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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sleeping Fires, by Gertrude Atherton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sleeping Fires
+
+Author: Gertrude Atherton
+
+Posting Date: August 29, 2012 [EBook #6884]
+Release Date: November, 2004
+First Posted: February 6, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLEEPING FIRES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tom Allen, Charles Franks and
+the Online Distributed
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SLEEPING FIRES
+
+A NOVEL
+
+BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+
+
+
+
+SLEEPING FIRES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+There was no Burlingame in the Sixties, the Western Addition was a
+desert of sand dunes and the goats gambolled through the rocky gulches
+of Nob Hill. But San Francisco had its Rincon Hill and South Park,
+Howard and Fulsom and Harrison Streets, coldly aloof from the
+tumultuous hot heart of the City north of Market Street.
+
+In this residence section the sidewalks were also wooden and uneven and
+the streets muddy in winter and dusty in summer, but the houses, some
+of which had "come round the Horn," were large, simple, and stately.
+Those on the three long streets had deep gardens before them, with
+willow trees and oaks above the flower beds, quaint ugly statues, and
+fountains that were sometimes dry. The narrower houses of South Park
+crowded one another about the oval enclosure and their common garden
+was the smaller oval of green and roses.
+
+On Rincon Hill the architecture was more varied and the houses that
+covered all sides of the hill were surrounded by high-walled gardens
+whose heavy bushes of Castilian roses were the only reminder in this
+already modern San Francisco of the Spain that had made California a
+land of romance for nearly a century; the last resting place on this
+planet of the Spirit of Arcadia ere she vanished into space before the
+gold-seekers.
+
+On far-flung heights beyond the business section crowded between Market
+and Clay Streets were isolated mansions, built by prescient men whose
+belief in the rapid growth of the city to the north and west was
+justified in due course, but which sheltered at present amiable and
+sociable ladies who lamented their separation by vast spaces from that
+aristocratic quarter of the south.
+
+But they had their carriages, and on a certain Sunday afternoon several
+of these arks drawn by stout horses might have been seen crawling
+fearfully down the steep hills or floundering through the sand until
+they reached Market Street; when the coachmen cracked their whips, the
+horses trotted briskly, and shortly after began to ascend Rincon Hill.
+
+Mrs. Hunt McLane, the social dictator of her little world, had recently
+moved from South Park into a large house on Rincon Hill that had been
+built by an eminent citizen who had lost his fortune as abruptly as he
+had made it; and this was her housewarming. It was safe to say that her
+rooms would be crowded, and not merely because her Sunday receptions
+were the most important minor functions in San Francisco: it was
+possible that Dr. Talbot and his bride would be there. And if he were
+not it might be long before curiosity would be gratified by even a
+glance at the stranger; the doctor detested the theatre and had engaged
+a suite at the Occidental Hotel with a private dining-room.
+
+Several weeks before a solemn conclave had been held at Mrs. McLane's
+house in South Park. Mrs. Abbott was there and Mrs. Ballinger, both
+second only to Mrs. McLane in social leadership; Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs.
+Brannan, and other women whose power was rooted in the Fifties; Maria
+and Sally Ballinger, Marguerite McLane, and Guadalupe Hathaway, whose
+blue large talking Spanish eyes had made her the belle of many seasons:
+all met to discuss the disquieting news of the marriage in Boston of
+the most popular and fashionable doctor in San Francisco, Howard
+Talbot. He had gone East for a vacation, and soon after had sent them a
+bald announcement of his marriage to one Madeleine Chilton of Boston.
+
+Many high hopes had centered in Dr. Talbot. He was only forty,
+good-looking, with exuberant spirits, and well on the road to fortune.
+He had been surrounded in San Francisco by beautiful and vivacious
+girls, but had always proclaimed himself a man's man, avowed he had
+seen too much of babies and "blues," and should die an old bachelor.
+Besides he loved them all; when he did not damn them roundly, which he
+sometimes did to their secret delight.
+
+And now he not only had affronted them by marrying some one he probably
+never had seen before, but he had taken a Northern wife; he had not
+even had the grace to go to his native South, if he must marry an
+outsider; he had gone to Boston--of all places!
+
+San Francisco Society in the Sixties was composed almost entirely of
+Southerners. Even before the war it had been difficult for a Northerner
+to obtain entrance to that sacrosanct circle; the exceptions were due
+to sheer personality. Southerners were aristocrats. The North was
+plebeian. That was final. Since the war, Victorious North continued to
+admit defeat in California. The South had its last stronghold in San
+Francisco, and held it, haughty, unconquered, inflexible.
+
+That Dr. Talbot, who was on a family footing in every home in San
+Francisco, should have placed his friends in such a delicate position
+(to say nothing of shattered hopes) was voted an outrage, and at Mrs.
+McLane's on that former Sunday afternoon, there had been no pretence at
+indifference. The subject was thoroughly discussed. It was possible
+that the creature might not even be a lady. Had any one ever heard of a
+Boston family named Chilton? No one had. They knew nothing of Boston
+and cared less. But the best would be bad enough.
+
+It was more likely however that the doctor had married some obscure
+person with nothing in her favor but youth, or a widow of practiced
+wiles, or--horrid thought--a divorcee.
+
+He had always been absurdly liberal in spite of his blue Southern
+blood; and a man's man wandering alone at the age of forty was almost
+foredoomed to disaster. No doubt the poor man had been homesick and
+lonesome.
+
+Should they receive her or should they not? If not, would they lose
+their doctor. He would never speak to one of them again if they
+insulted his wife. But a Bostonian, a possible nobody! And homely, of
+course. Angular. Who had ever heard of a pretty woman raised on beans,
+codfish, and pie for breakfast?
+
+Finally Mrs. McLane had announced that she should not make up her mind
+until the couple arrived and she sat in judgment upon the woman
+personally. She would call the day after they docked in San Francisco.
+If, by any chance, the woman were presentable, dressed herself with
+some regard to the fashion (which was more than Mrs. Abbott and
+Guadalupe Hathaway did), and had sufficient tact to avoid the subject
+of the war, she would stand sponsor and invite her to the first
+reception in the house on Rincon Hill.
+
+"But if not," she said grimly--"well, not even for Howard Talbot's sake
+will I receive a woman who is not a lady, or who has been divorced. In
+this wild city we are a class apart, above. No loose fish enters our
+quiet bay. Only by the most rigid code and watchfulness have we formed
+and preserved a society similar to that we were accustomed to in the
+old South. If we lowered our barriers we should be submerged. If Howard
+Talbot has married a woman we do not find ourselves able to associate
+with in this intimate little society out here on the edge of the world,
+he will have to go."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Mrs. McLane had called on Mrs. Talbot. That was known to all San
+Francisco, for her carriage had stood in front of the Occidental Hotel
+for an hour. Kind friends had called to offer their services in setting
+the new house in order, but were dismissed at the door with the brief
+announcement that Mrs. McLane was having the blues. No one wasted time
+on a second effort to gossip with their leader; it was known that just
+so often Mrs. McLane drew down the blinds, informed her household that
+she was not to be disturbed, disposed herself on the sofa with her back
+to the room and indulged in the luxury of blues for three days. She
+took no nourishment but milk and broth and spoke to no one. Today this
+would be a rest cure and was equally beneficial. When the attack was
+over Mrs. McLane would arise with a clear complexion, serene nerves,
+and renewed strength for social duties. Her friends knew that her
+retirement on this occasion was timed to finish on the morning of her
+reception and had not the least misgiving that her doors would still be
+closed.
+
+The great double parlors of her new mansion were thrown into one and
+the simple furniture covered with gray rep was pushed against soft gray
+walls hung with several old portraits in oil, ferrotypes and
+silhouettes. A magnificent crystal chandelier depended from the high
+and lightly frescoed ceiling and there were side brackets beside the
+doors and the low mantel piece. Mrs. McLane may not have been able to
+achieve beauty with the aid of the San Francisco shops, but at least
+she had managed to give her rooms a severe and stately simplicity,
+vastly different from the helpless surrenders of her friends to
+mid-victorian deformities.
+
+The rooms filled early. Mrs. McLane stood before the north windows
+receiving her friends with her usual brilliant smile, her manner of
+high dignity and sweet cordiality. She was a majestic figure in spite
+of her short stature and increasing curves, for the majesty was within
+and her head above a flat back had a lofty poise. She wore her
+prematurely white hair in a tall pompadour, and this with the rich
+velvets she affected, ample and long, made her look like a French
+marquise of the eighteenth century, stepped down from the canvas. The
+effect was by no means accidental. Mrs. McLane's grandmother had been
+French and she resembled her.
+
+Her hoopskirt was small, but the other women were inclined to the
+extreme of the fashion; as they saw it in the Godey's Lady's Book they
+or their dressmakers subscribed to. Their handsome gowns spread widely
+and the rooms hardly could have seemed to sway and undulate more if an
+earthquake had rocked it. The older women wore small bonnets and
+cashmere shawls, lace collars and cameos, the younger fichus and small
+flat hats above their "waterfalls" or curled chignons. The husbands had
+retired with Mr. McLane to the smoking room, but there were many beaux
+present, equally expectant when not too absorbed.
+
+Unlike as a reception of that day was in background and costumes from
+the refinements of modern art and taste, it possessed one contrast that
+was wholly to its advantage. Its men were gentlemen and the sons and
+grandsons of gentlemen. To no one city has there ever been such an
+emigration of men of good family as to San Francisco in the Fifties and
+Sixties. Ambitious to push ahead in politics or the professions and
+appreciating the immediate opportunities of the new and famous city, or
+left with an insufficient inheritance (particularly after the war) and
+ashamed to work in communities where no gentleman had ever worked, they
+had set sail with a few hundreds to a land where a man, if he did not
+occupy himself lucratively, was unfit for the society of enterprising
+citizens.
+
+Few had come in time for the gold diggings, but all, unless they had
+disappeared into the hot insatiable maw of the wicked little city, had
+succeeded in one field or another; and these, in their dandified
+clothes, made a fine appearance at fashionable gatherings. If they took
+up less room than the women they certainly were more decorative.
+
+Dr. Talbot and his wife had not arrived. To all eager questions Mrs.
+McLane merely replied that "they" would "be here." She had the dramatic
+instinct of the true leader and had commanded the doctor not to bring
+his bride before four o'clock. The reception began at three. They
+should have an entrance. But Mrs. Abbott, a lady of three chins and an
+eagle eye, who had clung for twenty-five years to black satin and
+bugles, was too persistent to be denied. She extracted the information
+that the Bostonian had sent her own furniture by a previous steamer and
+that her drawing room was graceful, French, and exquisite.
+
+At ten minutes after the hour the buzz and chatter stopped abruptly and
+every face was turned, every neck craned toward the door. The colored
+butler had announced with a grand flourish:
+
+"Dr. and Mrs. Talbot."
+
+The doctor looked as rubicund, as jovial, as cynical as ever. But few
+cast him more than a passing glance. Then they gave an audible gasp,
+induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment, and
+admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make every
+allowance. The poor thing could no more help being plain and dowdy than
+born in Boston, and as their leader had satisfied herself that she
+"would do," they would never let her know how deeply they deplored her
+disabilities.
+
+But they found nothing to deplore but the agonizing necessity for
+immediate readjustment. Mrs. Talbot was unquestionably a product of the
+best society. The South could have done no better. She was tall and
+supple and self-possessed. She was exquisitely dressed in dark blue
+velvet with a high collar of point lace tapering almost to her bust,
+and revealing a long white throat clasped at the base by a string of
+pearls. On her head, as proudly poised as Mrs. McLane's, was a blue
+velvet hat, higher in the crown than the prevailing fashion, rolled up
+on one side and trimmed only with a drooping gray feather. And her
+figure, her face, her profile! The young men crowded forward more
+swiftly than the still almost paralyzed women. She was no more than
+twenty. Her skin was as white as the San Francisco fogs, her lips were
+scarlet, her cheeks pink, her hair and eyes a bright golden brown. Her
+features were delicate and regular, the mouth not too small, curved and
+sensitive; her refinement was almost excessive. Oh, she was
+"high-toned," no doubt of that! As she moved forward and stood in front
+of Mrs. McLane, or acknowledged introductions to those that stood near,
+the women gave another gasp, this time of consternation. She wore
+neither hoop-skirt nor crinoline. Could it be that the most elegant
+fashion ever invented had been discarded by Paris? Or was this lovely
+creature of surpassing elegance, a law unto herself?
+
+Her skirt was full but straight and did not disguise the lines of her
+graceful figure; above her small waist it fitted as closely as a riding
+habit. She was even more _becomingly_ dressed than any woman in the
+room. Mrs. Abbott, who was given to primitive sounds, snorted. Maria
+Ballinger, whose finely developed figure might as well have been the
+trunk of a tree, sniffed. Her sister Sally almost danced with
+excitement, and even Miss Hathaway straightened her fichu. Mrs.
+Ballinger, who had been the belle of Richmond and was still adjudged
+the handsomest woman in San Francisco, lifted the eyebrows to which
+sonnets had been written with an air of haughty resignation; but made
+up her mind to abate her scorn of the North and order her gowns from
+New York hereafter.
+
+But the San Franciscans on the whole were an amiable people and they
+were sometimes conscious of their isolation; in a few moments they felt
+a pleasant titillation of the nerves, as if the great world they might
+never see again had sent them one of her most precious gifts.
+
+They all met her in the course of the afternoon. She was sweet and
+gracious, but although there was not a hint of embarrassment she made
+no attempt to shine, and they liked her the better for that. The young
+men soon discovered they could make no impression on this lovely
+importation, for her eyes strayed constantly to her husband; until he
+disappeared in search of cronies, whiskey, and a cigar: then she looked
+depressed for a moment, but gave a still closer attention to the women
+about her.
+
+In love with her husband but a woman-of-the-world. Manners as fine as
+Mrs. McLane's, but too aloof and sensitive to care for leadership. She
+had made the grand tour in Europe, they discovered, and enjoyed a
+season in Washington. She should continue to live at the Occidental
+Hotel as her husband would be out so much at night and she was rather
+timid. And she was bright, unaffected, responsive. Could anything be
+more reassuring? There was nothing to be apprehended by the socially
+ambitious, the proud housewives, or those prudent dames whose amours
+were conducted with such secrecy that they might too easily be
+supplanted by a predatory coquette. The girls drew little unconscious
+sighs of relief. Sally Ballinger vowed she would become her intimate
+friend, Sibyl Geary that she would copy her gowns. Mrs. Abbott
+succumbed. In short they all took her to their hearts. She was one of
+them from that time forth and the reign of crinoline was over.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The Talbots remained to supper and arrived at the Occidental Hotel at
+the dissipated hour of half past nine. As they entered their suite the
+bride took her sweeping skirts in either hand and executed a pas seul
+down the long parlor.
+
+"I was a success!" she cried. "You were proud of me. I could see it.
+And even at the table, although I talked nearly all the time to Mr.
+McLane, I never mentioned a book."
+
+She danced over and threw her arms about his neck. "Say you were proud
+of me. I'd love to hear it."
+
+He gave her a bear-like hug. "Of course. You are the prettiest and the
+most animated woman in San Francisco, and that's saying a good deal.
+And I've given them all a mighty surprise."
+
+"I believe that is the longest compliment you ever paid me--and because
+I made a good impression on some one else. What irony!"
+
+She pouted charmingly, but her eyes were wistful. "Now sit down and
+talk to me. I've scarcely seen you since we arrived."
+
+"Oh! Remember you are married to this old ruffian. You'll see enough of
+me in the next thirty or forty years. Run to bed and get your beauty
+sleep. I promised to go to the Union Club."
+
+"The Club? You went to the Club last night and the night before and the
+night before that. Every night since we arrived--"
+
+"I haven't seen half my old cronies yet and they are waiting for a good
+old poker game. Sleep is what you want after such an exciting day.
+Remember, I doctor the nerves of all the women in San Francisco and
+this is a hard climate on nerves. Wonder more women don't go to the
+devil."
+
+He kissed her again and escaped hurriedly. Those were the days when
+women wept facilely, "swooned," inhaled hartshorn, calmed themselves
+with sal volatile, and even went into hysterics upon slight
+provocation. Madeleine Talbot merely wept. She believed herself to be
+profoundly in love with her jovial magnetic if rather rough husband. He
+was so different from the correct reserved men she had been associated
+with during her anchored life in Boston. In Washington she had met only
+the staid old families, and senators of a benignant formality. In
+Europe she had run across no one she knew who might have introduced her
+to interesting foreigners, and Mrs. Chilton would as willingly have
+caressed a tiger as spoken to a stranger no matter how prepossessing.
+Howard Talbot, whom she had met at the house of a common friend, had
+taken her by storm. Her family had disapproved, not only because he was
+by birth a Southerner, but for the same reason that had attracted their
+Madeleine. He was entirely too different. Moreover, he would take her
+to a barbarous country where there was no Society and people dared not
+venture into the streets lest they be shot. But she had overruled them
+and been very happy--at times. He was charming and adorable and it was
+manifest that for him no other woman existed.
+
+But she could not flatter herself that she was indispensable. He openly
+preferred the society of men, and during that interminable sea voyage
+she had seen little of him save at the table or when he came to their
+stateroom late at night. For her mind he appeared to have a
+good-natured masculine contempt. He talked to her as he would to a
+fascinating little girl. If he cared for mental recreation he found it
+in men.
+
+She went into her bedroom and bathed her eyes with eau de cologne. At
+least he had given her no cause for jealousy. That was one
+compensation. And a wise married friend had told her that the only way
+to manage a husband was to give him his head and never to indulge in
+the luxury of reproaches. She was sorry she had forgotten herself
+tonight.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Dr. Talbot had confided to Mrs. McLane that his wife was inclined to be
+a bas bleu and he wanted her broken of an unfeminine love of books.
+Mrs. McLane, who knew that a reputation for bookishness would be fatal
+in a community that regarded "Lucile" as a great poem and read little
+but the few novels that drifted their way (or the continued stories in
+Godey's Lady's Book), promised him that Madeleine's intellectual
+aspirations should be submerged in the social gaieties of the season.
+
+She kept her word. Dinners, receptions, luncheons, theatre parties, in
+honor of the bride, followed in rapid succession, and when all had
+entertained her, the less personal invitations followed as rapidly. Her
+popularity was not founded on novelty.
+
+No girl in her first season had ever enjoyed herself more naively and
+she brought to every entertainment eager sparkling eyes and dancing
+feet that never tired. She became the "reigning toast." At parties she
+was surrounded by a bevy of admirers or forced to divide her dances;
+for it was soon patent there was no jealousy in Talbot's composition
+and that he took an equally naive pride in his wife's success. When
+alone with women she was quite as animated and interested, and,
+moreover, invited them to copy her gowns. Some had been made in Paris,
+others in New York. The local dressmakers felt the stirrings of
+ambition, and the shops sent for a more varied assortment of fabrics.
+
+Madeleine Talbot at this time was very happy, or, at least, too busy to
+recall her earlier dreams of happiness. The whole-hearted devotion to
+gaiety of this stranded little community, its elegance, despite its
+limitations, its unbounded hospitality to all within its guarded
+portals, its very absence of intellectual criticism, made the formal
+life of her brief past appear dull and drab in the retrospect. The
+spirit of Puritanism seemed to have lost heart in those trackless
+wastes between the Atlantic and the Pacific and turned back. True, the
+moral code was rigid (on the surface); but far from too much enjoyment
+of life, of quaffing eagerly at the brimming cup, being sinful, they
+would have held it to be a far greater sin not to have accepted all
+that the genius of San Francisco so lavishly provided.
+
+Wildness and recklessness were in the air, the night life of San
+Francisco was probably the maddest in the world; nor did the gambling
+houses close their doors by day, nor the women of Dupont Street cease
+from leering through their shuttered windows; a city born in delirium
+and nourished on crime, whose very atmosphere was electrified and whose
+very foundations were restless, would take a quarter of a century at
+least to manufacture a decent thick surface of conventionality, and its
+self-conscious respectable wing could no more escape its spirit than
+its fogs and winds. But evil excitement was tempered to irresponsible
+gaiety, a constant whirl of innocent pleasures. When the spirit passed
+the portals untempered, and drove women too highly-strung, too unhappy,
+or too easily bored, to the divorce courts, to drink, or to reckless
+adventure, they were summarily dropped. No woman, however guiltless,
+could divorce her husband and remain a member of that vigilant court.
+It was all or nothing. If a married woman were clever enough to take a
+lover undetected and merely furnish interesting surmise, there was no
+attempt to ferret out and punish her; for no society can exist without
+gossip.
+
+But none centered about Madeleine Talbot. Her little coquetries were
+impartial and her devotion to her husband was patent to the most
+infatuated eye. Life was made very pleasant for her. Howard, during
+that first winter, accompanied her to all the dinners and parties, and
+she gave several entertainments in her large suite at the Occidental
+Hotel. Sally Ballinger was a lively companion for the mornings and was
+as devoted a friend as youth could demand. Mrs. Abbott petted her, and
+Mrs. Ballinger forgot that she had been born in Boston.
+
+When it was discovered that she had a sweet lyric soprano, charmingly
+cultivated, her popularity winged another flight; San Francisco from
+its earliest days was musical, and she made a brilliant success as La
+Belle Helene in the amateur light opera company organized by Mrs.
+McLane. It was rarely that she spent an evening alone, and the cases of
+books she had brought from Boston remained in the cellars of the Hotel.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Society went to the country to escape the screaming winds and dust
+clouds of summer. A few had built country houses, the rest found
+abundant amusement at the hotels of The Geysers, Warm Springs and
+Congress Springs, taking the waters dutifully.
+
+As the city was constantly swept by epidemics Dr. Talbot rarely left
+his post for even a few days' shooting, and Madeleine remained with him
+as a matter of course. Moreover, she hoped for occasional long evenings
+with her husband and the opportunity to convince him that her
+companionship was more satisfying than that of his friends at the Club.
+She had not renounced the design of gradually converting him to her own
+love of literature, and pictured delightful hours during which they
+would discuss the world's masterpieces together.
+
+But he merely hooted amiably and pinched her cheeks when she approached
+the subject tentatively. He was infernally over-worked and unless he
+had a few hours' relaxation at the Club he would be unfit for duty on
+the morrow. She was his heart's delight, the prettiest wife in San
+Francisco; he worked the better because she was always lovely at the
+breakfast table and he could look forward to a brief dinner in her
+always radiant company. Thank God, she never had the blues nor carried
+a bottle of smelling salts about with her. And she hadn't a nerve in
+her body! God! How he did hate women's nerves. No, she was a model wife
+and he adored her unceasingly. But companionship? When she timidly
+uttered the word, he first stared uncomprehendingly, then burst into
+loud laughter.
+
+"Men don't find companionship in women, my dear. If they pretend to
+they're after something else. Take the word of an old stager for that.
+Of course there is no such thing as companionship among women as men
+understand the term, but you have Society, which is really all you
+want. Yearnings are merely a symptom of those accursed nerves. For
+God's sake forget them. Flirt all you choose--there are plenty of men
+in town; have them in for dinner if you like--but if any of those young
+bucks talks companionship to you put up your guard or come and tell me.
+I'll settle his hash."
+
+"I don't want the companionship of any other man, but I'd like yours."
+
+"You don't know how lucky you are. You have all of me you could stand.
+Three or four long evenings--well, we'd yawn in each other's faces and
+go to bed. A bull but true enough."
+
+"Then I think I'll have the books unpacked, not only those I brought,
+but the new case papa sent to me. I have lost the resource of Society
+for several months, and I do not care to have men here after you have
+gone. That would mean gossip."
+
+"You are above gossip and I prefer the men to the books. You'll ruin
+your pretty eyes, and you had the makings of a fine bluestocking when I
+rescued you. A successful woman--with her husband and with Society--has
+only sparkling shallows in her pretty little head. Now, I must run. I
+really shouldn't have come all the way up here for lunch."
+
+Madeleine wandered aimlessly to the window and looked down at the
+scurrying throngs on Montgomery Street. There were few women. The men
+bent against the wind, clutching at their hats, or chasing them along
+the uneven wooden sidewalks, tripping perhaps on a loose board. There
+were tiny whirlwinds of dust in the unpaved streets. The bustling
+little city that Madeleine had thought so picturesque in its novelty
+suddenly lost its glamour. It looked as if parts of it had been flung
+together in a night between solid blocks imported from the older
+communities; so furious was the desire to achieve immediate wealth
+there were only three or four buildings of architectural beauty in the
+city. The shop windows on Montgomery Street were attractive with the
+wares of Paris, but Madeleine coveted nothing in San Francisco.
+
+She thought of Boston, New York, Washington, Europe, and for a moment
+nostalgia overwhelmed her. If Howard would only take her home for a
+visit! Alas! he was as little likely to do that as to give her the
+companionship she craved.
+
+But she had no intention of taking refuge in tears. Nor would she stay
+at home and mope. Her friends were out of town. She made up her mind to
+go for a walk, although she hardly knew where to go. Between mud and
+dust and hills, walking was not popular in San Francisco. However,
+there might be some excitement in exploring.
+
+She looped her brown cloth skirt over her balmoral petticoat, tied a
+veil round her small hat and set forth. Although the dust was flying
+she dared not lower her veil until she reached the environs, knowing
+that if she did she would be followed; or if recognized, accused of the
+unpardonable sin. The heavy veil in the San Francisco of that day, save
+when driving in aggressively respectable company, was almost an
+interchangeable term for assignation. It was as inconvenient for the
+virtuous as indiscreet for the carnal.
+
+Madeleine reached the streets of straggling homes and those long
+impersonal rows depressing in their middle-class respectability, and
+lowered the veil over her smarting eyes. She also squared her shoulders
+and strode along with an independent swing that must convince the most
+investigating mind she was walking for exercise only.
+
+Almost unconsciously she directed her steps toward the Cliff House Road
+where she had driven occasionally behind the doctor's spanking team. It
+was four o'clock when she entered it and the wind had fallen. The road
+was thronged with buggies, tandems, hacks, phaetons, and four-in-hands.
+Society might be out of town but the still gayer world was not.
+Madeleine, skirting the edge of the road to avoid disaster stared
+eagerly behind her veil. Here were the reckless and brilliant women of
+the demi-monde of whom she had heard so much, but to whom she had
+barely thrown a glance when driving with her husband. They were painted
+and dyed and kohled and their plumage would have excited the envy of
+birds in Paradise. San Francisco had lured these ladies "round the
+Horn" since the early Fifties: a different breed from the camp
+followers of the late Forties. Some had fallen from a high estate,
+others had been the mistresses of rich men in the East, or belles in
+the half world of New York or Paris. Never had they found life so free
+or pickings so easy as in San Francisco.
+
+Madeleine knew that many of the eminent citizens she met in Society
+kept their mistresses and flaunted them openly. It was, in fact, almost
+a convention. She was not surprised to see several men who had taken
+her in to dinner tooling these gorgeous cyprians and looking far
+prouder than when they played host in the world of fashion. On one of
+the gayest of the coaches she saw four of the young men who were among
+the most devoted of her cavaliers at dances: Alexander Groome, Amos
+Lawton, Ogden Bascom, and "Tom" Abbott, Jr. Groome was paying his
+addresses to Maria Ballinger, "a fine figure of a girl" who had
+inherited little of her mother's beauty but all of her virtue, and
+Madeleine wondered if he would reform and settle down. Abbott was
+engaged to Marguerite McLane and looked as if he were having his last
+glad fling. Ogden Bascom had proposed to Guadalupe Hathaway every month
+for five years. It was safe to say that he would toe the mark if he won
+her. But he did not appear to be nursing a blighted heart at present.
+
+Madeleine's depression left her. _That_, at least, Howard would never
+do. She felt full of hope and buoyancy once more, not realizing that it
+is easier to win back a lover than change the nature of man.
+
+When Madeleine reached the Cliff House, that shabby innocent-looking
+little building whose evil fame had run round the world, she stared at
+it fascinated. Its restaurant overhung the sea. On this side the blinds
+were down. It looked as if awaiting the undertaker. She pictured
+Howard's horror when she told him of her close contact with vice, and
+anticipated with a pleasurable thrill the scolding he would give her.
+They had never quarrelled and it would be delightful to make up.
+
+"Not Mrs. Talbot! No! Assuredly not!"
+
+Involuntarily Madeleine raised her veil. She recognized the voice of
+"Old" Ben Travers (he was only fifty but bald and yellow), the Union
+Club gossip, and the one man in San Francisco she thoroughly disliked.
+He stood with his hat in his hand, an expression of ludicrous
+astonishment on his face.
+
+"Yes, it is I," said Madeleine coolly. "And I am very much interested."
+
+"Ah? Interested?" He glanced about. If this were an assignation either
+the man was late or had lost courage. But he assumed an expression of
+deep respect. "That I can well imagine, cloistered as you are. But, if
+you will permit me to say so, it is hardly prudent. Surely you know
+that this is a place of ill repute and that your motives, however
+innocent, might easily be misconstrued."
+
+"I am alone!" said Madeleine gaily, "and my veil is up! Not a man has
+glanced at me, I look so tiresomely respectable in these stout walking
+clothes. Even you, dear Mr. Travers, whom we accuse of being quite a
+gossip, understand perfectly."
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed. I do understand. And Mrs. Talbot is like Caesar's
+wife, but nevertheless--there is a hack. It is waiting, but I think I
+can bribe him to take us in. You really must not remain here another
+moment--and you surely do not intend to walk back--six miles?"
+
+"No, I'll be glad to drive--but if you will engage the hack--I
+shouldn't think of bothering you further."
+
+"I shall take you home," said Travers firmly. "Howard never would
+forgive me if I did not--that is--that is--"
+
+Madeleine laughed merrily. "If I intend to tell him! But of course I
+shall tell him. Why not?"
+
+"Well, yes, it would be best. I'll speak to the man."
+
+The Jehu was reluctant, but a bill passed and he drove up to Madeleine.
+"Guess I can do it," he said, "but I'll have to drive pretty fast."
+
+Madeleine smiled at him and he touched his hat. She had employed him
+more than once. "The faster the better, Thomas," she said. "I walked
+out and am tired."
+
+"I saw you come striding down the road, ma'am," he said deferentially,
+"and I knew you got off your own beat by mistake. I think I'd have
+screwed up my courage and said something if Mr. Travers hadn't happened
+along."
+
+Madeleine nodded carelessly and entered the hack, followed by Travers,
+in spite of her protests.
+
+"I too walked out here and intended to ask some one to give me a lift
+home. I am the unfortunate possessor of a liver, my dear young lady,
+and must walk six miles a day, although I loathe walking as I loathe
+drinking weak whiskey and water."
+
+Madeleine shrugged her shoulders and attempted to raise one of the
+curtains. The interior was as dark as a cave. But Travers exclaimed in
+alarm.
+
+"No! No! Not until we get out of this. When we have reached the city,
+but not here. In a hack on this road--"
+
+"Oh, very well. Then entertain me, please, as I cannot look out. You
+always have something interesting to tell."
+
+"I am flattered to think you find me entertaining. I've sometimes
+thought you didn't like me."
+
+"Now you know that is nonsense. I always think myself fortunate if I
+sit next you at dinner." Madeleine spoke in her gayest tones, but in
+truth she dreaded what the man might make of this innocent escapade and
+intended to make a friend of him if possible.
+
+She was growing accustomed to the gloom and saw him smile fatuously.
+"That sends me to the seventh heaven. How often since you came have I
+wished that my dancing days were not over."
+
+"I'd far rather hear you talk. Tell me some news."
+
+"News? News? San Francisco is as flat at present as spilled champagne.
+Let me see? Ah! Did you ever hear of Langdon Masters?"
+
+"No. Who is he?"
+
+"He is Virginian like myself--a distant cousin. He fought through the
+war, badly wounded twice, came home to find little left of the old
+estate--practically nothing for him. He tried to start a newspaper in
+Richmond but couldn't raise the capital. He went to New York and wrote
+for the newspapers there; also writes a good deal for the more
+intellectual magazines. Thought perhaps you had come across something
+of his. There is just a whisper, you know, that you were rather a bas
+bleu before you came to us."
