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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the Quarter, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: In the Quarter
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: February 8, 2003 [eBook #6893]
+[Most recently updated: December 28, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: William McClain
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE QUARTER ***
+
+
+
+
+In the Quarter
+
+by Robert W. Chambers
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+One evening in May, 1888, the Café des Écoles was even more crowded and
+more noisy than usual. The marble-topped tables were wet with beer and
+the din was appalling. Someone shouted to make himself heard.
+
+“Any more news from the Salon?”
+
+“Yes,” said Elliott, “Thaxton’s in with a number three. Rhodes is out
+and takes it hard. Clifford’s out too, and takes it—”
+
+A voice began to chant:
+
+Je n’sais comment faire,
+    Comment concillier
+Ma maitresse et mon père,
+    Le Code et Bullier.
+
+
+“Drop it! Oh, drop it!” growled Rhodes, and sent a handful of billiard
+chalk at the singer.
+
+Mr Clifford returned a volley of the Café spoons, and continued:
+
+Mais c’que je trouve de plus bête,
+    C’est qu’ i’ faut financer
+Avec ma belle galette,
+    J’aimerai mieux m’amuser.
+
+
+Several other voices took up the refrain, lamenting the difficulty of
+reconciling their filial duties with balls at Bullier’s, and protesting
+that they would rather amuse themselves than consider financial
+questions. Rhodes sipped his curaçoa sulkily.
+
+“The longer I live in the Latin Quarter,” he said to his neighbor, “the
+less certain I feel about a place of future punishment. It would be so
+tame after this.” Then, reverting to his grievance, he added, “The
+slaughter this year at the Salon is awful.”
+
+Reginald Gethryn stirred nervously but did not speak.
+
+“Have a game, Rex?” called Clifford, waving a cue.
+
+Gethryn shook his head, and reaching for a soiled copy of the _Figaro,_
+glanced listlessly over its contents. He sighed and turned his paper
+impatiently. Rhodes echoed the sigh.
+
+“What’s at the theaters?”
+
+“Same as last week, excepting at the Gaieté. They’ve put on ‘La Belle
+Hélène’ there.”
+
+“Oh! Belle Hélène!” cried Clifford.
+
+Tzing! la! la! Tzing! la! la!
+    C’est avec ces dames qu’ Oreste
+Fait danser l’argent de Papa!
+
+
+Rhodes began to growl again.
+
+“I shouldn’t think you’d feel like gibbering that rot tonight.”
+
+Clifford smiled sweetly and patted him on the head. “Tzing! la! la! My
+shot, Elliott?”
+
+“Tzing! la! la!” laughed Thaxton, “That’s Clifford’s biography in three
+words.”
+
+Clifford repeated the refrain and winked impudently at the pretty
+bookkeeper behind her railing. She, alas! returned it with a blush.
+
+Gethryn rose restlessly and went over to another table where a man,
+young, but older than himself, sat, looking comfortable.
+
+“Braith,” he began, trying to speak indifferently, “any news of my
+fate?”
+
+The other man finished his beer and then answered carelessly, “No.” But
+catching sight of Gethryn’s face he added, with a laugh:
+
+“Look here, Rex, you’ve got to stop this moping.”
+
+“I’m not moping,” said Rex, coloring up.
+
+“What do you call it, then?” Braith spoke with some sharpness, but
+continued kindly, “You know I’ve been through it all. Ten years ago,
+when I sent in my first picture, I confess to you I suffered the
+torments of the damned until—”
+
+“Until?”
+
+“Until they sent me my card. The color was green.”
+
+“But I thought a green card meant ‘not admitted.’”
+
+“It does. I received three in three years.”
+
+“Do you mean you were thrown out three years in succession?”
+
+Braith knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “I gave up smoking for those
+three years.”
+
+“You?”
+
+Braith filled his pipe tenderly. “I was very poor,” he said.
+
+“If I had half your sand!” sighed Rex.
+
+“You have, and something more that the rest of us have not. But you are
+very young yet.”
+
+This time Gethryn colored with surprise and pleasure. In all their long
+and close friendship Braith had never before given him any other
+encouragement than a cool, “Go ahead!”
+
+He continued: “Your curse thus far has been want of steady application,
+and moreover you’re too easily scared. No matter what happens this
+time, no knocking under!”
+
+“Oh, I’m not going to knock under. No more is Clifford, it seems,” Rex
+added with a laugh, as Clifford threw down his cue and took a step of
+the devil’s quadrille.
+
+“Oh! Elliott!” he crowed, “what’s the matter with you?”
+
+Elliott turned and punched a sleepy waiter in the ribs.
+
+“Emile—two bocks!”
+
+The waiter jumped up and rubbed his eyes. “What is it, monsieur?” he
+snapped.
+
+Elliott repeated the order and they strolled off toward a table. As
+Clifford came lounging by, Carleton said, “I hear you lead with a
+number one at the Salon.”
+
+“Right, I’m the first to be fired.”
+
+“He’s calm now,” said Elliott, “but you should have seen him yesterday
+when the green card came.”
+
+“Well, yes. I discoursed a little in several languages.”
+
+“After he had used up his English profanity, he called the Jury names
+in French, German and Spanish. The German stuck, but came out at last
+like a cork out of a bottle—”
+
+“Or a bung out of a barrel.”
+
+“These comparisons are as offensive as they are unjust,” said Clifford.
+
+“Quite so,” said Braith. “Here’s the waiter with your beer.”
+
+“What number did you get, Braith?” asked Rhodes, who couldn’t keep his
+mind off the subject and made no pretense of trying.
+
+“Three,” answered Braith.
+
+There was a howl, and all began to talk at once.
+
+“There’s justice for you!” “No justice for Americans!” “Serves us right
+for our tariff!” “Are Frenchmen going to give us all the advantages of
+their schools and honors besides while we do all we can to keep their
+pictures out of our markets?”
+
+“No, we don’t, either! Tariff only keeps out the sweepings of the
+studios—”
+
+“If there were no duty on pictures the States would be flooded with
+trash.”
+
+“Take it off!” cried one.
+
+“Make it higher!” shouted another.
+
+“Idiots!” growled Rhodes. “Let ’em flood the country with bad work as
+well as good. It will educate the people, and the day will come when
+all good work will stand an equal chance—be it French or be it
+American.”
+
+“True,” said Clifford, “Let’s all have a bock. Where’s Rex?”
+
+But Gethryn had slipped out in the confusion. Quitting the Café des
+Écoles, he sauntered across the street, and turning through the Rue de
+Vaugirard, entered the rue Monsieur le Prince. He crossed the dim
+courtyard of his hôtel, and taking a key and a candle from the lodge of
+the Concierge, started to mount the six flights to his bedroom and
+studio. He felt irritable and fagged, and it did not make matters
+better when he found, on reaching his own door, that he had taken the
+wrong key. Nor did it ease his mind to fling the key over the banisters
+into the silent stone hallway below. He leaned sulkily over the railing
+and listened to it ring and clink down into the darkness, and then,
+with a brief but vigorous word, he turned and forced in his door with a
+crash. Two bull pups which had flown at him with portentous growls and
+yelps of menace now gamboled idiotically about him, writhing with
+anticipation of caresses, and a gray and scarlet parrot, rudely
+awakened, launched forth upon a musical effort resembling the song of a
+rusty cart-wheel.
+
+“Oh, you infernal bird!” murmured the master, lighting his candle with
+one hand and fondling the pups with the other. “There, there, puppies,
+run away!” he added, rolling the ecstatic pups into a sort of dog
+divan, where they curled themselves down at last and subsided with
+squirms and wriggles, gurgling affection.
+
+Gethryn lighted a lamp and then a cigarette. Then, blowing out the
+candle, he sat down with a sigh. His eyes fell on the parrot. It
+annoyed him that the parrot should immediately turn over and look at
+him upside down. It also annoyed him that “Satan,” an evil-looking
+raven, was evidently preparing to descend from his perch and worry “Mrs
+Gummidge.”
+
+“Mrs Gummidge” was the name Clifford had given to a large sad-eyed
+white tabby who now lay dozing upon a panther skin.
+
+“Satan!” said Gethryn. The bird checked his sinister preparations and
+eyed his master. “Don’t,” said the young man.
+
+Satan weighed his chances and came to the conclusion that he could
+swoop down, nip Mrs Gummidge, and get back to his bust of Pallas
+without being caught. He tried it, but his master was too quick for
+him, and foiled, he lay sullenly in Gethryn’s hands, his two long claws
+projecting helplessly between the brown fists of his master.
+
+“Oh, you fiend!” muttered Rex, taking him toward a wicker basket, which
+he hated. “Solitary confinement for you, my boy.”
+
+“Double, double, toil and trouble,” croaked the parrot.
+
+Gethryn started nervously and shut him inside the cage, a regal gilt
+structure with “Shakespeare” printed over the door. Then, replacing the
+agitated Gummidge on her panther skin, he sat down once more and
+lighted another cigarette.
+
+His picture. He could think of nothing else. It was a serious matter
+with Gethryn. Admitted to the Salon meant three more years’ study in
+Paris. Failure, and back he must go to New York.
