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diff --git a/old/68775-h/68775-h.htm b/old/68775-h/68775-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index e9f8d3c..0000000 --- a/old/68775-h/68775-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10542 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Crucible, by Mark Lee Luther. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.blockquot { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - -.smcap { font-variant:small-caps; } - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.caption p -{ - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; - margin: 0.25em 0; -} - -table { - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } -.ph1 { font-size: large; margin: .67em auto; } - -.ph2 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } -.ph2 { font-size: medium; margin: .67em auto; } - -.ph3 { text-align: right; text-indent: 0em; } -.ph3 { font-size: medium; margin: .67em auto; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Crucible, by Mark Lee Luther</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Crucible</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mark Lee Luther</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Rose Cecil O'Neill</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 20, 2022 [eBook #68775]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Carlos Colon, Mary Meehan, the University of California and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUCIBLE ***</div> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE CRUCIBLE</h1> - -<h2>BY MARK LEE LUTHER</h2> - -<p><i>Author of "The Henchman," "The Mastery,"<br /> -etc., etc.</i></p> - - -<p>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY<br /> -ROSE CECIL O'NEILL</p> - - -<p>New York<br /> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> -1907</p> - -<p><i>All rights reserved</i></p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1907,<br /> -<span class="smcap">By</span> INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1907,<br /> -<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</p> - -<p>Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1907.</p> - -<p>Norwood Press<br /> -J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br /> -Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p> - - -<p>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p> - -<p>NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO<br /> -ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO</p> - -<p>MACMILLAN & CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span></p> - -<p>LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE</p> - -<p>THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></p> - -<p>TORONTO</p> - - -<p>To<br /> -E. M. R.<br /> -AN OPTIMIST</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> - -<table summary="illustrations"> - -<tr><td align="left"><a href="#illus1">"'A dimple will be a great handicap in my life.'"</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="left"><a href="#illus2">"And, among them, Jean."</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="left"><a href="#illus3">"'Do you know each other?'"</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="left"><a href="#illus4">"Her knight of the forest stood before her."</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="left"><a href="#illus5">"She was scoring."</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="left"><a href="#illus6">"From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future."</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<h2>THE CRUCIBLE</h2> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">I</p> - - -<p>The girl heard the key rasp in the lock and the door open, but she did -not turn.</p> - -<p>"When I enter the room, rise," directed an even voice.</p> - -<p>The new inmate obeyed disdainfully. The superintendent, a middle-aged -woman of precise bearing and crisp accent, took possession of the one -chair, and flattened a note-book across an angular knee.</p> - -<p>"Is Jean Fanshaw your full name?" she began.</p> - -<p>"I'm called Jack."</p> - -<p>"Jack!" The descending pencil paused disapprovingly in mid-air. "You -were committed to the refuge as Jean."</p> - -<p>"Everybody calls me Jack," persisted the girl shortly—"everybody."</p> - -<p>"Does your mother?"</p> - -<p>Her face clouded. "No," she admitted; "but my father did. He began it, -and I like it. Why isn't it as good as Jean? Both come from John."</p> - -<p>"It is not womanly," said Miss Blair, as one having authority. "Women -of refinement don't adopt men's names."</p> - -<p>"How about George Eliot?" Jean promptly countered. "And that other -George—the French woman?"</p> - -<p>The superintendent battled to mask her astonishment. Case-hardened by a -dozen years' close contact with moral perverts, budding criminals, and -the half-insane, she plumed herself that she was not easily taken off -her guard. But the unexpected had befallen. The newcomer had given her -a sensation, and moreover she knew it. Jean Fanshaw's dark eyes exulted -insolently in her victory.</p> - -<p>Miss Blair took formal refuge in her notes. "Birthplace?" she continued.</p> - -<p>"Shawnee Springs."</p> - -<p>"Age?"</p> - -<p>"Seventeen, two months ago—September tenth."</p> - -<p>The official jotted "American" under the heading of nationality, and -said,—</p> - -<p>"Where were your parents born?"</p> - -<p>"Father hailed from the South—from Virginia." Her face lighted -curiously. "His people once owned slaves."</p> - -<p>"And your mother?"</p> - -<p>The girl's interest in her ancestry flagged. "Pure Shawnee Springs." -She flung off the characterization with scorn. "Pure, unadulterated -Shawnee Springs."</p> - -<p>But the superintendent was now on the alert for the unexpected. "I -want plain answers," she admonished. "What has been your religious -training?"</p> - -<p>"Mixed. Father was an Episcopalian, I think, but he wasn't much of a -churchgoer; he preferred the woods. Mother's a Baptist."</p> - -<p>"And you?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know what I am. I guess God isn't interested in my case."</p> - -<p>The official retreated upon her final routine question.</p> - -<p>"Education?"</p> - -<p>"I was in my last year at high school when"—her cheek flamed—"when -this happened."</p> - -<p>Miss Blair construed the flush as a hopeful sign. "You may sit down, -Jean," she said, indicating the narrow iron bed. "Let me see your -knitting."</p> - -<p>The girl handed over the task work which had made isolation doubly -odious.</p> - -<p>The superintendent pursed her thin lips.</p> - -<p>"Have you never set up a stocking before?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Can you sew?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Or cook?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"'No, Miss Blair,' would be more courteous. Have you been taught any -form of housework whatsoever?"</p> - -<p>Jean looked her fathomless contempt. "We kept help for such drudgery," -she explained briefly.</p> - -<p>"You must learn, then. They are things which every woman should know."</p> - -<p>"I don't care to learn the things every woman should know. I hate -women's work. I hate women, too, and their namby-pamby ways. I'd give -ten years of my life to be a man."</p> - -<p>Her listener contrasted Jean Fanshaw's person with her ideas. Even -the flesh-mortifying, blue-and-white-check uniform of the refuge -became the girl. Immature in outline, she was opulent in promise. Her -features held no hint of masculinity; the mouth, chin, eyes—above -all, the defiant eyes—were hopelessly feminine. Miss Blair's own pale -glance returned again and again upon those eyes. They made her think -of pools which forest leaves have dyed. The brows were brown, too, -and delicately lined, but the thick rope of hair, which fell quite to -the girl's hips, was fair. The other woman touched the splendid braid -covetously.</p> - -<p>"You can't escape your sex," she said. "Don't try."</p> - -<p>"But I wasn't meant for a girl. They didn't want one when I was born. -They'd had one girl, my sister Amelia, and they counted on a boy. They -felt sure of it. Why, they'd even picked out his name. It was to be -John, after my father. Then I came."</p> - -<p>"Nature knew best."</p> - -<p>Jean gave a mirthless laugh. "Nature made a botch," she retorted. "What -business has a boy with the body of a girl?"</p> - -<p>The superintendent lost patience. "You must rid yourself of this -nonsense," she declared firmly, and said again, "You can't escape your -sex."</p> - -<p>"I will if I can."</p> - -<p>"But why?"</p> - -<p>"Because this is a man's world. Because I mean to do the things men do."</p> - -<p>"For some little time to come you'll occupy yourself with the things -women do."</p> - -<p>Jean's long fingers clenched at the reminder. The hot color flooded -back. "Oh, the shame of it!" she cried passionately. "The wicked -injustice of it!"</p> - -<p>"You did wrong. This is your punishment."</p> - -<p>"My punishment!" flashed the girl. "My punishment! Could they punish me -in no other way than this? Am I a Stella Wilkes, a common creature of -the streets, who—"</p> - -<p>The superintendent raised her hand. "Don't go into that," she warned -peremptorily. "If you knew Stella Wilkes in Shawnee Springs—"</p> - -<p>"I know her!"</p> - -<p>"Don't interrupt me. I repeat, if you know anything of Stella's record, -keep it to yourself. A girl turns over a new leaf when she enters here. -Her past is behind her. And let me caution you personally not to speak -of your life to any one but myself. Remember that. Make confidences to -no one—not even the matrons—to no one except me."</p> - -<p>Jean searched the enigmatic face hungrily. "I doubt if you'd care -to listen," she stated simply; "or whether, if you did listen, you'd -believe!"</p> - -<p>Something in her tone penetrated Miss Blair's official crust. "My -dear!" she protested.</p> - -<p>The girl was silent a moment. Then, point-blank, "Do you think a mother -can hate her child?" she asked.</p> - -<p>The superintendent, by virtue of her office, felt constrained to take -up the cudgels for humanity. "Of course not," she responded.</p> - -<p>"My mother hates me sometimes."</p> - -<p>"Nonsense!"</p> - -<p>"At other times it's only dislike," Jean went on impassively. "It's -always been so. Dad got over the fact that I was a girl. He said he -would call me his boy, anyhow. That's where the 'Jack' came from. -But mother—she was different. I dare say if I'd been all girl, like -Amelia, she could have stood me. She was forever holding up Amelia -as a pattern. Amelia would get a hundred per cent. in that quiz you -put me through. Amelia can sew; Amelia can embroider; Amelia can make -tea-biscuit and angel-cake."</p> - -<p>"And what were you doing while your sister was improving her -opportunities?"</p> - -<p>"Improving mine," came back Jean, with conviction. "Why didn't you ask -me if I could swim, and box, and shoot, and hold my own with a gamy -pickerel or trout?"</p> - -<p>"Did your father teach you those things?"</p> - -<p>"Some of them."</p> - -<p>"And to affect mannish clothes, and smoke cigarettes with your feet on -the table?"</p> - -<p>Jean flaunted an unregenerate grin. "You've heard more than you let on, -I guess. But you wouldn't have asked that last question if you'd known -him. He wasn't that sort. I did those things after—after he went. I -didn't really care for the cigarettes; I mainly wanted to shock that -sheep, Amelia. Besides, I only smoked in my own room. I had a bully -room—all posters and foils and guns. That reminds me," she added, with -a quick change of tone. "That woman who comes in here—the matron—took -something of mine. I want it back."</p> - -<p>"What was it?"</p> - -<p>"A little clay bust my father made."</p> - -<p>"Was he a sculptor?"</p> - -<p>"No, a druggist; but he could model. You'll make her give it back?"</p> - -<p>"Is it the likeness of a man?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, of dad."</p> - -<p>"The matron was right. We allow no men's pictures in the girls' rooms, -and the rule would apply here."</p> - -<p>Incredulity, resentment, impotent anger drove in rapid sequence across -the too mobile face. "But it's dad!" she cried. "Why, he did it for me! -I never had a picture. Don't keep it from me; it's only dad."</p> - -<p>The official shook her head in stanch conviction of the sacredness of -red tape. "The rule is for everybody. Furthermore, you must not refer -to men in your letters home. If you make such references, they will be -erased. Nor will they be permitted in any letter you may receive from -your family."</p> - -<p>"You'll read my letters?"</p> - -<p>"Certainly."</p> - -<p>Jean silently digested this fresh indignity. "Then I'll never write," -she declared.</p> - -<p>Miss Blair waived discussion. "Never mind about the rules now, my -girl," she returned, not unkindly. "You will appreciate the reasons for -them in time. Go on with your story. Tell me more of your home life."</p> - -<p>"It wasn't a home—at least, not for me. I didn't fit into it anywhere -after dad went. Mother couldn't understand me. She said I took after -the Fanshaws, not her folks, the Tuttles. Thank heaven for that! I -never understood her, it's certain. When she wasn't flint, she was -mush. Her softness was all for Amelia, though. They were hand and glove -in everything, and always lined up together in our family rows. I think -that was at the bottom of half the trouble. If mother'd only let us -girls scrap things out by ourselves, we'd have rubbed along somehow, -and probably been better friends. But she couldn't do it. She had to -take a hand for Saint Amelia, as a matter of course. I can't remember -when it wasn't so, from the days when we fought over our toys till the -last big rumpus of all."</p> - -<p>"And that last affair?" prompted her inquisitor. "What led to it?"</p> - -<p>"A box social."</p> - -<p>"A box social!"</p> - -<p>"Never heard of one? You're not country-bred, I guess. Shawnee Springs -pretends to be awfully citified when the summer cottagers are in town, -but it's rural enough the rest of the year. Box socials are all the -rage. You see, the girls all bring boxes, packed with supper for two, -which are auctioned off to the highest bidder. The fellows aren't -supposed to know whose box they're buying. Anyhow, that's the theory. -I thought it ought to be the practice, too, and when I found that -Amelia had fixed things beforehand with Harry Fargo, I planned a little -surprise by changing the wrapper. Harry bid in the box she signalled -him to buy, and drew his own little sister for a partner. The man who -bought Amelia's was a bald-headed old widower she couldn't bear. It -wasn't much of a joke, I dare say, and Amelia couldn't see the point of -it at all. She told me she hated me, right before Harry Fargo himself, -and after we came home she followed me up to my room to say it again."</p> - -<p>An unofficial smile tempered Miss Blair's austerity. "But go on," she -said, with an access of formality by way of atonement for her lapse.</p> - -<p>Jean's own quick-changing eyes gleamed over the memory of Amelia's -undoing, but it was for an instant only. "It was a dear joke for me," -she continued soberly. "Amelia was sore. She had a nasty way of saying -things, for all her angel-food, and she hadn't lost her voice that -night, I can assure you. I said I was sorry for playing her the trick, -but she kept harping on it like a phonograph, and one of our regular -shindies followed. It would have ended in talk, like all the rest, if -mother hadn't chimed in, but when they both tuned up with the same old -song about my being a hoiden and a family disgrace, why, I got mad -myself, and told them to clear out. When they didn't budge, I grabbed -a Cuban machete that a Rough Rider friend had given me, and went for -them."</p> - -<p>"What did you mean to do?"</p> - -<p>"Only frighten them. I never knew till afterward that I'd really pinked -Amelia's arm. Of course, I didn't mean to do anything like that. I -swear it."</p> - -<p>"And then?"</p> - -<p>"Then mother lost her head completely. She tore shrieking downstairs, -Amelia after her, and both of them took to the street. First I knew, -in came the officer. The rest seems a kind of nightmare to me—the -arrest, the station-house cell, the blundering old fool of a magistrate -who sent me here. He said he'd had his eye on me for a long time, and -that I was incorrigible. Incorrigible! What did he know about it? He -couldn't even pronounce the word! What business has such a man with -power to spoil a girl's life! He was only a seedy failure as a lawyer, -and got his job through politics. That's what sent me here—politics! -Mother never intended matters to go this far. I know she didn't, though -she doesn't admit it. She wanted to frighten me, but things slipped out -of her hands. Think of it! Three years among the Stella Wilkeses for a -joke! My God, I can't believe it! I must be dreaming still."</p> - -<p>The superintendent ransacked her stock of homilies for an adequate -response, but nothing suggested itself. Jean Fanshaw's case refused to -fit the routine pigeonholes. She could only remind the girl that it lay -with herself to decide whether she would serve out her full term.</p> - -<p>"It is possible to earn your parole in a year and a half, remember," -she charged, rising. "Bear that constantly in mind."</p> - -<p>Jean seemed not to hear. "The shame of it!" she repeated numbly. "The -disgrace of it! I shall never live it down."</p> - -<p>She brooded long at her window when her visitor had gone, her wrongs -rankling afresh from their rehearsal. The two weeks' isolation had -begun to tell upon the nerves which she had prided herself were of -stoic fibre. Human companionship she did not want. She had not welcomed -the superintendent's coming, nor the physician's before her; and, if -contempt might slay, the drear files of her fellow-inmates which -traversed the snow-bound paths below would have withered in their -tracks. It was the open she craved, and the daily walks under the close -surveillance of a taciturn matron had but whetted her great desire.</p> - -<p>She had conned the desolate prospect till she felt she knew its every -hateful inch. Yonder, at the head of the long quadrangle, was the -administration building, whither Miss Blair had taken her precise -way. Flanking the court, ran the red brick cottages—each a replica -of its unlovely neighbor, offspring all of a single architectural -indiscretion—one of which she supposed incuriously would house her in -the lost years of her durance. Quite at the end, closing the group, -loomed the prison, gaunt, iron-barred, sinister in the gathering dusk.</p> - -<p>This last structure had come almost to seem a sensate creature, -a grotesque, sprawling monster, with half-human lineaments which -nightfall blurred and modelled. Now, as she watched, the central door, -that formed its mouth, gaped wide and emitted one of the double files -of erring femininity which were continually passing and repassing. She -knew that there were degrees of badness here, and reasoned that these -from the monster's jaws must be the more refractory, but they appeared -to her no worse than the others. Indeed, as looks went, they were, -on the whole, superior. She felt no pity for them, only measureless -disgust—disgust for the brazen and the dispirited alike; all were -despicable. Her pity was for herself that she must breathe the common -air.</p> - -<p>Hitherto she had not separated them one from the other. This time, -however, she passed them in review—the hard, the vicious, the frankly -animal, the merely weak; till, coming last of all upon a brunette -face of garish good looks, she shrank abruptly from the window. For -the first time since her arrival she glimpsed the girl whose name had -been a byword in Shawnee Springs, the being who at once symbolized and -made concrete to Jean the bald, terrible fact of her degradation. Till -now she had gone through all things dry-eyed—manfully, as she would -have chosen to say—but the sight of Stella Wilkes plumbed emotional -deeps in the womanhood she would have forsworn, and she flung herself, -sobbing, upon her bed.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">II</p> - - -<p>So the little secretary found her. Miss Archer was born under a more -benignant star than her superior, and habitually tried in such quiet -ways as a wise grand vizier may to leaven the ruling autocracy with -kindness. She told Jean that she had come to transfer her to the -regular routine, bade her bathe her eyes, and made cheerful talk while -she collected her few possessions. They crossed the quadrangle in the -wintry dusk, turning in at a cottage near the prison just as Jean was -gripped by the fear that the monster itself would engulf her.</p> - -<p>At the door-sill she felt a hand slip into hers.</p> - -<p>"Be willing, dearie, and seem as cheerful as you can," counseled her -guide. "I'm anxious to have you make a good first impression here in -Cottage No. 6. It's immensely important that you stand well with your -matron. Everything depends upon it."</p> - -<p>Jean melted before her friendliness.</p> - -<p>"I wish I could be under you," she said impulsively. "This place -wouldn't seem—what it is."</p> - -<p>She framed this wish anew when she faced the matron herself in the -bleak cleanliness of the hall. This person was a variant of the -superintendent's impersonal type and a slavish plagiarist of her -mannerisms. A bundle of prejudices, she believed herself dowered -with superhuman impartiality; and now, in muddle-headed pursuit -of this notion, she promptly decided that an offender so plainly -superior to the average ought in the fitness of things to receive less -consideration than the average. Jean accordingly went smarting to her -room.</p> - -<p>Happily she was given little time to think about it. The incessant -round which, day in and day out, was to fill her waking hours, caught -her into its mechanism. A querulous bell tapped somewhere, her door, -in common with every one in the corridor, was unlocked, and she merged -with a uniformed file which, without words, shuffled down two flights -of stairs and ranged itself about the tables of a desolate dining-hall. -Whereupon the matron, who had taken her station at a small table laid -for herself and another black-garbed official, raised her thin voice -and repeated,</p> - -<p>"The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord!"</p> - -<p>An unintelligible mumbling followed, which by dint of strained -listening at many ensuing meals Jean finally translated,</p> - -<p>"And Thou givest them their meat in due season."</p> - -<p>Thirty odd chairs forthwith scraped the bare floor. Thirty odd -appetites attacked the food heaped in coarse earthenware upon the -oilcloth. Jean fasted. Hash she despised; macaroni stood scarcely -higher in her regard; while tea was an essentially feminine beverage -which of principle she had long eschewed. This eliminated everything -save bread, and it chanced that her share of this staple was of the -maiden baking of a young person whose talents till lately had been -exclusively devoted to picking pockets.</p> - -<p>Jean surveyed the room. It shared the naked dreariness of the -corridors; not a picture enlivened its terra-cotta wastes of wall. -Another long table, twin in all respects to her own, occupied with hers -the greater part of the floor space; but there remained room near the -door for two smaller tables, the matron's, which she had remarked on -entering, and one occupied by five favorites of fortune, whose uniform, -though similar to the general in color, resembled a trained nurse's in -its striping, and was further distinguished by white collars and cuffs. -This table, like the matron's, was covered with a white cloth and -boasted a small jardinière of ferns.</p> - -<p>The matron's voice was again heard.</p> - -<p>"You may talk now, girls," she announced. "Quietly, remember."</p> - -<p>A score of tongues were instantly loosed. The newcomer was astounded. -How had they the heart to speak? It was strange table-talk, curiously -limited in range, straying little beyond the narrow confines of the -reformatory world. A girl opposite said: "One year and five months -more!" and set afoot a spirited comparison which crisscrossed the board -from end to end and reached its climax in the enviable lot of her -whose release was due in thirty-seven days. Jean observed that the -head of the first speaker was lop-sided; its neighbor was narrow in -the forehead; a third, two places beyond, had peculiar teeth. Nearly -all, in fact, were stamped with some queerness, either natural or -artificially imposed by an institutional régime wherein the graces of -the toilet had no function.</p> - -<p>The gossip took another tack, originating this time in some trivial -happening in the gymnasium. Jean listened closely at a mention of -basket-ball, but lost all interest when the talk veered fitfully to the -sewing-school.</p> - -<p>"Ain't you hungry?" said a voice at her side.</p> - -<p>Jean rounded upon a girl perhaps a year her senior. Her tones were -gentle, with a certain lisping appeal, and her face, if not strong, was -neither abnormal nor coarse. Outside a refuge uniform she would readily -pass as pretty.</p> - -<p>"I couldn't stomach it myself, at the start," she went on, without -waiting for an answer, "but I got used to it. We all do. Why, the days -I work in the laundry I'm half starved."</p> - -<p>Jean stared.</p> - -<p>"They make you do laundry work!"</p> - -<p>"Sure. We all take a turn. Everything on the place is done by the -girls, you know—washing, cooking, tailoring, gardening, and a lot -besides."</p> - -<p>Her auditor relapsed into gloomy silence, a new horror added to her -plight. At home, even the factotum they styled the hired girl had been -exempt from washing. A strapping negress had come in Mondays for that.</p> - -<p>"I'm next door to you upstairs," pursued the new acquaintance, in her -deprecating way. "My name is Amy Jeffries. What's yours?"</p> - -<p>She gave it after a moment's debate. The old beloved "Jack" was at -the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly thought better of it. After -all, "Jean" would answer for this place. She regretted that in lieu -of Fanshaw she could not use Jones, or Smith, or—master stroke of -irony—the abominated Tuttle.</p> - -<p>"Jean Fanshaw's a nice name," commented Amy sociably.</p> - -<p>Dreading further catechising, Jean struck in with a question of her own.</p> - -<p>"Why have those girls over there a better uniform and a table to -themselves?" she demanded.</p> - -<p>"They're high grade."</p> - -<p>"What does that mean?"</p> - -<p>"Six months without a mark." Amy Jeffries cast a look of envy upon the -group at the side table. "I'd like awfully to be high grade. It must -seem like living again to sit down to a tablecloth. I should like the -cuffs and collars, too. I just love dress. When I leave here I think -I'll go into a dressmaking establishment, or a milliner's."</p> - -<p>Jean was reminded of something.</p> - -<p>"Tell me how I can get out of here in a year and a half," she -requested. "Somebody said it could be done."</p> - -<p>Amy smiled wanly.</p> - -<p>"I wanted to know, too, when I was green. I could just see the guard -holding the gate open as I sailed off the grounds! It was a beautiful -dream."</p> - -<p>"Why couldn't you do it?"</p> - -<p>"Marks," said Amy sententiously. "Parole in eighteen months means a -perfect record right from the beginning. I thought I'd try for it, but, -mercy, I've never even made high grade! Once I came within six weeks of -it, but I let a dress go down to the laundry with a pin in it."</p> - -<p>"They mark for a little thing like that?"</p> - -<p>"My stars, yes! For less than that—buttons off, wrong apron in the -recreation-room, and so on. I got my first mark for wearing my hair -'pomp.' They won't stand for it here. They want to make us as hideous -as they can."</p> - -<p>A lull threw the remarks of the girl with peculiar teeth into unsought -prominence.</p> - -<p>"Jim was a swell-looker," she was saying, "and a good spender when he -was flush, but I used to tell him—"</p> - -<p>"Delia!" The matron was on her feet leveling a rebuking finger at Jim's -biographer. "You know better. Leave the room at once. All talking will -cease."</p> - -<p>The culprit scuffed sulkily out, and no further word was uttered till -the end of the meal, when at a signal all rose and the matron observed -in pontifical tones,</p> - -<p>"Thou openest Thy hand!"</p> - -<p>On this occasion Jean caught the response without difficulty. The -words, "And Thou fillest all things living with plenteousness," seemed -to emanate chiefly from the high-grade table, with a faint echo on the -part of Amy Jeffries, in whom the ambition to eat from a cloth still -persisted. At "plenteousness" one bold spirit snickered.</p> - -<p>The file tramped up the two flights by which it had come, and scattered -to its rooms. For twenty minutes Jean sat in darkness and dejection. -Then the fretful bell clamored again, the doors yawned as before, -the silent ranks re-formed, and the march below stairs was repeated. -Their destination proved to be the recreation-room. In a dwelling this -chamber would have been shunned. Here, compared with such other parts -of the cottage as Jean had seen, it seemed blithesome. Potted geraniums -made grateful oases of the window-sills. An innocuous print or two hung -upon the walls.</p> - -<p>As the girls found seats, the matron handed Jean a letter.</p> - -<p>"You will be allowed to answer it next week," she said. "All -letter-writing is done upon the third Friday of the month."</p> - -<p>The girl took the missive with burning face. The envelope was already -slit. The letter itself had undergone inspection, and five whole lines -had been expunged. But her anger at this tampering lost itself in the -unspeakable bitterness which jaundiced her to the soul as she read. -Better that they had blotted every syllable.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<p><span class="smcap">Jean</span>: I hope this will find you reconciled to your cross, -and resolved to lead a different life. After talking over this great -affliction with our pastor, and taking it to the Throne of Grace in -prayer, I have come to feel that His hand guides us in this, as in all -things. I cannot understand why I have been so chastened, but I bow to -the rod. If your father were alive, I should consider it a judgment -upon him for his lax principles in religious matters. I never could -comprehend his frivolous indifference. I am sure I spared no effort to -bring him to a realizing sense of his impiety.</p> - -<p>Amelia takes the same view that I do of all that has happened. She -has not felt like going out, poor sensitive child, but.... (The hand -of the censor lay heavy here. Jean readily inferred, however, that -Amelia's retirement had its solace.) The first storm of the winter -came yesterday. Snow is six inches deep on a level, and eggs are high.</p> - -<p class="ph3">Your devoted mother,<br /> - -<span class="smcap">Marcia Fanshaw</span>.</p></div> - -<p>The matron was reading aloud from a novel which her audience found -absorbing. Jean could give it no heed. What were the imaginary woes of -Oliver Twist beside her actualities!</p> - -<p>The hands of a bland-faced clock crept round to bedtime. The reader -marked her place, and, after a moment's pause, began the first line -of a familiar hymn. Jean hated hymn-singing out of church. It had -depressed her even as a child, while later it evoked choking memories -of her father's funeral. So she set her teeth till they made an end of -it.</p> - -<p>Suggestive also of her father and of vesper services to which they -had sometimes gone together, after a Sunday in the fields, were the -words presently repeated by the forlorn figures kneeling about her; -but she heard them with mute lips and in passionate protest against -their personal application. These tawdry creatures might confess that -they had erred and strayed like lost sheep, if they would. She was -not of their flock. The things she had left undone did not prick her -conscience. The things which she ought not to have done were dwarfed to -peccadillos by the vast disproportion of their punishment.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">III</p> - - -<p>Life in a reformatory is an ordeal at its doubtful best. It -approximated its noxious worst under the martinet whom Cottage No. 6 -styled "the Holy Terror." The absolutism of the superintendent was at -least founded on a sense of duty; her imitator's was based upon whim. -Jean's chimera of parole after eighteen months was promptly dissipated. -Disciplined at the outset for breaking a rule of which she was not -aware, her obedience became thenceforth a captive's. Scrubwoman, -laundress, seamstress, kitchen-drudge—all rôles in which fate, as -embodied in the matron, cast her—were one in their odiousness. She -slurred their doing where she could, and scorned all such meek spirits -as curried favor by trying their best. At times only the fear of the -prison deterred her from open mutiny.</p> - -<p>She learned presently that there was an inferno lower even than the -prison. One day, while clearing paths after a heavy snowfall, she -saw a girl dragged past, handcuffed and struggling, her head muffled -in the brown refuge shawl, but audibly and fluently blasphemous -notwithstanding. Jean recognized Stella Wilkes.</p> - -<p>Amy, who was working near, said in furtive undertone:</p> - -<p>"I heard she'd cut loose again. She'll get all that's coming to her -this time."</p> - -<p>Jean eyed the nearest black-clad watcher before replying.</p> - -<p>"But she's in prison, anyhow," she commented, with Amy's trick of the -motionless lips. "She can't get much worse than she has already."</p> - -<p>"Can't she, though! It's the guardhouse this trip."</p> - -<p>Jean questioned and Amy answered till the matron's approach stopped -communication. It was a lurid saga of the days before the state -abolished corporal punishment, handed down with fresh embellishments -from girl to girl. The air was full of such bizarre folk-lore, she -discovered—tales of superintendents who failed to govern; of matrons, -wise and foolish; of delirious riots and hairbreadth escapes. Amy -Jeffries was always the channel which conveyed these legends to Jean's -willing ears.</p> - -<p>From all others Jean held herself aloof. Amy alone seemed a victim of -injustice like herself. Jean invited no confidences, and made none; but -bit by bit, as the winter passed, the story of this pretty moth, whose -world, more than her pleasure-loving self, seemed out of joint, pieced -itself together. It was a common story, too hackneyed to detail, though -it signified the quintessence of tragedy to its narrator. Of itself, it -struck no kindred chord in Jean. Its passions, its temptations, its sin -were without glamour or reason; but she divined that nature, rather -than Amy, had wrought this coil, and that, after the fashion of a -topsy-turvy universe, one was again expiating the lapse of two.</p> - -<p>The coming of spring at once brightened and embittered Jean's lot. -Outdoor work was no hardship. She knew the times and seasons of all -growing things; which soil was fattest; when plowshare, harrow, spade, -and hoe should do their appointed parts; when the strawberry-beds -should be stripped of their winter coverlets; when potatoes, shorn of -their pallid cellar sprouts, should be quartered and dropped; when -peas and green corn should be sown; when the drooping tomato plants -should be set out and fostered; and she entered upon this dear toil -with a zest which nothing indoors had inspired. But she knew also—and -here was the pang—precisely what was transpiring out there in the -forest which all but touched the refuge boundary. With a heartache -she visualized the stir of shy life in pond and field and tree-top; -caught in memory the scent of the first arbutus; spied out the earliest -violet; beheld jack-in-the-pulpit unbar his shutter; saw the mandrake -bear its apple, the ferns uncurl, the dogwood bloom.</p> - -<p>The call of the woods rang most insistent when she lay in her iron cot -at twilight, for bedtime still came as in the early nights of winter, -at an hour when the play of the outside world had just begun. She -could see the bit of forest from her narrow window, and in fancy made -innumerable forays into its captivating depths with rod or gun. It was -these imaginary outings, ending always behind locks and bars, which -first set her thoughts coursing upon the idea of escape.</p> - -<p>There were precedents galore. The undercurrent of reformatory gossip -was rich in these picaresque adventures. But cleverly planned as some -of them had been, daringly executed as were others, all save one ended -in commonplace recapture. The exception enchained Jean's interest. Amy -Jeffries had rehearsed the tale one day when the gardener, concerned -with the ravages of an insect invasion of the distant currant bushes, -left the lettuce-weeding squad to itself.</p> - -<p>"I never knew Sophie Powell," Amy prefaced; "she skipped before I came. -But they say she was something on your style—haughty-like and good at -throwing a bluff. I heard that the men down at the gatehouse nicknamed -her the 'Empress-out-of-a-job.' What she was sent here for, I can't -say. She was as close-mouthed as you. Mind you, I'm not criticising. -It's risky business, swapping life histories here. You're the only girl -that's heard my story. If you never feel like telling me yours, all -right. If you do, why, all right, too. I didn't mention names, and you -needn't either. I wonder if <i>he</i> would do as much for me!"</p> - -<p>Jean checkmated Amy's maneuver without ceremony.</p> - -<p>"I've no man's name to hide," she returned bluntly. "But never mind -that. It's Sophie Powell I want to hear about."</p> - -<p>Amy took no offense.</p> - -<p>"My," she laughed admiringly; "you <i>are</i> a riddle! Well, as I say, -Sophie had a way with her, and knew how to play her cards. She got high -grade within a year, and worked her matron for special privileges. -The matron let her have the run of her room a good deal, for Sophie -knew to a T just how she liked everything kept; and she wasn't over -particular about locking Sophie's door, which was handy to her own. -One spring night, earlier than this, I guess, for it was still dark -at supper, she played up sick. She timed her spasm for an hour when -the doctor was generally busy at the hospital, and let the matron fuss -round with hot-water bags till the supper bell rang. Then the matron -went downstairs, leaving the door open to give poor Sophie more air. As -soon as she heard the dishes rattle, the invalid got busy. She hopped -in next door, pinched the matron's best black skirt and a swell white -silk shirt-waist she kept for special, grabbed a hat and veil and a -long cloak out of the wardrobe and the big bunch of house-keys from a -hiding-place she'd spotted, tip-toed downstairs and let herself out of -the front door."</p> - -<p>Jean drew a long breath.</p> - -<p>"But the guards?" she put in.</p> - -<p>"She only ran into one—the easy mark at the gate."</p> - -<p>"The gate!"</p> - -<p>"Sure. Sophie didn't propose to muss her new clothes climbing a -ten-foot fence. She marched over to the gatehouse, bold as brass, -handed in her keys as she'd seen the matrons do, and was out in no -time. Why, the guard even tipped his hat—so he said before they fired -him. That was the most comical thing about it all."</p> - -<p>Jean threw a glance over her shoulder. The gardener was still beyond -earshot.</p> - -<p>"Go on," she said eagerly. "How did she manage outside? That's the part -I want to hear."</p> - -<p>"Then came smoother work still. Sophie hadn't a cent—she missed the -matron's purse in her hurry—but she had her nerve along. She streaked -it over into town, and asked her way to the priest who comes out here -twice a month for confession. She banked on his not remembering her, -for she wasn't one of his girls; and he didn't. His sight was poor, -anyhow. Well, she told him she was a Catholic and a stranger in town, -looking for work, and that she'd just had a telegram from home saying -her mother was dying. She pumped up the tears in good style, and put it -up to him to ante the car fare if he didn't want her heart to break. It -didn't break."</p> - -<p>Jean absently fashioned the moist earth beneath her fingers into the -semblance of a priest's face, which she instantly obliterated when it -stirred Amy's interest.</p> - -<p>"Why couldn't they trace her?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Because she was too cute to stick to her train. She must have jumped -the express when they slowed up for their first stop."</p> - -<p>The fugitive bulked large in Jean's meditations. It occurred to her -that possibly the needless rigor of her own treatment in Cottage No. -6 might originate in her chance resemblance to Sophie Powell. She -wondered how it fared with the girl; whether she had had to make her -way unbefriended; to what she had turned her hand. Was she perhaps -living a blameless life, respected, loved, in all ways another -personality, yet forever hag-ridden with the fear of recapture? She -did not debate whether such freedom were worth its cost, for just -then the pungent invitation of the woods was borne to her across the -lettuce-rows.</p> - -<p>A bit of refuse crystallized her resolve. She spied it toward the -end of her day's toil—a large rusty nail half protruding from the -loam—and knew it instantly for the tool which should compass her -release. Her mind acted on its hint with extraordinary lucidity, and -her fingers were scarcely less nimble. Not even Amy at her side saw her -slip the treasure trove into the concealing masses of her hair. From -that moment till the bolts were shot upon her for the night she was -absorbed in her plans.</p> - -<p>To duplicate Sophie Powell's exploit was, of course, out of the -question. Her own door was never left unlocked; the Holy Terror's -graceless clothes, for all practical uses, might as well hang in -another planet; while even were these impossibilities surmounted, she -could scarcely hope to hoodwink the men at the gate. She must secure -a disguise somehow, but she cheerfully left that detail to chance. To -escape was the main thing, and if by a rusty nail she might cross that -bridge, surely she need borrow no trouble lest her wits desert her -afterward.</p> - -<p>A tedious-toned clock over in the town struck twelve before she dared -begin her attempt. The watchman had just gone beneath her window on -his hourly round, and with the cessation of his slow pace upon the -gravel the peace of midnight overlay everything. For almost two hours -thereafter Jean labored with her rude implement at the staples which -held the woven-wire barrier before her window. The first staple came -hardest, but she had pried it loose by the time the watch repassed. In -a half-hour more she had freed enough of the netting to serve her end, -but she deferred the great moment till the man should again have come -and gone. It was a difficult wait, centuries long, and anxiety began to -cheat and befool her reason. She questioned whether she had not lost -count of time. Suppose she had let him come upon her unheeded! Suppose -he had caught some hint of her employment! Suppose he were even now -lurking, spider-like, in the shadows!</p> - -<p>Then the clock struck twice in its deliberative way, the measured -footfall recurred, and her brain cleared. Five minutes later she bent -back the netting and calculated the distance to the ground. She judged -it some sixteen or eighteen feet, all told, or a sheer drop of more -than half that space as she would hang by her finger-tips. There could -be no leaving a telltale rope of bedclothes to dangle. Such folly would -set the telephone wires humming within the hour. She must drop, and -drop with good judgment; since the grass plot, which she counted upon -to break her fall, gave place directly below to an area, grated over to -be sure, but undesirable footing notwithstanding.</p> - -<p>She tossed her brown shawl to the ground first, and noted, with some -oddly detached segment of her mind, that it spread itself on the sward -in the shape of a huge bat. A romping girlhood steadying her nerves, -she let herself cautiously over the sill, and for an instant hung -motionless, her eyes below. Then, gathering momentum from a double -swing, she suddenly relaxed her hold, cleared the danger-point, and -alighted, uninjured and almost without sound, upon the springing turf.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IV</p> - - -<p>For a moment Jean crouched listening where she fell. No sound issuing -from within, she caught up her shawl and stole quickly toward the point -where she planned to scale the high fence which still shut her from -freedom. There was no moon, but the night was luminous with starshine, -and she hugged the shadows of the cottages. These buildings shouldered -one another closely in most part, but she came presently to a gap in -the friendly obscurity where a site awaited a structure for which -the state had vouchsafed no funds. It was bare of any sort of screen -whatever, and lay in full range not only of the quadrangle, which it -broke, but of the gatehouse beyond.</p> - -<p>Nor was this all. Drifting round the last sheltering corner came -the reek of a pipe. Jean's heart sank. After all, the trap! Then -second thought told her that a foe in ambush would not smoke, and she -gathered courage to reconnoiter. Across the quadrangle she made out the -motionless figure of the watch. He was plainly without suspicion. He -had completed his circuit and was lounging against a hydrant, his idle -gaze upon the stars.</p> - -<p>So for cycling ages he sat. Yet but a quarter of an hour had lapsed -when the man knocked the ashes from his pipe, yawned audibly, and -turned upon his heel. The instant the door of the gatehouse swallowed -him, Jean sped like a phantom across the open ground, skirted the -hospital, the tool-sheds, and the hotbeds, and plunged into the -recesses of the garden. All else was simple. The high fence had no -terrors; her scaling-ladder was a piece of board. The asperities of the -barbed wire she softened with her shawl. When the town clock brought -forth its next languid announcement she heard it without a tremor. She -was resting on a mossy slope a mile or more away.</p> - -<p>She made but a brief halt, for the East, toward which she set her -face, was already paling. It was no blind flight. She struck for -the hills deliberately, since behind the hills ran the boundary of -another commonwealth. All fellow-runaways, whose stories she knew, -had foolishly held to the railroad or other main-traveled ways, and, -barring the brilliant Sophie, had for that very reason come early to -disaster. Jean reasoned that they were in all likelihood city girls -whom the woods terrified. Their stupidity was incredible. To fear what -they should love! She took great breaths of the cool fragrance. She -could not get her fill of it.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, it was not yet her purpose to quit the tilled countryside -utterly. She hoped first to compel clothing from it somehow—clothing, -and then food, of which she began to feel the need. The fact that -she must probably come unlawfully by these necessaries gave her -slight compunction. In some rose-colored, prosperous future she could -make anonymous amends. She haunted the outskirts of three several -farmhouses, but without success. At none of them had garments of any -kind been left outdoors over night. Some impossible rags fluttered from -a scarecrow in a field of young corn; that was all. Things edible, too, -were as carefully housed. Near the last place she found a spring with a -tin cup beside it. She drank long, and took the cup away with her.</p> - -<p>It was too light now for foraging, and Jean took up her eastward march, -avoiding the highways and resorting to hedgerows, stone walls, or -briers where the woods failed. As the day grew she saw farmhands pass -to their work, and once, in the far distance, she caught the seductive -glitter of a dinner pail. She was ravenous from her long fast, and -nibbled at one or two palatable wild roots which she knew of old. They -seemed savorless to-day, almost sickening in fact; and her fancy dwelt -covetously upon the resources of orchard, garden, and field, that the -next month but one would lavish. Nevertheless, she harbored no regret -that she had taken time somewhat too eagerly by the forelock.</p> - -<p>Noon found her beside a lake well up among the hills. She knew the -region by hearsay. People came here in hot weather, she remembered. -Somewhere alongshore should stand log-camps of a species which urban -souls fondly thought pioneer, but which snugly neighbored a summer -hotel where ice, newspapers, scandal, and like benefits of civilization -could be had. These play houses were as yet tenantless, of course—and -foodless; but the chance of finding some cast-off garment, possibly -too antiquated for a departing summer girl, but precious beyond cloth -of gold to a fugitive in blue-and-white check, buoyed Jean's spirits -and lent fresh energy to her muscles. Equipped with another dress, -be its style and color what they might, she felt that she could cope -fearlessly with fate.</p> - -<p>She had followed the vagrant shore-line for perhaps a mile when two -things, assailing her senses simultaneously, brought her to an abrupt -halt. One was the smell of frying bacon; the other was a baritone voice -which broke suddenly into the chorus of a rollicking popular air. Jean -wheeled for flight, but, beguiled by the bacon which just then wafted a -fresh appeal, she turned, cautiously parted the undergrowth, and beheld -a young man swaying in a hammock slung between two birch trees. He held -in his lap a book into which he dipped infrequently, singing meanwhile; -and his attention was further divided between the crackling spider -and a fishing-rod propped in a forked stick at the water's edge. Jean -viewed his methods with disapproval. It was neither the way to read, -sing, fry bacon, nor yet fish.</p> - -<p>Possibly some such idea suggested itself to this over versatile person, -for he presently rolled out of the hammock and centered his talents -upon the line, which he began to reel in as if the mechanism were an -amusing novelty. The stern critic in the background perceived the hand -of an amateur in the rebaiting, and predicted sorrier bungling still -when he should essay the cast. Her gloomiest forebodings, however, fell -far short of the amazing event. She expected the recklessly whirling -lead to shoot somewhere into the foliage, but nothing prepared her -for its sure descent upon herself. There was no disentangling that -outlandish collection of hooks at short notice, and she did not try. -But neither could she break the line. The bushes separated while she -struggled, and a vast silence befell.</p> - -<p>Jean straightened slowly.</p> - -<p>"You're a prize angler," she said.</p> - -<p>The young fellow's bewilderment gave way to an expansive smile.</p> - -<p>"I quite agree with you," he admitted. "I ought to have a blue ribbon, -or a pewter mug, or whatever they give the duffer who lands the biggest -catch. Let me help you with those hooks. I hope they haven't torn your -dress?"</p> - -<p>Then the blue-and-white check drew him. The girl's eyes had held him -first; next, her brows; afterward, her contrasting hair. The uniform -compelled his gaze to significant details—the shawl, the coarse shoes, -the fallen cup.</p> - -<p>Jean flushed under his scrutiny, and brusquely declined his help.</p> - -<p>"No, but let me," he urged, and so humbly that she relented.</p> - -<p>"I know more about these things than you do," she said. "Do you know -you're trying several kinds of fishing with one line?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes," he smiled. "You see I haven't a notion what sort of fish -frequent these waters, and fish vary a lot in their tastes. Some -prefer worms, some have a cannibal appetite for minnows, and some, I -believe, like a little bunch of colored feathers, which can't be very -nourishing, I must say. I couldn't make up my mind which bait to use, -and so I spread a kind of lunch-counter for all comers."</p> - -<p>This was too much for Jean's gravity. The fisherman was unruffled by -her laughter. In fact, he laughed with her.</p> - -<p>"Is it so preposterous as all that?" he asked. "I didn't know but I'd -hit on something new. This tackle doesn't belong to me; it's the other -fellow's."</p> - -<p>Jean's glance shot past him. The man saw and understood.</p> - -<p>"We planned to camp together," he explained, "but a telegram -overtook him on the train. It was highly inconsiderate in a mere -great-grandmother to pick out just this time for her funeral. I look -for him to-morrow or the day after."</p> - -<p>Jean freed her dress at length and searched for her belongings. The -young man stooped also. He was too late for the shawl, but gravely -restored the tin cup. She thanked him, as gravely, and after a little -pause added:—</p> - -<p>"The least you can do is to say nothing."</p> - -<p>"About seeing you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"You're from the other side of the county?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"From the—" he hesitated.</p> - -<p>"From the House of Refuge," stated Jean, looking him squarely in the -face.</p> - -<p>His own gaze was as direct.</p> - -<p>"But not that sort," he commented softly, as if thinking aloud—"not -that sort."</p> - -<p>Jean, boy-like, offered her hand.</p> - -<p>"Thank you," she said simply. "You're quite right. That's exactly why -I'm running away. Good-by."</p> - -<p>"Don't go!" He detained her hand, his face full of sympathy and -perplexity. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. It would be hard -lines for a fellow, but when I see a girl"—his eyes added: "And such a -girl!"—"roaming the country like a—a homeless—"</p> - -<p>"Hobo?" supplied Jean.</p> - -<p>He reddened guiltily.</p> - -<p>"Hang it all!" he ended, "I can't stand it. You hit the nail on the -head when you told me that the least I can do is to say nothing. But I -trust that isn't all I can do. I want to help."</p> - -<p>The girl's eyes misted.</p> - -<p>"You have helped, you believe in me."</p> - -<p>"Who wouldn't!" His bearing challenged the world.</p> - -<p>"Several people. My family, for instance; most of the officials back -there at the refuge. But never mind that."</p> - -<p>"No," agreed her new champion. "Never mind that. Let's face the future, -the practicalities."</p> - -<p>Jean complied with despatch.</p> - -<p>"Your bacon is burning," she announced.</p> - -<p>He led the way to his camp, and together they surveyed the charred ruin -in the spider. Jean could have devoured it as it lay.</p> - -<p>"And it's my first warm meal," lamented the camper tragically—"my -first warm meal after five days of canned stuff! The other fellow was -to be cook as well as fisherman."</p> - -<p>Jean promptly mastered the situation.</p> - -<p>"Clean that spider while I slice more bacon," she directed, rolling up -her sleeves. "If you have potatoes, wash about a dozen."</p> - -<p>The victim of a canned diet flung himself blithely into the work, but -halted suddenly, halfway to the water, and brandished the spider in air.</p> - -<p>"Not a mouthful unless you'll eat too?" he stipulated.</p> - -<p>Jean gave a happy laugh.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps I can be pressed," she conceded.</p> - -<p>With a facility which would have amazed the refuge, and with a secret -pride in her new knowledge which she had little dreamed she could come -to feel, Jean set the bacon and potatoes frying, evolved a plate of -sandwiches from soda crackers and a tin of sardines, discovered a jar -of olives which their owner had forgotten, and arranged the whole upon -a box-cover laid with a napkin. Nor was this the sum of the miracle. -She even garnished the meat with a handful of watercress which she -spied and bade her admiring host gather in a neighboring brook.</p> - -<p>They said little during the meal, for both were famished; but while -they washed the dishes together by the shore Jean, under questioning, -sketched the story of her flight. Her listener's ejaculations gained -steadily in vigor, till ultimately, moved by a startling thought, he -dropped the plate he was polishing.</p> - -<p>"Look here!" he cried. "Have you had a wink of sleep?"</p> - -<p>"I got in an hour about the middle of the forenoon."</p> - -<p>"One hour out of thirty!"</p> - -<p>"It was enough."</p> - -<p>"I'll sling the hammock anywhere you say."</p> - -<p>"I was never more wide awake. There are too many things to think out -and plan."</p> - -<p>"Take the hammock, anyhow," he urged. "You can plan and rest, too."</p> - -<p>She let herself be so far persuaded, and he brought pillows from the -tent. As she let herself relax, she first realized how weary she had -become, and closed her eyes that she might taste the full luxury of -rest. The rhythmic chuckle of the little brook where the watercress -grew was ineffably soothing. It seemed almost articulate, an elfish -voice to which the small waves, lapping the shore, played a delicate -accompaniment. She dreamily fitted words to its chant, and presently, -still smiling at the conceit, strayed quite into the delectable land -where water-sprites are real, and beautiful impossibilities matter of -fact.</p> - -<p>The shadows had lengthened when she woke. Her companion sat with his -back to a tree trunk as before, but she perceived that he had stretched -a bit of canvas to screen her from the slanting sun.</p> - -<p>"It was best all round," he said, as she sprang up reproachfully. "It -did you good and gave me leisure to think. I felt sorrier than ever -while you lay there, smiling and dimpling in your sleep, like a child."</p> - -<p>"I despise that dimple," avowed Jean, disgustedly.