+
+"Because I was born and educated in Boston? Poor Boston! I do recall
+reading something of Mr. Masters' in the _Atlantic_--I suppose it
+was--but I have forgotten what. Here, I have grown too frivolous--and
+happy--to care to read at all. But what have you to tell me
+particularly about Mr. Masters?"
+
+"I had a letter from him this morning asking me if there was an opening
+here. He resents the antagonism in the North that he meets at every
+turn, although they are glad enough of his exceptionally brilliant
+work. But he knows that San Francisco is the last stronghold of the
+South, and also that our people are generous and enterprising. I shall
+write him that I can see no opening for another paper at present, but
+will let him know if there happens to be one on an editorial staff.
+That is a long journey to take on an uncertainty."
+
+"I should think so. Heavens, how this carriage does bounce. The horses
+must be galloping."
+
+"Probably." He lifted a corner of the curtain. "We shall reach the city
+soon at this rate. Ah!"
+
+Madeleine, in spite of the bouncing vehicle, had managed heretofore to
+prop herself firmly in her corner, but a violent lurch suddenly threw
+her against Travers. He caught her firmly in one of his lean wiry arms.
+At the moment she thought nothing of it, although she disliked the
+contact, but when she endeavored to disengage herself, he merely jerked
+her more closely to his side and she felt his hot breath upon her
+cheek. It was the fevered breath of a man who drinks much and late and
+almost nauseated her.
+
+"Come come," whispered Travers. "I know you didn't go out there to meet
+any one; it was just a natural impulse for a little adventure, wasn't
+it? And I deserve my reward for getting you home safely. Give me a
+kiss."
+
+Madeleine wrenched herself free, but he laughed and caught her again,
+this time in both arms. "Oh, you can't get away, and I'm going to have
+that kiss. Yes, a dozen, by Jove. You're the prettiest thing in San
+Francisco, and I'll get ahead of the other men there."
+
+His yellow distorted face--he looked like a satyr--was almost on hers.
+She freed herself once more with a dexterous twisting motion of her
+supple body, leaped to the front of the carriage and pounded on the
+window behind the driver.
+
+"For God's sake! You fool! What are you doing? Do you want a scandal?"
+
+The carriage stopped its erratic course so abruptly that he was thrown
+to the floor. Madeleine already had the door open. She had all the
+strength of youth and perfect health, and he was worn out and shaken.
+He was scrambling to his feet. She put her arms under his shoulders and
+threw him out into the road.
+
+"Go on!" she called to the driver. And as he whipped up the horses
+again, his Homeric laughter mingling with the curses of the man in the
+ditch, she sank back trembling and gasping. It was her first experience
+of the vileness of man, for the men of her day respected the women of
+their own class unless met half way, or, violently enamoured, given
+full opportunity to express their emotions.
+
+Moreover she had made a venomous enemy.
+
+What would Howard say? What would he do to the wretch? Horsewhip him?
+Would he stop to think of scandal? The road had been deserted. She knew
+that Travers would keep his humiliation to himself and the incidents
+that led up to it; but if she told her husband and he lost his head the
+story would come out and soon cease to bear any semblance to the truth.
+She wished she had some one to advise her. What _did_ insulted women do?
+
+But she could not think in this horrible carriage. It would be at least
+an hour before she saw Howard. She would bathe her face in cold water
+and try to think.
+
+The hack stopped again and the coachman left the box.
+
+"It's only a few blocks now, ma'am," he said, as he opened the door. "I
+haven't much time--"
+
+Madeleine almost sprang out. She opened her purse. He accepted the
+large bill with a grin on his good-natured face.
+
+"That's all right, Mrs. Talbot. I wouldn't have spoke of it nohow. The
+Doctor and me's old friends. But I'm just glad old Ben got what he
+deserved. The impudence of him! You--well!--Good day, ma'am."
+
+He paused as he was climbing back to the box.
+
+"If you don't mind my giving ye a bit of advice, Mrs. Talbot--I've seen
+a good bit of the world, I have--this is a hot city, all right--I just
+wouldn't say anything to the doctor. Trouble makes trouble. Better let
+it stop right here."
+
+"Thanks, Thomas. Good-by."
+
+And Madeleine strode down the street as if the furies pursued her.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Madeleine was spared the ordeal of confession; it was six weeks before
+she saw her husband again. He telegraphed at six o'clock that he had a
+small-pox patient and could not subject her to the risk of contagion.
+The disease most dreaded in San Francisco had arrived some time before
+and the pest house outside the city limits was already crowded. The
+next day yellow flags appeared before several houses. Before a week
+passed they had multiplied all over the city. People went about with
+visible camphor bags suspended from their necks, and Madeleine heard
+the galloping death wagon at all hours of the night. Howard telegraphed
+frequently and sent a doctor to revaccinate her, as the virus he had
+administered himself had not taken. She was not to worry about him as
+he vaccinated himself every day. Finally he commanded her to leave
+town, and she made a round of visits.
+
+She spent a fortnight at Rincona, Mrs. Abbott's place at Alta, in the
+San Mateo valley, and another with the Hathaways near by. Then, after a
+fortnight at the different "Springs" she settled down for the rest of
+the summer on the Ballinger ranch in the Santa Clara valley. All her
+hostesses had house parties, there were picnics by day and dancing or
+hay-rides at night. For the first time she saw the beautiful California
+country; the redwood forests on the mountains, the bare brown and
+golden hills, the great valleys with their forests of oaks and madronas
+cleared here and there for orchard and vineyard; knowing that Howard
+was safe she gave herself to pleasure once more. After all there was a
+certain satisfaction in the assurance that her husband could not be
+with her if he would. She was not deliberately neglected and it was
+positive that he never entered the Club. She told no one but Sally
+Ballinger of her adventure, and although Travers was a favorite of her
+mother, this devoted friend adroitly managed that the gentleman to whom
+she applied many excoriating adjectives should not be invited that
+summer to "the ranch."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Langdon Masters arrived in San Francisco during Madeleine's third
+winter. He did not come unheralded, for Travers bragged about him
+constantly and asserted that San Francisco could thank him for an
+editorial writer second to none in the United States of America. As a
+matter of fact it was on Masters' achievement alone that the editor of
+the _Alta California_ had invited him to become a member of his staff.
+
+Masters was also a cousin of Alexander Groome, and arrived in San
+Francisco as a guest at the house on Ballinger Hill, a lonely outpost
+in the wastes of rock and sand in the west.
+
+There was no excitement in the female breast over his arrival for young
+men were abundant; but Society was prepared to welcome him not only on
+account of his distinguished connections but because his deliberate
+choice of San Francisco for his future career was a compliment they
+were quick to appreciate.
+
+He came gaily to his fate filled with high hopes of owning his own
+newspaper before long and ranking as the leading journalist in the
+great little city made famous by gold and Bret Harte. He was one of
+many in New York; he knew that with his brilliant gifts and the
+immediate prominence his new position would give him the future was his
+to mould. No man, then or since, has brought so rare an assortment of
+talents to the erratic journalism of San Francisco; not even James King
+of William, the murdered editor of the _Evening Bulletin_. Perhaps he
+too would have been murdered had he remained long enough to own and
+edit the newspaper of his dreams, for he had a merciless irony, a
+fearless spirit, and an utter contempt for the prejudices of small men.
+But for a time at least it looked as if the history of journalism in
+San Francisco was to be one of California's proudest boasts.
+
+Masters was a practical visionary, a dreamer whose dreams never
+confused his metallic intellect, a stylist who fascinated even the poor
+mind forced to express itself in colloquialisms, a man of immense
+erudition for his years (he was only thirty); and he was insatiably
+interested in the affairs of the world and in every phase of life. He
+was a poet by nature, and a journalist by profession because he
+believed the press was destined to become the greatest power in the
+country, and he craved not only power but the utmost opportunity for
+self-expression.
+
+His character possessed as many antitheses. He was a natural lover of
+women and avoided them not only because he feared entanglements and
+enervations but because he had little respect for their brains. He was,
+by his Virginian inheritance, if for no simpler reason, a bon vivant,
+but the preoccupations and ordinary conversational subjects of men
+irritated him, and he cultivated their society and that of women only
+in so far as they were essential to his deeper understanding of life.
+His code was noblesse oblige and he privately damned it as a
+superstition foisted upon him by his ancestors. He was sentimental and
+ironic, passionate and indifferent, frank and subtle, proud and
+democratic, with a warm capacity for friendship and none whatever for
+intimacy, a hard worker with a strong taste for loafing--in the open
+country, book in hand. He prided himself upon his iron will and turned
+uneasily from the weeds growing among the fine flowers of his nature.
+
+Such was Langdon Masters when he came to San Francisco and Madeleine
+Talbot.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+He soon tired of plunging through the sand hills between the city and
+Ballinger Hill either on horseback or in a hack whose driver, if the
+hour were late, was commonly drunk; and took a suite of rooms in the
+Occidental Hotel. He had brought his library with him and one side of
+his parlor was immediately furnished with books to the ceiling. It was
+some time before Society saw anything of him. He had a quick reputation
+to make, many articles promised to Eastern periodicals and newspapers,
+no mind for distractions.
+
+But his brilliant and daring editorials, not only on the pestiferous
+politics of San Francisco, but upon national topics, soon attracted the
+attention of the men; who, moreover, were fascinated by his
+conversation during his occasional visits to the Union Club. Several
+times he was cornered, royally treated to the best the cellar afforded,
+and upon one occasion talked for two hours, prodded merely with a
+question when he showed a tendency to drop into revery. But as a matter
+of fact he liked to talk, knowing that he could outshine other
+intelligent men, and a responsive palate put him in good humor with all
+men and inspired him with unwonted desire to please.
+
+Husbands spoke of him enthusiastically at home and wives determined to
+know him. They besieged Alexina Ballinger. Why had she not done her
+duty? Langdon Masters had lived in her house for weeks. Mrs. Ballinger
+replied that she had barely seen the man. He rarely honored them at
+dinner, sat up until four in the morning with her son-in-law (if she
+were not mistaken he and Alexander Groome were two of a feather),
+breakfasted at all hours, and then went directly to the city. What
+possible use could such a man be to Society? He had barely looked at
+Sally, much less the uxoriously married Maria, and might have been
+merely an inconsiderate boarder who had given nothing but unimpaired
+Virginian manners in return for so much upsetting of a household. No
+doubt the servants would have rebelled had he not tipped them
+immoderately. "Moreover," she concluded, "he is quite unlike our men,
+if he _is_ a Southerner. And not handsome at all. His hair is black but
+he wears it too short, and he had no mustache, nor even sideboards. His
+face has deep lines and his eyes are like steel. He rarely smiles and I
+don't believe he ever laughed in his life."
+
+Society, however, had made up its mind, and as the women had no
+particular desire to make that terrible journey to Alexina Ballinger's
+any oftener than was necessary, it was determined (in conclave) that
+Mrs. Hunt McLane should have the honor of capturing and introducing
+this difficult and desirable person.
+
+Mr. McLane, who had met him at the Club, called on him formally and
+invited him to dinner. Hunt McLane was the greatest lawyer and one of
+the greatest gentlemen in San Francisco. Masters was too much a man of
+the world not to appreciate the compliment; moreover, he had now been
+in San Francisco for two months and his social instincts were stirring.
+He accepted the invitation and many others.
+
+People dined early in those simple days and the hours he spent in the
+most natural and agreeable society he had ever entered did not
+interfere with his work. Sometimes he talked, at others merely listened
+with a pleasant sense of relaxation to the chatter of pretty women;
+with whom he was quite willing to flirt as long as there was no hint of
+the heavy vail. He thought it quite possible he should fall in love
+with and marry one of these vivacious pretty girls; when his future was
+assured in the city of his enthusiastic adoption.
+
+He met Madeleine at all these gatherings, but it so happened that he
+never sat beside her and he had no taste for kettledrums or balls. He
+thought her very lovely to look at and wondered why so young and
+handsome a woman with a notoriously faithful husband should have so sad
+an expression. Possibly because it rather became her style of beauty.
+
+He saw a good deal of Dr. Talbot at the Club however and asked them
+both to one of the little dinners in his rooms with which he paid his
+social debts. These dinners were very popular, for he was a connoisseur
+in wines, the dinner was sent from a French restaurant, and he was
+never more entertaining than at his own table. His guests were as
+carefully assorted as his wines, and if he did not know intuitively
+whose minds and tastes were most in harmony, or what lady did not
+happen to be speaking to another at the moment, he had always the
+delicate hints of Mrs. McLane to guide him. She was his social sponsor
+and vastly proud of him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Madeline went impassively to the dinner. His brilliancy had impressed
+her but she was indifferent to everything these days and her intellect
+was torpid; although when in society and under the influence of the
+lights and wine she could be almost as animated as ever. But the
+novelty of that society had worn thin long since; she continued to go
+out partly as a matter of routine, more perhaps because she had no
+other resource. She saw less of her husband than ever, for his practice
+as well as his masculine acquaintance grew with the city--and that was
+swarming over the hills of the north and out toward the sand dunes of
+the west. But she was resigned, and inappetent. She had even ceased to
+wish for children. The future stretched before her interminable and
+dull. A railroad had been built across the continent and she had asked
+permission recently of her husband to visit her parents: her mother was
+now an invalid and Mr. Chilton would not leave her.
+
+But the doctor was more nearly angry than she had ever seen him. He
+couldn't live without her. He must always know she was "there."
+Moreover, she was run down, she was thin and pale, he must keep her
+under his eye. But if he was worried about her health he was still more
+worried at her apparent desire to leave him for months. Did she no
+longer love him? Her response was not emphatic and he went out and
+bought her a diamond bracelet. At least she was thankful that it had
+been bought for her and not sent to his wife by mistake, an experience
+that had happened the other day to Maria Groome. The town had rocked
+with laughter and Groome had made a hurried trip East on business. But
+Madeleine no longer found consolation in the reflection that things
+might be worse. The sensation of jealousy would have been a welcome
+relief from this spiritual and mental inertia.
+
+She wore a dress of bright golden-green grosgrain silk trimmed with
+crepe leaves a shade deeper. The pointed bodice displayed her shoulders
+in a fashion still beloved of royal ladies, and her soft golden-brown
+hair was dressed in a high chignon with a long curl descending over the
+left side of her bust. A few still clung to the low chignon, others had
+adopted a fashion set by the Empress Eugenie and wore their hair in a
+mass of curls on the nape of the neck; but Madeleine received the
+latest advices from a sister-in-law who lived in New York; and as
+femininity dies hard she still felt a mild pleasure in introducing the
+latest cry in fashion. As she was the last to arrive she would have
+been less than woman if she had not felt a glow at the sensation she
+made. The color came back to her cheeks as the women surrounded her
+with ecstatic compliments and peered at the coiffure from all sides.
+The diamond bracelet was barely noticed.
+
+"I adopt it tomorrow," said Mrs. McLane emphatically. "With my white
+hair I shall look more like an old marquise than ever."
+
+One of the other women ran into Masters' bedroom where they had left
+their wraps and emerged in a few moments with a lifted chignon and a
+straggling curl. Amid exclamations and laughter two more followed suit,
+while the host and the other men waited patiently for their dinner. It
+was a lively party that finally sat down, and it was the gayest if the
+most momentous of Masters' little functions.
+
+His eyes strayed toward Madeleine more than once, for her success had
+excited her and she had never looked lovelier. She was at the other end
+of the table and Mrs. McLane and Mrs. Ballinger sat beside him. She
+interested him for the first time and he adroitly drew her history from
+his mentor (not that he deluded that astute lady for an instant, but
+she dearly loved to gossip).
+
+"She is going through one of those crises that all young wives must
+expect," she concluded. "If it isn't one thing it's another. She is
+still very young, and inclined to be romantic. She expected too
+much--of a husband, mon dieu! Of course she is lonely or thinks she is.
+Too bad youth never can realize that it is enough to be young. And with
+beauty, and means, and position, and charming frocks! She will grow
+philosophical--when it is too late. Meanwhile a little flirtation would
+not hurt her and Howard Talbot does not know the meaning of the word
+jealousy. Why don't you take her in hand?"
+
+"Not my line. But it seems odd that Talbot should neglect her. She
+looks intelligent and she is certainly beautiful."
+
+"Oh, Howard! He is the best of men but the worst of husbands."
+
+Her attention was claimed by the man on her right and at the same
+moment Madeleine's had evidently been drawn to the wall of books behind
+her. She turned, craned her neck, forgetting her partner.
+
+Then, Masters saw a strange thing. Her eyes filled with tears and she
+continued to stare at the books in complete absorption until her
+attention was laughingly recalled.
+
+"Now, that is odd," thought Masters. "Very odd."
+
+She felt his keen gaze and laughed with a curious eagerness as she met
+his eyes. He guessed that for the first time he had interested her.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+After dinner the men went into his den to smoke, but before his cigar
+was half finished he muttered something about his duty to the ladies
+and returned to the parlor. As he had half expected, Madeleine was
+standing before the books scanning their titles, and as he approached
+she drew her hand caressingly across a shelf devoted to the poets. The
+other women were gossiping at the end of the long room.
+
+"You are fond of books!" he said abruptly.
+
+She had not noticed his reappearance. She was startled and exclaimed
+passionately, "I loved them--once! But it is a long time since I have
+read anything but an occasional novel."
+
+"But why? Why?"
+
+He had powerful gray eyes and they magnetized the truth out of her.
+
+"My husband thinks it is a woman's sole duty to look charming. He was
+afraid I would become a bluestocking and lose my charm and spoil my
+looks. I brought many books with me, but I never opened the cases and
+finally gave them to the Mercantile Library. I have never gone to look
+at them."
+
+"Good heaven!" He had never felt sorrier for a woman who had asked alms
+of him in the street.
+
+She was looking at him eagerly. "Perhaps--you won't mind--you will lend
+me--I don't think my husband would notice now--he is never at home
+except for breakfast and dinner--"
+
+"Will I? For heaven's sake look upon them as your own. What will you
+take with you to-night?"
+
+"Oh! Nothing! Perhaps you will send me one tomorrow?"
+
+"One? I'll send a dozen. Let us select them now."
+
+But at this moment the other men entered and she whispered hurriedly,
+"Will you select and send them? Any--any--I don't care what."
+
+The doctor came toward them full of good wine and laughter. The books
+meant nothing to him. He had forgotten his wife's inexplicable taste
+for serious literature. He now found her quite perfect but was worried
+about her health. The tonics and horseback riding he had prescribed
+seemed to have little effect.
+
+"I am going to take you away and send you to bed," he said jovially.
+"No sitting up after nine o'clock until you are yourself again, and not
+another ball this winter. A wife is a great responsibility, Masters.
+Any other woman is easier to prescribe for, but the wife of your bosom
+knows you so well she can fool you, as no woman who expects a bill
+twice a year would dare to do. Still, she's pretty good, pretty good.
+She's never had an attack of nerves, nor fainted yet. And as for
+'blues' she doesn't know the meaning of the word. Come along,
+sweetheart."
+
+Madeleine smiled half cynically, half wistfully, shook hands with her
+host and made him a pretty little speech, nodded to the others and went
+obediently to bed. The doctor, whose manners were courtly, escorted her
+to the door of their parlor and returned to Masters' rooms. The other
+women left immediately afterward, and as it was Saturday night, he and
+his host and Mr. McLane talked until nearly morning.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+By the first of June Fashion had deserted the city with its winds and
+fogs and dust, and Madeleine was one of the few that remained. Her
+husband had intended to send her to Congress Springs in the mountains
+of the Santa Clara Valley, but she seemed to be so much better that he
+willingly let her stay on, congratulating himself on the results of his
+treatment. She was no longer listless and was always singing at the
+piano when he rushed in for his dinner.
+
+If he had been told that the cure was effected by books he would have
+been profoundly skeptical, and perhaps wisely so. But although
+Madeleine felt an almost passionate gratitude for Masters, she gave him
+little thought except when a new package of books arrived, or when she
+discussed them briefly with him in Society. He had never called.
+
+But her mind flowered like a bit of tropical country long neglected by
+rain. She had thought that the very seeds of her mental desires were
+dead, but they sprouted during a long uninterrupted afternoon and grew
+so rapidly they intoxicated her. Masters had sent her in that first
+offering poets who had not become fashionable in Boston when she left
+it: Browning, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne; besides the Byron and
+Shelley and Keats of her girlhood. He sent her Letters and Essays and
+Memoirs and Biographies that she had never read and those that she had
+and was glad to read again. He sent her books on art and she re-lived
+her days in the galleries of Europe, understanding for the first time
+what she had instinctively admired.
+
+It was not only the sense of mental growth and expansion that
+exhilarated her, after her long drought, but the translation to a new
+world. She lived in the past in these lives of dead men; and as she
+read the biographies of great painters and musicians she shared their
+disappointments and forgot her own. Her emotional nature was in
+constant vibration, and this phenomenon was the more dangerous, as she
+would have argued--had she thought about it at all--that having been
+diverted to the intellect it must necessarily remain there.
+
+If she had belonged to a later generation no doubt she would have taken
+to the pen herself, and artistic expression would--possibly--have
+absorbed and safe-guarded her during the remainder of her genetic
+years; but such a thing never occurred to her. She was too modest in
+the face of master work, and only queer freakish women wrote, anyhow,
+not ladies of her social status.
+
+Although her thoughts rarely strayed to Masters, he hovered a sort of
+beneficent god in the background of her consciousness, the author of
+her new freedom and content; but it was only after an unusually long
+talk with him at a large dinner given to a party of distinguished
+visitors from Europe, shortly before Society left town, that she found
+herself longing to discuss with him books that a week before would have
+been sufficient in themselves.
+
+The opportunity did not arise however until she had been for more than
+a fortnight "alone" in San Francisco. She was returning from her daily
+brisk walk when she met him at the door of the hotel. They naturally
+entered and walked up the stairs together. She had immediately begun to
+ply him with questions, and as she unlocked the door of her parlor she
+invited him to enter.
+
+He hesitated a moment. Nothing was farther from his intention than to
+permit his interest in this charming lonely woman to deepen;
+entanglements had proved fatal before to ambitious men; moreover he was
+almost an intimate friend of her husband. But he had no reasonable
+excuse, he had manifestly been sauntering when they met, and he had all
+the fine courtesy of the South. He followed her into the hotel parlor
+she had made unlike any other room in San Francisco, with the delicate
+French furniture and hangings her mother had bought in Paris and given
+her as a wedding present. A log fire was blazing. She waved her hand
+toward an easy chair beside the hearth, threw aside her hat and lifted
+her shining crushed hair with both hands, then ran over to a panelled
+chest which the doctor had conceded to be handsome, but quite useless
+as it was not even lined with cedar.
+
+"I keep them in here," she exclaimed as gleefully as a naughty child;
+and he had the uneasy sense of sharing a secret with her that isolated
+them on a little oasis of their own in this lawless waste of San
+Francisco.
+
+She had opened the chest and was rummaging.
+
+"What shall it be first? How I have longed to talk with you about a
+dozen. On the whole I think I'd rather you'd read a poem to me. Do you
+mind? I know you are not lazy--oh, no!--and I am sure you read
+delightfully."
+
+"I don't mind in the least," he said gallantly. (At all events he was
+in for it.) "And I rather like the sound of my own voice. What shall it
+be?"
+
+And, alas, she chose "The Statue and the Bust."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+He was disconcerted, but his sense of humor come to his rescue, and
+although he read that passionate poem with its ominous warning to
+hesitant lovers, with the proper emphasis and as much feeling as he
+dared, he managed to make it a wholly impersonal performance. When he
+finished he dropped the book and glanced over at his companion. She was
+sitting forward with a rapt expression, her cheeks flushed, her breath
+coming unevenly. But there was neither challenge nor self-consciousness
+in her eyes. The sparkle had left them, but it was their innocence, not
+their melting, that stirred him profoundly. With her palimpsest mind
+she was a poet for the moment, not a woman.
+
+Her manners never left her and she paid him a conventional little
+compliment on his reading, then asked him if he believed that people
+who could love like that had ever lived, or if such dramas were the
+peculiar prerogative of the divinely gifted imagination.
+
+He replied drily that a good many people in their own time loved
+recklessly and even more disastrously, and then asked her irresistibly
+(for he was a man if a wary one) if she had never loved herself.
+
+"Oh, of course," she replied simply. "I love my husband. But domestic
+love--how different!"
+
+"But have you never--domestic love does not always--well--"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and replied with the same disconcerting
+simplicity, "Oh, when you are married you are married. And now that
+your books have made me so happy I never find fault with Howard any
+more. I know that he cannot be changed and he loves me devotedly in his
+fashion. Mrs. McLane is always preaching philosophy and your books have
+shown me the way."
+
+"And do you imagine that books will always fill your life? After the
+novelty has worn off?"
+
+"Oh, that could never be! Even if you went away and took your books
+with you I should get others. I am quite emancipated now."
+
+"This is the first time I ever heard a young and beautiful woman
+declare that books were an adequate substitute for life. And one sort
+of emancipation is very likely to lead to another."
+
+She drew herself up and all her Puritan forefathers looked from her
+candid eyes. "If you mean that I would do the things that a few of our
+women do--not many (she was one of the loyal guardians of her anxious
+little circle)--if you think--but of course you do not. That is so
+completely out of the question that I have never given it
+consideration. If my husband should die--and I should feel terribly if
+he did--but if he should, while I was still young, I might, of course,
+love another man whose tastes were exactly like my own. But I'd never
+betray Howard--nor myself--even in thought."
+
+The words and all they implied might have been an irresistible
+challenge to another man. But to Masters, whose career was inexorably
+mapped out,--he was determined that his own fame and that of California
+should be synchronous--and who fled at the first hint of seduction in a
+woman's eyes, they came as a pleasurable reassurance. After all, mental
+companionship with a woman was unique, and it was quite in keeping that
+he should find it in this unique city of his adoption. Moreover, it
+would be a very welcome recreation in his energetic life. If
+propinquity began to sprout its deadly fruit he fancied that she would
+close the episode abruptly. He was positive that he should, if for no
+other reason than because her husband was his friend. He might elope
+with the wife of a friend if he lost his head, but he would never
+dishonor himself in the secret intrigue. And he had not the least
+intention of leaving San Francisco. For the time being they were safe.
+It was like picking wild flowers in the field after a day's hot work.
+
+"Now," she said serenely, "read me 'Pippa Passes.'"
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Nevertheless, he stayed away from her for a week. At the end of that
+time he received a peremptory little note bidding him call and expound
+Newman's "Apologia" to her. She could not understand it and she must.
+
+He smiled at the pretty imperiousness of the note so like herself; for
+her circle had spoiled her, and whatever her husband's idiosyncrasies
+she was certainly his petted darling.
+
+He went, of course. And before long he was spending every afternoon in
+the charming room so like a French salon of the Eighteenth Century that
+the raucous sounds of San Francisco beyond the closed and curtained
+windows beat upon it faintly like the distant traffic of a great city.
+
+Masters had asked himself humorously, Why not? and succumbed. There was
+no other place to go except the Club, and Mrs. Talbot was an infinitely
+more interesting companion than men who discussed little besides their
+business, professional, or demi-monde engrossments. It was a complete
+relaxation from his own driving work. He was writing the entire
+editorial page of his newspaper, the demand for his articles from
+Eastern magazines and weekly journals was incessant; which not only
+contributed to his pride and income, but to the glory of California. He
+was making her known for something besides gold, gamblers, and Sierra
+pines.
+
+But above all he was instructing and expanding a feminine but really
+fine mind. She sat at his feet and there was no doubt in that mind,
+both naive and gifted, that his was the most remarkable intellect in
+the world and that from no book ever written could she learn as much.
+He would have been more than mortal had he renounced his pedestal and
+he was far too humane for the cruelty of depriving her of the
+stimulating happiness he had brought into her lonely life. There was no
+one, man or woman, to take his place.
+
+Nor was there any one to criticize. The world was out of town. They
+lived in the same hotel, and he rarely met any one in their common
+corridor. At first she mentioned his visits casually to her husband,
+and Howard grunted approvingly. Several times he took Masters snipe
+shooting in the marshes near Ravenswood, but he accepted his friend's
+attitude to his wife too much as a matter of course even to mention it.
+To him, a far better judge of men than of women, Langdon Masters was
+ambition epitomized, and if he wondered why such a man wasted time in
+any woman's salon, he concluded it was because, like men of any calling
+but his own (who saw far too much of women and their infernal ailments)
+he enjoyed a chat now and then with as charming a woman of the world as
+Madeleine. If anyone had suggested that Langdon Masters enjoyed
+Madeleine's intellect he would have told it about town as the joke of
+the season.
+
+Madeleine indulged in no introspection. She had suffered too much in
+the past not to quaff eagerly of the goblet when it was full and ask
+for nothing more. If she paused to realize how dependent she had become
+on the constant society of Langdon Masters and that literature was now
+no more than the background of life, she would have shrugged her
+shoulders gaily and admitted that she was having a mental flirtation,
+and that, at least, was as original as became them both. They were
+safe. The code protected them. He was her husband's friend and they
+were married. What was, was.
+
+But in truth she never went so far as to admit that Masters and the
+books she loved were not one and inseparable. She could not imagine
+herself talking with him for long on any other subject, save, perhaps,
+the politics of the nation--which, in truth, rather bored her. As for
+small talk she would as readily have thought of inflicting the Almighty
+in her prayers.
+
+Nor was it often they drifted into personalities or the human problems.
+One day, however, he did ask her tentatively if she did not think that
+divorce was justifiable in certain circumstances.
+
+She merely stared at him in horror.
+
+"Well, there is your erstwhile friend, Sibyl Geary. She fell in love
+with another man, her husband was a sot, she got her divorce without
+legal opposition, and married Forbes--finest kind of fellow."
+
+"Divorce is against the canons of Church and Society. No woman should
+break her solemn vows, no matter what her provocation. Look at Maria
+Groome. Do you think she would divorce Alexander? She has provocation
+enough."
+
+"You are both High Church, but all women are not. Mrs. Geary is a mere
+Presbyterian. And at least she is as happy as she was wretched before."
+
+"No woman can be happy who has lost the respect of Society."
+
+"I thought you were bored with Society."
+
+"Yes, but it is mine to have. Being bored is quite different from being
+cast out like a pariah."
+
+"Oh! And you think love a poor substitute?"
+
+"Love, of course, is the most wonderful thing in the world. (She might
+be talking of maternal or filial love, thought Masters.) But it must
+have the sanction of one's principles, one's creed and one's
+traditions. Otherwise, it weighs nothing in the balance."
+
+"You are a delectable little Puritan," said Masters with a laugh that
+was not wholly mirthful. "I shall now read you Tennyson's 'Maud,' as
+you approve of sentiment, at least. Tennyson will never cause the
+downfall of any woman, but if you ever see lightning on the horizon
+don't read 'The Statue and the Bust' with the battery therof."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+When people returned to town they were astonished at the change in
+Madeleine Talbot, especially after a summer in the city that would have
+"torn their own nerves out by the roots." More than one had wondered
+anxiously if she were going into the decline so common in those days.
+They had known the cause of the broken spring, but none save the
+incurably sanguine opined that Howard Talbot had mended it. But mended
+it was and her eyes had never sparkled so gaily, nor her laugh rung so
+lightly since her first winter among them. Mrs. McLane suggested
+charitably that her tedium vitae had run its course and she was become
+a philosopher.
+
+But Madeleine _reviva_ did not suggest the philosopher to the most
+charitable eye (not even to Mrs. McLane's), particularly as there was a
+"something" about her--was it repressed excitement?--which had been
+quite absent from her old self, however vivacious.