+
+The personal income of Reginald Gethryn amounted to the magnificent sum
+of two hundred and fifty dollars. To this, his aunt, Miss Celestia
+Gethryn, added nine hundred and fifty dollars more. This gave him a sum
+of twelve hundred dollars a year to live on and study in Paris. It was
+not a large sum, but it was princely when compared to the amount on
+which many a talented fellow subsists, spending his best years in a
+foul atmosphere of paint and tobacco, ill fed, ill clothed, scarcely
+warmed at all, often sick in mind and body, attaining his first scant
+measure of success just as his overtaxed powers give way.
+
+Gethryn’s aunt, his only surviving relative, had recently written him
+one of her ponderous letters. He took it from his pocket and began to
+read it again, for the fourth time.
+
+“You have now been in Paris three years, and as yet I have seen no
+results. You should be earning your own living, but instead you are
+still dependent upon me. You are welcome to all the assistance I can
+give you, in reason, but I expect that you will have something to show
+for all the money I expend upon you. Why are you not making a handsome
+income and a splendid reputation, like Mr Spinder?”
+
+
+The artist named was thirty-five and had been in Paris fifteen years.
+Gethryn was twenty-two and had been studying three years.
+
+“Why are you not doing beautiful things, like Mr Mousely? I’m told he
+gets a thousand dollars for a little sketch.”
+
+
+Rex groaned. Mr Mousely could neither draw nor paint, but he made
+stories of babies’ deathbeds on squares of canvas with china angels
+solidly suspended from the ceiling of the nursery, pointing upward, and
+he gave them titles out of the hymnbook, which caused them to be bought
+with eagerness by all the members of the congregation to which his
+family belonged.
+
+The letter proceeded:
+
+“I am told by many reliable persons that three years abroad is more
+than enough for a thorough art education. If no results are attained at
+the end of that time, there is only one of two conclusions to be drawn.
+Either you have no talent, or you are wasting your time. I shall wait
+until the next Salon before I come to a decision. If then you have a
+picture accepted and if it shows no trace of the immorality which is
+rife in Paris, I will continue your allowance for three years more;
+this, however, on condition that you have a picture in the Salon each
+year. If you fail again this year, I shall insist upon your coming home
+at once.”
+
+
+Why Gethryn should want to read this letter four times, when one
+perusal of it had been more than enough, no one, least of all himself,
+could have told. He sat now crushing it in is hand, tasting all the
+bitterness that is stored up for a sensitive artist tied by fate to an
+omniscient Philistine who feeds his body with bread and his soul with
+instruction about art and behavior.
+
+Presently he mastered the black mood which came near being too much for
+him, his face cleared and he leaned back, quietly smoking. From the rug
+rose a muffled rumbling where Mrs Gummidge dozed in peace. The clock
+ticked sharply. A mouse dropped silently from the window curtain and
+scuttled away unmarked.
+
+The pups lay in a soft heap. The parrot no longer hung head downward,
+but rested in his cage in a normal position, one eye fixed steadily on
+Gethryn, the other sheathed in a bluish-white eyelid, every wrinkle of
+which spoke scorn of men and things.
+
+For some time Gethryn had been half-conscious of a piano sounding on
+the floor below. It suddenly struck him now that the apartment under
+his, which had been long vacant, must have found an occupant.
+
+“Idiots!” he grumbled. “Playing at midnight! That will have to stop.
+Singing too! We’ll see about that!”
+
+The singing continued, a girl’s voice, only passably trained, but
+certainly fresh and sweet.
+
+Gethryn began to listen, reluctantly and ungraciously. There was a
+pause. “Now she’s going to stop. It’s time,” he muttered. But the piano
+began again—a short prelude which he knew, and the voice was soon in
+the midst of the Dream Song from “La Belle Hélène.”
+
+Gethryn rose and walked to his window, threw it open and leaned out. An
+April night, soft and delicious. The air was heavy with perfume from
+the pink and white chestnut blossoms. The roof dripped with moisture.
+Far down in the dark court the gas-jets flickered and flared. From the
+distance came the softened rumble of a midnight cab, which, drawing
+nearer and nearer and passing the hôtel with a rollicking rattle of
+wheels and laughing voices, died away on the smooth pavement by the
+Luxembourg Gardens. The voice had stopped capriciously in the middle of
+the song. Gethryn turned back into the room whistling the air. His eye
+fell on Satan sitting behind his bars in crumpled malice.
+
+“Poor old chap,” laughed the master, “want to come out and hop around a
+bit? Here, Gummidge, we’ll remove temptation out of his way,” and he
+lifted the docile tabby, who increased the timbre of her song to an
+ecstatic squeal at his touch, and opening his bedroom door, gently
+deposited her on his softest blankets. He then reinstated the raven on
+his bust of Pallas, and Satan watched him from thence warily as he
+fussed about the studio, sorting brushes, scraping a neglected palette,
+taking down a dressing gown, drawing on a pair of easy slippers,
+opening his door and depositing his boots outside. When he returned the
+music had begun again.
+
+“What on earth does she mean by singing at a quarter to one o’clock?”
+he thought, and went once more to the window. “Why—that is really
+beautiful.”
+
+Oui! c’est un rêve, Oui! c’est un rêve doux d’amour.
+    La nuit lui prête son mystère,
+Il doit finir—il doit finir avec le jour.
+
+
+The song of Hélène ceased. Gethryn leaned out and gazed down at the
+lighted windows under his. Suddenly the light went out. He heard
+someone open the window, and straining his eyes, could just discern the
+dim outline of a head and shoulders, unmistakably those of a girl. She
+had perched herself on the windowsill. Presently she began to hum the
+air, then to sing it softly. Gethryn waited until the words came again:
+
+Oui, c’est un rêve—
+
+
+and then struck in with a very sweet baritone:
+
+Oui, c’est un rêve—
+
+
+She never moved, but her voice swelled out fresh and clear in answer to
+his, and a really charming duet came to a delightful finish. Then she
+looked up. Gethryn was reckless now.
+
+“Shall it be, then, only a dream?” he laughed. Was it his fate that
+made him lean out and whisper, “Is it, then, only a dream, Hélène?”
+
+There was nothing but the rustling of the chestnut branches to answer
+his folly. Not another sound. He was half inclined to shut his window
+and go in, well satisfied with the silence and beginning to feel
+sleepy. All at once from below came a faint laugh, and as he leaned out
+he caught the words:
+
+“Paris, Hélène bids you good night!”
+
+“Ah, Belle Hélène!”—he began, but was cut short by the violent opening
+of a window opposite.
+
+“Bon dieu de bon dieu!” howled an injured gentleman. “To sleep is
+impossible, tas d’imbeciles!—”
+
+And Hélène’s window closed with a snap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The day broke hot and stifling. The first sunbeams which chased the fog
+from bridge and street also drove the mists from the cool thickets of
+the Luxembourg Garden, and revealed groups of dragoons picketed in the
+shrubbery.
+
+“Dragoons in the Luxembourg!” cried the gamins to each other. “What
+for?”
+
+But even the gamins did not know—yet.
+
+At the great Ateliers of Messieurs Bouguereau and Lefebvre the first
+day of the week is the busiest—and so, this being Monday, the studios
+were crowded.
+
+The heat was suffocating. The walls, smeared with the refuse of a
+hundred palettes, fairly sizzled as they gave off a sickly odor of
+paint and turpentine. Only two poses had been completed, but the tired
+models stood or sat, glistening with perspiration. The men drew and
+painted, many of them stripped to the waist. The air was heavy with
+tobacco smoke and the respiration of some two hundred students of half
+as many nationalities.
+
+“Dieu! quel chaleur!” gasped a fat little Frenchman, mopping his
+clipped head and breathing hard.
+
+“Clifford,” he inquired in English, “ees eet zat you haf a so
+great—a—heat chez vous?”
+
+Clifford glanced up from his easel. “Heat in New York? My dear
+Deschamps, this is nothing.”
+
+The other eyed him suspiciously.
+
+“You know New York is the capital of Galveston?” said Clifford,
+slapping on a brush full of color and leaning back to look at it.
+
+The Frenchman didn’t know, but he nodded.
+
+“Well, that’s very far south. We suffer—yes, we suffer, but our poor
+poultry suffer more.”
+
+“Ze—ze pooltree? Wat eez zat?”
+
+Clifford explained.
+
+“In summer the fire engines are detailed to throw water on the hens to
+keep their feathers from singeing. Singeing spoils the flavor.”
+
+The Frenchman growled.
+
+“One of our national institutions is the ‘Hen’s Mutual Fire Insurance
+Company,’ supported by the Government,” added Clifford.
+
+Deschamps snorted.
+
+“That is why,” put in Rhodes, lazily dabbing at his canvas, “why we
+seldom have omelets—the eggs are so apt to be laid fried.”
+
+“How, zen, does eet make ze chicken?” spluttered the Frenchman, his
+wrath rising.
+
+“Our chickens are also—” a torrent of bad language from Monsieur
+Deschamps, and a howl of execration from all the rest, silenced
+Clifford.
+
+“It’s too hot for that sort of thing,” pleaded Elliott.
+
+“Idiot!” muttered the Frenchman, shooting ominous glances at the bland
+youth, who saw nothing.
+
+“C’est l’heure,” cried a dozen voices, and the tired model stretched
+his cramped limbs. Clifford rose, dropped a piece of charcoal down on
+his neighbor’s neck, and stepping across Thaxton’s easel, walked over
+to Gethryn.