</p> - -<p>"You despise it!"</p> - -<p>"It's so—so feminine."</p> - -<p>"Of course it is; that is no reason for abusing it."</p> - -<p>"I think it's a mighty good reason. A dimple will be a great handicap -in my life."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a> - <br /> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>"A dimple will be a great handicap in my life."</p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>"Great Jupiter!" said the young man softly. "Why, some girls I know -would give—But we can't discuss dimples, just now, can we? What I -began to say, before you took my breath away, was that I think I've -solved the clothes problem. You know there's a town about ten miles -to the north—the county seat—and it occurs to me that if I set out -to-night, I can be back here early in the morning with everything -you'll need. I don't believe they'll suspect me, even if they have -happened to read that a refuge girl has escaped. I can buy the skirt -in one store, the hat in another, and so on, pretending they're for my -sister—or my wife."</p> - -<p>Jean's refractory dimple deepened.</p> - -<p>"Make it your mother," she advised. "Wives and sisters prefer to do -their own shopping."</p> - -<p>"Very well, then. If you will jot down the measurements and other -technicalities, I'll manage it somehow. As for money," he added, -perceiving her falter, "I will take care of that, too, if you'll allow -me. You will naturally need a loan."</p> - -<p>Jean swallowed a lump.</p> - -<p>"You're a brick," she said huskily. "I'll pay you back with the first -money I earn."</p> - -<p>The brick received her praise with a change of color appropriate to his -title.</p> - -<p>"Any fellow would be—be glad to help, you know," he stammered. "And -you needn't feel that you must hurry to pay up, either. Wait until -you're well settled among your friends."</p> - -<p>"My friends! I have none."</p> - -<p>"No friends!" He stared blankly. "Of course I realized that you could -hardly go back home, but I took it for granted that there must be some -place—somebody—"</p> - -<p>"There isn't."</p> - -<p>He sat down abruptly, bewildered with the complexities which beset an -apparently simple situation. Jean herself began to entertain some -misgiving. For the moment his opinion epitomized the world's.</p> - -<p>"Where do you mean to go?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Across the state line first; then to New York."</p> - -<p>"New York!"</p> - -<p>"Yes; to find work. Why do you stare as if I'd said Timbuctoo?"</p> - -<p>"I'm from New York."</p> - -<p>"Are you?" She brightened wonderfully. "Then you can tell me where to -find work. I'm willing to do anything at the start, but by and by I -want to get into some good business. Women are succeeding in business -on all sides nowadays. Why do you look so hopeless? Don't you think I -can get on?"</p> - -<p>"How can I answer you! If there were only some woman to whom I might -take you. I've a sister, but—"</p> - -<p>"But she wouldn't understand?"</p> - -<p>"No, she wouldn't understand. Neither do you understand," he went on -anxiously. "To be a stranger in New York, homeless, friendless, without -work, the shadow of that place over there dogging your steps; with you -what you are—trustful, unsuspicious, open as sunlight—Oh, I daren't -advise you. I don't dare."</p> - -<p>Jean was awed, but not downcast.</p> - -<p>"I'll risk it," she replied stoutly.</p> - -<p>Twice he opened his lips to speak, but rose instead and paced among the -trees. Finally he confronted her.</p> - -<p>"Why not go back?" he asked.</p> - -<p>Jean widened her eyes upon him.</p> - -<p>"Go back! Go back to the refuge?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. Why not go back and see it through? No, no," he entreated, as her -lip curled. "Don't think I'm trying to squirm out of my offer. That -stands. It's you I'm considering. Remember that no matter how much you -may make of yourself those people over there will have the power to -take it from you. Should you marry—"</p> - -<p>"I shall never marry."</p> - -<p>"Should you marry—ah! you will—they can shame you and the man whose -name you bear. Could you stand that? After all, isn't the other way -better? Wouldn't a clean slate be worth its price?"</p> - -<p>She shook her head.</p> - -<p>"You don't realize what you ask. I can't go back. I can't. You don't -know."</p> - -<p>"I suppose I don't," he admitted.</p> - -<p>"I'd rather run the risk—the risk of their finding me, the risk, -whatever it is, of New York. As for friends—" she smiled upon him -radiantly—"well, I'll have you."</p> - -<p>"Yes," he promised. "You'll have me."</p> - -<p>He accepted her decision, and at once made ready for his tramp across -the hills. At parting he reminded her that to him she was still -nameless.</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure myself," she laughed. "I'll need a new name in New York!"</p> - -<p>"But now?"</p> - -<p>"Well, then—Jack."</p> - -<p>"To offset the dimple, I suppose. Is it short for Jacqueline?"</p> - -<p>"No; just Jack."</p> - -<p>Jean's knight errant looked back once before the tree-boles shut her -wholly away. She had dropped upon a log and was facing the blue reach -of the lake. This was about six o'clock in the evening. At nine she had -not shifted her position. It was perhaps an hour later when she sprang -up abruptly, lit a candle which he had shown her in arranging for the -night, and hunting out a pencil and paper, wrote a hurried note which -she pinned to the tent-flap.</p> - -<p>There were but two lines in all. The first thanked him. The second -ran:—</p> - -<p>"I've gone back to see it through."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">V</p> - - -<p>The refuge, considered officially, was impressed. That any fugitive, -let alone one who had outwitted pursuit, should freely present herself -at the gatehouse, spiced its drab annals with originality. Jean -Fanshaw, no less than Sophie Powell, had achieved distinction. The -refuge dissembled its emotion, however. An escape was an escape, with -draconic penalties no more to be stayed than the march of a glacier or -the changes of the moon.</p> - -<p>But even the refuge—from the vantage-point of a supposed ventilator -reached by a secret stair—discerned that the prisoner of the -guardhouse was unaccountably not the rebel of Cottage No. 6. The girl -who dropped from the window would have found this duress maddening. -Four brick walls were its horizon; its furnishing was a mattress -thrust through a grudging door at night and withdrawn when the dim -glow, filtering through a ground-glass disk in the ceiling, heralded -the return of another day. It was always twilight within, for the -occupations of a guardhouse require little light. Text-books, no other -print, were sometimes permitted, but even these arid pastimes were not -for Jean; the school taught nothing she had not mastered. Her resources -were two: she might knit or she might think. She usually chose the -latter.</p> - -<p>Another thing puzzled the refuge—still considered officially. It was -no novelty for a song to rise to the pseudo-ventilator (inmates so -punished often sang out of bravado when first confined), but it was -quite unprecedented for a girl with no couch but the floor, no outlook -save the walls, no employment except knitting, companioned solely by -her thoughts, to croon the words of a rollicking popular air as if she -were content.</p> - -<p>Jean, too, wondered unceasingly. Why had her old ideas of life -cheapened? Save one chance stranger, men had met her on the footing -of boyish good-fellowship which she required of them: why should this -no longer seem wholly desirable? Why had she relished a chivalrous -insistence on her sex? Why had she taken pride in the practice of a -menial feminine art? Why had all things womanly shifted value? Why, -above all, did she feel no regret that these things should be? Yet -content was scarcely the word for her frame of mind. Her thoughts were -a yeasty ferment out of which the unknown youth of the forest, whose -very name was a mystery, began presently to emerge as an ideal figure. -And this ideal man had on his part a conception of ideal womanhood! -Here was the germinal truth at last.</p> - -<p>While she pondered, two solitary weeks which by popular account should -have been unspeakable, slipped magically away. She dreaded their end, -for she knew that in the adamantine scheme of things six months of -prison life, at very least, awaited her. Even to the average refuge -girl the prison signified degradation; to Jean it also spelled Stella -Wilkes. The abhorred contact did not begin at once, however, since -it fell out that in runaway cases the powers were wont to decree -yet another fortnight of isolation following the transfer from the -guardhouse. But isolation in the prison was a relative term. The -building's sights could be shut away; its sounds penetrated every -cranny.</p> - -<p>Such sounds! One of them broke Jean's light slumber her first night -under the prison roof. It was a strand in the woof of her dreams at -first, a monotonous, tuneless plaint, strangely exotic, like nothing -earthly except the wailing of savage women who mourn their dead. She -lay half awake for an interval, the weird chant clutching at her heart. -Then, as it rose, waxing shriller with each repetition, she sat bolt -upright with hair prickling and flesh acreep. It was a menace to the -living, not a requiem; a virulent explicit curse.</p> - -<p>"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"</p> - -<p>The prison stirred.</p> - -<p>"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"</p> - -<p>Here a woman laughed; there one began softly to echo the cry; cell -warily hailed cell.</p> - -<p>"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"</p> - -<p>The pulsing hate of it now filled the corridors. A door opened -somewhere, and a metallic footfall began to echo briskly from iron -stairs.</p> - -<p>"Is it mesilf ye're wantin', darlin'?" called a fat-throated voice. -"I'll not keep ye waitin'. With ye in a jiffy!"</p> - -<p>There was a sound of shooting bolts, a brief scuffle, the click of -handcuffs, and a ragged retreat. Presently a door slammed, and the -matron's steps alone retraced the lower corridors. Far in the distance, -muffled by intervening walls, its two emphatic words only audible, -the eerie defiance still rose and untiringly persisted until it again -entered the fabric of Jean Fanshaw's dreams.</p> - -<p>That cry somehow struck the dominant note of the prison. Its -bitterness, its mental squalor, its agonizing repression, its -smouldering revolt, all focussed in that hysterical out-burst against -constituted authority. Jean heard it again and again in the ensuing -months, and in each instance it broke the stillness of night. The -second time it startled, but did not frighten. The third she thrilled -to its message, knowing it at last for her own fiery heartache made -articulate. But this was afterward.</p> - -<p>In the beginning Stella Wilkes overshadowed their background. She -and Jean had had a grammar-school acquaintance in the days before -respectability and the Wilkes girl—as Shawnee Springs knew her—parted -company; and it was to this period of democratic equality and relative -innocence to which Stella chose sentimentally to revert when she first -found a chance to speak.</p> - -<p>"Can't say I feel a day older than I did then," she went on, sociably. -"Do I look it?"</p> - -<p>Jean made some answer. Stella indeed seemed no different; looking a -mature woman at sixteen, she had simply marked time since. A mole, -oddly placed near one corner of her mouth where another girl would -dimple, still fascinated by its unexpectedness. Stella noticed this and -laughed.</p> - -<p>"Remember how all you little kids used to rubber at my mole?" she -said. "It made me mad. I don't care now when people stare, but I wish -it was on my neck. 'Moles on the neck, money by the peck,' you know. -Queer, ain't it, that two of us from the old West Street school should -strike this joint together? It's just the same as if we'd gone away to -college—I don't think! Any Shawnee Springs news to tell?"</p> - -<p>"No," Jean answered, stonily.</p> - -<p>Stella saw that her advances were unwelcome, and her mood veered.</p> - -<p>"That's your game, is it?" She thrust her hard face closer. "So I ain't -in your class, my lady—you that was so keen for the boys! You give -me a pain. As if near the whole kit of us wasn't pinched for the same -reason. Go tell the marines you're any better than the rest!"</p> - -<p>It was Jean's first sharp conception of the brutal truth that the -stigma of the reformatory was all-embracing. The world presently -emphasized the stern lesson. True to her word on learning of the -censorship, she had never written home; but her mother's letters, -formal and mutilated as they were, had nevertheless meant more to -her than she realized until her degradation to the prison lopped -this privilege too away. The cumulative effect of Mrs. Fanshaw's -correspondence, when finally read, was not tonic. Despite the censor, -Jean gathered that Shawnee Springs now linked her name with Stella -Wilkes's. A refuge girl was a refuge girl; degrees and shadings of -misconduct lost themselves in the murky sameness of the stain. Her -grateful wonder grew that her champion of the forest had had the -insight to distinguish. His quixotic young faith and a heartening word -now and then from Miss Archer, when some infrequent errand brought the -little secretary near, between them redeemed humanity.</p> - -<p>A torrid summer dragged into an autumn scarcely less enervating. The -kitchen-gardens were arid; the grass-plots sere; the scant wisps of -ivy wherewith Miss Archer, unsanctioned by the state, had attempted to -soften the more glaring shortcomings of the architect, hung dead beyond -all hope of resurrection; and the endless reaches of brick wall, soaked -in sunshine by day, reeked like huge ovens the live-long night. The -officials' tempers grew short, their decisions arbitrary beyond common; -obedience became daily more difficult; riot, full-charged, awaited only -its galvanizing spark.</p> - -<p>This the prison contributed. Conditions were always hardest here, and -the rage they fostered had gathered itself into an ominous hatred -of the matron. Nor was this wholly due to her chance embodiment of -law. That carried weight, of course, but the prime factor in her -unpopularity was a stolid cynicism implanted by some years' prior -service in a metropolitan police station. Joined to a temperament like -the superintendent's, this could have been endured, though detested; -but the former matron of a "sunrise court" mixed her doubt with a -lumbering joviality against which sincerity beat itself in vain. Her -smile was a goad; her laugh a stinging blow.</p> - -<p>The revolt turned upon an old grievance. Breakfast was a scant meal in -the prison, and the laundry squad, upon which the severest toil fell, -had for months clamored for a mid-forenoon luncheon. This request was -reasonable, but an intricate knot of red tape, understood clearly by -nobody, had balked its granting, and the matron accordingly reaped a -whirlwind which others had sown. All the week it threatened. On Monday -perhaps half the workers in the laundry, headed by Stella Wilkes, -repeated the old demand, and were sent about their business with heavy -sarcasm.</p> - -<p>"Lunch, is it!" drawled the matron, with her maddening grin. "Sure -it's Vassar College, or Bryn Mawr maybe, these swells think they're -attendin'! How triggynomtry, an' dead languidges, an' the pianoforty do -tire the brain! Wouldn't you find a club sandwich tasty, young ladies? -Or a paddy-de-foy-grass, now? Back to your tubs!"</p> - -<p>Jean took no part in the demonstration, and as the Wilkes girl returned -to her work she cursed her for a chicken-hearted coward. Since the day -of her rebuff she had worn her enmity like a chip upon her shoulder. -Jean met this, as she now met everything, with apathy. Stella, her -unlovely associates bending over the steaming tubs, the nagging -matron—one and all had their being in an unreal world, a nightmare -country, which must be stoically endured until the awakening. The -tomboy had become a mystic.</p> - -<p>With this detachment she incuriously watched the rising storm. From -Tuesday to Thursday the unrest spent itself in note-writing, a -diversion, following Rabelaisian models in style, which was, of course, -forbidden. The contraband pencils found ingenious hiding-places, -however, and the notes themselves a lively circulation. One of these -missives, written by Stella and mailed with a scuttleful of fresh coal -in the laundry stove, fell under Jean's eye Thursday afternoon. It was -intended for another, but some delay had bungled its delivery, and the -flames unfolded it and betrayed its secret. Stella saw and pressed -close.</p> - -<p>"If you blab, I'll kill you," she threatened hoarsely. "That's -straight."</p> - -<p>Jean shrugged her away. She attached no weight to the scrawl's -ungrammatical hints of violence. Such vaporings were as common as -they were idle. Nor was she moved when, on Friday, during recreation, -the matron's alertness checked, though it failed truly to appraise, -a catlike dart of Stella's to the rear. She did not escape, however, -a certain sympathetic share in the tension which set the last day -of the week apart from other days. The nerves of a reformatory are -high-pitched. To be always dumb unless bidden to speak, forever aware -of a spying eye, eternally the slave of Yea and Nay—such is the -common lot. Double the feeling of repression, and you get the prison -and hysteria. From the rising-bell, Saturday, till she slept again, -Jean's senses were played upon by vague malign influences. All felt -them. If sleeve brushed sleeve, a scowl followed; muttered curses sped -the passing of every dish at meals; and in the stifling night some one -raised the heart-clutching chant against the matron. This was the time -Jean hailed it for her own.</p> - -<p>Sunday brought no relief. The piping heat held unabated; hard work, -the week-day safety-valve, was lacking. Only the matron could muster -a smile. That smile! The prison file, passing, chapel bound, in -Sunday review, felt the heat hotter and life more bitter because of -it. The eyes of one girl blinked nervously; the fingers of a second -spread clawlike, then clenched; the jaws of another set. If that woman -laughed! The quadrangle peopled rapidly. Every building spun its -blue-gray thread into the paths. The earliest comers were quite at -the chapel steps when the prison girls, issuing from their frowning -archway last, swung reluctantly into the treeless glare. Their smiling -matron stood just within the shadow, looking exasperatingly cool in -her white linen, and outrageously at peace with herself and her smug, -well-ordered world. Then, abruptly, some trifle—perhaps a missing -button, possibly a curl where should be puritanic simplicity, nothing -more significant—loosed her sarcasm, her laugh and revolt.</p> - -<p>A cry, different from the midnight defiance, yet as terrible, burst -from one of the prison girls. Shrill, bird-like, prolonged, it was -such a sound as the tortured captive at the stake may have heard from -the encircling squaws. It was well known in the refuge; decade had -bequeathed it to decade; and it was always the signal of mutiny. As -throat after throat took it up, the commands of the matrons became -mere angry pantomime. Rank upon rank melted in confusion, and the mob, -lusting for violence, awaited only its directing fury.</p> - -<p>A leader rose. Stella had secretly fomented this outbreak; it was her -storm to ride openly if she dared. Yet it was scarcely a question of -daring. This was her supreme hour, hers by right of might; and had -another seized the lead she would have crushed her. With black locks -tumbled, eyes kindled, cheeks afire, wanting only the scarlet gear of -anarchy to cap her likeness to those women of other speech who braved -barricades like men, she rallied disorder about her as the fiercer -flame draws the less. Her following flocked from every quarter of the -quadrangle—high-grade girls, girls but just clear of the guardhouse; -the mature in years, the tender; the froward, the meek; spawn of the -tenements, wayward from the farm; beggars, vagrants, drunkards, felons, -wantons, thieves. Hysteria answering to hysteria, madness to madness, -like filings to the magnet they came, and, among them, Jean.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a> - <br /> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>And, among them, Jean.</p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VI</p> - - -<p>Stella hailed the recruit with shrill satisfaction, clutched her by the -arm lest her allegiance falter, and beckoned on her amazons.</p> - -<p>"Smash the prison first," she screamed. "We'll show 'em."</p> - -<p>Back into the grim archway they swept, a frenzied, yelling horde, -and flung themselves into a fury of destruction. The window-panes -crashed first; then followed fusillades of crockery from dining-room -and kitchen. Nothing breakable survived; where glass failed, they -demolished furniture; lacking wood, they fell upon the plumbing.</p> - -<p>Treading close in Stella's vandal wake, Jean laid waste right and -left with hands which she hazily perceived were but mere automata -under another unknown self's control. She was a dual being, thinking -one thing, doing its opposite. The active personality disquieted yet -fascinated the critical real self, and she realized, half dismayed, -that if Stella Wilkes should waver in her leadership, the mad, alien -Jean Fanshaw would in all likelihood leap to replace her.</p> - -<p>But Stella harbored no thought of abdication. Her reign had just begun. -What was the too brief interval which had sufficed to wreck the hated -prison! There was as good pillage in the cottages, she reminded them; -better still in the administration buildings and the chapel. The chapel -now! What splendid atrocities they could wreak upon the big organ! And -after the chapel, why not storm the gatehouse? What were a handful of -guards! The gatehouse and liberty! Fired with this dream of conquest, -the mob armed itself with scraps of wreckage and trooped back to the -entrance to confront a thorough surprise. Bolted doors blocked their -triumphal progress—bolted doors and the matron, calm, resolute, -unarmed, and absolutely alone.</p> - -<p>The quadrangle, too, had had its happenings. With the superintendent -absent, her assistant ill, and the few male guards at the gatehouse -but mere creatures of routine, wholly incapable of the generalship -which the crisis demanded, the outbreak could scarcely have been more -effectively timed; yet order somehow issued from confusion. Officials -acting separately bundled such of their charges as had not yielded to -hysteria into the cottages, and hurried back to cope with the open -mutiny. With this the prison matron demanded the right to deal. It -had flamed out in her special province; it was hers to quench if her -authority was to mean anything thereafter; and she stubbornly declined -aid. Not even the guards might enter with her; she would meet the -situation single-handed.</p> - -<p>The rioters faced the lonely figure stupidly. Their clamor sank to -whispers, then silence. Their eyes blinked and shifted under the cold -survey which passed deliberately from girl to girl, missing none, -condemning all.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the matron levelled a finger at a weak-jawed offender in the -van.</p> - -<p>"Drop that stick!" she commanded.</p> - -<p>The culprit sheepishly complied.</p> - -<p>"You too!" She indicated the next, and was again obeyed. In the rear -some one whispered.</p> - -<p>"Stella Wilkes, come here."</p> - -<p>Habit swayed the girl a step forward before she realized that she was -tamely submitting, but she caught herself up with an oath, and returned -stare for stare.</p> - -<p>The matron's voice sharpened.</p> - -<p>"Stella," she repeated, "come here."</p> - -<p>The rebel's grip upon her cudgel tightened.</p> - -<p>"Come yourself," she retorted. "Come if you dast!"</p> - -<p>The matron dared. Force rather than psychology had ruled the police -station of her schooling, and with the loss of her temper she reverted -instinctively to its crude argument. A rush, a glint of handcuffs -hitherto concealed, a violent brief struggle, a blow, a heavy -fall—such were the kaleidoscopic details of a battle whose whole -nobody saw perfectly, but from which Stella, the mob incarnate, emerged -unmistakably a victor. Moblike, she was also merciless, and continued -to rain blows which the half-stunned woman at her feet had power -neither to return nor fend. One of them drew blood, a scarlet thread, -which by fantastic approaches and doublings traversed the matron's now -pallid cheek and stained the whiteness of her dress.</p> - -<p>It was then Jean woke. She was no longer among the foremost. Separated -from Stella in the sack of the upper floors, she had fallen late upon a -mirror of the matron's, miraculously preserved till her coming, and had -busied herself with its joyous ruin till the others had surged below -and the rencounter at the door had begun. With her first idle moment -apart from the common folly she experienced reaction; one glimpse of -the scene below effected a cure. She loved the vanquished as little as -the victor, but her every instinct for fair play and decency cried out -against the wanton blows, and drove her hotly through the press to the -dazed woman's side.</p> - -<p>The surprise of the attack, more than its strength, disconcerted -Stella, and Jean had pulled the matron to her feet before retaliation -was possible. Nimble wits likewise counted most in the immediate -sequel. Quite in the moment of her charge Jean spied a coil of -fire-hose, which, used not half an hour ago for the sake of coolness, -lay still connected with its hydrant, and its possibilities flashed -instantly upon her. Before the ringleader's slow brain could divine her -purpose she had thrust the nozzle into the matron's fingers and sprung -to release the flood. Stella saw the advantages of this neglected -weapon now, and plunged to capture it, but a stream as thick as a -man's wrist took her squarely in the face with the pent energy of a -long descent from the hills, and brought her gasping to her knees. -Before she fairly caught her breath she was handcuffed and helpless, -and the matron, all bustle and resource with the turning of the tide, -was issuing crisp orders to as drenched, frightened, and abjectly -obedient a band of rebels as ever made unconditional surrender.</p> - -<p>To her real conqueror Stella at least made full and volcanic -acknowledgment. The guardhouse alone stemmed the sulphurous eruption -which she poured out upon Jean's past, present, and future; and the -girls who heard shivered thankfully that another than themselves must -drag out existence under the blighting fear of such a requital. The -official attitude was more dispassionate. Barring now and again a -puzzled glance, as at some insoluble riddle, the matron in no wise -singled her preserver from the common run of mutineers to whom she -meted out added rigors and penalties for their offence. Far from -hastening her return to cottage life by her service in the cause of -law and order, Jean learned that she had narrowly escaped doubling -her prison term, and that the fact that the good in her conduct had -been allowed to weigh over against the evil was deemed a piece of -extraordinary clemency.</p> - -<p>Yet even if that brief reign of unreason had added a half-year of -prison to the six months which a brief interval would round, its lesson -would not have been dear-bought; for, as she had returned richer by -a new conception of her womanhood from the flight of which the prison -was the price, so now she wrung sanity from her yielding to madness. -It terrified her that she could for one moment have become like these -weak pawns in an incomprehensible game, and the recoil intrenched her -in a fastness of self-control such as her girlhood had never conceived. -Happily there came also at this time another influence no less -wholesome and far-reaching.</p> - -<p>One morning of early winter she quitted the prison in charge of a clerk -from the superintendent's office, who led the way to Cottage No. 6. -Jean's heart sank as they crossed the threshold. In the optimism born -of new resolutions she had hoped for a different lot. What availed new -resolutions here! But she was no sooner within than she was conscious -of a changed atmosphere. Bare as they were, the corridors seemed less -institutional; the recreation hall, glimpsed in passing, smiled an -almost animate greeting; while the room in which she was told to await -the cottage matron's leisure resembled the room it had been in nothing -save its four walls. Amy Jeffries, dusting the window-seat as if she -enjoyed it, was actually humming.</p> - -<p>"Howdy!" she called. "Welcome home."</p> - -<p>Jean lifted a warning finger.</p> - -<p>"Somebody will hear," she cautioned. "Where will be your high grade -then?"</p> - -<p>Amy grinned broadly.</p> - -<p>"Noticed it, did you?" She pivoted complacently before a mirror. "Don't -I look for all the world like a trained nurse? Can't you just see me -doing the wedding march with the grateful millionaire I've pulled -through typhoid! Glory, but I am tickled to get out of checks!"</p> - -<p>Jean was vexed at her folly.</p> - -<p>"You'll get into them again mighty quick if she hears," she whispered. -"Don't be a fool."</p> - -<p>"She!" Amy turned to stare. "Well, if you're not in from the backwoods! -You don't mean to say you haven't heard that the Holy Terror is gone?"</p> - -<p>"Gone? You mean—"</p> - -<p>"I mean g-o-n-e, gone—cleared out, skipped, skedaddled. Can't you -understand plain English? I thought everybody knew. She left a week ago -to be married."</p> - -<p>"Married!"</p> - -<p>"Ain't it the limit? Fancy <i>that</i> with a husband!"</p> - -<p>Jean tried, but failed. Stupendous as it was, this marvel paled in -interest beside the fact that Cottage No. 6 had lost its martinet. -Small wonder the house beamed.</p> - -<p>"And the new matron is different?" she said.</p> - -<p>"Different! Dif—" Amy became incoherent with amusement. "Say, but you -folks in the jug have been exclusive since the riot! You shouldn't be, -really you shouldn't. You miss so many things, you know. There was the -Astor ball, and the Vanderbilt dinner, and the swellest little supper -at Sherry's I've gone to this seas—"</p> - -<p>All Amy's members were pinchable. Jean nipped the nearest.</p> - -<p>"Has something happened, or hasn't there?" she demanded.</p> - -<p>"Would I be talking here like a human being, not a jailbird, if -something corking hadn't happened?" She had a table between them now. -"Why, I wouldn't be high grade at all. There's been a new deal in No. -6 with a vengeance. You couldn't guess who's matron if I gave you all -day."</p> - -<p>Jean's face went suddenly radiant.</p> - -<p>"Not Miss Archer!"</p> - -<p>"You smart thing," said Amy, crestfallen.</p> - -<p>"Then it's true! It's really true?" The news was too wonderful for -credence. "I can't make it out."</p> - -<p>"Neither can I. Why, she's even come over here at a smaller salary. -Ain't that a puzzler? I know because I heard her talking it over with -the Supe—the Terror had chased me up to the offices on an errand; and -you can bet I listened when I caught on that there was something coming -for No. 6. As near as I can figure it out, the riot's at the bottom of -it, but just why that should make Miss Archer throw up a better job and -better pay to camp down here beats little Amy. I'm no rapping medium."</p> - -<p>Where Amy failed, Jean, with the clairvoyance of a finer nature, -presently divined the truth. It flashed upon her at the end of an hour -alone with the little matron, a wonderful, inspiring hour which she -came to look back upon as crucial—a forking of the ways where to have -chosen wrongly would have meant to miss life's best. Yet she could -never take it apart; its texture was gossamer. It helped nothing to -recall that the talk had sprung first from one or another of the room's -inanimate objects—some cast, book, picture, or bit of pottery—whose -sum mirrored Miss Archer's personality; yet one of them had surely been -the key to a Garden of the Spirit where common things underwent magical -transformations. The vague longings and aspirations which the forest -meeting had sown, seemed rank, uncertain growths no longer; precious, -rather, and infinitely desirable.</p> - -<p>Jean drew a long breath when they separated.</p> - -<p>"At first I could not understand why you came," she said; "but it's -plain now. It was to help—to help girls like me."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VII</p> - - -<p>It was during the second spring that Mrs. Fanshaw came. Because of the -little matron Jean had finally broken her resolve to write no letters -home, whereupon her mother accepted the change as a sign of repentance -which, after a seemly interval, she decided to encourage with her -presence. Jean was keenly expectant of the promised visit. With the -shifting of her whole point of view she now blamed herself for many of -the things, so petty taken one by one, so serious in gross, which had -made her home life what it was; and out of the reaction there welled -an unguessed tenderness for her mother, shy of written expression, but -eager to confess itself in deed.</p> - -<p>The official who brought Jean to the waiting-room and remained near -during the interview need not have turned a tactful back upon their -meeting for Mrs. Fanshaw's sake. That lady was as composed as the -best usage of Shawnee Springs's truly genteel could dictate under -circumstances so untoward. Her features reflected the most decorous -blend of pious resignation and parental compassion when the slender -blue-and-white figure flung itself from the doorway into her arms, and -she permitted the penitent to remain upon the bosom of her best alpaca -for an appreciable space of time with full knowledge that a waterfall -of lace, divers silken bows, and a long gold chain were lamentably -crushed by the impact.</p> - -<p>"Concentrate, child," she admonished firmly. "How often I've told you -to aim at self-control at all times!"</p> - -<p>Jean clung to her in a passion of homesickness, hearing nothing.</p> - -<p>"Mother! Mother!" she repeated.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw detached herself, repaired the ravages, and turned a -critical eye upon her daughter.</p> - -<p>"What a fright they've made of you!" she sighed. "The color of that -dress is becoming enough, but the pattern! What <i>have</i> you been doing -to your hair?"</p> - -<p>"My hair?" Jean fingered her braid vaguely. "Oh! You mean at the front? -It must be plain, you know."</p> - -<p>"And your hands! You never kept them like Amelia's, but now—why, they -might be a day-laborer's."</p> - -<p>"They are," said Jean.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Fanshaw's interest had fluttered elsewhere.</p> - -<p>"I can't be too thankful that I spared Amelia this ordeal," she went -on. "Amelia was anxious to come. She said she felt it was her duty, but -I refused. She is so sensitive she could not have borne it. To see her -own sister in such clothes and in such surroundings would have made an -indelible impression."</p> - -<p>Jean now had herself only too well in hand.</p> - -<p>"I dare say the refuge might tarnish Amelia's girlish bloom," she -retorted dryly. "I hope you'll feel no bad effects yourself, mother."</p> - -<p>"I'm positive I shall," replied Mrs. Fanshaw, seriously. "My nerves -are in a state already. But let that pass. Whatever the cost, I should -have come long ago if your behavior had been always what it should. -I could not come while you hardened your heart against God's will. -Your stubbornness in the beginning—they wrote me fully, Jean; your -unwomanly attempt to run away; that shocking riot, all showed—"</p> - -<p>"That's past, mother."</p> - -<p>"Past, yes; but not forgotten. Shawnee Springs never forgets anything. -Your escape was in the papers. I wrote you all that."</p> - -<p>"They never let me know. Not in the home papers, the county papers?"</p> - -<p>"No." Mrs. Fanshaw drew herself up. "Consideration for me prevented -that outrage. The editors preserved the same delicate silence that they -kept when you were arrested. But you don't seem to remember that city -dailies are read in Shawnee Springs. One vile sheet even printed your -picture."</p> - -<p>The girl's face crimsoned painfully.</p> - -<p>"Oh!" she cried sharply. "How could they! Where could they get it?"</p> - -<p>Her mother hesitated.</p> - -<p>"Amelia was in a way responsible," she admitted. "She was naturally -anxious at your disappearance, and when a nice-mannered young man -called and said that if he had your description he could help in the -search, the dear girl received him with open arms. How could <i>she</i> know -he was a reporter!"</p> - -<p>"She gave that man my picture!"</p> - -<p>"Like a trusting child. Amelia has felt all our trouble so keenly. For -weeks after you were sent away she could scarcely look one of her set -in the face. She said she felt like a refuge girl herself. I had to -appeal to our pastor to make her see that neither of us was to blame. -She shrank from the world even then, but the world came to her."</p> - -<p>"Meaning Harry Fargo?" queried Jean, emerging suddenly from the gloom -induced by Amelia's imbecility.</p> - -<p>"Harry was particularly sweet," admitted Mrs. Fanshaw, archly. "In -fact, he has become a son to me in everything but name. If Amelia would -only—but I mustn't gossip."</p> - -<p>Jean smiled without mirth.</p> - -<p>"I think she'll land him," she encouraged.</p> - -<p>Her mother frowned.</p> - -<p>"What a common expression!" she rebuked. "I thought at first I noticed -an improvement in your language. Your voice is certainly better—much -lower. It's the prison discipline, I presume. But speaking of Harry, I -really think we may regard it as, well, reasonably sure. I must say I'm -pleased. Harry is so eligible."</p> - -<p>Jean silently reviewed young Mr. Fargo's points; athlete second -to none in the gymnasium of the local Y.M.C.A.; gifted with a -tenor voice particularly effective at church festivals in ballads of -tee-total sentiment; heir presumptive to a mineral spring, a retail -coal business, and a seat in the directorate of the First National -Bank; clearly destined, in fine, to bloom one of the solid men of his -community. Joined to these virtues, present and prospective, he seemed -sincerely, if not ardently, fond of Amelia, and Jean with her whole -heart wished her sister's long-drawn-out wooing godspeed.</p> - -<p>Perhaps she couched this less happily than she might. At all events, -Mrs. Fanshaw took warm-offence at some allusion to the suitor's -leisured siege.</p> - -<p>"Under the circumstances," she remarked severely, "it's a wonder his -attentions have continued at all. No eligible young man in Shawnee -Springs can be expected to want a sister-in-law whose name everybody -mentions in the same breath with Stella Wilkes's, and you know the -Fargo family is as proud as Lucifer. I don't see that they have any -call to set themselves up as they do—the Tuttles were landowners in -the county twenty years before a Fargo was heard of; but there is -certainly some excuse for their standing off about Amelia. You don't -seem to appreciate how painful her situation has been. People were -only just pitching on something else to talk about after you went, -when you stirred the scandal up again by running away. That nearly -spoiled everything. I had it on the best of authority—Mrs. Fargo's -dressmaker is mine now—that Harry and his father actually came to -words. Then, to cap the climax, we'd no sooner settled down in peace -than the vulgar riot happened. Nobody knew positively whether you -were implicated, but they naturally judged you were, and of course I -couldn't conscientiously deny it when they asked me point-blank. It has -been terrible—terrible."</p> - -<p>Jean was swept away upon the flood of egotism. She forgot that she too -had a point of view. Their wrongs were the great wrongs.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "It's true I didn't realize. I don't want -to stand in Amelia's way. You won't have reason to complain again while -I am here."</p> - -<p>"I don't expect I shall. I can't conceive of another thing you could -be up to, even if your disposition to consider <i>our</i> feelings a little -should change. If they'll only marry before your term expires!"</p> - -<p>Jean's lips tightened.</p> - -<p>"There's almost a year and a half yet," she said grimly. "Surely that's -time enough."</p> - -<p>"It would be for anybody but a Fargo," sighed her mother. "They're slow -at everything. We can only hope and wait. It's been very hard."</p> - -<p>"I'll try not to make it more so afterward," Jean returned. "I suppose -I must go back to the Springs at first. When a girl goes out they take -her—home. But I'll not stay. I'll go away at once."</p> - -<p>"Go away! There are none of the relatives you can visit. The Tuttles -all feel the disgrace as if it were their own. As for your father's -folks—"</p> - -<p>"I don't mean to visit. I mean to work—to live."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw focussed her parochial mind upon this outlandish -suggestion, assuming, as was her habit with novel impressions, an air -of truculent disapproval.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps you still think you can gallivant about the country like a -man?" she remarked.</p> - -<p>"No. I've got over that. I shall find some woman's work."</p> - -<p>"You mean you'll cook, scrub, do the servant's drudgery you've learned -here? That would be a nice tale to go the rounds of the Springs!"</p> - -<p>"I would cook or scrub if I had to, but I've been taught other -things. One of the girls who's leaving this fall—her name is Amy -Jeffries—knew no more about earning a living than I when she came -here, but she has an eight-dollar-a-week place waiting for her in New -York. She's going with a ready-made cloak firm. It was Miss Archer who -got her the place, and she says when the time comes she can probably do -as well by me."</p> - -<p>"New York!" Mrs. Fanshaw shied with rural timidity from the fascinating -name. "You in New York! I must get Amelia's opinion. What if it should -prove a way out!"</p> - -<p>During the remainder of the call the talk strayed mainly in a maze of -Shawnee Springs gossip which Jean followed in a lethargy beneath which -throbbed an ache. She had grown to value her home, not for what it had -been, but for what it might be, and to realize that it was beyond doubt -the more a home without her, cut deep. Mrs. Fanshaw had amputated an -ideal.</p> - -<p>It in no way eased the smart to feel that her mother intended no -downright brutality. Indeed, as Jean did her the justice to perceive, -she tried in her clumsy way to be kind. She reverted again to the -agreeable change in the girl's voice, approved her quieter manner, -and, looking closer, even discerned a neatness in general upon which -she bestowed measured praise. It was in the midst of these final -note-takings that she detected her daughter in a vain attempt to -conceal some object in the folds of a pocketless dress.</p> - -<p>"What are you doing?" she demanded in abrupt suspicion. "What are you -hiding from me?"</p> - -<p>The girl started.</p> - -<p>"Nothing," she said evasively.</p> - -<p>"Nothing! You were always truthful at least."</p> - -<p>"I mean nothing important."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw laid a firm grasp upon the shrinking hand, and dragged its -secret to light.</p> - -<p>"Embroidery!" she exclaimed.</p> - -<p>Jean's cheeks were poppies.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she faltered.</p> - -<p>"Whose is it?"</p> - -<p>"Mine."</p> - -<p>The reluctant monosyllables whipped Mrs. Fanshaw's curiosity wide awake.</p> - -<p>"No more nonsense," she charged. "Tell me at once who gave you this."</p> - -<p>"Nobody," confessed Jean faintly. "I—I made it."</p> - -<p>"You!" A pair of glasses, black-rimmed and formidable, bore instantly -upon the marvel and searched it stitch by stitch.</p> - -<p>Jean waited breathless. Wrought with infinite labor not of the hands -alone, the little piece of needlework was absurdly freighted with -meaning. In the old days she had loathed such employment as ardently as -her sister loved it, but of late she had set herself doggedly to learn -the art, since it seemed to her that this more than anything else would -typify her new outlook, her return to sex. As such a symbol she had -brought her handiwork into the visitors' room. As such, before their -meeting, she had hoped her mother might interpret it. Even now, bereft -of illusions as she was, she still hoped something, she knew not what.</p> - -<p>In fairness to Mrs. Fanshaw it should be recorded that she apparently -grasped some hint of this. Relatively speaking, her smile was -encouraging. Viewed from her own standpoint, she all but scaled the top -note of praise when, extending the embroidery at last, she said,—</p> - -<p>"It is almost as good as Amelia's."</p> - -<p>The new Jean was still no candidate for sainthood. White to the lips -with anger, she caught the emblem of her regeneration from Mrs. -Fanshaw's profaning hand and tore it to little strips.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VIII</p> - - -<p>Thenceforward Jean dreaded nothing so much as any return to Shawnee -Springs whatsoever. Here, for once, she found herself in perfect accord -with her mother, for, as the time of her release drew near, young -Mr. Fargo's sauntering courtship took a sudden spurt, not clearly -explicable to himself, whose prime and bewildering result was the -fixing of his wedding day.</p> - -<p>Dear Amelia naturally longed for her sister's presence at the -culmination of her happiness (so Mrs. Fanshaw put it), but there were -the Fargos to consider—they were not cordial, by the way—and if the -refuge authorities made no objection, would it not perhaps be better if -she met the official having Jean in charge at some intermediate point, -from which she could proceed at once to her new calling? Jean, she was -convinced, would understand.</p> - -<p>Jean understood very well, but was thankful. She would rather serve -another month in the refuge than be an unwelcome guest at Amelia's -marriage. In truth, had she been put to a choice, she would have -elected further confinement to her mother's roof in any case. She -thought of the reformatory, not Shawnee Springs, as home, and this in a -sense which embraced more than Miss Archer and the transformed Cottage -No. 6. She loathed the life no less than in the beginning, but time -had knit her to its every phase. The cowed, drab ranks had long since -ceased to seem alien. Their deprivations, their meager privileges, -their rights, their wrongs, their sorrows, their spectral gayeties, all -were hers. She had thought to dart from the gatehouse like a wild thing -from a trap. In reality she paused to look back with a lump in her -throat.</p> - -<p>Yet it was a blithe world outside, the fog and gloom of a November -rain notwithstanding. Even the wet glisten of the mire seemed -cheery. A hundred trivialities, unheeded by her companion, absorbed -her unjaded eyes. The red and green liquids of a druggist's window -lured her as in childhood; then the glitter of a toy-shop enticed, -or the ruddy invitation of a forge. Station and train were each a -mine of entertainment. The ticket-buying was an event of the first -magnitude; the slot-machines, the time-tables, the news-stands, the -advertisements, all the prosaic human spectacle had the freshness of -novelty. She noted that women's sleeves had a fullness of which the -little tailor-shop in the refuge was but dimly aware; that men's hats -curled closer at the brim; that the trainmen wore a different uniform; -that one rural depot or another had received a coat of paint.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw was in waiting.</p> - -<p>"There's a train back to the Springs in twenty minutes," she announced -briskly, after a preoccupied dab at Jean's cheek, "and under the -circumstances"—she was always under circumstances—"I know you won't -mind if I take it instead of waiting till your own goes out. What -with presents arriving, the dressmaker, and the snobbish behavior of -Harry's family, I expect as it is to find Amelia on the edge of nervous -prostration. Every minute is precious, we're so rushed. In fact, I -could not find time to pack a single stitch for you to take to New -York. Anyhow, I understood from your last letter that the refuge would -fit you out with the necessaries, which is certainly a help at this -time when I'm paying out right and left for Amelia. Why," she wound up -suddenly, "your suit is actually tailor-made!"</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Jean.</p> - -<p>"Excellent material, too," commented Mrs. Fanshaw, fingering the -texture. "Does every girl fare as well?"</p> - -<p>"The low-grade girls get no jackets, only capes; and their material -isn't so good."</p> - -<p>"Then you're high grade! You never wrote me."</p> - -<p>"I did not think it would interest Shawnee Springs."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw looked aggrieved.</p> - -<p>"You are a strange child," she complained; "so secretive, so -self-centered. I suppose your suit was made in the refuge?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"By one of the inmates?"</p> - -<p>"By one of the inmates—myself."</p> - -<p>"Strange child!" said her mother again. "Strange child!"</p> - -<p>Linked by nothing save a distasteful past, they sat together for an -interval in constrained silence. Even at their friendliest, mother -and daughter had lacked conversational small change. Presently Mrs. -Fanshaw's roving eye encountered the dial of a train-indicator and -brightened.</p> - -<p>"The Shawnee Springs accommodation is on time for once," she announced.</p> - -<p>Jean responded with sincerity that she was glad. That her own train -was as plainly registered an hour late, with the equally obvious -consequence that she must arrive after nightfall in a strange city, was -unimportant.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw opened her hand-bag.</p> - -<p>"Here is the price of your ticket to New York," she said, counting out -the exact fare. "You had better buy it at once."</p> - -<p>Jean did so. When she returned from the ticket-office her mother was -smoothing the creases from a bank-note.</p> - -<p>"Did they supply you with any money?" she asked cautiously.</p> - -<p>"With two dollars."</p> - -<p>"Is that all?"</p> - -<p>"They paid my fare here."</p> - -<p>"How niggardly in a great state! I can spare you so little myself. But -you will begin work at once?"</p> - -<p>"To-morrow morning."</p> - -<p>"Then ten dollars ought to answer until you draw your first earnings, -if you are not extravagant."</p> - -<p>"I shan't stop at the Waldorf," promised Jean, grimly. She took the -bill, as she had taken the money for the ticket, without thanks, saying -only, "I will pay it back."</p> - -<p>Another blank silence fell. Mrs. Fanshaw stirred restively.</p> - -<p>"I hope that Jeffries girl can be depended on to meet you," she -presently remarked.</p> - -<p>"I think she can."</p> - -<p>"It's certainly a convenience to know somebody at the start, but I -don't feel that she is a very desirable associate, whatever Miss Archer -thinks. You can drop her later, of course, whenever it seems best."</p> - -<p>"Drop her!"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw jumped at the vehemence of the exclamation.</p> - -<p>"How abrupt you are! What I mean to say is that you will hardly want to -keep up these reformatory acquaintances. If I were you I should make -it a rule to recognize none of them you can by hook or crook avoid. -Possibly this girl is superior to most of her class. I don't think you -ever mentioned just why she was sent to the refuge?"</p> - -<p>Jean's eyes discharged an angry spark.</p> - -<p>"You're quite right," she retorted. "I never have."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw was still waiting in becoming patience for Jean to repair -this omission when her train was announced. They rose and faced each -other awkwardly.</p> - -<p>"Well, good-by," said the elder woman, presenting her cheek.</p> - -<p>"Well, good-by," said Jean.</p> - -<p>She watched her mother into a car, and through successive windows -traced her bustling progress to a seat. Mrs. Fanshaw found no leisure -for a last glance outward, and Jean, by aid of certain sharply etched -memories, divined that she was absorbed in repelling seat-mates. So -occupied, she vanished. Jean could have cried with ease, but sternly -denied herself the luxury. She yet retained something of her old -boy-like intolerance of the tear-duct, though the refuge, acquainting -her with nerves, had dulled the confident edge of her scorn. Tears, she -now perceived, like tea, had uses for women other than purely physical.</p> - -<p>Happily life's common things still wore a bloom of surpassing freshness -for her cloistered eye. This second station, like yet unlike the first; -the tardy train, thundering importantly in at last; the stirring flight -into the unknown, each served its diverting turn. As dusk settled, -the landscape became increasingly littered with signs trumpeting the -virtues of breakfast foods, women's wear, or plays current in the -metropolitan theatres; while the villages grew smarter in pavement and -lighting till she mistook one or two for near suburbs of the great city -itself. Then the open spaces grew rare. Did the semblance of a field -survive, it was gridironed by streets of the future or sprawled upon by -huge factories, formless leviathans of a thousand gleaming eyes. Town -linked itself to town.</p> - -<p>When they had run for a long time within what she knew must be the -limits of the city itself, a brakeman mouthed some unintelligible -remark from the door, and the train came to a stop. Jean caught up her -bag, but observing that a drummer of flirtatious propensities, who for -an hour past had shared her seat, made no move, was left in doubt.</p> - -<p>"Isn't this New York?" she asked.</p> - -<p>Her seatmate surveyed her facetiously.</p> - -<p>"Some of it," he said. "Want any particular part of the village?"</p> - -<p>"The main station," blushed the provincial.</p> - -<p>"You mean the Grand Central. Sit tight then. This is only a -Hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street—Harlem, you know, where the goat joke -flourishes. Never saw a billy there myself, and I boarded a year on -Lenox Avenue, too."</p> - -<p>Jean turned from a disquisition on boarding-houses to the car-window. -In its night-time glitter of electricity the street which he dismissed -with a careless numeral quite fulfilled her rural notion of Broadway. -If these were but the outposts, what was the thing itself!</p> - -<p>They shot a tunnel presently, which the drummer berated in terms -long since made familiar by the newspapers, threaded a maze of -block-signals and switch-lights, and halted at last in an enormous -cavern of a place which she needed no hint from her now too friendly -neighbor to assure her was truly New York.</p> - -<p>The drummer urged his escort, but she eluded him in leaving the car and -hurried on in the press. Nearing the gate, however, her pace slackened. -The bigness of the train-shed confused her, and she was daunted by the -clamor of hackmen and street-cars which penetrated from without. Amy -had written that she would meet her if she could leave her work, but -Jean could spy her nowhere in the waiting crowd banked in the white -glare of the arc-lights beyond the barrier. They were unfamiliar to the -last pallid urban face.</p> - -<p>She had gone slowly down the human aisle and was wavering on the -outskirts, uncertain whether to wait longer or adventure for herself, -when the drummer reappeared at her elbow.</p> - -<p>"Didn't your party show up?" he said. "I call that a mean trick. You -had better let me help you out, after all. You look like a girl with -sand. What say we give 'em a lesson? We can have supper at a nice, -quiet little place I know up the street, take in a show afterward, and -then when we're good and ready hunt up your slow-coach friends. Is it a -go?"</p> - -<p>She looked every way but toward him, saw a policeman, and aimed -forthwith for the shelter of his uniform. Halfway she felt her hand -seized, turned hotly, expecting the drummer, and plumped joyfully into -the arms of a young person of fashion who greeted her with an ecstatic -hug.</p> - -<p>"Amy! I was never so glad to see you!"</p> - -<p>The girl emerged from the embrace, panting.</p> - -<p>"I really think you are," she said. "Sorry to keep you waiting. There -was a block on the 'L.' What was that fellow saying to you?"</p> - -<p>When Jean had told her she peered eagerly into the crowd.</p> - -<p>"I find blond hair lets you in for a lot of that," she commented. "He -was a traveling man, you say?"</p> - -<p>"I think so."</p> - -<p>"Sort of sandy, with a reddish mustache? I could only see his back."</p> - -<p>"Sandy? I'm not sure. I avoided looking at him."</p> - -<p>Amy was silent while they passed to the street, and continued to scan -the faces about her. When they had wormed into a street-car packed with -standing women and seated men she spoke again of Jean's adventure.</p> - -<p>"Did he say what line of goods he was carrying?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"No," Jean answered indifferently. The spectacle of the pavement -without had already ousted the drummer from her thoughts.</p> - -<p>"Or where he lived?"</p> - -<p>"Where he lived?" She turned now and saw that the girl's eyes were -very bright. "He mentioned that he had boarded here somewhere—Harlem, -was it?"