn like a bowstring,
+aiming like a sharpshooter, Irish, jigging on his toes, careless of
+guarding, feinting with the right hand, breaking ground, feinting with
+the left, feinting with the right again, and then a sudden plunging
+rush.  The jar to his neck as the Italian's straight left caught him
+flush on the mouth, the whirling crash of infighting, the wrestling
+clinch.  No longer the referee called, "Break! break!" but tore at them
+with hysterical hands.  A tacit understanding grew between them to
+protect at all times, and as they drew apart they hooked and
+uppercutted, Irish with an insane mood of fighting, the Italian with a
+quick deliberation: <I>Snap!  Snap!</I> the punches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Patter of feet, and creak of the boards, and little whine of the ropes.
+The great blue light overhead, the click of the telegraph instruments
+below.  The running feet of the referee and the nervous patting of his
+hands, <I>clop! clop!</I>  The seconds with their eyes glued on the fighting
+men, and their hands sparring in sympathy.  The mooing roar of the
+crowd and their louder tense silence.  And the regular gong, the short
+respite, hardly a second it seemed, though the interval was a
+minute&mdash;and the gong again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once they were so carried away they paid no attention to it, but fought
+on.  Only the referee parted them.  Irish held out his glove in apology
+and they shook hands.  The garden seemed to shake to the cheering.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Whip of lead in the tenth round, crash of counter, deep sock of
+infighting.  Clinch; break.  A half-second's inattention on the
+Italian's part, and the left hand of Irish crashed home to the jaw.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Himself did not understand what had happened until he noticed the
+crumpled figure on the boards and heard the referee:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get back, McCann.  Get back! ... One! ... two..."  An immense hysteria
+of sound filled the house.  Men jumped on seats.  The telegraph
+instruments clattered madly.  Somewhere near the ring was a fist fight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The crumpled figure twitched.  At four it was dragging itself to its
+hands.  The glazed eyes blinked.  Life returned.  The Italian shook his
+head.  At seven he was on his hands and knees, his head clearing.  At
+eight he was kneeling on one knee, one glove resting on boards.  God!
+how long the seconds were, Irish thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nine!"  Slowly the Italian rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Garden was no longer filled with human beings but with instruments
+of baritone sound.  It hit the roof, rebounded, whirled, surged.  All
+about Irish was sound, sound.  In front of him the Italian weak at the
+knees.  The referee hunched like a bowler.  Irish jumped in, fists
+swinging.  His fists met crossed arms, elbows, shoulders, but not jaw
+or head.  And suddenly the Italian was clinging to him, as a terrified
+cat will cling&mdash;he could n't tear himself loose.  It took the referee
+and him to tear the Italian away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Insane with the din, blind with excitement, he rushed again to meet the
+beautiful diagonal coverup, left arm across heart and plexus, right
+crooked about throat and jaw.  Again the clinging of the cat.  And he
+felt the Italian growing stronger.  It was like a dead man coming to
+life again.  Life was flowing slowly back to shoulders, from shoulders
+to arms and hands, to hips and knees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stood back to consider this miracle, to think what to do next.  Two
+shaking lefts caught him in the face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the gong rang and his chance was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes another six months and he could have won.  He would have known how
+to keep his head, how to finish the Italian crisply.  He had him out,
+out clean.  Another punch would have finished it.  And he had n't
+experience enough&mdash;another six months.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, what was the use of grousing!  It could n't be helped.  He could
+n't pass the fight up when it was offered to him.  Right at home, and
+so much money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The money had been needed for the home and the old man.  It was funny
+how much a home cost even on Twenty-fourth Street, and the old man was
+used to a certain way of living.  He liked to have a cook, and a girl
+to do the work around the house.  That was the way it was in Ireland.
+And the old man needed his decent clothes and his spending money for
+his little drink and his tobacco and papers, and things like that.  He
+couldn't very well put the old man in lodgings.  He wasn't accustomed
+to that.  He wanted his home and the cook and girl.  He always was
+accustomed to it, and why should n't he have it?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But a house took an awful lot of money.  For what the house cost he and
+the old man could have stayed at a swell hotel.  But the old man liked
+to be by himself.  You could n't blame him; the old man was entitled to
+a home.  He was a queer, crusty sort, the old man.  No harm in him, you
+know, but just could n't get on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And for all that people thought, a boxer's money was n't easy.  A
+middle-weight did n't get the money light-weights and heavy-weights
+got.  If he 'd won the championship&mdash;ah, that was all right!  Let it
+go!  But when you split fifty-fifty with your manager, there was only
+half of what you fought for; and there was expenses, too.  You had to
+travel a lot, and be nice to people, too.  You had to spend a lot in
+saloons, though you never drank yourself.  Keep your end up with the
+crowd.  And there was always old fighters out of luck, and some of them
+had families, too.  You could n't refuse them even if you 'd wanted to.