+
+It was Mrs. Abbott, a lady of unquenchable virtue, whose tongue was
+more feared than that of any woman in San Francisco, who first
+verbalized what every friend of Madeleine's secretly wondered: Was
+there a man in the case? Many loyally cried, Impossible. Madeleine was
+above suspicion. Above suspicion, yes. No one would accuse her of a
+liaison. But who was she or any other neglected young wife to be above
+falling in love if some fascinating creature laid siege? Love dammed up
+was apt to spring a leak in time, even if it did not overflow,
+and--well, it was known that water sought its level, even if it could
+not run uphill. Mrs. Abbott had lived for twenty years in San
+Francisco, and in New Orleans for thirty years before that, and she had
+seen a good many women in love in her time. This climate made a
+plaything of virtue. "Virtue--you said?--Precisely. She's _not there_
+or we'd see the signs of moral struggle, horror, in fact; for she's not
+one to succumb easily. But mark my words, _she's on the way_."
+
+That point settled, and it was vastly interesting to believe it
+(Madeleine Talbot, of all people!), who was the man? Duty to mundane
+affairs had kept many of the liveliest blades and prowling husbands in
+town all summer; but Madeleine had known them all for three years or
+more. Besides, So and So was engaged to So and So, and So and So quite
+reprehensibly interested in Mrs. So and So.
+
+The young gentlemen were discreetly sounded, but their lack of anything
+deeper than friendly interest in the "loveliest of her sex" was
+manifest. Husbands were ordered to retail the gossip of the Club, but
+exploded with fury when tactful pumping forced up the name of Madeleine
+Talbot. They were harridans, harpies, old-wives, infernal
+scandalmongers. If there was one completely blameless woman in San
+Francisco it was Howard Talbot's wife.
+
+No one thought of Langdon Masters.
+
+He appeared more rarely at dinners, and had never ventured in public
+with Madeleine even during the summer. When his acute news sense
+divined they were gossiping and speculating about her he took alarm and
+considered the wisdom of discontinuing his afternoon visits. But they
+had become as much a part of his life as his daily bread. Moreover, he
+could not withdraw without giving the reason, and it was a more
+intimate subject than he cared to discuss with her. Whether he was in
+love with her or not was a question he deliberately refused to face. If
+the present were destroyed there was no future to take its place, and
+he purposed to live in his Fool's Paradise as long as he could. It was
+an excellent substitute for tragedy.
+
+But Society soon began to notice that she no longer honored kettledrums
+or the more formal afternoon receptions with her presence, and her
+calls were few and late. When attentive friends called on her she was
+"out." The clerk at the desk had been asked to protect her, as she
+"must rest in the afternoon." He suspected nothing and her word was his
+law.
+
+When quizzed, Madeleine replied laughingly that she could keep her
+restored health only by curtailing her social activities; but she
+blushed, for lying came hardly. As calling was a serious business in
+San Francisco, she compromised by the ancient clearing-house device of
+an occasional large "At Home," besides her usual dinners and luncheons.
+When Masters was a dinner guest he paid her only the polite attentions
+due a hostess and flirted elaborately with the prettiest of the women.
+Madeleine, who was unconscious of the gossip, was sometimes a little
+hurt, and when he avoided her at other functions and was far too
+attentive to Sally Ballinger, or Annette McLane, a beautiful girl just
+out, she had an odd palpitation and wondered what ailed her. Jealous?
+Well, perhaps. Friends of the same sex were often jealous. Had not
+Sally been jealous at one time of poor Sibyl Geary? And Masters was the
+most complete friend a woman ever had. She thought sadly that perhaps
+he had enough of her in the afternoon and welcomed a change. Well, that
+was natural enough. She found herself enjoying the society of other
+bright men at dinners, now that life was fair again.
+
+Nevertheless, she experienced a sensation of fright now and again, and
+not because she feared to lose him.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+There is nothing so carking as the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity. They
+may not cause the acute distress of love and hate, but no tooth ever
+ached more incessantly nor more insistently demanded relief. That
+doughty warrior, Mrs. Abbott, in her own homely language determined to
+take the bull by the horns. She sailed into the Occidental Hotel one
+afternoon and up the stairs without pausing at the desk. The clerk gave
+her a cursory glance. Mrs. Abbott went where she listed, and, moreover,
+was obviously expected.
+
+When she reached the Talbot parlor she halted a moment, and then
+knocked loudly. Madeleine, who often received parcels, innocently
+invited entrance. Mrs. Abbott promptly accepted the invitation and
+walked in upon Masters and his hostess seated before the fire. The
+former had a book in his hand, and, judging from the murmur that had
+penetrated her applied ear before announcing herself, had been reading
+aloud. ("As cozy as two bugs in a rug," she told her friends afterward.)
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Abbott! How kind of you!" Madeleine was annoyed to find
+herself blushing, but she kept her head and entered into no
+explanation. Masters, with his most politely aloof air, handed the
+smiling guest to the sofa, and as she immediately announced that the
+room was too warm for her, Madeleine removed her dolman. Mrs. Abbott as
+ever was clad in righteous black satin trimmed with bugles and fringe,
+and a small flat bonnet whose strings indifferently supported her
+chins. She fixed her sharp small eyes immediately on Madeleine's
+beautiful house gown of nile green camel's hair, made with her usual
+sweeping lines and without trimming of any sort.
+
+"Charming--charming--and so becoming with that lovely color you have.
+New York, I suppose--"
+
+"Oh, no, a seamstress made it. You must let me get you cake and a glass
+of wine." The unwilling hostess crossed over to the hospitable cupboard
+and Mrs. Abbott amiably accepted a glass of port, the while her eyes
+could hardly tear themselves from the books on the table by the fire.
+There were at least a dozen of them and her astute old mind leapt
+straight at the truth.
+
+"I thought you had given all your books to the Mercantile Library," she
+remarked wonderingly. "We all thought it so hard on you, but Howard is
+set in his ways, poor old thing. He was much too old for you anyhow. I
+always said so. But I see he has relented. Have you been patronizing C.
+Beach? Nice little book store. I go there myself at Christmas time--get
+a set in nice bindings for one of the children every year."
+
+"Oh, these are borrowed," said Madeleine lightly. "Mr. Masters has been
+kind enough to lend them to me."
+
+"Oh--h--h, naughty puss! What would Howard say if he found you out?"
+
+Masters, who stood on the hearth rug, looked down at her with an
+expression, which, she afterward confessed, sent shivers up her spine.
+"Talbot is a great friend of mine," he said with deliberate emphasis,
+"and not likely to object to his wife's sharing my library."
+
+"Don't be too sure. The whole town knows that Howard detests
+bluestockings and would rather his wife had a good honest flirtation
+than stuffed her brains.... Pretty little head." She tweaked
+Madeleine's scarlet ear. "Mustn't put too much in it."
+
+"I'm afraid it doesn't hold much," said Madeleine smiling; and fancied
+she heard a bell in her depths toll: "It's going to end! It's going to
+end!" And for the first time in her life she felt like fainting.
+
+She went hurriedly over to the cupboard and poured herself out a glass
+of port wine. "I had almost forgotten my tonic," she said. "It has made
+me quite well again."
+
+"Your improvement is nothing short of miraculous," said the old lady
+drily. "It is the talk of the town. But you are ungrateful if you don't
+give all those interesting books some of the credit. I hope Howard is
+properly grateful to Mr. Masters.... By the way, my young friend, the
+men complain that you are never seen at the Club during the afternoon
+any more. That is ungrateful, if you like!--for they all think you are
+the brightest man out here, and would rather hear you talk than eat--or
+drink, which is more to the point. Now, I must go, dear. I won't
+intrude any longer. It has been delightful, meeting two such clever
+people at once. You are coming to my 'At Home' tomorrow. I won't take
+no for an answer."
+
+There was a warning note in her voice. Her pointed remarks had not been
+inspired by sheer felinity. It was her purpose to let Madeleine know
+that she was in danger of scandal or worse, and that the sooner she
+scrambled back to terra firma the better. Of course she could not
+refrain from an immediate round of calls upon impatient friends, but
+she salved her conscience by asserting roundly (and with entire
+honesty) that there was nothing in it as yet. She had seen too much of
+the world to be deceived on _that_ point.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+After Masters had assisted Mrs. Abbott's large bulk into her barouche,
+resisting the impulse to pitch it in headfirst, he walked slowly up the
+stairs. He was seething with fury, and he was also aghast. The woman
+had unquestionably precipitated the crisis he had hoped to avoid. To
+use her favorite expression, the fat was in the fire; and she would see
+to it that it was maintained at sizzling point. He ground his teeth as
+he thought of the inferences, the innuendos, the expectations, the
+constant linking of his name with Madeleine's. Madeleine!
+
+It was true, of course, that the gossip might stop short of scandal if
+she entered the afternoon treadmill once more and showed herself so
+constantly that the most malignant must admit that she had no time for
+dalliance; it was well known that he spent the morning and late
+afternoon hours at the office.
+
+But that would mean that he must give her up. She was the last woman to
+consent to stolen meetings, even were he to suggest them, for the
+raison d'etre of their companionship would be gone. And that phase
+could end in but one way.
+
+What a dreamer he had been, he, a man of the world, to imagine that
+such an idyll could last. Perhaps four perfect months were as much as a
+man had any right to ask of life. Nevertheless, he experienced not the
+slightest symptom of resignation. He felt reckless enough to throw his
+future to the winds, kidnap Madeleine, and take the next boat to South
+America. But his unclouded mind drove inexorably to the end: her
+conscience and unremitting sense of disgrace would work the complete
+unhappiness of both. Divorce was equally out of the question.
+
+As he approached her door he felt a strong inclination to pass it and
+defer the inevitable interview until the morrow. He must step warily
+with her as with the world, and he needed all his self-control. If he
+lost his head and told her that he loved her he would not save a crumb
+from his feast. Moreover, there was the possibility of revealing her to
+herself if she loved him, and that would mean utter misery for her.
+
+Did she? He walked hastily past her door. His coolly reasoning brain
+felt suddenly full of hot vapors.
+
+Then he cursed himself for a coward and turned back. She would feel
+herself deserted in her most trying hour, for she needed a reassuring
+friend at this moment if never before. He had rarely failed to keep his
+head when he chose and he would keep it now.
+
+But when he entered the room his self-command was put to a severe test.
+She was huddled in a chair crying, and although he scoffed at woman's
+tears as roundly as Dr. Talbot, they never failed to rain on the
+softest spot in his nature. But he walked directly to the hearth rug
+and lit a cigarette.
+
+"I hope you are not letting that old cat worry you." He managed to
+infuse his tones with an amiable contempt.
+
+But Madeleine only cried the harder.
+
+"Come, come. Of course you are bruised, you are such a sensitive little
+plant, but you know what women are, and more especially that old woman.
+But even she cannot find much to gossip about in the fact that you were
+receiving an afternoon caller."
+
+"It--is--is--n't--only that!"
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"I--I'll be back in a moment."
+
+She ran into her bedroom, and Masters took a batch of proofs from his
+pocket and deliberately read them during the ten minutes of her
+absence. When she returned she had bathed her eyes, and looked quite
+composed. In truth she had taken sal volatile, and if despair was still
+in her soul her nerves no longer jangled.
+
+He rose to hand her a chair, but she shook her head and walked over to
+the window, then returned and stood by the table, leaning on it as if
+to steady herself.
+
+"Shall I get you a glass of port wine?"
+
+"No; more than one goes to my head."
+
+He threw the proofs on the table and retreated to the hearth-rug.
+
+"I suppose this means that you must not come here any more?"
+
+"Does it? Are you going to turn me adrift to bore myself at the Club?"
+
+"Oh, men have so many resources! And it is you who have given all. I
+had nothing to give you."
+
+"You forget, my dear Mrs. Talbot, that man is never so flattered as
+when some woman thinks him an oracle. Besides, although yours is the
+best mind in any pretty woman's head I know of--in any woman's head for
+that matter--you still have much to learn, and I should feel very
+jealous if you learned it elsewhere."
+
+"Oh, I could learn from books, I suppose. There are many more in the
+world than I shall ever be able to read. But--well, I had a friend for
+the first time--the kind of friend I wanted."
+
+"You are in no danger of losing him. I haven't the least intention of
+giving you up. Real friendships are too rare, especially those founded
+on mental sympathy, and a man's life is barren indeed when his friends
+are only men."
+
+"Have you had any woman friends before?" Her eyelids were lowered but
+she shot him a swift glance.
+
+"Well--no--to be honest, I cannot say I have. Flirtations and all that,
+yes. During the last eight years, between the war and earning my bread,
+I've had little time. Everything went, of course. I wrote for a while
+for a Richmond paper and then went to New York. That was hard sledding
+for a time and Southerners are not welcome in New York Society. If I
+bore you with my personal affairs it is merely to give you a glimpse of
+a rather arid life, and, perhaps, some idea of how pleasant and
+profitable I have found our friendship."
+
+She drooped her head. He ground his teeth and lit another cigarette.
+His hand trembled but his tones were even and formal.
+
+"I shall go to Mrs. Abbott's tomorrow."
+
+"Quite right. And if a man strays in flirt with him--if you know how."
+
+"There are four other At Homes and kettledrums this week and I shall go
+to those also. I don't know that I mind silly gossip, but it would not
+be fair to Howard. I shouldn't like to put him in the position of some
+men in this town; although they seem to console themselves! But Howard
+is not like that."
+
+"Not he. The best fellow in the world. I think your program admirable."
+He saw that he was trying her too far and added hastily: "It would be
+rather amusing to circumvent them, and it certainly would not amuse me
+to lose your charming companionship. I have fallen into the habit of
+imposing myself upon you from three until five or half-past. Perhaps
+you will admit me shortly after lunch and let me hang round until you
+are ready to go out?"
+
+She looked up with faintly sparkling eyes; then her face fell.
+
+"There are so many luncheons."
+
+"But surely not every day. You could refuse the informal affairs on the
+plea of a previous engagement, and give me the list of the inevitable
+ones the first of the week. And at least you are free from impertinent
+intrusion before three o'clock."
+
+"Yes, I'll do that! I will! It will be better than nothing."
+
+"Oh, a long sight better. And nothing can alter the procession of the
+seasons. Summer will arrive again in due course, and if your friends
+are not far more interested in something else by that time it is hardly
+likely that even Mrs. Abbott will sacrifice the comforts of Alta to spy
+on any one."
+
+"Not she! She has asthma in San Francisco in summer." Madeleine spoke
+gaily, but she avoided his eyes. Whether he was maintaining a pose or
+not she could only guess, but she had one of her own to keep up.
+
+"You must have thought me very silly to cry--but--these people have all
+been quite angelic to me before, and Mrs. Abbott descended upon me like
+the Day of Judgment."
+
+"I should think she did, the old she-devil, and if you hadn't cried you
+wouldn't have been a true woman! But we have a good half hour left. I'd
+like to read you--"
+
+At this moment Dr. Talbot's loud voice was heard in the hall.
+
+"All right. See you later. Sorry--"
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Madeline caught at the edge of the table. Had he met Mrs. Abbott? But
+even in this moment of consternation she avoided a glance of too
+intimate understanding with Masters. She was reassured immediately,
+however. The Doctor burst into the room and exclaimed jovially:
+
+"You here? What luck. Thought you would be at some infernal At Home or
+other. Just got a call to San Jose--consultation--must take the next
+train. Come, help me pack. Hello, Masters. If I'd had time I'd have
+looked you up. Got some news for you. Wait a moment."
+
+He disappeared into his bedroom and Madeleine followed. He had not
+noticed the books and Masters' first impulse was to gather them up and
+replace them in the chest. But he sat down to his proofs instead. The
+Doctor returned in a few moments.
+
+"Madeleine will finish. She's a wonder at packing. Hello! What's this?"
+He had caught sight of the books.
+
+"Some of mine. Mrs. Talbot expressed a wish--"
+
+"Why in thunder don't you call her Madeleine? You're as much her friend
+as mine.... Well, I don't mind as much as I did, for I find women are
+all reading more than they used to, and I'm bound to say they don't
+have the blues while a good novel lasts. Ouida's a pretty good dose and
+lasts about a week. But don't give her too much serious stuff. It will
+only addle her brains."
+
+"Oh, she has very good brains. Mrs. Abbott was here just now, and
+although she is not what I should call literary--or too literate--she
+seemed to think your wife was just the sort of woman who should read."
+
+"Mrs. Abbott's a damned old nuisance. You must have been overjoyed at
+the interruption. But if Madeleine has to put on pincenez--"
+
+"Oh, never fear!" Madeleine was smiling radiantly as she entered. Her
+volatile spirits were soaring. "My eyes are the strongest part of me.
+What did you have to tell Mr. Masters?" "Jove! I'd almost forgotten,
+and it's great news, too. What would you say, Masters, to editing a
+paper of your own?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"There's a conspiracy abroad--I won't deny I had a hand in it--no light
+under the bushel for me--to raise the necessary capital and have a
+really first-class newspaper in this town. San Francisco deserves the
+best, and if we've had nothing but rags, so far--barring poor James
+King of William's _Bulletin_--it's because we've never had a man before
+big enough to edit a great one."
+
+"I have no words! It is almost too good to be true!"
+
+Madeleine watched him curiously. His voice was trembling and his eyes
+were flashing. He was tall but had drawn himself up in his excitement
+and seemed quite an inch taller. He looked about to wave a sword and
+lead a charge. Establishing a newspaper meant a hard fight and he was
+eager for the fray.
+
+She had had but few opportunities to study him in detail unobserved.
+She had never thought him handsome, for he was clean shaven, with deep
+vertical lines, and he wore his black hair very short. Her preference
+was for fair men with drooping moustaches and locks sweeping the
+collar; although her admiration for this somewhat standardized type had
+so far been wholly impersonal. Even the doctor clipped his moustache as
+it interfered with his soup, and his rusty brown hair was straight,
+although of the orthodox length. But she had not married Howard for his
+looks!
+
+She noted the hard line of jaw and sharp incisive profile. His face had
+power as well as intellect, yet there was a hint of weakness somewhere.
+Possibly the lips of his well-cut mouth were a trifle too firmly set to
+be unselfconscious. And his broad forehead lacked serenity. There was a
+furrow between the eyes.
+
+It was with the eyes she was most familiar. They were gray, brilliant,
+piercing, wide apart and deeply set. She had noted more than once
+something alert, watchful, in their expression, as if they were the
+guardians of the intellect above and defied the weakness the lower part
+of his face barely hinted to clash for a moment with his ambitions.
+
+She heard little of his rapid fire of questions and Howard's answers;
+but when the doctor had pulled out his watch, kissed her hurriedly,
+snatched his bag and dashed from the room, Masters took her hands in
+his, his eyes glowing.
+
+"Did you hear?" he cried. "Did you hear? I am to have my own newspaper.
+My dream has come true! A hundred thousand dollars are promised. I
+shall have as good a news service as any in New York."
+
+Madeleine withdrew her hands but smiled brightly and made him a pretty
+speech of congratulation. She knew little of newspapers and cared less,
+but there must be something extraordinary about owning one to excite a
+man like Langdon Masters. She had never seen him excited before.
+
+"Won't it mean a great deal harder work?"
+
+"Oh, work! I thrive on work. I've never had enough. Come and sit down.
+Let me talk to you. Let me be egotistical and talk about myself. Let me
+tell you all my pent-up ambitions and hopes and desires--you wonderful
+little Egeria!"
+
+And he poured himself out to her as he had never unbosomed himself
+before. He stayed on to dinner--she had no engagement--and left her
+only for the office. He had evidently forgotten the earlier episode,
+and he swept it from her own mind. That mind, subtle, feminine,
+yielding, melted into his. She shared those ambitions and hopes and
+desires. His brilliant and useful future was as real and imperative to
+her as to himself. It was a new, a wonderful, a thrilling experience.
+When she went to bed, smiling and happy, she slammed a little door in
+her mind and shot the bolt. A terrible fear had shaken her three hours
+before, but she refused to recall it. Once more the present sufficed.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Madeleine went to Mrs. Abbott's reception, but there was nothing
+conciliatory nor apologetic in her mien. She had intended to be merely
+natural, but when she met that battery of eyes, amused, mocking,
+sympathetic, encouraging, and realized that Mrs. Abbott's tongue had
+been wagging, she was filled with an anger and resentment that
+expressed itself in a cold pride of bearing and a militant sparkle of
+the eye. She was gracious and aloof and Mrs. McLane approved her
+audibly.
+
+"Exactly as I should feel and look myself," she said to Mrs. Ballinger
+and Guadalupe Hathaway. "She's a royal creature and she has moved in
+the great world. No wonder she resents the petty gossip of this
+village."
+
+"Well, I'll acquit her," said Mrs. Ballinger tartly. "A more
+cold-blooded and unattractive man I've never met."
+
+"Langdon Masters is by no means unattractive," announced Miss Hathaway
+out of her ten years' experience as a belle and an unconscionable
+flirt. "I have sat in the conservatory with him several times. It may
+be that Mrs. Abbott stepped in before it was too late. And it may be
+that she did not."
+
+"Oh, call no woman virtuous until she is dead," said Mrs. McLane
+lightly. "But I won't hear another insinuation against Madeleine
+Talbot."
+
+Mrs. Abbott kissed the singed brand it had been her mission to snatch
+in the nick of time and detained her in conversation with unusual
+empressement. Madeleine responded with an excessive politeness, and
+Mrs. Abbott learned for the first time that sweet brown eyes could
+glitter as coldly as her own protuberant orbs when pronouncing judgment.
+
+Madeleine remained for two hours, bored and disgusted, the more as
+Masters' name was ostentatiously avoided. Even Sally Ballinger, who
+kissed her warmly, told her that she looked as if she hadn't a care in
+the world and that it was because she had too much sense to bother
+about men!
+
+She had never been treated with more friendly intimacy, and if she went
+home with a headache it was at least a satisfaction to know that her
+proud position was still scandal-proof.
+
+She wisely modified her first program and drifted back into afternoon
+society by degrees; a plan of defensive campaign highly approved by
+Mrs. McLane, who detested lack of finesse. The winter was an
+unsatisfactory one for Madeleine altogether. Society would not have
+bored her so much perhaps if that secret enchanting background had
+remained intact. But her intercourse with Masters was necessarily
+sporadic. Her conscience had never troubled her for receiving his
+visits, for her husband not only had expressed his approval, but had
+always urged her to amuse herself with men. But she felt like an
+intriguante when she discussed her engagement lists with Masters, and
+she knew that he liked it as little. His visits were now a matter for
+"sandwiching," to be schemed and planned for, and she dared not ask
+herself whether the persistent sense of fear that haunted her was that
+they both must betray self-consciousness in time, or that the more
+difficult order would bore him: their earlier intimacy had coincided
+with his hours of leisure. After all, he was not her lover, to delight
+in intrigue; and in time, it might be, he would not think the game
+worth the candle. She dreaded that revived gossip might drive him from
+the hotel, and that would be the miserable beginning of an unthinkable
+end.
+
+There were other interruptions. He paid a flying visit to Richmond to
+visit the death-bed of his mother, and he took a trip to the Sandwich
+Islands to recover from a severe cold on the chest. Moreover, his
+former placidity had left him, for one thing and another delayed the
+financing of his newspaper. One of its founders was temporarily
+embarrassed for ready money, another awaited an opportune moment to
+realize on some valuable stock. There was no doubt that the entire
+amount would be forthcoming in time, but meanwhile he fumed, and
+expressed himself freely to Madeleine. That he might have a more
+poisonous source of irritation did not occur to her.
+
+Fortunately she did not suspect that gossip was still rife. Madeleine
+might have a subtle mind but she had a candid personality. It was quite
+patent to sharp eyes that she was unhappy once more, although this time
+her health was unaffected. And Society was quite aware that she still
+saw Langdon Masters, in spite of her perfunctory appearances; for
+suspicion once roused develops antennae that traverse space without
+effort and return with accumulated minute stores of evidence. Masters
+had been seen entering or leaving the Talbot parlor by luncheon guests
+in the hotel. Old Ben Travers, who had chosen to ignore his astonishing
+and humiliating experience and always treated Madeleine with
+exaggerated deference, called one afternoon on her (in company with
+Mrs. Ballinger) and observed cigarette ends in the ash tray. Talbot
+smoked only cigars. Masters was one of the few men in San Francisco who
+smoked cigarettes and there was no mistaking his imported brand. Mr.
+Travers paid an immediate round of visits, and called again a fortnight
+later, this time protected by Mrs. Abbott. There were several books on
+the table which he happened to know Masters had received within the
+week.
+
+When the new wave reached Mrs. McLane she announced angrily that all
+the gossip in San Francisco originated in the Union Club, and refused
+to listen to details. But she was anxious, nevertheless, for she knew
+that Madeleine, whether she recognized the fact or not, was in love
+with Langdon Masters, and she more than suspected that he was with her.
+He went little into society, even before his mother's death, pleading
+press of work, but Mr. McLane often brought him home quietly to dinner
+and she saw more of him than any one did but Madeleine. Men had gone
+mad over her in her own time and she knew the stamp of baffled passions.
+
+It was on New Year's Day, during Masters' absence in Richmond, that an
+incident occurred which turned Society's attention, diverted for the
+moment by an open divorce scandal, to Madeleine Talbot once more.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+New Year's Day in San Francisco was one of pomp and triumphs, and much
+secret heart-burning. Every woman who had a house threw it open and the
+many that lived in hotels were equally hospitable. There was a constant
+procession of family barouches, livery stable buggies and hacks. The
+"whips" drove their mud-bespattered traps with as grand an air as if on
+the Cliff House Road in fine weather; and while none was ignored whose
+entertaining was lavish, those who could count only on admiration and
+friendship compared notes eagerly during the following week.
+
+But young men in those days were more gallant or less snobbish than in
+these, and few pretty girls, however slenderly dowered, were forgotten
+by their waltzing partners. The older men went only to the great
+houses, and frankly for eggnog. Mrs. Abbott's was famous and so was
+Mrs. McLane's. Ladies who lived out of town the year round, that their
+husbands might "sleep in the country!" received with their more
+fortunate friends.
+
+It had been Madeleine's intention to have her own reception at the
+hotel as usual, but when Mrs. McLane craved her assistance--Marguerite
+was receiving with Mrs. Abbott, now her mother-in-law--she consented
+willingly, as it would reduce her effort to entertain progressively
+illuminated men to the minimum. She felt disinclined to effort of any
+sort.
+
+Mrs. McLane, after her daughter's marriage, had tired of the large
+house on Rincon Hill and the exorbitant wages of its staff of servants,
+and returned to her old home in South Park, furnishing her parlors with
+a red satin damask, which also covered the walls. She had made a trip
+to Paris meanwhile and brought back much light and graceful French
+furniture. The long double room was an admirable setting for her
+stately little figure in its trailing gown of wine-colored velvet
+trimmed with mellowed point lace (it had been privately dipped in
+coffee) and her white high-piled hair. There was no watchful anxiety in
+Mrs. McLane's lofty mien. She knew that the best, old and young, would
+come to her New Year's Day reception as a matter of course.
+
+Mrs. Ballinger had also gratefully accepted Mrs. McLane's invitation,
+for Sally had recently married Harold Abbott and was receiving on
+Rincon Hill, and Maria was in modest retirement. She wore a long gown
+of silver gray poplin as shining as her silver hair; and as she was
+nearly a foot taller than her hostess, the two ladies stood at opposite
+ends of the mantelpiece in the front parlor with Annette McLane and two
+young friends between.
+
+The reception was at its height at four o'clock. The rooms were
+crowded, and the equipages of the guests packed not only South Park but
+Third Street a block north and south.
+
+Madeleine sat at the end of the long double room behind a table and
+served the eggnog. The men hovered about her, not, as commonly, in
+unqualified admiration, or passed on the goblets, slices of the
+monumental cakes, and Peter Job's famous cream pie.
+
+She had taken a glass at once and raised her spirits to the necessary
+pitch; but its effect wore off in time and her hand began to tremble
+slightly as she ladled out the eggnog. She had not heard from Masters
+since he left and her days were as vacant as visible space. She had
+felt nervous and depressed since morning and would have spent the day
+in bed had she dared.
+
+Mr. McLane, Mr. Abbott, Colonel "Jack" Belmont, Alexander Groome, Mr.
+Ballinger, Amos Lawton and several others were chatting with her when
+Ben Travers sauntered up to demand his potion. He had already paid
+several visits, and although he carried his liquor well, it was patent
+to the eyes of his friends he was in that particular stage of
+inebriation that swamped his meagre stock of good nature and the
+superficial cleverness which made him an agreeable companion, and set
+free all the maliciousness of a mind contracted with years and
+disappointments: he had never made "his pile" and it was current
+history that he had been refused by every belle of his youth.
+
+He made Madeleine a courtly bow as he took the goblet from her hands,
+not forgetting to pay her a well-turned compliment on those hands, not
+the least of her physical perfections. Then he balanced himself on the
+edge of the table with a manifest intention of joining in the
+conversation. Madeleine felt an odd sense of terror, although she knew
+nothing of his discoveries and communications; there was a curious hard
+stare in his bleared eyes and it seemed to impale her.
+
+He began amiably enough. "Best looking frocks in this house I've seen
+today. At least five from Paris. Mrs. McLane brought back four of them
+besides her own. Seen some awful old duds today. 'Lupie Hathaway had on
+an old black silk with a gaping placket and three buttons off in front.
+Some of the other things were new enough, but the dressmakers in this
+town need waking up. Of course yours came from New York, Mrs. Talbot.
+Charming, simply charming."
+
+Madeleine wore a gown of amber-colored silk with a bertha of fine lace
+and mousseline de soie, exposing her beautiful shoulders. The color
+seemed reflected in her eyes and the bright waving masses of her hair.
+
+"Madame Deforme made it," she said triumphantly. "Now don't criticize
+our dressmakers again."
+
+"Never criticize anybody but can't help noticing things. Got the
+observing eye. Nothing escapes it. How are you off for books now that
+Masters has deserted us?"
+
+Madeleine turned cold, for the inference was unmistakable, and she saw
+Mr. McLane scowl at him ferociously, But she replied smilingly that
+there was always the Mercantile Library.
+
+"Never have anything new there, and even C. Beach hasn't had a new
+French novel for six months. If Masters were one of those considerate
+men, now, he'd have left you the key of his rooms. Nothing compromising
+in that. But it would be no wonder if he forgot it, for I hear it
+wasn't his mother's illness that took him to Richmond, but Betty
+Thornton who's still a reigning toast. Old flame and they say she's
+come round. Had a letter from my sister."
+
+Madeleine, who was lifting a goblet, let it fall with a crash. She had
+turned white and was trembling, but she lifted another with an
+immediate return of self-control, and said, "How awkward of me! But I
+have had a headache for three days and the gas makes the room so warm."
+
+And then she fainted.
+
+Mr. McLane, who was more impulsive than tactful, took Travers by the
+arm and pushed him through the crowd surging toward the table, and out
+of the front door, almost flinging him down the front steps.
+
+"Damn you for a liar and a scandalmonger and a malicious old woman!" he
+shouted, oblivious of many staring coachmen. "Never enter my house
+again."
+
+But the undaunted Travers steadied himself and replied with a leer,
+"Well, I made her give herself dead away, whether you like it or not.
+And it'll be all over town in a week."
+
+Mr. McLane turned his back, and ordering the astonished butler to take
+out the man's hat and greatcoat, returned to a scene of excitement.
+Madeleine had been placed full length on a sofa by an open window, and
+was evidently reviving. He asked the men who had overheard Travers'
+attack to follow him to his study.
+
+"I want every one of you to promise me that you will not repeat what
+that little brute said," he commanded. "Fortunately there were no women
+about. Fainting women are no novelty. And if that cur tells the story
+of his dastardly assault, give him the lie. Swear that he never said
+it. Persuade him that he was too drunk to remember."
+
+"I'll follow him and threaten to horsewhip him if he opens his mouth!"
+cried Colonel Belmont, who had been a dashing cavalry officer during
+the war. He revered all women of his own class, even his wife, who
+rarely saw him; and he was so critical of feminine perfections of any
+sort that he changed his mistresses oftener than any man in San
+Francisco. "I'll not lose a moment." And he left the room as if
+charging the enemy.
+
+"Good. Will the rest of you promise?"