</p> - -<p>"Harlem!" Amy's pink cheeks turned rose-red. "And did he have a scar, a -little white scar, near his eyebrow?"</p> - -<p>"I didn't notice."</p> - -<p>"I wish you had."</p> - -<p>Jean eyed her narrowly.</p> - -<p>"I wish I had, too, if it matters so much," she returned.</p> - -<p>Amy donned a mask of transparent indifference.</p> - -<p>"Of course it doesn't matter," she said. "At first I thought it might -be somebody I used to know."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IX</p> - - -<p>They alighted at a kind of wooded island, girt by trolley lines and -crisscrossed by many paths, along one of which they struck. Although it -was November, the benches by the way frequently held slouching forms, -sodden men or unkempt women, at whom none glanced save a fat policeman. -Neighboring electric signs lit the lower end of the little park -brilliantly, and here, cheek by jowl with restaurant, vaudeville, and -saloon, Jean suddenly spied an august figure with which school-history -woodcuts had made her familiar from pinafores.</p> - -<p>"Why, this is Union Square!" she cried triumphantly. "I know it by -Washington's statue over there. And this street we're coming to must be -Broadway."</p> - -<p>"You're not so slow," said Amy, halting at the curb. "Here's another -chance to show your speed. Mind you step lively when I see a chance." -In the same breath she dragged her charge into a narrowing gap between -two street-cars, dodged a truck, circled a push-cart, and issued -miraculously, safe and sound, upon the farther side.</p> - -<p>They traversed now a street of entrancing shop-windows over which Jean -exclaimed, but which Amy in her sophistication dismissed with the -brief comment that the real thing was elsewhere. With the same careless -unconcern she dropped, "This is Fifth Avenue," at their next crossing; -but she immediately discounted Jean's awe by adding, "Not the swell -section, you know," and hurried from its unworthy precincts toward an -avenue which the elevated railroad bestrode. This, too, was wonderfully -curious, with its countless little shops and stalls, but Amy allowed -her a mere taste of it only and whipped round a corner into a dimly lit -street of dwellings, each with a scrap of a dooryard tucked behind an -iron fence.</p> - -<p>As they mounted the high steps of one of these houses, Jean remarked -with due respect that it was unmistakably a brownstone front—a species -of metropolitan grandeur upon which untravelled Shawnee Springs often -speculated vaguely; though its dilapidation, obvious even by night, -helped to put her at her ease. A placard inscribed, "Furnished Rooms -and Board," held a prominent station in one of the basement windows, -which was further adorned with a strange symbol upon red pasteboard, -explained by Amy, while they waited, as a mute appeal to a certain -haughty city official whose business was the collection of garbage.</p> - -<p>"The landlady's name is St. Aubyn," Amy further imparted; "or at any -rate that's what she goes by. She's the grass-widow of an actor. Some -people say her real name is Haggerty, but that needn't bother us. We -can't afford to be finicky, or at least I can't."</p> - -<p>"Nor I," agreed Jean.</p> - -<p>Mrs. St. Aubyn, who at this juncture opened the door in person, looked -a weary-eyed woman of fifty-odd, in whose face still lingered some -melancholy vestiges of charm. She greeted, without enthusiasm, Amy's -buoyant announcement that she had brought her a new boarder, saying -that, although she had no complaint to make of Miss Jeffries and -supposed she should get on equally well with her friend, on the whole -she preferred men.</p> - -<p>"They all do," cried Amy, in mock dudgeon. "Every blessed -boarding-house in New York prefers men."</p> - -<p>The actor's grass-widow did not question this sweeping statement, -evidently deeming it a truism which needed neither explanation nor -defence, but went on to say that inasmuch as Miss Jeffries already -knew the rooms and prices, and since she herself was dog-tired, and -the turnips were burning, and the cream-puffs had not come, and one -could not trust the best of servants beyond one's nose, she would leave -them to themselves, all of which she delivered with dwindling breath, -backing meanwhile toward the basement stair, till voice and speaker -vanished together.</p> - -<p>"Don't mind her little ways," consoled Amy, leading the way upward. -"She is really tickled to death to see you. The elevator's out of -order," she added facetiously, "but I'm on the first floor—counting -from the roof down. A good place it is, too, on hot summer nights when -breezes are scarce."</p> - -<p>She showed the narrow rear hall-bedroom she now occupied; a rather -bigger cell, deriving its ventilation solely from a skylight, which -Jean might have at the same price; and, finally, in enviable contrast, -a really spacious chamber at the front, possessing no less than three -windows,—dormers, it was true, yet windows,—a generous closet, and -a steam-radiator, all within their united means did they care to room -together. Amy tried to state the case dispassionately, but she could -not weigh the advantages of three dormers, a full-grown closet, and a -steam-radiator with perfect calm, and after one glance, not at these -persuasive features, but Amy's, Jean promptly voted for the joint -arrangement.</p> - -<p>Amy hugged her rapturously.</p> - -<p>"If you only knew how I've wanted it!" she exclaimed. "You can't -possibly do better for your money than here. Take my word for it, I've -tramped everywhere to see. It has a lot of good points. For one thing, -you'll be within walking distance of a warm lunch that won't cost -extra, and that's a big item, I can tell you. Besides, you'll meet nice -people. A dentist has the second floor front who's a regular swell, but -real sociable, and in the hall-bedroom, third floor back, there's an -old man who works in the Astor Library. He knows so much, I'm almost -afraid to talk to him. Why, they say he had a college education! -Then, there's a girl who typewrites for a law firm down in Nassau -Street—she's on our floor; another who's a manicure; and a quiet old -couple that used to have money, but lost it in Wall Street. All those -are permanents. There are two others, a man and his wife, who may go -any time because they belong to the profession."</p> - -<p>"Which?" asked Jean, innocently.</p> - -<p>"Why, the stage. Mrs. St. Aubyn always calls it 'the profession.' She -gets actors off and on who are waiting for engagements. She must have -known a stack of them once."</p> - -<p>Jean shrank from the thought of dining with this array of fashion, -learning, and talent, particularly when she discovered that one long -table held them all; but nothing could have been less formal than -the meal. The prodigy of learning from the Astor, who, by virtue of -intellect or seniority, sat at the head of the board in pleasing -domestic balance to Mrs. St. Aubyn at the foot, chatted amiably -with Jean and Amy, quite like a person of ordinary attainments. The -stenographer exchanged ideas upon winter styles with the wife of the -shorn lamb of Wall Street, who, on his part, forgot his losses in a -four-sided discussion, with the manicure and the professional birds of -passage, of the President's latest speech, a document which it tardily -developed none of them had read.</p> - -<p>Mrs. St. Aubyn's conversation dealt mainly with the food, and was -aimed at the maid, whose blunders were apparently legion, but even she -found leisure, as did every person in the room, for a quip with the -jocund ruling spirit of the feast, Dr. Paul Bartlett. Coming last, the -dentist instantly leavened the whole lump. He drew gems of dramatic -criticism from the players, got the bookworm's opinion of a popular -novel, inquired the day's happenings on 'Change' from the shorn lamb, -discussed a murder trial with the legal stenographer, the outrageous -rise in price of coal with Mrs. St. Aubyn, and the growing extravagance -of women's sleeves with Amy and the manicure, all between the soup and -fish. In fine, as Mrs. St. Aubyn loudly whispered to Jean in leaving -the dining room, he was the life of the occasion. Whether he heard this -or not, Doctor Bartlett redoubled his efforts, if they were efforts, -when after eddying uncertainly about the newel post of the main hall -the company finally drifted into the drawing-room.</p> - -<p>This was not a blithesome apartment. It ran extraordinarily to -length and height, Jean thought, rather to the scamping of its third -dimension, and was decorated after the dreary fashion of the decade -immediately succeeding the Civil War. Its woodwork was black walnut, -its chandelier a writhing mass of tortured metal, its mantelpiece -a marble sepulchre. A bedizened family Bible of some thirty pounds -avoirdupois, lying upon a stand ill designed to bear its weight, -blocked one window, while a Rogers group, similarly supported, filled -the other. The pictures were sadly allegorical save one, a large -engraving entitled "The Trial of Effie Deans." Yet, despite these -handicaps, the dentist contrived to give the room an air of cheer. -Spying a deck of cards upon the entablature of the mausoleum, he -performed a mystifying trick, which he followed with fortunes, told -as cleverly as a gypsy's, and with feats of sleight of hand. Then, -dropping to the piano-stool, he coaxed from the venerable instrument -a two-step which set everybody's feet beating time; passed from this -to a "coon song" one could easily imagine was sung by a negro; and, -finally, chief marvel of all, he succeeded in luring everybody except -Jean into joining the chorus of the latest popular air. In the midst -of all these things he narrated most amusing little stories, mainly of -dentists' offices, punctuated with dental oaths and imprecations like -"Holy Molars" and "Suffering Bicuspid," which sounded comically profane -without being so.</p> - -<p>The girls discussed him animatedly from their pillows in the wonderful -room of three dormers.</p> - -<p>"Didn't I tell you he was sociable?" Amy demanded. "Can't he sing -simply dandy? And isn't he good-looking?"</p> - -<p>Jean gave a general assent. She liked the young fellow's breeziness. -She liked his cleanliness, too, and remarked upon it.</p> - -<p>"I noticed it first of all," she said.</p> - -<p>"Yes, and what's better," added Amy, "you'll never see him look any -different. He says soap and water mean dollars in his business. That's -one reason why he's so run after at the parlors. None of the other -dentists there seem to care."</p> - -<p>"Then he hasn't an office of his own?"</p> - -<p>"Not yet. He works in a Painless Dental Parlor over on Sixth Avenue. -You'll know the place by a tall darky in uniform they keep at the foot -of the stairs to hand out circulars."</p> - -<p>"Do you suppose he thought it strange that I didn't sing with the -rest?" Jean asked anxiously. "He looked round twice."</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't wonder. He couldn't guess, naturally, that you've had a -steady diet of hymns for three years. Still, that song is only just -out, and half of us didn't know the words."</p> - -<p>"Did I do anything else queer?"</p> - -<p>"Well, you tried hard to pass dishes down the line, instead of letting -the maid do it, and you looked sideways a good deal without turning -your head. I don't think of anything else just now unless it's that -you're as nervous as a cat. Miss Archer did her best to make us girls -act like other human beings, but she didn't run the whole refuge, -more's the pity. I've got a stack of things to thank her for. Do you -notice I don't say 'ain't' any more?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"She broke me of that. She said I'd find it paid to speak good English, -and I have. Already it's meant dollars to me, just like the doctor's -soap and water."</p> - -<p>Jean wondered how grammatical accuracy could further the making of -cloaks, but Amy had suddenly become too drowsy to explain. Rest came -less easily to the newcomer. The muffled roar of the elevated railroad, -heeded by the urban ear no more than the beat of surf, teased her -excited senses to insomnia. Oblivion came abruptly when she despaired -of sleep at all, and then, as quickly, morning, with Amy shaking -her awake. The light from the three dormers was still uncertain and -the air chill, for though the prized radiator clanked and whistled -prodigiously, it emitted no warmth.</p> - -<p>Jean sprang up hurriedly.</p> - -<p>"Am I late?"</p> - -<p>"No; early. I thought you'd better get down to Meyer & Schwarzschild's -a little before time the first day. You'll have to wear your -street-suit there, of course, but you need another skirt and a big -apron for work. Just use these I've laid out as long as you like."</p> - -<p>"But you'll need them yourself."</p> - -<p>Amy smiled mysteriously.</p> - -<p>"No, I shan't," she returned, shaking down a smart black skirt over a -petticoat which gave forth the unmistakable rustle of silk. "In fact, -this is my work-dress—or one of them." She revolved slowly before the -glass a moment, relishing Jean's astonishment, then went on: "I'll have -to own up now. The cat was almost out of the bag last night. I didn't -want to tell you till this morning. I thought it might discourage you. -I'm not with Meyer & Schwarzschild any more."</p> - -<p>"You've left the cloak firm!" Jean was taken aback, but tried to hide -her disappointment. "I'm glad you've done better," glancing again at -Amy's magnificence; "it's easy to see you have."</p> - -<p>"Well, I guess! I'm a cloak-model in one of the biggest department -stores in the United States."</p> - -<p>"A cloak-model!" The term suggested only a wax-faced dummy to Jean. -"What do you do?"</p> - -<p>"Walk up and down before the millionaires' wives, and make the pudgy -old things think they'll look as well as I do if they buy the garment. -But they never do look as well. I got the place through a buyer who -came to Meyer & Schwarzschild's once in a while. He saw that I have -style and a good figure, and don't say 'ain't'—he really mentioned -that!—and told the cloak department that I was the girl they were -looking for. Sounds easy, doesn't it?"</p> - -<p>It sounded anything but easy to Jean.</p> - -<p>"And you like it?" she said. "But I needn't ask you that."</p> - -<p>"Don't I! Maybe it doesn't give you thrills to parade up and down -with a three-hundred-dollar evening wrap on your back! But cheer up," -she added quickly, reading Jean's face. "I'm going down to Meyer & -Schwarzschild's with you this morning and give you a rousing send-off."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">X</p> - - -<p>The section of Broadway to which Amy piloted Jean, showing her all the -short cuts which would save precious time at lunch hour, seemed wholly -given over to wholesale establishments with signs bearing Hebrew names.</p> - -<p>"Yes; this is Main Street of the New Jerusalem, all right," she -assented to Jean's comment; "but you'll find there are Jews and Jews in -the clothing trade. I'd hate to work for some of the chosen people I've -seen, but you'd have to hunt a long time to find a more well-meaning -man than old Mr. Meyer. I only hope he'll be down this morning."</p> - -<p>Other workers, chiefly women and girls, crowded into the rough freight -elevator by which they ascended, and one or two who got off with them -at Meyer & Schwarzschild's loft greeted Amy by name. They inventoried -her finery minutely, Jean saw, and nudging one another, arched -significant brows when her back was turned. On her part, Amy took -little notice of them, and, without introducing Jean, swept by toward -the flimsy partition of wood and ground glass which shut the workrooms -from the counting-room, brushed aside an office boy, who demanded her -business, and knocked at a half-open door lettered, "Jacob Meyer, Sr."</p> - -<p>The head of the firm, who bade them enter, was a very old man with -a patriarchal beard. He smiled benignantly, recognized Amy after a -moment's hesitation, asked about her new position, and patted her on -the shoulder when she told him he must be as good to Miss Fanshaw as he -had been to her. Turning to Jean, he said that Miss Archer had never -sent them a poor worker.</p> - -<p>"I have the highest opinion of Miss Archer," he added, with the air of -a presiding officer who relished the taste of his own periods. "Her -charity knows neither Jew nor Gentile. I met her first here in New York -when some of us were trying a philanthropic experiment in the so-called -Ghetto. It presented grave difficulties, very grave difficulties, -and it is hardly too much to say,—in fact, I have no hesitation in -saying,—that Miss Archer saved the day. I recall one most signal -instance of her tact—"</p> - -<p>He would have rambled on willingly, but Amy cut in with the statement -that she must be off, squeezed Jean's hand encouragingly, and whisked -out forthwith. Her abrupt exit seemed to disorder the deliberate -clockwork of old Mr. Meyer's thoughts, for he sat some little time -staring at a letter-file with his mouth ajar, till, recollecting -himself at last, he brought forth, "As I was saying, my dear, I trust -you'll like our ways,"—which Jean was certain he had not said at -all,—and thereupon led her to the door of one of the workrooms and -turned her over to its forewoman, a stout Jewess with oily black hair -combed low to disguise her too prominent ears.</p> - -<p>Work had begun, and the place was deafening with the whir of some -thirty-odd close-ranked machines which, their ends almost touching, -filled all the floor save the narrowest of aisles, where stood the -chairs of the operators. To one of these sewing-machines and a -huge pile of unstitched sleeves Jean was assigned. The task itself -was simple, after the sound training of the refuge school, but the -conditions under which she worked told heavily against her efficiency. -The din was incessant, the light poor, the low-ceiled room crowded -beyond its air-space, and the floor none too clean. As the morning drew -on, the atmosphere became steadily worse. Now and then the forewoman -would open a window,—she stood mainly by a door herself, turning and -turning a showy ring upon her fat index finger,—but the relatively -purer air thus admitted reached only the girls who worked nearest, of -whom Jean was not one, and these soon shivered and complained of drafts.</p> - -<p>By the time the hands of a dingy clock marked ten, her head was -throbbing violently and her spine seemed one prolonged ache. Her -neighbors, except a thin-cheeked woman who stopped now and again to -cough, turned off their stints with the regularity of long habit, -straightening only to seize fresh supplies for their insatiable -machines. At twelve o'clock, when whistles blew from all quarters -and the other employees, dropping work as it stood, scrambled for -lunch-boxes or wraps, Jean relaxed in her chair, too jaded to rise. -Food was out of the question,—even the look of the pickle-scented -luncheons which some of the cloak-makers opened made her ill,—but -she presently dragged herself outdoors, and striking down a cross -street, at whose farther end she could see trees, came to a little park -distinguished by a marble arch, where she wandered aimlessly till she -judged it time to return.</p> - -<p>The streets she retraced were now thronged with masculine wage-earners -lounging and smoking in the doorways of their various places of -employment. All paid her the tribute of a stare, and some made audible -comments on her hair or eyes, or what they termed her shape. Her own -doorway was also crowded. These idlers were, for the most part, girls -from the many garment-manufactories of one sort and another which the -great building housed; but a man stood here and there, either the -leader or the butt of some horse-play. One of the young women who had -scrutinized Amy in the elevator nodded to her and seemed about to -speak, but Jean felt too heart-sick for words, and returned at once -to her appointed corner in the hive, where, although it still lacked -something of one o'clock, she again sat down to her machine. The air -was better, for the windows had been thrown open during the noon-hour, -but the room was in consequence very chill, and her fellow-workers, -now drifting back in twos and threes, grumbled as they came. Among -them was the girl who had greeted her below, and looking at her with -more interest Jean read kindness in her freckled face. Their eyes met -again, with a half-smile, and the girl edged down the narrow lane for a -moment's gossip.</p> - -<p>"You'll find it better to take a bite of lunch, even if you don't -hanker for it," she observed.</p> - -<p>"How do you know I haven't?" Jean asked.</p> - -<p>"That's easy. For one reason, I seen you walkin' in Washington Square. -For another, a green hand here don't never want lunch. Not used to this -kind of thing, are you?"</p> - -<p>"To the work, yes; not the noise, the bad air."</p> - -<p>"Where'd you work last?"</p> - -<p>"In a small town," she eluded.</p> - -<p>"That's different. You don't have the sweat-shop in the country, I -guess."</p> - -<p>"Sweat-shop!" Jean had heard that sinister term before. "Is that what -they call Meyer & Schwarzschild's?"</p> - -<p>The girl laughed at her simplicity.</p> - -<p>"I call it one," she rejoined, "even if it is on Broadway. Don't low -wages and dirt and bad air and disease make a sweat-shop?"</p> - -<p>"Disease! What do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Well, consumption, for instance. It isn't bronchitis, as she thinks, -that ails the woman next machine to you. I could tell you other things, -but what's the use! You won't stop here any longer than I will, and -that's just long enough to find a better job."</p> - -<p>The afternoon lapsed somehow. Once, a youngish, overdressed man with -blustering manners and thick, bright-red lips came into their workroom -and told the forewoman that a certain order must be rushed. He idled -near Jean's machine for an interval, under pretence of examining her -work, but he mainly looked her in the face. As he passed down the -aisles, he touched this girl and that familiarly. Those so favored -were without exception pretty, and they usually simpered under his -attentions, though one or two grimaced afterward. When he had gone, -Jean's thin-cheeked neighbor told her between coughs that this was the -younger Meyer.</p> - -<p>She met him again when she passed the offices in leaving for the night, -and he again stared fixedly, wearing his repulsive, scarlet smile. She -jumped at the conclusion that old Mr. Meyer had mentioned that she -came from a reformatory, and hurried by with burning cheeks. The night -air refreshed her a little, but the way home seemed endless, and the -three flights from Mrs. St. Aubyn's door to the dormered bedroom were -appalling in prospect. She entered faint with hunger and fagged with -a thoroughness she had not known since the earlier days in the refuge -laundry.</p> - -<p>Amy sprang up from a novel.</p> - -<p>"Don't say a word," she charged. "I suspicioned how it would be when -you didn't show up for lunch. Not that I expected you, though. I'd have -bet a pound of chocolates you wouldn't come."</p> - -<p>Jean was content to say nothing and let herself be mothered. Amy showed -no trace of fatigue. She had changed her black blouse for a white one -of some soft fabric, and looked as fresh and pink-cheeked as if she had -idled the live-long day.</p> - -<p>"Now for the pick-me-up," she said briskly, after making Jean snug -among the pillows; and what with a tiny kettle and a spirit-lamp, some -sugar which she rummaged from a bureau drawer, and a little milk from -the natural refrigerator of the window-sill, she concocted in no time a -really savory cup of tea.</p> - -<p>Then, only, Jean found voice.</p> - -<p>"Did you know all the time," she demanded, "that Meyer & -Schwarzschild's is no better than a sweat-shop?"</p> - -<p>"I worked there a year," Amy returned sententiously. "I'm not saying it -was as bad all along as now. It was as decent as any at first, and I -hear that even now the room where the cutters work is pretty fair."</p> - -<p>"Does Miss Archer know? But that's impossible."</p> - -<p>"Of course she doesn't. And, though you mayn't believe it, old Mr. -Meyer doesn't know either. You saw what he is! It's only hospitals and -orphan asylums he thinks about. He totters down to business for about -an hour a week, and if he ever pokes his dear old nose into one of the -workrooms, it's early in the morning before the air gets so thick you -could slice it."</p> - -<p>"But his partner—Schwarzschild? Where is he?"</p> - -<p>"Dead. They keep the name because the firm is an old one. It's all -Meyer now, and that doesn't mean Jacob Meyer, Sr., but Jake. You -probably saw Jake. He has tomato-colored lips and an affectionate -disposition."</p> - -<p>Jean shivered.</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you tell me?"</p> - -<p>"How could I? Everything was settled before I knew you were going -there. Anyhow, it's a living while you are hunting something better. -I'm in hopes to get you in where I am. I spoke to a floor-walker I know -to-day. My department is full, but they'll probably need more help -downstairs for the Christmas rush."</p> - -<p>"That would be merely temporary."</p> - -<p>"Most every place is temporary till they size you up. If you're what -they want, they'll keep you on after the holidays, never fear. You may -have to take less money to begin with than you get now, but it will be -easier earned. Any old thing is better than Jake Meyer's joint, <i>I</i> -think."</p> - -<p>This hope carried Jean through the three ensuing days. The conditions -at the cloak-factory were at no time better—in fact, once or twice, -when it rained and the girls came with damp clothing, they were worse; -but she omitted no more meals, and after the second day accustomed -herself to the steady treadmill of the machine.</p> - -<p>At luncheon, Friday, Amy had news.</p> - -<p>"Come up to the store after you stop work to-night," she directed. -"Beginning to-day, we keep open longer. Take the elevator to the fourth -floor."</p> - -<p>"There's a place for me?"</p> - -<p>"I'm not saying that. I spoke to my friend, the floor-walker, -again—he's in the toy department—and he told me to bring you round."</p> - -<p>Jean found the vast establishment easily. The difficulty would have -been to miss it. Pushing her way through the holiday shoppers crowding -the immense ground-floor, she wormed into an elevator, got out as Amy -bade, and, after devious wanderings in a wonderful garden of millinery, -came finally upon her friend's special province and Amy herself.</p> - -<p>Or was it Amy? She looked twice before deciding. It was not so much -the costly garment, a thing of silks, embroideries, and laces, which -effected the transformation,—Jean expected something of the kind,—as -it was the actress in Amy herself, which impelled her to play the part -the costume implied. With eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed, shoulders -erect, she was not Amy Jeffries, cloak-model, but a child of luxury -apparelled for the opera or the ball.</p> - -<p>"Did she buy it?" Jean asked, when, free at last, Amy perceived her -waiting and came to her.</p> - -<p>Amy sighed dolefully.</p> - -<p>"Yes; it's gone," she said. "You can't imagine how I hate to lose it. -It had come to seem like my very own."</p> - -<p>Jean could not conceive Amy in an occupation more congenial, and -wished heartily that as enviable a fortune might fall to her.</p> - -<p>"It seems easy work," she said. "What do they require of a cloak-model?"</p> - -<p>"A thirty-six inch bust, at least, for a starter. Did I ever tell you -that they call us by our bust measures? We never hear our own names. -I'm Thirty-six; that big girl with the red hair is Thirty-eight; and so -it goes. Then you must have good proportions and a stylish carriage, -and be attractive generally," she added, naïvely regarding her trim -reflection in the nearest pier-glass.</p> - -<p>At this point "Thirty-eight" approached, and Amy introduced her, -saying:—</p> - -<p>"My friend here thinks she'd like to be a cloak-model. 'Tisn't all -roses, is it?"</p> - -<p>The red-haired girl gave the indulgent smile of experience.</p> - -<p>"Wholesale or retail, it's harder than it looks," she declared. "I -don't mean displaying gowns so much as the side issues. Why, the amount -of dieting, lacing, and French heels some models put up with to keep in -form is something awful. Give me the retail trade, though. I'd rather -deal with shopping cranks than buyers."</p> - -<p>"I suppose some of the buyers are fresh," Amy demurely remarked.</p> - -<p>"<i>Some!</i> Better say one out of every two," retorted Thirty-eight, -tersely. "I know what I'm talking about. I was a display model in -wholesale houses for three years—showing evening costumes, too! Oh, I -know buyers! A decent girl simply has to make herself a dummy, that's -all. She can't afford to have eyes and ears and feelings."</p> - -<p>It was now quite the closing hour, and Amy conducted Jean to a lower -floor which looked like Kriss Kringle's own kingdom. They came upon -the floor-walker, frowning portentously at an atom of a cash-girl -who had stopped to play with a toy which she should have had wrapped -immediately for a suburban customer; but he smoothed his wrinkled front -at sight of Amy, with whom he seemed on excellent terms. Jean looked -for a rigid inquiry into her qualifications, but after some mention -of a reference, which Amy forestalled by glibly offering her own, Mr. -Rose merely told her to report for trial Monday, at six dollars a week, -remarking in the same breath that she had a heart-breaking pair of eyes.</p> - -<p>Jean was puzzled.</p> - -<p>"Do they take on everybody with no more ceremony than that?" she asked, -as they made their way out. "It seems a slack way of doing things."</p> - -<p>Amy laughed gayly.</p> - -<p>"Not much! In some stores—most, I guess—the superintendent does the -hiring. I had to face the manager of my department. You would have had -to see the manager down here, probably, if he wasn't sick. I knew this -when I struck Rosey-posy for the place. He took you as a personal favor -to me, or that's what he said, for he's rushing me a bit. For my part, -I think your heart-breaking eyes did it. You don't seem to realize it, -but you're a mighty handsome girl. I didn't half appreciate it when -you wore the refuge uniform. Don't blush! You'll get used to it. Trust -the men to tell you. Anyhow, you've got your chance and can snap your -fingers at Meyer & Schwarzschild."</p> - -<p>"I'll tell them to-morrow morning."</p> - -<p>"Better wait till to-morrow night after you've drawn your pay," -counselled Amy, sagely. "Then you needn't listen to any more back talk -than you please."</p> - -<p>Jean followed this advice, giving the forewoman notice only when she -turned from the cashier's window with her hard-earned wage safe in her -grasp.</p> - -<p>The Jewess bridled, her fat shoulders quivering.</p> - -<p>"Place not good enough?" she queried tartly.</p> - -<p>"I've a better one."</p> - -<p>"With another cloak firm?"</p> - -<p>"No; with a department store."</p> - -<p>The forewoman smiled sarcastically.</p> - -<p>"Don't you fool yourself that you'll be better off. Mr. Meyer! Mr. -Meyer!" she called, raising her voice as the son of the house made -his appearance in a doorway. "Here's another girl what's got the -department-store fever."</p> - -<p>Jean shrank from further explanations, particularly with young Meyer, -but he bustled up at once and put the same questions as the forewoman.</p> - -<p>"Which store is it?" he continued.</p> - -<p>She told him, and wondered why he smirked.</p> - -<p>"Does Amy Jeffries work there still?" he said.</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Seems to be prospering? Wears good clothes?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>Young Meyer leered again.</p> - -<p>"Come round when you're sick of it," he invited. "Tell Amy, too. You're -both good cloak-makers."</p> - -<p>She turned from his satyr-face, vaguely disquieted. His whole manner -was an evil innuendo. The girl with the freckles, who had called the -place a sweat-shop, went down with her in the freight-elevator and -walked beside her for a block, when they gained the street.</p> - -<p>"I heard Jake chewin' the rag up there," she said. "Why didn't you cuff -his ears? Anybody'd know to look at you that no buyer got you <i>your</i> -position."</p> - -<p>"What are you talking about?"</p> - -<p>"You didn't catch on to what he was hintin'?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>The girl gave an incredulous exclamation.</p> - -<p>"And maybe you don't know either how Amy Jeffries got her place?" she -added.</p> - -<p>"She said a buyer for the firm saw her at Meyer & Schwarzschild's and -liked her looks."</p> - -<p>"That's straight," grinned the sceptic.</p> - -<p>Jean shook her impatiently by the arm.</p> - -<p>"What <i>isn't</i> straight?" she demanded. "You are the one hinting now. -What do you mean? Out with it!"</p> - -<p>But the girl squirmed out of her grasp and darted laughing away.</p> - -<p>"Ask Amy," she called.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XI</p> - - -<p>Jean meant to probe the mystery at the first possible moment, but her -resolve weakened in Amy's presence. If the girl's light-heartedness -did not of itself quiet suspicion, it at least disarmed it, while -her unselfish joy at Jean's release from the thraldom of Meyer & -Schwarzschild alone made the questions Jean had thought to put seem -churlish and ungrateful. Moreover, Amy was full of a plan for the -evening.</p> - -<p>"I knew it was coming," she exulted. "Anybody with a pair of eyes could -see by the way he's picked you out to talk to every night that you've -got him going. He came to me first to ask if I thought you'd come, and -when I accepted for both, he hustled right out to get the tickets."</p> - -<p>"What tickets?" She did not ask who was the purchaser; she, too, had -eyes.</p> - -<p>"Tickets for the theatre—a vaudeville show."</p> - -<p>Jean's face lit.</p> - -<p>"Vaudeville! I've often wondered what it was like."</p> - -<p>"You're not telling me you've never seen a vaudeville show?"</p> - -<p>"Never. Nothing worth seeing ever came to Shawnee Springs. Ought we to -go?"</p> - -<p>"Do you mean, is it respectable? Sure! One of the best in the city."</p> - -<p>"I don't mean that. Ought we to go in this way? I don't know him."</p> - -<p>"Well, I do," rejoined Amy, decisively; "and if there's a nicer fellow -between High Bridge and the Battery, I'll miss my guess. Of course, -if you want to scare up a headache and back out, why, you can. I'm -going, anyway, and I reckon the extra ticket won't go a-begging. The -stenographer or the manicure would jump at the chance."</p> - -<p>"Would he be offended?"</p> - -<p>"Awfully. Why, he only asked me because he wanted you! Next time it -will be you alone."</p> - -<p>Jean needed little coaxing. She wanted exceedingly to see a New -York theater, and she really liked the breezy young dentist. It had -surprised her in their evening talks to find how much they had in -common. He, too, had spent his youth in a country town, and, though -he had migrated first to a smaller city to study for his profession, -his early impressions of New York coincided very closely with her own. -She later discovered the same community of interest with nearly every -one so reared, but it now chanced that none other of Mrs. St. Aubyn's -boarders—or, as she preferred to call them, guests—were country-bred, -and Paul Bartlett got the credit of a readier sympathy accordingly. -Thus, to-night, he did not share Amy's rather too frequently expressed -wonder that Jean had never witnessed a vaudeville performance.</p> - -<p>"Never saw anything nearer to it than a minstrel show myself, up to the -time I went away to dental college," he confessed frankly, as they set -out. "We only got 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and 'East Lynne' troupes in our -burg. Say, but they were a rocky aggregation! I could see that even -then."</p> - -<p>This also struck Jean as a notable coincidence.</p> - -<p>"It seems as if you were describing the Springs," she said. "But we did -get a circus or two."</p> - -<p>"Then your town beat mine," Paul laughed. "We had to jog over to the -county seat for Barnum's. Otherwise they seem to have been cut off the -same piece of homespun. I'll bet you even had box socials?"</p> - -<p>Jean's face suddenly lost its animation.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she answered.</p> - -<p>"Just about the limit, weren't they? I wonder Newport doesn't take 'em -up. They're foolish enough. Yet I thought they were great sport once. -I used to try to change the boxes when I suspected that some love-sick -pair were scheming to beat the game. Maybe you've done that, too?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," Jean assented again unsteadily.</p> - -<p>She was infuriated with herself for her involuntary change of manner -and burning face, neither of which, she feared, had escaped his quick -eye. It galled her thoroughgoing honesty to be forever on her guard -against disclosing her refuge history, yet there seemed no help for -it. Unjust though it was, the stigma was as actual for her as for the -guiltiest, and cloak it she must.</p> - -<p>If the dentist noticed anything amiss, he was tactful and launched into -an exchange of nonsense with Amy which lasted quite to the theater's -garish door. Once within, Jean forgot that she had a past which might -not be fearlessly bared for any eye. Amy squeezed her arm happily as -they passed directly into the body of the house instead of mounting -the stairs familiar to her feet when she paid her own way; and to the -squeeze she added a look of transport and awe when, following the -usher, they skirted the orchestra and entered a narrow passage near the -stage.</p> - -<p>"We've got <i>box</i> seats!" she whispered huskily. "They couldn't have -cost him less than a dollar apiece!"</p> - -<p>Jean had a moment of timidity begotten of a vivid recollection of -two cramped pigeon-roosts, always untenanted, which flanked the -advertisement-littered drop-curtain of the Shawnee Springs Grand Opera -House, but was speedily reassured to find that she need endure no such -lonely distinction here. These boxes were many, and they held many, -their own being shared by half a dozen persons besides themselves, -while the hangings were so disposed that she could be as secluded as -she pleased, yet miss nothing of the play.</p> - -<p>The play! It was a series of plays, with endless other wonderful -things, too. Nothing that she had conceived resembled this -ever-shifting spectacle of laughter and tears. For there were -tears—real ones! Jean had often jeered at girls who cried over -novels, while those whom a play, or at least the Shawnee Springs brand -of drama, could move to tears, were even less comprehensible; yet -to-night, when a simple little piece dealing merely with an unhappy man -and wife who, resolved to go their separate ways, callously divided -their poor belongings until they reached a dead baby's shoes, ran its -course, she found her breath short and her cheeks wet. She was at -first rather ashamed of this weakness, attributing it to her refuge -nerves, but she presently heard Amy sob, and, looking round, perceived -handkerchiefs fluttering throughout the darkened house. Paul, on her -other side, hemmed once or twice, and she supposed him disgusted with -all this ado over a baby who never existed, but when the lights went up -suddenly she discovered that his eyes were moist, too.</p> - -<p>She liked this trait in Paul. She was glad, furthermore, that he -did not scoff afterward, as did some men whom the acting had moved. -It seemed to her a wholesome sign that he had the courage of his -sympathies; one could probably rely upon that type of man. His mental -alertness also impressed her anew. For him none of the quips of the -Irish or German comedians were recondite, and he could explain in a -nutshell the most bewildering feats of the Japanese adepts at sleight -of hand. She wondered not a little at this special knowledge, and when -they left the theatre he told her that it had been his chief boyish -ambition to become a magician.</p> - -<p>"I drummed up subscriptions, collected bones, old iron, and rubber -for the tinman, peddled anything under the canopy that folks would -buy, all for the sake of a little cash to get books and apparatus," he -confessed. "Once, when I was about smart sixteen, I gave an exhibition, -part magic lantern, part magic tommyrot. I hired the village hall, mind -you. What cheek I had those days!"</p> - -<p>Jean was keenly interested. This, too, reminded her of the Springs and -her own irrevocable playtime.</p> - -<p>"Did people turn out?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Did they! I cleared twelve dollars."</p> - -<p>"My!" jeered Amy. "I suppose you bought an automobile?"</p> - -<p>"No; they hadn't been invented yet." He turned again to Jean. "Guess -what I did buy!"</p> - -<p>"More apparatus."</p> - -<p>"Just as quick as I could get a money-order," he laughed. "You're -something of a wizard yourself. You must have been a boy once upon a -time."</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Jean; "I was."</p> - -<p>When they reached the street Paul suggested oysters, and after a faint -demurrer from Jean, which a secret pinch from Amy abruptly quenched, he -led the way to a restaurant. The establishment he chose had a German -name, and was fitted up in a manner which Jean took to be German also. -The chairs and tables were of a heavy medieval design, and matched -the high paneling which surrounded the room and terminated in a shelf -bearing a curious array of mugs and flagons. From a small dais in one -corner an orchestra, made up of a zither, two mandolins, and a guitar, -discoursed a wiry yet not unpleasant music which seemed, on the whole, -less Teuton than American, of a most unclassical bounce and joyousness. -Paul apologized for this flaw in an otherwise harmonious scheme, -explaining that the American patrons outnumbered the German, but Amy -patriotically declared that ragtime was better than foreign music any -day, and pronounced the entire place as cute as it could be, which -really left nothing else to be said.</p> - -<p>Everybody was drinking beer with his food, or, speaking more -accurately, eating a little food with his beer, and Paul ordered two or -three bottles of the exceedingly dark variety most in vogue, which he -and Amy consumed. Amy rallied Jean upon her abstinence, and asked if -she had signed the pledge; but Paul seemed to respect her scruples.</p> - -<p>"Felt the same way myself once," he said. "Whenever the good old -scandal specialists up our way saw a fellow slide into the hotel on a -hot day for a glass of lager, they thought he was piking straight for -the eternal bonfire. Naturally the boys punished a lot of stuff they -didn't want, just to live up to their reputations. It's some different -down here."</p> - -<p>"I should say so," agreed Amy, boisterously. "Why, my stepfather began -to send me out for beer almost as soon as I could walk. The idea of its -hurting anybody! I don't believe I'd feel it if I drank a keg."</p> - -<p>Paul did not seem as impressed by this statement as were an -after-theater party at an adjoining table, and embraced a quiet -opportunity to move an unfinished bottle out of her enthusiastic -reach. Jean glowed under the scrutiny of the supper-party opposite, -and, exchanging a look with Paul, rose presently to go. Amy objected -eloquently, pointing out that it still wanted half an hour of midnight -and that department stores did no business Sundays, together with -sundry arguments as trenchant, which plainly carried weight with the -attentive tables roundabout, but failed to convince her companions. -Near the door she fell in with an unexpected ally in the person of Mr. -Rose, who listened to her protests quite as sympathetically as if they -had not already reached him across the room, and promptly invited them -all to what he termed a nightcap with himself. Jean declined civilly, -and Amy, though sore tempted, followed her example. Once outside, -however, she asserted her perfect independence by walking off with Mr. -Rose on his remarking easily that he would stroll their way.</p> - -<p>"Aching incisors!" ejaculated the dentist, grimly watching them forge -ahead. "Where did I get the foolish idea that I was her escort? Who is -that flower, anyhow?"</p> - -<p>"An employee in our store."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" said Paul. "Clerk?"</p> - -<p>"No; a floor-walker."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" he said again, with a change of intonation which Jean detected. -"In her department?"</p> - -<p>"No; in mine."</p> - -<p>"Oh!"</p> - -<p>Amy's laugh came back shrilly through the now sparsely frequented -street.</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't have ordered so much beer," admitted the man. "It was too -heavy for her, even if her stepfather—but let's cut that out!"</p> - -<p>Jean herself thought that this passage from the Jeffries family history -might better be left undiscussed. She quickened their pace till they -were close upon Amy's too buoyant heels, and so continued to their door.</p> - -<p>Amy was full of regrets that she could not at this hour with propriety -ask Mr. Rose into Mrs. St. Aubyn's drawing-room, and as Paul -inhospitably neglected to offer his quarters, the floor-walker, with -unflagging cordiality and self-possession, took himself off.</p> - -<p>"I don't cotton to Mr. Rose," said the dentist, in a voice too low for -Amy, who was already mounting the stairs. "I hope you don't."</p> - -<p>"I don't know him."</p> - -<p>"You don't want to know him, take my word for it. This isn't sour -grapes because he butted in, mind you. If you knew the city, I wouldn't -say a word."</p> - -<p>Jean bent a frank gaze upon him under the dim hall light. Paul met it -to her satisfaction.</p> - -<p>"Thank you for to-night," she said, giving him her hand. "Thank you for -all of it; for the theater and the supper and for—this."</p> - -<p>Explanations with Amy were impossible now, but the following morning, -which the girls spent luxuriously in bed, proved auspicious. Amy's -waking mood was contrite. She owned of her own engaging accord that -she had made a goose of herself in the restaurant, suggesting by way -of defence that her stepfather must have favored quite another kind of -beer. She as frankly conceded that the Rose episode was indefensible, -and promised ample apologies to the dentist.</p> - -<p>"He'll understand how it was," she said. "Paul's not a Jake Meyer."</p> - -<p>"Will Mr. Rose understand?" asked Jean, pointedly.</p> - -<p>Amy shot her a sidelong glance.</p> - -<p>"Why not?"</p> - -<p>"He's not—well, a Paul Bartlett."</p> - -<p>"He isn't a Jake Meyer, either, if that's what you mean," retorted Amy, -rising on her elbow. "I like Rosey and make no bones of telling you. -What have you got at the back of your big brown eyes there? Somebody -has been stuffing you, I guess. Was it some kind friend at Meyer & -Schwarzschild's? What did they say about Rosey and me?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing," answered Jean, suspicious of her warmth; but now told her -plainly whom and what they had mentioned.</p> - -<p>Amy listened without surprise.</p> - -<p>"There was bound to be some gossip," she commented, at length. "I -counted on it."</p> - -<p>"You counted on it!"</p> - -<p>"Certainly. Jake knew the buyer's record from A to Z, and there were -others."</p> - -<p>Jean had a moment's giddiness, and shrank from her explorations.</p> - -<p>"Did you?" she faltered.</p> - -<p>"Of course. Do you suppose I couldn't read him like a book after all -I've been through?"</p> - -<p>"Yet you went just the same! You—"</p> - -<p>"I trusted to luck, and for once luck was with me. He had a big offer -from a Chicago firm, and left town the very day I went into the cloak -department. Oh, you needn't stare," she added, with a touch of passion. -"The world hasn't been any too kind to me, and I'm learning to beat it -at its own selfish game. Don't let it worry you."</p> - -<p>"I can't help it."</p> - -<p>"Then you're silly. I'm not as soft as I look. Besides, you'll find -yourself pretty busy paddling your own canoe."</p> - -<p>Jean fell into a brooding silence. The new life was incredibly complex. -It held possibilities before which imagination flinched. A picture, -recalled again and again with extraordinary vividness, flashed once -more before her. She saw a camp among birches bordering a pellucid -lake; a boyish, pacing figure; a straightforward, troubled face -confronting her own. She evoked a voice, "To be a stranger in New -York, homeless, friendless, without work, the shadow of that place -over there dogging your steps...." Every syllable, every intonation, -was ineffaceable. Where was he now, that flawless young knight of the -enchanted forest, who had stayed her folly and changed the current of -her life? He had promised to befriend her when, against his counsel, -she had thought to dare this unknown world. Would he still have faith, -should they meet?</p> - -<p>Amy's laugh caught her back to the room of three dormers.</p> - -<p>"You looked a million miles away," she said. "If you were another sort -of girl, I'd say you were dreaming of your best fellow. What! Blushes! -Then you were? Was it Paul?"</p> - -<p>"Paul!" Jean repelled the suggestion with a pillow. "Take that!"</p> - -<p>They said no more of the buyer—he was luckily out of the reckoning; -and although Jean deemed the dentist a wiser judge of men in general, -and of floor-walkers in particular, than Amy, she decided for the -present to side with neither, but try to weigh Mr. Rose for herself. If -Amy was skimming thin ice, she was at least a practiced skater, with -the chastening memory of a serious splash. Moreover, to recur to Amy's -metaphor, she had a canoe of her own to paddle, as she was roughly -reminded that same afternoon.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XII</p> - - -<p>It happened at dusk while they were returning from Central Park, which -Amy had selected as a primary lesson in Jean's civic education. They -were homing by way of Broadway, and were well back into the theatrical -section, when Jean's guide gripped her abruptly by the arm, dragged -her into the nearest doorway, and hurried her half up the dark flight -of stairs to which it led. Even here she enjoined silence, pointing -for explanation to the square of pavement framed by the doorway, into -which an instant later loitered the bedizened key to the riddle—Stella -Wilkes.</p> - -<p>There was no mistaking her. For an interminable interval she lingered, -watchful of the street, so distinct under the electrics that they could -even make out her mole. Then, aimlessly as she had come, she drifted -out again and away.</p> - -<p>"Thank my stars I saw her first that time!" gasped Amy, still fearfully -intent upon the lighted square.</p> - -<p>"You knew she was in New York?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. I've seen her before. She came up to me one night looking even -worse than now. She was more painted, and her eyes were like burned -holes. She said she was broke, but had the promise of a place. It was -to sing in some gin-mill, I think. She <i>can</i> sing, you know. Remember -how she'd let her voice go in chapel, just to show off? I loaned her -a dollar to get rid of her. I was afraid somebody I knew might see us -together. I think she saw I was afraid."</p> - -<p>"You shouldn't have let her see; it gives her a hold on you. I shan't -dodge."</p> - -<p>Jean began consistently to descend, but Amy caught her back.</p> - -<p>"Wait," she pleaded. "Do wait a little longer. Wait for my sake, if you -don't care yourself. But you'd better fight shy of her, too, I can tell -you. She hasn't forgotten the prison riot. She mentioned it the night I -saw her, and said she'd get plenty square with you yet."</p> - -<p>Tricked by her uncertain nerves, Jean came under the sway of Amy's -panic. They lurked cowering in the hallway till sure of a clear coast; -then, darting forth, hurried round the first corner to a quieter -thoroughfare which Stella would be less apt to haunt. Here, too, they -continually saw her in imagination, and sought other doorways and -rounded other corners for safety. Fear tracked them home, plucked at -them in their own street, mounted their own steps, entered their own -door, and abode with them thereafter.</p> - -<p>Nor, for one of them at least, did the crowded weeks next following -bring forgetfulness or reassurance. Jean was ever expecting the -dreaded face to leer at her from the blurred horde which swam daily -by the little island in the toy department, where she sold children's -games. While she elucidated the mysteries of parchesi or dissected -maps to some distraught mother of six, another part of the restless -mechanism of her brain was painting Stella to the life. She pictured -the outcast's vindictive joy at running her down, heard her mouth the -unspeakable for all who would lend an ear. And who would not! She -quailed in fancy before the gaping audience—the curious shoppers, the -round-eyed cash-girls, the smirking clerks, Mr. Rose, the floor-walker.</p> - -<p>Once, issuing from such a dream, she found herself face to face with -Mr. Rose, who had come unnoticed to her counter, and so clear-cut was -the vision, she merged the unreal with the real and blenched at his -voice.</p> - -<p>"Not taking morphine lunches, are you?" he asked, leaning solicitously -over the counter.</p> - -<p>She stared hazily till he repeated his question.</p> - -<p>"Morphine lunches! What are they?"</p> - -<p>The man enacted the pantomime of applying a hypodermic syringe to his -arm.</p> - -<p>"So," he said. "Some of the girls who can't lunch at home get into the -way of it. Bad thing—very."</p> - -<p>"Why should you suspect me of such a thing?" demanded Jean, -indignantly. "Do I look like a morphine-fiend?"</p> - -<p>"No offence intended. Noticed a queer look in your eyes, that's all. -Stunning eyes! I'd hate to see 'em full of dope. Perfectly friendly -interest, understand."</p> - -<p>She welcomed the fretful interruption of a customer, but the woman was -only returning some article, not buying, and the transaction required -the floor-walker's sanction. When the shopper had gone her way, he -leaned to Jean again.</p> - -<p>"If it's worry about holding your place after the holidays," he said, -"why, you can't quit it too soon. We've watched your work, and it's -all right. The forelady says you've learned the stock quicker than any -green clerk she's had in a dog's age, and you know she's particular. -Whoever else goes, you stick."</p> - -<p>Jean gave a long breath of thankfulness, but she was not too happy to -be practical.</p> - -<p>"And the pay?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"The same for the present. You're still a beginner, you know."</p> - -<p>"It is very little. The girl who had my place left because she could -not live on it, I hear."</p> - -<p>Mr. Rose tapped his prominent teeth with a pencil.</p> - -<p>"She said something of the kind to me," he admitted. "She was -unreasonable—very. What could she expect of six dollars?"</p> - -<p>The handsome saleswoman at the dolls' furniture counter was intoning, -"Oh, Mr. Rose! Oh, Mr. Rose!" with increasing petulance, and the -floor-walker sped to her, leaving his cryptic utterance unexplained. -Jean asked a fellow-clerk more about her predecessor, and learned that -as she lived somewhere in the Bronx, both carfare and lunches had been -serious items. These, fortunately, she herself need not consider. It -was half the battle to feel permanent. She could shift somehow on her -present wage till promotion came.</p> - -<p>There was, moreover, a certain compensation in feeling herself a -factor in this great establishment which everybody knew who had heard -of New York at all. It was a show place of the metropolis, one of the -seventy times seven wonders of the New World. Its floor space was -reckoned in acres, its roof housed a whole city block, its capital -represented millions, its wares the habitable globe. Nothing essential -to human life seemed to be lacking. There were scales for your exalted -babyship's earthly advent; patent foods, healing drugs, mechanical -playthings for your childish wants or ills; text-books for your growing -mind; fine feathers for your expanding social wings; the trousseau -for your marriage; furnishings from cellar to attic for your first -housekeeping; a bank for your savings; fittings for your office; the -postal service, the telegraph, the telephone, lest business suffer -while you shop; bronzes, carvings, automobiles, steam yachts, old -wines, old books, old masters for your topping prosperity; comforts -innumerable—oculists, dentists, discreet photographers, what not—for -your lean and slippered decline; and, yes, even the sad few vanities -you may take with you to your quiet grave.</p> - -<p>It drew rich and poor alike these days, and sooner or later the toy -department gathered them in. Though Stella came not, there were many -of familiar aspect who did. Hardly a day passed without its greeting -from some one Jean knew. Mrs. St. Aubyn came shopping on account of -an incredible grandchild she must remember; the bookworm for the -cogent reason that a cherubic niece brought him; the birds of passage -to celebrate an engagement obtained at last; the shorn lambs of Wall -Street to revive fading memories of a full pocketbook; the stenographer -and the manicure since they were women; the dentist because of Jean.</p> - -<p>It was impossible to mistake Paul's reason. Her fellow-clerks hinted -it, Mr. Rose reënforced their opinion with his own, Amy added -embroidered comment, and finally Paul told her explicitly himself. On -the first evening, when he appeared at her counter near the closing -hour, he bought a game. At his second call, a week later, he examined -at length, but did not purchase. The third time he said that he had -happened by; the fourth he cast subterfuge to the winds and avowed -frankly that he came to walk home with her.