+And who 's going to help out a fighter except a fighter?  And there was
+always a lot of poor folks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed a pity, even for the money end, not to have waited.  If he 'd
+waited he 'd have had the championship, and then he 'd have been fixed
+for life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If his old man had been a different kind of old man he 'd have gone to
+him and said: "Hey, old timer, how about going easy on the jack for a
+while, hey?  Just lay off a bit until I get things right.  Gi' me
+another half-dozen fights under my belt, see, and I 'll drop this
+Guinea cold.  And then the champion 'll have to give me a fight&mdash;the
+papers 'll make him, and you know what he is.  He 's a bum.  So what do
+you say we get us a couple o' rooms, hey, and go easy for a while?
+What do you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A different kind of old man would have said: "Sure.  We 'll take our
+time, and we 'll knock this Guinea for a row of jam-jars.  And as for
+the champion, it's a cinch."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he was n't that kind of old man.  He did n't hold with this
+fighting, nohow.  He had no use for it.  And he was n't the kind of old
+guy you could talk to.  Irish thought he must have had a hard time in
+his life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, well; he was entitled to a good time now.  Let him have his own
+way.  Irish could always make money.  It did n't matter so much, after
+all, did it?  The only thing that hurt him was that he would never draw
+the Stars and Stripes through the green Irish tights....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he could have, if he 'd had only six months.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Irish was aware now as he answered the bell that his bolt was shot.
+The high pitch of concentration had gone.  With the dropping of the
+Italian, and the Italian's escape, he had reached the high point of his
+fighting, and now must go down.  His punch would be heavy still, but it
+would lack the terrific speed, the speed of shock, that carries a
+knock-out.  And the effect of the cumulation of blows from the Italian
+sharpshooter was beginning to tell.  Through the bruises on his body
+and neck and the puffiness of his face, energy was flowing out of him
+like water from some pierced vessel.  The stinging lefts to his face
+had made it hard for him to breathe, and his hands were swollen inside
+his gloves, and all of a sudden his legs were tired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into ten rounds of whirlwind fighting he had foolishly put everything,
+gambled energy and hands and brain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he sensed with a great sinking of his heart that Chip was drawing
+ahead of him now, drawing away from him in the contest, with the
+inevitableness of the winner drawing away from the beaten man, forging
+ahead while the other plods hopelessly on....  With the quick telepathy
+of the ring the Italian knew Irish had cracked, that he was gone.  And
+now the energy he had saved by making his man come to him he could use,
+he must use.  For that knock-down in the tenth was a high score of
+points against him.  And he was afraid of a draw.  He would have to
+fight Irish again.  Not again!  He must knock him out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met the futile rushes with stinging lefts.  At close quarters he
+ripped home his hands mercilessly.  As they drew apart he stalked his
+man.  <I>Smack!  Smack!</I>  It was no hard matter to avoid the rushing of
+Irish.  God! what a glutton Irish was!  What he could take without
+going down!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mechanically, stolidly, dully, Irish boxed.  All about him now was the
+hoarse murmur of speculation, and the din of it dazed him a little, and
+the light.  And from a cut in his forehead the blood was running into
+his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Four times the gong crashed, the end and opening of a round, and the
+end and opening of another round.  Dully he went to his corner.  The
+splash of water in his face did not revive him, nor the current from
+the whipping towels, nor the slapping of his legs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't let him knock you out, Irish.  Hold him.  Only two more rounds.
+Don't let him knock you out."  Maher's fierce whisper hit at his
+ear-drums.  So it was as bad as that, hey?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold on to him, kid.  Don't fight him.  Hold him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bell rang.  They pushed him to his seat.  Wearily he moved toward
+the center of the ring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look out!" some one called.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Italian had sprung from his corner with the spring of a cat.  And
+Irish felt surprisedly that he had been struck with two terrific
+hammers on the jaw.  And as he wondered who had hit him his knees
+buckled surprisingly, and he was on his hands and knees on the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he heard some one say: "... three ... four..."  He struggled to his
+feet.  Somewhere Maher was shouting.  "Take the count, Irish."  Irish
+dully wondered what he meant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now Chip was in front of him, concentrated, poised.  And once more
+the hammer crashed on the jaw.  And he tumbled to the boards on his
+side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was very dull, very dazed.  For a while he knew nothing.  And then
+he understood; the referee pumping his hand up and down, and the roar
+of the crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eight!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he moved he felt the ropes, and blindly he groped for them, pulling
+himself to his feet somehow.  About him the din surged.  The referee
+stepped back.  The Italian was pawing at the referee's arm, protesting.