+
+“Rex, have you heard the latest?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“The Ministry has fallen again, and the Place de la Concorde is filled
+with people yelling, A bas la Republique! Vive le General Boulanger!”
+
+Gethryn looked serious. Clifford went on, speaking low.
+
+“I saw a troop of cavalry going over this morning, and old Forain told
+me just now that the regiments at Versailles were ready to move at a
+minute’s notice.”
+
+“I suppose things are lively across the river,” said Gethryn.
+
+“Exactly, and we’re all going over to see the fun. You’ll come?”
+
+“Oh, I’ll come. Hello! here’s Rhodes; tell him.”
+
+Rhodes knew. Ministry fallen. Mob at it some more. Been fired on by the
+soldiers once. Pont Neuf and the Arc guarded by cannon. Carleton came
+hurrying up.
+
+“The French students are loose and raising Cain. We’re going to assist
+at the show. Come along.”
+
+“No,” growled Braith, and looked hard at Rex.
+
+“Oh, come along! We’re all going,” said Carleton, “Elliott, Gethryn,
+the Colossus, Thaxton, Clifford.”
+
+Braith turned sharply to Rex. “Yes, going to get your heads smashed by
+a bullet or carved by a saber. What for? What business is it of yours?”
+
+“Braith thinks he looks like a Prussian and is afraid,” mused Clifford.
+
+“Come on, won’t you, Braith?” said Gethryn.
+
+“Are you going?”
+
+“Why not?” said the other, uneasily, “and why won’t you?”
+
+“No French mob for me,” answered Braith, quietly. “You fellows had
+better keep away. You don’t know what you may get into. I saw the
+siege, and the man who was in Paris in ’71 has seen enough.”
+
+“Oh, this is nothing serious,” urged Clifford. “If they fire I shall
+leg it; so will the lordly Reginald; so will we all.”
+
+Braith dug his hands into the pockets of his velveteens, and shook his
+head.
+
+“No,” he said, “I’ve got some work to do. So have you, Rex.”
+
+“Come on, we’re off,” shouted Thaxton from the stairway.
+
+Clifford seized Gethryn’s arm, Elliott and Rhodes crowded on behind. A
+small earthquake shock followed as the crowd of students launched
+itself down the stairs.
+
+“Braith doesn’t approve of my cutting the atelier so often,” said
+Gethryn, “and he’s right. I ought to have stayed.”
+
+“Reggy going to back out?” cooed Clifford.
+
+“No,” said Rex. “Here’s Rhodes with a cab.”
+
+“It’s too hot to walk,” gasped Rhodes. “I secured this. It was all I
+could get. Pile in.”
+
+Rex sprang up beside the driver.
+
+“Allons!” he cried, “to the Obelisk!”
+
+“But, monsieur—” expostulated the cabby, “it is today the revolution. I
+dare not.”
+
+“Go on, I tell you,” roared Rhodes. “Clifford, take his reins away if
+he refuses.”
+
+Clifford made a snatch at them, but was repulsed by the indignant
+cabby.
+
+“Go on, do you hear?” shouted the Colossus. The cabman looked at
+Gethryn.
+
+“Go on!” laughed Rex, “there is no danger.”
+
+Jehu lifted his shoulders to the level of his shiny hat, and giving the
+reins a jerk, muttered, “Crazy English!—Heu—heu—Cocotte!”
+
+In twenty minutes they had arrived at the bridge opposite the Palais
+Bourbon.
+
+“By Jove!” said Gethryn, “look at that crowd! The Place de la Concorde
+is black with them!”
+
+The cab stopped with a jolt. Half a dozen policemen stepped into the
+street. Two seized the horses’ heads.
+
+“The bridge is forbidden to vehicles, gentlemen,” they said,
+courteously. “To cross, one must descend.”
+
+Clifford began to argue, but Elliott stopped him.
+
+“It’s only a step,” said he, paying the relieved cabby. “Come ahead!”
+
+In a moment they were across the bridge and pushing into the crowd,
+single file.
+
+“What a lot of troops and police!” said Elliott, panting as he elbowed
+his way through the dense masses. “I tell you, the mob are bent on
+mischief.”
+
+The Place de la Concorde was packed and jammed with struggling, surging
+humanity. Pushed and crowded up to the second fountain, clinging in
+bunches to the Obelisk, overrunning the first fountain, and covering
+the pedestals of the “Cities of France,” it heaved, shifted, undulated
+like clusters of swarming ants.
+
+In the open space about the second fountain was the Prefect of the
+Seine, surrounded by a staff of officers. He looked worn and anxious as
+he stood mopping the perspiration from his neck and glancing nervously
+at his men, who were slowly and gently rolling back the mob. On the
+bridge a battalion of red-legged soldiers lounged, leaning on their
+rifles. To the right were long lines of cavalry in shining helmets and
+cuirasses. The men sat motionless in their saddles, their armor
+striking white fire in the fierce glow of the midday sun. Ever and anon
+the faint flutter of a distant bugle announced the approach of more
+regiments.
+
+Among the shrubbery of the Gardens, a glimmer of orange and blue
+betrayed the lurking presence of the Guards. Down the endless vistas of
+the double and quadruple rows of trees stretching out to the Arc, and
+up the Cour la Reine, long lines of scarlet were moving toward the
+central point, the Place de la Concorde. The horses of a squadron of
+hussars pawed and champed across the avenue, the men, in their pale
+blue jackets, presenting a cool relief to the universal glare. The
+Champs Elysees was deserted, excepting by troops. Not a civilian was to
+be seen on the bridge. In front of the Madeleine three points of fire
+blazed and winked in the sun. They were three cannon.
+
+Suddenly, over by the Obelisk, began a hoarse murmur, confused and dull
+at first, but growing louder, until it swelled into a deafening roar.
+“Long live Boulanger!” “Down with Ferry!” “Long live the Republic!” As
+the great wave of sound rose over the crowd and broke sullenly against
+the somber masses of the Palace of the Bourbons, a thin, shrill cry
+from the extreme right answered, “Vive la Commune!” Elliott laughed
+nervously.
+
+“They’ll charge those howling Belleville anarchists!”
+
+Clifford began, in pure deviltry, to whistle the Carmagnole.
+
+“Do you want to get us all into hot water?” whispered Thaxton.
+
+“Monsieur is of the Commune?” inquired a little man, suavely.
+
+And, the devil still prompting Clifford, he answered: “Because I
+whistled the Carmagnole? Bah!”
+
+The man scowled.
+
+“Look here, my friend,” said Clifford, “my political principles are
+yours, and I will be happy to drink at your expense.”
+
+The other Americans exchanged looks, and Elliott tried to check
+Clifford’s folly before it was too late.
+
+“Espion!” muttered the Frenchman, adding, a little louder, “Sale
+Allemand!”
+
+Gethryn looked up startled.
+
+“Keep cool,” whispered Thaxton; “if they think we’re Germans we’re done
+for.”
+
+Carleton glanced nervously about. “How they stare,” he whispered.
+“Their eyes pop out of their heads as if they saw Bismarck.”
+
+There was an ominous movement among the throng.
+
+“Vive l’Anarchie! A bas les Prussiens!” yelled a beetle-browed Italian.
+“A bas les etrangers!”
+
+“My friend,” said Clifford, pleasantly, “you’ve got a very vile accent
+yourself.”
+
+“You’re a Prussian!” screamed the man.
+
+Every one was now looking at them. Gethryn began to fume.
+
+“I’ll thrash that cur if he says Prussian again,” said he.
+
+“You’ll keep quiet, that’s what you’ll do,” growled Thaxton, looking
+anxiously at Rhodes.
+
+“Yes, you will!” said the Colossus, very pale.
+
+“Pig of a Prussian!” shouted a fearful-looking hag, planting herself in
+front of Clifford with arms akimbo and head thrust forward. “Pig of a
+Prussian spy!”
+
+She glanced at her supporters, who promptly applauded.
+
+“Ah—h—h!” she screamed, her little green eyes shining like a
+tiger’s—“Spy! German spy!”
+
+“Madam,” said Clifford, politely, “go and wash yourself.”
+
+“Hold your cursed tongue, Clifford!” whispered Thaxton. “Do you want to
+be torn to pieces?”
+
+Suddenly a man behind Gethryn sprang at his back, and then, amazed and
+terrified at his own daring, yelled lustily for help. Gethryn shook him
+off as he would a fly, but the last remnant of self-control went at the
+same time, and, wheeling, he planted a blow square in the fellow’s
+neck. The man fell like an ox. In an instant the mob was upon them.
+Thaxton received a heavy kick in the ribs, which sent him reeling
+against Carleton. Clifford knocked two men down in as many blows, and,
+springing back, stood guard over Thaxton until he could struggle to his
+feet again. Elliott got a sounding thwack on the nose, which he neatly
+returned, adding one on the eye for interest. Gethryn and Carleton
+fought back to back. Rhodes began by half strangling a son of the
+Commune and then flung him bodily among his howling compatriots.
+
+“Good Heavens,” gasped Rhodes, “we can’t keep this up!” And raising his
+voice, he cried with all the force of his lungs, “Help! This way,
+police!” A shot answered him, and a man, clapping his hands to his
+face, tilted heavily forward, the blood spurting between his fingers.