</p> - -<p>"Fact is, I'm lonesome," he explained, when they reached the street. -"Till you came I never got a chance to talk to the right sort of girl -except in the operating-chair, and that didn't cut much ice, for it -was always about teeth. Hope you don't mind my dropping round for you -once in a while after office hours? It will keep these street-corner -mashers away from you and do a lot toward civilizing me."</p> - -<p>Jean accepted his companionship as frankly as it was tendered. There -was nothing loverlike about Paul's attitude. He was precisely the same -whether they walked alone or whether, as frequently happened, Amy came -down with her to the employees' entrance, where Jean had suggested that -they meet. His escort was doubly welcome during the last week before -Christmas when the great store kept open evenings, and the shopping -quarter held its nightly jam. Then, perhaps a fortnight after the -holidays, she overheard a conversation.</p> - -<p>It was not about herself, nor among girls she knew, nor indeed in her -department; merely a scrap of waspish dispute between two young persons -of free speech who supposed themselves in sole possession of the -cloak-room. Black Eyes remarked that she knew very well what Blue Eyes -was. She didn't belong there; her place was the East Side. Whereupon -Blue Eyes elegantly retorted that unless Black Eyes shut her mouth, she -would smash her ugly face in. This was evidently purely rhetorical, for -when Black Eyes waxed yet more personal, pointing out the inconsistent -relation of fifteen-dollar picture hats to six dollars a week, with -pertinent reference to a bald floor-walker from the carpet department -who waited for Blue Eyes every night, the only act of violence was the -slamming of a door which covered Blue Eyes's swift retreat.</p> - -<p>That evening Jean told the dentist he must come no more.</p> - -<p>"Suffering bicuspid!" he gasped. "What have <i>I</i> done?" This despite her -tactful best to assure him that he had done nothing at all.</p> - -<p>It seemed enormously difficult of explanation at first, but when she -suggested that she found the department store not unlike a small town -for gossip, he comprehended instantly.</p> - -<p>"Who has been talking?" he demanded. "If it was that pup of a -floor-walker—"</p> - -<p>"It wasn't. So far as I know, not a soul has mentioned my name. It's -because they mustn't talk, that I've spoken."</p> - -<p>Paul squared a by no means puny pair of shoulders.</p> - -<p>"Let me catch 'em at it!" he said.</p> - -<p>She was more watchful of her fellow-clerks thereafter. A few girls -she doubted, but striking an average, they seemed as a class honest, -hard-working, and monotonously commonplace, with their loftiest -ambitions centered upon tawdry and impracticable clothes. If a girl -dressed better than her wage warranted, as many did, it usually -developed that she lived with her parents or with other relations who -gave her cheap board. These lucky beings had also a social existence -denied to the wholly self-supporting, of which Jean obtained a perhaps -typical glimpse through a vivacious little rattlepate at the adjoining -mechanical-toy counter, with whom friendly overtures between customers -led to the discovery that they were neighbors, and to a call at the -three dormers. This courtesy Jean in due course returned one evening, -at the paternal flat over an Eighth Avenue grocery, where "Flo," as -she petitioned to be called, rejoiced in the exclusive possession of a -small bedroom ventilated, though scarcely illumined, by an air-shaft.</p> - -<p>"Mother gave me this room to myself when I began to bring in money," -she explained. "I only have to hand over two dollars a week. What's -left I spend just as I please. Father says I buy more clothes than the -rest of the family put together, and he nearly threw a fit once when I -paid twelve dollars for a lace hat trimmed with imported flowers; but -all the same he doesn't like to see any of the girls I go with look -better than I do. Our crowd is great for dress. How do you like my cozy -corner? I think these wire racks for photographs are sweet, don't you? -I have such a stack of fellows' pictures! I wonder if you know any of -them. The man in the dress suit is Willy Larkin—he's in the gents' -furnishing department. I put him next to Dan Evans—you know Dan, don't -you?—because they're so tearing jealous of each other. If Dan takes -me to a Sousa concert one night, Willy can't rest till he has spread -himself on vaudeville or some exciting play. They almost came to blows -over a two-step I promised both of them at the subscription hop our -dancing club gave New Year's. That tintype you're looking at is one -Charlie Simmons and I had taken at Glen Island last year. Goodness! -Don't hold <i>my</i> face to the light. I'm a fright in a bathing-suit. I -do love bathing, though, but I think salt water is packs more fun. Last -summer I had enough saved for a whole week at a dandy beach near Far -Rock-away. There was a grand dancing pavilion, and sometimes you could -hear the waves above the band. I just love the sea!"</p> - -<p>Jean was not envious, but the girl's chatter made her own existence -outside the store seem humdrum. Mrs. St. Aubyn's circle was more -narrow than had at first appeared. After a few dinners, it was obvious -that the landlady's talk was nearly always confined to the food and -servants, as the librarian's was limited to the weather, the shorn -lambs' to things financial, and the stenographer's, the manicure's, and -Amy's to feminine styles, while the birds of passage, whose side-lights -upon the Profession had been diverting, were now lamentably displaced -by an insurance agent who dwelt overmuch upon the uncertainty of human -life. It had to be admitted, also, that Paul himself talked shop with -frequency. His stories, like his droll ejaculations, were apt to smack -of the office; and he had a habit of carrying gold crowns or specimens -of bridgework in his pockets, which, though no doubt works of art of -their kind, were yet often disconcerting when shown in mixed company. -At such times especially, Jean would evoke that knightlier figure, who -shone so faultless in perspective, and in fancy put him in Paul's place.</p> - -<p>She perceived the dentist's foibles, however, without liking the -essential man one whit the less, and, in the absence of the Ideal, -frequently took Sunday trolley trips with him in lieu of the tabooed -walks from the store; but the fear of meeting Stella made her decline -his invitations to the theater and kept her from the streets at night. -Paul took these self-denials for maiden scruples beyond his masculine -comprehension, and was edified rather than offended; but he was at -first puzzled and then hurt, when, as spring drew on, the outings also -ceased. Jean was evasive when questioned, while Amy looked knowing, but -was too loyal to explain. The stenographer or the manicure or, for that -matter, any normal woman could, if asked, have told him that Jean was -merely ashamed of her clothes.</p> - -<p>It was largely because Paul misunderstood that Jean resolved no -longer to wait passively for promotion. Six dollars a week had their -limitations, since five went always to Mrs. St. Aubyn for board. -Yet, out of that scant margin of a sixth, she had somehow scraped -together enough to replace what she had used of Mrs. Fanshaw's grudging -contribution, the whole of which she despatched to Shawnee Springs -in a glow of wrathful satisfaction that cheered her for many days. -Nevertheless, the want of it pinched her shrewdly. Those ten dollars -would have helped spare the refuge suit, which, fortunately black, -did duty seven days in the week and looked it, too, now that the mild -days began to outnumber the raw, and other girls bloomed in premature -spring finery. Many of the bargains which the great store was forever -advertising would have aided in little ways, but the management was -opposed to its employees' profiting by these chances.</p> - -<p>During the continued ill health of the department manager, Mr. Rose -still wielded an extended authority, and to him, accordingly, Jean -made her appeal, overtaking him on his way to the offices one evening -when the immense staff was everywhere hurrying from the building. The -carpet and upholstery department, where they talked, was ever a place -of muffled quiet, even with business at high tide, and, save for an -occasional night-watchman, they seemed isolated now. Rose heard her -out, lounging with feline complacency upon a soft-hued heap of Oriental -rugs, while his eyes roamed her eager face with candid approval.</p> - -<p>Jean saw with anger that he no longer attended.</p> - -<p>"You are not listening," she reproached. "Can't you appreciate what -this means to me? Look at my shoes! They're all I have. Look at this -suit! It's my only one. I've saved no money to buy other clothes—it's -impossible. You say I'm efficient—pay me living wages, then. I can't -live on what you give me. I've tried and I've failed—failed like the -girl before me."</p> - -<p>The floor-walker slid smiling from the rug pile.</p> - -<p>"She was inconceivably plain," he said; "but you—" He spread his white -hands in futile search of adjectives.</p> - -<p>"Never mind my looks, Mr. Rose," Jean struck in curtly. "I am talking -business."</p> - -<p>"So am I, my dear. I'm pointing out your resources."</p> - -<p>She did not take his meaning fully, his leer notwithstanding, and he -drew his own interpretation of her silence.</p> - -<p>"You know we don't lack for applicants here," he continued. "There are -a dozen girls waiting to jump into your shoes. We expect our low-paid -girls to have additional means of support. Some of them have families; -others—but you're no fool. There are plenty of men who'd be glad to -help you out. Why don't you arrange things with that young dentist? -Or"—his smile grew more saccharine—"if that affair is off, perhaps -I—"</p> - -<p>Then something transpired which he never clearly understood. It was -plain enough to Jean. In the twinkling of an eye she was again an -athletic boxing tomboy, answering to the name of Jack, before whose -scientific "right" Mr. Rose dropped with crumpled petals to the floor.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XIII</p> - - -<p>Jean stood over him an instant, her anger still at white heat, but -the floor-walker had had enough of argument and only groveled cursing -where he fell. Leaving him without a word, she swept by a grinning -night-watchman and turned in at the adjacent offices, whither Rose -himself was bound. She had learned the ways of the place sufficiently -by now to know that members of the firm often lingered here after the -army which served them had gone, and she was determined that her own -story should reach them first. But the office of the head of the firm -was dark, and the consequential voice which answered her knock at the -door of a junior partner, where a light still shone, proved to be that -of a belated stenographer.</p> - -<p>As she turned uncertainly away, Rose, nursing a swelling eye, again -confronted her.</p> - -<p>"Thought you'd take it to headquarters, did you?" he said. "I advise -you to drop it right here."</p> - -<p>He recoiled as she advanced, and warded an imaginary blow, but she only -passed him by contemptuously.</p> - -<p>"Are you going to drop it?" he asked, following to the stairs. "I -don't want to see you get into trouble, for all your nasty temper. I'm -willing to overlook your striking me."</p> - -<p>His persistence only fixed her resolution to expose him, and she -hurried on without reply.</p> - -<p>"Two can play at that game," he warned over the rail.</p> - -<p>In the street she paused irresolutely. The man would, of course, -protect himself if he could, and her own story should reach some member -of the firm to-night. If she waited till morning, Rose could easily -forestall her. Yet she had become too sophisticated not to shrink -from the idea of trying to take her grievance into one of those men's -homes. Only the other day she had picked up a trashy paper containing a -shop-girl story, warmly praised by Amy, which narrated an incident of -the kind. The son and heir of a merchant prince—so the author styled -him—had cruelly wronged the beautiful shop-girl, who, after harrowing -sorrows, took her courage in her hands and braved the ancestral -hall. She gained an entrance somehow (details were scanty here) and -confronted the base son and heir at the climax of a grand ball at which -the upper ten and other numerals were assembled to do honor to his -chosen bride. Jean had seen the absurdity of the picture as Amy could -not. Things did not fall out this wise in real life. The beautiful -shop-girl would never have gotten by the merchant prince's presumably -well-trained servants, even if she had eluded the specially detailed -policeman at the awning, and Jean judged that her own chances would be -as slender.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, there seemed to be nothing left her but to try. She -consulted a directory in the next drugstore and copied out the home -addresses of the several members of the firm. One of the junior -partners seemed to live nearest, though not within walking distance, -and at this address she finally arrived at an hour when, judging Fifth -Avenue by Mrs. St. Aubyn's, she feared she would find her employer at -dinner. She recognized the house as one which Amy had pointed out with -an air of proprietorship on their first Sunday walk, and she reflected -with misgiving that it was a really plausible setting for the drama of -the beautiful shop-girl, did such things exist.</p> - -<p>An elderly butler convinced her that this was her own drama. He was not -unbearably haughty, a vast quantity of polite fiction to the contrary; -and if he scorned her clothes, he did not let the fact appear. His -manner even suggested decorous regret that the master of the house -was not at home. Jean went down the steps, wondering whether this -were an artistic lie, but, happily for the servant's reputation, an -electric cab at this moment drew up at the curb and dropped the man she -sought. She recognized him at once, for of all the firm he had the most -striking presence, looking very like the more jovial portraits of Henry -VIII. Unlike the Tudor king, however, he was said to be happily married -and of domestic tastes. He paused, giving her a keen look, when he -perceived that she meant to accost him.</p> - -<p>"I just asked for you." Jean said. "I wanted to speak to you about -something at the store."</p> - -<p>"You are one of our employees?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. I am a sales girl in the toy department. I wish to make a serious -complaint."</p> - -<p>"A complaint? Your own department is the proper channel for that."</p> - -<p>"I cannot ask the man to judge himself," returned Jean, simply.</p> - -<p>He gave her another sharp look.</p> - -<p>"Oh," he said, with a change of tone. "Come in." Then, to the elderly -butler, who during this interval had held the door ajar with an air of -not listening, "The Study."</p> - -<p>Jean seemed to recall that the beautiful shop-girl had encountered -a "study," which could have been no more luxurious than this. She -queried, while she waited, what the library and more pretentious -apartments could be like. The room seemed to her of regal splendor. -It was paneled and cross-beamed, and a fireplace in keeping with -the architecture well-nigh filled one end wall. The light fell from -a wonderful affair of opalescent glass which gave new tones to the -oriental fabrics underfoot and added richness to the lavishly employed -mahogany. No other wood had been permitted here. It glowed dully from -beam, panel, and cornice; from the mantel, the bookshelves, the carved -cabinet concealing a safe; from the massive griffin-legged desk at -which the owner of it all, as florid as his taste, presently took his -seat.</p> - -<p>"Now, then," he said, "tell me explicitly what you charge."</p> - -<p>She omitted nothing. Her listener followed her closely and once, -when she gave Rose's version of the firm's policy, he shook his head -dissentingly, but whether in disbelief of herself or in condemnation of -the floor-walker, she could not guess.</p> - -<p>"This is a grave accusation," he said, when she had done. "It -involves not only Mr. Rose,—who, let me say, has always been most -efficient,—but the good name of the whole establishment."</p> - -<p>"That is one reason why I came."</p> - -<p>"Of the whole establishment," repeated the junior partner, as if she -had not spoken. "Was there a third party present?"</p> - -<p>"There was a watchman near by, but he couldn't have heard what was -said."</p> - -<p>"You are quite sure you did not misunderstand Mr. Rose?"</p> - -<p>"Quite."</p> - -<p>"And were not prejudiced against him in advance? Floor-walkers as a -class have often been maligned."</p> - -<p>Jean reflected carefully.</p> - -<p>"I can't say no to that," she owned frankly. "A friend had a poor -opinion of him and said so before I began work, but I tried not to let -that influence me."</p> - -<p>"But it did?"</p> - -<p>"A little, perhaps. I admit I've never liked him."</p> - -<p>For a time the big man under the drop-light trifled absently with a -paper-knife.</p> - -<p>"We'll take this matter up, of course," he said presently. "If we need -a housecleaning, we'll have it; but I can't believe that things are -radically at fault. No department store in the city is more considerate -of its people. We were among the first to close Saturday afternoons -in midsummer; we offer liberal inducements for special energy during -the holidays; we have provided exceedingly attractive lunch-rooms; we -even hope, when trade conditions permit, to introduce a form of profit -sharing. What more can we do?"</p> - -<p>Jean supposed his rhetorical query personal.</p> - -<p>"You might pay better wages," she suggested. "Then things like this -wouldn't happen."</p> - -<p>For the fraction of a second King Henry wore one of his less amiable -expressions. It suggested beheading or long confinement in the Tower. -Then, immediately, it was glossed by modernity.</p> - -<p>"There you trench upon economic grounds," he rejoined heavily. "I wish -we might inaugurate a lecture course for our employees, to elucidate -the principles which govern a great business. The law of supply and -demand, the press of competition, the necessity for costly advertising, -these and countless other considerations, which we at the helm -appreciate, never enter the shop-girl's head."</p> - -<p>Jean was overborne by these impressive phrases. They had never entered -her head, certainly, and she was not altogether sure why they should.</p> - -<p>"We only ask a living," she said.</p> - -<p>"But you shouldn't. We want the girl who asks pin-money, the girl who -lives with her family. Have you no family yourself, by the way?"</p> - -<p>"My mother is living."</p> - -<p>"Is she dependent upon you in any way?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Is she able to provide for you?"</p> - -<p>"Perfectly."</p> - -<p>"Then why doesn't she?"</p> - -<p>Jean's eyes snapped.</p> - -<p>"Because I won't let her."</p> - -<p>Her listener shrugged.</p> - -<p>"The modern woman!" he lamented. "But this is beside the question. We -pay as others pay. If a girl thinks it insufficient, let her find other -work. So far, I uphold Mr. Rose. His further advice—as you report -it—is another matter. As I have said, we will take it up."</p> - -<p>He touched a bell and rose, and Jean followed the elderly servant to -the door. The impetus which had brought her here had subsided into -great weariness of body and spirit, but she went down the avenue not -ill satisfied. She had had her hearing. She had spoken, not for herself -alone, but in a measure for others. Moreover, the man's bluff candor -seemed an earnest that justice would be done. Precisely what form -justice would take, she did not speculate.</p> - -<p>Near her own door she met Paul on anxious lookout for her.</p> - -<p>"I was beginning to imagine a fine bunch of horrors," he said. "Amy -hadn't a ghost of a notion what was up."</p> - -<p>"I did not tell Amy I should be late," Jean replied. She offered no -explanations, but Paul's concern was grateful after what she had -undergone, and she added, "I'm sorry you worried."</p> - -<p>He eyed her narrowly, pausing an instant at the steps.</p> - -<p>"Any need for a man of my build?" he inquired.</p> - -<p>"Why do you ask that?"</p> - -<p>"Because I think you're in trouble. If I can help—"</p> - -<p>"No, no," she returned hastily. "But thank you."</p> - -<p>"Something has happened?"</p> - -<p>"Yes; at the store. I can't very well explain it."</p> - -<p>"Oh," said Paul, as if explanations were needless. "I'm not so sure I -couldn't be useful."</p> - -<p>She felt that he divined something of what had transpired, his -knowledge of the floor-walker being perhaps fuller than her own, but he -said no more. Jean was singularly comforted by his attitude, especially -since Amy's, as presently defined, left much to be desired. She seemed -less amazed at Rose's behavior than at Jean's active resentment.</p> - -<p>"I wouldn't have struck him," she said.</p> - -<p>"What would you have done?"</p> - -<p>"I—I don't know. At any rate, not that. A girl has to put up with a -lot."</p> - -<p>"I presume you wouldn't have reported him, either?" Jean flung out -bitterly.</p> - -<p>"No; I didn't—I mean I wouldn't."</p> - -<p>Jean started.</p> - -<p>"I think you meant just what you said first, Amy," she cried. "Has he -told you the same thing?"</p> - -<p>Amy writhed.</p> - -<p>"N-no," she began; "that is—"</p> - -<p>"Almost, then?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"And you did nothing?"</p> - -<p>"I didn't dare do anything. I don't see how you dared. It's too big a -risk."</p> - -<p>"I would have risked more in keeping quiet. I simply had to take it -higher up."</p> - -<p>"But you said Mr. Rose offered to let it drop," Amy timidly reminded. -"You could have done that."</p> - -<p>"That!" She had no words to voice her scorn.</p> - -<p>They went to bed and rose again in an atmosphere of constraint, and -Jean walked to her day's work alone. She dreaded meeting Rose, and -apprehended another interview with the junior partner, an ordeal -which wore a more forbidding aspect by day. But neither happened. The -floor-walker did not appear in the toy department at all, though some -one had seen him enter the building. It was rumored that he was ill.</p> - -<p>Toward the end of the afternoon Jean noticed that she had become an -object of some interest to the forewoman, and wondered hopefully -if this influential personage had marked her for promotion. Her -pay-envelope, for it was Saturday, shortly furnished a clew to the -mystery in the shape of a neat slip informing her that her services -were no longer required.</p> - -<p>"I'm to answer questions if you have any," the forewoman told her, -shortly; "but I guess you understand."</p> - -<p>The girl turned a chalky face upon her.</p> - -<p>"But I don't—"</p> - -<p>"Then you're slower than I thought. The firm has looked you up, that's -all."</p> - -<p>Jean realized the monstrous injustice of it but slowly.</p> - -<p>"I don't see," she faltered.</p> - -<p>"Bosh!" cut in the woman, impatiently. "Don't try to flimflam me. Lord -knows what kind of game you were working, but you had more nerve than -sense. You might have guessed when you tried to put your bare word -against Mr. Rose's that they'd make it their business to find out just -what your word was worth. Your last employer told them."</p> - -<p>"Told them what?" blazed Jean.</p> - -<p>"What do you suppose? That you'd done time in a reformatory, of -course."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XIV</p> - - -<p>In her dark hour came Paul.</p> - -<p>"I know," he said, hunting her out in the corner of the melancholy -drawing-room where she sat Sunday afternoon with absent eyes upon -"The Trial of Effie Deans." "Some of it I guessed, and a little more -filtered from Amy <i>via</i> Mrs. St. Aubyn, but I got the finishing touch -from a man in the store."</p> - -<p>"The store!" Jean had a moment of acute dismay; she would fain leave -Paul his illusions. "What man?"</p> - -<p>"A chap in the drug department I do work for now and then. He turned up -at the parlors this morning. We're open Sundays from 'leven to one, you -know."</p> - -<p>Then, the refuge spectre had followed here! She could not look him in -the face. But Paul's next words reassured.</p> - -<p>"He didn't mention names, but I put two and two together quick enough -when he told me that one of their new girls knocked out a fresh -floor-walker the other night. I was proud I knew you."</p> - -<p>"Did he know of my—my discharge?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"You didn't mention it yourself?" Jean faltered. "Or my name?"</p> - -<p>Paul's look was sad.</p> - -<p>"That's a shade lower down than I think I've got," he observed loftily. -"A man who'd lug in a lady friend's name under such circumstances -wouldn't stop at the few trifles that still faze me. He—why, he'd even -gold-crown an anterior tooth!"</p> - -<p>She hastened to mollify him, relieved beyond measure that his chance -informant knew nothing of the real reason for her dismissal. Amy could -be trusted to conceal it for her own sake. Then Paul stirred her -anxiety afresh with a request.</p> - -<p>"I want to polish off Mr. Rose," he said, doubling his fist -suggestively. "You made a good beginning, but the pup needs a thorough -job. I know where he boards—he told me that night he butted in; and if -you'll just let me call round as a friend of yours—"</p> - -<p>"No, no. Promise me you won't!"</p> - -<p>"But he needs it," argued the dentist, plaintively. "I'd also like, if -it could be managed, to say a few things to the head of the firm."</p> - -<p>"Indeed you mustn't," cried Jean. "Promise me you'll say nothing about -it in any way!"</p> - -<p>"Can't I even <i>tell</i> Rose what I think?"</p> - -<p>"Never. I've got to accept this thing and make a new start. I must -forget it, not brood over it. You mustn't thrash him, you mustn't tell -him what you think—above all, you mustn't go to the firm. Promise me -you won't!"</p> - -<p>"All right," he assented, manifestly puzzled. "A girl looks at things -differently. I've got another proposition, though, which I hope you -won't veto. Any prejudice against dentists, present company excepted?"</p> - -<p>"No," smiled Jean.</p> - -<p>"Some folks have, you know. Can't understand it myself. Why isn't it -as high-toned to doctor teeth as it is to specialize an inch higher -up, say, on the nose? Yet socially the nose-specialist gets the glad -hand in places where the dentist couldn't break in with a Krupp gun. It -makes me hot. But enough said along that line just now. What I started -in to tell you is that there's an opening at the parlors."</p> - -<p>"For me—a girl?"</p> - -<p>"For a girl?" Paul pretended to weigh this handicap gravely. "Of -course, a lady assistant is generally a man, but still—"</p> - -<p>Jean was unfamiliar with this adjunct of modern dentistry.</p> - -<p>"What must she do?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Be a lady and assist. That sums it all up. Some old fogies would -specify thirty summers and a homely face, but I believe in a cheery -office straight through. We've been looking round for the right party -lately—the girl who has the berth now is going to be married; but it -never occurred to me to offer it to you until to-day. It would mean -eight dollars a week right at the start, and a raise just as soon as -they appreciate what an air you give the whole place. There'd be more -still in it if you liked the work well enough to branch out."</p> - -<p>"Branch out? In what way?"</p> - -<p>"Operating-room. At first you'll act as secretary and cashier, receive -patients, and see that the hulk of a janitor keeps the parlors neat. -Then, if you get on as I think you will, you'll very likely have an -assistant yourself, and put in most of your time elsewhere. A clever -girl can be no end of help in the operating-room. Say, for instance, -I'm doing a contour filling, which, let me tell you, needs an eagle-eye -and the patience of a mule. Well, while I pack and figure how to do an -artistic job, you anneal gold and pass it to me in the cavity. See what -I mean? One bright little woman we had for a while drew thirty-five a -week, but she was a trained nurse, too."</p> - -<p>Jean had doubts of her usefulness amid these technicalities, but the -office work sounded simple, and she caught thankfully at the chance.</p> - -<p>The dentist waved aside her gratitude.</p> - -<p>"I'm simply doing a good stroke of business for the Acme Painless -Dental Company," he said. "I'll tell Grimes in the morning that I've -located the right party,—Grimes is the company, by the way, the whole -painless ranch,—and you can drop in later and cinch the deal."</p> - -<p>Jean's thoughts took a leap ahead to ways and means, and she drew a -worn shoe farther beneath her skirt.</p> - -<p>"You're sure I'll do?" she hesitated.</p> - -<p>"You! I only wish you could see some of the procession who've answered -our ad." Then, almost as if he read her mind, he added with unwonted -bashfulness: "If I were in your place, I'd borrow Amy's black feather -boa for your first call. It suits you right down to the ground."</p> - -<p>She took the hint laughingly. There were more things than the boa to -be borrowed for the conquest of Grimes. She was touched by Paul's -transparent diplomacy, and glad that in his slow man's way he had at -last perceived why their outings had ceased. So, by grace of Paul and -Amy, it fell out before another week elapsed that the affianced lady -assistant of the Acme Painless Dental Company left to prepare for her -bridal, and Jean reigned in her stead.</p> - -<p>The company's outworks on Sixth Avenue were a resplendent negro and -a monumental show-case, both filled with glittering specimens of the -painless marvels accomplished within. The African wore a uniform of -green and gold, and all day forced advertisements into the unwilling -hands of passers-by, chanting meanwhile the full style and title of -the establishment in a voice which soared easily above the roar of -the elevated trains overhead. Passing this personage, you mounted -a staircase whose every step besought you to remember the precise -whereabouts of the parlors, while yet other placards of like import -made clear the way at the top and throughout the unmistakable corridor -leading to the true and only Acme Painless Dental Company's door.</p> - -<p>Entering here to the trill of an electric bell, you came full upon -the central office, or, as the leaflets read, the elegant parlor, -from which the operating-rooms led on every hand. In character -this apartment was broadly eclectic. Jean's special nook, with its -telephone, cash-register, and smart roll-top desk, was contemporary to -the minute; yet in the corner diagonally opposed, a suit of stage armor -jauntily bade the waiting patient think upon knights, jousts, and the -swashbuckling Middle Ages. In still another quarter a languorous slave -girl of scanty raiment, but abundant bangles, postured upon a teak-wood -tabouret, backed by way of further realism with Bagdad hangings and a -palm of the convenient species which no frost blights and an occasional -whisk of the duster always rejuvenates. The chairs were frankly Grand -Rapids and built for wear, though the proprietor's avowed taste ran -to a style he called "Lewis Quince"; and the gilt he might not employ -here he lavished upon the frames of his pictures, which, nearly without -exception, were night-scenes wherein shimmering castle windows or the -gibbous moon were cunningly inlaid in mother-of-pearl. In the midst -of all this, now pacifying the waiting with vain promises of speedy -relief, now pottering off into this room or that in as futile attempts -to make each of several sufferers believe his blundering services -exclusive—big, easy-going, slovenly, yet popular—moved Grimes.</p> - -<p>Of the operating-rooms, which by no means approached the splendor of -the parlor, the next best to Grimes's own was Paul Bartlett's, for Paul -was a person of importance here. Of the four assistant dentists, he was -at once the best equipped and the best paid, receiving a commission -over and above his regular thirty-five dollars a week. The more -discriminating of the place's queer constituency coolly passed Grimes -by in Paul's favor, but the elder man was not offended. A month or so -after Jean's coming he even offered his clever helper a partnership, -which Paul unhesitatingly declined. He was ambitious for an office of -his own, when his capital should permit, and he planned it along lines -which would have fatigued his slipshod employer to conceive.</p> - -<p>"It's all too beastly bad," he told Jean, in answer to her query why -he did not accept Grimes's offer and insist on reform. "You'd simply -have to burn the shop from laboratory to door-mat. To advertise as he -does is against the code of dental ethics, and his practice ought to -be jumped on by the board of health. Look at this junk!" he added, -shaking an indignant fist under the nose of the slave girl. "Lord -knows how many good dollars it cost, and yet we haven't got more than -one decent set of instruments in the whole shebang. I reach for a -spatula or a plugger that I've laid down two minutes before, and I find -it's been packed off by old Grimes to use on another patient. As for -sterilizing—faugh! You could catch <i>anything</i> here. How he's shaved -through so far without a damage suit euchres me."</p> - -<p>"Yet I like him," said Jean.</p> - -<p>"So do I. So does everybody. And he's getting rich on the strength of -it."</p> - -<p>"I'm getting rich on the strength of it, too," Jean laughed. "Next week -I shall really be able to put money in the bank."</p> - -<p>Better paid, better dressed, with easy work and not infrequent leisure -to read, she felt that at last she had begun to live. Her position long -retained a flavor of novelty, for the dental company's patrons were -infinitely various and furnished endless topics of interest to herself -and Paul. They usually went to and from Mrs. St. Aubyn's together, and -as the summer excursion season drew on, their Sunday pleasurings began -to flourish afresh. Sometimes Amy joined them, but more often she made -labored excuses, and they went alone. Jean thought her more secretive -and reserved than of old, and Paul, too, remarked a change.</p> - -<p>"How did you two get chummy?" he asked abruptly, after one of Amy's -declinations. "You're not at all alike."</p> - -<p>"Chums are usually different, aren't they?" Jean said, her skin -beginning to prickle.</p> - -<p>"Not so much as you two. You're a lady and she—well, she isn't. Known -her some time?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Where did you meet? You were certainly green to the city when you -struck our house. Amy's an East Sider Simon-pure."</p> - -<p>"It was in the country. Amy stayed in the country once."</p> - -<p>"Shawnee Springs?"</p> - -<p>"No, no. Another place."</p> - -<p>"Was that where you knew Miss Archer?"</p> - -<p>Jean turned a sick face upon him, but Paul's own countenance was -without guile.</p> - -<p>"I've overheard you and Amy mention her once or twice," he explained.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she stammered. "We both knew her there."</p> - -<p>"Out of breath?" he said, still too observant. "I thought we were -taking our usual gait."</p> - -<p>She blamed the heat and led him to speak of other things, but the -day was spoiled. She debated seriously whether it were not wise to -make a clean breast of her refuge history, but Paul's belief in her -unworldliness had its sweetness, and the fit chance to dispel his -illusion somehow had not come when Stella, for weeks almost forgotten, -so involved the coil that frankness was impossible.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XV</p> - - -<p>Motley as were the dental company's patrons, Jean never entertained the -possibility of Stella's crossing the threshold, till her coming was an -accomplished fact. Luckily she happened to be elsewhere in the office -when the bell warned her that some one had entered, and she was able, -accordingly, to sight the caller with her admiring gaze fixed upon the -slave girl. Her own retreat was instant and blind, and by a spiteful -chance took her full tilt into the arms of Paul.</p> - -<p>"What's up?" he demanded, holding her fast. "What's happened to you?"</p> - -<p>She was dumb before his questions. He noticed her pallor and helped her -into the nearest operating-chair.</p> - -<p>"There is a patient waiting," she got out at last.</p> - -<p>"You're the first patient," he said; and brought smelling-salts, -which he administered with a liberal hand. "You girls eat a roll for -breakfast and a chocolate caramel for lunch, and then wonder why you -faint."</p> - -<p>She finally persuaded him to leave her on her promising that she would -not stir till his return, and he went in her stead to receive Stella, -whom he brought to a room so near that almost every word was audible. -Stella had evidently visited the parlors before. She addressed Paul -familiarly as "Doc," spoke of other work he had done for her, and -lingered to make conversation after he had fixed an appointment. The -dentist's responses were cool and perfunctory, and in leaving she -chaffed him on having lost his old-time sociability.</p> - -<p>He returned with a red face to find Jean outwardly herself.</p> - -<p>"Better?" he said awkwardly.</p> - -<p>"Much better."</p> - -<p>Paul fidgeted with the mechanism of the chair.</p> - -<p>"As long as you're O.K. now," he went on, "I'm not sorry you missed -that party. That's the worst of Grimes. He caters to all sorts. You -heard her talk, I suppose?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>He furtively studied her face. "I hope you don't think we're as -friendly as she made out?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, no."</p> - -<p>Paul looked greatly relieved.</p> - -<p>"I bank a lot on what you think," he said. "You're the kind of girl who -makes a fellow want to toe the mark."</p> - -<p>"Don't," she entreated, writhing under his praise. "You rate me too -high."</p> - -<p>"Too high!" He laughed excitedly and caught her hand when she moved to -go. "You didn't mind my telling you?" Then, without awaiting a reply, -he blurted: "There's a heap more to say. I want to take you out of all -this—away from such riffraff as the girl you didn't see; I want—I -want you, Jean."</p> - -<p>She tried to speak, but he read refusal in her troubled eyes and cut -her short.</p> - -<p>"Don't answer now," he begged. "I didn't expect to tell you this so -soon. I don't expect you to say yes straight off. I'm not good enough -for you, Lord knows, but nobody could care more. Promise me you'll -think it over. Promise me that, anyhow."</p> - -<p>She would have promised anything to escape. Again at her desk, she -strove to think things out, but from the whirl of her thoughts only -one fixed purpose emerged: she must know the day and hour of Stella's -intended return, for this detail had escaped her. Making some excuse, -therefore, when Paul came for her at closing time, she watched him -to the street and then hurried to search his operating-room for the -little red-covered book in which his personal appointments were kept. -It was not in its usual place, however, nor in his office-coat behind -the door, nor in any possible drawer of the cabinet. He had evidently -slipped it into some pocket of the suit he wore.</p> - -<p>She dragged home in miserable anxiety, pinning all her hopes on -obtaining a glance at the book while the dentist was at dinner; but -this plan failed her, too, since that night, contrary to his custom, -Paul made no change in his dress. The book was in his possession. Of -this she was certain, for a corner of its red binding gleamed evilly -at her from beneath his coat. Once, in an after-dinner comparison of -biceps, which the insurance agent inaugurated in the hall, the thing -actually fell to the floor at her feet, only to be noted by a watchful -chorus before she might even think of advancing a casual ruffle. She -devised a score of pretexts for asking Paul to let her see it, any one -of which would have passed muster before his enamored eyes, but she -dismissed each as too flimsy and open to suspicion; and so, before a -safe course suggested itself, the evening was gone, and she climbed her -three flights to spend hours in horrid wakefulness succeeded by even -more merciless dreams.</p> - -<p>Fate was kinder on the morrow. Paul laid the appointment-book upon -an open shelf of his cabinet in the course of the forenoon, and she -seized a moment when he was scouring the establishment for one of his -ever-vagrant instruments, to wrest its secret at last. She found the -record easily. It was among the engagements for that very day: "Miss -Wilkes, 11-11.30." The little clock on the cabinet indicated ten -minutes of eleven now!</p> - -<p>She evaded Paul, who was returning, caught up her hat, and telling -Grimes that she was too ill to work that day—which the big incompetent -sympathetically assured her he could see for himself—fled in panic -to the stairs only to behold Stella's nodding plumes already rounding -the sample show-case below. Fortunately she was mounting with head -down, and it took Jean but an instant to dart for the staircase to the -floor above, from whose landing, breathless, lax-muscled, yet safe, she -followed Stella's rustling progress to the dental company's door. When -she cautiously descended, the hall reeked with a musky perfume from -which she recoiled as from a physical nearness to the woman herself.</p> - -<p>Luncheon brought Paul and questions which she answered, as she could, -from behind her closed door. He had no suspicion of the real cause -of her sudden leaving, ascribing her indisposition, as yesterday, -to insufficient nourishment, and joined his imagination to Mrs. St. -Aubyn's, and that of the proprietor of a neighboring delicatessen shop, -in the heaping of a tray whose every mouthful choked. It tortured her -to brazen out this deception, but unaided she could see no other way, -and advisers there were none. She might have confided in Amy, had the -need arisen earlier; but Amy was become a creature of strange reserves -and silences.</p> - -<p>She left her room at evening and braved the galling solicitude of -the dining room. Mrs. St. Aubyn was for extracting her precise -symptoms, and led a discussion of favorite remedies, to which nearly -all contributed some special lore, from the librarian, who swore -by a newspaper cholera mixture, to the bankrupt, whose panacea was -Adirondack air. Paul refrained from the talk, perceiving that Jean -wished nothing so much as to be let alone. He was more silent than -she had ever known him at table, and she twice surprised him in a -brown study, of which Amy was seemingly the subject. Dinner over, he -brought about a tête-à-tête in an upper hall, a meeting made easy by -the boarders' summer custom of blocking the front steps in a domestic -group, of which Mrs. St. Aubyn, watchful of other clusters obviously -less presentable, was the complacent apex.</p> - -<p>"I didn't trot out a remedy downstairs," he said, "but I've got one all -the same. It's a vacation."</p> - -<p>"But—" Jean began.</p> - -<p>"No 'buts' in order. I've got the floor. It's a vacation you need, and -it's a vacation you'll have. Grimes has arranged everything. You're to -have a week off, beginning to-morrow, and your pay will go on same as -ever."</p> - -<p>"This is your doing."</p> - -<p>"No," he disclaimed; "it's Grimes's. I only told him it would do you -more good now than in August. It was due you anyhow."</p> - -<p>"But I'm not sick," she protested. "I can't let you think I am. It's -not right to deceive—"</p> - -<p>"The question now before the house," Paul calmly interposed, "is, Where -do you want to spend it? How about Shawnee Springs?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Thought not. You never mention the Springs as though you pined to get -back. Ever try Ocean Grove, where the Methodists round up?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Then why don't you? There's more fun in the place than you'd think. -They can't spoil the ocean, and Asbury Park is just a stone's throw -away whenever the hymns get on your nerves. I mention Ocean Grove, -because Mrs. St. Aubyn's sister has a boarding-house there—Marlborough -Villa, she calls it—where she'll take you cheap, coming now before the -rush. I'll run down Sunday and see how you're making out."</p> - -<p>He had an answer for every objection, and in the end Jean let herself -be persuaded, although to yield here seemed to imply a tacit assent -to other things she was wofully unready to meet. The future stretched -away, a jungle of complexity. Perhaps the sea, the real sea she had -never beheld, for Coney Island did not count, would help her think it -out.</p> - -<p>Early the following morning the dentist saw her aboard the boat.</p> - -<p>"You'll not mind if I come down?" he asked.</p> - -<p>She smiled "No" a little wanly, but he went away content. Sunday would -be crucial, she foresaw. He would press for his answer then, and -she——Perhaps the salt breeze would shred these mists.</p> - -<p>But neither the breeze, full of the odor of sanctity, which cooled -encamped Methodism, nor the secular, yet not flagrantly sinful, -atmosphere of the twin watering-place, had aided much when the week-end -brought Paul to solve the riddle for himself.</p> - -<p>Many things allied in his favor. In the first place, Jean was -unfeignedly glad to see him, as the agitated veranda rockers of -Marlborough Villa bore witness. In a world which she had too often -found callous, Paul Bartlett, for one, had proved himself a practical -friend. She felt a distinct pride in him, too, as he withstood the -brunt of the veranda fire; a pardonable elation that, in a social -scheme overwhelmingly feminine, she led captive so presentable a male.</p> - -<p>Again, Paul was tactful in following up his welcome. His only concern -Saturday evening, and throughout Sunday till almost the end, was -seemingly to give her pleasure. Sometimes she played the cicerone to -her own discoveries: now a model of Jerusalem, its Lilliputian streets -littered with the peanut shucks of appreciative childhood; the pavilion -where free concerts were best; the bathing-beach where the discreetly -clothed crowd was most diverting; or a little lake, remote from the -merry-go-rounds and catch-penny shows, which she secretly preferred -to all. Or Paul would display the results of his past researches. He -knew an alley in one of the great hotels, where she had from him her -first lesson in the ancient game of bowls; a catering establishment -whose list of creams and ices exceeded imagination; and a drive—Sunday -morning this—past opulent dwellings, whose tenants they commiserated, -to an old riverside tavern overhung by noble trees.</p> - -<p>Sundown found them watching the trampling surf from the ramparts of -their own sand-castle, which Paul, guided by her superior knowledge -of things mediæval, had reared. The transition from sandcastles to -air-castles was easy, and presently the man was mapping his future.</p> - -<p>"Grimes wants me to renew our contract," he said. "It runs out October -first, you know. But I think it's up to me to be my own boss. I've got -what I needed from the dental company—practical experience. If I stay -on, I may pick up some things I don't need, just as the other fellows -finally drop into old Grimey's shiftless ways. I don't want to take -any of his smudge into <i>my</i> office. He can keep his gilt gimcracks -and his slave girl and his bogus armor. A plain reception-room, but -cheerful, I say; and an operating-room that's brighter still. Canary -or two, maybe; plants—real plants—and fittings strictly up to date. -Electricity everywhere, chair best in the market, instruments the -finest money will buy, but <i>out of sight</i>. No chamber of horrors for -me! As for location, give me Harlem. I know a stack of folks there, and -I like Harlem ways. I've even looked up offices, and I know one on a -'Hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street that just fills the bill. Well, that's -part of the programme."</p> - -<p>Jean was roused from visions of her own.</p> - -<p>"I know you'll succeed," she said.</p> - -<p>"That's part of the programme," he repeated; then, less confidently: -"The other part includes a snug little flat just round the corner, -where a fellow can easily run in for lunch. I don't mean a bachelor's -hall. I mean a <i>bona-fide</i> home, with a wife in it—a wife named Jean!"</p> - -<p>He was a likable figure—clean-cut, earnest, manly—as he waited in -the dusk, and the home he offered had its appeal. Marriage would -solve many problems. She would be free of the grinding struggle for a -livelihood, which the stigma of the refuge made dangerous. She would be -free of the fear of such vengeance as Stella could wreak. If the need -arose, it would be a simple matter, once they were married, to tell -Paul the truth of things. His love would make light of it. As for her -love——But what was love? Where in life did one meet the rose-colored -dream of fiction? Love was intensified liking, and Paul, as has been -recorded, was a likable figure—clean-cut, earnest, manly—as he waited -in the dusk.</p> - -<p>Yet, even then, recurred a still undimmed picture wherein, against -a background of forest birches, there shone an indubitable hero of -romance.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XVI</p> - - -<p>Jean shrank from the congratulations of the boarding-house and the -office, and they decided at the outset to keep their engagement to -themselves.</p> - -<p>"Not barring your mother, of course," Paul amended. "To play strictly -according to Hoyle, I expect I ought to drop her a line. What do you -think?"</p> - -<p>"It won't be necessary," Jean said.</p> - -<p>The dentist sighed thankfully.</p> - -<p>"Glad to hear it. The chances are she'd say no, straight off the bat, -if I did. Letter-writing isn't my long suit. What will you say about a -proposition like me, anyhow?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing."</p> - -<p>"Nothing? Least said the better, eh?"</p> - -<p>"I mean I'm not going to write."</p> - -<p>"Not at all?"</p> - -<p>"Not till we are married. I will write home then."</p> - -<p>Paul whistled meditatively.</p> - -<p>"Mind telling why?" he queried. "Can't say that this play seems -according to Hoyle, either."</p> - -<p>Jean's real reason was rooted in a fear that Mrs. Fanshaw's erratic -conscience might be capable of a motherly epistle to Paul, setting -forth the refuge history. So she answered that she and her family were -not in sympathy, and was overjoyed to find that Paul thought her excuse -valid.</p> - -<p>"I know just how you feel," he said. "My governor and I could never -hit it off. But about writing your mother: we'll need her consent, you -know. You're still under twenty-one."</p> - -<p>"I come of age September tenth."</p> - -<p>"But we want to be married the third week in August."</p> - -<p>"We can't," said Jean; and that was the end of it.</p> - -<p>This postponement notwithstanding, it seemed to her that she fairly -tobogganed toward her marriage. Even before her return to work, Paul -notified Grimes of his intention to shift for himself after October -and leased the office of which he had told her. With the same energy, -of which he gratefully assured her she was the dynamo, he promptly had -her hunting Harlem for the little flat, just around the corner, of his -imaginings. For so modest a thing, this proved singularly elusive, and -it took a month of Sundays, besides unreckoned week-day explorations, -before they lit finally upon what they wanted, in a building so new -that the plumbers and paper-hangers still overran its upper floors.</p> - -<p>The "Lorna Doone" was an apartment house. The prospectus said so; the -elevator and the hall service proved it. Mere flats have stairs and -ghostly front doors which unseen hands unlock. Mere flats have also at -times an old-fashioned roominess which apartments usually lack; but -as Paul, out of a now ripe experience with agents and janitors, justly -remarked, they have no tone. This essential attribute—the agents and -janitors agreed that it was essential—seemed to him to exhale from -the Lorna Doone with a certainty not evident in many higher-priced -buildings whose entrances boasted far less onyx paneling and mosaic. -Besides tone or, more correctly perhaps, as a constituent of tone, this -edifice had location, which Jean was surprised to learn was a thing to -be considered even in this happily unfashionable section.</p> - -<p>There was Harlem and Harlem, it appeared; and taught partly by Paul, -partly by the real-estate brokers, she became adept in the subtle -distinctions between streets which seemingly differed only in their -numerals. For example, there was a quarter, <i>the</i> quarter to be -accurate, once called Harlem Heights, which now in the full-blown pride -of its cathedral, its university, and its hero's mausoleum, haughtily -declared itself not Harlem at all. They had scaled this favored region -in their quest, admired its parks, watched the Hudson from its airy -windows, and hoped vainly to find some nook their purse might command; -but they had to turn their steps from it at last. This glimpse of the -unattainable was a strong, if not controlling, factor in their final -choice.</p> - -<p>"We can't be hermits and live in a hole," Paul argued. "I know a big -bunch of people here already, and we'll soon know more. We've got to -hold up our end. Nice name we'd get in our club if we didn't entertain -once in a while like the rest."</p> - -<p>"Our club!" she echoed. "We're to join a club?"</p> - -<p>"Sure. Bowling club, I mean. Everybody bowls in Harlem. We must think -about the office, too. It's the women who make or break a dentist's -practice, and sooner or later they find out how he lives and the kind -of company he keeps."</p> - -<p>After a reflective silence he frightened her by asking abruptly whether -she remembered a loud girl who had come to the dental parlors for an -appointment the day of her first illness.</p> - -<p>"The chatty party who thought I wasn't sociable," he particularized. -"Her name's Wilkes."</p> - -<p>Jean remembered.</p> - -<p>"Well, she came back," pursued the dentist, slowly. "I filled a tooth -for her the next morning. She had a good deal to say."</p> - -<p>She brought herself to look at him. If the past must be faced now, she -would meet it like the honest girl she was. But Paul's manner was not -accusing, and when he spoke again, it was of neither Stella nor herself.</p> - -<p>"How much does Amy get a week?" he asked.</p> - -<p>She told him, and he nodded as over a point proved.</p> - -<p>"Would it surprise you to hear that she draws five dollars less? That -does surprise you, doesn't it?"</p> - -<p>"How do you know?"</p> - -<p>"My drug-department patient told me long ago. I didn't think much -about it at the time, for some girls dress well on mighty little; but -when—well, the long and short of it is, that Wilkes woman knows Amy!"</p> - -<p>Jean pulled herself together somehow. Amy's defense was for the moment -her own.</p> - -<p>"Need that condemn Amy?" she said.</p> - -<p>"Of course not," returned Paul judiciously. "It might happen to you, or -anybody. Perhaps she says she knows me. It's the way she came to know -her that counts. The Wilkes girl got very confidential when I left her -mouth free. She had tanked up with firewater for the occasion, and it -oiled her tongue. I didn't pay much attention until Amy Jeffries's name -slipped out, but I listened after that. I thought it was due you."</p> - -<p>"And she said—?"</p> - -<p>"She said a lot I won't rehash, but it all boils down to the fact that -they both graduated from the same reformatory."</p> - -<p>She must tell him now! White-faced, miserable, she nerved herself to -speak.</p> - -<p>"Paul!" she appealed.</p> - -<p>He was instantly all concern for her distress.</p> - -<p>"Don't take it so hard," he begged. "She isn't worth it."</p> - -<p>"You don't understand. I—I knew."</p> - -<p>"You knew what?"</p> - -<p>"About the—reformatory. I once told you I met Amy in the country."</p> - -<p>"I remember."</p> - -<p>"Well," the confession came haltingly, "it was the refuge I meant. I -met her at the refuge."</p> - -<p>She waited with eyes averted for the question which should bare all. -Instead, she suddenly felt Paul's caress and faced him to meet a smile.</p> - -<p>"You <i>are</i> a trump!" he ejaculated. "To know all the while and never -give her away!"</p> - -<p>He had not understood! Trembling like a reprieved criminal, she heard -him go on to complete his self-deception.</p> - -<p>"I was going to ask you to let Amy slide after we were married," he -said, "but if you believe in her this much, I reckon she's worth -helping. I don't suppose all refuge girls are of the Wilkes stripe."</p> - -<p>The crisis past, she half regretted that she could not have screwed -her courage to the point of a full confession, but this feeling was -transitory. Paul rested content with his own explanations and talked -of little else than their flat, and she, too, presently found their -home-building absorbing.</p> - -<p>A more minute inspection of the Lorna Doone, after the signing of the -lease, revealed that the outer splendor had its inner penalties.