+Irish understood.  Chip wanted the fight stopped, did n't want to hit
+him any more.  Ah, he was a good kid, Chip was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then the ring slithered underneath him; the hand grasping the rope
+grew lifeless, let go; and the lights went out for him; and Irish
+crashed forward on his face.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The old man looked at the battered face above the blue serge suit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he said, "it must have been a grand fight entirely!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a great fight," Irish grinned, "and a good man won."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Meaning yourself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, meaning the Guinea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you were beat, eh?" the old man jeered.  "I never thought you were
+much good at it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I don't know."  And Irish grinned again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me," the old man snapped, "did you bring me 'The Advocate'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did."  And Irish handed it over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'T is a wonder you remembered it," the old man snarled.  "And the fine
+lacing you 're after taking!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Irish grinned again.  Wasn't he a queer, grumpy old man!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+BY ORDEAL OF JUSTICE
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Very much as though he were entering a disreputable place, Matthew
+Kerrigan slipped furtively from the taxicab into the hallway of the old
+New York mansion made over into an apartment-house.  He stood at the
+door, portly, important, wrapped in his fur coat.  He pushed the button
+marked "Mr. Sergius."  A young Russian butler admitted him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just say a Mr. Smith," Kerrigan announced importantly.  Across the
+Russian boy's harsh features there was the shadow of contempt.  He
+reappeared in an instant and held open a door for Kerrigan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kerrigan had been expecting something of the dark, perfumed, cheap
+interior of a palmist's studio; or the meretricious mystery of a
+clairvoyant apartment with its crystal glass on faded velvet.  Even
+Kerrigan's untrained Broadwayish mind was awe-struck by the huge,
+somber living-room into which he was ushered.  He sensed, rather than
+understood, the richness of the pictures and hangings, the beautiful
+ceiling.  Only in books and papers had he seen anything like the great
+white borzoi lying before the roaring fireplace like a patient cat.
+The man he had come to see was sitting by the fire; dead-white features
+against a black background.  Lean, emaciated, with his full black
+beard, black cassock, and high black headdress of the Greek monk, he
+seemed more spirit than body.  He looked at Kerrigan with the insolence
+of a prince.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?"  He did not ask Kerrigan to sit down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kerrigan had planned a neat speech, somewhat humorous, cynical,
+patronizing, but it had fled from his memory.  He felt a sort of vague
+terror, as though this man were probing, uninvited, inside his soul and
+mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard&mdash;down-town&mdash;" he muttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!" the monk said impatiently.  "What do you want me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wondered, Mr.&mdash;ah, Mr.&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Brother Sergius!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wondered, Brother Sergius, if it were possible to hold converse&mdash;or
+see&mdash;or have some communication&mdash;some certain communication&mdash;with a
+person who 's been dead some time, some fourteen years&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The monk was looking at him keenly.  What had this well-fed business
+man, with the sweeping mustache and obviously massaged face, to do with
+the dim inhabitants of Death?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did this man die?" the monk Sergius asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By accident," Matthew Kerrigan answered.  "He drowned himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What interest have you in him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They say he killed himself on account of me," Kerrigan's voice broke
+out as though he were pleading to a judge.  "It's not true!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know whether it's true or not?"  The Greek monk was studying
+Kerrigan's terrified features.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can it be done?" Kerrigan was surprised at himself, so hoarse his
+voice sounded, so sincere his tones.  "I must know about it.  Can it be
+done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It can be done."  The monk nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there 's any fee&mdash;" Kerrigan suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no fee."  The monk laughed contemptuously.  "I act for the
+good of souls, when it is necessary."  He watched Kerrigan intently for
+some minutes.  "On Monday morning&mdash;at two in the morning&mdash;if the
+weather is clear, I will send for you.  Leave your name and address
+with the butler."  And he turned again to the book he was reading,
+oblivious of Kerrigan, as a great lord might be of the peasant standing
+awkward and awe-stricken in his presence.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Financial agents admire Matthew Kerrigan.  He is the sort of person who
+gives them no trouble.  They are more cordial toward him than they are
+toward great bankers or great Wall Street men.  For great
+bank-presidents and stock-manipulators wage terrific and lyrical
+battles on the terrain of commerce, and though there are great Leipzigs
+and Jenas, there are also great Waterloos.  But Kerrigan is safe.  He
+takes no chances.  His factories in Yonkers purr, day in, day out,
+making by the million that simple fastening device for women's corsets
+that has made him several fortunes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the way to make money," they will tell you.  "Just hit upon
+something simple and necessary, like a hair-pin or a shoe-horn, that no
+other person has thought of.  Make it and sell it to the public and
+bank your money in gilt-edged securities.  Look at Matthew Kerrigan!