+
+Then a terrible cry arose, a din in which the Americans caught the
+clanging of steel and the neighing of horses. A man was hurled
+violently against Gethryn, who, losing in turn his balance, staggered
+and fell. Rising to his knees, he saw a great foam-covered horse
+rearing almost over him, and a red-faced rider in steel helmet and
+tossing plume slashing furiously among the crowd. Next moment he was
+dragged to his feet and back into the flying mob.
+
+“Look out,” panted Thaxton, “the cavalry—they’ve charged—run!” Gethryn
+glanced over his shoulder. All along the edge of the frantic,
+panic-stricken crowd the gleaming crests of the cavalry surged and
+dashed like a huge wave of steel.
+
+Cries, groans, and curses rose and were drowned in the thunder of the
+charging horses and the clashing of weapons.
+
+“Spy!” screamed a voice in his ear. Gethryn turned, but the fellow was
+legging it for safety.
+
+Suddenly he saw a woman who, pushed and crowded by the mob, stumbled
+and fell. In a moment he was by her side, bent over to raise her, was
+hurled upon his face, rose blinded by dust and half-stunned, but
+dragging her to her feet with him.
+
+Swept onward by the rush, knocked this way and that, he still managed
+to support the dazed woman, and by degrees succeeded in controlling his
+own course, which he bent toward the Obelisk. As he neared the goal of
+comparative safety, exhausted, he suffered himself and the woman to be
+carried on by the rush. Then a blinding flash split the air in front,
+and the crash of musketry almost in his face hurled him back.
+
+Men threw up their hands and sank in a heap or spun round and pitched
+headlong. For a moment he swayed in the drifting smoke. A blast of hot,
+sickening air enveloped him. Then a dull red cloud seemed to settle
+slowly, crushing, grinding him into the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+When Gethryn unclosed his eyes the dazzling sunlight almost blinded
+him. A thousand grotesque figures danced before him, a hot red vapor
+seemed to envelop him. He felt a dull pain in his ears and a numb
+sensation about the legs. Gradually he recalled the scene that had just
+passed; the flying crowd lashed by that pitiless iron scourge; the
+cruel panic; the mad, suffocating rush; and then that crash of thunder
+which had crushed him.
+
+He lay quite still, not offering to move. A strange languor seemed to
+weigh down his very heart. The air reeked with powder smoke. Not a
+breath was stirring.
+
+Presently the numbness in his knees changed to a hot, pricking throb.
+He tried to move his legs, but found he could not. Then a sudden
+thought sent the blood with a rush to his heart. Perhaps he no longer
+had any legs! He remembered to have heard of legless men whose phantom
+members caused them many uncomfortable sensations. He certainly had a
+dull pain where his legs belonged, but the question was, had he legs
+also? The doubt was too much, and with a faint cry he struggled to
+rise.
+
+“The devil!” exclaimed a voice close to his head, and a pair of
+startled eyes met his own. “ _The_ devil!” repeated the owner of the
+eyes, as if to a apostrophize some particular one. He was a bird-like
+little fellow, with thin canary-colored hair and eyebrows and colorless
+eyes, and he was seated upon a campstool about two feet from Gethryn’s
+head.
+
+He blinked at Gethryn. “These Frenchmen,” said he, “have as many lives
+as a cat.”
+
+“Thanks!” said Gethryn, smiling faintly.
+
+“An Englishman! The devil!” shouted the pale-eyed man, hopping in haste
+from his campstool and dropping a well-thumbed sketching-block as he
+did so.
+
+“Don’t be an ass,” suggested Gethryn; “you’d much better help me to get
+up.”
+
+“Look here,” cried the other, “how was I to know you were not done
+for?”
+
+“What’s the matter with me?” said Gethryn. “Are my—my legs gone?”
+
+The little man glanced at Gethryn’s shoes.
+
+No, they’re all there, unless you originally had more than the normal
+number—in fact I’m afraid—I think you’re all right.
+
+Gethryn stared at him.
+
+“And what the devil am I to do with this sketch?” he continued, kicking
+the fallen block. “I’ve been at it for an hour. It isn’t half bad, you
+know. I was going to call it ‘Love in Death.’ It was for the _London
+Illustrated Mirror._”
+
+Gethryn lay quite still. He had decided the little fellow was mad.
+
+“Dead in each other’s arms!” continued the stranger, sentimentally.
+“She so fair—he so brave—”
+
+Gethryn sprang up impatiently, but only a little way. Something held
+him down and he fell back.
+
+“Do you want to get up?” asked the stranger.
+
+“I should rather think so.”
+
+The other bent down and placed his hands under Gethryn’s arms, and—half
+helped, half by his own impatient efforts—Rex sat up, leaning against
+the other man. A sharp twinge shot through the numbness of his legs,
+and his eyes, seeking the cause, fell upon the body of a woman. She lay
+across his knees, apparently dead. Rex remembered her now for the first
+time.
+
+“Lift her,” he said weakly.
+
+The little man with some difficulty succeeded in moving the body; then
+Gethryn, putting one arm around the other’s neck, struggled up. He was
+stiff, and toppled about a little, but before long he was pretty steady
+on his feet.
+
+“The woman,” he said, “perhaps she is not dead.”
+
+“Dead she is,” said the Artist of the _Mirror_ cheerfully, gathering up
+his pencils, which lay scattered on the steps of the pedestal. He
+leaned over the little heap of crumpled clothing.
+
+“Shot, I fancy,” he muttered.
+
+Gethryn, feeling his strength returning and the circulation restored to
+his limbs, went over to the place where she lay.
+
+“Have you a flask?” he asked. The little Artist eyed him suspiciously.
+
+“Are you a newspaperman?”
+
+“No, an art student.”
+
+“Nothing to do with newspapers?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I don’t drink,” said the queer little person.
+
+“I never said you did,” said Gethryn. “Have you a flask, or haven’t
+you?”
+
+The stranger slowly produced one, and poured a few drops into his pink
+palm.
+
+“We may as well try,” he said, and began to chafe her forehead. “Here,
+take the whiskey—let it trickle, so, between her teeth. Don’t spill any
+more than you can help,” he added.
+
+“Has she been shot?” asked Gethryn.
+
+“Crushed, maybe.”
+
+“Poor little thing, look at her roll of music!” said Gethryn, wiping a
+few drops of blood from her pallid face, and glancing compassionately
+at the helpless, dust-covered figure.
+
+“I’m afraid it’s no use—”
+
+“Give her some more whiskey, quick!” interrupted the stranger.
+
+Gethryn tremblingly poured a few more drops between the parted lips. A
+faint color came into her temples. She moved, shivered from head to
+foot, and then, with a half-choked sob, opened her eyes.
+
+“Mon Dieu, comme je souffre!”
+
+“Where do you suffer?” said Gethryn gently.
+
+“The arm; I think it is broken.”
+
+Gethryn stood up and looked about for help. The Place was nearly
+deserted. The blue-jacketed hussars were still standing over by the
+Avenue, and an occasional heavy, red-faced cuirassier walked his
+sweating horse slowly up and down the square. A few policemen lounged
+against the river wall, chatting with the sentries, and far down the
+dusty Rue Royale, the cannon winked and blinked before the Church of
+the Madeleine.
+
+The rumble of wheels caused him to turn. A clumsy, blue-covered wagon
+drew up at the second fountain. It was a military ambulance. A
+red-capped trooper sprang down jingling from one of the horses, and was
+joined by two others who had followed the ambulance and who also
+dismounted. Then the three approached a group of policemen who were
+lifting something from the pavement. At the same moment he heard voices
+beside him, and turning, found that the girl had risen and was sitting
+on the campstool, her head leaning against the little stranger’s
+shoulder.
+
+An officer stood looking down at her. His boots were spotless. The band
+of purple on his red and gold cap showed that he was a surgeon.
+
+“Can we be of any assistance to madame?” he inquired.
+
+“I was looking for a cab,” said Gethryn, “but perhaps she is not strong
+enough to be taken to her home.”
+
+A frightened look came into the girl’s face and she glanced anxiously
+at the ambulance. The surgeon knelt quietly beside her.
+
+“Madame is not seriously hurt,” he said, after a rapid examination.
+“The right arm is a little strained, but it will be nothing, I assure
+you, Madame; a matter of a few days, that is all.”
+
+He rose and stood brushing the knees of his trousers with his
+handkerchief. “Monsieur is a foreigner?”
+
+Gethryn smiled. “The accent?”
+
+“On the contrary, I assure you, Monsieur,” cried the officer with more
+politeness than truth. He eyed the ambulance. “The people of Paris have
+learned a lesson today,” he said.
+
+A trooper clattered up, leading an officer’s horse, and dismounted,
+saluting. The young surgeon glanced at his watch.
+
+“Picard,” he said, “stop a closed cab and send it here.”
+
+The trooper wheeled his horse and galloped away across the square, and
+the officer turned to the others.
+
+“Madame, I trust, will soon recover,” he said courteously. “Madame,
+messieurs, I have the honor to salute you.” And with many a clink and
+jingle, he sprang into the saddle and clattered away in the wake of the
+slowly moving ambulance.