+
+"Of course we'll promise."
+
+But alas, wives have means of extracting secrets when their suspicions
+are alert and clamoring that no husband has the wit to elude, man being
+too ingenuous to follow the circumlocutory methods of the subtler sex.
+Not that there was ever anything subtle about Mrs. Abbott's methods.
+Mr. Abbott had a perpetual catarrh and it had long since weakened his
+fibre. It was commonly believed that when Mrs. Abbott, her large bulk
+arrayed in a red flannel nightgown, sat up in the connubial bed and
+threatened to pour hot mustard up his nose unless he opened his sluices
+of information he ingloriously succumbed.
+
+At all events, how or wherefore, Travers' prediction was fulfilled,
+although he shiveringly held his own tongue. The story was all over
+town not in a week but in three days. But of this Madeleine knew
+nothing. The doctor, who feared typhoid fever, ordered her to keep
+quiet and see no one until he discovered what was the matter with her.
+Her return to Society and Masters' to San Francisco coincided, but at
+least her little world knew that Dr. Talbot had been responsible for
+her retirement. It awaited future developments with a painful and a
+pleasurable interest.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The rest of the season, however, passed without notable incident. But
+it was known that Madeleine saw Masters constantly, and she was so
+narrowly observed during his second absence that the nervousness it
+induced made her forced gaiety almost hysterical. During the late
+spring her spirits grew more even and her migraines less frequent;
+sustained as she was by the prospect of her old uninterrupted relations
+with Masters.
+
+But more than Mrs. Abbott divined the cause of her ill-suppressed
+expectancy and never had she received so many invitations to the
+country. Mrs. McLane spent her summers at Congress Springs, but even
+she pressed Madeleine to visit her. Sally Abbott lived across the Bay
+on Lake Merritt and begged for three days a week at least; while as for
+Mrs. Abbott and Mr. and Mrs. Tom, who lived with her, they would harken
+to no excuses.
+
+Madeleine was almost nonplussed, but if her firm and graceful refusals
+to leave the doctor had led to open war she would have accepted the
+consequences. She was determined that this summer she had lived for
+throughout seven long tormented months should be as unbroken and happy
+as the other fates would permit. She had a full presentiment that it
+would be the last.
+
+Masters glided immediately into the old habit and saw her oftener when
+he could. Of course no phase ever quite repeats itself. The blithe
+unconsciousness of that first immortal summer was gone for ever; each
+was playing a part and dreading lest the other suspect it. Moreover,
+Masters was irritated almost beyond endurance at the constant
+postponement of the financial equipment for his newspaper. The man who
+had promised the largest contribution had died suddenly, and although
+his heir was more than eager to be associated with so illustrious an
+enterprise he must await the settlement of the estate.
+
+"I am beginning to believe I never shall have that newspaper," Masters
+said gloomily to Madeleine. "It looks like Fate. When the subject was
+first broached there was every prospect that I should get the money at
+once. It has an ugly look. Any man who has been through a war is
+something of a fatalist."
+
+They were less circumspect than of old and were walking out the old
+Mission Road. In such moods it was impossible for him to idle before a
+fire and read aloud. Madeleine had told her husband she would like to
+join Masters in his walks occasionally, and he had replied heartily:
+"Do you good. He'll lead you some pretty tramps! I can't keep up with
+him. You don't walk half enough. Neither do these other women, although
+my income would be cut in half if they did."
+
+It was a cool bracing day without dust or wind and Madeleine had
+started out in high spirits, induced in part by a new and vastly
+becoming walking suit of forest green poplin and a hat of the same
+shade rolled up on one side and trimmed with a drooping grey feather.
+Her gloves and shoes were of grey suede, there was soft lace about her
+white throat and a coquettish little veil that covered only her eyes.
+
+She always knew what to say when Masters was in one of his black moods,
+and today she reminded him of the various biographies of great men they
+had read together. Had not all of them suffered every disappointment
+and discouragement in the beginning of their careers? Overcome
+innumerable obstacles? Many had been called upon to endure grinding
+poverty as well until they forced recognition from the world, and he at
+least was spared that. If Life took with one hand while she gave with
+the other, the reverse was equally true; and also no doubt it was a
+part of her beneficence that she not only strengthened the character by
+preliminary hardships, but amiably planned them that success might be
+all the sweeter when it came.
+
+Masters laughed. "Incontrovertible. Mind you practice your own
+philosophy when you need it. All reverses should be temporary if people
+are strong enough."
+
+She lost her color for a moment, but answered lightly: "That is an easy
+philosophy for you. If one thing failed you would simply move on to
+another. Men like you never really fail, for your rare abilities give
+you the strength and resource of ten men."
+
+"I wonder! The roots of strength sometimes lie in slimy and corrupting
+waters that spread their miasma upward when Life frowns too long and
+too darkly. Sometimes misfortunes pile up so remorselessly, this miasma
+whispers that a man's chief strength consists in going straight to the
+devil and be done with it all. A resounding slap on Life's face. An
+insolent assertion of the individual will against Society. Or perhaps
+it is merely a disposition to run full tilt, hoping for the coup de
+grace--much as I felt when I lay neglected on the battlefield for
+twenty-four hours and longed for some Yank to come along and blow out
+my brains."
+
+"That is no comparison," she said scornfully. "When the body is whole
+nothing is impossible. I should feel that the Universe was reeling if I
+saw you go down before adversity. I could as readily imagine myself
+letting go, and I am only a woman."
+
+"Oh, I should never fear for you," he said bitterly. "What with your
+immutable principles, your religion, and your proud position in the
+Society of San Francisco to sustain you, you would come through the
+fiery furnace unscathed."
+
+"Yes, but the furnace! The furnace!"
+
+She threw out her hands with a gesture of despair, her high spirits
+routed before a sudden blinding vision of the future. "Does any woman
+ever escape that?"
+
+One of her hands brushed his and he caught it irresistibly. But he
+dropped it at once. There was a sound of horses' hoofs behind them. He
+had been vaguely aware of cantering hoof-beats in the distance for
+several minutes.
+
+Two men passed, and one of them took off his hat with a low mocking
+sweep and bowed almost to the saddle. It was old Ben Travers.
+
+"What on earth is he doing in town?" muttered Masters in exasperation.
+No one had told him of the New Year's Day episode, but he knew him for
+what he was.
+
+Madeleine was fallowing the small trim figure on the large chestnut
+with expanded eyes, but she answered evenly enough: "He has some
+ailment and is remaining in town under Howard's care."
+
+"Liver, no doubt," said Masters viciously. "Too bad his spleen doesn't
+burst once for all."
+
+He continued unguardedly, "Well, if he tries to make mischief, Howard
+will tell him bluntly that we walk together with his permission and
+invite him to go to the devil."
+
+Her own guard was up at once, although it was not any gossip carried to
+Howard she feared. "He has probably already forgotten us," she said
+coldly. "Have you finished that paper for _Putnam's?_"
+
+"Three days ago, and begun another for the _Edinburgh Review_. That is
+the first time I have been invited to write for an English review."
+
+"You see!" she cried gaily. "You are famous already. And ambitious! You
+were once thinking of writing for our _Overland Monthly_ only. Bret
+Harte told me you had promised him three papers this year."
+
+"I shall write them."
+
+"Perfunctory patriotism. You'd have to write the entire magazine and
+bring it out weekly to get rid of all your ideas and superfluous
+energy."
+
+"Well, and wouldn't the good Californians rather read any magazine but
+their own? Even Harte is far better known in the East than here. I
+doubt if I've heard one of his things mentioned but 'The Heathen
+Chinee.' He has been here so long they regard him as a mere native. If
+I am advancing my reputation in the East I am making it much faster
+than if I depended upon the local reputation alone. San Francisco is
+remarkably human."
+
+"When I first came here--it seems a lifetime ago!--I never saw an
+Eastern magazine of the higher class and rarely a book. I believe you
+have done as much to wake them up as even the march of time. They read
+newspapers if they won't read their own poor little _Overland_. And you
+are popular personally and inspire a sort of uneasy emulation. You are
+a sort of illuminated bridge. Now tell me what your new paper is about."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+A while later they came to the old Mission Dolores, long ago the center
+of a flourishing colony of native Indians, who, under the driving
+energy of the padres, manufactured practically every simple necessity
+known to Spain. There was nothing left but the crumbling church and its
+neglected graveyard, alone in a waste of sand. The graves of the
+priests and grandees were overrun with periwinkle, and the only other
+flower was the indestructible Castilian rose. The heavy dull green
+bushes with their fluted dull pink blooms surrounded by tight little
+buds, were as dusty as the memory of the Spaniard in California.
+
+They went into the church to rest. Madeleine had never taken any
+interest in the history of her adopted state, and as they sat in a pew
+at the back, surrounded by silence and a deep twilight gloom, Masters
+told her the tragic story of Rezanov and Concha Arguello, who would
+have married before that humble altar and the history of California
+changed if the ironic fates had permitted. The story had been told him
+by Mrs. Hathaway, who was the daughter of one of the last of the
+grandees, and whose mother had lived in the Presidio when Rezanov
+sailed in through the Golden Gate and Concha Arguello had been La
+Favorita of Alta California.
+
+The little church was very quiet. The rest of the world seemed far
+away. Madeleine's fervid yielding imagination swept her back to that
+long-forgotten past when a woman to whom the earlier fates had been as
+kind as to herself had scaled all but the highest peaks of happiness
+and descended into the profoundest depths of despair. Her sympathies,
+enhanced by her own haunting premonition of disaster, shattered her
+guard. She dropped her head into her hands and wept hopelessly. Masters
+felt his own moorings shake. He half rose to flee. But he too had been
+living in the romantic and passionate past and he too had been visited
+by moments of black forebodings. Love had tormented him to the breaking
+point before this and his ambition had often been submerged in his
+impatience for the excess of work which his newspaper would demand,
+exhausting to body and imagination alike. He had long ceased to doubt
+that she loved him, but her self-command had protected them both. He
+had believed it would never desert her and when it did his pulses had
+their way. He took her in his arms and strained her to him as if with
+the strength of his muscles and his will he would defy the blundering
+fates.
+
+Madeleine made no resistance. She was oblivious of everything but the
+ecstasy of the moment. When he kissed her she clung to him as ardently,
+and felt as mortals may, when, in dissolution, they have the vision of
+unmortal bliss. She had the genius for completion and neither the past
+nor the future intruded upon the perfect moment when love was all.
+
+But the moment was brief. A priest entered and knelt before the altar.
+She disengaged herself and adjusted her hat with hands that trembled
+violently, then almost ran out of the church. Masters followed her. As
+they descended the steps Travers and his companion passed again, after
+their short canter down the peninsula. He stared so hard at Madeleine's
+revealing face that he almost forgot to take off his hat, and half
+reined in as if he would pause and gratify his curiosity; but thought
+better of it and rode on.
+
+Masters and Madeleine did not exchange a word until they had walked
+nearly a mile. But his brain was working as clearly as if passion had
+never clouded it, and although he could see no hope for the future he
+was determined to gain time and sacrifice anything rather than lose
+what little he might still have of her. He said finally, in a
+matter-of-fact voice:
+
+"I want you to use your will and imagination and forget that we ever
+entered that church."
+
+"Forget! The memory of it will scourge me as long as I live. I have
+been unfaithful to my husband!"
+
+"Oh, not quite as bad as that!"
+
+"What difference? I had surrendered completely and forgotten my vows,
+my religion, every principle that has guided my life.
+If--if--circumstances had been different that would not have been the
+end. I am a bad wicked woman."
+
+"Oh, no, you are not. You are a terribly good one. If you were not you
+would take your life in your hands and make it over."
+
+He did not dare mention the word divorce, and lest it travel from his
+mind to hers and cause his immediate repudiation, he added hastily:
+
+"You were immortal for a moment and it should be your glory, not a whip
+to scourge you. The time will come when you will remember it with
+gratitude and without a blush. You know now what you could be and feel.
+If we part at least you will have been saved from the complete
+aridity--"
+
+"Part?" She looked at him for the first time, and although she had
+believed she never could look at him again without turning scarlet,
+there was only terror in her eyes.
+
+"I have been afraid of banishment."
+
+"It was my fault as much as yours."
+
+"I am not so sure. We won't argue that point. Is anything perfect
+arguable? But if I am to stay in San Francisco I must see you."
+
+"I'll never see you alone again."
+
+"I have no intention of pressing that point! But the open is safe and
+you must walk with me every day."
+
+"I don't know! Oh--I don't know! And I think that I should tell Howard."
+
+"You will not tell Howard because you are neither cowardly nor cruel.
+Nor will you ruin a perfect memory that belongs to us alone. You do
+love me and that is the end of it--or the beginning of God knows what!"
+
+"Love!" She shivered. "Yes, I love you. Why do poets waste so many
+beautiful words over love? It is the most terrible thing in the world."
+
+"Let us try to forget it for the present," he said harshly. "Forget
+everything we cannot have--"
+
+"You have your work. You have only to work harder than ever. What have
+I?"
+
+"We will walk together every day. We can take a book out on the beach
+and sit on the rocks. Read more fiction. That is its mission--to
+translate one for a time from the terrible realities of life. Your
+religion should be of some use to you. It is almost a pity there is no
+poverty out here. Sink your prejudices and seek out poor Sibyl Forbes.
+Every woman in town has cut her. In healing her wounds you could forget
+your own. Above all, use your will. We are neither of us weaklings, and
+it could be a thousand times worse. Nothing shall take from us what we
+have, and there may be a way out."
+
+"There is none," she said sadly. "But I will do as you tell me. And
+I'll forget--not remember--if I can."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The end came swiftly. The next day Ben Travers drove down to Rincona.
+Mrs. Abbott listened to his garnished tale with bulging eyes and her
+three chins quivering with excitement. She had heard no gossip worth
+mentioning since she left town, and privately she hated the summer and
+Alta.
+
+"You should have seen her face when she came out of that church," cried
+Travers for the third time; he was falling into the senile habit of
+repeating himself. "It was fairly distorted and she looked as if she
+had been crying for a week. Mark my words, Masters had been making the
+hottest kind of love to her--he was little more composed than she. Bet
+you an eagle to a dime they elope within a week."
+
+"Serve Howard Talbot right for marrying a woman twenty years younger
+than himself and a Northerner to boot. Do you think he suspects?"
+
+"Not he. Now, I must be off. If I didn't call on the Hathaways and
+Montgomerys while I'm down here they'd never forgive me."
+
+"Both have house parties," said Mrs. Abbott enviously. "Just like you
+to get it first! I'd go with you but I must write to Antoinette McLane.
+She'll _have_ to believe that her paragon is headed for the rocks this
+time."
+
+Mrs. McLane was having an attack of the blues when the letter arrived
+and did not open her mail until two days later. Then she drove at once
+to San Francisco. She was too wise in women to remonstrate with
+Madeleine, but she went directly to Dr. Talbot's office. It was the
+most unpleasant duty she had ever undertaken, but she knew that Talbot
+would not doubt his wife's fidelity, and she was determined to save
+Madeleine. She had considered the alternative of going to Masters, but
+even her strong spirit quailed before the prospect of that interview.
+Besides, if he were as deeply in love with Madeleine as she believed
+him to be, it would do no good. She had little faith in the
+self-abnegation of men where their passions were concerned.
+
+Dr. Talbot was in his office and saw her at once, and they talked for
+an hour. His face was purple and she feared a stroke. But he heard her
+quietly, and told her she had proved her friendship by coming to him
+before it was too late. When she left him he sat for another hour,
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+It was six o'clock. San Francisco was enjoying one of its rare heat
+waves and Madeleine had put on a frock of white lawn made with a low
+neck and short sleeves, and tied a soft blue sash round her waist. As
+the hour of her husband's reasonably prompt homing approached she
+seated herself at the piano. She could not trust herself to sing, and
+played the "Adelaide." The past three days had not been as unhappy as
+she had expected. She had visited Sibyl Forbes, living in lonely
+splendor, and listened enthralled to that rebellious young woman (who
+had received her with passionate gratitude) as she poured out
+humiliations, bitter resentment, and matrimonial felicity. Madeleine
+had consoled and rejoiced and promised to talk to the all-powerful Mrs.
+McLane.
+
+Twice she had gone to hear John McCullough at his new California
+Theatre, with another dutiful doctor's wife who lived in the hotel, and
+she had walked for three hours with Masters every afternoon. He had
+always found it easy to turn her mind into any channel he chose, and he
+had never exerted himself to be more entertaining even with her.
+
+Today he had been jubilant and had swept her with him on his high tide
+of anticipation and triumph. Another patriotic San Franciscan had come
+to the rescue and the hundred thousand dollars lay to Masters' credit
+in the Bank of California. He had taken his offices an hour after the
+deposit was made; his business manager was engaged, and every writer of
+ability on the other newspapers was his to command. "Masters'
+Newspaper" had been the talk of the journalistic world for months. He
+had picked his staff and he now awaited only the presses he had ordered
+that morning from New York.
+
+Madeleine had sighed as she listened to him dilate upon an active
+brilliant future in which she had no place, but she was in tune with
+him always and she could only be happy with him now. Moreover, it was
+an additional safeguard. He would be too busy for dreams and human
+longings. As for herself she would go along somehow. Tears, after all,
+were a wonderful solace. Fear had driven her down a light romantic
+by-way of her nature. Even if days passed without a glimpse of him she
+could dwell on the pleasant thought that he was not far away, and now
+and then they would take a long walk together.
+
+The door opened and Dr. Talbot entered. His face was no longer purple.
+It was sallow and drawn. Her hands trailed off the keys, her arms fell
+limply. Not even during an epidemic, when he found little time for
+sleep, had his round face lost its ruddy brightness, his black eyes
+their look of jovial good-fellowship, his mouth its amiable cynicism.
+
+"Something has happened," she said faintly. "What is it?"
+
+"Would you mind sitting here?" He fell heavily into a chair and
+motioned to one opposite. She left the shelter of the piano with
+dragging feet, her own face drained of its color. Ben Travers! She knew
+what was coming.
+
+His arms lay limply along the arms of his chair. As she gazed at him
+fascinated it seemed to her that he grew older every minute. And she
+had never seen any one look as sad.
+
+"I have been a bad husband to you," he said. And the life had gone out
+of even his voice.
+
+"Oh! No! No! you have been the best, the kindest and most indulgent of
+husbands."
+
+"I have been worse than a bad husband," he went on in the same
+monotonous voice. "I have been a failure. I never tried to understand
+you. I didn't want to understand what might interfere with my own
+selfish life. You have a mind and I ordered you to feed it husks. You
+asked me for the companionship that was your right and I told you to go
+and amuse yourself as best you could. I fooled myself with the excuse
+that you were perfect as you were, but the bald truth was that I liked
+the society of men better, and hated any form of mental exertion
+unconnected with my profession. I plucked the rarest flower a
+good-for-nothing man ever found and I didn't even remember to give it
+fresh water. It is a wonder you didn't wilt before you did. You were
+wilting--dying mentally--when Masters came along. You found in him all
+that I had denied you. And now I have the punishment I deserve. You no
+longer love me. You love him."
+
+"Oh--Oh--" Madeleine twisted her hands in her lap and stared at them.
+"You--you--cannot help being what you are. I long since ceased to find
+fault with you--"
+
+"Yes, when you ceased to love me! When you found that we were
+hopelessly mismated. When you gave up."
+
+"I--I'm very fond of you still. How could I help it when you are so
+good to me?"
+
+"I have no doubt of your friendship--or of your fidelity. But you love
+Masters. Can you deny it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you preparing to elope with him?"
+
+"Oh! No! No! How could you dream of such a thing?"
+
+"I am told that every one is expecting it."
+
+"I would no more elope than I would ask for a divorce. I may be sinful
+enough to love a man who is not my husband, but I am not bad enough for
+that. And people are very stupid. They know that Langdon Masters'
+future lies here. If I were as wicked a woman as that, at least he is
+not a fool. Why, only today he received the capital for his newspaper."
+
+"And do you know so little of men and women as to imagine that you two
+could go on indefinitely content with the mere fact that you love each
+other? I may not have known my own wife because I chose to be blind,
+but a doctor knows as much about women in general as a father
+confessor. Men and women are not made like that! It seems that every
+one but myself has known for months that Masters is in love with you;
+and Masters is a man of strong passions and relentless will. He has
+used his will so far to curb his passions, principally, no doubt, on my
+account; he is my friend and a man of honor. But there are moments in
+life when honor as well as virtue goes overboard."
+
+"But--but--we have agreed never to see each other alone again--except
+out of doors."
+
+"That is all very well, but there are always unexpected moments of
+isolation. The devil sees to that. And while I have every confidence in
+your virtue--under normal conditions--I know the helpless yielding of
+women and the ruthless passions of men. It would be only a question of
+time. I may have been a bad husband but I am mercifully permitted to
+save you, and I shall do so."
+
+He rose heavily from his chair. "Do you know where I can find Masters?"
+
+She sprang to her feet and for the first time in her life her voice was
+shrill.
+
+"You are not going to kill him?"
+
+"Oh, no. I am not going to kill him. There has been scandal enough
+already. And I have no desire to kill him. He has behaved very well,
+all things considered. I am almost as sorry for him as I am for
+you--and myself! Do you know where he is?"
+
+"He is probably dining at the Union Club--or he may be at his new
+offices. They are somewhere on Commercial Street."
+
+He went out and Madeleine sat staring at the door with wide eyes and
+parted lips. She felt no inclination to tears, nor even to faint,
+although her body could hardly have been colder in death. She felt
+suspended in a vacuum, awaiting something more dreadful than even this
+interview with her husband had been.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Dr. Talbot turned toward the stairs, but it occurred to him that
+Masters might still be in his rooms and he walked to the other end of
+the hall. A ringing voice answered his knock. He entered. Masters
+grasped him by the hand, exclaiming, "I was going to look you up
+tonight and tell you the good news. Has Madeleine told you? I have my
+capital! And I have just received a telegram from New York saying that
+my presses will start by freight tomorrow. That means we'll have our
+newspaper in three weeks at the outside--But what is the matter, old
+chap? I never saw you look seedy before. Suppose we take a week off and
+go on a bear hunt? It's the last vacation I can have in a month of
+Sundays."
+
+"I have come to tell you that you must leave San Francisco."
+
+"Oh!" Masters' exuberance dropped like a shining cloak from a figure of
+steel. He walked to his citadel, the hearth rug, and lit a cigarette.
+
+"I suppose you have been listening to the chatter of that infernal old
+gossip, Ben Travers."
+
+"Ben Travers knows me too well to bring any of his gossip to me. But he
+has carried his stories up and down the state; not only his--more
+recent discoveries, but evidence he appears to have been collecting for
+months. But he is only one of many. It seems the whole town has known
+for a year or more that you see Madeleine for three or four hours every
+day, that you have managed to have those hours together, no matter what
+her engagements, that you are desperately in love with each other. The
+gossip has been infernal. I do not deny that a good deal of the blame
+rests on my shoulders. I not only neglected her but I encouraged her to
+see you. But I thought her above scandal or even gossip, and I never
+dreamed it was in her to love--to lose her head over any man. She was
+sweet and affectionate but cold--my fault again. Any man who had the
+good fortune to be married to Madeleine could make her love him if he
+were not a selfish fool. Well, I have been punished; but if I have lost
+her I can save her--and her reputation. You must go. There is no other
+way."
+
+"That is nonsense. You exaggerate because you are suffering from a
+shock. You know that I cannot leave San Francisco with this great
+newspaper about to be launched. If it is as bad as you make out I will
+give you my word not to see Madeleine again. And as I shall be too busy
+for Society it will quickly forget me."
+
+"Oh, no, it will not. It will say that you are both cleverer than you
+have been in the past. If you leave San Francisco--California--for good
+and all--it may forget you; not otherwise."
+
+"Do you know that you are asking me to give up my career? That I shall
+never have such an opportunity in my life again? My whole future--for
+usefulness as well as for the realization of my not ignoble
+ambitions--lies in San Francisco and nowhere else?"
+
+"Don't imagine I have not thought of that. And San Francisco can ill
+afford to spare you. You are one of the greatest assets this city ever
+had. But she will have to do without you even if you never can be
+replaced. I had the whole history of the affair from Mrs. McLane this
+afternoon. No one believes--yet--that things have reached a climax
+between you and Madeleine. On the contrary, they are expecting an
+elopement. But if you remain, nothing on God's earth can prevent an
+abominable scandal. Madeleine's name will be dragged through the mud.
+She will be cut, cast out of Society. Even I could not protect her; I
+should be regarded as a blind fool, or worse, for it will be known that
+Mrs. McLane warned me. No woman can keep her mouth shut. She and other
+powerful women--even that damned old cut-throat, Mrs. Abbott--are
+standing by Madeleine loyally, but they are all alert for a denouement
+nevertheless. If you go, that will satisfy them. Madeleine will be
+merely the heroine of an unhappy love-affair, and although nothing will
+stop their damned clacking tongues for a time, they will pity her and
+do their best to make her forget."
+
+"I cannot go. It is impossible. You are asking too much. And, I repeat,
+I'll never see her again. Mrs. McLane can be made to understand the
+truth. I'll leave the hotel tomorrow."
+
+"You love Madeleine, do you not?"
+
+"Yes--I do."
+
+"Then will you save her from ruin in the only way possible. It is not
+only her reputation that I fear. You know yourself, I fancy. You may
+avoid her, but you will hardly deny that if circumstances threw you
+together, alone, temptation would be irresistible--the more so as you
+would have ached for the mere sound of her voice every minute. I know
+now what it means to love Madeleine."
+
+Masters turned his back on Talbot and leaned his arms on the
+mantel-shelf. He saw hideous pictures in the empty grate.
+
+The doctor had not sat down. Not a muscle of his big strong body had
+moved as he stood and pronounced what was worse than a sentence of
+death on Langdon Masters. He averted his dull inexorable eyes, for he
+dared not give way to sympathy. For the moment he wished himself
+dead--and for more reasons than one! But he was far too healthy and
+practical to contemplate a dramatic exit. No end would be served if he
+did. Madeleine's sensitive spirit would recoil in horror from a union
+haunted by the memory of the crime and anguish of the husband she had
+vowed to love and obey. Not Madeleine! His remorseless solution was the
+only one.
+
+Masters turned after a time and his face looked as old as Talbot's.
+
+"I'll go if you are quite sure it is necessary. If you have not spoken
+in the heat of the moment."
+
+"If I thought for a month it would make no difference. If you remain,
+no matter what your circumspection Madeleine will rank in the eyes of
+the world with those harlots over on Dupont Street. And be as much of
+an outcast. You know this town. You've lived in it for a year and a
+half. It's not London, nor even New York. Nothing is hidden here. It
+lives on itself; it has nothing else to live on. It is almost
+fanatically loyal to its own until its loyalty is thrown in its face.
+Then it is bitterer than the wrath of God. You understand all this,
+don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I understand. But--couldn't you send Madeleine to her parents in
+Boston for six months--she has never paid them a visit--but no, I
+suppose the scandal would be worse--"
+
+"Far worse. It would look either as if she had run away from me or as
+if I had packed her off in disgrace. If I could leave my practice I'd
+take her abroad for two years, but I cannot. Nor--to be frank--do I see
+why I should be sacrificed further."
+
+"Oh, assuredly not." Masters' tones were even and excessively polite.
+
+"You will take the train tomorrow morning for New York?"
+
+"I cannot leave San Francisco until after the opening of the banks. The
+money must be refunded. Besides, I prefer to go by steamer. There is
+one leaving tomorrow, I believe. I want time to think before I arrive
+in New York."
+
+"And you will promise to have no correspondence with Madeleine
+whatever?"
+
+"You might leave us that much!"
+
+"The affair shall end here and now. Do you promise?"
+
+"Very well. But I should like to see her once more."
+
+"That you shall not! I shall not leave her until you are outside the
+Golden Gate."
+
+"Very well. If that is all--"
+
+"Good-by. You have behaved--well, as our code commands you to behave. I
+expected nothing less. Don't imagine I don't appreciate what this means
+to you. But you are a man of great ability. You will find as hospitable
+a field for your talents elsewhere. San Francisco is the chief loser. I
+wish you the best of luck."
+
+And he returned to Madeleine.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Madeleine came of a brave race and she was a woman of intense pride.
+She spent a week at Congress Springs and she took her courage in her
+teeth and spent another at Rincona. There was a house party and they
+amused themselves in the somnolent way peculiar to Alta. Bret Harte was
+there, a dapper little man, whose shoes were always a size too small,
+but popular with women as he played an excellent game of croquet and
+talked as delightfully as he wrote. His good humor could be counted on
+if no one mentioned "The Heathen Chinee." He had always admired
+Madeleine and did his best to divert her.
+
+Both Mrs. McLane and Mrs. Abbott were disappointed that they were given
+no opportunity to condole with her; but although she gave a fair
+imitation of the old Madeleine Talbot, and even mentioned Masters' name
+with a casual indifference, no one was deceived for a moment. That her
+nerves were on the rack was as evident as that her watchful pride was
+in arms, and although it was obvious that she had foresworn the luxury
+of tears, her eyes had a curious habit of looking through and beyond
+these good ladies until they had the uncomfortable sensation that they
+were not there and some one else was. They wondered if Langdon Masters
+were dead and she saw his ghost.
+
+The summer was almost over. After a visit to Sally Abbott on Lake
+Merritt, she returned to town with the rest of the fashionable world.
+People had never been kinder to her; and if their persistent attentions
+were strongly diluted with curiosity, who shall blame them? It was not
+every day they had a blighted heroine of romance, who, moreover, looked
+as if she were going into a decline. She grew thinner every day. Her
+white skin was colorless and transparent. They might not have her for
+long, poor darling! How they pitied her! But they never wished they had
+let her alone. It was all for the best. And what woman ever had so
+devoted a husband? He went with her everywhere. He, too, looked as if
+he had been through the mill, poor dear, but at least he had won a
+close race, and he deserved and received the sympathy of his faithful
+friends. As for that ungrateful brute, Langdon Masters, he had not
+written a line to any one in San Francisco since he left. Not one had
+an idea what had become of him. Did he secretly correspond with
+Madeleine? (They would have permitted her that much.) Would he blow out
+his brains if she died of consumption? He was no philanderer. If he
+hadn't really loved her nothing would have torn him from San Francisco
+and his brilliant career; of course. Duelling days were over, and the
+doctor was not the man to shoot another down in cold blood, with no
+better excuse than the poor things had given him. It was all very
+thrilling and romantic. Even the girls talked of little else, and
+regarded their complacent prosperous swains with disfavor. "The Long
+Long Weary Day" was their favorite song. They wished that Madeleine
+lived in a moated grange instead of the Occidental Hotel.
+
+Madeleine had had her own room from the beginning of her married life
+in San Francisco, as the doctor was frequently called out at night.
+When Howard had returned and told her that Masters would leave on the
+morrow and that she was not to see him again, she had walked quietly
+into her bedroom and locked the door that led to his; and she had never
+turned the key since.
+
+Talbot made no protest. He had no spirit left where Madeleine was
+concerned, but it was his humble hope to win her back by unceasing
+devotion and consideration, aided by time. He not only never mentioned
+Masters' name, but he wooed her in blundering male fashion. Not a day
+passed that he did not send her flowers. He bought her trinkets and
+several valuable jewels, and he presented her with a victoria, drawn by
+a fine sorrel mare, and a coachman in livery on the box.
+
+Madeleine treated him exactly as she treated her host at a dinner. She
+was as amiable as ever at the breakfast table, and when he deserted his
+club of an evening, she sat at her embroidery frame and told him the
+gossip of the day.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+One evening at the end of two long hours, when he had heroically
+suppressed his longing for a game of poker, he said hesitatingly, "I
+thought you were so fond of reading. I don't see any books about. All
+the women are reading a novel called 'Quits.' I'll send it up to you in
+the morning if you haven't read it."