</p> - -<p>"Looks like a case of rob Paul to pay Peter, this trip," said the -dentist. "Peter is the owner's first name, you know. The woodwork is -cheap, the bathtubs are seconds, and the closets, as you say, aren't -worth mentioning. I'll gamble the building laws have been dodged from -subcellar to cornice. I hear he has run up a dozen like it, and every -blessed one on spec. That's why we're getting six weeks' rent free. -It's anything to fill the house and hook some sucker who hankers for an -investment and never suspects the leases don't amount to shucks."</p> - -<p>"Don't they?"</p> - -<p>"Ours doesn't. Why, the man as much as told me to clear out when the -building changes hands, if I like."</p> - -<p>Jean looked round the bright little toy of a kitchen where they stood.</p> - -<p>"I shan't want to leave," she said. "It already seems like home."</p> - -<p>It seemed more and more a home as their preparations went forward. They -were not supposed to enter into formal possession till late in August, -but the complaisant owner gave Paul a key some weeks before and made -no objection to their moving in anything they pleased. So it fell out -that their modest six-rooms-and-bath in the Lorna Doone became in a -way a sanctuary to which they went evenings when they could, and made -beautiful according to their light.</p> - -<p>It was a precious experience. Such wise planning it involved! Such -ardent scanning of advertisements, such sweet toil of shopping, such -rich rewards in midsummer bargains! They did not appreciate the -magnitude of their needs till an out-of-the-way store, which fashion -never patronized, put them concretely before their eyes in a window -display. In successive show-windows, each as large as any of their -rooms at the Lorna Doone, this enterprising firm had deployed a whole -furnished flat. Furthermore, they had peopled it. In the parlor, which -one saw first, a waxen lady in a yellow tea-gown sat embroidering by -the gas-log, while over against her lounged a waxen gentleman in velvet -smoking-jacket and slippers—a most inviting domestic picture, even -though its atmosphere was somewhat cluttered with price-marks.</p> - -<p>"That's you and me," said Paul, tenderly ungrammatical.</p> - -<p>Jean was less romantically preoccupied.</p> - -<p>"I'd quite forgotten curtains," she mused. "They'll take a pretty -penny."</p> - -<p>Thereupon the dentist discovered things which he had overlooked.</p> - -<p>"We must have a bookcase," he said. "That combination case and desk -certainly looks swell. What say to one like it?"</p> - -<p>"Have you any books?"</p> - -<p>"I should smile. I've got together the best little dental library you -can buy."</p> - -<p>"Then you'll keep it at your office," decided Jean, promptly. "When we -have a library about something besides teeth, we'll think about a case."</p> - -<p>The shopkeeper's imaginative realism extended also to the other rooms. -Real fruit adorned the dining-room buffet; the neat kitchen was -tenanted by a maid in uniform, whom they dubbed "Marie" and agreed -that they could do without; while in one of the bedrooms they came upon -a crib whose occupant they studiously refrained to classify.</p> - -<p>"But for kitchenware," said Paul, abruptly, "the five-and-ten-cent -stores have this place beaten to a pulp."</p> - -<p>With this, then, as a working model, to which Paul was ever returning -for inspiration, they made their purchases. It was, of course, his -money in the main which they expended, but Jean also drew generously -on her small hoard. They vied with each other in planning little -surprises. Now the dentist would open some drawer and chance upon a kit -of tools for the household carpentering, in which his mechanical genius -reveled; or Jean would find her kitchen the richer for some new-fangled -ice-cream freezer, coffee-machine, or dish-washer which, in Paul's -unvarying phrase, "practically ran itself." They derived infinite -amusement also from the placing and replacing of their belongings—a -far knottier problem than any one save the initiate may conceive, since -the wall spaces of flats, as all flat-dwellers know, are ingeniously -designed to fit nothing which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker -produce. Luckily they discovered this profound law early in their -buying, though not before Paul, adventuring alone among the "antique" -shops of Fourth Avenue, fell victim to an irresistible bargain in the -shape of a colonial sideboard which, joining forces with an equally -ponderous bargain of a table, blockaded their little dining room -almost to the exclusion of chairs.</p> - -<p>Half the zest of all this lay in its secrecy; for although the -boarding-house suspected a love affair,—and broadly hinted its -suspicions,—it innocently supposed their frequent evenings out were -spent at the theaters. Quite another theory prevailed at the Lorna -Doone, however, as Jean learned to her dismay one Sunday when she was -addressed as "Mrs. Bartlett" by the portly owner, whom they passed in -the entrance hall.</p> - -<p>"Oh, they've all along taken it for granted we're married," said Paul, -carelessly. "I thought it was too good a joke to spoil."</p> - -<p>Jean did not see its humor.</p> - -<p>"We must explain," she said.</p> - -<p>"And be grinned at for a bride and groom! What's the use? It will be -true enough two weeks from now."</p> - -<p>She privily decided that she would undeceive the owner at the first -opportunity, but the chance to speak had not presented itself when far -graver happenings brushed it from her thoughts as utterly as if it had -never been.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XVII</p> - - -<p>Amy had, in fairness, to be told as August waned. To Jean's suggestion -that very likely either the stenographer or the manicure would be glad -to share the room of the three dormers, she replied that she could -easily afford to keep it on by herself while she remained.</p> - -<p>"It won't be for long," she vouchsafed airily. "In fact, I'm going to -be married myself."</p> - -<p>Jean's arms went round her instantly, the restraint of months forgotten.</p> - -<p>"And you've never breathed a word!" she reproached.</p> - -<p>"No more have you," retorted Amy, glacial under endearments.</p> - -<p>"I know, I know. But you have seemed so different. You have kept to -yourself, and I thought—"</p> - -<p>"You thought I wasn't straight," Amy took her up bitterly as Jean -hesitated. "I knew mighty well what was in your mind every time I got a -new shirt-waist or a hat."</p> - -<p>"You weren't frank with me."</p> - -<p>"I couldn't be."</p> - -<p>"I don't see why."</p> - -<p>"Because," she wavered, melted now, "because you are you, so -strait-laced and—and strong. I've always been afraid to tell you just -how things stood."</p> - -<p>"Afraid, Amy? Afraid of me!" Jean felt keenly self-reproachful. "I am -horribly sorry. Heaven knows I haven't meant to be unkind. I've found -my own way too hard to want to make things worse for anybody else, you -above all. You believe me, don't you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Then be your old self, the Amy who made friends with me in Cottage No. -6. Who is he? Any one I know?"</p> - -<p>"You've met him."</p> - -<p>"I have! Where?"</p> - -<p>Amy's color rose.</p> - -<p>"Remember the night you struck New York?"</p> - -<p>"Perfectly."</p> - -<p>"And the traveling man who jollied you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Well," she faltered, "he's the one. His name is Chapman."</p> - -<p>Jean was too staggered for a prompt response, but Amy was still toiling -among her explanations.</p> - -<p>"You mustn't think anything of his nonsense that night," she went on. -"It was only Fred's way. He's a born flirt. You couldn't help liking -him, Jean, if you knew him."</p> - -<p>Jean met her wistful appeal for sympathy, woman-wise. Words were -impossible at first. By and by, when she could trust herself to speak, -she wished her happiness.</p> - -<p>"Does he—know?" she added.</p> - -<p>Amy's fair skin went a shade rosier.</p> - -<p>"My record, you mean? Nobody knows it better. Don't you—don't you -catch on, Jean? He was the—the man!"</p> - -<p>"He! You've taken up with him again! The man who saw your stepfather -send you to the refuge and never lifted a finger—"</p> - -<p>"Don't!"</p> - -<p>"Who let his child—"</p> - -<p>"Stop, I tell you!" She barred Jean's lips passionately. "You see! Is -it any wonder I couldn't bear to tell you? I wish to God I'd never said -a word."</p> - -<p>Jean stared blankly at this lamb turned lioness.</p> - -<p>"Forgive me," she begged. "Perhaps I don't understand."</p> - -<p>"Understand! You!" She laughed hysterically, "Yet you're going to be -married! If you loved Paul Bartlett, you'd understand."</p> - -<p>"You must not say that."</p> - -<p>"Then don't say things that hurt me. Understand! If you did, you -would know that it would make no difference if he was rotten clear -through. But he's not. Fred never knew about the baby. He cried when -he heard—cross my heart, he did. He said if he'd known—but what's -the use of digging up the past! He is trying to make up for it now. -He's been trying ever since we ran across each other again. It was in -the cloak department he caught sight of me," she digressed with a -pale smile. "I was wearing a white broadcloth, sable-trimmed evening -wrap, and maybe he didn't stare! He couldn't do enough for me. That's -where the new clothes came from. I could have had money if I'd wanted -it—money to burn, for he makes a lot; but I wouldn't touch it. It -would have looked—oh, you see for yourself I could not take money. -You don't sell love, real love, and God knows mine is real! I've never -stopped loving him. I never can."</p> - -<p>She, too, it appeared when she grew more calm, aspired to be mistress -of a flat.</p> - -<p>"Though not at the start," she continued. "Fred wants to board at -first. He says I've had work enough for one while. I said I shouldn't -mind that kind of work, but he is dead set on boarding, till I've had a -good long rest. Fred can be terrible firm. But by and by we're to keep -house, and you'll be able to tell me just what to do and buy. You will, -won't you, Jean?" she ended anxiously. "You'll stick by me?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," Jean promised.</p> - -<p>"And you'll come to see me—afterward? Say you'll come."</p> - -<p>"Yes, I'll come."</p> - -<p>"And you won't let Fred suspect that you've heard about—about -everything? I want him to see that I know a girl like you. I've talked -to him about you, but I've never let on that you're a refuge girl -yourself. Promise me you will be nice to him!"</p> - -<p>"I'll try."</p> - -<p>Amy kissed her fervently.</p> - -<p>"This makes me awful happy," she sighed. "I think a heap of you, Jean. -Honest, I do. You come next to Fred."</p> - -<p>As a proof of her affection she presently bought a wedding gift of a -pair of silver candelabra which she could ill afford, and which Jean -accepted only because she must. These went to flank Grimes's gift—for -he was party to the secret now—a glittering timepiece for their -mantel, densely infested with writhing yet cheerful Cupids, after -the reputed manner of his admired "Lewis Quince." Mrs. St. Aubyn's -contribution was a framed galaxy of American poets: Bryant, Emerson, -Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Walt Whitman, the last -looking rakishly jocular at the Brahminical company in which he found -himself thus canonized.</p> - -<p>Everything was finally in place at the Lorna Doone, and with the actual -beginning of their lease-hold Paul moved his personal chattels from -Mrs. St. Aubyn's to the flat, and slept there nights. This was the -twenty-fifth of August. A week later Jean climbed the Acme Painless -Dental Company's sign-littered stairway for her last day's service. -She was a little late, owing to a fire which had impeded traffic in a -near-by block, and the morning's activity at the parlors was already -under way. She busied herself first, as usual, at her desk, sorting -the mail which the postman had just left. In addition to the office -mail there were personal letters for Grimes and the various members of -the staff, which she presently began to distribute, reaching Paul's -operating-room last of all.</p> - -<p>The dentist was at work, but he glanced up when she entered and sent -her a loverlike look over his patient's head. No creature with eyes -and a reasoning brain could have misread it, and the occupant of the -chair, who had both, squirmed to view its object; but Paul threw in a -strategic "Wider, please," and held the unwilling head firmly to the -front.</p> - -<p>"Chuck them anywhere, Jean," he directed, his glance dropping to her -hand.</p> - -<p>Her obedience was literal; the next instant the letters strewed the -rug at his feet. With the enunciation of the name, the patient twisted -suddenly from Paul's grasp, and Jean found herself staring full into -the malignant eyes of Stella Wilkes.</p> - -<p>Paul first found voice.</p> - -<p>"We'll go on, Miss Wilkes," he said, his gaze still intent upon the -tragic mask, which was Jean.</p> - -<p>Stella waved him aside.</p> - -<p>"Hold your horses, Doc," she rejoined coolly. "I've met an old friend."</p> - -<p>"Do you know each other?" It was to Jean he put the question.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a> - <br /> - <img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>"Do you know each other?"</p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Stella answered for her.</p> - -<p>"Do I know Jean Fanshaw!" Sure of how matters stood between these two, -sure also of her own rôle in the drama, she sprang from the chair -and bestowed a Judas kiss upon Jean's frozen cheek. "Do I know her! Why -we're regular old pals!"</p> - -<p>Freed somehow from that loathsome touch, Jean stumbled to her desk. -Patients came and went, the routine of the office ran its course; her -share in the mechanism got itself mechanically performed; yet, whether -she sped or welcomed, plied the cash-register, receipted bills, or -soothed a nervous child, some spiteful goblin at the back of her brain -was ever whispering the shameful tale which Stella was pouring out in -that inner room. Those lies would be past Paul's forgetting, perhaps -even past his forgiving, say what she might in defense. His look at -Stella's kiss had been ghastly. What was he thinking now!</p> - -<p>Then, when her agony of suspense seemed bearable no longer, came -Stella, her pretense of friendship abandoned, her real vengeful self to -the fore.</p> - -<p>"I guess we're square," she bent to whisper, her face almost touching -Jean's. "I guess we're square."</p> - -<p>She vanished like the creature of nightmare she was, but the nightmare -remained. Paul would demand his reckoning now. He would come and stand -over her with his accusing face and ask her what this horror meant. -She could not go to him, she felt, or at least unless he sent. But -throughout that endless forenoon the dentist kept to his office, though -twice there were intervals when she knew him to be alone. Her lunch -hour—and his—came at last. She lingered, but still Paul delayed. At -last, driven by an imperative craving to be done with it, she hurried -to his room and found it empty. Grimes told her that he had seen Paul -leave the place by a side door. The news was a dagger-thrust in her -pride. Of a surety, now, he must seek her.</p> - -<p>Between five o'clock and six, a dull hour, he came, woebegone and -conciliatory.</p> - -<p>"For God's sake, clear this up," he begged. "Haven't you anything to -say?"</p> - -<p>"A great deal, Paul. But first tell me what that woman said about me."</p> - -<p>"You heard."</p> - -<p>"But what else?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing."</p> - -<p>"Nothing!" The thing was incredible.</p> - -<p>"Only that you'd probably be glad to explain things yourself."</p> - -<p>At that half her burden fell. Stella's cunning had overreached itself. -She had thought to rack her victim most by forcing her to betray -herself, but she had reasoned from the false premise that Jean had a -truly shameful past to conceal.</p> - -<p>"Glad," she repeated. "Yes, I am glad. I should have told you some day, -Paul. It's a long story."</p> - -<p>The door opened to admit a caller with a swollen jowl.</p> - -<p>"To-night, then?" said the dentist, hurriedly.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she assented. "I will tell you to-night."</p> - -<p>"At the flat?"</p> - -<p>"Yes; at the flat."</p> - -<p>Spurred on by her unrest, she reached the Lorna Doone before Paul had -returned from his evening meal, and found the flat in darkness. She was -relieved that this was so. It would give her a quiet interval in which -to turn over what she meant to say. She entered the little parlor and -seated herself in an open window where a shy midsummer-night's breeze, -astray from river or sound, stole gently in and out and fingered -her hair. It was wonderfully peaceful for a city. The sounds from -below—the footsteps on the pavement, the cries of children at play -under the young elms lining the avenue, the jests of the cigar-store -loungers, the chatter of the girls thronging the soda-fountain at the -corner druggist's, the jingle of bicycle bells, the beat of hoofs, -the honk of occasional automobiles, even the strains of a hurdy-gurdy -out-Heroding Sousa—one and all ascended, mellowed by distance to -something not unmusical and cheerily human. She realized, as she -listened, that the city, not the country, this city, this very corner, -this hearth which she and Paul had prepared, was at last and truly home.</p> - -<p>Presently she heard Paul's latch-key in the lock and his step in the -dark corridor.</p> - -<p>"You here?" he called tonelessly. "Better have a light, hadn't we?"</p> - -<p>"It is cooler without," she answered. Even though her explanations need -not fear the light, she thought obscurity might ease their telling.</p> - -<p>With no other greeting, the dentist passed to the window opposite -hers, slouched wearily into a chair, and waited in silence for her to -begin.</p> - -<p>Jean told her story in its fullness: her tomboy girlhood, the hateful -family jars, the last quarrel with Amelia, her sentence to the -refuge, her escape, return, riot-madness, and release, and the inner -significance of her late struggle for a living against too heavy odds. -She told it so honestly, so plainly, that she thought no sane being -could misunderstand; yet, vaguely at first, with fatal clearness as, -ending, she strained her eyes toward the dour shadowy figure opposite, -she perceived that she had to deal with doubt.</p> - -<p>"Do you think I am holding something back?" she faltered, after a long -silence. "Must I swear that I've told you the whole truth?"</p> - -<p>The man stirred in his place at last.</p> - -<p>"I guess an affidavit won't be necessary," he returned grimly.</p> - -<p>She endured another silence impatiently, then rose proudly to her feet.</p> - -<p>"I'll say it for you," she flashed. "This frees you of any promises -to me, Paul. You are as free as if you had never made them. Go your -own way: I'll go mine. It—it can't be harder than the one I've come. -Good-by."</p> - -<p>He roused himself as she made to leave.</p> - -<p>"Hold on, Jean," he said, coming closer. "I guess we can compromise -this thing somehow."</p> - -<p>"Compromise! I have nothing to compromise."</p> - -<p>"Haven't you?" He laughed harshly. "I should say—but let that pass. -Of course, after what's turned up, you can't expect a fellow to be so -keen to marry—"</p> - -<p>"I've told you that you are free," she interrupted.</p> - -<p>"But I don't want to be free—altogether. We could be pretty snug here, -Jean. The parson's rigmarole doesn't cut much ice with me, and I don't -see that it need with you. They think downstairs we're married. That -part's dead easy. As for Grimes and the rest—"</p> - -<p>She had no impulse to strike him as she had the floor-walker. Waiting -in his folly for an answer, the man heard only her stumbling flight -along the corridor and the jar of a closing door.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XVIII</p> - - -<p>Yet, an hour later, Paul came seeking her at Mrs. St. Aubyn's, and, -failing, returned in the morning before she breakfasted. Unsuccessful -a second time, and then a third, he wrote twice, imploring her not to -judge him by a moment's madness.</p> - -<p>Jean made no reply. Moved by the eloquent memory of Paul's many -kindnesses and with the charity she hoped of others for herself, she -did him the justice to believe him better than his lowest impulse. But -while she was willing to grant that the Paul who, in the first shock of -her revelation, thought all the world rotten, was not the real Paul, -she would not have been the woman she was, had his offense failed -to bar him from her life. Her decision was instinctive and instant, -requiring no travail of spirit, though she could not escape subsequent -heart-searchings whether she had unwittingly laid herself open to -humiliation and a scorching shame that the dentist, or any man, could -even for a moment have held her so cheap.</p> - -<p>Necessity turned her thoughts outward. The marriage plans had all -but devoured her savings, and while she was clothed better than ever -before, she lacked ready money for even a fortnight's board. Immediate -employment was essential, yet, when canvassed, the things to which she -might turn her hand were alarmingly few. After her experience with -Meyer & Schwarzschild, she was loath to go back to her refuge-taught -trade except as a last resort, while department-store life, as she had -found it, seemed scarcely less repellent. At the outset it was her hope -to secure somewhere a position like her last, but the advertisements -yielded the name of only one dentist in need of an assistant, and this -man had filled his vacancy before she applied. Thereafter she roamed -the high seas of "Help Wanted: Female" without chart or compass.</p> - -<p>The newspapers teemed with offers of work for women's hands. The -caption "Domestic Service" of course removed a host of them from -consideration, and the demand for stenographers, manicures, and like -specialized wage-earners disposed of many others; but, these aside, -opportunity still seemed to beckon from infinite directions. Thus, the -paper-box industry clamored for girls to seam, strip, glue, turn in, -top-label, close, and tie; the milliners wanted trimmers, improvers, -frame-makers, and workers in plumage and artificial flowers; the -manufacturers of shirt-waists and infants' wear called for feminine -fingers to hemstitch, shirr, tuck, and press; deft needles might turn -their skill toward every conceivable object from theatrical spangles to -gas-mantles; nimble hands might dip chocolates, stamp decorated tin, -gold-lay books, sort corks, tip silk umbrellas, curl ostrich feathers, -fold circulars, and pack everything from Bibles to Turkish cigarettes.</p> - -<p>But this prodigious demand, at first sight so promising, proved on -close inspection to be limited. Beginners were either not wanted at -all or, if taken on trial, were expected to subsist on charity or -air. Experience was the great requisite. Day after day Jean toiled up -murky staircases to confront this stumbling-block; day after day her -resources dwindled.</p> - -<p>Amy was keenly sympathetic and pored over the eye-straining -advertisement columns as persistently as Jean herself.</p> - -<p>"How's this?" she inquired, glancing up hopefully from one of these -quests. "'Wanted: Girl or woman to interest herself in caring for the -feeble-minded.'"</p> - -<p>"I tried that yesterday."</p> - -<p>"No good?"</p> - -<p>"They only offered a home."</p> - -<p>"And with idiots! They must be dotty themselves."</p> - -<p>Then Jean, ranging another column, thought that she detected a glimmer -of hope.</p> - -<p>"Listen," she said. "'Wanted: Girl to pose for society illustrations.' -Do you think there is anything in this?"</p> - -<p>"Too much," returned Amy, sententiously. "Don't answer model ads. It -isn't models those fellows want any more than they are artists. Real -artists don't need to advertise. They can get all the models they want -without it. I never thought to mention posing. Why don't you try it? -You have got the looks, and it's perfectly respectable."</p> - -<p>"Is it?" rejoined Jean, dubiously. "I thought this advertisement -sounded all right because it says 'society illustrations.'"</p> - -<p>"It's just as proper to pose nude, if that's what you're thinking -about. I know the nicest kind of a girl who does. Her mother is -paralyzed. But that's only one branch of the business, and it's all -respectable. Why, you'll find art students themselves doing it to help -along with their expenses. I know what I'm talking about, because I've -posed."</p> - -<p>"You!"</p> - -<p>"Just a little. It was for an artist who boarded here a while before -you came. He moved uptown when he began to get on, and now you see his -pictures in all the magazines. I was a senator's daughter in one set -of drawings and a golf-girl in a poster. It's easy work as soon as -your muscles get broken in, and it stands you in fifty cents an hour -at least. The girl I told you of sometimes makes twenty-five or thirty -dollars a week, but she poses for life classes; they're in the schools, -you know. I made up my mind to go into it once."</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you?"</p> - -<p>Amy laid a derisive finger on her tip-tilted nose.</p> - -<p>"Here's why," she laughed. "It was this way: The artist who used to -board here told me of another man who paid three or four models regular -salaries. He did pictures about Greeks and Romans, and all those -girls had to do, I heard, was to loaf round in pretty clothes, and -once in awhile be painted. I went up there one day and it certainly -was a lovely place, just like a house in a novel I'd read called 'The -Last Days of Pompey-eye.' A girl was posing when I came, and, if -you'll believe me, that man had rigged up a wind-machine that blew her -clothes about just as though she was running a race. Well, I didn't -stay long. The artist—he was seventy-five or eighty, I should say, -and grumpy—turned me sideways, took one look at my nose, and said I -was too old, nineteen hundred years too old! He thought he was funny. -Somebody told me afterward that he was a has-been and couldn't sell his -pictures any more."</p> - -<p>With the idea that posing might answer as a stop-gap until she found -some other means of support, Jean forthwith visited an agency whose -address Amy furnished. She found the proprietor of this enterprise a -jerky little man with a disquieting pair of black eyes which thoroughly -inventoried her every feature, movement, and detail of dress.</p> - -<p>"Chorus, front row, show-girl, or church choir?" he demanded briskly.</p> - -<p>"I thought this was a model agency," Jean said; "I wish to try posing -if—"</p> - -<p>"Right shop. What line, please?"</p> - -<p>"In costume."</p> - -<p>"You don't follow me. Fashion-plate, illustrating, lithography, or -commercial photography."</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure," she hesitated, bewildered by this unexpected broadening -of the field. "What can I earn?"</p> - -<p>The little man waved his arms spasmodically.</p> - -<p>"Might as well ask me what the weather'll be next Fourth of July," he -sputtered. "See that horse there?" pointing out of his window at a -much-blanketed thoroughbred on its way to the smith's. "How fast can -he trot? You don't know! Of course you don't. How much can you earn? -I don't know. Of course I don't. You see my point? Same case exactly. -Illustrators pay all the way from half a dollar to a dollar and a half -an hour. Camera-models make from one dollar to three. And there you -are."</p> - -<p>"I've had no experience."</p> - -<p>"That's plain enough. Sticks out like a sore thumb. But you don't need -any. Fact, you don't. That's the beauty of the business. Appearance and -gumption, they're the cards to hold. You've got appearance. A girl has -to have the looks, or I don't touch her fee. Fair all round, you see. -If a girl's face or get-up is against her, I've no business taking her -money. If an illustrator says, 'Send me up a model who looks so and -so,' that's just the article he gets. First-class models, first-class -illustrators, there's my system."</p> - -<p>"I need work at once," Jean stated. "What is my chance?"</p> - -<p>"Prime. You ought to fill the bill for a man who 'phoned not two -minutes before you walked through the door. High-class artist, known -everywhere, liberal pay. There needn't have been any delay whatever, if -you'd thought to bring your father or mother along."</p> - -<p>Jean's rising spirits dropped dismally at this remark.</p> - -<p>"My father is dead," she explained. "My mother lives in the country."</p> - -<p>"Then get her consent in writing. Means time, of course, and time's -money, but it can't be helped."</p> - -<p>"Is it absolutely necessary?"</p> - -<p>"You'll have to have it to do business with me," replied the agent, -beginning to shuffle among his papers.</p> - -<p>"But my mother knows I am trying to earn a living," she argued. -"Besides, I'm nearly of age. I shall be twenty-one next week."</p> - -<p>"Drop in when you get your letter," directed the little man, -inflexibly. "Minor or not, I make it a rule to have parents' consent. -Troubles enough in my line without papa and mamma. Good day."</p> - -<p>Outside the door Jean decided upon independent action. This last -resource was at once too attractive and too near to be relinquished -lightly. The idea of obtaining Mrs. Fanshaw's consent was preposterous, -even if she could bring herself to ask it—the term "artist's model" -conveyed only scandalous suggestions to Shawnee Springs; but there -was nothing to prevent her hunting employment from studio to studio. -Amy had mentioned the address of the illustrator whom success had -translated from Mrs. St. Aubyn's world, and to him Jean determined to -apply first.</p> - -<p>Her errand brought her to one of the innumerable streets from which -wealth and fashion are ever in retreat before a vanguard of the -crafts of which wealth and fashion are the legitimate quarry, and -to a commercialized brownstone dwelling with a modiste established -in its basement, a picture-dealer tenanting its drawing-room, and a -mixed population of artists, architects, and musicians tucked away -elsewhere between first story and roof. She found the studio of Amy's -acquaintance readily, and obeying a muffled call, which answered her -knock, pushed open the door of an antechamber that had obviously once -done service as a hall-bedroom. Here she hesitated. The one door other -than that by which she entered led apparently into the intimacies of -the artist's domestic life, for the counterpane of a white iron bed, -distinctly visible from her station, outlined a woman's recumbent form.</p> - -<p>"In here, please," called the voice. "I'm trying to finish while the -light holds."</p> - -<p>On the threshold Jean had to smile at her own unsophistication. The -supposed bedroom was a detail of the studio proper, the supposed wife a -model impersonating a hospital patient who held the centre of interest -in a gouache drawing, to which the illustrator was adding a few last -touches by way of accent.</p> - -<p>"I see you don't need a model," Jean said, with a smile inclusive of -the girl in the bed.</p> - -<p>He scrutinized her impersonally, transferred a brush from mouth to -hand, and caught up a bundle of galley-proofs.</p> - -<p>"No," he decided, more to himself than Jean. "It's another petite -heroine, drat her! But I'd be glad to have you leave your name and -address," he added, indicating a paint-smeared memorandum book which -lay amidst the brushes, ink-saucers, and color-tubes littering a small -table at elbow. "I may need your type any day."</p> - -<p>Jean complied, thanked him, and turned to go.</p> - -<p>"Try MacGregor, top floor—Malcolm MacGregor," he suggested. "Tell him -I said to have a look at your eyes."</p> - -<p>Much encouraged, she mounted two more flights, knocked, and, as before, -let herself in at an unceremonious hail. This time, however, she -passed directly from hall to studio, coming at once into an atmosphere -startling in its contrast to the life she left behind. MacGregor's -Oasis, one of the illustrator's friends called it, and the phrase -fitted happily. The rack of wonderfully chased small arms and long Arab -flintlocks; the bright spot of color made upon the neutral background -of the wall by some strange musical instrument or Tripolitan fan; the -curious jugs, gourds, and leathern buckets of caravan housekeeping; the -careless heaps of oriental stuffs and garments from which, among the -soberer folds of a barracan or camel's-hair jellaba, one caught the -red gleam of a fez or the yellow glow of a vest wrought with intricate -embroideries; the tropical sun-helmet,—MacGregor's own,—its green -lining bleached by the reflected light of Sahara sand; the antelope -antlers above the lintel; the Soudanese leopard skins under foot—these -and their like, in bewildering number and variety, recalled the charm -and mystery of the African desert which this man knew, loved, and -painted superlatively.</p> - -<p>MacGregor himself, whom she found at his easel, was, despite his -name, not Scotch, but American, with seven generations of New England -ancestors behind him. Tall, thin-featured, alert, and apparently in his -late thirties, he had the quizzical, shrewdly humorous eye which passes -for and possibly does express the Connecticut Yankee's outlook upon -life. In nothing did he suggest the artist.</p> - -<p>"I'll be through here in no time, if you'll take a chair," he said, -when Jean had repeated the other artist's message.</p> - -<p>Her wait was fruitful, for it emphasized most graphically the dictum -of the agent that gumption was fundamental in the successful model's -equipment. The man now posing for MacGregor in the character of an -aged Arab leading a caravan down a rocky defile, was mounted upon -nothing more spirited than an ingenious arrangement of packing-cases, -but he bestrode his saddle as if he rode in truth the barb which -the canvas depicted. He dismounted presently and disappeared in an -adjacent alcove from which he shortly issued a commonplace young man -in commonplace occidental garb, who pocketed his day's wage and went -whistling down the stairs.</p> - -<p>MacGregor turned to Jean.</p> - -<p>"I do want a model," he said. "I want one bad. By rights I should be -painting over yonder,"—his gesture broadly signified Africa,—"but -my market, the devil take it! is here. So I'm hunting a model. I have -had plenty come who look the part (which you don't) even Arabs from a -Wild West show; but I've yet to strike one who has any more imagination -than a rabbit. I tell you this frankly because it's easy to see you're -not the average model. That is why I asked you to wait. The model I'm -looking for must work under certain of the Arab woman's restrictions. -Out there"—his hand again swept the Dark Continent—"you never see -her face, as you probably know. You glimpse her eyes, if they're not -veiled; you try to read their story. If even the eyes are hidden, -you find yourself attempting to read the draperies. Do you grasp my -difficulty? I want some one who can express emotions not only with the -eyes, but without them. Now you," he ended, with a note of enthusiasm, -"you have the eyes. Don't tell me you haven't the rest."</p> - -<p>Jean laughed.</p> - -<p>"I won't if I can help it," she assured him.</p> - -<p>He caught up a costume which lay upon a low divan, and ransacked a -heap of unframed canvases that leaned backs outward against the wall.</p> - -<p>"This sketch will give you a notion how the dress goes," he said, and -carried his armful into the alcove.</p> - -<p>When she reëntered the studio, MacGregor was arranging a screen of a -pattern Jean had never seen.</p> - -<p>"It was made from an old lattice," he explained, placing a chair for -her behind it. "I picked it up in Kairwan. This little door swings in -its original position. You are looking now from a window—a little more -than ajar, so—from which generations of women, dressed as you are -dressed, have watched an Arab street."</p> - -<p>He passed round to the front of the screen and studied her intently.</p> - -<p>"Eyes about there," he said, indicating a rose-water jar upon a low -shelf. "Expression," he paused thoughtfully. "How shall I tell you what -I want you to suggest from the lattice? Don't think of those women of -the Orient. You can't truly conceive their life. Think of something -nearer home. Imagine yourself in a convent—no, that won't do at all. -Imagine yourself a prisoner, an innocent prisoner, peering through your -grating at the world, longing—"</p> - -<p>"Wait," said Jean.</p> - -<p>She threw herself into his conception, closed her mental vision -upon the studio and its trophies, erased the bustling city from her -thoughts. She was again a resentful inmate of Cottage No. 6, lying in -her cell-like room at twilight, while the woods called to her with a -hundred tongues. There were flowers in the sheltered places; arbutus, -violets—</p> - -<p>"You've got it!" MacGregor's exultant voice brought her back. "You've -got it! We'll go to work to-morrow at nine."</p> - -<p>"No admission, Mac?" asked a man's voice from the doorway. "I gave the -regulation knock, but you seemed—" He stopped and gazed hard into the -eyes which met his with answering wonder from the lattice.</p> - -<p>"I've found her, Atwood," MacGregor hailed him jubilantly. "I've found -her at last."</p> - -<p>The newcomer took an uncertain step forward, halted again, then strode -suddenly toward the screen.</p> - -<p>"I think I have, too," he said, at the little window now. "It's Jack, -isn't it?"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XIX</p> - - -<p>And Jean?</p> - -<p>It was as if she still dwelt in fancy in that unforgettable past. She -had burst her bars; she had come, a fugitive, to the birch-edged shore -of a lonely lake; her knight of the forest stood before her.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a> - <br /> - <img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>Her knight of the forest stood before her.</p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The astonished MacGregor, having waited a decent interval for some -rational clew to the situation, recalled his own existence by the -simple expedient of folding the screen.</p> - -<p>"Step inside, won't you?" he invited with a dry grin. "You may take -cold at the window."</p> - -<p>Atwood turned an illumined face.</p> - -<p>"It's been years since we met," he explained. "I was not sure at -first—the costume, the place."</p> - -<p>MacGregor's eye lingered upon him in humorous meditation.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps you'll see your way in time to introduce me," he suggested. -"This has been a business session, so far. We hadn't come to names."</p> - -<p>The younger man floundered, glowing healthily, but Jean retained her -wits.</p> - -<p>"Miss Fanshaw," she supplied promptly. "I should have mentioned it -before."</p> - -<p>She vanished into the alcove, questioned her unfamiliar image in the -little mirror, and began to resume her street-dress with fingers -not under perfect control. There came an indistinct murmur of talk -from the studio in which MacGregor's incisive tones predominated. His -companion's responses were few and low. When she reëntered, Atwood -stood waiting by the outer door.</p> - -<p>"At nine, then," reminded MacGregor. "So-long, Craig, if you must go."</p> - -<p>"So-long," answered the other, absently.</p> - -<p>On the stair they faced each other with the wonder of their meeting -still upon them.</p> - -<p>"You are not a professional model," he said; "I should have come across -you before, if you were."</p> - -<p>"You have seen me get my first engagement."</p> - -<p>"And with MacGregor! Was it chance?"</p> - -<p>"Just chance."</p> - -<p>"Jove!" he ejaculated. "It might have been myself. Yet it's strange -enough as it is. MacGregor in there was the chap I was to camp with, -you remember? The man whose grandmother—"</p> - -<p>"Great-grandmother, wasn't it?" she smiled.</p> - -<p>"You do remember!"</p> - -<p>A silence fell upon them for a little moment and they assayed each -other shyly, he keenly aware of the fuller curves which had made a -woman of her, she searching rather for reminders of the youth whose -image had gone back with her through the gatehouse into bondage. He was -more grave, as became a man now looking back upon his golden twenties, -with thoughtful lines about the eyes, and a clearer demarcation of -the jaw, which was, as of old, shaven, and pale with the pallor of a -dweller in cities. The mouth was the mouth of the youth, sensitive, -unspoiled; and the direct eyes had lost nothing of their friendliness, -though she divined that he weighed her, questioning what manner of -woman she had become.</p> - -<p>"You went back," he broke the pause, "you went back to that inferno -because of what I said. You saw it through. Plucky Jack!"</p> - -<p>"Jean," she corrected.</p> - -<p>"Why?"</p> - -<p>"Jack was another girl, a girl I hope I've outgrown."</p> - -<p>"Don't say that," he protested. "I knew her. But this Jean of the -staircase—"</p> - -<p>"Well?" she challenged, avid for his mature opinion.</p> - -<p>"Makes me wonder," he completed, "whether I've not been outgrown, too."</p> - -<p>It was not a satisfying answer. She remembered that growth may be other -than benign.</p> - -<p>"You!" she said.</p> - -<p>"Why not? I was young, preposterously young. Had I been older, I should -never have dared meddle with your life."</p> - -<p>"Meddle!" she repeated, his self-reproach rang so true; "you gave -me the wisest advice such a girl could receive. That girl could not -appreciate how wise it was, but this one does and thanks you from the -bottom of her heart."</p> - -<p>Atwood drew a long breath.</p> - -<p>"You can say that!" he exclaimed. "You knew what it meant to return; -I did not. Since I have realized the truth, the thought of my folly -has given me no peace. I imagined—God knows what I haven't imagined! -To see you here, as you are; to have you thank me, when I thought I -deserved your undying hate, is like a reprieve."</p> - -<p>Jean's face went radiant. "Yet you say you knew her!"</p> - -<p>Their eyes met an instant; then they laughed together happily.</p> - -<p>"You're right," he acknowledged. "It seems I don't know either of you. -But we can't talk here, can we? We need—" He paused, then, "Give me -this day," he entreated. "We're not strangers. Say you will!"</p> - -<p>As they issued upon the pavement, the driver of a passing cab raised -an interrogative whip. Atwood nodded, and a moment afterward they -had edged into the traffic of one of the avenues and were rolling -northward. To Jean, reveling silently in her first hansom, it seemed -that they had scarcely started before they turned in at one of the -entrances of Central Park, and for a time followed perforce the -flashing afternoon parade before striking into a less frequented -roadway, where they dismounted. Atwood, too, had said nothing amidst -the jingling ostentation of the avenue and main-traveled drives, and -he was silent now as they forsook the asphalt walks for quiet paths, -where their feet trod the good earth, and the odor of leaf mold rose -pungently.</p> - -<p>Presently he halted.</p> - -<p>"Will you shut your eyes for a little way?" he asked. "It's my whim."</p> - -<p>She assented, and they went forward slowly, her hand upon his sleeve. -She felt the path drop, by gentle slopes at first, then with sharp -turns past jutting rocks, where there seemed no path at all. Her sense -of direction failed her, and with it went her recollection of the -city's nearness. The immediate sounds were all sylvan. She heard the -call of a cat-bird, the bark of a squirrel, the laughing whimper of -a brook among stones, which she guessed, if her ear had not lost its -woodcraft, merged its peevish identity in some neighboring lake or pool.</p> - -<p>"Now," said her guide, pausing.</p> - -<p>She looked, started, and rounded swiftly upon Atwood to find him -beaming at her instant comprehension.</p> - -<p>"It might be the very same!" she exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Mightn't it? The birches, the shore-line—"</p> - -<p>"And the stream, even the little stream! Could I find watercress -<i>there</i>, I wonder?"</p> - -<p>The man laughed.</p> - -<p>"Ah, it is real to you! I, too, forgot New York when I first stumbled -on it. I even <i>looked</i> for watercress. But it knows no such purity, -poor little brook! I've had to pretend with it, as I've pretended with -the lake. The landscape-gardener was a clever fellow. He makes you -believe there are distances out there—winding channels, unplumbed -depths; he cheats you into thinking you have a forest at your back. -Sometimes he has almost persuaded me to cast a clumsy line into that -thicket yonder."</p> - -<p>Jean's look returned to him quickly. He was smiling, but with an -undercurrent of gravity.</p> - -<p>"You know it well," she said.</p> - -<p>"I ought. It was here, the summer after we met, that I came to realize -something of what I had asked you to do. I began to study refuges. I -went to such as I could, boys' places, mainly; I even tried to get -sight or word of you. Somehow, though, I never came at the right -official, and it seemed that men weren't welcome. I learned a few -things, however. I grubbed among reports; I found out what your daily -life was like, what your companions must be, and once I saw a newspaper -account of a riot. But of you I heard nothing. How could I? I did not -even know your name—I, your judge!"</p> - -<p>The girl moved toward the border of the lake and for a space stood -looking dreamily into its tranquil counterfeit of changing foliage and -September sky. To the miracle of their meeting was added the revelation -that even as he had filled her thoughts in the dark days, so had she -possessed his.</p> - -<p>"Will you sit here?" he asked, again beside her. "I want to hear the -whole story—the story which began back among the other birches."</p> - -<p>"It began farther back than there."</p> - -<p>"Not for me."</p> - -<p>"But it should. If you thought about me at all, you must have wondered -how I came to be in a refuge uniform."</p> - -<p>"I wondered, yes; but I never really cared. I could see with my own -eyes what you were."</p> - -<p>She searched his face with the skepticism which the world had taught, -then, with a swift intake of breath, looked believing away.</p> - -<p>"We must begin at the beginning," she said.</p> - -<p>She told him her story as she had told it to the dentist that hideous -night of explanations at the Lorna Doone, but where Paul's black -silence had stifled her, lamed her speech, made her almost doubt -herself, this listener's faith leaped before her words, bridged the -difficult places where she faltered, spread the cloak of chivalry in -the miry way. Yet, with all his sympathy, it hurt her, so senseless -always seemed the reckoning for her follies, so poignant were her -regrets, and once, when she began to speak of Stella and the riot, he -stopped her.</p> - -<p>"Don't go on," he begged. "I see what it costs you."</p> - -<p>"I'd rather you heard it all," she replied. "It's your due."</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, she did not tell him all. She could speak of Stella, -of Amy, of young Meyer, of the floor-walker, but no word of Paul -passed her lips. She let Atwood infer that the stigma of the refuge -had driven her from Grimes's employ, as it had thrust her from the -department store. The whole chain of circumstances which the dentist's -name connoted had become suddenly as inexplicable to herself as to this -transcendent hero of a perfect day.</p> - -<p>The sun was low when she made an end, and the long-drawn shadows of the -birches in the lake turned their thoughts again to that other sundown.</p> - -<p>"You were a lonely little figure as I looked back," he said. "I took -that picture with me through the hills, and it remained my sharpest -memory. It was a sad memory, a mute reproach, like the poor things I -bought for you to wear."</p> - -<p>"Then you did get them!" she cried, her dress instinct astir. "What -were they like?"</p> - -<p>"I will show them to you some day."</p> - -<p>"You've kept them? I must pay my debt."</p> - -<p>He shook his head. "They're not for sale. You shall see them when you -come to my studio."</p> - -<p>"You are an artist, too?"</p> - -<p>"I paint," he replied simply. "When you are not busy with MacGregor, -you will find work with me. We'll arrange that among us. Old Mac little -dreams our secret."</p> - -<p>"It is a secret?"</p> - -<p>"With me, at any rate. I've never told. You see"—he looked away with a -sudden diffidence almost boyish; then back again with a temerity that -was boyish, too—"you see, I was jealous of my memories. I wanted to -keep them wholly to myself. Our meeting was—how shall I say it?—a -kind of idyl. And you—have you told?"</p> - -<p>"Never."</p> - -<p>"Was it partly for my reason?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," she answered; "partly for your reason."</p> - -<p>"But those clothes," he said, after a moment, "you'll smile when you -see them. I've tried many a time to imagine you wearing them, braving -the world as you planned so stoutly. Perhaps it would have been no -harder than the other way. Perhaps—but that's over with, thank heaven! -You've earned your freedom and have a brighter lot than a fugitive's -to face. I don't mean a model's life. That will be temporary. There's -something in you, something fine that only needs its chance. I can't -tell you how I know this any more than I can tell you what it is, but -I believe in it as I believe in my own existence. I know it's true, as -true as the fact that we stand here face to face."</p> - -<p>By some necromancy of the mind he mirrored back her own vague hopes.</p> - -<p>"But I am a woman," she said, eager for more.</p> - -<p>"So much the better. You live in woman's day. But don't forget that you -have given me a part of it," he added, as she rose. "My own particular -solar day isn't ended yet. When we first met, you had me to luncheon, -or was it breakfast? I'm going to return the courtesy."</p> - -<p>"But—"</p> - -<p>"You couldn't be more appropriately dressed for a park restaurant," he -cut in, pursuing her glance. "They'll serve us under an arbor where the -wistaria blooms in May. We'll have to pretend about the wistaria, but -it ought to be easy. The great pretense has come true."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XX</p> - - -<p>She learned from MacGregor what Atwood's modest "I paint" signified.</p> - -<p>"He is an illustrator who illustrates," he told her their first -day, while they worked. "I mean—left arm a trifle higher, please; -you've shifted the pose—I mean he gets into the skin of a writer's -characters, when they have any. If they're mere abstractions, he -creates blood, bones, and epidermis for them outright. Rarer thing -than you imagine, I dare say, in spite of the newspaper jokes. You can -count the men on one hand who do it here in New York, and to my mind -Craig deserves the index finger. He'd find a soul for a rag doll. But -I'm only telling you what any top-notch magazine you pick up says more -forcibly."</p> - -<p>Jean cloaked her ignorance in silence and put her trust in MacGregor's -enthusiasm for further light. After an industrious interval it came.</p> - -<p>"But that isn't all," he added, tilting back to study his canvas -through half-shut eyes. "The public doesn't know Atwood's true -<i>metier</i>. He's bigger than they think. I'll show you something in a -minute. It's time for rest."</p> - -<p>He lingered for a brush stroke, which at one sweep filled a languid -fold of drapery with action, and then crossed the studio to the stack -of unfinished work beside the wall.</p> - -<p>"Wait," he warned, placing a canvas in the trial frame and wheeling an -easel tentatively. "It's in the rough, but we can give it light and a -setting. Now look. That's what I call portraiture."</p> - -<p>Even her unschooled eye perceived its strength. It was MacGregor who -looked out at her, MacGregor as she herself had twice seen him that day -with his working fit upon him, New York forgotten, Africa filling every -thought.</p> - -<p>"And Mr. Atwood did it?"</p> - -<p>"Nobody else. He sat over there in that corner, while I worked in mine, -and painted what he saw."</p> - -<p>"It's a wonderful likeness."</p> - -<p>"Likeness!" MacGregor shook the poor word contemptuously. "Likeness! -Child, it's divination!"</p> - -<p>He dismissed her early in the afternoon, for it was raining fitfully -and the light was uncertain, and on leaving she turned her steps -toward the Astor Library, intent on a purpose inspired by MacGregor's -talk. She had some acquaintance with the lending libraries, but none -with this sedate edifice whose size and gloom oppressed her as she -looked vainly about for her elderly fellow-boarder who spent his life -somewhere amidst its dinginess. In this quandary, she was spied by a -mannered attendant whose young face, framed in obsolete side-whiskers, -reminded her of certain middle-Victorian bucks of Thackeray's whom she -had come to know during spare moments at the dental parlors. This guide -led her into a large reading-room where he assured her ladies were -welcome, despite the frowns of the predominant sex whose peace they -ruffled, and found her the two or three illustrated periodicals she -named.</p> - -<p>Without exception these contained Atwood's work, a fact which impressed -her tremendously; and without exception they bore testimony to his -superiority as emphatically as MacGregor. She pored over these drawings -one by one, weighing them much as she weighed his spoken thought, -and judging them, no less than his speech, most candid mirrors of -his personality. In what this personality's appeal consisted, she -had neither the detachment nor the wish to define; she could only -uncritically feel its sincerity, its romance, and its power.</p> - -<p>She craved a fuller knowledge, however, than these mute witnesses could -give, and the desire presently drew her back into the high-vaulted -chamber where the library's activities seemed to focus; and here, -bewildered by the riches of the card catalogue, she was luckily seen by -the quiet old man who lent his dignity to the head of Mrs. St. Aubyn's -table. He smiled gently upon her over his spectacles, pondering the -motive behind her request as he had speculated about the motives of -thousands before her, and instantly, out of a head whose store she -felt that she had scantily appreciated, produced half a dozen likely -references which he straightway bade a precocious small boy to track -to their fastnesses in some mysterious region he called the stacks; -himself, meanwhile, with a faded gallantry, escorting her to a desk in -a scholarly retreat where only feminine glances questioned her coming.</p> - -<p>So ensconced, she came upon the facts she sought in a bound volume -of a journal devoted chiefly to the fine arts. She learned here that -her knight errant's full name was Francis Craig Atwood, that New York -claimed the honor of his birthplace, and that he was a trifle less than -ten years older than herself. There followed a list of his schools, -which ended with Julien's Academy in Paris, where it appeared he had -gone the autumn after their meeting, and had exhibited canvases at the -Salons of two successive years. His return to America and his instant -recognition coincided closely with her own coming to New York. The -concluding analysis of his work bristled with technicalities, but she -read into it the qualities which she perceived or imagined in the man, -and, staring into the dusty alcove over against her seat, lost herself -in a brown study of what such success as this probably meant to him. -Newspaper paragraphs about his comings and goings, she supposed, many -sketches like this under her hand, social opportunities of course, the -flattery of women, friendships with the clever and the rich. It rather -daunted her to find him a celebrity, and at this pass nothing could -have so routed her self-possession as to discover that a man, of whose -nearness at an adjacent bookcase she had been vaguely aware, was no -other than Atwood himself.</p> - -<p>"Thank you," he laughed, with a wave of the hand toward the telltale -page. "But there's better reading in the library."</p> - -<p>Jean clapped to the offending volume and blushed her guiltiest.</p> - -<p>"You must think me very silly," she stammered. "Mr. MacGregor praised -your work, showed me the portrait—"</p> - -<p>"Of course he did. You have discovered Mac's weakness and his dangerous -charm. He believes all his friends are geniuses. You'll grow as -conceited as the rest of us in time."</p> - -<p>"And have the other conceited friends done work like yours and said -nothing about it?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"A thousand times better. You've no idea what a clever lot of men and -women Mac knows." He rapidly instanced several artists, sculptors, -and writers of prominence, adding: "But you will see them all at The -Oasis sooner or later. You've probably noticed that Mac is one of those -rareties who can talk while they work. What would hinder most people, -only stimulates him. And it stimulates the other fellow, too. I always -drop in on him for a tonic when my own stuff lags. I was there this -afternoon, in fact, though for another reason. I wanted to see you. It -must have been telepathy that brought me down here; I thought it was -'The Gadzooks'!"</p> - -<p>"'The Gadzooks,'" she puzzled.</p> - -<p>"Merely my slang for the Revolutionary romance," he explained. "I'm -illustrating still another one, and ran in here to resolve my doubts -about bag-wigs. My novelist seems to have invented a new variety. But -about you: if you don't mind the weather, and have nothing better to -do, I should like to take you over to a Fifth Avenue picture dealer's -to see a so-called Velasquez that's come into the market."