+
+At the corner of the Rue Royale, Gethryn saw the trooper stop a cab and
+point to the Obelisk. He went over and asked the canary-colored
+stranger, “Will you take her home, or shall I?”
+
+“Why, you, of course; you brought her here.”
+
+“No, I didn’t. I never saw her until I noticed her being pushed about
+by the crowd.” He caught the girl’s eye and colored furiously, hoping
+she did not suspect the nature of their discussion. Before her
+helplessness it seemed so brutal.
+
+The cab drew up before the Obelisk and a gruff voice cried, “V’la!
+M’ssieurs!—’dames!”
+
+“Put your arm on my shoulder—so,” said Gethryn, and the two men raised
+her gently. Once in the cab, she sank back, looking limp and white.
+Gethryn turned sharply to the other man.
+
+“Shall I go?”
+
+“Rather,” replied the little stranger, pleasantly.
+
+Opening his coat in haste, he produced a square of pasteboard. “My
+card,” he said, offering one to Gethryn, who bowed and fumbled in his
+pockets. As usual, his card-case was in another coat.
+
+“I’m sorry I have none,” he said at length, “but my name is Reginald
+Gethryn, and I shall give myself the pleasure of calling to thank you
+for—”
+
+“For nothing,” laughed the other, “excepting for the sketch, which you
+may have when you come to see me.”
+
+“Thanks, and au revoir,” glancing at the card. “Au revoir, Mr
+Bulfinch.”
+
+He was giving the signal to the cabby when his new acquaintance stopped
+him.
+
+“You’re quite sure—you—er—don’t know any newspapermen?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“All right—all right—and—er—just don’t mention about my having a flask,
+if you do meet any of them. I—er—keep it for others. I don’t drink.”
+
+“Certainly not,” began Gethryn, but Mr T. Hoppley Bulfinch had seized
+his campstool and trotted away across the square.
+
+Gethryn leaned into the cab.
+
+“Will you give me your address?” he asked gently.
+
+“Rue Monsieur le Prince—430—” she whispered. “Do you know where it is?”
+
+“Yes,” said Gethryn. It was his own number.
+
+“Rue Monsieur le Prince 430”, he repeated to the driver, and stepping
+in, softly shut the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Rain was falling steadily. The sparrows huddled under the eaves, or
+hopped disconsolately along the windowsills, uttering short,
+ill-tempered chirps. The wind was rising, blowing in quick, sharp gusts
+and sweeping the forest of rain spears, rank upon rank, in mad dashes
+against the glass-roofed studio.
+
+Gethryn, curled up in a corner of his sofa, listlessly watched the
+showers of pink and white blossoms which whirled and eddied down from
+the rocking chestnuts, falling into the windy court in little heaps.
+One or two stiff-legged flies crawled rheumatically along the window
+glass, only to fall on their backs and lie there buzzing.
+
+The two bull pups had silently watched the antics of these maudlin
+creatures, but their interest changed to indignation when one sodden
+insect attempted a final ascent and fell noisily upon the floor under
+their very noses. Then they rose as one dog and leaped madly upon the
+intruder, or meant to; but being pups, and uncertain in their
+estimation of distances, they brought up with startled yelps against
+the wall. Gethryn took them in his arms, where they found consolation
+in chewing the buttons off his coat. The parrot had driven the raven
+nearly crazy by turning upside down and staring at him for fifteen
+minutes of insulting silence. Mrs Gummidge was engaged in a matronly
+and sedate toilet, interrupting herself now and then to bestow a
+critical glance upon the parrot. She heartily approved of his attitude
+toward the raven, and although the old cynic cared nothing for Mrs
+Gummidge’s opinion, he found a sour satisfaction in warning her of her
+enemy’s hostile intentions. This he always did with a croak, causing
+Mrs Gummidge to look up just in time, and the raven to hop back
+disconcerted.
+
+The rain beat a constant tattoo on the roof, and this, mingling with
+the drowsy purr of the cat, who was now marching to and fro with tail
+erect in front of Gethryn, exercised a soothing influence, and
+presently a snore so shocked the parrot that he felt obliged to relieve
+his mind by a series of intricate gymnastics upon his perch.
+
+Gethryn was roused by a violent hammering on his door. The room had
+grown dark, and night had come on while he slept.
+
+“All right—coming,” he shouted, groping his way across the room.
+Slipping the bolt, he opened the door and looked out, but could see
+nothing in the dark hallway. Then he felt himself seized and hugged and
+dragged back into his studio, where he was treated to a heavy slap on
+the shoulder. Then someone struck a match and presently, by the light
+of a candle, he saw Clifford and Elliott, and farther back in the shade
+another form which he thought he knew.
+
+Clifford began, “Here you are! We thought you were dead—killed through
+my infernal fooling.” He turned very red, and stammered, “Tell him,
+Elliott.”
+
+“Why, you see,” said Elliott, “we’ve been hunting for you high and low
+since the fight yesterday afternoon. Clifford was nearly crazy. He said
+it was his fault. We went to the Morgue and then to the hospitals, and
+finally to the police—” A knock interrupted him, and a policeman
+appeared at the door.
+
+Clifford looked sheepish.
+
+“The young gentleman who is missing—this is his room?” inquired the
+policeman.
+
+“Oh, he’s found—he’s all right,” said Clifford, hurriedly. The officer
+stared.
+
+“Here he is,” said Elliott, pointing to Rex.
+
+The man transferred his stare to Gethryn, but did not offer to move.
+
+“I am the supposed deceased,” laughed Rex, with a little bow.
+
+“But how am I to know?” said the officer.
+
+“Why, here I am.”
+
+“But,” said the man, suspiciously, “I want to know how I am to know?”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Elliott, laughing.
+
+“But, Monsieur,” expostulated the officer, politely.
+
+“This is Reginald Gethryn, artist, I tell you!”
+
+The policeman shrugged his shoulders. He was noncommittal and very
+polite.
+
+“Messieurs,” he said, “my orders are to lock up this room.”
+
+“But it’s my room, I can’t spare my room,” laughed Gethryn. “From whom
+did you take your orders?”
+
+“From Monsieur the Prefect of the Seine.”
+
+“Oh, it is all right, then,” said Gethryn. “Take a seat.”
+
+He went to his desk, wrote a hasty note, and then called the man. “Read
+that, if you please, Monsieur Sergeant de Ville.”
+
+The man’s eyes grew round. “Certainly, Monsieur, I will take the note
+to the Prefect,” he said; “Monsieur will pardon the intrusion.”
+
+“Don’t mention it,” said Rex, smiling, and slipped a franc into his big
+red fist. The officer pocketed it with a demure “Merci, Monsieur,” and
+presently the clank of his bayonet died away on the stairs.
+
+“Well,” said Elliott, “you’re found.” Clifford was beginning again with
+self-reproaches and self-abasement, but Rex broke in: “You fellows are
+awfully good—I do assure you I appreciate it. But I wasn’t in any more
+danger than the rest of you. What about Thaxton and the Colossus and
+Carleton?” He grew anxious as he named them.
+
+“We all got off with no trouble at all, only we missed you—and then the
+troops fired, and they chased us over the bridge and scattered us in
+the Quarter, and we all drifted one by one into the Café des Écoles.
+And then you didn’t come, and we waited till after dinner, and finally
+came here to find your door locked—”
+
+“Oh!” burst out Clifford, “I tell you, Rex—damn it! I will express my
+feelings!”
+
+“No, you won’t,” said Rex; “drop ’em, old boy, don’t express ’em. Here
+we are—that’s enough, isn’t it, Shakespeare?”
+
+The bird had climbed to Gethryn’s shoulder and was cocking his eye
+fondly at Clifford. They were dear friends. Once he had walked up
+Clifford’s arm and had grabbed him by the ear, for which Clifford, more
+in sorrow than in anger, soaked him in cold water. Since that, their
+mutual understanding had been perfect.
+
+“Where are you going to, you old fiend?” said Clifford, tickling the
+parrot’s throat.
+
+“Hell!” shrieked the bird.
+
+“Good Heavens! I never taught him that,” said Gethryn.
+
+Clifford smiled, without committing himself.
+
+“But where were you, Rex?” asked Elliott.
+
+Rex flushed. “Hullo,” cried Clifford, “here’s Reginald blushing. If I
+didn’t know him better I’d swear there’s a woman in it.” The dark
+figure at the end of the room rose and walked swiftly over, and Rex saw
+that it was Braith, as he had supposed.
+
+“I swear I forgot him,” laughed Elliott. “What a queer bird you are,
+Braith, squatting over there as silent as a stuffed owl!”
+
+“He has been walking his legs off after you,” began Clifford, but
+Braith cut him short with a brusque—
+
+“Where were you, Rex?”
+
+Gethryn winced. “I’d rather—I think”—he began, slowly—
+
+“Excuse me—it’s not my business,” growled Braith, throwing himself into
+a seat and beginning to rub Mrs Gummidge the wrong way. “Confound the
+cat!” he added, examining some red parallel lines which suddenly
+decorated the back of his hand.
+
+“She won’t stand rubbing the wrong way,” said Rex, smiling uneasily.
+
+“Like the rest of us,” said Elliott.
+
+“More fool he who tries it,” said Braith, and looked at Gethryn with an
+affectionate smile that made him turn redder than before.