+And not fifteen years ago he was a clerk in an accountant's office."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Along Broadway, too, he is known favorably, in that happy-go-easy
+circle of minor actors, wine-merchants, and women aspirants for the
+stage and movies.  Head waiters are deferential, and slightly
+contemptuous toward him.  He is a good spender, and yet&mdash;  There is
+something repulsive, unhealthy in the way he enjoys food and drink and
+looks at women.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven, which are an abomination
+unto him": and the first is haughty eyes.  I cannot conceive that as
+denoting the light that shines from eyes lit from a sense of high and
+noble lineage, of chivalrous ideals, of just power.  I translate it by
+the eyes of Matthew Kerrigan&mdash;those gray, full orbs which look about a
+room stating that there is no man present whose equal and superior
+Kerrigan is now.  Eyes which tell you Kerrigan has money, and is
+prepared to spend money for what he wants.  You know that man will get
+good measure for his money&mdash;shrewdness and sophistication gleam from
+them in a wary, reptilian way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They may call this the Rube City," Morgenthal, the little real-estate
+broker, announced at the Elks' Club, "but, believe me, there 's one guy
+in town they can't put anything over on, and that's Kerrigan.  He 's
+wise.  I tell you, boy, he 's wise.  Did you hear about that baby at
+the Winter Garden that tried to pull that hard-luck story on him?  You
+didn't, eh?  Well, let me tell you something: She got hers...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is one other place you may collect facts about Matthew Kerrigan
+and that is the down-town lunch-rooms of the financial
+district&mdash;uncomfortable, clattering places where you eat on a high
+stool at a counter and compute the price of your meal to the cashier as
+you go out.  There is a race of clerks there, old men, natty but shabby
+of dress, pinched in the face, gray-headed, stoop-shouldered.  Some of
+them are bitter and many are garrulous.  They specialize in the early
+histories of well-known men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I remember him when he was a bum in the street," they will tell you of
+nearly all of them; "when he had n't got a nickle for a shoe-shine.
+Did you ever hear how he got on his feet?"  And then will follow either
+a sordid or a criminal story.  And from them you can learn the story of
+Matthew Kerrigan and Leonard Holt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An office friend had told Kerrigan of an eccentric inventor who lived
+out in his home town of Englewood, a poor, poverty-stricken,
+scatter-brained mechanic who plodded in a broken-down cottage on the
+outskirts of Englewood at magnificent and foolish dreams, such as
+aviation and perpetual motion.  When Kerrigan went out to see his
+friend he was taken, on a rainy afternoon, to pass the dull hours, on a
+visit to the man Holt.  Beyond an occasional dunning tradesman, who
+sneered at him, and an occasional equally poor friend who remonstrated
+with him and urged him to take a position in a factory, Holt saw no
+one.  And when Kerrigan was introduced, he talked like a starved
+fanatic.  Tall; loosely built, as though his jointures were precarious;
+stooped; with great greasy hands; sandy-haired; with burning blue eyes
+and a high forehead, and a listless mouth and chin&mdash;one might have been
+pardoned for believing him an impractical fool.  He pointed out a large
+system of wheels and pulleys, of weights and springs.  It was the
+perpetual-motion model on which he was working.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I thought perpetual motion had been given up as impossible,"
+Kerrigan objected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They have been making strides toward it," Holt answered.  "The
+<I>Struttapparat</I> was a great advance.  Of course a small quantity of
+radium is necessary.  But, still, energy may be&mdash;it is just
+possible&mdash;created mechanically.  They disprove perpetual motion by the
+hypothesis of the conservation of energy, which is not proven&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so he went on at great length in his jerky sentences, while
+Kerrigan listened, picking up things and dropping them boredly&mdash;a
+Bunsen burner, a pair of pliers, a tripod&mdash;what not.  He lifted two
+pieces of asbestos, clamped queerly together by two long pieces of
+flexible metal.  As he toyed with it the thing came apart in his hands.