</p> - -<p>Jean absorbed more than the true rank and value of Velasquez's -portraiture. Wet or dry, the weather was irreproachable. Did it rain, -there were yet other picture dealers' secluded galleries where one -might loiter luxuriously; while for the intervals of sunshine the -no less fascinating shop-windows awaited, each a glimpse into the -wonderland of Europe, which her guide seemed to know so well. They -even discussed going on to the Metropolitan to look in at a Frans Hals -and a Rembrandt, which the talk of Velasquez suggested, but Atwood's -absurd watch, corroborated by several equally ridiculous clocks of the -neighborhood, said plainly that it was well past closing time at the -museum and indeed quite the day's end here among the shops.</p> - -<p>He was loath to let her go.</p> - -<p>"It's been like a too short trip abroad," he said. "I hate to book for -home just yet. Why can't we dine as we did last night?"</p> - -<p>She shook her head.</p> - -<p>"Yesterday was an occasion."</p> - -<p>"Say Italy?" he persisted. "We've skimmed England, France, the Low -Countries; why not Italy? I know a little place that's as Italian as -Naples. You would never guess its existence. It looks like every other -brownstone horror outside, with not a hint of its real business, for -they say old Gaetano Sanfratello has no license. He looks you over -through the basement grating, and, if you're found worthy, leads you -through a tunnel of a hallway into the most wonderful kitchen you ever -saw. It's as clean as clean and is a regular treasure-house of shining -copper. Then you'll find yourself out in what prosaic New York calls -a back yard, but which, in fact, is a trattoria in the kingdom of -Victor Emmanuel, whose lithograph you will see above the door. There -are clusters of ripening grapes in the trellis overhead, and Chianti -or Capri antico—real Capri—on the cloth below; and they'll serve -you such artichoke soups, cheese soufflés, and reincarnations of the -chestnut, as the gods eat! And Gaetano's pretty daughter will wait upon -us and sing 'Bella Napoli,' and perhaps, if we're in great luck, she'll -let us have a peep at her bambino which she keeps swaddled precisely -like the one in that copy of Luca della Robbia you are staring at this -minute. Aren't you tempted?"</p> - -<p>She was, but resisted successfully; and when he saw that she was -inflexible, he walked with her to her own street, planning other -holidays of a future which should know no shadows.</p> - -<p>"You must forget that gray time you've left behind you," he declared. -"Call this your real beginning—your rebirth, your renaissance."</p> - -<p>So in truth it was. The weeks following were weeks of rapid growth -and ripening, which, Atwood's influence admitted, yet found their -compelling force in the girl's own will. The ambition to do her utmost -for MacGregor, to learn what books could teach of the life he knew by -living, took her back repeatedly to the library; then other suggestions -of the studio, which, even at its narrowest, was a school of curious -knowledge about common things that few, save the artist, seemed to -see as they were. Who but he, for instance, stopped to consider that -sunlight filtering through leaves fell in circles; that shadows were -violet, not black; that tobacco smoke from the mouth was of another -color than the graceful spiral which rose from the tip of a cigarette? -But this field opened into innumerable others in the wide domain where -her two friends plied their differing talents; while these, in turn, -marched with the boundaries of others still, whose only limits were -Humanity's. Life itself set the true horizon to MacGregor's Oasis.</p> - -<p>Among MacGregor's intimates who shared the secret of a knock which -admitted them at all hours, but who, busy men themselves, came oftenest -after the north light failed, was a sculptor named Karl Richter. This -man's specialty was the American Indian, but he also had known the -Arab at first-hand, and Africa in one or another of its myriad phases -was ever the topic when he and MacGregor foregathered. Listening to -their talk, Jean came to visualize the bronze-skinned folk, the vivid -market-places, the wild music of hautboys and tom-toms, the gardens -of fig and olive and orange and palm, the waysides thicketed with -bamboo, tamarisk, or scarlet geranium, and the desert,—above all, the -mysterious, terrible, beautiful desert,—as things which her own senses -had known. It chanced one day that they spoke of camels and, as often, -began to argue; and that Richter, to prove his point, whipped from his -pocket a lump of modeling wax, which, under his wonderful fingers, -became in a twinkling a striking counterfeit of the beast itself. It -could not have been more than an inch in height, but it was a very -camel, stubborn, complaining, alive. MacGregor confuted, the sculptor -annihilated the little animal with a careless pinch, tossed the wax -aside, and soon after went his way.</p> - -<p>Dissatisfied with his work, MacGregor presently caught his canvas from -the easel, and, laying it prone upon the floor, began by shifting -strips of card-board to hunt the truer composition. Jean, left to -herself, took up the discarded wax, tried vainly to coax back the -vanished camel, and then amused herself with a conception of her own. -So absorbed did she become that MacGregor finished his experiments -unheeded, and, receiving no answer to a question, still unregarded came -and peered over her shoulder.</p> - -<p>"Great Jupiter Pluvius!" he exclaimed.</p> - -<p>Jean whirled about.</p> - -<p>"How you startled me!" she said.</p> - -<p>"It's nothing to the way you've startled me. Where did you see that -head you've modeled?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, this?" She tried to put the wax away. "It's nothing—only a baby -in our block."</p> - -<p>MacGregor pounced upon the model and bore it to the light.</p> - -<p>"Nothing! Merely a study from life, that's all! Just a trifle thrown -off in your odd moments!" He turned the little head round and round, -showering exclamations. "Who taught you?" he demanded, striding back. -"Somebody had a finger in it besides you. There are lines here that -can't be purely intuitive."</p> - -<p>"I used to watch my father."</p> - -<p>"Was he a sculptor?"</p> - -<p>"He might have been, if he'd had the chance. But he had to work at -other things, and he married—"</p> - -<p>"I know, I know," MacGregor groaned. "Love in a cottage and to hell -with art! But he couldn't keep his thoughts or his hands from it. He -modeled when he could?"</p> - -<p>Jean nodded dreamily.</p> - -<p>"Sundays, mainly," she answered. "We used to go into the country -together. He found a bed of good clay near a creek where the mint grew. -I can never smell mint without remembering. I couldn't go back there -after he died."</p> - -<p>MacGregor gave her a sidelong glance, hemmed, made an unnecessary trip -across the studio, and kicked a fallen burnous violently.</p> - -<p>"But you went on modeling?" he asked, returning.</p> - -<p>"Yes—by and by. Then, later, I stopped."</p> - -<p>"Why?"</p> - -<p>"I—I hadn't the clay?" she evaded.</p> - -<p>MacGregor brooded over her handiwork a moment longer, then squared his -jaw.</p> - -<p>"You'll have the 'clay' hereafter," he said.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXI</p> - - -<p>At the outset she was rather skeptical of his faith in her. Had not -Atwood said that MacGregor saw genius in all his friends? But the -younger man now hailed him a most discerning judge.</p> - -<p>"It's the something I divined," he declared jubilantly, "the -gold-bearing vein I believed in, but hadn't the luck to unearth. Now to -develop it! What does Mac advise?"</p> - -<p>"One of the art schools," said Jean. "I can go evenings, it seems."</p> - -<p>"And work days! It's a stiff programme you plan."</p> - -<p>"But the school won't mean work," she declared. "Then, too, the posing -comes far easier than it did. Mr. MacGregor says my muscles are almost -as steady as a professional's."</p> - -<p>"So he tells me. I'm going to insist on sharing your time. He has -monopolized you long enough."</p> - -<p>MacGregor's monopoly did not cease at once, however. His first step on -discovering Jean's talent was to enlist Richter's expert criticism and -counsel with the practical outcome that the sculptor's door swung open -to her in the daylight hours when MacGregor worked with male models. -The clay-modeling-room at the art school was a wonderful place. Its -casts, its tools, its methods, were a revelation after the crude -shifts with which her father had had to content himself; but Richter's -studio transcended it as a university transcends a kindergarten. Here -were conceived ideas which found perpetuity in bronze!</p> - -<p>Studio and sculptor were each unique. A little man of crippled frame, -Karl Richter delighted in the muscular and the colossal and walked a -pigmy amidst his own creations. Michael Angelo was his god; but his -manner was his own, and the Indians and cow-boys he loved best to -express were remote enough from the great Florentine's subjects to -acquit him of imitation. His frail physique notwithstanding, he had -been at pains to see for himself the primitive life he adored, and -the idler who coined "The Oasis" dubbed the sculptor's place "The -Wigwam," and spread a facetious tale that Richter went about his work -in blanket and moccasins, and habitually smoked a calumet which had -once belonged to Sitting Bull. Richter never denied this myth, which by -now had received the sanction of print, and took huge satisfaction in -the crestfallen glances unknown callers gave his conventional dress. -However, the studio itself, a transformed stable, was sufficiently -picturesque. It overflowed with spoils from ranch and tepee, and, -thanks to the Wild West show which furnished MacGregor occasional -Arabs, sometimes sheltered genuine, if sophisticated, red men.</p> - -<p>About this time Jean left Mrs. St. Aubyn's, whose neighborhood Paul, -after dejected silence, had again begun to haunt. She had thus far -eluded him, but meet they must, she felt, if she remained; and with -Amy's abrupt departure, which now came to pass, she changed to a -boarding-house of Atwood's recommending in Irving Place.</p> - -<p>"There are no signs of the trade about it, fashionable or -unfashionable," he said. "It's just a homelike place, neither too -large nor too small, where you will see mainly art students. Many of -them, like you, are making their own way, and all of them are dead in -earnest. All the illustrators know Mrs. Saunders. Half of us have lived -under her roof some time or other."</p> - -<p>"You, too!"</p> - -<p>He smiled at her tone.</p> - -<p>"I wasn't born with a golden spoon, you know. Some New Yorkers aren't. -I inherited a little money, but I'm not a plutocrat yet, even if -editors do smile upon me. Julie and I thoroughly mastered the gentle -art of scrimping at one time. Have I ever mentioned my sister, Mrs. Van -Ostade?"</p> - -<p>"You spoke of her the day I saw you first."</p> - -<p>"At the birches?" he returned, surprised.</p> - -<p>"You said she would not understand."</p> - -<p>His eyes sobered.</p> - -<p>"I remember," he said. "And it was true. Neither would she understand -now, I fear. She has been both wedded and widowed since. You'll see -her at the studio yet, if MacGregor ever lets us begin work together. -She surprises me there when she thinks I am neglecting my duties as a -social being. Julie has all the zeal of a proselyte in her missionary -labors for society," he added laughingly. "She married into one of the -old Dutch families."</p> - -<p>Jean found that a tradition of Mrs. Van Ostade's residence in Irving -Place still lingered there. She was spoken of as Craig Atwood's sister, -the clever girl who had jockied for position, on nothing a year, by -cultivating fashionable charities. Settlement work, it appeared, had -been the fulcrum for her lever. No one here, however, had known her -personally, save Mrs. Saunders, who was a paragon of reticence when -gossip was afield. Indeed, a dearth of gossip, in the invidious sense -of the word, was a negative virtue to which her whole establishment -might lay claim. Mainly art students, as Atwood had predicted, the -sharpest personalities of Jean's new acquaintances dealt with the -vagaries of masters whom they furtively admired and not seldom aped. -Thus the life-class girl would furrow her pretty forehead over the -drawing of a beginner at antique with the precise "Ha!" and "Not half -bad!" of the distinguished artist and critic who twice a week set her -own heart palpitating with his crisp condemnation or praise.</p> - -<p>Illustrating, painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative design, -whatever their individual choice, life for each had its center in the -particular school of his or her adhesion. Art—always Art—was the -beginning and end of their table-talk, and even the two young men who -had other interests, a lawyer and a playwright, both embryonic, spoke -the language of the studios. To this community of interest was added -the discovery that all derived from country stock. Half a dozen states -had their nominal allegiance, and not even Mrs. Saunders, who seemed as -metropolitan as the City Hall, could boast New York as her birthplace. -They brimmed with a fine youthful confidence in their ability to wrest -success from this alien land of promise, which charged their atmosphere -electrically and spurred Jean's already abundant energy to tireless -endeavor. Her days were all too short, and Atwood, whose invitations -she repeatedly refused for her art's sake, began to caution her against -overwork.</p> - -<p>"Philosophic frivolity, as my sister calls it, has its uses," he said. -"I usually agree with her social preachments, even if I don't observe -them very faithfully. You must know Julie. I'll ask her to call."</p> - -<p>Whether he did so or not, Jean was unaware. At all events, Mrs. Van -Ostade did not renew her acquaintance with Irving Place, nor did Atwood -broach the subject again. If the social columns might be believed, -the lady was amply preoccupied with philosophic frivolity. MacGregor -presently turned a searching light upon her personality.</p> - -<p>"Notice that bit of impertinent detail, the unnecessary jewel?" he -queried, stabbing with his pipe-stem at one of Atwood's drawings which -a premature Christmas magazine had reproduced in color. "Craig never -did it."</p> - -<p>"Then who did?" Jean asked.</p> - -<p>"His sister."</p> - -<p>"Does she draw?"</p> - -<p>"By proxy. I mean she suggested this as she has suggested every false, -vitiating note that's crept into his work. Left to himself, Craig never -paints the lily. But he defers to her as a younger brother often will -to a sister who has mothered or stepmothered him. It was probably a -good thing once—I admit she has brains and push; but now it's time -the coddling stopped. It did let up for a while when she went over to -the Dutch—she was too busy to bother with him; but with her husband -underground and Craig coming on, it has begun again. Artistically she's -his evil genius. Of course he can't see it, or won't. I've done my -level best to beat it into him."</p> - -<p>"You have told him!"</p> - -<p>"Certainly; and her too. I have known them both for years. What are you -grinning at?"</p> - -<p>"Your candor. What did he say?"</p> - -<p>MacGregor scowled.</p> - -<p>"Same old rot I'm always hearing," he grumbled. "Called me a -woman-hater. What do you think?" challenging her abruptly. "You've seen -me at close quarters for some time. Do I strike you as that sort of -man? I want your unvarnished opinion."</p> - -<p>Jean answered him with his own frankness.</p> - -<p>"A woman-hater?" she repeated. "Never. I think you are"—she searched -for the word—"a woman-idolater."</p> - -<p>MacGregor grimly assured himself that no sarcasm was intended.</p> - -<p>"Expound," he directed.</p> - -<p>"I mean it seems to me you rate Woman so high that mere women can't -realize your ideal."</p> - -<p>"Humph!" he commented ungraciously. "Where did you learn to turn cheap -epigrams? Probably it's an echo of something you've read."</p> - -<p>He addressed her variously as Miss Epigrams, Lady Blessington, and -Madame de Staël as the work went forward, always with profound gravity, -until finally, when he saw her color rise to his teasing, he gave his -full-lunged laugh and confessed.</p> - -<p>"All the same, you're right, Miss Epigrams. That's one reason why I'm -still unattached. It's also why I haven't cared to see Craig take the -only sure cure. A wife would teach his sister her place, if she had the -right metal." He chuckled at the vision his words conjured. "But it -would be a battle royal."</p> - -<p>It was spring before Jean herself saw Mrs. Van Ostade. She had posed -for Atwood frequently after Christmas, but had chanced always to be -either with MacGregor or Richter when his sister visited the studio, -until the April afternoon when Julie's knock interrupted an overdue -illustration which Atwood was toiling mightily to finish. He frowned -at the summons and answered it without putting down the maul-stick, -palette, and brushes with which his hands were cumbered; but his "You, -Julie!" at the door hinted no impatience, nor his returning step aught -but infinite leisure as he issued with his dark-eyed, dark-haired, -dark-skinned caller from behind the screen.</p> - -<p>"Those stairs!" sighed the lady. Then, observing Jean, she subjected -her to a drastic ordeal by lorgnon, which, raking her from face to -gown,—where the inquisition lingered,—returned with added intensity -upon her face.</p> - -<p>Hot plowshares could have been no more fiery for poor Jean, who, -sufficiently aglow with the knowledge that the dress upon her back was -a piece of Mrs. Van Ostade's evening finery abandoned to the uses of -the studio, found herself tormented by the certainty that somewhere -in her vulnerable past she and this sister of Craig Atwood's had met -before.</p> - -<p>A sympathetic reflection of her embarrassment lit the man's face.</p> - -<p>"This is Miss Fanshaw," he interposed, "herself an artist. You have -heard me speak of her, Julie."</p> - -<p>The lorgnon dropped and the two women exchanged a bow perceptible to -the naked eye.</p> - -<p>"I know the face," stated Mrs. Van Ostade, with an impersonal air of -classifying scientific phenomena. "Where did I see it?"</p> - -<p>Jean now recalled this elusive detail most vividly, but she kept her -head.</p> - -<p>"Probably in Mr. Atwood's work," she suggested coldly.</p> - -<p>"Of course," seconded Atwood, keen to end the incident. "You will find -Miss Fanshaw in half my recent stuff."</p> - -<p>"The living face has no pictorial associations whatever," retorted his -sister, with decision. "I shall remember in time. But go on with your -work, Craig. I did not come to disturb you—merely to bring a piece of -news which I'll tell you as soon as I get my breath."</p> - -<p>Atwood placed a chair and, returning to his easel, made a show of -work which Jean's trained eye knew for his usual polite pretense with -visitors who assumed themselves no hindrance; while Mrs. Van Ostade, -throwing back her furs, relegated the model to the ranks of the -inanimate studio properties, of which her leisured survey now took -stock.</p> - -<p>"Those stairs!" she said again, pursuing her breath by the unique -method of lavishing more. "Really, Craig, you couldn't have pitched on -a more inconvenient rookery."</p> - -<p>"We thought it a miracle for the money once," he reminded. "I dare -say I could find a more convenient workshop in one of the new -office-buildings, but then I shouldn't have my open fire."</p> - -<p>"You could have it at the Copley Studios, and modern comforts, too."</p> - -<p>"Up there!" he scoffed. "I don't belong in the pink-tea circle, Julie."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Van Ostade refused to smile with him.</p> - -<p>"The location counts," she insisted.</p> - -<p>"With some people."</p> - -<p>"With the helpful people. I've thought it over carefully; I've used -my eyes and ears. The studio unquestionably carries weight. It ought -to be something more than a workshop, as you call it. It should have -atmosphere. Even our friend down the street has achieved that. Barbaric -as it is, MacGregor's studio has a distinct artistic unity."</p> - -<p>"Mac's place reflects his work. So does mine."</p> - -<p>"Yours! It's a jumble of everything, a junk-shop."</p> - -<p>"Of course it is," he laughed. "I've ransacked two-thirds of these -treasures from the Ghetto. But even junk-shops have atmosphere—a musty -one—and so, it logically follows, must my studio."</p> - -<p>She indulged his trifling with a divine patience.</p> - -<p>"Could you receive Mrs. Joyce-Reeves in such a place?" she queried -sweetly.</p> - -<p>"Certainly; if any possible errand could bring that high and mighty -personage over the door-sill."</p> - -<p>"There is a possible reason."</p> - -<p>Her tone drew him round. Jean, forgotten by both, discerned that he -also attached a significance to the hypothetical visit. She was at a -loss to account for this, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's prominence in the social -world of New York notwithstanding.</p> - -<p>"Is this your news, Julie?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>His sister savored his quickened interest a moment.</p> - -<p>"Part of it," she replied. "She saw your dry-point of me at Mrs. -Quentin Van Ostade's the other day."</p> - -<p>"The dry-point!" he deprecated. "It was only an experiment."</p> - -<p>"So I told her. She asked if you do anything in the way of portraiture -in oil, and of course I answered yes."</p> - -<p>"I say!"</p> - -<p>"Well, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>"Trash, yes; cart-loads of it."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps you call your portrait of Malcolm MacGregor trash? Mrs. -Joyce-Reeves did not."</p> - -<p>"She saw it!"</p> - -<p>"I dropped casually that it had been hung with the Fifth Avenue -exhibition of MacGregor's African studies, and she took the address. -That was day before yesterday. This afternoon I met her again—met her -leaving the gallery."</p> - -<p>"Well?" jogged Atwood, impatiently.</p> - -<p>"She told me she had bought two of MacGregor's things," continued Mrs. -Van Ostade, not to be hurried. "She took a desert nocturne and that -queer veiled woman at a window—you remember?"</p> - -<p>"Do I!" He spun about. "You heard that, Jean? Mrs. Joyce-Reeves has -bought 'The Lattice'! Miss Fanshaw posed for it, Julie."</p> - -<p>"Indeed!" The lorgnon, again unsheathed at the intimate "Jean," once -more took cognizance of that young person's existence. "I don't care -for it. But, what is more important, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves mentioned your -portrait."</p> - -<p>"Yes?"</p> - -<p>"And this time asked for your address."</p> - -<p>"Jove! You think—"</p> - -<p>"I'm positive she'll give you a commission."</p> - -<p>"Jove!" he exclaimed again, "what a chance!" and paced the studio. "Yet -she may. It's her whim to pose as a discoverer. What a chance! What -a colossal chance! It would mean—what wouldn't it mean?" He stopped -excitedly before the escritoire where Jean sat waiting to resume her -interrupted impersonation of a note-writing débutante. "It would take -nerve, no end of it. She's been painted by Sargent, Chartran, Zorn—all -the big guns. A fellow would have to find a phase they'd missed. But if -he could! You can't conceive her influence, Jean. If she buys a man's -pictures, all the little fish in her pond tumble over one another to -buy them, too. That's not the main issue, however, though I don't blink -its importance. The opportunity to paint <i>her</i>, to search out the woman -behind—that's the big thing. I have a theory. I met her once—she'd -bought an original of mine, thanks again to Julie—and something she -let fall makes me think—but I'm talking as if I had the commission in -my hands."</p> - -<p>Jean scarcely heard. Sympathize with him as she might, Julie Van -Ostade's face, from the moment Atwood's talk ceased to be hers -exclusively, absorbed her more.</p> - -<p>"Craig," broke in his sister, crisply, "my furs."</p> - -<p>He touched earth blankly.</p> - -<p>"Not going, Julie?"</p> - -<p>"My furs," she repeated.</p> - -<p>"But I haven't begun to thank you," he said, obeying.</p> - -<p>"Is not that also premature?" She rustled majestically toward the door, -which he sprang before her to open. The girl was but a lay figure in -her path.</p> - -<p>Then the door closed and Atwood, wearing a look of bewilderment, -came slowly up the studio to meet still another problem in feminine -psychology in the now thoroughly outraged Jean.</p> - -<p>"Why did you introduce me?" she demanded bitterly. "Why couldn't -you let me remain a common model to her? I am a common model in her -eyes—common in every sense. I remember well enough where she saw me, -and she'll remember, too, never fear."</p> - -<p>"Jean! Jean!" He came to her in distress.</p> - -<p>"It was a drinking-place, and the girl with me had drunk too much. -We amused your sister's theater-party immensely. They were probably -slumming—seeing low life!"</p> - -<p>He drew a calmer account from her presently.</p> - -<p>"I know the place," he said. "It had rather a vogue before people -found out that it was only sham-German, after all. It's a perfectly -respectable rathskeller. You went with some gentleman, of course?"</p> - -<p>Jean's passion for confession flagged.</p> - -<p>"With a friend of Amy's from the boarding-house," she answered briefly.</p> - -<p>Atwood gave a relieved laugh.</p> - -<p>"You have made a mountain of a mole-hill," he told her; "but I'm -glad you mentioned the circumstances. I'll explain to Julie, if she -ever thinks of it again. Don't misjudge her, Jean. I admit she's -unsympathetic at first sight, even brusque; but there's another side, -believe me. You saw how devoted she is to my interests."</p> - -<p>She had indeed seen, and the knowledge rankled.</p> - -<p>"You should not have introduced me, made me share your talk," she said. -"You meant a kindness, but it was no kindness; it was a humiliation, -a—" Then the tension snapped and her head went down between her arms.</p> - -<p>"Kindness!" He swept her stormily to himself. "Kindness, Jean! Can't -you see why I wanted you to share it with me? Can't you see that I want -you to share everything? I love you, Jean."</p> - -<p>For a long moment she yielded; the next she had slipped from him and -the escritoire was between them.</p> - -<p>"Don't," she forbade. "You must not say these things to me."</p> - -<p>"Must not?"</p> - -<p>"I can't marry you."</p> - -<p>"Can't! Yet a moment ago—"</p> - -<p>"I can't marry you," she repeated breathlessly.</p> - -<p>"But your kiss—"</p> - -<p>"Was a lie—pity—what you like. I was unstrung. I—I don't love you."</p> - -<p>He searched her face for a perplexed instant.</p> - -<p>"Jean," he commanded; "look at me!"</p> - -<p>She faced him.</p> - -<p>"Now tell me that again—straight in the eyes."</p> - -<p>"Don't," she entreated.</p> - -<p>"Say it!"</p> - -<p>"You heard me."</p> - -<p>"I want to hear it again—on your honor!" He waited.</p> - -<p>"I—I refuse."</p> - -<p>He strode toward her in triumph.</p> - -<p>"You can't," he cried. "The kiss was no lie. It was the truth, the -sacred truth! What unselfish madness made you try to deceive me?"</p> - -<p>"Remember your career," she protested; "your sister's world, which is -your world, too."</p> - -<p>But the time for reasoning was past.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXII</p> - - -<p>What passed forthwith between brother and sister Jean neither heard -nor particularly conjectured. Ways, means, and motives were for the -time being eclipsed by the tremendous fact that Julie called. That -she acquitted herself of this formality at an hour when the slightest -possible knowledge of the girl's habits would argue her absence from -Irving Place, roused in Jean only a vast relief. The mute pasteboard -was itself sufficiently formidable.</p> - -<p>She was even more relieved that through some mischance, for which -Atwood, who went with her, taxed himself, her return call found Julie -out. Visiting-cards she had none, their urgent need having hitherto -never presented itself; but Atwood helped her pretend before the rather -overpowering servant that she had forgotten them, and, scribbling her -name upon one of his own, bore her off for an evening at the play.</p> - -<p>Here, for the space of a week, matters rested, only to hatch a fresh -embarrassment in the end, beside which calls were trivialities. -This was no less than an invitation to dine, and to dine, not with -Mrs. Van Ostade and Atwood merely, but as one of a more or less -formal company—so Craig enlightened her—of the clever or socially -significant.</p> - -<p>Jean heard these depressing explanations with a sick face.</p> - -<p>"I can't go," she protested quickly. "Don't ask me."</p> - -<p>"Can't!" he repeated. "Why not?"</p> - -<p>"You know why. They're different, these people—as different from me as -if I were Chinese."</p> - -<p>"What rubbish!"</p> - -<p>"It's the truth. Perhaps later, when I've studied more, seen more, I -can meet them and not shame you—"</p> - -<p>"Shame me, Jean! If you realized how proud I am—"</p> - -<p>"Then don't put me in a position where you may feel anything but proud. -Don't make me go."</p> - -<p>He reasoned with her laughingly, but without real understanding of her -reluctance.</p> - -<p>"Besides," he concluded, "you can't decline. The dinner is really for -you."</p> - -<p>Her cup of misery brimmed over.</p> - -<p>"For me!"</p> - -<p>"In a way, it's in honor of our engagement, even though it isn't known."</p> - -<p>"Your sister wrote nothing of this."</p> - -<p>"But she told me. She said she wanted you to meet some of our friends. -Don't be afraid of them, Jean. You're as clever as any of them, while -in looks not a woman Julie knows can hold a candle to you."</p> - -<p>"But their clothes! Don't you see it's impossible? I've absolutely -nothing to wear."</p> - -<p>The man flicked this thistle-down airily away.</p> - -<p>"Dowds, half of 'em, Julie's crowd," he declared. "You don't need -anything elaborate. Just wear some simple gown that doesn't hide your -neck. Simple things tell."</p> - -<p>"And cost," she added, smiling ruefully at his nebulous solution. "I -have never owned a dinner-gown in my life."</p> - -<p>Atwood had an inspiration.</p> - -<p>"Why, the studio is full of them," he cried.</p> - -<p>"Your sister's—every one. Could I wear one of her dresses to her -dinner?"</p> - -<p>"Hardly. What inferior intellects men have! But is there any objection -to your wearing one of <i>my</i> gowns? None of the properties fit the -scheme of illustrations I've planned for that last novel, and I've -decided to have one or two things made. Now, if you'll choose the -material and bother with the fittings—"</p> - -<p>Jean's laugh riddled this improvisation.</p> - -<p>"I'll go if I must," she promised, "but I'll wear my own clothes. After -all, I know something about dressmaking."</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, the dress problem was serious when she came to marshal -her resources, and she still vacillated in a choice of evils, when Amy -happened in with a fresh point of view and an authoritative knowledge -of the latest mode, which cleared the muddle magically.</p> - -<p>"Put those away," she ordered, dismissing with a glance the -alternatives arrayed despairingly on the bed. "Wear white or a color, -and you'll have every old cat there rubbering to see how it's made. -Where's your black net?"</p> - -<p>"Here," said Jean, producing it without enthusiasm. "It's hopeless."</p> - -<p>"It is a sight by daylight," agreed Amy, candidly. "That cheap -quality always gets brown and rusty. But under gas it will never -show. Cut those sleeves off at the elbow and edge them with lace. The -forty-nine-cent kind will do, and you'll only need two yards."</p> - -<p>Jean's spirits rebounded under this practical encouragement.</p> - -<p>"I might turn in the neck about so much," she suggested, indicating an -angle by no means extravagant.</p> - -<p>Amy snatched the garment away.</p> - -<p>"Scissors!" she commanded decisively. "This yoke is coming out -altogether. Can't you see, Jean Fanshaw, that if you give your -shoulders a chance, people won't think twice about your dress? I'd -just give millions for your shoulders. The black will set them off as -nothing else could. If you want a dash of color, I don't know anything -smarter than a spray of pink-satin roses. Fred thinks I twist them up -almost like real."</p> - -<p>Jean evaded the artificial flowers with tact, but otherwise let herself -be guided by Amy, under whose fingers the transformation of the black -net went forward rapidly.</p> - -<p>"It's a treat to have something to do," Amy avowed, declining aid. "I -get awful lonesome over at our boarding-place. You never have time -any more to run in, and, excepting Saturday afternoon and Sunday, I -don't see anything of Fred. This is his busiest time, he says. Fred's -a crackerjack salesman. Last month he sent in more orders than any man -the firm ever put on the road. He just seems to hypnotize customers, -same as he did me. I know you would like him, too, Jean, if you would -ever come over while he's home. He spoke about that very thing the -other day. He said it looked as if you were trying to dodge him. He -wanted me to ask you to go down to the Coney Island opening last -Saturday, but I was afraid you'd say no and hurt his feelings, so I -told him you were sure to be at your art school. I was glad afterward -you didn't come, for we met Stella Wilkes."</p> - -<p>The name failed to stir Jean as of old.</p> - -<p>"I don't fear Stella now," she said.</p> - -<p>"I do," Amy rejoined. "It gives me the creeps to be anywhere near her. -Fred says he can't see why. Men are queer that way. She came up to us -on the Iron Pier, where we were having beer and sandwiches, and in -spite of all my hints, he asked her to have something, too. She told -us she was singing in one of the music-halls down there, and nothing -would do Fred but we must go that night and see what her voice was -like. She spotted us down in the crowd and waved her hand at us as bold -as you please. I was so mad! Fred didn't care. He thought she had a -bully voice. It did sound first-rate in 'coon songs,' and I really had -to laugh myself at some of her antics when she danced a cake-walk. -Wouldn't it be a queer thing if she got to be well known? Fred says -there's no reason why she shouldn't earn big money, and he's a dandy -judge of acting. You ought to hear him spout some of the speeches from -'Monte Cristo.' We always go to a show Saturday nights, when he's -home, and generally Sundays to sacred concerts and actors' benefits. I -wouldn't go Sundays if the rest of the week wasn't so dull. If I only -had a flat, it would help pass the time away. I tease Fred for one all -the time. Maybe I can pretty soon. He's to have Long Island and North -Jersey for his territory, and that will bring him home oftener nights. -Haven't you a better drop-skirt than this?"</p> - -<p>"Drop-skirt?" The transition caught Jean daydreaming over a contrast -between Amy's drummer and an illustrator not unknown to fame.</p> - -<p>"This one is so scant it spoils the whole dress," explained the critic. -"I always said so."</p> - -<p>"I know; but it's the best I have. Does it matter so much?"</p> - -<p>"Matter!" Amy mourned over the offending detail with artistic concern. -"There's nothing I'm so particular about. A drop-skirt like this would -spoil a Paquin gown, or a Redfern, let alone a—a—"</p> - -<p>"Rusty black net?" Jean prompted. "Aren't you forgetting my wonderful -shoulders? Nobody is to look at anything else, you know!"</p> - -<p>Amy ignored the implication.</p> - -<p>"It won't be so funny if they do," she reproved. "I do wish I had -something to lend you, but since I left the store, I never wear black. -Fred likes lively colors. Isn't there anything at the studio you could -borrow?"</p> - -<p>There was, though Jean forbore to mention it. As certain as her need, -was the knowledge that from the third right-hand hook of the studio -wardrobe depended its easy satisfaction. She had told Atwood with -almost rebuking emphasis that she must wear her own clothes, but in -the befogging nervousness which the bugaboo of the dinner wrought, -the temptation to make use of at least this discarded trifle of Mrs. -Van Ostade's plenty assailed her with waxing strength, till success -or failure seemed to hang on her decision. The garment had its -individuality, like most things belonging to Julie, who, Atwood said, -had her own notions of design; but Jean told herself that it need not -be flaunted.</p> - -<p>To assure herself whether, after all, she might not be overrating its -importance, she wore the silken lure home under her street-dress the -evening of the dinner. This candid course was most efficacious. In the -light of the miracle it worked, consistency troubled her no more than -Amy. Its influence transcended the material; it fortified her courage; -and when at last the admiring maid brought word that a gentleman -waited below, she gave a final glance mirrorward, which was almost -optimistic, and went down for Craig's verdict with starry eyes.</p> - -<p>No faintest premonition prepared her to confront in the dim-lit room, -not Craig, but Paul.</p> - -<p>The dentist took an uncertain step toward her.</p> - -<p>"I had to come, Jean," he said defensively. "There hasn't been a -more miserable cuss in the city. I—" Then, seeing her clearly under -the flare of the gas-burner nearest the door, which her hand sought -instantly, he stood a moment, wide-eyed and mute, in fascinated survey -of her unwonted garb. No tribute to its effectiveness could be more -sincere. As if it spoke for her like a symbol, answering a question -he could no longer put, he made a simple gesture of renunciation, the -pathos and dignity of which sounded the very well-springs of her pity. -"Excuse me for butting in," he added. "I can see now it was no use."</p> - -<p>Jean put out her hand. The mystery of her dead affection—she could not -call it love—for this man was never more baffling. The woman she was -seemed as far removed from her who pledged herself to Paul, as that -girl in turn was remote from the mutinous rebel of Cottage No. 6; but -the dentist's gesture, his words, his shabbiness—so different from the -half-dandified neatness of old—touched her where a direct appeal to -their common past would have found her flint.</p> - -<p>"It was no use in the way you mean, Paul," she said gently. "But sit -down. I am sorry if you have been unhappy."</p> - -<p>Whereupon an inconceivably subdued Paul Bartlett sat down beside her -and with a gush of mingled self-pity and remorse poured the tale -of his manifold sorrows into an absorbed and—her wrongs, her sex -considered—sympathetic ear. Life had fared ill with the dentist. He -had not been able, he said, to swing the enterprise of the new office -quite as he had hoped. The location was all right, the equipment was -all right, but for some reason, perhaps the election-time flurry, -perhaps because he himself may not have pushed things as he did -when feeling quite up to par, patients had not flocked his way. The -hell he had been through! To know there wasn't a more up-to-date -office in Harlem, not one that paid a stiffer rent, and yet, for a -month, six weeks, two months, to see almost nobody drift in except -"shoppers"—Jean would remember their sort!—who haggled over dinkey -little jobs such as amalgam fillings, or beat him down on a cheap plate -to a figure that hardly paid a man to fire up his vulcanizer—well, -he'd sooner handle a pick and shovel than go through that again.</p> - -<p>"But it's better now?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Shouldn't have showed my face here if it wasn't," Paul retorted, -with a flicker of his old spirit. "The luck changed just when I'd -about decided to go back to Grimes. Yes, I'm doing so-so. Nothing -record-breaking, but I'm out of debt."</p> - -<p>"I'm very glad."</p> - -<p>"Thanks," he said gratefully. "You've no call to be, God knows! When -I think—but what's the good? I've thought till I'm half crazy. Just -to look into the little place at the Lorna Doone queers a whole week -for me. It stands about as it did, Jean. All the time the pinch was -hardest, I had to carry the flat, too—empty. I couldn't live there, -and nobody else wanted it. I missed my chance to clear out when the -building changed hands—I tumbled just too late, not being on the spot. -The new owners would make trouble, and I've had trouble enough. I just -<i>can't</i> sell the things—leastways some of them—and I thought perhaps -you—they're really yours, you know—perhaps you—No? Well, I don't -blame you. If folks were only living there, I guess I'd feel different. -I would sublet for a song."</p> - -<p>Amy's consuming desire flashed into Jean's mind to relieve a situation -too tense for long endurance, and Paul thankfully made note of the -drummer's address. This mechanical act seemed to put a period to -their meeting and both rose; but although they shook hands again, and -exchanged commonplaces concerning neither knew what, the man continued -to imprison her fingers in an awkward solemnity which, more sharply -than words, conveyed his sense of a bitter, yet just, finality.</p> - -<p>So occupied, Atwood's hurried entrance found them.</p> - -<p>"I'm late, very late," he said from the hall, at first seeing only -Jean; "but the cab-horse looks promising, and the driver says—I beg -your pardon!"</p> - -<p>Acutely conscious of a burning flush, which Paul's red-hot confusion -answered like an afterglow, Jean made the presentation.</p> - -<p>"Bartlett—not Barclay," Paul corrected Atwood's murmured greeting, -with the footless particularity of the embarrassed.</p> - -<p>"I beg your pardon," said Atwood again.</p> - -<p>"Often mixed, those two names, Bartlett and Barclay," babbled the -dentist, with desperate stage laughter. "Half the people who come to my -office call me Barclay. Feel sometimes as if it must be Barclay after -all. Dare say Barclay is as good a name—that is—"</p> - -<p>Jean stilled the parrot cry with an apology for running off, and the -trio passed down the steps together. Atwood glanced back curiously as -they whipped away.</p> - -<p>"Who is Mr. Bartlett—not Barclay?" he smiled.</p> - -<p>"A dentist I knew when I worked for the Acme Company," she answered, -and then, with a generous impulse added, "He was very kind to me once -when I needed kindness."</p> - -<p>"So?" Atwood's interest livened. "Then I have double reason not to -forget his name. I don't dare picture what Julie's thinking," he went -on, peering at a jeweller's street-clock. "We're undeniably late. But I -have the best excuse in the world. Guess!"</p> - -<p>Jean tried, but found her wits distraught between the scene just past -and the trial to come.</p> - -<p>"No; tell me," she entreated.</p> - -<p>He drew a full exultant breath.</p> - -<p>"It's the Joyce-Reeves commission," he said. "I received the order -to-night."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXIII</p> - - -<p>They were not unpardonably late, yet were tardy enough to render their -coming conspicuous to what seemed to Jean an ultramodish company which -peopled not only Mrs. Van Ostade's drawing-room, but the connecting -music-room and library as well.</p> - -<p>Julie, her dark good looks set off by yellow, met them with observant -eyes, nodded "Yes, Craig; I know" to Atwood's great news, murmured a -conventional word of regret to Jean that both their calls should have -been fruitless, made two or three introductions to those who chanced -nearest, and with the lift of an eyelid set in motion the mechanism of -a statuesque butler; whereupon Jean found herself hazily translated -to her place at table between a blond giant, who took her in, and -a shadowy-eyed person with a pointed beard, who languidly quoted -something resembling poetry about what he called the tinted symphony of -Mrs. Van Ostade's candle-light.</p> - -<p>"How clever!" said Jean, at a venture, and welcomed the voice of her -less ethereal neighbor.</p> - -<p>"Corking race," remarked the giant, beaming at her over the rim of his -cocktail.</p> - -<p>This was concrete, if indefinite.</p> - -<p>"You mean—"</p> - -<p>"Yesterday—France. Wonderful! Gummiest kind of course—two days' hard -rainfall, you know. I've been saying 'I told you so' all day. Didn't -surprise me in the least. I knew her, d'ye see, I knew her."</p> - -<p>Jean looked as intelligent as she could, and hoped for a clew. The big -man checked his elliptical remarks altogether, however, and, still -beaming, awaited her profound response.</p> - -<p>"Is she French?" she hazarded, jumping at an inference.</p> - -<p>"But it was a man won. The sporting duchess, you mean, drew out."</p> - -<p>"I'm speaking of the horse," Jean struggled.</p> - -<p>"Horse! What horse?" ejaculated the giant. "I'm talking automobiles."</p> - -<p>She judged frankness best.</p> - -<p>"There is nothing for it but to confess," she said. "I know nothing -about automobiles. I never set foot in one in my life."</p> - -<p>Her companion wagged a large reproachful finger.</p> - -<p>"Don't string me," he begged. "Didn't Julie Van Ostade put you up to -this? I know I'm auto-mad and an easy mark, but—Jove! I believe you're -serious. Why, it's—it's incredible! Just think a bit. You must have -been in one of those piffling little runabouts?"</p> - -<p>"Never."</p> - -<p>"Well, then, a cab—an electric cab?"</p> - -<p>"Not even a 'bus."</p> - -<p>He shook his head solemnly and besought the attention of the petite -guest in mauve on his left.</p> - -<p>"What do you think?" Jean heard him begin. "Miss Fanshaw here—"</p> - -<p>Then the shadowy-eyed seized his chance.</p> - -<p>"I hail a kindred spirit," he confided softly. "To me the automobile -is the most hideous, blatant fact of a prosaic age. Its coarsening -pleasures are for the few; its brutal sins against life's meager poetry -touch the unprivileged millions."</p> - -<p>"Rot!" cut in the giant, whose hearing was excellent. "The motor -is everybody's servant. As for poetry, man alive! you would never -talk such drool again if you could see a road-race as the man in -the car sees it. Poetry! It's an epic!" Wherewith he launched into -terse description, jerky like the voice of his machine and bestrewn -with weird technicalities, but stirring and roughly eloquent of a -full-blooded joy in life.</p> - -<p>While the battle raged over her—for the man with the pointed beard -showed unexpected mettle—Jean evolved a working theory as to the -uses of unfamiliar forks and crystal, and took stock of her other -fellow-guests. It was now, with a start of pleasure, that she first -met the eye of MacGregor, whom she had overlooked in the hurry of -their late arrival. His smile was encouraging, as if he divined her -difficulties, and she took a comfort in his presence, which Atwood's, -for once, failed to inspire.</p> - -<p>Craig seemed vastly remote. He was in high spirits and talking eagerly -to an odd-looking girl with a remarkable pallor that brought out the -vivid scarlet of her little mouth and the no less striking luster of -her raven hair, which she wore low over the ears after a fashion Jean -associated with something literary or theatrical. She caught a word or -two of their conversation, and it overshot her head, though the talk at -MacGregor's Oasis had acquainted her with certain labels for uncertain -quantities known as Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw. She perceived -a sophisticated corner of Atwood's mind, hitherto unsuspected, so -deceptive was his boyish manner; and the anæmic girl, juggling the -Superman with offhand ease, became clothed with piquant interest. She -wondered who she was, what Atwood saw in her, and whether they knew -each other well.</p> - -<p>Of his own accord her neighbor with the beard enlightened her.</p> - -<p>"Pictorial, isn't she?" he said. "Pre-Raphaelite, almost, as to -features; hair Cleo de Merode. I hope Mrs. Van Ostade pulls the match -off. They're so well suited; clever, both of them, and in different -ways. Then, her money. That is a consideration."</p> - -<p>"Is it?" groped Jean.</p> - -<p>"Rather! Wealthy in her own name, you know, and virtually sure of -her uncle's fortune. They're very soundly invested, the Hepworth -millions. But it's the psychological phase of it that interests me. I'm -curious to see what effect she'll have upon his work. For the artistic -temperament marriage is twice a lottery. I've never dared risk it -myself."</p> - -<p>His tone offered confidences, but Jean found his celibacy of slight -interest beside Miss Hepworth's. She was conscious that he was -permitting her glimpses into the lone sanctities of what he termed -his priesthood, as she was aware of a whir and rush of motor-maniacal -anecdote on her other side, and of a ceaseless coming and going of -courses amidst the generally pervasive fog of conversation. She made -the automatic responses which seemed all her immediate fellow-guests -required of her, and masked her face with a smile, into which she threw -more spontaneity after the bearded one said it suggested Mona Lisa's -and belied her glorious youth.</p> - -<p>"For she is 'older than the rocks among which she sits,'" he quoted. -"You remember Pater's famous interpretation?"</p> - -<p>Jean knew neither quotation nor writer, but she was familiar with -Leonardo's picture and turned the personality with a neutral question, -which served the man as a spring-board for fresh verbal acrobatics, -amusing to him and restful for her. He was shrewder than she had -thought. In truth, she felt both young and old; young, if this dismal -futility could be the flower of much living; old, if by chance it -should be, as she questioned, merely puerile.</p> - -<p>She sighed for the dinner's end, but when it came and the women, -following a custom she had read about without dreaming she should yet -encounter it, left the men behind, she sighed to be back with her -loquacious seat-mates, talk what jargon they would. Her sex imposed no -conversational burden upon any one here. She fitted naturally into none -of the little clusters into which the rustling file dissolved; and, -after some aimless coasting among these groups where women to whom she -had been presented smiled upon her vaguely and chattered of intimacies -and happenings peculiarly their own, she cut adrift altogether and -grounded with feigned absorption by a cabinet of Chinese lacquer. If -Julie meant her kindness, she told a remarkable golden dragon, this -was the time to show it, but her hostess remained invisible, and the -dragon's gaze, though sympathetic, seemed presently to suggest that the -social possibilities of lacquer had their limits. In this crisis, she -made a lucky find of a portfolio of Craig's sketches, none of which she -had ever seen.</p> - -<p>While turning these drawings, she was approached by some one, and, -looking up with the expectation of seeing Mrs. Van Ostade, met instead -the gaze of a very old and excessively wrinkled lady, who, without -tedious formalities, calmly possessed herself of the sketch Jean had in -hand.</p> - -<p>"They're amazingly deft," she said, after a moment. "Even the academic -things have their charm. Take this charcoal, for instance," she went -on, selecting another drawing. "It's not the stereotyped Julien study -in the least. They couldn't extinguish the boy's individuality. -Somewhere here there is another still better."</p> - -<p>"You mean this, don't you?" Jean asked, delving into the portfolio for -a bold rendering of a human back.</p> - -<p>"Ha!" said the old lady, staring. "Of course I do. But what made you -think so?"</p> - -<p>"It was the only one of the Julien studies you could mean," returned -Jean, promptly. "He did not draw like this till the year he exhibited."</p> - -<p>The explosive "Ha!" was repeated, and the girl felt herself thoroughly -assayed by the shrewd old eyes.</p> - -<p>"You are a close student of Mr. Atwood, my dear," came dryly. "Perhaps -you are a critic of contemporary art?"</p> - -<p>Jean reddened, but, surprising the twinkle behind the sarcasm, laughed.</p> - -<p>"Is it probable?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"It's possible. Half the celebrities I meet seem young enough to be my -grandchildren. But you are telling me nothing. Are you one of Julie Van -Ostade's discoveries? She collects geniuses, you know. What is your -name?"</p> - -<p>Jean told her.</p> - -<p>"It means nothing, you see," she smiled. "I am only a student."</p> - -<p>"Of painting?"</p> - -<p>"No; sculpture."</p> - -<p>"Are you! But you look original. Where are you at work? I hope you -don't mind my questions? I'm an inquisitive old person."</p> - -<p>Jean named her school and mentioned Richter.</p> - -<p>"But I have accomplished nothing yet," she added.</p> - -<p>"Ha!" said the old lady. "Then it's time you did. I shall ask Richter -about it. If I forget your name, I'll describe your eyes. There is -something singularly familiar about your eyes."</p> - -<p>The men and Mrs. Van Ostade made a simultaneous entrance, and the -latter at once bore down on Jean's catechist.</p> - -<p>"Peroni will sing," she announced with a note of triumph. "He -volunteered as a mark of respect to you."</p> - -<p>"Really!" The octogenarian's smile was extraordinarily expressive. "Yet -they call him mercenary."</p> - -<p>The opening bar of an accompaniment issued from the music-room, and -Jean joined the drift toward the piano. She wondered who this sprightly -personage might be for whom the spoiled tenor volunteered, and then, in -the magic of his voice, forgot to wonder.</p> - -<p>In the babel following the hush, MacGregor leaned over her chair.</p> - -<p>"So the irrepressible conflict is on?" he greeted her.</p> - -<p>Jean's welcome was whole-hearted.</p> - -<p>"Craig has told you?" she said softly.</p> - -<p>"Yesterday. I wish you both all the usual things. I ought to have -seen it from the first, I suppose, but as a matter of fact I did not. -Certainly I never figured you in the lists when I spoke of the battle -royal. Any war news?"</p> - -<p>"We have exchanged calls without meeting."</p> - -<p>"Preliminary skirmishes."</p> - -<p>"Next came the dinner-invitation. Not exactly a war measure, should you -say?"</p> - -<p>"Knowing Julie, yes. I should call it the first engagement."</p> - -<p>Jean perceived his military metaphor was but a thin disguise for a -serious opinion.</p> - -<p>"And the victor?" she said.</p> - -<p>"Apparently yourself."</p> - -<p>"I don't feel especially victorious," she said, a little wistfully. -"What makes you think the battle is on? Oh, but we must not talk this -way here," she immediately added. "We've eaten her salt."</p> - -<p>"What if the salt is an ambush?" queried MacGregor. "Besides, I never -pretended to be a gentleman. Look over this menagerie carefully, -guileless child! Do you suppose Julie usually selects her dinner-guests -after this grab-bag fashion? Not to my knowledge. She loathes big -dinners, so she has told me. It's her study and pride to bring together -people of like tastes. The seating of a dinner-party is to her like -a nice problem at chess. Do you think it a mere chance shuffle that -settled your destiny at table? Do you know one automobile from another?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Of course not. And half the time you hadn't a glimmer of a notion what -the decadent poet with the Vandyck beard was driving at?"</p> - -<p>"More than half."</p> - -<p>"Neither should I. A steady diet of the hash he serves up to women's -clubs would land me in a padded cell. But perhaps the general talk -amused you?"</p> - -<p>"I could not make much of it," she admitted.</p> - -<p>"Sensible girl! Neither could most of the talkers. But—here was where -you scored a point—you looked as if you did. The minor poet and the -motor-maniac couldn't wait their turns to bore you. Then, point number -two, your gown. Logically, it's point number one, and a big point, too. -I happened to be watching Julie when you arrived. Yes; you scored."</p> - -<p>Jean caught gratefully at the tribute. She remembered that Craig had -been too preoccupied with the Joyce-Reeves commission to notice her -dress, and wondered whether the pictorial girl's æsthetic draperies had -drawn his praise. She was shy of mentioning Miss Hepworth to MacGregor; -he might think her jealous. Nor did he speak her name, though Craig -and his dinner-partner, again in animated converse, were in plain view -from their own station. Jean guessed that he trusted her instinct to -light readily on the significance of this factor in Mrs. Van Ostade's -strategy.</p> - -<p>"Lastly," he enumerated, "you bagged Mrs. Joyce-Reeves."</p> - -<p>"What! The woman who talked to me about Craig?"</p> - -<p>"You're surprised to find her here? So was Julie. She invited herself. -Julie met her somewhere this afternoon and mentioned that she was -giving a dinner. Mrs. Joyce-Reeves asked questions—you discovered -that trait of hers, probably—and said she'd be punctual. Quite royal, -isn't she? She is strong enough to be as eccentric as she pleases. So -Craig was your topic? Then she had your secret out of you, mark my -word. How did you fall in with her?"</p> - -<p>"She came to me while I was turning over some of Craig's sketches."</p> - -<p>"Pretending to enjoy yourself, but really feeling as lonesome as -Robinson Crusoe?"</p> - -<p>"Almost."</p> - -<p>"That is very likely why she spoke to you. She does that sort of -thing, they say. It's one of her curious eccentricities. I think your -motor-maniac is edging this way," he added. "Yes, and your poet, too. -Can it be that you are going to score again!"