+
+“Rex,” began Clifford again, with that fine tact for which he was
+celebrated, “own up! You spent last night warbling under the windows of
+Lisette.”
+
+“Or Frisette,” said Elliott, “or Cosette.”
+
+“Or Babette, Lisette, Frisette, Cosette, Babette!” chanted the two
+young men in a sort of catch.
+
+Braith so seldom swore, that the round oath with which he broke into
+their vocal exercises stopped them through sheer astonishment. But
+Clifford, determined on self-assertion and loving an argument,
+especially out of season, turned on Braith and began:
+
+“Why should not Youth love?”
+
+“Love! Bah!” said Braith.
+
+“Why Bah?” he persisted, stimulated by the disgust of Braith. “Now if a
+man—take Elliott, for example—”
+
+“Take yourself,” cried the other.
+
+“Well—myself, for example. Suppose when my hours of weary toil are
+over—returning to my lonely cell, I encounter the blue eyes of Ninette
+on the way, or the brown eyes of Cosette, or perhaps the black eyes
+of—”
+
+Braith stamped impatiently.
+
+“Lisette,” said Clifford, sweetly. “Why should I not refresh my
+drooping spirits by adoring Lisette—Cos—- ”
+
+“Oh, come, you said that before,” said Gethryn. “You’re getting to be a
+bore, Clifford.”
+
+“You at least can no longer reproach me,” said the other, with a quick
+look that increased Gethryn’s embarrassment.
+
+“Let him talk his talk of bewitching grisettes, and gay students,” said
+Braith, more angry than Rex had ever seen him. “He’s never content
+except when he’s dangling after some fool worse than himself. Damn this
+‘Bohemian love’ rot! I’ve been here longer than you have, Clifford,” he
+said, suddenly softening and turning half apologetically to the latter,
+who nodded to intimate that he hadn’t taken offense. “I’ve seen all
+that shabby romance turn into such reality as you wouldn’t like to
+face. I’ve seen promising lives go out in ruin and disgrace—here in
+this very street—in this very house—lives that started exactly on the
+lines that you are finding so mighty pleasant just now.”
+
+Clifford was in danger of being silenced. That would never do.
+
+“Papa Braith,” he smiled, “is it that you too have been through the
+mill? Shall I present your compliments to the miller? I’m going. Come,
+Elliott.”
+
+Elliott took up his hat and followed.
+
+“Braith,” he said, “we’ll drink your health as we go through the mill.”
+
+“Remember that the mill grinds slowly but surely,” said Braith.
+
+“He speaks in parables,” laughed Clifford, halfway downstairs, and the
+two took up the catch they had improvised, singing,
+“Lisette—Cosette—Ninette—” in thirds more or less out of tune, until
+Gethryn shut the door on the last echoes that came up from the hall
+below.
+
+Gethryn came back and sat down, and Braith took a seat beside him, but
+neither spoke. Braith had his pipe and Rex his cigarette.
+
+When the former was ready, he began to speak. He could not conceal the
+effort it cost him, but that wore away after he had been talking a
+while.
+
+“Rex,” he began, “when I say that we are friends, I mean, for my own
+part, that you are more to me than any man alive; and now I am going to
+tell you my story. Don’t interrupt me. I have only just courage enough;
+if any of it oozes out, I may not be able to go on. Well, I have been
+through the mill. Clifford was right. They say it is a phase through
+which all men must pass. I say, must or not, if you pass through it you
+don’t come out without a stain. You’re never the same man after. Don’t
+imagine I mean that I was brutally dissolute. I don’t want you to think
+worse of me than I deserve. I kept a clean tongue in my head—always. So
+do you. I never got drunk—neither do you. I kept a distance between
+myself and the women whom those fellows were celebrating in song just
+now—so do you. How much is due in both of us to principle, and how much
+to fastidiousness, Rex? I found out for myself at last, and perhaps
+your turn will not be long in coming. After avoiding entanglements for
+just three years—” He looked at Rex, who dropped his head—“I gave in to
+a temptation as coarse, vulgar and silly as any I had ever despised.
+Why? Heaven knows. She was as vulgar a leech as ever fastened on a calf
+like myself. But I didn’t think so then. I was wildly in love with her.
+She said she was madly in love with me.” Braith made a grimace of such
+disgust that Rex would have laughed, only he saw in time that it was
+self-disgust which made Braith’s mouth look so set and hard.
+
+“I wanted to marry her. She wouldn’t marry me. I was not rich, but what
+she said was: ‘One hates one’s husband.’ When I say vulgar, I don’t
+mean she had vulgar manners. She was as pretty and trim and clever—as
+the rest of them. An artist, if he sees all that really exists,
+sometimes also sees things which have no existence at all. Of these
+were the qualities with which I invested her—the moral and mental
+correspondencies to her blonde skin and supple figure. She justified my
+perspicacity one day by leaving me for a loathsome little Jew. The last
+time I heard of her she had been turned out of a gambling hell in his
+company. His name is Emanuel Pick. Is not this a shabby romance? Is it
+not enough to make a self-respecting man hang his head—to know that he
+has once found pleasure in the society of the mistress of Mr Emanuel
+Pick?”
+
+A long silence followed, during which the two men smoked, looking in
+opposite directions. At last Braith reached over and shook the ashes
+out of his pipe. Rex lighted a fresh cigarette at the same time, and
+their eyes met with a look of mutual confidence and goodwill. Braith
+spoke again, firmly this time.
+
+“God keep you out of the mire, Rex; you’re all right thus far. But it
+is my solemn belief that an affair of that kind would be your ruin as
+an artist; as a man.”
+
+“The Quarter doesn’t regard things in that light,” said Gethryn, trying
+hard to laugh off the weight that oppressed him.
+
+“The Quarter is a law unto itself. Be a law unto yourself, Rex—Good
+night, old chap.”
+
+“Good night, Braith,” said Gethryn slowly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Thirion’s at six pm. Madame Thirion, neat and demure, sat behind her
+desk; her husband, in white linen apron and cap, scuttled back and
+forth shouting, “Bon! Bon!” to the orders that came down the call
+trumpet. The waiters flew crazily about, and cries went up for “Pierre”
+and “Jean” and “green peas and fillet.”
+
+The noise, smoke, laughter, shouting, rattle of dishes, the penetrating
+odor of burnt paper and French tobacco, all proclaimed the place a
+Latin Quarter restaurant. The English and Americans ate like civilized
+beings and howled like barbarians. The Germans, when they had napkins,
+tucked them under their chins. The Frenchmen—well! they often agreed
+with the hated Teuton in at least one thing; that knives were made to
+eat with. But which of the four nationalities exceeded the others in
+turbulence and bad language would be hard to say.
+
+Clifford was eating his chop and staring at the blonde adjunct of a
+dapper little Frenchman.
+
+“Clifford,” said Carleton, “stop that.”
+
+“I’m mesmerizing her,” said Clifford. “It’s a case of hypnotism.”
+
+The girl, who had been staring back at Clifford, suddenly shrugged her
+shoulders, and turning to her companion, said aloud:
+
+“How like a monkey, that foreigner!”
+
+Clifford withdrew his eyes in a hurry, amid a roar of laughter from the
+others. He was glad when Braith’s entrance caused a diversion.
+
+“Hullo, Don Juan! I see you, Lothario! Drinking _again?_”
+
+Braith took it all as a matter of course, but this time failed to
+return as good as they gave. He took a seat beside Gethryn and said in
+a low tone:
+
+“I’ve just come from your house. There’s a letter from the Salon in
+your box.”
+
+Gethryn set down his wine untasted and reached for his hat.
+
+“What’s the matter, Reggy? Has Lisette gone back on you?” asked
+Clifford, tenderly.
+
+“It’s the Salon,” said Braith, as Gethryn went out with a hasty “Good
+night.”
+
+“Poor Reggy, how hard he takes it!” sighed Clifford.
+
+Gethryn hurried along the familiar streets with his heart in his boots
+sometimes, and sometimes in his mouth.
+
+In his box was a letter and a note addressed in pencil. He snatched
+them both, and lighting a candle, mounted the stairs, unlocked his door
+and sank breathless upon the lounge. He tore open the first envelope. A
+bit of paper fell out. It was from Braith and said:
+
+“I congratulate you either way. If you are successful I shall be as
+glad as you are. If not, I still congratulate you on the manly courage
+which you are going to show in turning defeat into victory.”
+
+
+“He’s one in a million,” thought Gethryn, and opened the other letter.
+It contained a folded paper and a card. The card was white. The paper
+read:
+
+“You are admitted to the Salon with a No. 1. My compliments.
+    J. Lefebvre”
+
+
+He ought to have been pleased, but instead he felt weak and giddy, and
+the pleasure was more like pain. He leaned against the table quite
+unstrung, his mind in a whirl. He got up and went to the window. Then
+he shook himself and walked over to his cabinet. Taking out a bunch of
+keys, he selected one and opened what Clifford called his “cellar.”