+A snap, and it was together again.  Kerrigan looked up in interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's this for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A little fastening trick.  Of no practical use&mdash;except, perhaps, for
+women's corsets!"  Holt laughed.  Kerrigan was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Patented?" he suggested, after a while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything I have is patented," Holt said with a touch of pride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I bring it along," Kerrigan asked, "to show it to a friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, certainly!" Holt nodded.  "Now, if you understand that the energy
+develops in geometric progression&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And very efficiently did Matthew Kerrigan show Holt's fastening device
+to his friend&mdash;a prominent banker who had never heard of Kerrigan
+before, but had always money to sink, at a price, in worthy
+enterprises.  Kerrigan returned to Holt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There may be something in that little thing of yours.  Will you take a
+hundred dollars for it outright?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that intuition which sometimes warns the unworldly minded, and that
+mulish obstinacy which some men have, made Holt stand out for a share
+of the profits, and unwillingly Kerrigan and his associate had to allow
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a hold-up," they complained to each other bitterly, "but we can't
+do anything about it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Holt was admitted to the profits of his patent, and for a while he
+dreamed dreams of wealth untellable; a wealth that would enable him to
+send his motherless three-year-old daughter to boarding-school and
+college and leave him in peace to work, with all appliances to
+hand&mdash;<I>Stuttapparat</I> and radium and everything&mdash;at the problem which
+had baffled scientific dreamers since the dawn of intelligence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The model on a big scale," he figured, "would cost ten thousand
+dollars&mdash;" and on his visions went, unhampered, unselfish, unpractical.
+He wanted to benefit the world by his discovery&mdash;and to get a little
+applause, a little credit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I don't know how they do these things, but they do them, and they must
+do them skilfully, for they evade the law, the iron law which insists
+on justice for all men.  Kerrigan laid his hand feelingly on Holt's
+shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm sorry, old man," he said with that sincere stop in his voice.
+"We made a mistake.  It's not practical."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Holt had received many blows, and was nearly impervious to them.  He
+smiled wistfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps I can do something," Kerrigan continued.  "I might get a
+little for your rights from some one who will take a chance.  I should
+like you to get something for it.  I led you to believe so much in it&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were very generous, for they knew there were millions ahead of
+them, so they gave Holt a thousand dollars, and he buckled to again at
+his grotesque machine.  A few weeks later some well-intentioned
+Christian told him the truth and commented fulsomely on what a fool
+Holt was.  The last blow was the fatal one.  It split his heart in two.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Methodically he made arrangements for his child to be brought up in a
+convent, and he left what money he had for the purpose.  He took the
+train to New York and crossing on the ferry-boat he climbed to the
+upper deck.  He sat huddled up in a corner, gray and shabby of clothes,
+gray and shabby of face, until the boat was half-way over.  He stood up
+on the seat and jumped, and the noise his jump made was drowned in the
+clatter of the paddles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tall, lank, oblivious, unpractical&mdash;your economist will tell you that
+the man was of no value to the community, and was better dead.  And
+your religious person will tell you that the crime of suicide merits
+hell-fire.  But somehow I feel that for these poor men with the light
+heads and the light bodies, and the heavy, heavy hearts, there is
+somewhere Understanding and Great Tenderness....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All this they will tell you, the garrulous and bitter old men, and
+while they inveigh against Kerrigan, you see somewhere in their eyes a
+glint of admiration and of envy.  The arena of Wall Street differs
+little from the arena of Neronic Rome; <I>væ victis</I> is the motto and the
+rule of the game.  And before you can leave them in contemptuous horror
+they will tap you on the knee, gloatingly dramatic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now Kerrigan is going to marry Holt's daughter!  Can you beat it?
+Can you beat that?"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+He had gone&mdash;perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of the depths of
+sentimentality that men of his type have somewhere in the bottom of
+their hearts&mdash;with his cousin, the chubby little minister of religion,
+to the prize-giving at the convent in Newark.  The bishop was there,
+and a play of Dunsany's was given; a few poems recited, and a song or
+two sung.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eye had been attracted all through the exercises by a tall girl in
+a white dress with a blue sash&mdash;a slim girl with hazel eyes and
+light-brown hair who in the distance had the profile of a Saint
+Cecilia&mdash;a Saint Cecilia with a somewhat broad, honest mouth and good
+firm teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's an attractive girl," he told his cousin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little cherubic minister, who worried in secret about his cousin's
+soul, was delighted.  He dreamed often of having his cousin Matthew
+reformed by the influence of some sweet woman.  A Dominican religious
+brought her forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Holt, Miss Agnes Holt."  Kerrigan was introduced to her.  He
+talked banalities to her for a half-hour, when she shyly took her leave
+of him, blushing furiously under the glances of her schoolmates.  When
+he was alone Kerrigan smiled queerly, with a distant look in his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At forty-five there comes always to a man of Kerrigan's type, with the
+first gray hairs, the fear of age.  There will be an inevitable day
+when he will no longer attract women, and when, in the bars and about
+the clubs, he will be referred to as an old man of another generation,
+and there arises in his mind the fear of loneliness in the fifties and
+the sixties, with Death hurrying breathlessly toward him day by day.