+
+For the first time since Masters' departure the blood rose in
+Madeleine's face, but she answered calmly:
+
+"Thanks. I have little time for reading, as I have developed quite a
+passion for embroidery and I practice a good deal. This is a
+handkerchief-case for Mrs. McLane. Of course I must read 'Quits,'
+however, and also 'The Initials.' One mustn't be behind the times. If
+you'll step into Beach's tomorrow and order them I'll be grateful."
+
+"Of course I will. Should--should--you like me to read to you? I'm a
+pretty bad reader, I guess, but I'll do my best."
+
+"Oh--is there an earthquake?"
+
+"No! But your nerves are in a bad state. I'll get you a glass of port
+wine."
+
+He went heavily over to the cupboard, but his hand was shaking as he
+poured out the wine. He drank a glass himself before returning to her.
+
+"Thanks. You take very good care of me." And she gave him the gracious
+smile of a grateful patient.
+
+"I don't think you'd better go out any more at night for a while. You
+are far from well, you know, and you're not picking up."
+
+"A call for you, I suppose. Too bad."
+
+There had been a peremptory knock on the door. A coachman stood
+without. Would Dr. Talbot come at once? A new San Franciscan was
+imminent via Mrs. Alexander Groome on Ballinger Hill.
+
+The doctor grumbled.
+
+"And raining cats and dogs. Why couldn't she wait until tomorrow? We'll
+probably get stuck in the mud. Damn women and their everlasting babies."
+
+She helped him into his overcoat and wished him a pleasant good-night.
+It was long since she had lifted her cheek for his old hasty kiss, and
+he made no protest. He had time on his side.
+
+She did not return to her embroidery frame but stood for several
+moments looking at the chest near the fireplace. She had not opened it
+since Masters left. His library had been packed and sent after him by
+one of his friends, but no one had known of the books in her
+possession. Masters certainly had not thought of them and she was in no
+condition to remember them herself at the time.
+
+She had not dared to look at them! Tonight, however, she moved slowly
+toward the chest. She looked like a sleep-walker. When she reached it
+she knelt down and opened it and gathered the books in her arms. When
+her husband returned two hours later she lay on the floor in a dead
+faint, the books scattered about her.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+It was morning before he could revive her, and two days before she
+could leave her bed. Then she developed the hacking cough he dreaded.
+He took her to the Sandwich Islands and kept her there for a month. The
+even climate and the sea voyage seemed to relieve her, but when they
+returned to San Francisco she began to cough again.
+
+Do women go into a decline these days from corroding love and hope in
+ruins? If so, one never hears of it and the disease is unfashionable in
+modern fiction. But in that era woman was woman and little besides. If
+a woman of the fashionable world she had Society besides her family and
+housekeeping. She rarely travelled, certainly not from California, and
+if one of her band fell upon evil days and was forced to teach school,
+knit baby sacques, or keep a boarding-house, she was pitied but by no
+means emulated. Madeleine had neither house nor children, and more
+money than she could spend. She had nothing to ask of life but
+happiness and that was for ever denied her. Masters had never been out
+of her mind for a moment during her waking hours, and she had slept
+little. She ate still less, and kept herself up in Society with punch
+in the afternoon and champagne at night. Only in the solitude of her
+room did she give way briefly to excoriated nerves; but the source of
+her once ready tears seemed dry. There are more scientific terms for
+her condition these days, but she was poisoned by love and despair. Her
+collapse was only a matter of time.
+
+Dr. Talbot knew nothing about psychology but he knew a good deal about
+consumption. He had also arrested it in its earlier stages more than
+once. He plied Madeleine with the good old remedies: eggnog, a raw egg
+in a glass of sherry, port wine, mellow Bourbon whiskey and cream. She
+had no desire to recover and he stood over her while she drank his
+potions lest she pour them down the washstand; and some measure of her
+strength returned. She fainted no more and her cough disappeared. The
+stimulants gave her color and her figure began to fill out again. But
+her thoughts, save when muddled by her tonics, never wandered from
+Masters for a moment.
+
+The longing to hear from him grew uncontrollable with her returning
+vitality. She had hoped that he would break his promise and write to
+her once at least. He knew her too well not to measure the extent of
+her sufferings, and common humanity would have justified him. But his
+ship might have sunk with all on board for any sign he gave. Others had
+ceased to grumble at his silence; his name was rarely mentioned.
+
+If she had known his address she would have written to him and demanded
+one letter. She had given no promise. Her husband had commanded and she
+had obeyed. She had always obeyed him, as she had vowed at the altar.
+But she had her share of feminine guile, and if she had known where to
+address Masters she would have quieted her conscience with the
+assurance that a letter from him was a necessary part of her cure. She
+felt that the mere sight of his handwriting on an envelope addressed to
+herself would transport her back to that hour in Dolores, and if she
+could correspond with him life would no longer be unendurable. But
+although he had casually alluded to his club in New York she could not
+recall the name, if he had mentioned it.
+
+She went to the Mercantile Library one day and looked over files of
+magazines and reviews. His name appeared in none of them. It was
+useless to look over newspaper files, as editorials were not signed.
+But he must be writing for one of them. He had his immediate living to
+make.
+
+What should she do?
+
+As she groped her way down the dark staircase of the library she
+remembered the newspaper friend, Ralph Holt, who had packed his
+books--so the chambermaid had informed her casually--and whom she had
+met once when walking with Masters. He, if any one, would know Masters'
+address. But how meet him? He did not go in Society, and she had never
+seen him since. She could think of no excuse to ask him to call. Nor
+was it possible--to her, at least--to write a note and ask him for
+information outright.
+
+But by this time she was desperate. See Holt she would, and after a few
+moments' hard thinking her feminine ingenuity flashed a beacon. Holt
+was one of the sub-editors of his newspaper and although he had been
+about to resign and join Masters, no doubt he was on the staff still.
+Madeleine remembered that Masters had often spoken of a French
+restaurant in the neighborhood of the _Alta_ offices, patronized by
+newspaper men. The cooking was excellent. He often lunched there
+himself.
+
+She glanced at her watch. It was one o'clock. She walked quickly toward
+the restaurant.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+She entered in some trepidation. She had never visited a restaurant
+alone before. And this one was crowded with men, the atmosphere thick
+with smoke. She asked the fat little proprietor if she might have a
+table alone, and he conducted her to the end of the room, astonished
+but flattered. A few women came to the restaurant occasionally to lunch
+with "their boys," but no such lady of the haut ton as this. A
+fashionable woman's caprice, no doubt.
+
+Her seat faced the room, and as she felt the men staring at her, she
+studied the menu carefully and did not raise her eyes until she gave
+her order. In spite of her mission and its tragic cause she experienced
+a fleeting satisfaction that she was well and becomingly dressed. She
+had intended dropping in informally on Sibyl Forbes, still an outcast,
+in spite of her intercession, and wore a gown of dove-colored cashmere
+and a hat of the same shade with a long lilac feather.
+
+She summoned her courage and glanced about the room, her eyes casual
+and remote. Would it be possible to recognize any one in that smoke?
+But she saw Holt almost immediately. He sat at a table not far from her
+own. She bowed cordially and received as frigid a response as Mrs.
+Abbott would have bestowed on Sibyl Forbes.
+
+Madeleine colored and dropped her eyes again. Of course he knew her for
+the cause of Masters' desertion of the city that needed him, and the
+disappointment of his own hopes and ambitions. Moreover, she had
+inferred from his conversation the day they had all walked together for
+half an hour that he regarded Masters as little short of a god. He was
+several years younger, he was clever himself, and nothing like Masters
+had ever come his way. He had declared that the projected newspaper was
+to be the greatest in America. She had smiled at his boyish enthusiasm,
+but without it she would probably have forgotten him. She had resented
+his presence at the time.
+
+Of course he hated her. But she had come too far to fail. He passed her
+table a few moments later and she held out her hand with her sweetest
+smile.
+
+"Sit down a moment," she said with her pretty air of command; and
+although his face did not relax he could do no less than obey.
+
+"I feel more comfortable," she said. "I had no idea I should be the
+only lady here. But Mr. Masters so often spoke to me of this restaurant
+that I have always meant to visit it." She did not flutter an eyelash
+as she uttered Masters' name, and her lovely eyes seemed wooing Holt to
+remain at her side.
+
+"Heartless, like all the rest of them," thought the young man
+wrathfully. "Well, I'll give her one straight."
+
+"Have you heard from him lately?" she asked, as the waiter placed the
+dishes on the table. "He hasn't written to one of his old friends since
+he left, and I've often wondered what has become of him."
+
+"He's gone to the devil!" said Holt brutally. "And I guess you know
+where the blame lies--Oh!--Drink this!" He hastily poured out a glass
+of claret. "Here! Drink it! Brace up, for God's sake. Don't give
+yourself away before all these fellows."
+
+Madeleine swallowed the claret but pushed back her chair. "Take me away
+quickly," she muttered. "I don't care what they think. Take me where
+you can tell me--"
+
+He drew her hand through his arm, for he was afraid she would fall, and
+as he led her down the room he remarked audibly, "No wonder you feel
+faint. There's no air in the place, and you've probably never seen so
+much smoke in your life before."
+
+At the door he nodded to the anxious proprietor, and when they reached
+the sidewalk asked if he should take her home.
+
+"No. I must talk to you alone. There is a hack. Let us drive somewhere."
+
+He handed her into the hack, telling the man to drive where he liked as
+long as he avoided the Cliff House Road. Madeleine shrank into a corner
+and began to cry wildly. He regarded her with anxiety, and less
+hostility in his bright blue eyes.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I was a brute. But I thought you would
+know--I thought other things--"
+
+"I knew nothing, but I can't believe it is true. There must be some
+mistake. He is not like that."
+
+"That's what's happened. You see, his world went to smash. That was the
+opportunity of his life, and such opportunities don't come twice. He
+has no capital of his own, and he can't raise money in New York.
+Besides, he didn't want a newspaper anywhere else. And--and--of-course,
+you know, newspaper men hear all the talk--he was terribly hard hit. I
+couldn't help feeling a little sorry for you when I heard you were ill
+and all the rest; but today you looked as if you had forgotten poor
+Masters had ever lived--just a Society butterfly and a coquette."
+
+"Oh, I'm not blaming you! Perhaps it is all my fault. I don't
+know!--But _that_! I can't believe it. I never knew a man with as
+strong a character. He--he--always could control himself. And he had
+too much pride and ambition."
+
+"I guess you don't know it, but he had a weak spot for liquor. That is
+the reason he drank less than the rest of us--and that did show
+strength of character: that he could drink at all. I only saw him
+half-seas over once. He told me then he was always on the watch lest it
+get the best of him. His father drank himself to death after the war,
+and his grandfather from mere love of his cups. Nothing but a hopeless
+smash-up, though, would ever have let it get the best of him.... He was
+terribly high-strung under all that fine repose of his, and although
+his mind was like polished metal in a way, it was full of quicksilver.
+When a man like that lets go--nothing left to hold on to--he goes down
+hill at ten times the pace of an ordinary chap. I--I--suppose I may as
+well tell you the whole truth. He never drew a sober breath on the
+steamer and he's been drunk more or less ever since he arrived in New
+York. Of course he writes--has to--but can't hold down any responsible
+position. They'd be glad to give him the best salary paid if he'd sober
+up, but he gets worse instead of better. He's been thrown off two
+papers already; and it's only because he can write better drunk than
+most men sober that he sells an article now and again when he has to."
+
+Madeleine had torn her handkerchief to pieces. She no longer wept. Her
+eyes were wide with horror. He fancied he saw awful visions in them.
+Fearing she might faint or have hysterics, he hastily extracted a
+brandy flask from his pocket.
+
+"Do you mind?" he asked diffidently. "Sorry I haven't a glass, but this
+is the first time I've taken the cork out."
+
+She lifted the flask obediently and took a draught that commanded his
+respect.
+
+She smiled faintly as she met his wide-eyed regard. "My husband makes
+me live on this stuff. I was threatened with consumption. It affects me
+very little, but it helps me in more ways than one."
+
+"Well, don't let it help you too much. I suppose the doctor knows
+best--but--well, it gets a hold on you when you are down on your luck."
+
+"If it ever 'gets a hold' on me it will because I deliberately wish it
+to," she said haughtily. "If Langdon Masters--has gone as far as you
+say, I don't believe it is through any inherited weakness. He has done
+it deliberately."
+
+"I grant that. And I'm sorry if I offended you--"
+
+"I am only grateful to you. I feel better now and can think a little.
+Something must be done. Surely he can be saved."
+
+"I doubt it. When a man starts scientifically drinking himself to death
+nothing can be done when there is nothing better to offer him. May I be
+frank?"
+
+"I have been frank enough!"
+
+"Masters told me nothing of course, but I heard all the talk. Old
+Travers let out his part of it in his cups, and news travels from the
+Clubs like water out of a sieve. We don't publish that sort of muck,
+but there were innuendoes in that blackguard sheet, _The Boom_. They
+stopped suddenly and I fancy the editor had a taste of the horsewhip.
+It wouldn't be the first time.... When Masters sent for me and told me
+he was leaving San Francisco for good and all, he looked like a man who
+had been through Dore's Hell--was there still, for that matter. Of
+course I knew what had happened; if I hadn't I'd have known it the next
+day when I saw the doctor. He looked bad enough, but nothing to
+Masters. He had less reason! Of course Masters threw his career to the
+winds to save your good name. Noblesse oblige. Too bad he wasn't more
+of a villain and less of a great gentleman. It, might have been better
+all round. This town certainly needs him."
+
+"If he were not a great gentleman nothing would have happened in the
+first place," she said with cool pride. "But I asked you if there were
+no way to save him."
+
+"I can think of only two ways. If your husband would write and ask him
+to return to San Francisco--"
+
+"He'd never do that."
+
+"Then you might--you might--" He was fair and blushed easily. Being
+secretly a sentimental youth he was shy of any of the verbal
+expressions of sentiment; but he swallowed and continued heroically.
+"You--you--I think you love him. I can see you are not heartless, that
+you are terribly cut up. If you love him enough you might save him. A
+man like Masters can quit cold no matter how far he has gone if the
+inducement is great enough. If you went to New York--"
+
+He paused and glanced at her apprehensively, but although she had
+gasped she only shook her head sadly.
+
+"I'll never break my husband's heart and the vows I made at the altar,
+no matter what happens."
+
+"Oh, you good women! I believe you are at the root of more disaster
+than all the strumpets put together!"
+
+"It may be. I remember he once said something of the sort. But he loved
+me for what I am and I cannot change myself."
+
+"You could get a divorce."
+
+"I have no ground. And I would not if I had. He knows that."
+
+"No wonder he is without hope! But I don't pretend to understand women.
+You'll leave him in the gutter then?"
+
+"Don't!--Don't--"
+
+"Well, if he isn't there literally he soon will be. I've seen men of
+your set in the gutter here when they'd only been on a spree for a
+week. Take Alexander Groome and Jack Belmont, for instance. And after
+the gutter it is sometimes the calaboose."
+
+"You are cruel, and perhaps I deserve it. But if you will give me his
+address I will write to him."
+
+"I wouldn't. He might be too drunk to read your letter, and lose it. Or
+he might tear it up in a fury. I don't fancy even drink could make
+Langdon Masters maudlin, and the sight of your handwriting would be
+more likely to make him empty the bottle with a curse than to awaken
+tender sentiment. Anyhow, it would be a risk. Some blackguard might get
+hold of it."
+
+"Very well, I'll not write. Will you tell the man to drive to the
+Occidental Hotel?"
+
+He gave the order and when he drew in his head she laid her hand on his
+and said in her sweet voice and with her soft eyes raised to his (he no
+longer wondered that Masters had lost his head over her), "I want to
+thank you for the kindness you have shown me and the care you took of
+me in that restaurant. What you have told me has destroyed the little
+peace of mind I had left, but at least I'm no longer in the dark. I
+will confess that I went to that restaurant in the hope of seeing you
+and learning something about Masters. Nor do I mind that I have
+revealed myself to you without shame. I have had no confidant
+throughout all this terrible time and it has been a relief. I suppose
+it is always easier to be frank with a stranger than with even the best
+of friends."
+
+"Thanks. But I'd like you to know that I am your friend. I'd do
+anything I could for you--for Masters' sake as well as your own. It's
+an awful mess. Perhaps you'll think of some solution."
+
+"I've thought of one as far as I am concerned. I shall drink myself to
+death."
+
+"What?" He was sitting sideways, embracing his knees, and he just
+managed to save himself from toppling over. "Have you gone clean out of
+your head?"
+
+"Oh, no. Not yet, But I shall do as I said. If I cannot follow him I
+can follow his example. Why should he go to the dogs and I go through
+life with the respect and approval of the world? He is far greater than
+I--and better. I can at least share his disgrace, and I shall also
+forget--and, it may be, delude myself that I am with him at times."
+
+"My God! The logic of women! How happy do you think _that_ will make
+your husband? Good old sport, the doctor--and as for religion--and
+vows!"
+
+"One can stand so much and no more. I have reached the breaking point
+here in this carriage. It is that or suicide, and that would bring open
+disgrace on my husband. The other would only be suspected. And I'll not
+last long."
+
+The hack stopped in front of the hotel. She gave him her hand after he
+had escorted her to the door. "Thank you once more. And I'd be grateful
+if you would come and tell me if you have any further news of him--no
+matter what. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," he said. "But I feel like going off and getting drunk, myself. I
+wish I hadn't told you a thing."
+
+"It wouldn't have made much difference. If you know it others must, and
+I'd have heard it sooner or later. I hope you'll call in any case."
+
+He promised; but the next time he saw her it was not in a drawing-room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Madeleine had reached the calmness of despair once more, and this time
+without a glimmer of hope. Life had showered its gifts sardonically
+upon her before breaking her in her youth, and there was still a
+resource in its budget that it had no power to withhold. She was a firm
+believer in the dogmas of the Church and knew that she would be
+punished hereafter. Well, so would he. It might be they would be
+permitted to endure their punishment together. And meanwhile, there was
+oblivion, delusions possibly, and then death.
+
+It was summer and there were no engagements to break. The doctor was
+caught in the whirlwind of another small-pox epidemic and lived in
+rooms he reserved for the purpose. He did not insist upon her departure
+from town as he knew her to be immune, and he thought it best she
+should remain where she could pursue her regimen uninterrupted; and tax
+her strength as little as possible. If he did not dismiss her from his
+mind at least he had not a misgiving. She had never disobeyed him, she
+appeared to have forgotten Masters at last, she took her tonics
+automatically, and there were good plays in town. In a few months she
+would be restored to health and himself.
+
+He returned to the hotel at the end of six weeks. It was the dinner
+hour but his wife was not at the piano. He tapped on the door that led
+from the parlor to her bedroom, and although there was no response he
+turned the knob and entered.
+
+Madeleine was lying on the bed, asleep apparently.
+
+He went forward anxiously; he had never known her to sleep at this hour
+before. He touched her lightly on the shoulder, but she did not awaken.
+Then he bent over her, and drew back with a frown. But although
+horrified he was far from suspecting the whole truth. He had been
+compelled to break more than one patient of too ardent a fidelity to
+his prescriptions.
+
+He forced an emetic down her throat, but it had no effect. Then he
+picked her up and carried her into the bath room and held her head
+under the shower. The blood flowed down from her congested brain. She
+struggled out of his arms and looked at him with dull angry eyes.
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded. "How dared you do such a thing to me?"
+
+"You had taken too much, my dear," he said kindly. "Or else it affects
+you more than it did--possibly because you no longer need it. I shall
+taper you off by degrees, and then I think we can do without it."
+
+"Without it? I couldn't live without it. I need more--and more--" She
+looked about wildly.
+
+"Oh, that is all right. They always think so at first. In six months
+you will have forgotten it. Remember, I am a doctor--and a good one, if
+I say so myself."
+
+She dropped her eyes. "Very well," she said humbly. "Of course you know
+best."
+
+"Now, put on dry clothes and let us have dinner. It seems a year since
+I dined with you."
+
+"I haven't the strength."
+
+He went into the parlor and returned with a small glass of cognac.
+"This will brace you up, and, as I said, you must taper off. But I'll
+measure the doses myself, hereafter."
+
+She put on an evening gown, but with none of her old niceness of
+detail. She merely put it on. Her wet hair she twisted into a knot
+without glancing at the mirror. As she entered the parlor she staggered
+slightly. Talbot averted his eyes. He may have had similar cases, and,
+as a doctor, become hardened to all manifestations of human weakness,
+but this patient was his wife. It was only temporary, of course, and a
+not unnatural sequel. But Madeleine! He felt as a priest might if a
+statue of the Virgin opened its mouth and poured forth a stream of
+blasphemy.
+
+Then he went forward and put his arm about her. "Brace up," he said. "I
+hear the waiters in the dining-room. They must not see you like this.
+Where--where have you taken your meals?"
+
+"In my bedroom."
+
+"I hoped so. Has any one seen you?"
+
+"I don't know--no. I think not. I have been careful enough. I do not
+wish to disgrace you."
+
+He was obliged to give her another glass of cognac, and she sat through
+the dinner without betraying herself, although she would eat nothing.
+She was sullen and talked little, and when the meal was over she went
+directly to bed.
+
+Dr. Talbot followed her, however, and searched her wardrobe and bureau
+drawers. He found nothing. When he returned to the parlor he locked the
+cupboard where he kept his hospitable stores and put the key in his
+pocket. But he did not go out, and toward midnight he heard her moving
+restlessly about her room. She invited him eagerly to enter when he
+tapped.
+
+"I'm nervous, horribly nervous," she said. "Give me some more
+cognac--anything."
+
+"You'll have nothing more tonight. I shall give you a dose of valerian."
+
+She swallowed the noxious mixture with a grimace and was asleep in a
+few moments.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+The doctor was still very busy but he returned to the hotel four times
+a day and gave her small doses of whatever liquor she demanded. In a
+short time he diluted them with Napa Soda water. She was always pacing
+the room when he entered and looked at him like a wild animal at bay.
+But she never mentioned Masters' name, even when her nerves whipped her
+suddenly to hysterics; and although he sometimes thought he should go
+mad with the horror of it all, he had faith in his method, and in her
+own pride, as soon as the first torments wore down. She refused to walk
+out of doors or to wear anything but a dressing gown; she took her
+slender meals in her room.
+
+But Madeleine's sufferings were more mental than physical, although she
+was willing the doctor should form the natural conclusion. She was
+possessed by the fear that a cure would be forced upon her; she was
+indifferent even to the taste of liquor, and had merely preferred it
+formerly to bitter or nauseous tonics; in Society it had been a
+necessary stimulant, when her strength began to fail, nothing more.
+After her grim decision she had forced large quantities down her throat
+by sheer strength of will. But she had found the result all that she
+had expected, she had alternated between exhilaration and oblivion, and
+was sure that it was killing her by inches. Now, she could indulge in
+neither wild imaginings nor forget. And if he cured her!--but her will
+when she chose to exert it was as strong as his, and her resource
+seldom failed her.
+
+One day in her eternal pacing she paused and stared at the keyhole of
+the cupboard, then took a hairpin from her head and tried to pick the
+lock. It was large and complicated and she could do nothing with it.
+She glanced at the clock. The doctor would not return for an hour. She
+dressed hastily and went out and bought a lump of soft wax. She took an
+impress of the keyhole and waited with what patience she could summon
+until her husband had come and gone. Then she went out again. The next
+day she had the key and that night she needed no valerian.
+
+Doctor Talbot paced the parlor himself until morning. But he did not
+despair. He had had not dissimilar experiences before. He removed his
+supplies to the cellar of the hotel and carried a flask in his pocket
+from which he measured her daily drams.
+
+The same chambermaid had been on her floor for years, and was devoted
+to her. She sent her out for gin on one pretext or another, although
+the woman was not deceived for a moment; she had "seen how it was" long
+since. But she was middle-aged, Irish, and sympathetic. If the poor
+lady had sorrows let her drown them.
+
+Madeleine was more wary this time. She told her husband she was
+determined to take her potions only at noon and at night; in the
+daytime she restrained herself after four o'clock, although she took
+enough to keep up her spirits at the dinner-table to which she had
+thought it best to return.
+
+The doctor, thankful, no longer neglected his practice, and left
+immediately after dinner for the Club as she went to her room at once
+and locked the door. There was no doubt of her hostility, but that,
+too, was not unnatural, and he was content to wait.
+
+Society returned to town, but she flatly refused to enter it. Nor would
+she receive any one who called. The doctor remonstrated in vain. He
+trusted her perfectly and a glass of champagne at dinner would not hurt
+her. If she expected to become quite herself again she must have
+diversions. She was leading an unnatural life.
+
+She deigned no answer.
+
+He warned her that tongues would wag. He had met several of the women
+during the summer and told them her lungs were healed.... No doubt he
+had been over-anxious, mistaken--in the beginning. He wished he had
+given her a tonic of iron arsenic and strychnine, alternated with
+cod-liver oil. But it was too late for regrets, and at least she was
+well on the road to recovery; if she snubbed people now they would take
+their revenge when she would be eager for the pleasures of Society
+again.
+
+Madeleine laughed aloud.
+
+"But, my dear, this is only a passing phase. Of course your system is
+depressed but that will wear off, and what you need now, even more than
+brandy twice a day, is a mental tonic. By the way, don't you think you
+might leave it off now?"
+
+"No, I do not. If my system is depressed I'd go to pieces altogether
+without it."
+
+"I'll give you a regular tonic--"
+
+"I'll not take it. You are not disposed to use force, I imagine."
+
+"No, I cannot do that. But you'll accept these invitations--some of
+them?" He indicated a pile of square envelopes on the table. He had
+opened them but she had not given them a passing glance.
+
+"Society would have the effect of arresting my 'cure.' I hate it. If
+you force me to go out I'll drink too much and disgrace you."
+
+"But what shall I tell them?" he asked in despair. "I see some of them
+every day and they'll quiz my head off. They can't suspect the truth,
+of course, but--but--" he paused and his ruddy face turned a deep brick
+red. He had never mentioned Masters' name to her since he announced his
+impending departure, but he was desperate. "They'll think you're
+pining, that's what! That you won't go out because you take no interest
+in any one but Langdon Masters."
+
+She was standing by the window with her back to him, looking down into
+the street. She turned and met his eyes squarely.
+
+"That would be quite true," she said.
+
+"You do not mean that!"
+
+"I have never forgotten him for a moment and I never shall as long as I
+live." She averted her eyes from his pallid face but went on
+remorselessly. "If you had been merciful you would have let me die when
+I was so ill. But you showed me another way, and now you would take
+even that from me."
+
+"Do--do you mean to say that you tried to drink yourself to death?"
+
+"Yes, I mean that. And if you really cared for me you would let me do
+it now."
+
+"That I'll never do," he cried violently. "I'll cure you and you'll get
+over this damned nonsense in time."
+
+"I never shall get over it. Don't delude yourself for an instant."
+
+He stared at her with a sickening sense of impotence--and despair. He
+thought she had never looked more beautiful. She wore a graceful
+wrapper of pale blue camel's hair and her long hair in two pendent
+braids. She was very white and she looked as cold and remote as the
+moon.
+
+"Madeleine! Madeleine! You have changed so completely! I cannot believe
+that you'll never be the same Madeleine again. Why--you--you look as if
+you were not there at all!"
+
+"Only my shell is here. The real me is with him."
+
+"Curse the man! Curse him! Curse him! I wish I'd blown out his brains!"
+He threw his arms about wildly and she wondered if he would strike her.
+But he threw himself into a chair and burst into heavy sobbing.
+Madeleine ran out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+"I tell you it's true. You needn't pooh-pooh at me, Antoinette McLane.
+I have it on the best authority."
+
+"Old Ben Travers, I suppose!"
+
+"No, it's not Ben Travers, although he'll find it out soon enough. Her
+chambermaid knows my cook. She is devoted to Madeleine, evidently, and
+cried after she had told it, but--well, I suppose it was too good for
+any mere female to keep."
+
+"Servants' gossip," replied Mrs. McLane witheringly. "I should think it
+would be beneath your self-respect to listen to it. Fancy gossiping
+with one's cook."
+
+"I didn't," replied Mrs. Abbott with dignity. "She told my maid, and if
+we didn't listen to our maids' gossip how much would we really know
+about what goes on in this town?"
+
+Mrs. McLane, Mrs. Ballinger, Guadalupe Hathaway and Sally Abbott were
+sitting in Mrs. Abbott's large and hideous front parlor after luncheon,
+and she had tormented them throughout the meal with a promise of
+"something that would make their hair stand on end."
+
+She had succeeded beyond her happy expectations. Mrs. McLane's eyes
+were flashing. Mrs. Ballinger looked like a proud silver poplar that
+had been seared by lightning. Sally burst into tears, and Miss
+Hathaway's large cold Spanish blue eyes saw visions of Nina Randolph, a
+brilliant creature of the early sixties, whom she had tried to save
+from the same fate.
+
+"Be sure the bell boys will find it out," continued Mrs. Abbott
+unctuously. "And when it gets to the Union Club--well, no use for us to
+try to hush it up."
+
+"As you are trying to do now!"
+
+"You needn't spit fire at me. I feel as badly as you do about it. If
+I've told just you four it's only to talk over what can be done."
+
+"I don't believe there's a word of truth in the story. Probably that
+wretched servant is down on her for some reason. Madeleine Talbot! Why,
+she's the proudest creature that ever lived."
+
+"She might have the bluest blood of the South in her veins," conceded
+Mrs. Ballinger handsomely. "I pride myself on my imagination but I
+simply cannot _see_ her in such a condition."
+
+"If it's true, it's Masters, of course," said Miss Hathaway. "The only
+reason I didn't fall in love with him was because it was no use. But
+he's the sort of man--there are not many of them!--who would make a
+woman love him to desperation if he loved her himself. And she'd never
+forget him."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Ballinger coldly. "I never believed
+that Madeleine was in love with Langdon Masters. A good woman loves
+only her husband."
+
+"Oh, mamma!" wailed Sally. "Madeleine is young, and the doctor's a dear
+but he wasn't the sort of a man for her at all. He just attracted her
+when she was a girl because he was so different from the men she knew.
+But Langdon is exactly suited to her. I guessed it before any of you
+did. It worried me dreadfully, but I sympathized--I always admired
+Langdon--if he'd looked at me before I fell in love with Hal I believe
+I'd have married him--but I wish, oh, how I wish, Madeleine could get a
+divorce."
+
+"Sally Ballinger!" Her mother's voice quavered. "This terrible
+California! If you had been brought up in Virginia--"
+
+"But I wasn't. And I mean what I say. And--and--it's true about
+Madeleine. I went there the other day and she saw me--and--oh, I never
+meant to tell it--it's too terrible!"
+
+"So," said Mrs. McLane. "So," She added thoughtfully after a moment.
+"It's a curious coincidence. Langdon Masters is drinking himself to
+death in New York. Jack Belmont returned the other day--he told Mr.
+McLane."
+
+She had been interrupted several times, Madeleine for the moment
+forgotten.
+
+"Why didn't Alexander Groome know? He's his cousin and bad enough
+himself, heaven knows."
+
+"Oh, poor Langdon! Poor Langdon! I knew he could love a woman like
+that--"
+
+"He has remarkable powers of concentration!"
+
+"I'll wager Mr. Abbott heard it himself at the Club, the wretch! He'll
+hear from me!"
+
+"Oh, it's too awful," wailed Sally again. "What an end to a romance. It
+was quite perfect before--in a way. And now instead of pitying poor
+Madeleine and wishing we were her--she--which is it?--we'll all be
+despising her!"
+
+"It's loathsome," said Mrs. Ballinger. "I wish I had not heard it. I
+prefer to believe that such things do not exist."
+
+"Good heavens, mamma, I've heard that gentlemen in the good old South
+were as drunk as lords, oftener than not."
+
+"As lords, yes. Langdon Masters is in no position to emulate his
+ancestors. And Madeleine! No one ever heard of a lady in the South
+taking to drink from disappointed love or anything else. When life was
+too hard for them they went into a beautiful decline and died in the
+odor of sanctity."
+
+"They get terribly skinny and yellow in the last stages--"
+
+"Sally!"