</p> - -<p>With the three men grouped about her chair, Jean had an intoxicating -suspicion that she was scoring, provided MacGregor's embattled theory -held; and when Mrs. Van Ostade herself entered the scene just as the -blond giant, under fire from the Vandyck beard, was begging her to -set a day for her initiation into the joys of motoring, a certain -rigidity in Julie's smile convinced her that MacGregor was right. -Atwood's opportune arrival in his sister's wake charged the situation, -she felt, with the last requisite of drama. But Mrs. Van Ostade's -eye was restless, however staccato her smile, and Jean, conscious, -though no longer unhappy under its regard, reflected that even without -its terrible lorgnon it had its power. Then, even as she framed the -thought, she beheld its sudden concentration, tracked its cause, -and caught its glittering rebound from the nether edge of her too -tempestuous petticoat. For an instant the brown eyes braved the black, -then struck their colors, conquered.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a name="illus5" id="illus5"></a> - <br /> - <img src="images/illus5.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>She was scoring.</p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Without a word Julie Van Ostade had shouted, "Cast-off clothes!" louder -than the raucous dealers of the curb.</p> - -<p>Luckily, the ghastly business was not prolonged. The leave-takings -began at once, and Jean passed out among the first. Some hitch in the -carriage arrangements delayed her a moment in the vestibule, however, -and MacGregor came by.</p> - -<p>"Did something happen back there?" he asked bluntly. "I don't think the -others noticed anything; I didn't grasp anything tangible myself; but -still—are the honors doubtful, after all?"</p> - -<p>Jean shook her head.</p> - -<p>"No," she answered grimly; "not doubtful in the least. She won."</p> - -<p>Then Craig put her in the coupé, and asked if it had not been a jolly -evening.</p> - -<p>"It was a mixed crowd for Julie," he said, "but it seems she wanted to -show you all sorts. You see how absurd it was to dread coming. Every -time I laid eyes on you, you were holding your own. Virginia Hepworth -asked who you were. Did you notice her? I want you to know her. You -mightn't think it at first blush, but she's very stimulating; at least -I always find her so. We had a famous powwow. I should like to paint -her sometime against a sumptuous background. What did you think of her -hair?"</p> - -<p>Jean's response was incoherent. Then an illuminated turning brought her -face sharply from the shadows.</p> - -<p>"Jean!" he cried. "What is it? What's wrong?"</p> - -<p>"Myself. We had best face it—face it now; better now than later. I -am only a drag upon you, a handicap—not the kind of woman you should -marry. You must marry a stim—stim—stimulus."</p> - -<p>Atwood drew her into his arms.</p> - -<p>"And so I shall," he answered, "so I shall the first minute she'll let -me. To-night even! Do you understand me, Jean? Why shouldn't it be -to-night? What do you say?"</p> - -<p>Jean said nothing. What folly she had uttered! Give him up! His mere -touch exorcised that madness. All the primitive woman in her revolted -from the sacrifice. He was hers—<i>hers</i>! Could that pale creature love -him as she loved him? Could Julie love him as she loved him? Julie! A -gust of passion shook her; part anger with herself for the weakness to -which she had stooped, part hot resentment against this superior being -who set traps for her inexperience. For it was a trap, that dinner! -MacGregor was wholly right. There was war between them; the night had -witnessed a battle. What was it all but a manœuvre to humble her before -her lover, prove her unfitness, alienate his love?</p> - -<p>Then Craig's words took on a meaning.</p> - -<p>"I'm in earnest," he was saying. "It isn't a spur-of-the-moment idea. -These three days I've had it in mind to ask you to slip off with me -quietly and without fuss. We've never been conventional, you and I. Why -should we begin now? Nothing could be simpler. It is early yet—little -more than ten o'clock. I'll drop you in Irving Place long enough for -you to change your dress and pack a bag. Meanwhile I can pick up my -own and make sure of the clergyman. That part is easy, too. I'll ask a -friend of mine who lives not five blocks off. His wife and sister will -be our witnesses. Then the midnight train for Boston and a honeymoon in -some coast village."</p> - -<p>"But the portrait?" she wavered.</p> - -<p>"The best of reasons. The sensible thing is to marry before I begin -work. Don't hunt for reasons against it, dear. None of them count. -It's our wedding, not Mrs. Grundy's. We'll let her know by one of the -morning papers, if there's time to give notice on our way to the train. -Julie I'll wire."</p> - -<p>A blithe vision of Julie digesting her telegram flitted across Jean's -imagination with an irresistible appeal.</p> - -<p>"I'll need half an hour, Craig," she said, as the carriage halted.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXIV</p> - - -<p>Julie's congratulations reached them three days later at the decayed -seaport, an hour's run out of Boston, which they had chosen at laughing -haphazard in their flight. It was a skillful piece of literature. -Ostensibly for both, its real message was for the errant Craig. There -were delicate allusions to their close companionship of years, so -precious to her. To him, a man, it had of course meant less. A woman's -devotion—but she would not weary him with protestations. What she had -been, she would always be. She bore him no unkindness for shutting her -out at the momentous hour; she knew marriage would raise no future -barrier. That was all.</p> - -<p>"Dear old Julie!" said Atwood. "It did cut her." He smoked for a -pensive interval, gazing out from their balcony over the rotting hulks -of a vanished trade. "She's been my right hand almost," he went on -presently. "Not many endearments between us—surface tendernesses. Some -people think her hard, but she's as stanch as stanch. Did I tell you -how she nursed me through typhoid?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"That showed! Or take our Irving Place days. Many a play or concert she -gave up for me—and gowns! She believed in me from the first. I can't -forget that. What nonsense to talk of marriage shutting her out! We -must not let her feel that way, Jean."</p> - -<p>"No," said the wife; for to such charity toward the beaten enemy had -she already come.</p> - -<p>Indeed, her happiness had softened her to a point where she questioned -whether MacGregor did Julie complete justice. He was a man of strong -prejudices, set, dogmatic; even, she suspected, a man with a grievance, -for Craig now told her that something in the nature of an engagement -had once existed between his sister and his friend. Might not Atwood's -insight be the truer? She began to put herself in Julie's place, -and then, without much difficulty, saw herself acting Julie's part. -Ambitious for Craig, scheming for him always, self-sacrificing if need -arose, why should she not resent his marriage to a nobody whom she knew -only as a model?</p> - -<p>This flooding charity likewise embraced Mrs. Fanshaw. Her mother's -chronicles of the small beer of Shawnee Springs had continued with -the punctuality of tides. The weekly letter seemed to present itself -to her mind as an imperative duty, like the Wednesday prayer-meeting, -Saturday's cleaning, or church-going Sunday. Duty bulked less -prominently in Jean's view of it, but she had answered, desultorily -at first, and then by habit, almost with her mother's regularity. Yet -she had told little of her life. The changes from cloak-factory to -department store, from store to the Acme Company, and from the dental -office to the studio had been briefly announced, but despite questions, -never lengthily explained. Now she felt the need for confidence. -Feelings quickened in her which she supposed atrophied, and under their -impulsion she wrote her mother for the first time the true history of -her flight from the refuge and traced the romance there begun to its -miraculous flower.</p> - -<p>A second note from Mrs. Van Ostade, received two days later, voiced in -the friendliest way her acceptance of things as they were. She wondered -whether they had formulated any plans for living? Craig's bachelor -quarters, she pointed out, were scarcely adaptable for housekeeping, -and surely they would not care for hotel life or furnished apartments? -What they did want, she assumed, was an apartment of their own; that -is, eventually. But, again, did they at this time of such critical -importance in Craig's work, want the exhausting labor of house-hunting? -Her suggestion—she was diffident, but oh, not lukewarm, in broaching -it—was that for the time being they make the freest use of her much -too spacious home. Craig knew how burdensome the East Fifty-third -Street place had seemed to her since Mr. Van Ostade's death; he would -remember how often she had urged his sharing it. Well, why not now? -It need be only temporary, if they wished; merely for the critical -present. It could easily be arranged from a financial point of view. -When had he and she ever quarreled over money! And the domestic -problem was as simple. Wouldn't they consider it? She meant literally -<i>consider</i>, not decide. They could decide on the spot, for come to her -they must on their return. She claimed that of them at least. They -should be her guests first; then—but no more of that now.</p> - -<p>They read the letter shoulder to shoulder; and so, without speaking, -sat for a long moment after they reached the end.</p> - -<p>"Well?" he said at last, with a vain reading of the still face.</p> - -<p>"Well, Craig?"</p> - -<p>"Bully of her, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>She assented.</p> - -<p>"And practical," he added; "more practical than our air-castles, I dare -say."</p> - -<p>A quick fear caught at her throat.</p> - -<p>"Could you give them up, Craig?"</p> - -<p>"Give them up!" he exclaimed. "Give up the air-castles that we've -planned while drifting in the bay, roaming the fields, watching the -sunset from this dear window? Never! We'll have our own home yet. But -it does mean time, as Julie says, and this is a critical period in my -affairs. I feel it strongly."</p> - -<p>"And I."</p> - -<p>"It would be practical," he said again thoughtfully. "We must admit -it, Jean. How Julie seems to set her heart upon it! We owe her some -reparation, I suppose. We might—at least, till the portrait is under -way? Oh, but you must decide this point."</p> - -<p>"No," she answered. "Your work must decide. But need we worry over it -<i>now</i>?"</p> - -<p>"Indeed, we'll not," he declared. "When we reach town will be soon -enough, as Julie says. Come out for a row."</p> - -<p>The end of the honeymoon came sooner than they thought. A third missive -from Julie, laid before them at breakfast, asked when she might look -for them, and added that Mrs. Joyce-Reeves also wished enlightenment, -as she should soon be leaving town. Jean herself had urged a prompt -return for the portrait's sake, but it seemingly needed his sister's -spur to prick Craig to action. Time-tables immediately absorbed him. -Noon saw them in Boston and the evening in New York, where a week to -a day, almost to an hour, from the fateful dinner, they passed again -through Mrs. Van Ostade's door.</p> - -<p>Throughout the homeward journey Jean had shrunk from this moment, and, -though he said nothing, she divined that Craig himself dreaded facing -Julie. But the actual meeting held no terrors. Mrs. Van Ostade greeted -them cordially and at once led the way to the suite of rooms set apart -for their use.</p> - -<p>"This is your particular corner," she said at the threshold, "but the -whole house, remember, is yours."</p> - -<p>"My books!" exclaimed Atwood, bringing up in the little living-room, -the charm of which won Jean instantly. "My old French prints! Have you -moved me bag and baggage, Julie?"</p> - -<p>"I did send to your rooms for a few things to make you comfortable. -I think you'll find the essentials. Had I dared," she added, turning -smilingly on Jean, "I should have laid hands on your belongings, too."</p> - -<p>They came upon discovery after discovery as they traversed the -successive rooms. Julie's deft touch showed itself everywhere. Flowers -met them on every hand, and a great bowl of bride's roses lavished its -fragrance from Jean's own dressing-table. Her face went down among -their petals.</p> - -<p>"You don't mind?" murmured Julie at her side. "I wanted to do -something, belated as it seems."</p> - -<p>Atwood caught up one of the dainty trifles with which the -dressing-table was strewn.</p> - -<p>"See, Jean!" he called. "They're yours. This is your monogram."</p> - -<p>The remorseful lump in the girl's throat stifled speech.</p> - -<p>"You don't mind?" Julie repeated.</p> - -<p>Jean's response was mute, but convincing. Atwood went out precipitately -and closed the door upon his retreat.</p> - -<p>Nor did Mrs. Van Ostade's thoughtfulness stop at their welcome, or yet -at the almost imperceptible point where, the portrait deciding, their -status as guests changed to a relation less transient. It concerned -itself with the revision of Jean's wardrobe, with the more effective -dressing of her hair, with the minutiæ of calls and social usages, -intricate beyond her previous conception, but not lacking rime and -reason in her altered life.</p> - -<p>Jean had no galling sense of pupilage—the thing was too delicately -done. Often Julie's lessons took the sugar-coated form of a gentle -conspiracy against Craig, who, his sister confided, had in some -respects lapsed into a bohemianism which needed its corrective. A -portrait-painter, she reasoned, must defer to society more than -other artists. It was an essential part of his work to acquaint -himself sympathetically with the ways of the leisured class who made -his profession commercially possible. Mrs. Joyce-Reeves furnished -a concrete illustration. Even if the studio stairs had not proved -too great an obstacle for her years, how enormously more to Craig's -advantage it was that he could paint her here! Coming to this house, -his sitter entered no alien environment. She retained her atmosphere.</p> - -<p>"I make it a point to serve tea at their afternoon sittings," she -added. "And I try to chat with her whenever I can. It draws her out, -lets Craig see her as she really is, makes up for his lack of knowledge -of her individuality."</p> - -<p>Plastic as she was under coaching, Jean nursed a healthy doubt of the -wisdom of Mrs. Van Ostade's constant presence in the billiard-room over -the extension, which Atwood had chosen for the work because of its -excellent north light. When had he so changed that the chatter of a -third person helped him to paint?</p> - -<p>Moreover, Craig was openly dissatisfied.</p> - -<p>"I'm only marking time," he fretted, as he and Jean sat together -before the canvas after Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's third sitting. "All my -preconceived notions were merely blind scents. I'm not getting at the -woman behind."</p> - -<p>"Yet it's wonderfully like her," she encouraged, studying the strong, -mocking old face.</p> - -<p>"So are her photographs! Is that portraiture? Look at their stuff," he -cried, catching a handful of unmounted prints from a drawer. "See what -Huntington did with her girlhood! See Millais's woman of thirty! Look -at Zorn's great portrait! Take Sargent's!"</p> - -<p>"But none of them have painted her old age," she reminded. "You have -that advantage."</p> - -<p>"And what have I got out of it? Wrinkles!"</p> - -<p>Crossing Madison Square a day or two later, Jean met MacGregor. He had -congratulated them promptly by letter and sent them one of his desert -studies which he knew for a favorite; but she had not come face to -face with him since her marriage. She wanted to speak to him, for an -unfulfilled penance hung over her, and almost her first word was a -confession of her feeling that she had done Julie an injustice.</p> - -<p>He listened with a caustic stare.</p> - -<p>"Buried the hatchet?" he remarked.</p> - -<p>"If there ever was a hatchet. I'm not so sure there was. I think we -both misjudged her."</p> - -<p>"Both, eh!" snorted MacGregor, huffily. "I dare say. After all, I'm a -raw young thing with no experience."</p> - -<p>"No; seriously," Jean laughed.</p> - -<p>He changed the topic.</p> - -<p>"Is the portrait coming on?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Craig is despondent."</p> - -<p>"Good thing!" he ejaculated. "Stimulates the gray matter." His face -went awry, however, when she mentioned Julie's theory and practice. "So -it's the tea-drinking Mrs. Joyce-Reeves our mighty painter thinks most -important," he broke out acidly, after violent bottling of comment more -pungent. "Fine! What insight! What originality!"</p> - -<p>Jean's eyes snapped loyally.</p> - -<p>"Don't be disagreeable," she retorted. "You know Craig doesn't think -anything of the kind."</p> - -<p>They separated with scant courtesy, but she had not quitted the park -before MacGregor's tall figure again towered over her.</p> - -<p>"Enlighten the brute a little further," he said with elaborate -meekness. "What is to become of your work? Richter says you haven't -darkened his door since your marriage."</p> - -<p>"Four whole weeks!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, jeer away," he grumbled. "Honeymoon or not, it's too long."</p> - -<p>"I must think of Craig's interests first."</p> - -<p>MacGregor lifted his hat.</p> - -<p>"Your father also dabbled in clay—and matrimony, I believe," he said, -and left her definitely to herself.</p> - -<p>She admitted the justice of his reminder when her cheek cooled, and, -turning into a cross-town street, set a straight course for Richter's. -The swathed model of a colossal group called "Agriculture," which he -had in hand for a Western exposition, hid the sculptor as she pushed -open the door of the big studio, and when she finally came upon the -little man it was to discover Mrs. Joyce-Reeves beside him in close -examination of an uncovered bit of foreground where a child tumbled in -joyous, intimate communion with the soil.</p> - -<p>They broke out laughing at sight of Jean.</p> - -<p>"I told you I should ask Richter," declared the old lady, briskly. "His -answer was to show me this."</p> - -<p>Jean flushed at this indirect praise from the master.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Richter let me have a hand in it," she said.</p> - -<p>"A hand! He told me he should have had to leave the figure out -altogether if you had not experimented with the janitor's baby."</p> - -<p>The sculptor was now blushing, too.</p> - -<p>"He did not tell me," Jean laughed.</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you?" demanded Mrs. Joyce-Reeves, abruptly. "Why didn't you -encourage the girl?"</p> - -<p>"I think praise should be handled gingerly," he explained.</p> - -<p>"Is it such moral dynamite? I don't believe it."</p> - -<p>She beamed her approval of Jean's physical endowments as well, -lingering in particular upon her eyes. Suddenly she gave a little cluck -of surprise, whipped out a handkerchief, and laid it unceremoniously -across the girl's lower face.</p> - -<p>"Do you know Malcolm MacGregor?" she demanded. "Yes? Then I'm the owner -of your portrait. It's called 'The Lattice.' Atwood's wife, MacGregor's -inspiration, Richter's collaborator—my dear, you are very wonderful. -Shall I take you home? I've promised your husband a sitting."</p> - -<p>Jean said she must remain and work. She had thought only to run in and -appease Richter, but between his grudging praise and MacGregor's goad, -she found her fingers itching for the neglected tools; and she was into -her comprehensive studio-apron before Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's electric -brougham had purred halfway down the block. The sculptor squandered -no more compliments that day, however. Indeed, he swerved heavily -to the opposite extreme, but Jean dreamed audacious dreams over the -penitential copying of a battered antique, and the afternoon was far -gone when she reluctantly stopped work.</p> - -<p>Leaving Richter's door, she beheld her husband swinging gayly down the -street. He waved to her boyishly and quickened his step.</p> - -<p>"Good news?" she queried.</p> - -<p>"The very best," he said, seizing both her hands, to the lively -edification of two nursemaids, a policeman, and the driver of a passing -dray. "I've got my interpretation, Jean! Got it at last! And it came -through you!"</p> - -<p>For some reason, he told her, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves had arrived earlier -than her appointment. Julie was out, but luckily she caught him, and -so an hour of vast significance tamely began. By and by his sitter -mentioned Jean, her work, and Richter's opinions, and plied him with -kindly inquisitive questions about their love affair and elopement, -till—all in a lightning flash—it came to him that here, peeping -from behind the worldly old mask which everybody knew, was another, -unguessed Mrs. Joyce-Reeves with a schoolgirl's appetite for romance.</p> - -<p>"And that is what I want to paint," he declared. "Cynic on the surface, -romanticist at heart."</p> - -<p>The way home was too ridiculously short, and they pieced it out with -park and shop-window saunterings. The future was big with promise. Both -should wear the bays.</p> - -<p>"For something she dropped set me thinking," Atwood said. "She sees, -like all of us, that children are your forte, and she thinks that in -this day of child study, your talent can't fail to make its mark. The -janitor's baby seems to have swept her off her feet. She said the -janitors, proud race though they be, must not be allowed to monopolize -your time. Then she spoke of her great-grandchild, and I think there's -something in the wind."</p> - -<p>Jean trifled with the intoxicating possibilities for a dozen paces.</p> - -<p>"Oh," she said finally, as if shaking herself awake, "Richter would -never consent to my trying such things yet."</p> - -<p>They composed their frivolous faces under the solemn regard of Julie's -butler, who told Jean that a caller awaited her in the library.</p> - -<p>"A lady from out of town," he added.</p> - -<p>Jean wondered, "Why the library?" and, then, advancing, wondered again -as a silvery tinkle reached her ears; but the chief marvel of all was -the spectacle of Julie Van Ostade and Mrs. Fanshaw in amicable, even -intimate, converse over afternoon tea.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXV</p> - - -<p>Surprise held her at the threshold an instant, whereupon a rare, -beaming, even effusive, Mrs. Fanshaw, whom Jean's memories linked with -calls from the minister, bore down on her, two steps to her one, and -engulfed her in a prolonged embrace. Then, holding her daughter at -arm's length in swift appraisement of her dress and urban air,—</p> - -<p>"Death brought me," she explained.</p> - -<p>"Death!"</p> - -<p>"Your great-aunt Martha Tuttle died last Friday at brother Andrew's -in Paterson," she announced in lugubrious tones with which her blithe -visage could not instantly be brought in harmony. "I am on my way home -from the funeral."</p> - -<p>"I've been trying to persuade your mother to break her journey here for -a few days," Julie contributed, with a fugitive smile; "but she says -she must hurry away."</p> - -<p>"Amelia expects her little stranger any time now," murmured Mrs. -Fanshaw, chastely. "But I will stop overnight, perhaps part of -to-morrow, thanking you kindly, Mrs. Van Ostade."</p> - -<p>"Pray don't," deprecated Julie, moving toward the door. "This is -Jean's home, you know. Unfortunately, I'm dining out this evening."</p> - -<p>Jean learned of Mrs. Fanshaw's haste and Julie's engagement with equal -relief. She felt no snobbish shame for her mother's rusticity, but she -did fear her babbling tongue, and her first word on Julie's withdrawal -was one of caution.</p> - -<p>"Not a syllable about the refuge here," she charged. "Neither Craig nor -I wish Mrs. Van Ostade to know. Remember, mother."</p> - -<p>The visitor's eyes widened.</p> - -<p>"Oh," she observed slowly, "I don't see—"</p> - -<p>"We see," Jean cut her short. "You must respect my wishes in this."</p> - -<p>"All right," assented Mrs. Fanshaw, with amazing meekness. "Is your -husband on the premises?"</p> - -<p>"You will meet him soon," she replied, thinking it expedient that Julie -or herself should first give Atwood some hint of what lay in store.</p> - -<p>"He is really quite well known, isn't he? I've taken more notice of -magazine pictures since I heard I had another son-in-law. I hope he's -not wild. They tell of such goings-on among artists and models. I seem -to recollect, though, they were French."</p> - -<p>"Craig is a gentleman."</p> - -<p>"I'm bound to say his sister is a lady," Mrs. Fanshaw replied to this -laconic statement. "Is she any connection of that Mrs. Quentin Van -Ostade the papers mention so much?"</p> - -<p>"Julie is her daughter-in-law."</p> - -<p>"You don't tell me!" She was impressed to the verge of awe. "Why, that -makes you sister-in-law to Mrs. Quentin Van Ostade's son!"</p> - -<p>"He is dead."</p> - -<p>"Dead!" Her face paid the late Mr. Van Ostade the fleeting tribute of a -shadow. "What a pity! But I presume his mother still sees something of -his widow?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes."</p> - -<p>"And comes here sometimes?"</p> - -<p>"Frequently."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw resurveyed her surroundings as if they had taken on -historic interest.</p> - -<p>"You've seen her?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"I mean, really met her—been introduced?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," Jean admitted, without humility.</p> - -<p>Her mother eyed her with respectful interest.</p> - -<p>"I hope you'll keep your head, Jean," she admonished solemnly. "This is -a great come-up in the world for you."</p> - -<p>An impish impulse took shape in Jean's brain, and, under cover of -showing the house, she guided Mrs. Fanshaw by edifying stages to -Craig's temporary studio and the great work.</p> - -<p>"A portrait he's doing!" she dropped carelessly.</p> - -<p>Her mother as carelessly bestowed a brief glance upon the canvas.</p> - -<p>"What a wrinkled old woman," she commented, turning away. "But I -suppose it is the money your husband is thinking of?"</p> - -<p>"Partly."</p> - -<p>"What will he get for it?"</p> - -<p>Jean pondered demurely.</p> - -<p>"It is hard to say. Perhaps a thousand, perhaps two thousand dollars."</p> - -<p>"What!" She wheeled upon the portrait. "Why, who is the woman?"</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Joyce-Reeves."</p> - -<p>The effect was as dramatic as Jean's unfilial fancy had hoped.</p> - -<p>"The Mrs. Joyce-Reeves of Fifth Avenue and Newport?"</p> - -<p>"And of Lenox, Aiken, and Ormond—yes."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Fanshaw's attitude toward the portrait became reverential. Here -was hallowed ground!</p> - -<p>"Have you met <i>her</i>, too?" she asked finally, with the realization that -even her child might share the sacerdotal mysteries.</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"You have <i>talked</i> with her?"</p> - -<p>"Only this afternoon."</p> - -<p>"Here?"</p> - -<p>"She was here to-day, for a sitting, but I ran across her at Mr. -Richter's studio."</p> - -<p>"That is where you go to—"</p> - -<p>"To model; yes." Then, with great calm, "Mrs. Joyce-Reeves admires my -work."</p> - -<p>A chastened, pensive, almost deferential, being, who from time to time -stole puzzled glances at her ugly duckling turned swan, let herself be -shown to her room and smartened for dinner, to which she descended at -what seemed to her robust appetite an unconscionably late hour. Here -the fame of her son-in-law and the even more disconcerting attentions -of the butler combined to make her subjugation complete.</p> - -<p>Sweet as was her victory, however, Jean had no wish to see her mother -ill at ease, and she rejoiced when Craig exerted himself to entertain -this visitor whose subdued, almost shy, manner was so bewilderingly -at variance with the forbidding image his fancy had set up. Moreover, -he succeeded. If Mrs. Fanshaw's parochial outlook dulled the edge of -his choicer quips and anecdotes, his boyish charm, at least, required -no footnotes; and before the dinner ended she was bearing her gustful -share in the conversation with such largess of detail that a far less -imaginative listener than he might reconstruct therefrom the whole -social and economic fabric of Shawnee Springs.</p> - -<p>To Jean, who in dark moments had longed to forget it utterly, the -narrow little town recurred with sharp, unlovely lines. Forget it! She -could as easily forget that this was her mother. Flout it as she would, -it yet stood closer to her than any spot on earth. Its censure and its -respect were neither despicable; her rehabilitation in its purblind -eyes was a thing desirable above all other ambitions. Then, presently, -in this hour when she craved such justification deepest, its -possibility, even its certainty, came to her. She had slipped away to -answer one of the more imperative letters which Craig's detestation of -affairs left to her, and as she mused a moment over her finished task, -the drift of Mrs. Fanshaw's monologue in the room beyond penetrated her -revery.</p> - -<p>She was talking, as Jean had heard her talk times innumerable, with -endless variations upon a single theme. But the burden of her laud was -no longer Amelia! Now it was Jean—her childish spirit, her school-time -precocity, her early love of shaping things in clay, her promise, -her beauty, her future—Jean, always Jean! And as the girl at the -desk drank it in thirstily, she foresaw the end. Signs there had been -already that Amelia was wavering on her pedestal—her husband and her -husband's family, the proud Fargos, had impaired her sainthood; and now -in the tireless, fatuous, sweet refrain, Jean read her own elevation to -the vacant niche. Hot tears blinded her. It might not be her noblest -compensation; but it was the dearest.</p> - -<p>If Mrs. Fanshaw's coming marked the dawn of another day in Jean's -spirit, its effect on her external welfare was less happy. Her -relations with Julie were beyond question altered, though precisely -where the difference lay was not easy to detect. Intuition, rather than -any overt act or word of Mrs. Van Ostade's, told her this, for their -surface intercourse went on much as before; but, elusive and volatile -as this changed atmosphere was, she nevertheless knew it for something -real, alert, and vaguely hostile. Yet this aloofness, if aloofness it -could be called, was so bound up in Julie's propaganda on behalf of -Craig's career that Jean took it for a not unnatural jealousy.</p> - -<p>Atwood fed the flame with repeated acknowledgments of his wife's share -in solving his riddle, the fervor of which leaped from bud to bloom -with tropic extravagance as the portrait went rapidly forward and the -judgment of MacGregor and other experts assured him of its strength. -His sister, Jean noted, always took these outbursts in silence. The -portrait expressed a Mrs. Joyce-Reeves with whom she was unfamiliar, -either over the tea-cups or elsewhere, but she had the breadth to -recognize its bigness and set her restless energy to work to exploit it -with all her might.</p> - -<p>Of her methods Jean perhaps saw more than Mrs. Van Ostade supposed. For -a fortnight Atwood let the nearly finished portrait cool, as he said, -and busied himself at his regular studio with such illustrative work as -he was still under contract to deliver. This was Julie's opportunity. -That Atwood was painting Mrs. Joyce-Reeves was no secret—a discreet -paragraph or two had sown the seed of publicity in fertile ground; -and Julie furthermore let it leak out among those it might interest -that the sittings took place beneath her roof. Skillful playing of -influential callers who rose eagerly to allusions to the opinions of -the critics—Mr. Malcolm MacGregor, for example—would lead usually, -in strictest confidence, to a stolen view of the masterpiece. By such -devices—and others—it came to pass that Atwood, happily ignorant -of the wire-pulling which loosed the falling manna, found himself -commissioned to paint three more persons of consequence so soon as his -engagements to Mrs. Joyce-Reeves and the publishers would permit.</p> - -<p>Craig ascribed it all to society's proneness to follow its bell-wethers.</p> - -<p>"But I never gauged Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's true power, the magic of her -mere name," he said repeatedly. "Three orders on the bare gossip that -she has given me sittings!"</p> - -<p>Julie begged Jean not to undeceive him.</p> - -<p>"At least not yet," she qualified. "He is quixotic enough to throw his -chance away, if he thought I used a little business common sense to -make his art pay. I've never dared let him know the labor it cost to -interest Mrs. Joyce-Reeves. Not that it was illegitimate or in any way -underhanded. All this is as legitimate as the social pressure a clever -architect brings to bear, and nobody thinks of censuring. But illusions -are precious to Craig; they feed his inspiration. So I say, let him -enjoy them while he can. Let him think commissions drop from the skies."</p> - -<p>Jean doubted the truth of this estimate of Craig, but she did full -justice to Mrs. Van Ostade's motives and to the signal success of -her campaign which, for all she knew of such matters, might be, as -Julie said, legitimate, and at this time even vitally important. The -necessity for a change of studio, which now recurred, seemed logical, -too.</p> - -<p>"You now see for yourself, Craig, how unsuited to portrait work your -old quarters are," Julie argued.</p> - -<p>"Virginia Hepworth won't mind coming here—she is next, you know; but -you can't go on this way indefinitely. Of course, it's possible that -you may find it desirable to take a temporary studio at Newport for the -summer; but in the fall people will expect a city studio worthy of your -reputation."</p> - -<p>Atwood was tractable.</p> - -<p>"We must have a look around," he assented.</p> - -<p>"I have looked around," announced his sister; "and I've found something -you couldn't possibly better. It has every convenience—a splendid -workroom, a large reception-room, a dressing-room, and an extra chamber -which would be useful for the caterer when you receive. It will require -very little redecorating, though they're willing to do it throughout, -if we like."</p> - -<p>"That sounds like the Copley Studios."</p> - -<p>"It is."</p> - -<p>Atwood laughed.</p> - -<p>"Must it be the pink-tea district, after all, Julie? Boy in buttons at -the door, velvet-coated poseur—Artist with a capital <i>A</i>—in the holy -of holies. What will old Mac say! Jean, what do you think?"</p> - -<p>She felt Julie's compelling eye upon her, and resented its domination; -but she saw no choice of ways.</p> - -<p>"The velvet jacket isn't compulsory, is it?" she said lightly. "Why not -look at the studio?"</p> - -<p>"I'll drop in the first time I am near," he agreed.</p> - -<p>Julie coughed.</p> - -<p>"I ventured to make an appointment," she said. "They only show it by -special permission of the owners, the Peter Y. Satterlee Company. Mr. -Satterlee himself offered to be at the building at twelve o'clock -to-morrow, if that hour will suit. To deal with him in person would be -an advantage."</p> - -<p>"Would it?" responded Craig, hazily. "Very well. Can you go, Jean?"</p> - -<p>"If you want me," she returned, feeling outside the discussion.</p> - -<p>"Of course. I count on you and Julie to browbeat the real-estate shark -into reducing the summer's rent. All I shall be good for is to tell you -whether there is a practicable north light."</p> - -<p>Jean came late. Richter had abruptly taken her off the -spirit-mortifying antique to aid him with one of his lesser studies for -the Western exposition, and the forenoon had been absorbing. To watch -Richter model was much; to help him a heaven-sent boon to be exercised -in fear and trembling and exceeding joy. The stroke of twelve, which -should have found her with Craig, saw her but leaving Richter's door. -The distance was short, however, and at a quarter past the hour the -overupholstered elevator of the Copley Studios bore her without vulgar -haste aloft.</p> - -<p>It was all vastly different from Craig's unfashionable top-story back, -a mile or more down-town. No shabby street confronted this temple -of the fine arts; its benign façade overlooked a trim park and the -vehicles of elegant leisure. No base odor of cabbage or garlic rose -from the nether lair of its janitor; no plebeian tailor or dressmaker -debased the tone of its lower floors. Its courts were of marble, and -its flunkies had supple spines.</p> - -<p>The door to which Jean was directed stood ajar, and she let herself in -to encounter other mighty differences. The entrance to the down-town -studio precipitated the caller squarely into the travail of artistic -production, but the architect who planned the Copley Studios had -interposed a little hall with a stained-glass window-nook and a -reception-room of creamy empire fittings between genius and its -interruptions.</p> - -<p>From the studio proper issued Julie's level tones, presumably in -discussion with Peter Y. Satterlee, for Jean heard Craig's meditative -whistle in another direction. Following a small passage, she came upon -him studying the convolutions of a nervous jet of steam which found -vent among the myriad chimneys of the nearer outlook.</p> - -<p>"Will it do?" she smiled.</p> - -<p>"Splendidly—almost too splendidly. Julie and the magnificent Satterlee -are settling terms, I believe. Behold your studio, sculptress mine!" -he added with a grandiloquent gesture. "This is the extra chamber -of Julie's rhapsodies, otherwise a bachelor's bedroom about to be -dedicated to nobler ends. Notice your view, Jean! New York, the Hudson, -Jersey's hills, and the promise of sunsets beyond compare! And look -here"—descending to practicality—"running water handy and my workshop -next. We shall virtually work side by side."</p> - -<p>He pushed open the connecting door, and they entered the studio. -Julie and a globular man in superfine raiment stood like ill-balanced -caryatids in support of either end of the mantelpiece.</p> - -<p>"I agree to everything," he was saying. "The leases shall be ready -to-morrow."</p> - -<p>The voice signaled some cell in Jean's brain. The face, which he turned -immediately upon her, gave memory its instant clew, and she felt her -skin go hot and cold under Peter Y. Satterlee's earnest gaze.</p> - -<p>"Have you a double, Mrs. Atwood?" he asked, after a moment's idle -discussion of the studio.</p> - -<p>She tried to face him calmly.</p> - -<p>"A double? I think not."</p> - -<p>"Why?" demanded Julie.</p> - -<p>Satterlee pursued his investigations with maddening care.</p> - -<p>"It's a most extraordinary resemblance, particularly as to eyes," he -said. "There was a young woman, a dentist's wife, living in a Harlem -apartment of ours—the Lorna Doone, it was—who might be Mrs. Atwood's -twin. You didn't marry a widow, sir?" he broke off jocularly.</p> - -<p>Atwood laughingly shook his head.</p> - -<p>"How curious!" he exclaimed. "What was her name?"</p> - -<p>"There you have me," admitted the agent, after brain-fagging efforts. -"I can't recollect. I sold the property very soon."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXVI</p> - - -<p>Rid of them all, Jean was tormented by a host of replies and courses of -action, any one of which, she believed, would have blunted the edge of -Julie's suspicion. For she was suspicious! There could be no doubt of -it. To Craig she longed to offer some explanation, but her love bade -her reject anything short of the whole truth, even as it told her that -the whole truth was impossible. Every hour of her wedded happiness -heaped proof on proof of the joy he took in the belief that he alone -had filled her heart. And was he not right? Had not his dear image -persisted—canonized, enshrined, worshiped—since their forest meeting! -Paul had never displaced it. In truth, it had shone the brighter -because of Paul. But how put this holy mystery in words!</p> - -<p>She took refuge in an opportunism not unlike Amy's. Did not time and -chance rule the world! Yet her peace of mind was fitful, and she -shunned the Copley Studios with a fear which hearkened to no argument. -It was useless to remind herself that Satterlee was a man of many -interests. Her imagination always figured him as haunting the room -where she had come upon him. There he waited, a rotund bomb by the -mantelpiece, with the explosive "Bartlett" in his subconsciousness -ready to destroy her the instant her face should at last apply the -fatal spark. So it fell out that, pleading her own work whenever Craig, -himself absorbed in the Hepworth portrait, asked her opinion of his -sister's ideas, the new studio's furnishing went forward without her -and in unhampered accord with Julie's ambitious plans.</p> - -<p>How far-reaching these plans were she first adequately perceived -through MacGregor, whose card came up to her one evening when both -Atwood and Mrs. Van Ostade were out.</p> - -<p>"I counted on finding you alone," he owned with characteristic -bluntness. "Craig has gone to the Salmagundi doings, of course,—I'm -due there later; while I happen to know that Julie is dining with her -mother-in-law. I met Julie this afternoon at the Copley Studios."</p> - -<p>"Then you saw Craig's new quarters?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. Have you seen them?"</p> - -<p>"Why do you ask that question?"</p> - -<p>"I gathered that you hadn't."</p> - -<p>"I went there the day Craig took the place."</p> - -<p>"And have not returned! Why?"</p> - -<p>"I am working hard with Richter."</p> - -<p>"So he tells me. Don't overwork. Art isn't everything."</p> - -<p>"Aren't you inconsistent?" she laughed.</p> - -<p>"Lord, yes! Consistently inconsistent. Life would lose half its -sparkle, if I weren't. But the new studio; you should have a look in; -it would interest you. I don't often trouble the pink-tea district, -but an errand took me into the Copley building to-day just as Julie -entered, and she offered to show me through."</p> - -<p>His meditations became irksome.</p> - -<p>"Well?" Jean prompted.</p> - -<p>"Julie should have been a stage-manager," he said. "Her scenic instinct -is remarkable. She sees Craig's place peopled with a fashionable -portrait-painter's clientele, and has set her properties accordingly. -His Italian finds,—his tapestries, his old furniture, his Pompeian -bronzes,—the new grand piano, and the various other newnesses, all -present themselves as background for society drama. I take off my hat -to her. She, too, is an artist, an artist of imagination. It is all -perfectly done. Nothing lacks but the fashionable portrait-painter."</p> - -<p>"And the drama?" Jean suggested.</p> - -<p>"Oh, that is being looked after. She plans a house-warming of some -sort. You haven't been consulted?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"Neither has Craig, I dare say. Perhaps the idea only took shape -while she talked with me. I can't give you the technical name of the -function, but it will be worthy of the manager's reputation. The scheme -is to get Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's portrait, Miss Hepworth's, and mine—yes, -mine!—before as many as possible of the opulent beings who itch to -hand their empty faces down to posterity. By the way, I want to see the -Hepworth portrait."</p> - -<p>She took him to the billiard-room and brought the unfinished picture to -the easel. MacGregor turned off a warring light, chose a view-point, -bestrode a chair, and lapsed into a long silence. Jean tried to read -his rugged face, but finding it inscrutable, herself studied the -canvas. Fuller knowledge of Craig's sitter had failed to reveal the -qualities of mind he found so stimulating; but now, confronting the -immobile counterfeit, she hit with disturbing certainty upon the truth -that Virginia Hepworth's appeal was physical, and to men as men.</p> - -<p>A moment afterward MacGregor confirmed her intuition.</p> - -<p>"I don't know her any better," he said. "Outwardly she is the same -neurotic creature I've seen all along. Apathetic with other women, -she stirs to life and takes her tints from the particular male with -whom she chances to be. Craig has missed an opportunity to dissect a -chameleon."</p> - -<p>"You think it's a failure!"</p> - -<p>"Psychologically, I do; technically, no. In color, texture, it is -masterly. Don't distress yourself about its success; it will be only -too successful. I think it will even have the bad luck to be popular."</p> - -<p>Jean's loyalty rose to do battle.</p> - -<p>"It's to Craig's credit that he could not see her truly," she retorted. -"If she takes her tints from the man with whom she talks, then he has -painted into her something of himself, something fine. But wasn't it -hers for the moment? Why, then, shouldn't he show her at her best, not -her worst?"</p> - -<p>MacGregor laughed immoderately.</p> - -<p>"That is stanch and wifely and nonsensical. It is not a -portrait-painter's business to supply the virtues or the vices. His -palette ought to contain neither mud nor whitewash. It is his duty to -see things as they are."</p> - -<p>"But how can you expect Craig to see Miss Hepworth as she is? He's -not—"</p> - -<p>"Middle-aged, like myself," suggested MacGregor, as she hesitated. "Say -it! It makes your fling concrete, personal, feminine."</p> - -<p>Jean's wrath cooled in a smile.</p> - -<p>"I was going to add, cynical," she said. "Is that a personality?"</p> - -<p>"It's wide of the mark, whatever we call it. I'm no cynic. If I were, I -should merely stand by and laugh, not interfere."</p> - -<p>"Don't put it that way."</p> - -<p>"It amounts to interference. I can't cheat you, and I don't fool myself -into thinking my talk about Craig's work is impersonal. Neither is what -I say about Julie impersonal. Of course you've heard that she jilted -me for Van Ostade? Eh? I thought so. Don't think you must say you're -sorry," he protested hastily, as her lips parted. "I'm not sorry. -I'm thankful for my escape. That sounds bitter to you. Perhaps I am -bitter, but the bitterness is for myself, not her; and it doesn't sway -my judgment of her influence upon Craig by a hair's breadth. He thinks -it does, naturally, and he discounts my warnings. But I know, and -you <i>will</i> know, if you don't see it yet, that he must shake her off. -Otherwise he's damned."</p> - -<p>Jean kindled from his fiery earnestness.</p> - -<p>"What must I do?" she asked. "Do you think the new studio is a mistake?"</p> - -<p>"No; I don't say it is. Craig had to come uptown. I'm not maintaining, -either, that he can't paint under such conditions. Some men they -stimulate. It isn't the studio; it's the commercial campaign it stands -for which makes my gorge rise. Mind you, I don't censure Craig for not -grasping Miss Hepworth in character. His youth is responsible for that -fluke. But if he listens to Julie, he'll soon be painting everybody at -their best moments. He'll take orders like a factory—yes; and execute -then? like a factory—shallow, slap-dash, characterless vanities all -of a mould, which fools will buy and the future ignore. There is no -lost soul so tortured as the fashionable portrait-painter who has once -known honest work. You must save Craig from such a fate. Don't think he -is too strong to succumb. I've seen men with as much promise as his go -under. Help him keep his feeling fresh. See that he has time to linger -over and search out each subject. Make him paint even the mediocrities -as they are."</p> - -<p>"How shall I begin?"</p> - -<p>"Throw Julie overboard," answered MacGregor, instantly. "I did not come -here to mince words. I want to bring this home to you before I leave -the country. I sail for Africa day after to-morrow."</p> - -<p>"For Africa!"</p> - -<p>"Yes. This is good-by. A magazine has made me an offer I can't afford -to refuse."</p> - -<p>She was oppressed by a great loneliness.</p> - -<p>"Then I must fight it out single-handed," she said.</p> - -<p>"You would fight single-handed if I were here, I'm afraid. Nobody can -help you much. The most I can do is to try to convince you that you -must fight. You must show Julie her place, and show her soon. Don't be -soft-hearted about it. She's not soft, trust my word. You are dealing -with an enemy—understand it clearly. She is an enemy and a clever one. -Julie could not prevent your marriage, but she may break it."</p> - -<p>She paled at the conviction of his tone.</p> - -<p>"I can't believe it!"</p> - -<p>"Can't you? I tell you the process of alienation has begun. Doesn't -Craig think you indifferent about the studio?"</p> - -<p>"Perhaps. I had reasons—"</p> - -<p>"Chuck them away."</p> - -<p>"And he knows I've been busy with Richter. Craig himself is lukewarm -about the studio."</p> - -<p>"You must not be. It may be your battle-ground. I don't say it will; -but it may be, and it behooves you to look after your defences." He -glowered at the painted face a moment, then: "You may know that the -Chameleon was Julie's own choice for sister-in-law. Yes? It's a fact -worth thinking over. Good-by, Jean, and good luck! I haven't been -agreeable, but I've spoken as a friend. You feel that, I hope?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," she answered unsteadily; "and thank you."</p> - -<p>MacGregor winced as her voice broke.</p> - -<p>"Buck up, buck up!" he charged. "You'll win out, sure!"</p> - -<p>She brooded over his words till Atwood's return, but without seeing her -way, and a restless night suggested only courses too fantastic for the -light of day. She could not repeat MacGregor's warnings to Craig, nor -could she voice them as her own; while to attack Julie openly seemed -maddest of all. She could only drift and bide a time to assert herself -with dignity.</p> - -<p>Such a chance seemed to offer at luncheon when Mrs. Van Ostade asked -Craig for suggestions regarding the decoration of the small room off -the main studio.</p> - -<p>"It has never been done up, you know," she continued. "The last tenant -did not occupy it at all. We shall need it, however, and I think it -should be put in order at once. I'll use my own discretion, if you -don't want to be bothered."</p> - -<p>"But that is Jean's affair," he said.</p> - -<p>Julie's eyebrows arched.</p> - -<p>"Really!"</p> - -<p>"She and I settled it in the beginning that she should have that room -for her work."</p> - -<p>His sister drew her knife through an inoffensive chop with bloodthirsty -vehemence.</p> - -<p>"Indeed!" she returned.</p> - -<p>"I will look after its decoration," put in Jean, quietly.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Van Ostade's dusky skin shadowed with the dull red which marked -her infrequent flush.</p> - -<p>"It must be in harmony with the other rooms," she said sharply. "At -times it will be necessary to throw everything open."</p> - -<p>"Of course."</p> - -<p>"And it should be done immediately. In fact, Mr. Satterlee promised to -look in at the studio about it at five o'clock to-day."</p> - -<p>Jean was staggered, but she could not hesitate.</p> - -<p>"I will meet Mr. Satterlee," she answered.</p> - -<p>Julie's thin lips parted in a travesty of a smile.</p> - -<p>"You are sure it would be agreeable?" she asked.</p> - -<p>Atwood lifted his eyes at her tone.</p> - -<p>"Agreeable, Julie?" he said. "Why do you give the word that twist? Why -shouldn't it be agreeable?"</p> - -<p>Jean felt like an animal in a trap, but she faced Mrs. Van Ostade with -head erect and unflinching eyes.</p> - -<p>"Yes; why?" she demanded.</p> - -<p>Julie seemed to weigh a reply which prudent second thought bade her -check.</p> - -<p>"How tragic you two have suddenly become," she drawled. "Isn't it -possible that the exacting Richter may have a prior claim? I am only -too happy that Jean can find time to revisit the studio—and meet Mr. -Satterlee. I hope, Craig, you will be present yourself?"</p> - -<p>Atwood looked frankly distressed over the rancorous turn the discussion -had taken.</p> - -<p>"If you'll wait for me, Jean," he said, "we will walk over together. -Miss Hepworth is to give me a sitting at three."</p> - -<p>Jean went heavy-hearted to her room and flung herself down to wonder -dully how it would end. Drowsiness overtook her in these unprofitable -questionings, and, spent with her wearing night, she fell into a deep -slumber which shut out all thought till a knock called her back to face -reality smugly embodied in a servant with a card-tray.</p> - -<p>Paul! The bit of pasteboard fluttered to the floor. What brought him -here? Then, perceiving a gleam of human curiosity light the face of the -automaton with the tray, she gripped her self-control and bade the man -tell Bartlett that she would see him.</p> - -<p>"It's Amy," explained the dentist, rising from a respectful survey of -Mrs. Van Ostade's drawing-room. "Nothing will do her but that you must -come up to the flat. It isn't a thing I could 'phone or I wouldn't -have broken in on you like this, let alone hustling down here between -appointments and maybe missing other patients."</p> - -<p>"But what is it?"</p> - -<p>"The drummer. Amy thinks he means to shake her, and she's gone all to -pieces. I ran in there to ask for the rent, which is 'way behind, and -found her all in a heap. It was no place for P.B. Amy needs another -woman and needs her bad; and it seems to be up to you. I know it's -tough, asking you to go back to the Lorna Doone where every stick of -furniture—"</p> - -<p>"I'll go," she interrupted. "If Amy didn't need me, I know you would -not have come."</p> - -<p>"I'm afraid I can't wait to ride up with you," Paul apologized. "You -see, I'm only here between appointments, and—"</p> - -<p>"I understand. Besides, I must see Mr. Atwood first."</p> - -<p>She mounted hurriedly to the billiard-room where Craig must still be -at work, but hesitated on the threshold. The door was half open, and, -unseen herself, she saw both painter and sitter. Virginia Hepworth had -dropped her pose and had come behind Craig's chair. Neither spoke, -though his brush was idle. They merely faced the canvas in a silence, -the long-standing intimacy of which stabbed Jean with a jealous pang -and sent her away with her message unspoken.</p> - -<p>She trusted Craig, but she could not trust herself, and deemed it the -part of wisdom to leave word with the dispassionate butler that a -friend's sickness would prevent her going to the studio.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXVII</p> - - -<p>Jean entered the Lorna Doone with a sense of having known the -place in some former life. Its braggart onyx, its rugs, its palms, -all the veneer which went to make for "tone"—that fetich of the -dentist—greeted her with a luster scarcely dimmed; the negro hall-boy -flashed a toothful smile of recognition; and even a scratch, which -their moving had left on the green denim by the flat door, had its keen -associations.</p> - -<p>It was a relief to lay eyes upon Amy, who had no close relationship to -this dead yet risen past. Amy, poor wight, seemed related to nothing -familiar. Easily flooding tears, which gushed afresh at sight of Jean, -had washed her prettiness away.</p> - -<p>"I knew you'd come," she whispered, clinging desperately. "Paul thought -it was no use to ask, but I made him go. You're not mad at me, Jean, -for sending? I've nobody else—not a soul."</p> - -<p>Jean soothed her as she would a child, and leading her into a bedroom -close at hand, made her lie down. No sooner did her head touch the -pillow, however, than she struggled up again.</p> - -<p>"I can't lie still," she pleaded. "Don't make me lie still. I tossed -here all night. I can't rest, I must talk. I want you to know what's -happened. I want you to tell me what to do. I must do something. It -can't go on. I'll lose my mind. I'll die."</p> - -<p>Jean drew the woebegone figure to her.</p> - -<p>"Tell me, Amy," she said gently. "Perhaps it isn't as black as it -seems."</p> - -<p>Amy rocked herself disconsolately.</p> - -<p>"It's blacker than it seems," she lamented. "Oh, if I'd never taken -the flat! Fred never wanted me to do it. I've only myself to thank. I -didn't know when I was well off."</p> - -<p>"But what has the flat to do with your trouble?"</p> - -<p>"Everything. I thought it would be heaven to keep house,—my own -house,—but it's been a hell. Fred said we couldn't afford a girl, -though I never saw why, for he's done splendid in his new territory. -And he didn't like my cooking! I only learned the plain things at the -refuge, you know, and he's been pampered, living so much at hotels. -Somehow I never can do things his way. Traveling men think a lot of -their stomachs, and Fred is more particular than most."</p> - -<p>Jean began to comprehend the sordid little tragedy.</p> - -<p>"But you'll learn," she comforted. "Make Fred buy you a first-class -cook-book. Try the recipes by yourself till you succeed. Don't feed him -on the experiments."</p> - -<p>"I did try by myself. I practiced on a Welsh rabbit, and I thought I -had it down fine. So I surprised him one night after the theater when -he came home hungry. He said it wasn't fit for a h-h-hog!"</p> - -<p>Jean's indignation boiled over.</p> - -<p>"It was a thousand times too good for him," she cried.</p> - -<p>"Don't," begged Amy. "I didn't blame him after I tasted it. The thing -I do blame him for and can't bear is the way he criticises my looks. I -can't always look pretty and do my work. Fred seems to think I ought, -and is always holding up Stella to me without stopping to remember that -she has nothing to do but sing and change her clothes."</p> - -<p>"Stella! Do you let Stella Wilkes come here?"</p> - -<p>"Fred made me ask her. She's got a flat herself—just a common sort of -a place that she rents furnished, with two chorus-girls. She's making -money now. She left the Coney Island beer-hall for one of those cheap -Fourteenth Street theaters. Fred says she's bound to make a hit. He's -crazy about her,"—her voice rose to a wail,—"just crazy!"