+The only thing to do then is to begin anew with a young wife, far away
+from the swirl of the city.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the only life," they say pathetically; "a wife and kiddies, a
+little bit of land somewhere, away from all this stuff."  And they wave
+their hands at the gleaming glasses and the pictures on the bar-room
+walls.  "There's nothing to it," they aver; and they drink up and have
+another one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met the religious as he was going away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That Miss Holt," he said, "is a very attractive girl."  It was the
+only adjective he knew to fit her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," the nun agreed.  "We all like her.  She 's been with us nearly
+all her life.  Her father died when she was young.  He was an inventor;
+Leonard Holt was his name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The name is familiar."  Kerrigan was shocked, but his self-restraint
+was superb.  "Died after some business depression, if I remember
+aright?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was murdered!"  The little religious's eyes flashed magnificently.
+"Murdered!  In the way of business!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kerrigan had heard that word used of Holt's end more than once.  But
+the fourteen years had been full ones, and the matter had not troubled
+him much&mdash;things like that happened so often.  And, besides, it was not
+true.  A murder predicates a murderer, and he was no murderer.  It was
+all a business arrangement.  And the man could n't stand the gaff.
+That was all!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All rotten foolishness!" he swore.  But somehow, this last time,
+perhaps on account of the dramatic meeting with the daughter, it would
+not go out of his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And no more would go out of his head the thought and picture of Agnes
+Holt in her white dress and blue sash, with her Saint Cecilia profile.
+She haunted him night and day.  At that period, peculiar in a man as
+the late thirties are in women, he fell in love, or in what for him
+would pass for love.  In all his selfish business career he had known
+intimately no woman like her, and her aloof, unrifled virginity struck
+him like a blinding flash of light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After all," he said, in the manner of his kind, "there is nothing on
+God's earth like a sweet, pure woman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And for days he thought about her and about love, not as a young man
+might, in a burning equation with factors of living flame, but in the
+smoldering symbols of maturity, which are so long in the consuming and
+so hard to quench.  He would go away from Broadway&mdash;"quit the whole
+condemned shooting-match," as he weirdly termed it&mdash;and take a place in
+Westchester or Long Island, a good, comfortable house with grounds to
+it.  They would be glad to have him in such a community.  He would be
+one of the village trustees; run for president.  And he would fashion a
+new life there with a young and beautiful bride, whom everybody would
+envy him.  There would be children, too.  Undoubtedly there would be
+children.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 'll be glad to get away from the convent," he thought shrewdly.
+And, after all, perhaps he had treated Holt a bit shabbily.  He would
+make up for it in the way he would treat his daughter.  She should wear
+diamonds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm thinking of marrying and settling down, Father John," he told the
+little clergyman one day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm glad to hear of it, Cousin Matthew," he said, rubbing his plump
+little hands, his cherub's face beaming benignantly.  "I 'm delighted.
+I am so!"  He shook his finger waggishly.  "And I think I know the
+young lady, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the little Holt girl we met at the convent that day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must come over and meet her again," Father John planned.  "I 'll
+talk to the Mother Superior."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so, with due chaperonage, Kerrigan met Agnes Holt several times,
+and each time he became more impressed with her.  She would say little,
+blushing mostly, and playing with something in her lap.  She understood
+vaguely that this portly, mustached man was thinking of marrying her,
+but that denoted nothing to her, so cloistered had her life been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," or "No," or "Thank you," was nearly the limit of her
+conversation, and she had difficulty in not adding "sir."  At times she
+would accompany him, with Father John, to a matinée in New York to see
+a carefully chosen family production, or to have tea at the
+less-worldly restaurants.  Occasionally she would burst out with a
+naïve exclamation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I once rode in a Fifth Avenue bus with Sister Mary Joseph," was the
+sort of thing she would vouchsafe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you were n't to marry her," Father John said, "she would enter the
+convent as a lay sister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+More and more as he met her Kerrigan's mind was taken up by the idea of
+her father.  The contour of her face; a certain look of her eye; a
+light in her hair when the sun shone on it, would recall the inventor,
+and immediately within him would rise a measure of uneasiness which he
+could not get rid of.  He once asked her if she remembered him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He died when I was young, very young," she said.  "An accident in a
+ferry-boat.  I have spent all my life with the sisters."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he went to and from the convent, he often met the religious who had
+spoken of Holt's death as murder.  And as often as he met her, so often
+would his mind revert to that sinister word, and he would find himself
+arguing about it internally, as though he were defending himself in a
+court of law.  He would try to shake off the mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of all the blamed foolishness!" he would tell himself angrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the idea would persist, and, growing morbid about it, he found
+himself reading carefully the charges of judges in cases of homicide.