+
+"Well, I don't care anything about Langdon Masters," announced Mrs.
+Abbott. "He's left here anyway, and like as not we'll never see him
+again. This is what I want to know: Can anything be done about
+Madeleine Talbot? Of course Howard poured whiskey down her throat until
+it got the best of her. But he should know how to cure her. That is if
+he knows the worst."
+
+"You may be sure he knows the worst," said Mrs. McLane. "How could he
+help it?"
+
+"That maid said she bought it on the sly all the time. Don't you
+suppose he'd put a stop to that if he knew it?"
+
+"Well, he will find it out. And I'll not be the one to tell him. One
+ordeal of that sort is enough for a lifetime."
+
+"Why not give her a talking to? She has always seemed to defer more to
+you than to any one else." Mrs. Abbott made the admission grudgingly.
+
+"I am willing to try, if she will see me. But--if she knows what has
+happened to Masters--and ten to one she does--he may have written to
+her--I don't believe it will do any good. Alas! Why does youth take
+life so tragically? When she is as old as I am she will know that no
+man is worth the loss of a night's sleep."
+
+"Yes, but Madeleine isn't old!" cried Sally. "She's young--young--and
+she can't live without him. I don't know whether she's weaker or
+stronger than Sibyl, but at any rate Sibyl is happy--"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Can't you see it in her face at the theatre? Oh, I don't care! I'll
+tell it! Madeleine asked me to lunch to meet her one day last winter
+and I went. We had a splendid time. After lunch we sat on the rug
+before the fire and popped corn. Oh, you needn't all glare at me as if
+I'd committed a crime. It's hard to _be_ hard when you're young, and
+Sibyl was my other intimate friend. But that's not the question at
+present. I've had an idea. Perhaps I could persuade Madeleine to stay
+with me. Now that I know, perhaps she won't mind so much. I only got in
+by accident. There's a new man at the desk and he let me go up--"
+
+"Well, what is your idea?" asked Mrs. McLane impatiently. "What could
+you do with her if she did visit you--which she probably will not."
+
+"I might be able to cure her. She wouldn't see anything to drink. Hal
+has sworn off. There's not a drop in sight, and not only on his account
+but because the last butler got drunk and fell in the lake. We'll not
+have any company while she's there. And I'd lock her in at night and
+never leave her alone in the daytime."
+
+"That is not a bad idea at all," said Mrs. McLane emphatically. "But
+don't waste your time trying to persuade her. Go to Howard. Tell him
+the truth. He will give her a dose of valerian and take her over in a
+hack at night."
+
+"I don't like the idea of Sally coming into contact with such a
+dreadful side of life--"
+
+"But if I can save her, mamma?"
+
+"Maria is Alexander Groome's wife and she has no influence over him."
+
+"Oh, Maria! If he were my husband I'd lead him such a dance that he'd
+behave himself in self-defence. Maria is too much like you--"
+
+"Sally Ballinger!"
+
+"I only meant that you are an angel, mamma dear. And of course you are
+so enchanting and beautiful papa has always toed the mark. But Maria is
+good without being any too fascinating--"
+
+"Sally is right," interrupted Mrs. McLane. "I am not sure that her plan
+will succeed. But no one has thought of a better. If Madeleine has a
+deeper necessity for stupefying her brain than shattered nerves, I
+doubt if any one could save her. But at least Sally can try. We'd be
+brutes if we left her to drown without throwing her a plank."
+
+"Just what I said," remarked Mrs. Abbott complacently. "Was I not
+justified in telling you? And when you get her over there, Sally, and
+her mind is quite clear, warn her that while she may do what she
+chooses in private, if she elects to die that way, just let her once be
+seen in public in a state unbecoming a lady, and that is the end of her
+as far as we are concerned."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. McLane with a sigh. "We should have no choice. Poor
+Madeleine!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Madeleine awoke from a heavy drugged sleep and reached out her hand
+automatically for the drawer of her commode. It fumbled in the air for
+a moment and then she raised herself on her elbow. She glanced about
+the room. It was not her own.
+
+She sprang out of bed. A key turned and Sally Abbott entered.
+
+"What does this mean?" cried Madeleine. "What are you doing here,
+Sally? Why did Howard move me into another room?"
+
+"He didn't. You are over at my house. He thought the country would be
+good for you for a while and I was simply dying to have you--"
+
+"Where are my clothes? I am going back to the city at once."
+
+"Now, Madeleine, dear." Sally put her arm round the tall form which was
+as rigid as steel in her embrace. But she was a valiant little person
+and strong with health and much life in the open. "You are going to
+stay with me until--until--you are better."
+
+"I'll not. I must get back. At once! You don't understand--"
+
+"Yes, I do. And I've something for you." She took a flask from the
+capacious pocket of her black silk apron and poured brandy into a glass.
+
+Madeleine drank it, then sank heavily into a chair.
+
+"That is more than he has been giving me," she said suspiciously. "How
+often did he tell you to give me that?"
+
+"Four times a day."
+
+"He's found out! He's found out!"
+
+"That chambermaid blabbed, and of course he heard it. I--I--saw him
+just after. He felt so terribly, Madeleine dear! Your heart would have
+ached for him. And when I asked him to let you come over here he seemed
+to brighten up, and said it was the best thing to do."
+
+Madeleine burst into tears, the first she had shed in many months.
+"Poor Howard! Poor Howard! But it will do no good."
+
+"Oh, yes, it will. Now, let me help you dress. Or would you rather stay
+in bed today?"
+
+"I'll dress. And I'm not going to stay, Sally. I give you fair warning."
+
+"Oh, but you are. I've locked up your outdoor things--and my own! I'll
+only let you have them when we go out together."
+
+"So you have turned yourself into my jailer?"
+
+"Yes, I have. And don't try to look like an outraged empress until your
+stays are covered up. Put on your dress and we'll have a game of
+battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. It's raining. Then we'll have
+some music this afternoon. My alto used to go beautifully with your
+soprano, and I'll get out our duets. I haven't forgotten one of the
+accompaniments--What are you doing?"
+
+Madeleine was undressing rapidly. "I haven't had my bath. I seldom
+forget that, even--where is the bath room? I forget."
+
+"Across the hall. And leave your clothes here. Although you'd break
+your bones if you tried to jump out of the window. When you've finished
+I'll have a cup of strong coffee ready for you. Run along."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Lake Merritt, a small sheet of water near the little town of Oakland,
+was surrounded by handsome houses whose lawns sloped down to its rim.
+Most them were closed in summer, but a few of the owners, like the
+Harold Abbotts, lived there the year round. At all times, however, the
+lawns and gardens were carefully tended, for this was one of Fashion's
+chosen spots, and there must be no criticism from outsiders in Oakland.
+The statues on the lawns were rubbed down after the heavy rains and
+dusted as carefully in summer. There were grape-vine arbors and wild
+rose hedges, and the wide verandas were embowered. In summer there were
+many rowboats on the lake, and they lingered more often in the deep
+shade of the weeping willows fringing the banks. The only blot on the
+aristocratic landscape was a low brown restaurant kept by a Frenchman,
+known as "Old Blazes." It was a resort for gay parties that were quite
+respectable and for others that were not. Behind the public rooms was a
+row of cubicles patronized by men when on a quiet spree (women, too, it
+was whispered). There were no cabinet particuliers. Old Blazes had his
+own ideas of propriety; and no mind to be ousted from Lake Merritt.
+
+Madeleine had found Sally Abbott's society far more endurable, when she
+paid her round of visits after Masters' departure, than that of the
+older women with their watchful or anxious eyes, and she had no
+suspicion that Sally had guessed her secret long since. If love had
+been her only affliction she would have been grateful for her society
+and amusing chatter, for they had much in common. But in the
+circumstances it was unthinkable. Not only was she terrified once more
+by the prospect of being "cured," but her shattered nerves demanded far
+more stimulation and tranquilizing than these small daily doses of
+brandy afforded.
+
+Her will was in no way affected. She controlled even her nerves in
+Sally's presence, escaped from it twice a day under pretext of taking a
+nap, and went upstairs immediately after dinner. She had a large room
+at the back of the house where she could pace up and down unheard.
+
+She pretended to be amiable and resigned, played battledoor and
+shuttlecock in the hall, or on the lawn when the weather permitted,
+sang in the evenings with Sally and Harold, and affected not to notice
+that she was locked in at night. She refused to drive, as she would
+have found sitting for any length of time unendurable, but she was glad
+to take long walks even in the rain--and was piloted away from the town
+and the railroad.
+
+Sally wrote jubilant letters to Dr. Talbot, who thought it best to stay
+away. The servants were told that Mrs. Talbot was recovering from an
+illness and suspected nothing.
+
+It lasted two weeks. Sally had inexorably diminished the doses after
+the seventh day. Madeleine's mind, tormented by her nerves, never
+ceased for a moment revolving plans for escape.
+
+As they returned from a walk one afternoon they met callers at the door
+and it was impossible to deny them admittance. Madeleine excused
+herself and went up to her room wearing her coat and hat instead of
+handing them to Sally as usual. She put them in her wardrobe and locked
+the door and hid the key. At dinner it was apparent, however, that
+Sally had not noticed the omission of this detail in her daily
+espionage, for the visitors had told her much interesting gossip and
+she was interested in imparting it. Moreover, her mind was almost at
+rest regarding her captive.
+
+Madeleine, some time since, had found that the key of another door
+unlocked her own, and secreted it. She had no money, but she had worn a
+heavy gold bracelet when her husband and Sally dressed her and they had
+pinned her collar with a pearl brooch. Sally followed her to her room
+after she had had time to undress and gave her the nightly draught, but
+did not linger; she had no mind that her husband should feel neglected
+and resent this interruption of an extended honeymoon.
+
+Madeleine waited until the house was quiet. Then she went down the
+heavily carpeted stairs and let herself out by one of the long French
+windows. She had made her plans and walked swiftly to the restaurant.
+She knew "Old Blazes," for she had dined at his famous hostelry more
+than once with her husband or friends.
+
+There was a party in the private restaurant. She walked directly to one
+of the cubicles and rang for a waiter and told him to send M'sieu to
+her at once.
+
+"Old Blazes" came immediately, and if she expected him to look
+astonished she was agreeably disappointed. Nothing astonished him.
+
+She held out her bracelet and brooch. "I want you to lend me some money
+on these," she said. "My husband will redeem them."
+
+"Very well, madame." (He was far too discreet to recognize her.) "I
+will bring you the money at once."
+
+"And I wish to buy a quart of Bourbon, which I shall take with me. You
+may also bring me a glass."
+
+"Very well, madame."
+
+He left the room and returned in a moment with a bottle of Bourbon,
+from which he had drawn the cork, a glass, and a bottle of Napa Soda.
+He also handed her two gold pieces. He had been a generous friend to
+many patrons and had reaped his reward.
+
+"I should advise you to leave by the back entrance," he said. "Shall I
+have a hack there--in--"
+
+"Send for it at once and I will take it when I am ready. Tell the man
+to drive on to the boat and to the Occidental Hotel."
+
+"Yes, Madame. Good-night, Madame."
+
+He closed the door. Madeleine left the restaurant three quarters of an
+hour later.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Colonel Belmont, Alexander Groome, Amos Lawton, Ogden Bascom and
+several other worthy citizens, were returning from a pleasant supper at
+Blazes'. They sat for a time in the saloon of the ferry boat El Capitan
+with the birds of gorgeous plumage they had royally entertained and
+then went outside to take the air; the ladies preferring to nap.
+
+"Hello! What's that?" exclaimed Groome. "Something's up. Let's
+investigate."
+
+At the end of the rear deck was a group of men and one or two women.
+They were crowding one another and those on the edge stood on tiptoe.
+Belmont was very tall and he could see over their heads without
+difficulty.
+
+"It's a woman," he announced to his friends. "Drunk--or in a dead
+faint--"
+
+A man laughed coarsely. "Drunk as they make 'em. No faint about
+that--Hi!--Quit yer shovin'--"
+
+Belmont scattered the crowd as if they had been children and picked up
+the woman in his arms.
+
+"My God!" he cried to his staring companions, and as he faced them he
+looked about to faint himself. "Do you see who it is? Where can we hide
+her?"
+
+"Whe-e-ew!" whistled Groome, and for the moment was thankful for his
+Maria. "What the--"
+
+"I've got my hack on the deck below," said one of the gaping crowd.
+"She came in it. Better take her right down, sir. I never seen her
+before but I seen she was a lady and tried to prevent her--"
+
+"Lead the way.... I'll take her home," he said to the others. "And
+let's keep this dark if we can."
+
+When the hack reached the Occidental Hotel he gave the driver a
+twenty-dollar gold piece and the man readily promised to "keep his
+mouth shut." He told the night clerk that Mrs. Talbot had sprained her
+ankle and fainted, and demanded a pass key if the doctor were out. A
+bell boy opened the parlor door of the Talbot suite and Colonel Belmont
+took off Madeleine's hat, placed her on the bed, and then went in
+search of the doctor.
+
+When Madeleine opened her eyes her husband was sitting beside her. He
+poured some aromatic spirits of ammonia into a glass of water and she
+drank it indifferently.
+
+"How did I get here?" she asked.
+
+He told her in the bitterest words he had ever used.
+
+"You are utterly disgraced. Some of those men may hold their tongues
+but others will not. By this time it is probably all over the Union
+Club. You are an outcast from this time forth."
+
+"That means nothing to me. And I warned you."
+
+"It is nothing to you that you have disgraced me also, I suppose?"
+
+"No. You made an outcast of Langdon Masters. You wrecked his life and
+will be the cause of his early death. Meanwhile he is in the gutter. I
+am glad that I am publicly beside him.... Still, I would have spared
+you if I could. You are a good man according to your lights. If you had
+heeded my warning and made no foolish attempts to cure me, no one would
+have been the wiser."
+
+"Several of the women knew it. And if you had taken advantage of the
+opportunity given you by Sally I think they would have guarded your
+secret. You have publicly disgraced them as well as yourself and your
+husband."
+
+"Well, what shall you do? Throw me into the street? I wish that you
+would."
+
+"No, I shall try to cure you again."
+
+"And have a wife that your friends will cut dead? You'd be far better
+off if I _were_ dead."
+
+"Perhaps. But I shall do my duty. And if I can cure you I'll sell my
+practice and go elsewhere. To South America, perhaps."
+
+"Scandal travels. You would never get away from it. Better stay here
+with your friends, who will not visit my sins on your head. They will
+never desert you. And you cannot cure me. Did you ever know any one to
+be cured against his will?"
+
+"I shall lock you in these rooms and you can't drink what you haven't
+got."
+
+"I've circumvented you before and I shall again."
+
+"Then," he cried violently, "I'll put you in the Home for Inebriates!"
+
+She laughed mockingly. "You'll never do anything of the sort. And I
+shouldn't care if you did. I should escape."
+
+"Have you no pride left?"
+
+"It is as dead as everything else but this miserable shell. As dead as
+all that was great in Langdon Masters. Won't you let me die in my own
+way?"
+
+"I will not."
+
+She sighed and moved her head restlessly on the pillow. "You mean to do
+what is right, I suppose. But you are cruel, cruel. You condemn me to
+live in torment."
+
+"I shall give you more for a while than I did before. I was too abrupt.
+I wouldn't face the whole truth, I suppose."
+
+"I'll kill myself."
+
+"I have no fear of that. You are as superstitious as all religious
+women--although much good your religion seems to do you. And you have
+the same twisted logic as all women, clever as you are. You would drink
+yourself to death if I would let you, but you'd never commit the overt
+act. If you are relying on your jewels to bribe the servants with, you
+will not find them. They are in the safe at the Club. And I shall
+discontinue your allowance."
+
+"Very well. Please go. I should like to take my bath."
+
+He was obliged to attend an important consultation an hour later, but
+he did not lock the doors as he had threatened. He wanted as little
+scandal in the hotel as possible, and he believed her to be helpless
+without money. The barkeeper was an old friend of his, and when he
+instructed him to honor no orders from his suite he knew, that the
+man's promise could be relied on. The chambermaid was dismissed.
+
+As soon as she was alone Madeleine wrote to her father and asked him
+for a thousand dollars. It was the first time she had asked him for
+money since her marriage; and he sent it to her with a long kindly
+letter, warning her against extravagance. She had given no reason for
+her request, but he inferred that she had been running up bills and was
+afraid to tell her husband. Was she ill, that she wrote so seldom? He
+understood that she had quite recovered. But she must remember that he
+and her mother were old people.
+
+Several days after her return she had sold four new gowns, recently
+arrived from New York and unworn, to Sibyl Forbes.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+Ralph Holt ran down the steps of a famous night restaurant in north
+Montgomery Street on the edge of Chinatown. It was a disreputable place
+but it had a certain air of brilliancy, although below the sidewalk,
+and was favored by men that worked late on newspapers, not only for its
+excellent cuisine but because there was likely to be some garish bit of
+drama to refresh the jaded mind.
+
+The large room was handsomely furnished with mahogany and lit by three
+large crystal chandeliers and many side brackets. It was about two
+thirds full. A band was playing and on a platform a woman in a Spanish
+costume of sorts was dancing the can-can, to the noisy appreciation of
+the male guests. Along one side of the room was a bar with a large
+painting above it of bathing nymphs. The waiters were Chinese.
+
+Holt found an unoccupied table and ordered an oyster stew, then glanced
+about him for possible centres of interest. There were many women
+present, gaudily attired, but they were not the elite of the
+half-world. Neither did the gentlemen who made life gay and care-free
+for the haughty ladies of the lower ten thousand patronize anything so
+blatant. They were far too high-toned themselves. Their standards were
+elevated, all things considered.
+
+But the women of commerce, of whatever status, had no interest for
+young Holt save as possible heroines of living drama. He had a lively
+news sense, and although an editor, and of a highly respectable sheet
+at that, he could become as keen on the track of a "story" as if he
+were still a reporter.
+
+But although the night birds were eating little and drinking a great
+deal, at this hour of two in the morning, the only excitement was the
+marvellous high kicking of the black-eyed scantily clad young woman on
+the stage and the ribald applause of her admirers.
+
+His eye was arrested by the slender back of a woman who sat at a table
+alone drinking champagne. She was so simply dressed that she was far
+more noticeable than if she had crowned herself with jewels. His lunch
+arrived at the moment, and it was not until he had satisfied his usual
+morning appetite that he remembered the woman and glanced her way
+again. Two men were sitting at her table, apparently endeavoring to
+engage her in conversation. They belonged to the type loosely known as
+men about town, of no definite position, but with money to spend and a
+turn for adventure.
+
+It was equally apparent that they received no response to their amiable
+overtures, for they shrugged their shoulders in a moment, laughed, and
+went elsewhere. More than one woman sat alone and these were amenable
+enough. They came for no other purpose.
+
+Holt paid his account and strolled over to the table. When he took one
+of the chairs he was shocked but not particularly surprised to see that
+the woman was Mrs. Talbot. The town had rung with her story all winter,
+and he had heard several months since that she had obtained money in
+some way and left her husband. The report was that Dr. Talbot had
+traced her to lodgings on the Plaza, but she had not only refused to
+return to him but to tell him where she had obtained her funds. She had
+informed him that she had sufficient money to keep her "long enough,"
+but the doctor had his misgivings and directed his lawyers to pay the
+rent of the room and make an arrangement with a neighboring restaurant
+to send in her meals. Then he had gone off on a sea voyage. Holt had
+seen him driving his double team the day before, evidently on a round
+of visits. The sea, apparently, had done him little good. Nothing but
+age, no doubt, would shatter that superb constitution, but he had lost
+his ruddy color and his face was drawn and lined.
+
+Madeleine had not raised her eyes. She looked like an effigy of
+well-bred contempt, and Holt did not wonder that she suffered briefly
+from the attentions of predatory males in search of amusement.
+Moreover, she was very thin, and the sirens of that day were
+voluptuous. They fed on cream and sweets until the proper curves of
+bust and hips were achieved, and those that appeared in the wrong place
+were held flat with a broad "wooden whalebone."
+
+Holt was surprised to find her so little changed. It was evident she
+was one of those drinkers whom liquor made pallid not red; her skin was
+still smooth and her face had not lost its fine oval. But it was only a
+matter of time!
+
+"Mrs. Talbot."
+
+She raised her eyes with a faint start and with an expression of
+haughty disdain. But as she recognized him the expression faded and she
+regarded him sadly.
+
+"You see," she said.
+
+"It's a crime, you know."
+
+"Have you any news of him?"
+
+"Nothing new. It takes time to kill a man like that."
+
+"I hope he is more fortunate than I am! It hasn't the effect that it
+did. It keeps my nerves sodden, but my brain is horribly clear. I no
+longer forget! And death is a long time coming. I am tired always, but
+I don't break."
+
+"You shouldn't come to such places as this. If a man was drunk enough
+you couldn't discourage him."
+
+"Oh, I have been spoken to in places like this and on the street by men
+in every stage of intoxication and by men who were quite sober. But I
+am able to take care of myself. This sort of man--the only sort I meet
+now--likes gay clothes and gay women."
+
+"All the same it's not safe. Do you only go out at night?"
+
+"Yes--I--I sleep in the daytime."
+
+"Look here--I have a plan--I won't tell you what it is now--but
+meanwhile I wish you would promise me that you will not go out
+alone--to hells of this sort--again. I can make an arrangement for a
+while at the office to get off earlier, and I'll take you wherever you
+want to go. Is it a bargain?"
+
+"Very well," she said indifferently. Then she smiled for the first
+time, and her face looked sweet and almost girlish once more. "You are
+very kind. Why do you take so much interest? I am only one more
+derelict. You must have seen many."
+
+"Well, I'm just built that way. I took a shine to you the day in that
+old ark we ambled about in, and then I'm as fond of Masters as ever.
+D'you see? Now, let's get out of this. I'm going to see you home."
+
+"Home!"
+
+"Well, I'm glad the word gives you a shock, anyway. It's where you
+ought to be."
+
+They left the restaurant and although, when they reached the sidewalk,
+she took his arm, he noticed that she did not stagger.
+
+They walked up the hill past the north side of the Plaza. The gambling
+houses of the fifties and early sixties had moved elsewhere, and
+although there were low-browed shops on the east side with flaring gas
+jets before them even at this hour, the other three sides, devoted to
+offices and rooming-houses, were respectable. There were a few drunken
+sailors on the grass, who had wandered too far from Barbary Coast, but
+they were asleep.
+
+"I never am molested here," she said. "I don't think I have ever met
+any one. Sometimes I have stood in the shadow up there and looked down
+Dupont Street. What a sight! Respectable Montgomery Street is never so
+crowded at four in the afternoon. And the women! Sometimes I have
+envied them, for life has never meant anything to them but just that. I
+never saw one of those painted harlots who looked as if she had even
+the remnants of a mind."
+
+"Well, for heaven's sake keep your distance from Dupont Street. If some
+drunken brute caught you lurking in the shadows it might appeal to his
+sense of humor to toss you on his shoulder and run the length of the
+street with you--possibly fling you through one of the windows of those
+awful cottages into some harlot's lap, if she happened to be soliciting
+at the moment. Then she'd scratch your eyes out.... You know a lot
+about taking care of yourself," he fumed.
+
+"Oh, I never go there any more," she said indifferently. "I'm tired of
+it."
+
+"I can understand you leaving your husband and wishing to live
+alone--natural enough!--but what I cannot understand is that you, the
+quintessence of delicate breeding, should walk the streets at night and
+sit in dives. I wonder you can stand being in the room with such women,
+to say nothing of the men."
+
+"It has been my hope to forget all I represented before, and danger
+means nothing to me. Moreover, there are other reasons. I must have
+exercise and air. I do not care to risk meeting any of my old friends.
+I must get away from myself--from solitude--during some part of the
+twenty-four hours. And--well--the die was cast. I was publicly
+disgraced. It doesn't matter what I do now, and when I sit in that sort
+of place I can imagine that he is in similar ones on the other side of
+the continent. I told you that I intended to be no better than he--and
+of course as I am a woman I am worse."
+
+"I suppose you would not be half so charming if you were not so
+completely feminine. But just how many of these night hells have you
+been to?"
+
+"I can't tell. I've been to far worse dives than that. I've even been
+in saloons over on Barbary Coast. But although I've been hurt
+accidentally several times in scuffles, and a bullet nearly hit me
+once, I seem to bear a charmed life. I suppose those do that want to
+die. And although they treat me with no respect they seem to regard me
+as a harmless lunatic, and--and--I take very little when I am out. I
+have just enough pride left not to care to be taken to the calaboose by
+a policeman."
+
+"Good God! How can you even talk of such things? Some day you will
+regret all this horribly."
+
+"I'll never regret anything except that I was born."
+
+"Well, here we are. I'll not take you up to your rooms. Don't give them
+a chance at that sort of scandal whatever you do. It's lucky for you
+that alcohol doesn't send you along a still livelier road to perdition.
+It does most women."
+
+"I see him every moment. Even if I did not, I do not think--well, of
+course if things were different I should not be an outcast of any sort.
+And don't imagine that my refinement suffers in these new contacts. The
+underworld interests me; I had never even tried to imagine it before. I
+am permitted to remain aloof and a spectator. At times it is all as
+unreal as I seem to myself, sitting there. But I never feel so close to
+vice as to complete honesty. I have often had glimpses of blacker sins
+in Society."
+
+"Well, I'm glad it's no worse. To tell you the truth, I've avoided
+looking you up, for I didn't know--well, I didn't want to see you again
+if you were too different. Good-night. I'll meet you at this door
+tonight at twelve sharp."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+There were doctors' offices on the first floor and Madeleine climbed
+wearily the two flights to her room. Her muscles felt as tired as her
+spirit, but she had an odd fancy that her skeleton was of fine flexible
+steel and not only indestructible but tenacious and dominant. It defied
+the worst she could do to organs and soul.
+
+She unlocked her door and lit the gas jet. It was a decent room, large,
+with the bed in an alcove, and little uglier than those grim double
+parlors of her past that she had graced so often. But her own rooms at
+the hotel had been beautiful and luxurious. They had sheltered and
+pampered her body for five years, and her father's house was a stately
+mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after
+the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently
+equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the
+horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had
+rebelled more than once.
+
+But she would never return; although she guessed that the complete
+dissociation from her old life and its tragic reminders had more than a
+little to do with the loathing for drink that had gradually possessed
+her. She had not admitted it to Holt, but it required a supreme effort
+of will to take a glass of hot whiskey and water at night, the taste
+disguised as much as possible by lime juice, and another in the
+daytime. She had no desire to reform! And she longed passionately to
+drown not only her heart but her pride. Now that her system was
+refusing its demoralizing drug she felt that horror of her descent only
+possible to a woman who has inherited and practised all the refinements
+of civilization. She longed to return to those first months of degraded
+oblivion, and could not!
+
+The champagne or brandy she was forced to order in the dives she
+haunted, in order to secure a table, merely gave her tone for the
+moment.
+
+Her nerves were less affected than her spirits. She had hours of such
+black depression that only the faint glimmering star of religion kept
+her from suicide. She had longer seasons for thought on Masters and his
+ruin--and of the hours they had spent together. One night she went out
+to Dolores and sat in the dark little church until dawn. She had
+nothing of the saint in her and felt no impulse to emulate Concha
+Arguello, who had become the first nun in California; moreover, Razanov
+had died an honorable death through no fault of his or his Concha's.
+She and Langdon Masters were lost souls and must expiate their sins in
+the eyes of the world that heaped on their heads its pitiless scorn.
+
+Madeleine threw off her hat and dropped into the armchair, oblivious of
+its bumps. She began to cry quietly with none of her former hysteria.
+Holt was nearer to Masters than any one she knew, and she was grateful
+that he had not seen her in her hours of supreme degradation. If he
+ever saw Masters again he would tell him of her downfall, of
+course--and the reason for it; but at least he could paint no horrible
+concrete picture. For the first time she felt thankful that she had not
+sunk lower; been compelled, indeed, against her will, to retrace her
+steps. She even regretted the hideous episode of the ferry boat,
+although she had welcomed the exposure at the time. Her pride was
+lifting its battered head, and although she felt no remorse, and was
+without hope, and her unclouded consciousness foreshadowed long years
+of spiritual torment and longing with not a diversion to lighten the
+gloom, she possessed herself more nearly that night than since Holt had
+given her what she had believed to be her death blow.
+
+If she could only die. But death was no friend of hers.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+That afternoon Holt called on Dr. Talbot in his office. Half an hour
+later, looking flushed and angry, he strolled frowning down Bush
+street, then turned abruptly and walked in the direction of South Park.
+He did not know Mrs. McLane but he believed she would see him.
+
+He called at midnight--and on many succeeding nights--for Madeleine and
+took her to several of the dives that seemed to afford her amusement.
+He noticed that she drank little, and had a glimmering of the truth.
+Newspaper men have several extra senses. It was also apparent that the
+life she had led had not made her callous. As he insisted upon
+"treating" her she would have none of champagne but ordered ponies of
+brandy.
+
+Now that she had a cavalier she was stared at more than formerly, and
+there was some audible ribald comment which Holt did his best to
+ignore; but as time wore on those bent on hilarity or stupor ceased to
+notice two people uninterestingly sober.
+
+Holt talked of Masters constantly, relating every incident of his
+sojourn in San Francisco he could recall, and of his past that had come
+to his knowledge; expatiating bitterly upon his wasted gifts and
+blasted life. The more Madeleine winced the further he drove in the
+knife.
+
+One night they were sitting on a balcony in Chinatown. In the
+restaurant behind them a banquet was being given by a party of Chinese
+merchants, and Holt had thought the scene might amuse her. The round
+table was covered with dishes no larger than those played with in
+childhood and the portions were as minute. The sleek merchants wore
+gorgeously embroidered costumes, and behind them were women of their
+own race, dressed plainly in the national garb, their stiff oiled hair
+stuck with long pins lobed with glass. They were evidently an
+orchestra, for they sang, or rather chanted, in high monotonous voices,
+as mournful as their gray expressionless faces. In two recesses,
+extended on teakwood couches, were Chinamen presumably of the same
+class as the diners, but wearing their daily blue silk unadorned and
+leisurely smoking the opium pipe. The room was heavily gilded and
+decorated and on the third floor as befitted its rank. Chinamen of
+humbler status dined on the floor below, and the ground restaurant
+accommodated the coolies.
+
+On the little balcony, their chairs wedged between large vases of
+growing plants, Madeleine could watch the function without attracting
+attention; or lean over the railing and look down upon the narrow
+street hung with gay paper lanterns above the open doors of shops that
+flaunted the wares of the Orient under strange gilt signs. There were
+many little balconies high above the street and they were as
+brilliantly lit as for a festival. From several came the sound of
+raucous instrumental music or that same thin chant as of lost souls
+wandering in outer darkness. The street was thronged with Chinamen of
+the lower caste in dark blue cotton smocks, pendent pigtails, and round
+coolie hats.
+
+It was eight o'clock, but it was Holt's "night off" and as he had told
+her that morning he could get a pass for the dinner, and that it was
+time she "changed her bill," she had risen early and met him at her
+door.
+
+It was apparent that she took a lively interest in this bit of Shanghai
+but a step out of the Occident, for her face had lost its heavy
+brooding and she asked him many questions. It was an hour before
+Masters' name was mentioned, and then she said abruptly:
+
+"You tell me much of his life out here and before he came, but you
+hardly ever say anything about the present."
+
+"That sort of life is much of a muchness."
+
+"How do you hear?"
+
+"One of the _Bulletin_ men--Tom Lacey--went East just after Masters
+did. He is on the _Times_. Several of us correspond with him."
+
+"Has--has he ever been--literally, I mean--in the gutter?"
+
+"Probably. He was in a hospital for a time and when he came out several
+of his friends tried to buck him up. But it was no use. He did work on
+one of the newspapers--the _Tribune_, I believe--about half sober until
+he had paid his hospital bill with something to spare. Then he went to
+work in the same old steady painstaking way to drink himself to death."