+
+Clifford knew and deplored the fact that Gethryn’s “cellar” was no
+longer open to the public. Since the day when Rex returned from
+Julien’s, tired and cross, to find a row of empty bottles on the floor
+and Clifford on the sofa conversing incoherently with himself, and had
+his questions interrupted by a maudlin squawk from the parrot—also
+tipsy—since that day Gethryn had carried the key. He now produced a
+wine glass and a dusty bottle, filled the one from the other and
+emptied it three times in rapid succession. Then he took the glass to
+the washbasin and rinsed it with great slowness and precision. Then he
+sat down and tried to think. Number One meant a mention, perhaps a
+medal. He would telegraph his aunt tomorrow. Suddenly he felt a strong
+desire to tell someone. He would go and see Braith. No, Braith was in
+the evening class at the Beaux Arts; so were the others, excepting
+Clifford and Elliott, and they were at a ball across the river.
+
+Whom could he see? He thought of the garçon. He would ring him up and
+give him a glass of wine. Alcide was a good fellow and stole very
+little. The clock struck eleven.
+
+“No, he’s gone to bed. Alcide, you’ve missed a glass of wine and a
+cigar, you early bird.”
+
+His head was clear enough now. He realized his good fortune. He had
+never been so happy in his life. He called the pups and romped with
+them until an unlucky misstep sent Mrs Gummidge, with a shriek, to the
+top of the wardrobe, whence she glared at Gethryn and spit at the
+delighted raven.
+
+The young man sat down fairly out of breath, but the pups still kept
+making charges at his legs and tumbled over themselves with barking. He
+gathered them up and carried them into his bedroom to their sleeping
+box. As he stooped to drop them in, there came a knock at his studio
+door. But when he hastened to open it, glad of company, there was no
+one there. Surprised, he turned back and saw on the floor before him a
+note. Picking it up, he took it to the lamp and read it. It was signed,
+“Yvonne Descartes.”
+
+When he had read it twice, he sat down to think. Presently he took
+something out of his waistcoat pocket and held it close to the light.
+It was a gold brooch in the shape of a fleur-de-lis. On the back was
+engraved “Yvonne.” He held it in his hand a while, and then, getting
+up, went slowly towards the door. He opened the door, closed it behind
+him and moved toward the stairs. Suddenly he started.
+
+“Braith! Is that you?”
+
+There was no answer. His voice sounded hollow in the tiled hallway.
+
+“Braith,” he said again. “I thought I heard him say ‘Rex.’” But he kept
+on to the next floor and stopped before the door of the room which was
+directly under his own. He paused, hesitated, looking up at a ray of
+light which came out from a crack in the transom.
+
+“It’s too late,” he muttered, and turned away irresolutely.
+
+A clear voice called from within, “Entrez donc, Monsieur.”
+
+He opened the door and went in.
+
+On a piano stood a shaded lamp, which threw a soft yellow light over
+everything. The first glance gave him a hasty impression of a white
+lace-covered bed and a dainty toilet table on which stood a pair of
+tall silver candlesticks; and then, as the soft voice spoke again,
+“Will Monsieur be seated?” he turned and confronted the girl whom he
+had helped in the Place de la Concorde. She lay in a cloud of fleecy
+wrappings on a lounge that was covered with a great white bearskin. Her
+blue eyes met Gethryn’s, and he smiled faintly. She spoke again:
+
+“Will Monsieur sit a little nearer? It is difficult to speak loudly—I
+have so little strength.”
+
+Gethryn walked over to the sofa and half unconsciously sank down on the
+rug which fell on the floor by the invalid’s side. He spoke as he would
+to a sick child.
+
+“I am so very glad you are better. I inquired of the concierge and she
+told me.”
+
+A slight color crept into the girl’s face. “You are so good. Ah! what
+should I have done—what can I say?” She stopped; there were tears in
+her eyes.
+
+“Please say nothing—please forget it.”
+
+“Forget!” Presently she continued, almost in a whisper, “I had so much
+to say to you, and now you are really here, I can think of nothing,
+only that you saved me.”
+
+“Mademoiselle—I beg!”
+
+She lay silent a moment more; then she raised herself from the sofa and
+held out her hand. His hand and eyes met hers.
+
+“I thank you,” she said, “I can never forget.” Then she sank back among
+the white fluff of lace and fur. “I only learned this morning,” she
+went on, after a minute, “ _who_ sat beside me all that night and
+bathed my arm, and gave me cooling drinks.”
+
+Gethryn colored. “There was no one else to take care of you. I sent for
+my friend, Doctor Ducrot, but he was out of town. Then Dr Bouvier
+promised to come, and didn’t. The concierge was ill herself—I could not
+leave you alone. You know, you were a little out of your head with
+fright and fever. I really couldn’t leave you to get on by yourself.”
+
+“No,” cried the girl, excitedly, “you could not leave me after carrying
+me out of that terrible crowd; yourself hurt, exhausted, you sat by my
+side all night long.”
+
+Gethryn laid his hand on her. “Hélène,” he said, half jesting, “I did
+what anyone else would have done under the circumstances—and
+forgotten.”
+
+She looked at him shyly. “Don’t forget,” she said.
+
+“I couldn’t forget your face,” he rashly answered, moved by the emotion
+she showed.
+
+She brightened.
+
+“Did you know me when you first saw me in the crowd?” She expected him
+to say “Yes.”
+
+“No,” he replied, “I only saw you were a woman and in danger of your
+life.”
+
+The brightness fell from her face. “Then it was all the same to you who
+I was.”
+
+He nodded. “Yes—any woman, you know.”
+
+“Old and dirty and ugly?”
+
+His hand slipped from hers. “And a woman—yes.”
+
+She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Then I wish it had been someone
+else.”
+
+“So do I, for your sake,” he answered gravely.
+
+She glanced at him, half frightened; then leaning swiftly toward him:
+
+“Forgive me; I would not change places with a queen.”
+
+“Nor I with any man!” he cried gayly. “Am I not Paris?”
+
+“And I?”
+
+“You are Hélène,” he said, laughing. “Let me see—Paris and Hélène would
+not have changed—”
+
+She interrupted him impatiently. “Words! you do not mean them. Nor do
+I, either,” she added, hastily. After that neither spoke for a while.
+Gethryn, half stretched on the big rug, idly twisting bits of it into
+curls, felt very comfortable, without troubling to ask himself what
+would come next. Presently she glanced up.
+
+“Paris, do you want to smoke?”
+
+“You don’t think I would smoke in this dainty nest?”
+
+“Please do, I like it. We are—we will be such very good friends. There
+are matches on that table in the silver box.”
+
+He shook his head, laughing. “You are too indulgent.”
+
+“I am never indulgent, excepting to myself. But I have caprices and I
+generally die when they are not indulged. This is one. Please smoke.”
+
+“Oh, in that case, with Hélène’s permission.”
+
+She laughed delightedly as he blew the rings of fragrant smoke far up
+to the ceiling. There was another long pause, then she began again:
+
+“Paris, you speak French very well.”
+
+He came from where he had been standing by the table and seated himself
+once more among the furs at her feet.
+
+“Do I, Hélène?”
+
+“Yes—but you sing it divinely.”
+
+Gethryn began to hum the air of the dream song, smiling, “Yes ’tis a
+dream—a dream of love,” he repeated, but stopped.
+
+Yvonne’s temples and throat were crimson.
+
+“Please open the window,” she cried, “it’s so warm here.”
+
+“Hélène, I think you are blushing,” said he, mischievously.
+
+She turned her head away from him. He rose and opened the window,
+leaning out a moment; his heart was beating violently. Presently he
+returned.
+
+“It’s one o’clock.”
+
+No answer.
+
+“Hélène, it’s one o’clock in the morning.”
+
+“Are you tired?” she murmured.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Nor I—don’t go.”
+
+“But it’s one o’clock.”
+
+“Don’t go yet.”
+
+He sank down irresolutely on the rug again. “I ought to go,” he
+murmured.
+
+“Are we to remain friends?”
+
+“That is for Hélène to say.”
+
+“And Hélène will leave it to Homer!”
+
+“To whom?” said Gethryn.
+
+“Monsieur Homer,” said the girl, faintly.
+
+“But that was a tragedy.”
+
+“But they were friends.”
+
+“In a way. Yes, in a way.”
+
+Gethryn tried to return to a light tone. “They fell in love, I
+believe.” No answer. “Very well,” said Gethryn, still trying to joke,
+“I will carry you off in a boat, then.”
+
+“To Troy—when?”
+
+“No, to Meudon, when you are well. Do you like the country?”
+
+“I love it,” she said.
+
+“Well, I’ll take my easel and my paints along too.”
+
+She looked at him seriously. “You are an artist—I heard that from the
+concierge.”
+
+“Yes,” said Gethryn, “I think I may claim the title tonight.”
+
+And then he told her about the Salon. She listened and brightened with
+sympathy. Then she grew silent.
+
+“Do you paint landscapes?”
+
+“Figures,” said the young man, shortly.
+
+“From models?”
+
+“Of course,” he answered, still more drily.
+
+“Draped,” she persisted.
+
+“No.”
+
+“I hate models!” she cried out, almost fiercely.
+
+“They are not a pleasing set, as a rule,” he admitted. “But I know some
+decent ones.”
+
+She shivered and shook her curly head. “Some are very pretty, I
+suppose.”
+
+“Some.”
+
+“Do you know Sarah Brown?”
+
+“Yes, I know Sarah.”
+
+“Men go wild about her.”
+
+“I never did.”