+He went to the public library and conned upon the subject in
+encyclopedias.  He read of the magnificent fair play in trial by jury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I guess that settles it," he told himself.  "There 's nothing to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went on, however, and, reading farther, he came on the ancient
+custom of trial by ordeal of justice&mdash;of the test of a man's innocence
+by touching the dead body of a murdered man.  If the person suspected
+were guilty, blood would exude from the corpse.  A couplet of
+Shakespeare's was quoted&mdash;from the play of "Richard III":
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds<BR>
+Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh!<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+The thing made his flesh creep.  He read of the grisly test of the dead
+hand, and of the ordeal by fire and the ordeal by poison.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's no sense to that!" he muttered angrily, and little beads of
+perspiration gathered on his brow.  Even the innocent would waver under
+such a test.  Trial by jury&mdash;that was the sensible way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, one day, in a bleak sitting-room in the convent, he proposed
+to Agnes Holt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Agnes&mdash;" he cleared his throat, and he was honestly husky&mdash;"I suppose
+you have understood that my intentions toward you had a wedding in
+view.  I can make you very happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must talk to the Mother Superior," she said, blushing furiously, her
+voice low.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took her hand, and, opening a case, put a ring on her finger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have talked to the Mother Superior, myself," he told her, "and that
+is all right."  He drew her toward him, trembling a little, and on her
+forehead, with his mustached lips, he kissed her.  He was suddenly
+still, and strangely cold.  The touch of that skin reminded him of his
+last hand-shake with Leonard Holt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must put an end to this obsession!" he told himself angrily, that
+night at his hotel, and he poured himself stiff drinks of Bourbon.
+Should he tell Father John?  No! he decided.  He knew Father John well
+for a relative and a friend and a genial companion with lovable
+peccadillos.  But he knew, too, that the little clergyman could thunder
+with the thunder of Sinai.  Marry the daughter of a man in whose death
+he was implicated!  Never would Father John consent.  The cleric would
+not understand.  What could a priest know of business?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no use going to him," Kerrigan decided.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped a moment, thinking.  And, half-laughing and half-nervous, he
+remembered a conversation with a friend of his, a great Wall Street
+operator, who combined the shrewdness of his kind with his kind's
+superstition, and had recourse in moments of tension to clairvoyants
+and tarot cards.  He told Kerrigan of M. Sergius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's a Greek monk&mdash;been expelled from Mount Athos for practising
+magic.  What that man can tell you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose the next thing you 'll tell me is that he raises spirits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen!  You just ask Cabot Montgomery how they found that will of Van
+Vleet's.  Just ask him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's one born every minute," Kerrigan laughed, "and some of 'em
+live."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, brother," Kerrigan was told, "this man does it for nothing.
+Do you get me?  For nothing!  If it's important enough he 'll do it.
+If not, outside.  This is none of your country-fair crystal-gazers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In Kerrigan, too, was that strain of superstition that all men laugh at
+and all men have.  And right now as he sat in a mental, spiritual
+whirlwind, the memory of that conversation came to him as a preserver.
+After all, if he put things to the test&mdash;  Of course it was foolish; it
+was ridiculous, but still&mdash;  Nothing could come of it, by any manner of
+means, and yet&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the harm?" he laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At his time of life, he smiled, to put himself in the hands of a
+charlatan, to conjure up a spirit!  In this century, with the telephone
+by his bedside, with the electric light overhead, to patronize a
+mumming magician!  Nothing would, could happen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that nothing would be his answer.  It would mean that his life was
+free forever, purged of the foolish innuendos, the lunatic accusations
+of outsiders; the morbid worries of his own abnormal mind.  Free to go
+ahead and be married, and to live happily ever after.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When the butler had come for him silently, in the big blue limousine,
+one fine night of stars, he had gone with a little tremor in his veins.
+What would Father John and the gentle nuns and his little betrothed
+think of this mad excursion?  Well, he had thrown down a gauntlet to
+Fate, and he would go through with it, regardless of the empty issue.
+There was a witticism on his lips as he entered the apartment; but the
+witticism froze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Silently the butler ushered him into a dim room lighted by tapers.  In
+a corner, silent, were Sergius and four young men.  In the middle of
+the floor was a strange geometric design of circles and squares.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your butler just came for me&mdash;" Kerrigan felt the need of saying
+something, no matter how banal.  In a sort of awe Kerrigan noted the
+white garments of the former monk, and of his disciples; the white
+shoes embroidered in red; the white crowns with the Hebrew letters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you still wish to go ahead with this?" the Russian asked him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Kerrigan uttered.  His own voice seemed strange in his
+ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are to obey me in all things."  The ex-monk's voice had a terrible
+hidden menace in it, "and if you move out of that circle you are worse
+than a dead man!  Follow me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They moved forward through an opening into the strange geometric
+design, and behind them on silent feet came the four attendants.