+
+"Wh--why did he go to the hospital? Was he very ill?"
+
+"Busted the crust of a policeman and got his own busted at the same
+time."
+
+"How is it you spared me this before?"
+
+He pretended not to see her tears, or her working hands.
+
+"Didn't want to give you too heavy doses at once, but you are so much
+stronger that I chanced it. He's been in more than one spectacular
+affair. One night, in front of the City Prison, he tossed the driver
+off a van as if the man had been a dead leaf, and before the guard had
+time to jump to his seat he was on the box and had lashed the horses.
+He drove like mad all over New York for hours, the prisoners inside
+yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs. They thought it was a
+new and devilishly ingenious mode of punishment. When the horses
+dropped he left the van where it stood and went home. There was a
+frightful row over the affair. Masters was arrested, of course, but
+bailed out. He has friends still and some of them are influential. The
+trial was postponed a few times and then dropped. His rows are too
+numerous to mention. When he was here and sober he betrayed anger only
+in his eyes, which looked like steel blades run through fire, and with
+the most caustic tongue ever put in a man's head. But when he's in
+certain stages of insobriety his fighting instincts appear to take
+their own sweet way. At other times, Lacey writes, he is as interesting
+as ever and men sit round eagerly and listen to him talk. At others he
+simply disappears. Did I tell you he had come into a little money--just
+recently?"
+
+"No, you did not. Why doesn't he start a newspaper?"
+
+"He's probably forgotten he ever wanted one--no, I don't fancy he ever
+forgets anything. Only death will destroy that brain no matter how he
+may obfuscate it. And I guess there are times when he can't, poor
+devil. But he couldn't start a newspaper on what he's got. It's just
+enough to buy him all he wants without the necessity for work."
+
+"How did he get it?"
+
+"His elder brother--only remaining member of the immediate family--died
+and left him the old plantation in Virgina--what there is left of it;
+and a small income from two or three old houses in Richmond. Masters
+told me once that when the war left them high and dry he agreed to
+waive his share in the estate provided his brother would take care of
+his mother and the old place. The estate comes to him now, but in
+trust. At his death, without legal heir, it goes to a cousin."
+
+"Oh, take me home, please. I can't stand those wailing women any
+longer."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+A month later there was a tap on Madeleine's door. She rose earlier
+these days and opened it at once, assuming that it was a message from
+Holt. But Mr. McLane stood there.
+
+"How are you, Madeleine? May I come in?" He shook her half-extended
+hand as if he were paying her an afternoon call at the Occidental
+Hotel, and sat down on the horsehair sofa with a genial smile; placing
+his high silk hat and gold-headed cane beside him.
+
+"Glad to see you looking so well. I've wanted to call for a long time,
+but as you dropped us all like so many hot potatoes, I hesitated, and
+was delighted today when Howard gave me an excuse."
+
+"Howard?"
+
+"Yes, he wants you to go back to him."
+
+"That I'll never do."
+
+"Don't be hasty. He is willing to forget everything--he asked me to
+make you understand that he would never mention the subject. He will
+also put your share of your father's estate unreservedly in your hands
+as soon as the usual legal delays are over. You knew that your father
+was dead, did you not? And your mother also?"
+
+"Oh yes, I knew. It didn't seem to make any difference. I knew I never
+should see them again anyhow."
+
+"Howard was appointed trustee of your inheritance, but as I said, he
+does not mean to take advantage of the fact. I am informed, by the way,
+that your brother never told your parents that you had left Howard. He
+knew nothing beyond the fact, of course."
+
+"Well, I am glad of that."
+
+She had no intention of shedding any tears before Mr. McLane. Let him
+think her callous if he must.
+
+"About Howard?"
+
+"I'll never go back to him. I never want to see him again."
+
+"Not if he would take you to Europe to live? There is an opening for an
+American doctor in Paris."
+
+"I never want to see him again. I know he is a good man but I hate him.
+And if I did go back it would be worse. You may tell him that."
+
+"Is your decision irrevocable?"
+
+"Yes, it is."
+
+"Then I must tell you that if there is no prospect of your return he
+will divorce you."
+
+"Divorced--I divorced?" Her eyes expanded with horrified astonishment.
+But only for a moment. She threw back her head and laughed. "That was
+funny, wasn't it? Well, let him do as he thinks best. And he may be
+happy once more if I am out of his life altogether. He won't have much
+trouble getting a divorce!"
+
+"He will obtain it on the ground of desertion."
+
+"Oh! Well, he was always a very good man. Poor Howard! I hope he'll
+marry again and be happy."
+
+"Better think it over. I--by the way--I'm not sure the women wouldn't
+come round in time; particularly if you lived abroad for a few years."
+
+She curled her lip. "And I should have my precious position in Society
+again! How much do you suppose that means to me? Have the fatted calf
+killed and coals of fire poured on my humbled head! Do you think I have
+no pride?"
+
+"You appear to have regained it. I wish you could regain the rest and
+be the radiant creature you were when you came to us. God! What a
+lovely stunning creature you were! It hurts me like the devil, I can
+tell you. And it's hurt the women too. They were fond of you. Do you
+know that Sally is dead?"
+
+"Yes. She had everything to live for and she died. Life seems to amuse
+herself with us."
+
+"She's a damned old hag." He rose and took up his hat and cane. "Well,
+I'll wait a week, and then if you don't relent the proceedings will
+begin. I shan't get the divorce. Not my line. But he asked me to talk
+to you and I was glad to come. Good-by."
+
+She smiled as she shook hands with him. As he opened the door he turned
+to her again.
+
+"That young Holt is a good fellow and has a head on his shoulders.
+Better be guided by him if he offers you any advice."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+Almost insensibly and without comment Madeleine fell into the habit of
+sleeping at night and going abroad with Holt in the daytime. Nor did he
+take her to any more dives. They went across the Bay, either to Oakland
+or Sausalito, and took long walks, dining at some inn where they were
+sure to meet no one they knew. She had asked him to buy her books, as
+she did not care to venture either into the bookstores or the
+Mercantile Library. She now had a part of her new income to spend as
+she chose, and moved into more comfortable rooms, although far from the
+fashionable quarter. She was restless and often very nervous but Holt
+knew that she drank no longer. There had been another revolution of the
+wheel: she would have a large income, freedom impended, the future was
+hers to dispose of at will. Her health was excellent; she had regained
+her old proud bearing.
+
+"What are you going to do with it?" he asked her abruptly one evening.
+They were sitting in the arbor of a restaurant on the water front at
+Sausalito and had just finished dinner. The steep promontory rose
+behind them a wild forest of oak and pine, madrona and chaparral.
+Across the sparkling dark green water San Francisco looked a pale blue
+in the twilight and there was a banner of soft pink above her. Lights
+were appearing on the military islands, the ferry boats, and yachts.
+"You will be free in about a month now. Have you made any plans? You
+will not stay here, of course."
+
+"Stay here! I shall leave the day the decree is granted, and I'll never
+see California again as long as I live."
+
+"But where shall you go?"
+
+"Oh--it would be interesting to live in Europe."
+
+"Whether you have admitted it to yourself or not you have not the
+remotest idea of going to Europe."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"You are going to Langdon Masters. Nothing in the world could keep you
+away from him--or should."
+
+"I wish women smoked. You look so placid. And I am glad you smoke
+cigarettes."
+
+"Why not try one?"
+
+"Oh, no!" She looked scandalized. "I never did that--before. The other
+was for a purpose, not because I liked it."
+
+"I am used to your line of ratiocination. But you haven't answered my
+question."
+
+"Did you ask one?"
+
+"In the form of an assertion, yes."
+
+"You know--the Church forbids marriage after divorce."
+
+"Look here, Madeleine!" Holt brought his fist down on the table with
+such violence that she half started to her feet. "Do you mean to tell
+me you are going to let any more damn foolishness wreck your life a
+second time?"
+
+"You must not speak of the Church in that way."
+
+"Let that pass. I am not going to argue with you. You've argued it all
+out with yourself unless I'm much mistaken. Are you going to let
+Masters kill himself when you can save him? Are you going to condemn
+yourself to a miserably solitary, wandering, aimless life, in which you
+are no good to yourself, your Church, or any one on earth--and with a
+crime on your soul?"
+
+I--I--haven't admitted to myself what I shall do. It has seemed to me
+that when I am free I shall simply go--"
+
+"And straight to Masters. As well for a needle to try to run away from
+a magnet."
+
+"Oh, I wonder! I wonder!" But she did not look distressed. Her face was
+transfigured as if she saw a vision. But it fell in a moment, that
+inner glowing lamp extinguished.
+
+"He may no longer want me. He may have forgotten me. Or if he remembers
+it must only be to remind himself that I have ruined his life. He may
+hate me."
+
+"That is likely! If he hated you he'd have pulled up long ago. He knows
+he still has it in him to make a name for himself, whether he owns a
+newspaper or not. If he's gone on making a fool of himself it's because
+his longing for you is insupportable; he can forget you in no other
+way."
+
+"Can men really love like that?" The inner lamp glowed again.
+
+"A few. Not many, perhaps. Langdon's one of them. Case of a rare whole
+being chopped in two by fate and both halves bleeding to death without
+the other. There are a few immortal love affairs in the world's
+history, and that's just what makes 'em immortal."
+
+She did not answer, but sat staring at the rosy peaceful light above
+the fiery city that had burnt out so many lives. Then her face changed
+suddenly. It was set and determined, almost hard. He thought she looked
+like a beautiful Medusa.
+
+"Yes," she said. "I am going to him. I suppose I have known it all
+along. At all events I know it now."
+
+"And what is your plan?"
+
+"I have had no time to make one yet."
+
+"Will you listen to mine?"
+
+"Do not I always listen to you with the greatest respect?" She was the
+charming woman again. "Mr. McLane told me that I was to follow your
+advice--I have an idea you have engineered this whole affair!--But if
+he hadn't--well, I have every reason to be humbly grateful to you. If
+this terrible tangle ever unravels I shall owe it to you."
+
+"Then listen to me now. What I said--that his actions prove that he
+cares for you as much as ever--is true. But--you might come upon him in
+a condition where he would not recognize you, or was morose from too
+much drink or too little; and for the moment he would hate you, either
+because you reminded him too forcibly of what he had been and was, or
+because it degraded him further to be seen by you in such a state. He
+could make himself excessively disagreeable sober. Drunk, panic
+stricken, reckless, I should think he might achieve a masterpiece in
+that line that would make you feel like ten cents.... This is my plan.
+I'll go on at once and prepare him. Get him down to his home in
+Virginia on one pretence or another, sober him up by degrees, and then
+tell him all you have been through for his sake, and that as soon as
+you are free you will come to him. He'll be a little more like himself
+by that time and can stand having you look at him.... It'll be no easy
+task at first; and I'll have to taper him off to prevent any blow to
+his heart. There may be relapses, and the whole thing to do over; but I
+shall use the talisman of your name as soon as he is in a condition to
+understand, and shall succeed in the end. Once let the idea take hold
+of him that he can have you at last and it is only a question of time."
+
+She made no reply for a moment. She sat with her eyes on his as he
+spoke. At first they had opened widely, melted and flashed. But they
+narrowed slowly. As he finished she turned her profile toward him and
+he had never seen a cameo look harder.
+
+"That would be an easy way out," she said. "But it does not appeal to
+me. Nothing easy appeals to me these days. I'll fight my own battles
+and overcome my own obstacles. Besides, he's mine. He shall owe nothing
+to any one but to me. I'll find him and cure him myself."
+
+"But you'll have a hard time finding him. He disappears for weeks at a
+time. Even Tom Lacey might not be able to help you."
+
+"I'll find him."
+
+"You may have to haunt the most abominable places."
+
+"You seem to forget that I have haunted a good many abominable places.
+And if they are good enough for him they are good enough for me."
+
+"New York has the worst set of roughs in the world. Our hoodlums are
+lambs beside them."
+
+"I have no fear of anything but not finding him in time."
+
+"But that is not the worst. You should not see him in that state. You
+might find him literally in the gutter. He might be a sight you never
+could forget. No matter what you made of him you never could obliterate
+such a hideous memory. And he might say things to you that your
+outraged pride would never forgive."
+
+"I can forget anything I choose. Nor could anything he said, nor
+anything he may have become, horrify me. Don't you think I have
+pictured all that? I think of him every moment and I am not a coward. I
+have imagined things that may be worse than the reality."
+
+"Hardly. But there is another danger. You might kidnap him and get him
+sobered up, only to lose him again. He might be so overcome with shame
+that he would cut loose and hide where you would never find him.
+Remember, his pride was as great as yours."
+
+"I'd track him to the ends of the earth. He's mine and I'll have him."
+
+Holt stared at her for a moment in perplexity, then laughed. "You are a
+liberal education, Madeleine. Just as I think I really know you at last
+you break out in a new place. Masters will have an interesting life.
+You must be a sort of continued-in-our-next story for any one who has
+the right to love and live with you. But for any one else who has loved
+you it must be death and damnation."
+
+She stole a glance at him, wondering if he loved her. If he did he had
+never made a sign, and at the moment he seemed to be appraising her
+with his sharp cool blue eyes.
+
+"I was thinking of the doctor," he said calmly. "Although, of course,
+there must have been a good many in a more or less idiotic state over
+the reigning toast."
+
+"The reigning toast!... Well, I'll never be that again. But it won't
+matter if--when--You are to promise me you will not write to him!"
+
+"Oh, yes, I promise." Holt had been rapidly formulating his own plans.
+"But you'll let me give you a letter to Lacey? It's a wild goose chase
+but a little advice might help."
+
+"I should have asked you for a line to Mr. Lacey. I don't wish to waste
+time if I can help it."
+
+He rose. "Well, there's a pile of blank paper and a soft pencil waiting
+for me. I've an editorial to write on the low-lived politics of San
+Francisco, and another on the increasing number of murders in our fair
+city. Look at the fog sailing in through the Golden Gate, pushing
+itself along like the prow of a ship. You'll never see anything as
+beautiful as California again. But I suppose that worries you a lot."
+
+She smiled, a little mysterious smile, but she did not reply, and they
+walked down to the ferry slip in silence.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+Madeline went directly from the train to Printing House Square and had
+a long talk with "Tom" Lacey. He had been advised of her coming and her
+quest and had already made a search for Masters, but without result.
+This he had no intention of imparting, however, but told her a
+carefully prepared story.
+
+Masters had been writing regularly for some time and it was generally
+believed among his friends that he had pulled up in a measure, but
+where he was hiding himself no one knew. Cheques and suggestions were
+sent to the Post Office, but he had no box, nor did he call for his
+mail in person.
+
+He appeared no more at the restaurants in Nassau or Fulton Streets, or
+in Park Row, and it would be idle to look for him up town. It was
+apparent that he wished to avoid his friends, and to do this
+effectually he had probably hidden himself in one of the rabbit warrens
+of Nassau Street, where the King of England or the Czar of all the
+Russias might hide for a lifetime and never be found. But Masters could
+be "located," no doubt of that. "It only needs patience and alertness,"
+said Lacey, looking straight into Madeleine's vigilant eyes. "I have a
+friend on the police force down there who will spot him before long and
+send for me hot-foot."
+
+It was Lacey's intention to sublet a small office in one of the
+swarming buildings, put a cot in it and a cooking stove, and transfer
+Masters to it as soon as he was found. He knew what some of Masters'
+haunts were and had no intention that this delicate proud woman should
+see him in any of them.
+
+When she told him that she should never leave Masters again after his
+whereabouts had been discovered, he warned her not to take rooms in a
+hotel. There would be unpleasant espionage, possibly newspaper scandal.
+There was nothing for it but Bleecker Street. It was outwardly quiet,
+the rooms were large and comfortable in many of those once-fashionable
+houses, and it was the one street in New York where no questions were
+asked and no curiosity felt. It was no place for her, of course--but
+under the circumstances--if she persisted in her idea of keeping
+Masters with her until his complete recovery--
+
+"My neighbors will not worry me," she said, smiling for the first time.
+"It seems to be just the place. I already feel bewildered in this great
+rushing noisy city. I have lived in a small city for so long that I had
+almost forgotten there were great ones; and I should not know what to
+do without your advice. I am very grateful."
+
+"Glad to do anything I can. When Holt wrote me you were coming and
+there was a chance to pull Masters out of the--put him on his legs
+again, I went right up in the air. You may count on me. Always glad to
+do anything I can for a lady, too. I used to see you at the theatre and
+driving, Mrs. Talbot, and wished I were one of the bloods. Seems like a
+fairy tale to be able to help you now."
+
+He had red hair and slate-colored eyes, a snub nose and many freckles,
+but she thought him quite beautiful; he was her only friend in this
+terrifying city, and there was no doubt she could count on him.
+
+"How shall I go about finding a lodging in Bleecker Street?" she asked.
+"I stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel when I visited New York with my
+mother, and as I know nothing of the other hotels, I left my luggage at
+the depot until I should have seen you. I didn't dare go where I might
+run into any one. Californians are beginning to visit New York.
+Moreover, my brother and his family live here and I particularly wish
+to avoid them."
+
+"A theatrical troupe is just leaving town--so there should be several
+empty rooms. A good many of them hang out there when in New York. There
+is one thing in your favor. Your--pardon me--beauty won't be so
+conspicuous in Bleecker Street as it would be in hotels. It isn't only
+actresses that lodge there, but--well--those ladies so richly dowered
+by nature they command the longest pocketbooks, and the owners thereof
+sometimes have a pew in Trinity Church and a seat on the Stock
+Exchange. The great world averts its eyes from Bleecker Street, and you
+will be as safe in there as the most respectable sinner. Nor will you
+be annoyed by rowdyism in the street, although you may hear echoes of
+high old times going on in some of the houses patronized by artists and
+students--it's a sort of Latin Quarter, too. Little of everything, in
+fact. Now, come along. We'll take a hack, get your luggage, and fix you
+up."
+
+"And you'll vow--"
+
+"To send for you the moment Masters is located? Just rely on Tom Lacey."
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+Madeline took two floors of a large brown stone house in Bleecker
+Street, and the accommodating landlady found a colored wench to keep
+her rooms in order and cook her meals. A room at the back and facing
+the south was fitted up for Masters. It was a masculine-looking room
+with its solid mahogany furniture, and as his books were stored in the
+cellar of the Times Building she had shelves built to the ceiling on
+the west wall. Lacey obtained an order for the books without
+difficulty, and Madeleine disposed of several of her long evenings
+filling the shelves. When she had finished, one side of the large room
+at least looked exactly like his parlor in the Occidental Hotel. She
+also hung the windows with green curtains and draped the mantelpiece
+with the same material. Green had been his favorite color.
+
+She had rebelled at giving up her original purpose of making a personal
+search for Masters, but one look at New York had convinced her that if
+Lacey would not help her she must employ a detective. Nevertheless, she
+went every mid-day to one or other of the restaurants below Chambers
+Street; and, although nothing had ever terrified her so much, she
+ventured into Nassau Street at least once a day and struggled through
+it, peering into every face.
+
+Nassau Street was only ten blocks long and very narrow, but it would
+seem as if, during the hours of business, a cyclone gathered all the
+men in New York and hurled them in compact masses down its length until
+they were met by another cyclone that drove them back again. They
+filled the street as well as the narrow sidewalks, they poured out of
+the doorways as if impelled from behind, and Madeleine wondered they
+did not jump from the windows. No one sauntered, all rushed along with
+tense faces; there were many collisions and no one paused to apologize,
+nor did any one seem to expect it. There were hundreds, possibly
+thousands, of offices in those buildings high for their day, and every
+profession, every business, every known or unique occupation, was
+represented. There were banks and newspaper buildings, hotels,
+restaurants, auction rooms, the Treasury and the old Dutch Church that
+had been turned into the General Post Office. There were shops
+containing everything likely to appeal to men, although one wondered
+when they found time for anything so frivolous as shopping; second-hand
+book stores, and street hawkers without number.
+
+In addition to the thousands of men who seemed to be hurrying to and
+from some business of vital import, there were the hundred thousand or
+more who surged through that narrow thoroughfare every day for their
+mail. The old church looked like a besieged fortress and Madeleine
+marvelled that it did not collapse. She was thankful that she was never
+obliged to enter it. Holt and her lawyer had been instructed to send
+their letters to Lacey's care, and Lacey when obliged to communicate
+with her, either called or sent his note by a messenger.
+
+Madeleine was so hustled, stepped on, whirled about, that she finally
+made friends with an old man who kept one of the secondhand shops, and,
+comparatively safe, used the doorway as her watch tower.
+
+One day she thought she saw Masters and darted out into the street.
+There she fought her way in the wake of a tall stooping man with black
+hair as mercilessly as if she were some frantic woman who had risked
+her all on the Stock Exchange. He entered the door of one of the tall
+buildings, and when she reached it she heard the sound of footsteps
+rapidly mounting.
+
+She followed as rapidly. The footsteps ceased. When she arrived at the
+fourth floor she knocked on every door in turn. It was evidently a
+building that housed men of the dingiest social status. Every man who
+answered her peremptory summons looked like a derelict. These were mere
+semblances of offices, with unmade beds, sometimes on the floor. In
+some were dreary looking women, partners, no doubt, of these forlorn
+men, whose like she sometimes saw down in the street. But her
+breathless search was fruitless. She knew that one of the men who
+grudgingly opened his door--looking as if he expected the police--was
+the man she had followed, and she was grateful that it was not Masters.
+
+She went slowly down the rickety staircase feeling as if she should
+sink at every step. It had been her first ray of hope in two weeks and
+she felt faint and sick under the reaction.
+
+She found a coupe in Broadway and was driven to her lodgings. The maid
+was waiting for her in the doorway, evidently perturbed.
+
+"There's a strange gentleman upstairs in the parlor, ma'am," she said.
+"Not Mr. Lacey. I didn't want to let him in but he would. He said--"
+
+She thrust the girl aside and ran up the steps. But when she burst into
+the parlor the man waiting for her was Ralph Holt.
+
+She dropped into a chair and began to cry hysterically. He had dealt
+with her in that state before, and Amanda had lived in Bleecker Street
+for many years. She was growing bored with the excessive respectability
+of her place, and was delighted to find that her mistress was human.
+Cold water, sal volatile, and hartshorn soon restored Madeleine's
+composure. She handed her hat to the woman and was alone with Holt.
+
+"I thought--perhaps you understand--"
+
+"I understand, all right. I hope you are not angry with me for
+following you."
+
+"I am only too glad to see you. I never knew a city could be so big and
+heartless. I have felt like a leaf tossed about in a perpetual cold
+wind. When did you arrive?"
+
+"The day after you did."
+
+"What? And you--you--have been looking for him?"
+
+"That is what I came for--partly. Yes, Lacey and I have combed the
+town."
+
+Madeleine sprang to her feet. "You've found him! I know it! Why don't
+you say so?"
+
+"Well, we know where he is. But it's no place for you."
+
+"Take me at once. I don't care what it is."
+
+"But I do. So does Lacey. His plan was to shanghai him and sober him
+up. But--well--it is your right to say whether he shall do that or not.
+You wanted to find him yourself. But Five Points is no place for you,
+and I want your permission to carry out Lacey's program."
+
+"What is Five Points?"
+
+"The worst sink in New York. Just imagine the Barbary Coast of San
+Francisco multiplied by two thousand. There is said to be nothing worse
+in London or Paris."
+
+"If you and Mr. Lacey do not take me there I shall go alone."
+
+"Be reasonable."
+
+"My reason works quite as clearly as if my heart were chloroformed.
+Langdon will know, when I track him to a place like that, what he means
+to me."
+
+"He probably will be in no condition to recognize you."
+
+"I'll make him recognize me. Or if I cannot you may use your force
+then, but he shall know later that I went there for him. Have you seen
+him?"
+
+Holt moved uneasily and looked away. "Yes, I have seen him."
+
+"You need not be so distressed. I shall not care what he looks like. I
+shall see _him_ inside. Did you speak to him?"
+
+"He either did not recognize me or pretended not to."
+
+"Well, we go now."
+
+"Won't you think it over?"
+
+"I prefer your escort to that of a policeman. I shall not be so foolish
+as to go alone."
+
+"Then we'll come for you at about eleven tonight. It would be useless
+to go look for him now. People who lead that sort of life sleep in the
+day time. I have not the faintest idea where he lives."
+
+"Very well, I shall have to wait, I suppose."
+
+Holt rose. "Lacey and I will come for you, and we'll bring with us two
+of the biggest detectives we can find. It's no joke taking a woman--a
+woman like you--Good God!--into a sewer like that. Even Lacey and I got
+into trouble twice, but we could take care of ourselves. Better dine
+with me at Delmonico's and forget things for a while."
+
+"I could not eat, nor sit still. Nor do I wish to run the risk of
+meeting my brother; or any one else I know. Come for me promptly at
+eleven or you will not find me here."
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Langdon Masters awoke from a sleep that had lasted all day and glowered
+out upon the room he occupied in Baxter Street. It was as wretched as
+all tenements in the Five Points, but it had the distinguishing mark of
+neatness. Drunk as he might be, the drab who lived with him knew that
+he would detect dirt and disorder, and that her slender hold on his
+tolerance would be forfeited at once. There were too many of her sort
+in the Five Points eager for the position of mistress to this man who
+treated them as a sultan might treat the meanest of his concubines,
+rarely throwing them a word, and alternately indulgent and brutal. They
+regarded him with awe, even forgetting to drink when, in certain stages
+of his cups, he entertained by the hour in one or other of the
+groggeries a circle of the most abandoned characters in New
+York--thieves, cracksmen, murderers actual or potential,
+"shoulder-hitters," sailors who came ashore to drink the fieriest rum
+they could find, prostitutes, dead-beats, degenerates, derelicts--with
+a flow of talk that was like the flashing of jewels in the gutter. He
+related the most stupendous adventures that had ever befallen a mortal.
+If any one of his audience had heard of Munchausen he would have
+dismissed him as a poor imitation of this man who would seem to have
+dropped down into their filthy and lawless quarter from a sphere where
+things happened unknown to men on this planet. They dimly recognized
+that he was a fallen gentleman, for at long intervals good churchmen
+from the foreign territory of Broadway or Fifth Avenue came to
+remonstrate and plead. They never came a second time and they usually
+spent the following week in bed.
+
+But Masters was democratic enough in manner; it was evident that he
+regarded himself as no better than the worst, and nothing appeared to
+be further from his mind than reform of them or himself. He had now
+been with them for six months and came and went as he pleased. In the
+beginning his indestructible air of superiority had subtly irritated
+them in spite of his immediate acceptance of their standards, and there
+had been two attempts to trounce him. But he was apparently made of
+steel rope, he knew every trick of their none too subtle "game," and he
+had knocked out his assailants and won the final respect of Five Points.
+
+And if he was finical about his room he took care to be no neater in
+his dress than his associates. Although he had his hair cut and his
+face shaved he wore old and rough clothes and a gray flannel shirt.
+
+Masters, after his drab had given him a cup of strong coffee and a
+rasher, followed by a glass of rum, lost the horrid sensations incident
+upon the waking moment and looked forward to the night with a sardonic
+but not discontented grin. He knew that he had reached the lowest
+depths, and if his tough frame refused to succumb to the vilest liquor
+he could pour into it, he would probably be killed in some general
+shooting fray, or by one of the women he infatuated and cast aside when
+another took his drunken but ever ironic fancy. Only a week since the
+cyprian at present engaged in washing his dishes had been nearly
+demolished by the damsel she had superseded. She still wore a livid
+mark on her cheek and a plaster on her head whence a handful of hair
+had been removed by the roots. He had stood aloof during the fracas in
+the dirty garish dance house under the sidewalk, laughing consumedly;
+and had awakened the next night to find the victor mending her tattered
+finery. She made him an excellent cup of coffee, and he had told her
+curtly that she could stay.
+
+If, in his comparatively sober moments, the memory of Madeleine
+intruded, he cast it out with a curse. Not because he blamed her for
+his downfall; he blamed no one but himself; but because any
+recollection of the past, all it had been and promised, was
+unendurable. Whether he had been strong or weak in electing to go
+straight to perdition when Life had scourged him, he neither knew nor
+cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the
+present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more
+agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were in
+hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his
+brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two
+attempts to recover himself, but the writing of unsigned editorials on
+subjects that interested him not at all was like wandering in a thirsty
+desert without an oasis in sight--after the champagne of his life in
+San Francisco with a future as glittering as its skies at night and the
+daily companionship of a woman whom he had believed the fates must give
+him wholly in time.
+
+He finally renounced self-respect as a game not worth the candle.
+Moreover, the clarity of mind necessary to sustained work embraced ever
+the image of Madeleine; what he had lost and what he had never
+possessed. And, again, he tormented himself with imaginings of her own
+suffering and despair; alternated with visions of Madeleine enthroned,
+secure, impeccable, admired, envied--and with other men in love with
+her! Some depth of insight convinced him that she loved him immortally,
+but he knew her need for mental companionship, and the thought that she
+might find it, however briefly and barrenly, with another man, sent him
+plunging once more.
+
+His friends and admirers on the newspaper staffs had been loyal, but
+not only was he irritated by their manifest attempts to reclaim him,
+but he grew to hate them as so many accusing reminders of the great
+gifts he was striving to blast out by the roots; and, finding it
+difficult to avoid them, he had, as soon as he was put in possession of
+his small income, deliberately transferred himself to the Five Points,
+where they would hardly be likely to trace him, certainly not to seek
+his society.
+
+And, on the whole, this experience in a degraded and perilous quarter,
+famous the world over as a degree or two worse than any pest-hole of
+its kind, was the most enjoyable of his prolonged debauch. It was only
+a few yards from Broadway, but he had never set foot in that
+magnificent thoroughfare of brown stone and white marble, aristocratic
+business partner of Fifth Avenue, since he entered a precinct so
+different from New York, as his former world knew it, that he might
+have been on a convict island in the South Seas.
+
+The past never obtruded itself here. He was surrounded by danger and
+degradation, ugliness unmitigated, and a complete indifference to
+anything in the world but vice, crime, liquor and the primitive
+appetites. Even the children in the swarming squalid streets looked
+like little old men and women; they fought in the gutters for scraps of
+refuse, or stood staring sullenly before them, the cry in their
+emaciated bodies dulled with the poisons of malnutrition; or making
+quick passes at the pocket of a thief. The girls had never been young,
+never worn anything but rags or mean finery, the boys were in training
+for a career of crime, the sodden women seemed to have no natural
+affection for the young they bore as lust prompted. Men beat their
+wives or strumpets with no interference from the police. The Sixth Ward
+was the worst on Manhattan, and the police had enough to do without
+wasting their time in this congested mass of the city's putrid dregs;
+who would be conferring a favor on the great and splendid and envied
+City of New York if they exterminated one another in a grand final orgy
+of blood and hate.
+
+The irony in Masters' mind might sleep when that proud and contemptuous
+organ was sodden, but it was deathless. When he thought at all it was
+to congratulate himself with a laugh that he had found the proper
+setting for the final exit of a man whom Life had equipped to conquer,
+and Fate, in her most ironic mood, had challenged to battle; with the
+sting of death in victory if he won. He had beaten her at her own game.
+He had always aimed at consummation, the masterpiece; and here, in his
+final degradation, he had accomplished it.
+
+This morning he laughed aloud, and the woman--or girl?--her body was
+young but her scarred face was almost aged--wondered if he were going
+mad at last. There was little time lost in the Five Points upon
+discussion of personal peculiarities, but all took for granted that
+this man was half mad and would be wholly so before long.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" she asked timidly, her eye on the door but
+not daring to bolt.
+
+"Oh, no, nothing! Nothing in all this broad and perfect world. Life is
+a sweet-scented garden where all the good are happy and all the bad
+receive their just and immediate deserts. You are the complete epitome
+of life, yourself, and I gaze upon you with a satisfaction as complete.
+I wouldn't change you for the most silken and secluded beauty in
+Bleecker Street, and you may stay here for ever. The more hideous you
+become the more pleased I shall be. And you needn't be afraid I have
+gone mad. I am damnably sane. And still more damnably sober. Go out and
+buy me a bottle of Lethe, and be quick about it. This is nearly
+finished."