</p> - -<p>Jean held the shaking form closer.</p> - -<p>"Aren't you mistaken?" she said, without conviction.</p> - -<p>"Mistaken!" The girl wrenched herself erect. "Last night I saw her in -his arms."</p> - -<p>"Amy!"</p> - -<p>"I saw them—here—in my own house! Stella was here when Fred came home -from Newark—I guess she knew he was coming—and he made her take off -her things and stay to supper. It wasn't a good supper. The gas-range -wouldn't work, and I'd forgotten to put Fred's beer in the ice-box. I -was hot and cross from standing over the fire, and hadn't a minute to -do my hair. I saw Fred looking from me to Stella, who was dressed to -kill, and I knew what he thought. I could have cried right there. I -don't know how I got through the meal, but it ended somehow, and they -went off into the parlor, leaving me to clear away the things. I washed -the dishes up, for, company or not, I hate to let them stand over until -morning; and then fixed myself a little to go where they were. I must -have got through sooner than they expected. I saw him kiss her as plain -as I see you."</p> - -<p>"Did they know you saw them?"</p> - -<p>"I let them know," rejoined Amy, with a heart-breaking laugh. "I'll -bet her ears burn yet. I ordered her out of the house, and she went, -double-quick!"</p> - -<p>"And he?"</p> - -<p>The light died out of Amy's face.</p> - -<p>"Fred went, too," she said numbly. "I haven't seen him since. I'll -never see him again, I guess. I'm the most miserable girl alive! What -shall I do? What shall I do?"</p> - -<p>"Divorce the scoundrel," counseled Jean, promptly. "I'll take care of -the lawyer. I'll employ detectives, too, if you need more evidence, as -I suppose you will. He must be made to pay alimony. But you've nothing -to fear, even if you don't get a cent. You earned your living once; -you can do it again. Be rid of him at once."</p> - -<p>Amy turned her face away.</p> - -<p>"You don't know," she moaned.</p> - -<p>"What is it I don't know?"</p> - -<p>"The truth—the real truth."</p> - -<p>"You mean you still care for him?"</p> - -<p>"I do care for him—I always shall—but that's not what I mean. I can't -divorce Fred. I'm not—not his wife."</p> - -<p>Jean sprang to her feet.</p> - -<p>"You're not married!"</p> - -<p>A spasm of anguish racked the shrinking form.</p> - -<p>"Not—not yet."</p> - -<p>Jean stood in rigid dismay, striving to read this enigma.</p> - -<p>"Not yet," she repeated slowly. "Did you believe, Amy, <i>could</i> you -believe, he ever meant to deal honestly with you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes!" The girl turned passionately. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! -He couldn't at first. His wife had divorced him, and he wasn't allowed -to remarry for three years. The time wasn't up when we met again; it -wasn't up when we began to live together. It seemed so long to wait. I -trusted him. I loved him."</p> - -<p>"But now? He is free now?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"And does nothing!"</p> - -<p>"We—we put it off."</p> - -<p>"You mean, he put it off. Amy! Amy! Can't you realize that he is -worthless? Can't you understand that you must root him out of your -life? Face this like a brave woman. I'll help you make a fresh start. -Be independent. Cut yourself off from him completely. Do it now—now!"</p> - -<p>Amy's haggard eyes were unresponsive.</p> - -<p>"It's too late."</p> - -<p>"No, no!"</p> - -<p>"It's too late. I can't cut myself off from him. Jean!" Her voice -quavered to shrill intensity. "Jean! Don't you—don't you <i>see</i>!"</p> - -<p>Jean saw and was answered, and her womanhood bade her sweep the -weakling to her breast.</p> - -<p>"I've kept it from him," wept Amy. "He hates children about. I did not -dare tell him."</p> - -<p>"I dare," cried Jean, like a trumpet-call. "And I will."</p> - -<p>Her assurance quieted the girl like an anodyne, and presently she -slept. Sundown, twilight, and night succeeded. The watcher's muscles -grew cramped, but whenever she sought to loose the sleeper's clasp, -Amy whimpered like a feverish child, and so she sat compassionately on -aiding nature's healing work. Meanwhile she tried to frame her appeal -to the drummer. How or when she should reach him she knew not; Amy -must bring about a meeting. She did not believe that he had definitely -deserted his victim. His sample-cases in the hall, his innumerable -pipes, his clothing strewn about the bedroom, all argued a return. -She longed that he might come now while her wrath burned hottest and -she might scorch him to a sense of his infamy. It could be done. She -was confident that she could stir him somehow. Surely, he was not -all beast. Somewhere underneath the selfish hide lurked a torpid -microscopic soul, some germ of pity, some spark of manhood.</p> - -<p>Then Amy awoke, refreshed, heartened, yet still spineless, clinging, -and dependent; and Jean threw herself into the task of cheering this -mockery of a home. She made Amy bathe her dreadful eyes, arrange -her hair, don a dress the drummer liked; and then set her ordering -the neglected flat, while she herself conjured up a meal from the -unpromising materials which a search of the larder disclosed. The -little kitchen was haunted with ghosts of her other life. The dentist's -astonishing ice-cream freezer and the patent dish-washer stared her in -the face, and her hunt for the tea-canister revealed the kit of tools -she had bought to surprise him. Not a utensil hung here which was not -of their choosing.</p> - -<p>And so it was with the other rooms. When she came to lay the cloth, -its grape-vine pattern greeted her like a forgotten acquaintance; the -colonial sideboard and the massive table, as formerly, united to resist -invasion of their tiny stronghold. The silver candelabra, restored to -the giver, still flanked Grimes's Louis XV clock upon the mantelpiece; -the galaxy of American poets hung where she had appointed. The Jean -who had done these things, lived this existence, was a distant, shadowy -personality, and the feat of making her intelligible to another seemed -more than ever impossible. She rejoiced that she had locked this -chapter from Craig. Her present self was her real self, the Jean he -idealized, the real Jean.</p> - -<p>The belated supper braced Amy's mood. She became apologetic for the -drummer and sanguine of the future.</p> - -<p>"Don't be harsh with Fred," she entreated. "Tell him the truth, but -don't hurt his pride. Fred is so proud. He's the proudest man I ever -knew. Besides, I'm every bit as much to blame. Stroke him the right -way, and he'll do almost anything you want. I could have managed him, -if I'd been well. He means all right. He'll do right, too. I wish—I -wish you could see us married, Jean. If he would only come now, we -could get a minister in and have it over to-night."</p> - -<p>Jean hoped as fervently as Amy for the drummer's coming, and in this -hope lingered till she could wait no longer.</p> - -<p>"Go to bed," she charged. "Sitting up won't hurry him home. If -he comes, don't weep, don't reproach him, don't plead with him, -don't—above all—don't apologize. Keep him guessing for once, and -leave the talking to me. Find out in some way where I can see him. If -he will be home to-morrow evening, I'll come here; if there's a chance -of catching him earlier at the office of his firm, let me know and I'll -go there. Meanwhile say nothing, but look your best."</p> - -<p>Amy promised all things, and Jean hurried out, horrified at the -lateness of the hour. The long down-town journey at this hour daunted -her till she shook off the atmosphere of the Lorna Doone sufficiently -to recall that penny-saving was no more a vital factor in her life. -Cabs were not wont to stalk custom in this neighborhood, however, and -even a search of the nearest cross-street, where business predominated, -was fruitless. As she hesitated, scouring the scene, the attentions of -a group of corner loafers became pointed, and, believing one of them -about to accost her, she darted down a convenient stair of the subway -and boarded a train which was just about to depart. She rode past two -stations before she discovered that in her haste she had entered from -an uptown platform.</p> - -<p>Dismounting, she began a wait in the whited suffocating cavern, which -seemed endless. Under the hard glitter of the arc-lights the raw -flamboyant advertisements of soaps, whiskies, hair tonics, liver pills, -and department-store specials became a physical pain. The voices of -the ticket-choppers, gossiping across the tracks of the President whom -they called by a diminutive of his first name, were like the drone -of monster flies in a bottle. Then the green and yellow eyes of her -dilatory train gleamed far down the tunnel, and the rails quickened -and murmured under its onset. This show of speed was delusive, -however. They halted leisurely at platforms where no one got off or -on, and loitered mysteriously in the bowels of the earth where were no -stations whatsoever. The system seemed hopelessly out of joint and the -handful of passengers sighed or swore, according to sex, and tried with -grotesque noddings to nap through the tedious delays. Then more waits -and more stations succeeded, and the ranks of the sufferers thinned -until only Jean and a red-nosed woman, who smelled of gin and thirsted -for conversation, were left.</p> - -<p>At last came release, and, spurred forward by the waxing friendliness -of the red-nose, who also alighted, she hurried to the surface. The -remaining distance was short, and in five minutes she was rummaging her -shopping-bag for a latch-key. The servants were of course abed. Not a -light was visible. All the house apparently slumbered in after-midnight -peace. She experienced a burglarious sense of adventure in fitting her -key to the lock, and a guilty start when the heavy door escaped her -fingers and shut with a resounding slam. At the same instant a light -streamed from the library at the farther end of the hall, disclosing -Julie haughtily erect in the opening, and Craig's stricken face just -behind.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXVIII</p> - - -<p>"It is I, Craig," Jean called. "Surely you haven't worried?"</p> - -<p>The man groaned.</p> - -<p>"Worried!" he cried. "What does it all mean, Jean?"</p> - -<p>He would have come out to her, but Julie laid a restraining hand on his -sleeve, saying,—</p> - -<p>"Keep yourself in hand, Craig dear."</p> - -<p>Jean moved quickly down the hall and confronted them.</p> - -<p>"What is this mystery?" she demanded. "Did not the servant deliver my -message?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Van Ostade signed for her to enter the library. She passed in with -a bewildered look at Atwood, who walked uncertainly to the fireplace -and stood gazing down into its lifeless grate. His sister shut the door -and put her back against it.</p> - -<p>"Didn't you receive my message?" Jean again addressed Craig. "Miss -Hepworth was with you, and I disliked to interrupt. There was no time -for a note. I left too hurriedly."</p> - -<p>"With whom?" The question was Julie's and was delivered like a blow.</p> - -<p>Jean faced her.</p> - -<p>"I went alone," she replied quietly. "Does it matter?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Van Ostade flung out an imperious finger.</p> - -<p>"Read that card beside you on the desk," she directed. "'Paul Bartlett, -D.D.S. Crown and bridge work a specialty,' Do you deny meeting that -person to-day?"</p> - -<p>"Certainly not. He brought word that a sick friend needed me, and left -immediately afterward."</p> - -<p>"And you have not seen him since?"</p> - -<p>"No." Her denial rang out emphatically. "Craig," she appealed, "what is -the meaning of this catechism? I have been with Amy ever since I left -the house. She is in great trouble. It is a terrible story."</p> - -<p>"It is indeed," struck in Julie. "Do you swallow it, Craig? Can -anybody! Perhaps now you will begin to use the reasoning powers which -your infatuation for this adventuress has clouded. How could you ever -have trusted her! Wasn't the bare fact of the reformatory enough?"</p> - -<p>"Craig!" Appeal, reproach, anguish, all blended in that bitter cry.</p> - -<p>Atwood disclaimed responsibility with a gesture.</p> - -<p>"Your mother," he said.</p> - -<p>"Yes; your mother," Julie echoed. "Before she sat ten minutes in this -room she had told all she knew—do you understand me?—<i>all she knew</i>! -I was your friend till then. I don't pretend I was not cut to the heart -by Craig's mad marriage. I would have given my right hand to prevent -it. Hadn't I seen you before you ever entered his studio? Didn't I know -how vulgar your associates were? Perhaps your 'Amy' was the drunken -little fool who created a scene in the restaurant where I made your -acquaintance? But I tried to put that out of mind when I accepted the -marriage. I took you into my own home; I hoped to school you to fill -your new place in life worthily."</p> - -<p>"And have I not?" Jean interpolated proudly. "Have I shamed you or him?"</p> - -<p>Julie scorned reply.</p> - -<p>"But I knew nothing of the refuge story," she railed on. "I never -suspected the awful truth when you evaded every question I asked about -your girlhood. I knew your past had been common; I could not dream it -had also been criminal."</p> - -<p>"Julie!" Atwood entreated.</p> - -<p>"The time has come for plain dealing," she answered him. "You will live -to thank me for opening your eyes."</p> - -<p>Jean took a step nearer her accuser.</p> - -<p>"Let her go on," she challenged contemptuously. "She only distorts what -I have told you already."</p> - -<p>Julie's dark face grew thunderous.</p> - -<p>"Do I!" she retorted. "Let us see. What have you told Craig of this man -Bartlett? What have you told him of the flat at the Lorna Doone? Where -are your glib answers now? Can you suppose that, knowing your history, -I would suspect nothing when Satterlee put you out of countenance at -the Copley Studios? A double, indeed! From that moment you avoided -the place. From that moment every shift of yours strengthened my -belief that I had stumbled on one more murky chapter of your life. -Satterlee's memory improved; he recalled your twin's name. Thereafter -my investigations were child's play. Can you, dare you, deny that you -were known at the Lorna Doone as Bartlett's wife?"</p> - -<p>Jean's face grew pale; Craig's, her agonized glance perceived, was -whiter still.</p> - -<p>"It was a mistake," she answered. "They thought—"</p> - -<p>"Ah!" Julie's cry was long-drawn, triumphant. "Do you hear, Craig? She -admits that she was known as Mrs. Bartlett. My poor brother! By her own -confession you have married either a discarded mistress or a bigamist!"</p> - -<p>Jean's brain whirled. That passion could put such a monstrous -construction on her conduct, passed belief.</p> - -<p>"Lies!" she gasped.</p> - -<p>"Prove them false!"</p> - -<p>"Lies, cruel lies!"</p> - -<p>Atwood sprang to her side.</p> - -<p>"I could not believe them, Jean," he cried. "You are too honest, too -pure—"</p> - -<p>"Prove them false!" Julie challenged again.</p> - -<p>Jean turned her back upon her.</p> - -<p>"This is between you and me, Craig," she pleaded, struggling for -self-control. "I am the honest woman you have always believed me. I -have concealed nothing shameful. My only thought was to spare you pain. -You shall know now, everything; but it is a story for your ears alone. -It concerns us only, dear, our happiness, our love."</p> - -<p>He cast a look of entreaty at Julie, who met it with an acid smile.</p> - -<p>"You are wax in her hands," she taunted. "She can cajole you into -thinking black is white."</p> - -<p>"No, no," he protested. "You are unjust to her, Julie. I know her as -you cannot. She is the soul of truth."</p> - -<p>Jean's heart leaped at his words.</p> - -<p>"God bless you for that!" she exclaimed. "Let her hear, then! Why -should I fear her now?"</p> - -<p>The dentist's attentions at the boarding-house, their walks and -theater-goings, his help when the department store cast her out, -their engagement, the taking and furnishing of a flat, the apparition -of Stella, the confession and the crash—all she touched upon -without false shame, without attempt to gloss her free agency and -responsibility. She dealt gently with Paul, magnifying his virtues, -palliating his great fault, bearing witness to the sincerity of his -remorse. But Craig she could not spare, pity him as she might. She saw -his drawn face wince as if under bodily pain, and before she ended he -was groping for a chair. She perceived, as she had feared, that an -ideal was gone from him, perhaps the dearest ideal of all; yet she did -not realize what a blow she had struck this stunned, flaccid figure -with averted head, till, breaking the long silence which oppressed the -room when she had done, he asked,—</p> - -<p>"Did you love this man, Jean?"</p> - -<p>She weighed her answer painfully.</p> - -<p>"Not as we know love, Craig," she said.</p> - -<p>"You would have sold yourself for a home—for a flat in the Lorna -Doone! Where was your remembrance of the birches then?"</p> - -<p>She forgave the words in pity for the pain which begot them. She forgot -Julie. Nothing in life mattered, if love were lost. A great devouring -fear lest he slip from her drove her forward and flung her kneeling at -his side.</p> - -<p>"You were with me always, Craig, always," she said brokenly. "Is it -too hard to believe? If you try to paint an ideal and the picture -falls short, does that make your ideal less dear? What hope had I -ever to meet you again? How could I dream that I stood for more in -your thoughts than a heedless fugitive of whom you were well rid? You -could not know that you had given me courage for the guardhouse and -the prison; made me strive to become the girl you thought me; changed -the whole trend of my foolish life! How then have I been unfaithful? -Was it treachery to you, whom I never looked to see again, that when a -good man—yes; at heart, Paul is a good man—offered me a way of escape -I should take it? You ask me if I would have sold myself for a home, -for that poor little flat in the Lorna Doone whose cheapness I never -appreciated till to-night—I answer no. I know now that I did not love -him; but I did not know it then. It was left for you to teach me."</p> - -<p>He made no response when she ceased. His hands lay nerveless under -hers; his eyes still brooded on the fireless hearth. So for a hundred -heart-beats they remained together.</p> - -<p>"You believe me, Craig?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," he wrenched forth at last.</p> - -<p>Jean slowly withdrew her hands.</p> - -<p>"But you cannot wholly forgive?"</p> - -<p>He had no answer.</p> - -<p>"I can say no more," she added, rising; and came again face to face -with Julie, who made way for her at the door. "I leave your house -to-morrow, Mrs. Van Ostade. If I could, I would go to-night."</p> - -<p>Free of gnawing secrecies at last! The thought brought a specious sense -of peace. Julie's yoke broken! Her step on the stair grew buoyant. The -battle desired by MacGregor had been fought. Precipitated by causes -with which neither had reckoned, waged with a fierce heat alien to art, -Craig's emancipation had nevertheless been at stake. The break had -come, and it was beyond remedy. He must cleave to his wife.</p> - -<p>Too excited for sleep, she began at once her preparations for quitting -Julie's hateful roof, and one after another overcame the obstacles -which packing in the small hours entailed. Each overflowing chair, -every yawning door and drawer, testified the increased complexity -of her life and the bigness of her task. The bride of a single -dinner-dress had become under Craig's lavish generosity the mistress of -great possessions. There were gowns of many uses and many hues; hats -and blouses in extravagant number; shoes—a little regiment of shoes -aligned neatly in their trees; costly trifles for her desk; books and -pictures in breath-taking profusion.</p> - -<p>She now remembered that her one trunk, with Craig's many upon which -she depended, was stored on the top floor, and she debated whether to -wake one of the servants or await her husband's help. In the end she -did neither. She disliked Mrs. Van Ostade's servants, one and all, -suspecting them of tale-bearing, and after a vain wait for Craig, who -still lingered below, she went about the business for herself. It -was a difficult matter to accomplish without rousing the house, and -when, after much travail of mind and disused muscle, she effected the -transfer of her own trunk, she was tempted to do what she could with -it and let her other belongings follow as they might. This course, -also, she rejected. Nothing except a complete evacuation would satisfy, -and she craved the joy of leaving Julie's bridal gift conspicuously -unpacked.</p> - -<p>By three o'clock all was done, and as she flung herself wearily upon -her bed she heard Craig's leaden step mount the stair. He entered -their living-room, which, save for one or two small articles he would -scarcely miss, she had not dismantled, switched on the electricity, and -after a pause closed the door of the dressing-room connecting with the -darkened chamber where she lay. Jean heard him light a cigarette and -drop heavily into a chair, which he abandoned almost at once to pace -the floor. The sound of his pacing went on and on, varied only by the -scrape of matches as he lit cigarette after cigarette, the penetrating -oriental scent of which began in time to seep into her own room and -infect her with his unrest.</p> - -<p>She took alarm to find him so implacable. Did his sister sway him -still? Had Julie poisoned the truth with the acid of her hate? Might -she lose him after all? She could scarcely keep herself from calling -his name. And the monotonous footfall went on and on, on and on, -trampling her heart, grinding its iteration into her sick brain. Then, -when it seemed endurable no longer, it became a sedative, and she slept -to dream that she was a new inmate of Cottage No. 6, with a tyrannous, -vindictive matron whose face was the face of Julie Van Ostade.</p> - -<p>She stirred with the day and lay with shut eyes, tasting the blissful -reality of familiar things. This was no cell-like room, no refuge -pallet. She had only to stretch out her hand—thus—to the bed beside -her own, and touch—? Nothing! Craig's bed stood precisely as the maid -had prepared it for his coming. Was he pacing yet? She listened, but -no sound came. Creeping to the living-room door she listened again; -then turned the knob. Empty! The untouched pillows of the divan, the -overflowing ash-tray, the lingering haze, bespoke an all-night vigil. -He had not only let the sun go down upon his wrath, he had watched it -rise again! An answering glow kindled in her bruised pride.</p> - -<p>Left rudderless by his silence, she cast about eagerly for some new -plan of action while she dressed. Last night she had meant to order -her things sent to the studio until they could plan the future, but -that course seemed feasible no longer. She searched her pocketbook for -funds and found only tickets for a popular comedy. She smiled upon them -grimly. Comedy, forsooth! Here was more comic stuff—the screaming -farce of woman's lot! Flouted, she had no choice but to fold her hands -and wait while the dominant male in his wisdom decided her destiny.</p> - -<p>At her accustomed hour she touched the bell for her coffee, and with -sharpened observation saw at once that, unlike other days, the tray -held but a single service.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Atwood breakfasted downstairs?" she said carelessly.</p> - -<p>The maid's eyes roved the dissipated scene of Atwood's reflections and -lit upon a strapped trunk which Jean had for convenience pulled into -the dressing-room.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Craig came down very early."</p> - -<p>"Did he go out?"</p> - -<p>"More than an hour ago."</p> - -<p>Jean let the coffee go cold and crumbled her toast untasted. How could -she endure this passivity! Must she forever be the spectator? Amidst -these drab reveries her eyes rested for some minutes upon the topmost -of the morning papers, which the maid had brought as usual with the -breakfast, before one of its by no means modest head-lines resolved -itself into the words,—</p> - -<p class="ph2">MURDERED IN CENTRAL PARK</p> - -<p>Then a familiar name and a familiar address leaped from the context, -and she seized breathlessly upon the brief double-leaded paragraph and -read it twice from end to end.</p> - -<p>"The northern extremity of Central Park," ran the account, "became last -night the scene of a tragedy which its loneliness and insufficient -lighting have long invited. Shortly after midnight the body of Frederic -Chapman, a commercial traveler in the employ of Webster, Cassell & Co., -residing in the Lorna Doone apartments, not ten blocks from the spot -where he met his death, was found with a bullet through the heart. Up -to the time of going to press, no trace of the murderer or weapon had -been discovered, although the physician summoned by Officer Burns, who -came upon the body in his regular rounds, was of the opinion that life -had been extinct less than an hour. Both precinct and central office -detectives are at work upon the case. Mr. Chapman leaves a young -widow, who is prostrated by the blow."</p> - -<p>Jean sprang to her feet, her own woes forgotten in her horrified -perception of Amy's dire need. Tearing out the paragraph, she penciled -across its head-lines, "I have gone to her," and enclosing it in an -envelope addressed to Atwood, set it conspicuously on his desk.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXIX</p> - - -<p>Early as she reached the Lorna Doone, Jean found others before her, -drawn by the morbid lure of sudden death. The hawkers of "extras" -already filled the street with their cries; open-mouthed children -swarmed about the entrance of the apartment-house as if this, not the -park, were the historic ground; while Amy's narrow hall was choked with -reporters, amidst whom Amy herself, colorless, bright-eyed, babbled -wearilessly of the drummer's virtues.</p> - -<p>"He was the best salesman they ever had," she was saying. "Put that -in the paper, won't you? In another year he'd most likely have had an -interest in the business. They couldn't get along without him, they -said. He was the best salesman they ever had. People just had to buy -when Fred called. He seemed to hypnotize customers. One man—" and she -rambled into the story of a conquest, beginning nowhere and ending in -fatuity with the unceasing refrain, "He was the best salesman they ever -had."</p> - -<p>The sight of Jean shunted her from this theme to self-pity. She clung -to her hysterically, declaring she was her only friend and calling upon -the reporters to witness what a friend she was! They had, of course, -heard of Francis Craig Atwood, the great artist? This was his wife—her -old friend, her only friend. Jean urged her gently toward the bedroom, -and, shutting the door upon her, turned and asked the pressmen to go. -They assented and left immediately, save one of boyish face who delayed -some minutes for sympathetic comment on the tragedy.</p> - -<p>"I'm only a cub reporter, Mrs. Atwood," he added, "and I have to take -back something. That's the rule in our office—get the story or get -out. Poor Mrs. Chapman was too upset to give me anything of value. -Perhaps you'd be willing to help me make good?"</p> - -<p>"I know nothing but what the papers have told," Jean replied.</p> - -<p>"I don't mean the shooting—merely a fact or two about Mr. and Mrs. -Chapman, whom you know so well. When were they married?"</p> - -<p>"I can't tell you," she said hastily. "I—I was not present."</p> - -<p>"But approximately? I don't want the dates. She looks a bride, and you -know the public is interested in brides. They haven't lived here long, -I suppose?"</p> - -<p>"No; not long," she assented, thankful for the loophole; "a few weeks."</p> - -<p>"This was their first home?"</p> - -<p>"Practically. They boarded for a time. Excuse me now, please. You must -see how much she needs me."</p> - -<p>"She is lucky to have you, Mrs. Atwood. Girlhood friends, I presume?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, yes. Go now, please."</p> - -<p>She turned him out at last and paused an instant to brace her nerves -before joining Amy. At the far end of the hall the parlor door stood -ajar, and she saw with a shiver that the shades were down. Then Amy -peered from the bedroom in search of her, a grief-stricken figure with -wringing hands.</p> - -<p>"Don't keep me in here," she moaned. "Let me walk, walk." And she moved -toward the darkened room.</p> - -<p>"Not there!" Jean cried, preventing her. "Not there!"</p> - -<p>Amy stared an instant and then uttered a laugh more terrible than tears.</p> - -<p>"He is not in the parlor," she replied. "They took him to an -undertaker's. There's a man—I forgot to tell you—there's a man from -the undertaker's here now. He wants clothes, black clothes. He's in -the spare room, hunting. I—I couldn't touch them. I told him to look -for himself. You help him, Jean. I couldn't touch Fred's things. It -seemed—oh, I just couldn't!"</p> - -<p>Jean let her wander where she would, and opened the guest-room door. A -heavy-jowled man pivoted about at her entrance and stuffed a handful of -letters into a pocket of one of the dead drummer's coats. The garment -was not black.</p> - -<p>"What are you doing there?" she demanded. "That coat might answer for a -horse-race, not a funeral."</p> - -<p>The man had a glib answer ready.</p> - -<p>"I took it down to look behind," he said. "The letters fell out."</p> - -<p>She doubted his word and, walking to the closet, made a selection from -the more sober wear.</p> - -<p>"Take these," she ordered.</p> - -<p>He thanked her, gathered the clothing together, and left the room; and -she heard the hall door close after him while she lingered a moment to -replace the things his rummaging had disturbed. Coming out herself, the -first object to meet her eye was a telltale bit of cloth protruding -from the umbrella-rack, into which, she promptly discovered, the -supposed undertaker's assistant had stuffed every article she had given -him. The sight unnerved her, and she sought Amy in the parlor and told -her what she had seen.</p> - -<p>"Don't let people in here," she warned. "The man was, of course, a -reporter. No experienced detective would have left the clothes behind."</p> - -<p>Amy plucked at her throat as if stifled.</p> - -<p>"What did he w-want?" she chattered. "What did he want?"</p> - -<p>"Scandal, probably."</p> - -<p>"You think so?" whispered the girl, ghastly white. "You think so? You -don't suppose he came because—because he suspects—"</p> - -<p>"Suspects whom?"</p> - -<p>"Me!" she wailed, her cry trembling to a shriek. "Me! Me! Me! I did it, -Jean. I shot him. I killed Fred. I'm the one. I—"</p> - -<p>Jean clapped a hand over her mouth.</p> - -<p>"Hush!" she implored. "You're mad!"</p> - -<p>Amy tore herself free and dropped huddled to the floor.</p> - -<p>"I'm not mad. I wish I were. They'd only lock me up, if I were mad. Now -they'll kill me, too."</p> - -<p>Jean shook her roughly.</p> - -<p>"Stop!" she commanded. "Some one might overhear and believe you. Don't -say such things. It's dangerous."</p> - -<p>Amy threw back her head with a repetition of her awful laugh.</p> - -<p>"You don't believe me!" she cried. "I'll make you believe me. Listen: -He came home last night after you left. You hadn't been gone ten -minutes when he came. He'd been drinking, but he was good-natured, and -I thought I would speak to him myself. It didn't seem as if I could -wait for you to speak to him, Jean. I thought I could manage it—he was -so good-natured—and so I asked him to make me an honest woman. I never -mentioned the baby—then! And I wasn't cross or mean with him. I asked -him as nice as I knew how. But he wouldn't listen—it was the drink in -him—and he struck me. Fred never struck me before in his life. He was -always such a gentleman. It was the drink in him made him strike me. -After that I went into the bedroom and cried, and I heard him go to the -sideboard and pour out more whisky. He did it twice. By and by he came -into the hall and took his hat, and I called to him and asked him not -to go out again. I said I was sorry for bothering him; but he went out -just the same. Then I followed. I knew, I don't know how, but I knew he -was going to Stella's, and it didn't seem, after all I'd been through, -I could stand for it. Sure enough, he turned down the avenue toward -that flat of hers I told you about, with me after him keeping on the -other side. I lagged behind a little when he reached Stella's street, -for it was lighter by her door than on the avenue, and when I got -around the corner he wasn't anywhere to be seen, and I knew for certain -he'd gone in at her number. I'd been trembling all over up to then, but -now I felt bold as a lion, I was so mad, and I marched straight up to -the house myself. I decided I wouldn't ring her bell—it's just one of -those common flat-houses without an elevator—but somebody else's, and -then, after the catch was pulled, go up and take them by surprise.</p> - -<p>"I was half running when I came to the steps, and before I could stop -myself, or hide, or do anything, I banged right into Fred, who hadn't -been able to get in at all and was coming away. His face was terrible -when he saw who it was, but I wasn't afraid of him any more and told -him he'd got to hear something now that would bring him to his senses, -if anything could. He saw I meant business and said, 'Oh, well, spit -it out!' But just then some people came along and walked close behind -us all the way to the corner. The avenue was full of people, too, for -the show at that little concert-hall near the park entrance was just -over, so we crossed into the park to be by ourselves. We were quite -a way in before I spoke, for I was thinking what to say, and finally -when Fred said he wasn't going a step farther, I up and told him about -the baby. He said that was a likely story and started to pull away, -and then—then I took out the pistol. It was Fred's six-shooter; he'd -kept it in the top bureau drawer ever since the last scare about -burglars, and I caught it up when I followed him out. I didn't mean it -for him. I only meant to shoot myself, if he wouldn't do right by me -when he'd heard the truth. But he thought I wanted to kill him, and he -grabbed hold of my arm to get it away. Then, somehow, all of a sudden -it was done, and there he was lying across the path with his head in -the grass. I don't know how long I stood there, or why I didn't kill -myself. I ought to have shot myself right there. But I only stood, -numb-like, till all at once I got frightened and began to run. I ran -along by the lake and threw the revolver in the water, and went out of -the park by another entrance and came back here. Nobody saw me go out; -nobody saw me come in. The elevator boy goes home at twelve o'clock. I -guess you believe me now, don't you?"</p> - -<p>Jean froze before the horror of it. While she mechanically soothed the -hapless creature who, her secret out, had relapsed into ungovernable -hysteria wherein Fred's praises alternated with shuddering terror of -the future, her own thoughts crowded in a disorder almost as chaotic. -She faced a crime, and yet no crime. Must she bid Amy give herself up -to the law? Must this frail girl undergo the torture of imprisonment -and trial for having served as little more than the passive tool -of circumstance? If they held their peace, the mystery might never -be cleared. Would justice suffer greatly by such silence? But Amy -would suffer! The fear of discovery—the fear Jean herself knew so -well—would dog her to her grave. To trust the law was the frank -course, but would the law—blind, clumsy, fallible Law whose heavy hand -had all but spoiled her own life—would the law believe Amy had gone -out, carrying a weapon, without intent to do murder? The dilemma was -too cruel.</p> - -<p>The door-bell bored itself into her consciousness, and she went out to -confront more reporters.</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Chapman is too ill to see you," she said curtly.</p> - -<p>"But it's you we want to see," returned one, whose face she recalled -from the earlier invasion. "There are new developments, and we'd like -to have your comment. It's of public interest, Mrs. Atwood."</p> - -<p>Her anger flamed out against them.</p> - -<p>"What have I to do with your public?" she demanded. "I have nothing to -say to it."</p> - -<p>"But you consented to an interview this morning," rejoined the -spokesman for the group. "Why do you object to another?"</p> - -<p>"I consented to an interview!"</p> - -<p>"Here you are," he said, producing one of the more sensational -newspapers. "'The beautiful wife of the well-known illustrator, Francis -Craig Atwood, has been with the heart-broken little bride since early -morning. Mrs. Atwood and Mrs. Chapman were schoolgirl chums whose -friendship has endured to be a solace in this crushing hour. Mrs. -Atwood brokenly expressed her horror at the catastrophe and added one -or two touching details concerning the Chapmans' ideal married life. -Their wedding—'"</p> - -<p>Jean seized the cub reporter's "story" and read it for herself. The -drummer shone a paragon of refinement in the light of her friendship -and Craig's, for Atwood was not neglected; two paragraphs, indeed, were -given over to a résumé of his artistic career.</p> - -<p>Tears of mortification sprang to her eyes.</p> - -<p>"What an outrage!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Atwood has never seen these -people, never set foot in this building! I myself met this unfortunate -man but once in my life!"</p> - -<p>The group pricked up its ears.</p> - -<p>"We shall be very glad to publish your denial," assured the spokesman.</p> - -<p>"Oh, don't publish anything," she cried. "Drop us out of it altogether, -I beg of you!"</p> - -<p>"But in the light of the new developments, it would be only just to you -and Mr. Atwood," he persisted.</p> - -<p>"What developments?"</p> - -<p>"The revelations concerning Chapman's—er—irregular mode of life. His -former wife—she lives in Jersey City—has laid certain information -before the police. She seems to care for him still, after a fashion. -She only heard this morning of his remarriage, though she met and -talked with him day before yesterday."</p> - -<p>Jean's hand sought the wall.</p> - -<p>"What does she know?"</p> - -<p>"The police won't disclose. But they say her information, taken with -another clew that's come into their hands, will lead shortly to an -arrest. Shall we publish the denial, Mrs. Atwood?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," she answered; "yes."</p> - -<p>As she closed the door, Amy tottered down the hall.</p> - -<p>"I heard!" she gasped. "I heard all they said. The police—the police -will come next! They've found out I'm not Fred's wife. I'll be shamed -before everybody. They'll suspect me first of all. They'll find out -everything. You heard what they said about a clew? When they get hold -of a clew, they get everything! They'll take me to the Tombs—the -Tombs! Hark!"</p> - -<p>The fretful bell rang again.</p> - -<p>"The police!" chattered Amy. "The police!"</p> - -<p>The same fear gripped Jean, but she mustered strength to push the girl -into the bedroom and shut the door; and then, with sinking knees, went -to answer the summons.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XXX</p> - - -<p>No uniformed agent of pursuing justice confronted her; only the face -of him she loved best; and the great uplifting wave of relief cast her -breathless in Craig's arms.</p> - -<p>"Come away," he begged, his answering clasp the witness and the seal of -their reconciliation. "Come away."</p> - -<p>"Craig!" she whispered. "Craig!"</p> - -<p>"I only just learned where you were. A reporter came to the studio, -showed me his paper—"</p> - -<p>"Falsehoods! They perverted my words—"</p> - -<p>"I knew, I knew. I'm the one to blame, not you. If I'd gone home, -stayed home, you would never have come here. Forgive me, Jean. I've -been a fool."</p> - -<p>"Hush," she said, laying a hand upon his lips. "We were both wrong. But -I must have come to Amy. After what she told me last night, there was -no choice. You'll understand when I explain. It's ghastly clear."</p> - -<p>"But come away first. Don't give anyone a chance to ferret out your -life, Jean. Why should you stay here now?"</p> - -<p>A low, convulsive moan issued from the bedroom. Jean sprang to the -door.</p> - -<p>"Amy!" she called. "Don't be frightened. It's only Craig. Do you hear -me? It was Craig who rang. I'll come to you soon."</p> - -<p>Atwood followed to the little parlor.</p> - -<p>"You see?" she said.</p> - -<p>"But there must be some one else, some other woman—"</p> - -<p>"There is no one who knows what I know. You must hear it, too, Craig. -It's more than I can face alone. You must think for me, help me." And -she poured the whole petrifying truth into his ears.</p> - -<p>"She must give herself up," he said, at last.</p> - -<p>"But—" And the dilemma of moral and legal guilt plagued her again.</p> - -<p>He brushed her tender casuistry aside.</p> - -<p>"The law must deal with such doubts," he answered. "We must help her -face it, help her see that delay only counts against her. She must tell -her story before they come at the facts without her."</p> - -<p>"She believes they suspect already. They've found out something about -that wretched man's life,—the reporters don't say what,—and she lies -in that room shaking with terror at every ring of the bell. We thought -you were the police."</p> - -<p>"We must help her face it," he repeated. "I will drive her to police -headquarters."</p> - -<p>"Not you, Craig. You must not. The papers shall not drag you into this -again. I will go with her."</p> - -<p>"Isn't your name mine? You see it makes no difference. I'll not allow -you to go through this alone. I've let you meet too much alone. We'll -talk to Amy together, if you think best."</p> - -<p>Jean's glance fell on Grimes's gilt clock.</p> - -<p>"Amy has tasted nothing, and it's nearly noon," she said. "I must make -coffee or something to give her strength. Wait till she has eaten."</p> - -<p>She started for the kitchen, but brought up, white-faced, at the -recurring summons of the bell. Their eyes met in panic. Were they -too late? The ring was repeated while they questioned. Jean took a -faltering step toward the door, listening for an out-burst from the -bedroom; but Amy seemed not to hear. Craig stepped before her into the -hall.</p> - -<p>"Let me answer it," he said.</p> - -<p>Then, before either could act, a key explored the lock, and Paul -Bartlett's anxious face peered through the opening. He started at sight -of them, but came forward with an ejaculation of relief.</p> - -<p>"I remembered I had a key," he explained. "It was so still I thought -something had gone wrong. Where's Amy?"</p> - -<p>Jean signed toward the bedroom, and the three tip-toed into the parlor -and shut the door. An awkward silence rested upon them for an instant. -Jean's thoughts raced back to her last meeting with the dentist in this -room, and she knew that Paul could be scarcely less the prey of his -memories. Atwood himself, divining something of what such a reunion -meant, was stricken with a share of their embarrassment.</p> - -<p>Paul pulled himself together first.</p> - -<p>"I came to help Amy, if I could," he said to Jean; "and also to see -you. I've read the papers, and I thought"—he hesitated lamely—"I -thought somebody ought to take your place. It's not pleasant to be -dragged into a murder case—not pleasant for a lady, I mean," he -corrected himself hastily. "<i>I</i> don't mind. Mrs. St. Aubyn won't mind, -either. I've 'phoned her—she always liked Amy, you know—and she's -coming soon. You needn't wait. You mustn't be expected to—to—oh, for -God's sake, sir," he broke off, wheeling desperately upon Atwood, "take -your wife away!"</p> - -<p>Jean's eyes blurred with sudden tears, which fell unrestrained when -Craig's chivalry met the dentist's halfway.</p> - -<p>"Now <i>I</i> know you for the true man Jean has praised," he said, gripping -Paul's hand. "But I can't take her away. She has a responsibility—we -both have a responsibility it's impossible to shirk. Tell him, Jean!"</p> - -<p>The dentist squared his shoulders in the old way, when she ceased.</p> - -<p>"I'll see that Amy reaches headquarters," he said doggedly. "Neither of -you need go. There isn't the slightest necessity. I'm her old friend, -the lessee of this flat: who would be more likely to act for her? You -convince her that she must toe the mark—I can't undertake that part; -and then, the sooner you leave, the better."</p> - -<p>Atwood turned irresolutely toward the window and threw up the shade as -if his physical being craved light. Jean met the straightforward eyes.</p> - -<p>"Why should you shoulder it, Paul?"</p> - -<p>Bartlett shot a look at Atwood, who nervously drummed the pane, his -gaze fixed outward; and then, with a sweeping gesture, invoked the -silent argument of the room.</p> - -<p>"I guess you know," he added simply.</p> - -<p>Her face softened with ineffable tenderness.</p> - -<p>"I'll tell Amy you are here," she said.</p> - -<p>The men heard her pass down the hall and knock; wait, knock again, -calling Amy's name; wait once more; and then return.</p> - -<p>"Shall we let her sleep while she can?" she whispered. "It's a hideous -thing that she must meet."</p> - -<p>Atwood's look questioned the dentist, whose reply was to brush by them -both and assault Amy's door.</p> - -<p>"Amy!" he shouted. "Amy!"</p> - -<p>They held their breath. Back in the parlor the gilt clock ticked like -a midsummer mad insect; the cries of newsboys rose muffled from the -street; even a drip of water sounded from some leaky kitchen tap; but -from the bedroom came nothing.</p> - -<p>Jean tried the knob.</p> - -<p>"Locked!"</p> - -<p>The dentist laid his shoulder to the woodwork, put forth his strength, -and the door burst in with an impetus that carried him headlong; but -before either could follow he had recovered himself and turned to block -the way.</p> - -<p>"Keep back, Jean," he commanded sharply. "Keep back!"</p> - -<p>Their suspense was brief. Almost immediately he came out, closed the -door gently after him, and held up a red-labeled vial.</p> - -<p>"Carbolic acid!" he said hoarsely.</p> - -<p>Jean uttered a sharp cry.</p> - -<p>"A doctor!" she exclaimed.</p> - -<p>Paul shook his head.</p> - -<p>"I am doctor enough to know death. Atwood, get your wife away."</p> - -<p>"But now—" Jean resisted.</p> - -<p>"Go, go!" he commanded, driving them before him. "Mrs. St. Aubyn will -do what a woman can. I will attend to the police. You left for rest, -believing her asleep. I suspected suicide, and broke down the door. -That's our story. Go while you can."</p> - -<p>They went out as in a dream, striking away at random when they issued -on the street, seeking only to shun the still idling curious, grateful -beyond words for release, avid for the pure, vital air. Presently, in -some quarter, they knew not where, a cab-driver hailed them, and they -passively entered his hansom and as passively sat dependent on his -superior will.</p> - -<p>"Where to?" asked the man, impatiently.</p> - -<p>Atwood shook himself awake. "The Copley Studios," he answered. "Do you -know the building? It's near—"</p> - -<p>The closing trap clipped his directions, and they drove away. They -gave no heed to their course till, passing a park entrance, they came -full upon a knot of urchins and nursemaids clustered between lake and -drive.</p> - -<p>"That's where the Chapman murder took place," volunteered the driver.</p> - -<p>Jean shut her eyes.</p> - -<p>"This way of all ways!"</p> - -<p>"It is behind us now," Craig comforted. "It's <i>all</i> behind us now."</p> - -<p>Neither spoke again till they reached the studio, and a porter -announced the arrival of several trunks.</p> - -<p>"They're yours, Jean," Atwood said. "I ordered them sent here when -Julie telephoned for instructions. I realize that there is no -going back. She admits that she did you a wrong—she will tell you -so herself; but that doesn't alter matters. We must live our own -lives. To-night we'll go away for a time. In the mountains or by the -sea, whichever you will, we'll plan for the future. It's time the -air-castles were made real."</p> - -<p>He ordered a luncheon from a neighboring restaurant, forced her to eat, -and then to rest. She said that sleep was impossible, and that she must -repack against their journey; but her eyelids grew heavy even while she -protested, and she was just drowsily aware that he threw over her some -studio drapery which emitted a spicy oriental scent.</p> - -<p>It was a dreamless sleep until just before she woke, when she shivered -again under the obsession of Amy's door-bell. The studio furnishings -delivered her from the delusion, but a bell rang on. Where was Craig? -Then her eye fell upon a scrawl, transfixed to her pillow by a hatpin, -which told her that he had gone to arrange for their departure; and -she roused herself to answer the door. Here, for an instant, the dream -seemed still to haunt, for the caller who greeted her was the reporter -of the morning who had taken her denial.</p> - -<p>"I'm right sorry to bother <i>you</i> again, Mrs. Atwood," he apologized. -"I'm looking for your husband."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Atwood is out."</p> - -<p>"Could I see him later, perhaps? It's about five-thirty now. Would six -o'clock suit?"</p> - -<p>"Why do you annoy him?" she asked wearily. "I told you that he has -nothing to do with this awful affair."</p> - -<p>"The public thinks he has, and in a way, through your knowing Mrs. -Chapman, it's true. Anyhow, I'm authorized to make him a proposition -with dollars in it. Our Sunday editor is willing to let him name his -own figure for a column interview and a sketch of the Wilkes girl, in -any medium he likes, which he can knock off from our own photographs. -We got some rattling good snap-shots just as she was taken into -custody."</p> - -<p>Jean stared blankly into his enthusiastic face.</p> - -<p>"Taken into custody?" she said. "The Wilkes girl! You mean—on -suspicion—of murder!"</p> - -<p>"Haven't you seen the afternoon editions?" cried the man, -incredulously. "You don't say you haven't heard about the new figure -in the case, the Fourteenth Street music-hall favorite, Stella Wilkes! -It was Chapman's divorced wife who put the police on the scent. She'd -spotted them together, and the janitor of the Wilkes girl's flat-house -identified Chapman as a man who'd been running there after her. Of -course by itself, that's no evidence of guilt; but they've unearthed -more than that. One of the clever men of our staff got hold of a letter -which the girl wrote Chapman. The police are holding it back, but it's -a threat of some kind, and strong enough to warrant them gathering her -in for the grand jury's consideration. But let me send up a hall-boy -with the latest. I'll try again at six for Mr. Atwood."</p> - -<p>Stella! Stella accused of the murder! She pressed her hands to her -dizzy head and groped back to the studio. Could fate devise a more -ironic jest! Stella, wrecker of Amy's happiness, herself dragged down! -Then, her brain clearing, her personal responsibility overwhelmed her. -She alone had received Amy's confession. She alone could vouch for -Stella's innocence. She must dip her hands again into this defiling -pitch, endure more publicity, risk exposure, humiliate Craig! And for -Stella—byword of Shawnee Springs, fiend who had made the refuge twice -a hell, terror of her struggle to live the dark past down—of all human -creatures, Stella Wilkes!</p> - -<p>But it must be done. She made herself ready for the street with -benumbed fingers, till the thought of Craig again arrested her. Should -she wait for him?</p> - -<p>He entered as she hesitated.</p> - -<p>"Rested, Jean?" he called cheerily, delaying a moment in the hall. -"Here are your papers. The boy said you wanted them." Then, from the -threshold, "You're ill!"</p> - -<p>She caught one of the newspapers from him and struck it open. Its -head-lines shouted confirmation of the reporter's words.</p> - -<p>"Look!"</p> - -<p>"'Footlight favorite ... damaging letter ... journalistic enterprise,'" -he repeated.</p> - -<p>"You see what it means?"</p> - -<p>"Wait, wait!" He read on feverishly to the end.</p> - -<p>Jean gave a last mechanical touch to her veil.</p> - -<p>"I am going down to police headquarters to tell what I know, Craig."</p> - -<p>"No," he cried. "You must not mix in this again. You shall not. There -is some better way. We must think it out. There is Bartlett—he knows!"</p> - -<p>"Through me!"</p> - -<p>"I think he'd be willing—no; that's folly. We can't ask the man to -perjure himself. We must hit on something else. You must not be the -one. Think what it might mean!"</p> - -<p>"I've thought."</p> - -<p>"They would dig up the past—all your acquaintance with Amy. The Wilkes -creature's tongue could never be stopped. She doesn't know now that -Mrs. Atwood means Jean Fanshaw. She must not know. Take no rash step. -We must wait, temporize."</p> - -<p>"Temporize with an innocent person accused of crime!"</p> - -<p>"They don't accuse her yet—formally. She is held—detained—whatever -the lawyer's jargon is. She isn't convicted. She never will be. They -can't convict her on one letter.—I doubt if they'll indict her. Why, -she may prove an alibi at once! Wait, Jean, wait! She's merely under -suspicion of—"</p> - -<p>"Murder!" She stripped away his sophistries with a word. "Isn't that -enough? What of her feelings while we wait? Is it nothing to be -suspected of killing a man?"</p> - -<p>"What is her reputation now? Unspeakable!"</p> - -<p>"More reason that we make it no worse. No, no, Craig; I must do this -thing at any cost."</p> - -<p>He threw out his hands in impassioned appeal.</p> - -<p>"Any cost! Any cost!" he cried. "Do you realize what you're saying? -Will you let her rag of a reputation weigh against your own, against -the position you've fought for, against my good name? If you won't -spare yourself, spare me!"</p> - -<p>"Craig!" she implored, "be just!"</p> - -<p>"I am only asking you to wait. A night may change everything. It can't -make her name blacker; it may save you."</p> - -<p>"Suppose it changes nothing; suppose no alibi is proved; suppose they -do indict! How would my delay look then? Can't you see that my way is -the only way? Don't think I'm not counting the cost." Her voice wavered -and she shut her eyes against his unnerving face which seemed to have -shed its boyishness forever, against this room which everywhere bespoke -the future she jeopardized. "I do! I do! But we must go—go at once."</p> - -<p>His face set sternly.</p> - -<p>"I refuse."</p> - -<p>"Craig!"</p> - -<p>"I refuse. This morning, when we had no way to turn, I was ready to -stand by you. But now—now I wash my hands of it all. If you go—"</p> - -<p>Her face turned ashen.</p> - -<p>"If I go?" she repeated.</p> - -<p>"You go alone."</p> - -<p>"And afterward?"</p> - -<p>He dashed a distracted hand across his forehead and turned away without -answer.</p> - -<p>"Yet I must go," she said.</p> - -<p>Before her blind fingers found the outer door, he was again beside her.</p> - -<p>"You're right," he owned. "Forgive me, Jean. We'll see it through."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Their ride in the twilight seemed an excursion in eternity. Home-going -New York met them in obstructive millions. Apparently they alone sought -the lower city. From zone to zone they descended—luxury, shabby -gentility, squalor succeeding in turn—till their destination loomed -a dread tangible reality. It was fittingly seated here, Jean felt, -where life's dregs drifted uppermost, sin was a commonplace, arrest a -diversion. Would not such as these glory in the deed she found so hard? -Would not the brain beneath that "picture" hat, the sable plumes of -which—jaunty, insolent, triumphant—floated the center of a sidewalk -throng, envy her the publicity from which she shrank? Then, as the -ribald crowd passed and the garish blaze of a concert-saloon lit the -woman's face, she threw herself back in the shadow with a sharp cry.</p> - -<p>"Look, Craig! Look!"</p> - -<p>Atwood craned from the cab, which a dray had blocked, but saw only -agitated backs as the saloon swallowed up the pavement idol.</p> - -<p>A policeman grinned sociably from the curb.</p> - -<p>"Stella Wilkes," he explained. "Chesty, ain't she? She was pretty -wilted, though, when they ran her in. I saw her come."</p> - -<p>Craig's hand convulsively gripped Jean's.</p> - -<p>"They've let her go?" he questioned. "She's free?"</p> - -<p>"Sure—an' callin' on her friends. Hadn't you heard? Mrs. Chapman left -a note ownin' up. If they'd found it sooner, this party would have had -a pleasanter afternoon. Still, I guess she's plenty satisfied. They say -a vaudeville house has offered her five hundred a week. She'd better -cinch the deal to-night. It will all be forgotten to-morrow."</p> - -<p>Atwood strained the white-faced figure to his breast.</p> - -<p>"You heard him, Jean? He's right. It <i>will</i> be forgotten to-morrow."</p> - -<p>From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.</p> - -<p>"To-morrow," she echoed.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a name="illus6" id="illus6"></a> - <br /> - <img src="images/illus6.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.</p> - </div> -</div> - - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUCIBLE ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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