+Kerrigan noticed in a sort of daze the sword they carried, the trumpet,
+the book, and the lighted taper.  About him, outside the circle, were
+strange paper symbols that seemed to cut him off from the world of sane
+and living men.  The Magus lit a circle of censers about the outer
+square.  He closed the circle and lifted one on high.  He swung it
+toward the four corners of the square.  An attendant handed him a
+sword.  He stuck it in the ground.  Another handed him a trumpet.  He
+blew it brazenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O Lord!  Hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto Thee...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Queer little whorls of smoke mounted through the air from the censers.
+The attendants had retired to the four points of the compass.  The
+Magus raised the bare sword.  His voice vibrated like an organ:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"O ye spirits!  Ye I conjure by the power, wisdom, and virtue of the
+Spirit of God ... by the Holy Name of God Eheith ... by which Adam,
+having invoked, acquired the knowledge of all created things ... by the
+invisible name Yod, which had Abel invoked he would have escaped from
+the hand of Cain, his brother...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to Kerrigan, standing there that about this circle was
+something that was not life, and that it was cut off from the security
+of things without as an island is cut off by water.  About it the
+incense rose in shadowy vapors.  The lights of the candles became
+dulled to a pale, diaphanous gold.  There was something terrible about
+it all.  He had imagined a grisly, morbid thing of quackery.  This he
+could have stood smiling.  But cold, stern majesty of ritual made his
+heart contract, as it might be oppressed in the nave of some great
+cathedral.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... By the Two Tables of the Law; by the Seven Burning Candlesticks;
+by the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest may go..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wanted to raise his voice, to tell the man to stop this mummery.  He
+wanted to walk to the door and slam it contemptuously, and to walk home
+through the cool mundane air.  That would be an end for him of all this
+morbidness.  But somehow he could not go.  It was as though he were
+held by hypnosis to the spot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... That spirit who was known here as Leonard Holt, and with whom this
+man, for a sufficient reason, would converse.  I conjure and invoke him
+in the name of the Lord Adonai.  I conjure him in the name of the god
+El, strong and powerful...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fear arose in Kerrigan like a cold marsh vapor.  He had come there in a
+braggadocio test of fate, to something whose being and name he knew
+not; to face it man to man, and to abide by the result.  But he seemed
+now to be, as it were, in a dock, not to argue but to be judged, by
+that vagueness against which he had thrown down the gauntlet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Magus had fallen to his knees.  Before him a disciple held an open
+book and a taper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the name of Him who hath made the heavens and the earth, and who
+hath measured them in the hollow of His hand, enclosing the earth in
+three of His fingers..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without those circles now, Kerrigan imagined, things were hovering with
+a force as of a great wind.  Things hurtled themselves against the
+mystic, powerful symbols like troopers against an impregnable
+fortalice.  No longer was he certain that nothing could happen.  If in
+a minute now, at any instant, the Thing that was being called would
+come, not the vacuous, impractical body, but a terrible being armed
+with the awful majesty of the dead, standing before him accusingly,
+with terrible eyes&mdash;standing like a flaming weapon between Kerrigan and
+the daughter who was flesh of him, who they said was murdered ... If!
+If!  If!  If!  His skin contracted in a tense horripilation.  His
+breath came shallow and panting, like that of a strained dog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Magus stood up.  Again the sword flashed in his hand.  He laid his
+hand on his heart.  His voice rang vibrant with power.  The acolytes
+bowed their heads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here be the symbols of secret things&mdash;the standards, the banners, the
+ensigns of God the Conqueror; the arms of the Almighty One to compel
+the aerial potencies.  I command absolutely&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Across Kerrigan's mind thoughts raced like skipping rabbits; like reels
+of living pictures.  He was being tried!  His wrists shook as the blood
+pulsed through.  Tried!  Tried by ordeal of justice!  By the terrible
+thing that made a dead man's wounds open when you touched him.  By
+ordeal of justice!  That was it.  He felt his face contract into a
+horrible grimace.  By ordeal of justice!  There was a weight on his
+chest of as huge granite blocks, very cold.  He could n't breathe.
+Through his heart there ran a pain like a knife....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... By their power and virtue that he come near to us, into our
+presence from whatsoever part of the world he may be in&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Master!"  An acolyte stepped forward and touched the exorcist's white
+samite sleeve.  He pointed to the crumpled figure in the circle.
+"Master, this man is dead!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
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+
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