+
+"Do you mean rum?" She was reassured, somewhat, but he had a fashion of
+making what passed for her brain feel as if it had been churned.
+
+"Yes, I mean rum, damn you. Clear out."
+
+He opened an old wallet and threw a handful of bills on the floor. "Go
+round into Broadway and buy yourself a gown of white satin and a wreath
+of lilies for your hair. You would be a picture to make the angels
+weep, while I myself wept from pure joy. Get out."
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+Madeleine had forced herself to eat a light dinner, and a few minutes
+before eleven she drank a cup of strong coffee; but when she entered
+upon the sights and sounds and stenches of Worth Street she nearly
+fainted.
+
+The night was hot. The narrow crooked streets of the Five Points were
+lit with gas that shone dimly through the grimy panes of the lamp posts
+or through the open doors of groggeries and fetid shops. The gutter was
+a sewer. Probably not one of those dehumanized creatures ever bathed.
+Some of the children were naked and all looked as if they had been
+dipped in the gutters and tossed out to dry. The streets swarmed with
+them; and with men and women between the ages of sixteen and forty. One
+rarely lived longer than that in the Five Points. Some were shrieking
+and fighting, others were horribly quiet. Men and women lay drunk in
+the streets or hunched against the dripping walls, their mouths with
+black teeth or no teeth hanging loosely, their faces purple or pallid.
+Screams came from one of the tenements, but neither of the two
+detectives escorting the party turned his head.
+
+Madeleine had imagined nothing like this. Her only acquaintance with
+vice had been in the dens and dives of San Francisco, and she had
+pictured something of the same sort intensified. But there was hardly a
+point of resemblance. San Francisco has always had a genius for making
+vice picturesque. The outcasts of the rest of the world do their worst
+and let it go at that. Moreover, in San Francisco she had never seen
+poverty. There was work for all, there were no beggars, no hungry
+tattered children, no congested districts. Vice might be an agreeable
+resource but it was forced on no one; and always the atmosphere of its
+indulgence was gay. She had witnessed scenes of riotous drunkenness,
+but there was something debonair about even those bent upon
+extermination, either of an antagonist or the chandeliers and
+glass-ware, and she had never seen men sodden save on the water front.
+Even then they were often grinning.
+
+But this looked like plain Hell to Madeleine, or worse. The Hell of the
+Bible and Dante had a lively accompaniment of writhing flames and was
+presumably clean. This might be an underground race condemned to a
+sordid filthy and living death for unimaginable crimes of a previous
+existence. Even the children looked as if they had come back to Earth
+with the sins of threescore and ten stamped upon their weary wicked
+faces. Madeleine's strong soul faltered, and she grasped Holt's arm.
+
+"Well, you see for yourself," he said unsympathetically. "Better go
+back and let me bring him to you. One of our men can easily knock him
+out--"
+
+"I'm here and I shall go on. I'll stay all night if necessary."
+
+Lacey looked at her with open adoration; he had fallen truculently in
+love with her. If Masters no longer loved her he felt quite equal to
+killing him, although with no dreams for himself. He hoped that if
+Masters were too far gone for redemption she would recognize the fact
+at once, forget him, and find happiness somewhere. He was glad on the
+whole that she had come to Five Points.
+
+"What's the program?" asked one of the detectives, kicking a sprawling
+form out of the way. "Do you know where he hangs out?"
+
+"No," said Lacey. "He seems to go where fancy leads. We'll have to go
+from one groggery to another, and then try the dance houses, unless
+they pass the word in time. The police are supposed to have closed
+them, you know."
+
+"Yes, they have!" The man's hearty Irish laugh startled these wretched
+creatures, unused to laughter, and they forsook their apathy or
+belligerence for a moment to stare. "They simply moved to the back, or
+to the cellar. They know we believe in lettin' 'em go to the devil
+their own way. Might as well turn in here."
+
+They entered one of the groggeries. It was a large room. The ceiling
+was low. The walls were foul with the accumulations of many years, it
+was long since the tables had been washed. The bar, dripping and slimy,
+looked as if about to fall to pieces, and the drinks were served in
+cracked mugs. The bar-tender was evidently an ex-prize-fighter, but the
+loose skin, empty of muscle, hung from his bare arms in folds. The air
+was dense with vile tobacco smoke, adding to the choice assortment of
+stenches imported from without and conferred by Time within. Men and
+women, boys and girls, sat at the tables drinking, or lay on the floor.
+There they would remain until their drunken stupor wore off, when they
+would stagger home to begin a new day. A cracked fiddle was playing.
+The younger people and some of the older were singing in various keys.
+Many were drinking solemnly as if drinking were a ritual. Others were
+grinning with evident enjoyment and a few were hilarious.
+
+The party attracted little general attention. Investigating travellers,
+escorted by detectives, had visited the Five Points more than once,
+curious to see in what way it justified its reputation for supremacy
+over the East End of London and the Montmartre of Paris; and although
+pockets usually were picked, no violence was offered if the detectives
+maintained a bland air of detachment. They did not even resent the
+cologne-drenched handkerchiefs the visitors invariably held to their
+noses. As evil odors meant nothing to them, they probably mistook the
+gesture for modesty.
+
+Madeleine preferred her smelling salts, and at Holt's suggestion had
+wrapped her handkerchief about the gold and crystal bottle. But she
+forgot the horrible atmosphere as she peered into the face of every man
+who might be Masters. She wore a plain black dress and a small black
+hat, but her beauty was difficult to obscure. Her cheeks were white and
+her brown eyes had lost their sparkle long since, but men not too drunk
+to notice a lovely woman or her manifest close scrutiny, not only
+leered up into her face but would have jerked her down beside them had
+it not been for their jealous partners and the presence of the
+detectives. There was a rumor abroad that the new City Administration
+intended to seek approval if not fame by cleaning out the Five Points,
+tearing down the wretched tenements and groggeries, and scattering its
+denizens; and none was too reckless not to be on his guard against a
+calamity which would deprive him not only of all he knew of pleasure
+but of an almost impregnable refuge after crime.
+
+The women, bloated, emaciated with disease, few with any pretension to
+looks or finery, made insulting remarks as Madeleine examined their
+partners, or stared at her in a sort of terrible wonder. She had no
+eyes for them. When she reached the end of the room, looking down into
+the faces of the men she was forced to step over, she turned and
+methodically continued her pilgrimage up another lane between the
+tables.
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Holt to Lacey. "There he is! I hoped we should
+have to visit at least twenty of these hells, and that she'd faint or
+give up."
+
+"How on earth can you distinguish any one in this infernal smoke?"
+
+"Got the eyes of a cat. There he is--in that corner by the door. God!
+What a female thing he's got with him."
+
+"Hope it'll cure her--and that we can get out of this pretty soon.
+Strange things are happening within me."
+
+There was an uproar on the other side of the room. One man had made up
+his mind to follow this fair visitor, and his woman was beating him in
+the face, shrieking her curses.
+
+A party of drunken sailors staggered in, singing uproariously, and
+almost fell over the bar.
+
+But not a sound had penetrated Madeleine's unheeding ears. She had seen
+Masters.
+
+His drab had not taken his invitation to bedeck herself too literally,
+nor had she ventured into Broadway. But after returning with the rum
+she had gone as far as Fell Street and bought herself all the tawdry
+finery her funds would command. She wore it with tipsy pride: a pink
+frock of slazy silk with as full a flowing skirt as any on Fifth Avenue
+during the hour of promenade, a green silk mantle, and a hat as flat as
+a plate trimmed with faded roses, soiled streamers hanging down over
+her impudent chignon. She was attracting far more attention than the
+simply dressed lady from the upper world. The eyes of the women in her
+vicinity were redder with envy than with liquor and they cursed her
+shrilly. One of the younger women, carried away by a sudden dictation
+of femininity, made a dart for the fringed mantle with obvious intent
+to appropriate it by force. She received a blow in the face from the
+dauntless owner that sent her sprawling, while the others mingled jeers
+with their curses.
+
+Masters was leaning on the table, supporting his head with his hands
+and laughing. He had passed the stage where he wanted to talk, but it
+would be morning before his brain would be completely befuddled.
+
+Madeleine's body became so stiff that her heels left the floor and she
+stood on her toes. Holt and Lacey grasped her arms, but she did not
+sway; she stood staring at the man she had come for. There was little
+semblance of the polished, groomed, haughty man who had won her. His
+face was not swollen but it was a dark uniform red and the lines cut it
+to the bone. The slight frown he had always worn had deepened to an
+ugly scowl. His eyes were injected and dull, his hair was turning gray.
+His mouth that he had held in such firm curves was loose and his teeth
+stained. She remembered how his teeth had flashed when he smiled, the
+extraordinary brilliancy of his gray eyes.... The groggery vanished ...
+they were sitting before the fire in the Occidental Hotel....
+
+The daze and the vision lasted only a moment. She disengaged herself
+from her escorts and walked rapidly toward the table.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+Masters did not recognize her at once. Her face lay buried deep in his
+mind, covered with the debris of innumerable carouses, forgotten women,
+and every defiance he had been able to fling in the face of the
+civilization he had been made to adorn. As she stood quite still
+looking at him he had a confused idea that she was a Madonna, and his
+mind wandered to churches he had attended on another planet, where
+pretty fashionable women had commanded his escort. Then he began to
+laugh again. The idea of a Madonna in a groggery of the Five Points was
+more amusing than the fracas just over.
+
+"Langdon!" she said imperiously. "Don't you know me?"
+
+Then he recognized her, but he believed she was a ghost. He had had
+delirium tremens twice, and this no doubt was a new form. He gave a
+shaking cry and shrank back, his hands raised with the palms outward.
+
+"Curse you!" he screamed. "It's not there. I _don't_ see you!"
+
+He extended one of his trembling hands, still with his horrified eyes
+on the apparition, filled his mug from a bottle and drank the liquor
+off with a gulp. Then he flung the mug to the floor and staggered to
+his feet, his eyes roving to the men behind her. "What does this mean?"
+he stammered. "Are you here or aren't you--dead or alive?"
+
+"We're here all right," said Holt, in his matter-of-fact voice. "And
+this really is she. She has come for you."
+
+"Come for me--for me!" His roar of laughter was drunken but its note
+was even more ironic than when his mirth had been excited by the mean
+drama of the women. He fell back in his chair for he was unable to
+stand. "Well, go back where you came from. There's nothing here for
+you. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.... Here--what's your name?" he
+said brutally to his companion. "Go and get me another mug."
+
+But the young woman, who had been gaping at the scene, suddenly
+recovered herself. She ran round the table and flung her arms about his
+neck. "He's my man!" she shrieked. "You can't have him." And she
+sputtered obscenities.
+
+Madeleine reached over, tore her from Masters, dragged her across the
+table, whirled her about, and flung her to the floor. The neighborhood
+shrieked its delight. The rest of the room took no notice of them. The
+drunken sailors were still singing and many took up the refrain.
+
+"No," said Madeleine. "He's mine and I'll have him."
+
+"Now I know you are not Madeleine," cried Masters furiously, and trying
+to rise again. "She never was your sort, you damned whore, to fight
+over a man in a groggery. She was a lady--"
+
+"She was also a woman," said Madeleine coolly. "And never more so than
+now. You are coming with me."
+
+"I'll see you in hell first."
+
+"Well, I'll go there with you if you like. But you'll come home with me
+first."
+
+"Even if you were she, I've no use for you, I'd forgotten your
+existence. If I'd remembered you at all it was to curse you. I'll
+never--never--" His voice trailed off although his eyes still held
+their look of hard contempt.
+
+His companion had pulled herself to her feet with the aid of an empty
+chair. She made a sudden dart at Madeleine, her claws extended,
+recognizing a far more formidable rival than the harlot she had
+hammered and displaced. But Madeleine had not forgotten to give her the
+corner of an eye. She caught the threatening arm in her strong hand,
+twisted it nearly from its socket, and the woman with a wild shriek of
+pain collapsed once more.
+
+Masters began to laugh again, then broke off abruptly and began to
+shudder violently. He stared as if the nightmare of his terrible years
+were racing across his vision.
+
+"Now," said Madeleine. "I've fought for you on your own field and won
+you. You are mine. Come."
+
+"I'll come," he mumbled. He tried to rise but fell back. "I'm very
+drunk," he said apologetically. "Sorry."
+
+He made no resistance as Holt and Lacey took him by his arms and
+supported him out of the groggery and out of the Five Points to a
+waiting hack; Madeleine and the detectives forming a body-guard in the
+rear.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+It was two months before Madeleine saw him again. He was installed in
+his room, two powerful nurses attended him day and night, and Holt
+slept on a cot near the bed. He was almost ungovernable at first, in
+spite of the drugs the doctor gave him, but these had their effect in
+time; and then the tapering-off process began, combined with hotly
+peppered soups and the vegetable most inimical to alcohol; finally food
+in increasing quantity to restore his depleted vitality. In his first
+sane moment he had made Holt promise that Madeleine should not see him,
+and she had sent word that she would wait until he sent for her.
+
+Madeleine took long walks, and drives, and read in the Astor Library.
+She also replenished her wardrobe. The color came back to her cheeks,
+the sparkle to her eyes. She had made all her plans. The house in
+Virginia was being renovated. She would take him there as soon as he
+could be moved. When he was strong again he would start his newspaper.
+Holt and Lacey were as overjoyed at the prospect of being his assistant
+editors as at the almost unbelievable rescue of Langdon Masters.
+
+He had remained in bed after the worst was over, sunk in torpor, with
+no desire to leave it or to live. But strength gradually returned to
+his wasted frame, the day nurse was dismissed, and he appeared to
+listen when Holt talked to him, although he would not reply. One day,
+however, when he believed himself to be alone, he opened his eyes and
+stared at the wall covered with his books, as he had done before
+through half-closed lids. Then his gaze wandered to the green curtains.
+But his mind was clear. He was visited by no delusions. This was not
+the Occidental Hotel.
+
+It was long since he had read a book! He wondered, with his first
+symptom of returning interest in life, if he was strong enough to cross
+the room and find one of his favorite volumes. But as he raised himself
+on his elbow Holt bent over him.
+
+"What is it, old fellow?"
+
+"Those books? How did they get here?"
+
+"Lacey brought them. You remember, you left them in the _Times_ cellar."
+
+"Are these your rooms?"
+
+"No, they are Madeleine Talbot's."
+
+He made no reply, but he did not scowl and turn his back as he had done
+whenever Holt had tentatively mentioned her name before. The sight of
+his familiar beloved books had softened his harsh spirit, and the
+hideous chasm between his present and his past seemed visibly
+shrinking. His tones, however, had not softened when he asked curtly
+after a moment:
+
+"What is the meaning of it all? Why is she here? Is Talbot dead?"
+
+"No, he divorced her."
+
+"Divorced her? Madeleine?" He almost sat upright. Mrs. Abbott could not
+have looked more horrified. "Is this some infernal joke?"
+
+"Are you strong enough to hear the whole story? I warn you it isn't a
+pretty one. But I've promised her I would tell you--"
+
+"What did he divorce her for?"
+
+"Desertion. There was worse behind."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me there was another man? I'll break your neck."
+
+"There was no other man. I'll give you a few drops of digitalis,
+although you must have the heart of an ox--"
+
+"Give me a drink. I'm sick of your damn physic. Don't worry. I'm out of
+that, and I shan't go back."
+
+Holt poured him out a small quantity of old Bourbon and diluted it with
+water. Masters regarded it with a look of scorn but tossed it off.
+
+"What was the worse behind?"
+
+"When she heard what had become of you--she got it out of me--she
+deliberately made a drunkard of herself. She became the scandal of the
+town. She was cast out, neck and crop. Every friend she ever had cut
+her, avoided her as if she were a leper. She left the doctor and lived
+by herself in one room on the Plaza. I met her again in one of the
+worst dives in San Francisco--"
+
+"Stop!" Masters' voice rose to a scream. He tried to get out of bed but
+fell back on the pillows. "You are a liar--you--you--"
+
+"You shall listen whether you relish the facts or not. I have given her
+my promise." And he told the story in all its abominable details,
+sparing the writhing man on the bed nothing. He drew upon his
+imagination for scenes between Madeleine and the doctor, of whose
+misery he gave a harrowing picture. He described the episode on the
+boat after her drinking bout at Blazes', of the futile attempts of
+Sally Abbott and Talbot to cure her. He gave graphic and hideous
+pictures of the dives she had frequented alone, the risks she had run
+in the most vicious resorts on Barbary Coast. Not until he had seared
+Masters' brain indelibly did he pass to Madeleine's gradual rise from
+her depths, the restoration of her beauty and charm and sanity. It was
+when she was almost herself again that Talbot had offered to forgive
+her and take her to Europe to live, offering divorce as the alternative.
+
+"Of course she accepted the divorce," Holt concluded. "That meant
+freedom to go to you."
+
+Masters had grown calm by degrees. "I should never have dreamed even
+Madeleine was capable of that," he said. "And there was a time when I
+believed there was no height to which she could not soar. She is a
+great woman and a great lover, and I am no more worthy of her now than
+I was in that sink where you found me. Nor ever shall be. Go out and
+bring in a barber."
+
+Holt laughed. "At least you are yourself again and I fancy she'll ask
+no more than that. Shall I tell her you will see her in an hour?"
+
+"Yes, I'll see her. God! What a woman."
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Madeleine made her toilette with trembling hands, nevertheless with no
+detail neglected. Her beautiful chestnut hair was softly parted and
+arranged in a mass of graceful curls at the back of the head. She wore
+a house-gown of white muslin sprigged with violets, and a long Marie
+Antoinette fichu, pale green and diaphanous. Where it crossed she
+fastened a bunch of violets. She looked like a vision of spring, a
+grateful vision for a sick room.
+
+When Holt tapped on her door on his way out the second time, muttering
+characteristically: "Coast clear. All serene," she walked down the hall
+with nothing of the primitive fierce courage she had exhibited in Five
+Points. She was terrified at the ordeal before her, afraid of appearing
+sentimental and silly; that he would find her less beautiful than his
+memory of her, or gone off and no longer desirable. What if he should
+die suddenly? Holt had told her of his agitation. This visit should
+have been postponed until he had slept and recuperated. She had sent
+him word to that effect but he had replied that he had no intention of
+waiting.
+
+She stood still for a few moments until she felt calmer, then turned
+the knob of Masters' door and walked in.
+
+He was sitting propped up in bed and she had an agreeable shock of
+surprise. In spite of all efforts of will her imagination had persisted
+in picturing him with a violent red face and red injected eyes, a loose
+sardonic mouth and lines like scars. His face was very pale, his eyes
+clear and bright, his hair trimmed in its old close fashion, his mouth
+grimly set. Although he was very thin the lines in his cheeks were less
+pronounced. He looked years older, of course, and the life he had led
+had set its indelible seal upon him, but he was Langdon Masters again
+nevertheless.
+
+His eyes dilated when he saw her, but he smiled whimsically.
+
+"So you want what is left of this battered old husk, Madeleine?" he
+asked. "You in the prime of your beauty and your youth! Better think it
+over."
+
+She smiled a little, too.
+
+"Do you mean that?"
+
+"No, I don't! Come here! Come here!"
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+In the winter of 1878-79 Mrs. Ballinger gave a luncheon in honor of
+Mrs. McLane, who had arrived in San Francisco the day before after a
+long visit in Europe. The city was growing toward the west, but
+Ballinger House still looked like an outpost on its solitary hill and
+was almost surrounded by a grove of eucalyptus trees.
+
+Mrs. Abbott grumbled as she always did at the long journey, skirting
+far higher hills, and through sand dunes still unsubdued by man and
+awaiting the first dry wind of summer to transform themselves into
+clouds of dust. But a sand storm would not have kept her away. The
+others invited were her daughter-in-law, who had met Mrs. McLane at
+Sacramento, Guadalupe Hathaway, now Mrs. Ogden Bascom, Mrs. Montgomery,
+Mrs. Yorba, whose husband had recently built the largest and ugliest
+house in San Francisco, perched aloft on Nob Hill; several more of Mrs.
+McLane's favorites, old and young, and Maria Groome, born Ballinger,
+now a proud pillar of San Francisco Society.
+
+The dining-room of Ballinger House was long and narrow and from its bow
+window commanded a view of the Bay. It was as uncomely with its black
+walnut furniture and brown walls as the rest of that aristocratic
+abode, across whose threshold no loose fish had ever darted; but its
+dingy walls were more or less concealed by paintings of the martial
+Virginia ancestors of Mrs. Ballinger and her husband, the table linen
+had been woven for her in Ireland, the cut glass blown for her in
+England; the fragile china came from Sevres, and the massive silver had
+travelled from England to Virginia in the reign of Elizabeth. The room
+may have been ugly, nay, ponderous, but it had an air!
+
+The women who graced the board were dressed, with one or two
+exceptions, in the height of the mode. Save Maria Groome each had made
+at least one trip to Europe and left her measurements with Worth. Maria
+did not begin her pilgrimages to Europe until the eighties, and then it
+was old carved furniture she brought home; dress she always held in
+disdain, possibly because her husband's mistresses were ever attired in
+the excess of the fashion.
+
+Mrs. Ballinger was now in her fifties but still one of the most
+beautiful women in San Francisco; and she still wore shining gray gowns
+that matched the bright silver of her hair to a shade. Her descendants
+had inherited little of her beauty (Alexina Groome as yet roaming
+space, and, no doubt, having her subtle way with ghosts old and new).
+
+Mrs. McLane had discharged commissions for every woman present except
+Maria, and their gowns had been unpacked on the moment, that they might
+be displayed at this notable function. They wore the new long basque
+and overskirt made of cloth or cashmere, combined with satin, velvet or
+brocade, and with the exception of Mrs. Abbott they had removed their
+hats. Chignons had disappeared. Hair was elaborately dressed at the
+back or arranged in high puffs with two long curls suspended.
+Marguerite Abbott and Annette wore the new plaids. Mrs. Abbott had
+graduated from black satin and bugles to cloth, but her bonnet was of
+jet.
+
+"Now!" exclaimed Mrs. McLane, who had been plied with eager questions
+from oysters to dessert. "I've told you all the news about the
+fashions, the salon, the plays, the opera, all the scandals of Paris I
+can remember but you'll never guess my _piece de resistance_."
+
+"What--what--" Tea was forgotten.
+
+"Well--as you know, I was in Berlin during the Congress--"
+
+"Did you see Bismark--Disraeli--"
+
+"I did and met them. But they are not of half as much interest to you
+as some one else--two people--I met."
+
+"But who?"
+
+"Can't you guess?"
+
+"I know!" cried Guadalupe Bascom. "Langdon and Madeleine Masters."
+
+"No! What would they be doing in Berlin?" demanded Mrs. Ballinger. "I
+thought he was editing some paper in New York."
+
+"'Lupie has guessed correctly. It's evident that you don't keep up.
+We're just the same old stick-in-the-muds. 'Lupie, how did you guess?
+I'll wager you never see a New York newspaper yourself."
+
+"Not I. But one does hear a little Eastern news now and again. I happen
+to know that Masters has made a success of his paper and it would be
+just like him to go to the Congress of Berlin. What was he doing there?"
+
+"Oh, nothing in particular. Merely corresponding with his paper, and,
+in the eyes of many, eclipsing Blowitz."
+
+"Who is Blowitz?"
+
+"Mon dieu! Mon dieu! But after all London is farther off than New York,
+and I don't fancy you read the _Times_ when you are there--which is
+briefly and seldom. Paris is our Mecca. Well, Blowitz--"
+
+"But Madeleine? Madeleine? It is about her we want to hear. What do we
+care about tiresome political letters in solemn old newspapers? How did
+she look? How dressed? Was she ahead of the mode as ever? Does she look
+much older? Does she show what she has been through.... Oh,
+Antoinette--Mrs. McLane--Mamma--how tiresome you are!"
+
+Mrs. Abbott had not joined in this chorus. She had emitted a series of
+grunts--no less primitive word expressing her vocal emissions when
+disgusted. She now had four chins, her eyes were alarmingly
+protuberant, and her face, what with the tight lacing in vogue, much
+good food and wine, and a pious disapproval of powder or any care of a
+complexion which should remain as God made it, was of a deep mahogany
+tint; but her hand still held the iron rod, and if its veins had risen
+its muscles had never grown flaccid.
+
+"Abominable!" she ejaculated when she could make herself heard. "To
+think that a man and a woman like that should be rewarded by fame and
+prosperity. They were thoroughly bad and should have been punished
+accordingly."
+
+"Oh, no, they were not bad, ma chere," said Mrs. McLane lightly. "They
+were much too good. That was the whole trouble. And you must admit that
+for their temporary fall from grace they were sufficiently punished,
+poor things."
+
+"Antoinette, I am surprised." Mrs. Ballinger spoke as severely as Mrs.
+Abbott. She looked less the Southerner for the moment than the Puritan.
+"They disgraced both themselves and Society. I was glad to hear of
+their reform, but they should have continued to live in sackcloth for
+the rest of their lives. For such to enjoy happiness and success is to
+shake the whole social structure, and it is a blow to the fundamental
+laws of religion and morality."
+
+"But perhaps they are not happy, mamma." Maria spoke hopefully,
+although the fates seemed to have nothing in pickle for her erratic
+mate. "Mrs. McLane has not yet told us--"
+
+"Oh, but they are! Quite the happiest couple I have ever seen, and
+likely to remain so. That's a case of true love if ever there was one.
+I mislaid my skepticism all the time I was in Berlin--a whole month!"
+
+"Abominable!" rumbled Mrs. Abbott. "And when I think of poor
+Howard--dead of apoplexy--"
+
+"Howard ate too much, was too fond of Burgundy, and grew fatter every
+year. Madeleine could reclaim Masters, but she never had any influence
+over Howard."
+
+"Well, she could have waited--"
+
+"Masters was pulled up in the nick of time. A year more of that
+horrible life he was leading and he would have been either
+unreclaimable or dead. It makes me believe in Fate--and I am a good
+Churchwoman."
+
+"It's a sad world," commented Mrs. Ballinger with a sigh. "I confess I
+don't understand it. When I think of Sally--"
+
+Mrs. Montgomery, a good kind woman, whose purse was always open to her
+less fortunate friends, shook her head. "I do not like such a sequel. I
+agree with Alexina and Charlotte. They disgraced themselves and our
+proud little Society; they should have been more severely punished.
+Possibly they will be."
+
+"I doubt it," said Mrs. Bascom drily. "And not only because I am a
+woman of the world and have looked at life with both eyes open, but
+because Masters had success in him. I'll wager he's had his troubles
+all in one great landslide. And Madeleine was born to be some man's
+poem. The luxe binding got badly torn and stained, but no doubt she's
+got a finer one than ever, and is unchanged--or even improved--inside."
+
+"Oh, do let me get in a word edgeways," cried young Mrs. Abbott. "Tell
+me, Mamma--what does Madeleine look like? Has she lost her beauty?"
+
+"She looked to me more beautiful than ever. I'd vow Masters thinks so."
+
+"Has she wrinkles? Lines?"
+
+"Not one. Have we grown old since she left us? It's not so many years
+ago?"
+
+"Oh, I know. But after all she went through.... How was she dressed?"
+
+"What are her favorite colors?"
+
+"Who makes her gowns?"
+
+"Has she as much elegance and style as ever?"
+
+"Did she get her mother's jewels? Did she wear them in Berlin?"
+
+"Is she in Society there? Is her grand air as noticeable among all
+those court people as it was here?"
+
+"Oh, mamma, mamma, you are so tiresome!"
+
+Mrs. McLane had had time to drink a second cup of tea.
+
+"My head spins. Where shall I begin? The gowns she wore in Berlin were
+made at Worth's. Where else? She still wears golden-brown, and amber,
+and green--sometimes azure--blue at night. She looked like a fairy
+queen in blue gauze and diamond stars in her hair one night at the
+American Legation--"
+
+"How does she wear her hair?"
+
+"There she is not so much a la mode. She has studied her own style, and
+has found several ways of dressing it that become her--sometimes in a
+low coil, almost on her neck, sometimes on top of her head in a braid
+like a coronet, sometimes in a soft psyche knot. There never was
+anything monotonous about Madeleine."
+
+"I'm going to try every one tomorrow. Has she any children?"
+
+"One. She left him at their place in Virginia. I saw his picture. A
+beauty, of course."
+
+Mrs. Ballinger raised her pencilled eyebrows and glanced at Maria. Mrs.
+Abbott gave a deep rumbling groan.
+
+"Poor Howard!"
+
+"He dreed his weird," said Mrs. McLane indifferently. "He couldn't help
+it. Neither could Madeleine."
+
+"Well, I'd like to hear something more about Langdon Masters,"
+announced Guadalupe Bascom. "That is, if you have all satisfied your
+curiosity about Madeleine's clothes. He is the one man I never could
+twist around my finger and I've never forgotten him. How does he look?
+He certainly should carry some stamp of the life he led."
+
+"Oh, he looks older, of course, and he has deeper lines and some gray
+hairs. But he's thin, at least. His figure did not suffer if his face
+did--somewhat. He looks even more interesting--at least women would
+think so. You know we good women always have a fatal weakness for the
+man who has lived too much."
+
+"Speak for yourself, Antoinette." Mrs. Ballinger looked like an effigy
+of virtue in silver. "And at your age you should be ashamed to utter
+such a sentiment even if you felt it."
+
+"My hair may be as white as yours," rejoined Mrs. McLane tartly. "But I
+remain a woman, and for that reason attract men to this day."
+
+"Is Masters as brilliant as ever--in conversation, I mean? Is he gay?
+Lively?"
+
+"I cannot say that I found him gay, and I really saw very little of him
+except at functions. He was very busy. But Mr. McLane was with him a
+good deal, and said that although he was rather grim and quiet at
+times, at others he was as brilliant as his letters."
+
+"Does he drink at all, or is he forced to be a teetotaller?"
+
+"Not a bit of it. He drinks at table as others do; no more, no less."
+
+"Then he is cured," said Mrs. Bascom contentedly. "Well, I for one am
+glad that it's all right. Still, if he had fallen in love with me he
+would have remained an eminent citizen--without a hideous interval he
+hardly can care to recall--and become the greatest editor in
+California. Have they any social position in New York?"
+
+"Probably. I did not ask. They hardly looked like outcasts. You must
+remember their story is wholly unknown in fashionable New York.
+Scarcely any one here knows any one in New York Society; or has time
+for it when passing through.... But I don't fancy they care
+particularly for Society. In Berlin, whenever it was possible, they
+went off by themselves. But of course it was necessary for both to go
+in Society there, and she must have been able to help him a good deal."
+
+"European Society! I suppose she'll be presented to the Queen of
+England next!--But no! Thank heaven she can't be. Good Queen Victoria
+is as rigid about divorce as we are. Nor shall she ever cross my
+threshold if she returns here." And Mrs. Abbott scalded herself with
+her third cup of tea and emitted terrible sounds.
+
+Mrs. Yorba, a tall, spare, severe-looking woman, who had taught school
+in New England in her youth, and never even powdered her nose, spoke
+for the first time. Her tones were slow and portentious, as became one
+who, owing to her unfortunate nativity, had sailed slowly into this
+castellated harbor, albeit on her husband's golden ship.
+
+"We may no longer have it in our power to punish Mrs. Langdon Masters,"
+she said. "But at least we shall punish others who violate our code,
+even as we have done in the past. San Francisco Society shall always be
+a model for the rest of the world."
+
+"I hope so!" cried Mrs. McLane. "But the world has a queer fashion of
+changing and moving."
+
+Mrs. Ballinger rose. "I have no misgivings for the future of our
+Society, Antoinette McLane. Our grandchildren will uphold the
+traditions we have created, for our children will pass on to them our
+own immutable laws. Shall we go into the front parlor? I do so want to
+show it to you. I have a new set of blue satin damask and a crystal
+chandelier."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sleeping Fires, by Gertrude Atherton
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