+
+Yvonne was out of humor. “Oh,” she cried, petulantly, “you are very
+cold—you Americans—like ice.”
+
+“Because we don’t run after Sarah?”
+
+“Because you are a nation of business, and—”
+
+“And brains,” said Gethryn, drily.
+
+There was an uncomfortable pause. Gethryn looked at the girl. She lay
+with her face turned from him.
+
+“Hélène!” No answer. “Yvonne—Mademoiselle!” No answer. “It’s two
+o’clock.”
+
+A slight impatient movement of the head.
+
+“Good night.” Gethryn rose. “Good night,” he repeated. He waited for a
+moment. “Good night, Yvonne,” he said, for the third time.
+
+She turned slowly toward him, and as he looked down at her he felt a
+tenderness as for a sick child.
+
+“Good night,” he said once more, and, bending over her, gently laid the
+little gold clasp in her open hand. She looked at it in surprise; then
+suddenly she leaned swiftly toward him, rested a brief second against
+him, and then sank back again. The golden fleur-de-lis glittered over
+his heart.
+
+“You will wear it?” she whispered.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then—good night.”
+
+Half unconsciously he stooped and kissed her forehead; then went his
+way. And all that night one slept until the morning broke, and one saw
+morning break, then fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+It was the first day of June. In the Luxembourg Gardens a soft breeze
+stirred the tender chestnut leaves, and blew sparkling ripples across
+the water in the Fountain of Marie de Medicis.
+
+The modest little hothouse flowers had quite recovered from the shock
+of recent transplanting and were ambitiously pushing out long spikes
+and clusters of crimson, purple and gold, filling the air with spicy
+perfume, and drawing an occasional battered butterfly, gaunt and seedy,
+from his long winter’s sleep, but still remembering the flowery days of
+last season’s brilliant debut.
+
+Through the fresh young leaves the sunshine fell, dappling the glades
+and thickets, bathing the gray walls of the Palais du Sénat, and almost
+warming into life the queer old statues of long departed royalty, which
+for so many years have looked down from the great terrace to the Palace
+of the King.
+
+Through every gate the people drifted into the gardens, and the winding
+paths were dotted and crowded with brightly-colored, slowly-moving
+groups.
+
+Here a half dozen meager, black-robed priests strolled silently amid
+the tender verdure; here a noisy crowd of children, gamboling awkwardly
+in the wake of a painted rubber ball, made day hideous with their
+yells.
+
+Now a slovenly company of dragoons shuffled by, their big shapeless
+boots covered with dust, and their whalebone plumes hanging in straight
+points to the middle of their backs; now a group of strutting students
+and cocottes passed noisily, the girls in spotless spring plumage, the
+students vying with each other in the display of blinking eyeglasses,
+huge bunchy neckties, and sleek checked trousers. Policemen, trim
+little grisettes (for whatever is said to the contrary, the grisette is
+still extant in Paris), nurse girls with turbaned heads and ugly red
+streamers, wheeling ugly red babies; an occasional stray zouave or
+turco in curt Turkish jacket and white leggings; grave old gentlemen
+with white mustache and military step; gay, baggy gentlemen from St
+Cyr, looking like newly-painted wooden soldiers; students from the
+Ecole Polytechnique; students from the Lycée St Louis in blue and red;
+students from Julien’s and the Beaux Arts with a plentiful sprinkling
+of berets and corduroy jackets; and group after group of jingling
+artillery officers in scarlet and black, or hussars and chasseurs in
+pale turquoise, strolled and idled up and down the terrace, or watched
+the toy yachts braving the furies of the great fountain.
+
+Over by the playgrounds, the Polichinel nuisance drummed and squeaked
+to an appreciative audience of tender years. The “Jeu de paume” was
+also in full swing, a truly exasperating spectacle for a modern tennis
+player.
+
+The old man who feeds the sparrows in the afternoon, and beats his wife
+at night, was intent on the former cheerful occupation, and smiled
+benevolently upon the little children who watched him, open mouthed.
+The numerous waterfowl—mallard, teal, red-head, and dusky—waddled and
+dived and fought the big mouse-colored pigeons for a share of the
+sparrow’s crumbs.
+
+A depraved and mongrel pointer, who had tugged at his chain in a wild
+endeavor to point the whole heterogeneous mass of feathered creatures
+from sparrow to swan, lost his head and howled dismally until dragged
+off by the lean-legged student who was attached to the other end of the
+chain.
+
+Gethryn, sprawling on a bench in the sunshine, turned up his nose.
+Braith grunted scornfully.
+
+A man passed in the crowd, stopped, stared, and then hastily advanced
+toward Gethryn.
+
+“You?” said Rex, smiling and shaking hands. “Mr Clifford, this is Mr
+Bulfinch; Mr Braith,”—but Mr Bulfinch was already bowing to Braith and
+offering his hand, though with a curious diminution of his first
+beaming cordiality. Braith’s constraint was even more marked. He had
+turned quite white. Bulfinch and Gethryn, who had risen to receive him,
+remained standing side by side, stranded on the shoals of an awkward
+situation. The little _Mirror_ man made a grab at a topic which he
+thought would float them off, and laid hold instead on one which upset
+them altogether.
+
+“I hope Mrs Braith is well. She met you all right at Vienna?”
+
+Braith bowed stiffly, without answering.
+
+Rex gave him a quick look, and turning on his heel, said carelessly:
+
+“I see you and Mr Braith are old acquaintances, so I won’t scruple to
+leave you with him for a moment. Bring Mr Bulfinch over to the music
+stand, Braith.” And smiling, as if he were assisting at a charming
+reunion, he led Clifford away. The latter turned, as he departed, an
+eye of delighted intelligence upon Braith.
+
+To renew his acquaintance with Mr Bulfinch was the last thing Braith
+desired, but since the meeting had been thrust upon him he thanked
+Gethryn’s tact for removing such a witness of it as Clifford would have
+been. He had no intention, however, of talking with the little _Mirror_
+man, and maintained a profound silence, smoking steadily. This conduct
+so irritated the other that he determined to force an explanation of
+the matter which seemed so distasteful to his ungracious companion. He
+certainly thought he had his own reasons for resenting the sight of
+Braith upon a high horse, and he resumed the conversation with all the
+jaunty ease which the calling of newspaper correspondent is said to
+cultivate.
+
+“I hope Mrs Braith found no difficulty in meeting you in Vienna?”
+
+“Madame was not my wife, and we did not meet in Vienna,” said Braith
+shortly.
+
+Bulfinch began to stare, and to feel a little less at ease.
+
+“She told me—that is, her courier came to me and—”
+
+“Her courier? Mr Bulfinch, will you please explain what you are talking
+about?” Braith turned square around and looked at him in a way that
+caused a still further diminution of his jauntiness and a proportionate
+increase of respect.
+
+“Oh—I’ll explain, if I know what you want explained. We were at
+Brindisi, were we not?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“On our way to Cairo?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“In the same hotel?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But I had no acquaintance with madame, and had only exchanged a word
+or two with you, when you were suddenly summoned to Paris by a
+telegram.”
+
+Braith bowed. He remembered well the false dispatch that had drawn him
+out of the way.
+
+“Well, and when you left you told her you would be obliged to give up
+going to Cairo, and asked her to meet you in Vienna, whither you would
+have to go from Paris?”
+
+“Oh, did I?”
+
+“And you recommended a courier to her whom you knew very well, and in
+whom you had great confidence.”
+
+“Ah! And what was that courier’s name?”
+
+“Emanuel Pick. I wasn’t fond of Emanuel myself,” with a sharp glance at
+Braith’s eyes, “but I supposed you knew something in his favor, or you
+would not have left—er—the lady in his charge.”
+
+Braith was silent.
+
+“I understood him to be your agent,” said the little man, cautiously.
+
+“He was not.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+A long silence followed, during which Mr Bulfinch sought and found an
+explanation of several things. After a while he said musingly:
+
+“I should like to meet Mr Pick again.”
+
+“Why should _you_ want to meet him?”
+
+“I wish to wring his nose two hundred times, one for each franc I lent
+him.”
+
+“How was that?” said Braith, absently.
+
+“It was this way. He came to me and told me what I have repeated to
+you, and that you desired madame to go on at once and wait for you in
+Vienna, which you expected to reach in a few days after her arrival.
+That you had bought tickets—one first class for madame, two second
+class for him and for her maid—before you left, and had told her you
+had placed plenty of money for the other expenses in her dressing case.
+But this morning, on looking for the money, none could be found. Madame
+was sure it had not been stolen. She thought you must have meant to put
+it there, and forgotten afterwards. If she only had a few francs, just
+to last as far as Naples! Madame was well known to the bankers on the
+Santa Lucia there! etc. Well, I’m not such an ass that I didn’t first
+see madame and get her to confirm his statement. But when she did
+confirm it, with such a charming laugh—she was very pretty—I thought
+she was a lady and your wife—”
+
+In the midst of his bitterness, Braith could not help smiling at the
+thought of Nina with a maid and a courier. He remembered the tiny
+apartment in the Latin Quarter which she had been glad to occupy with
+him until conducted by her courier into finer ones. He made a gesture
+of disgust, and his face burned with the shame of a proud man who has
+received an affront from an inferior—and who knows it to be his own
+fault.
+
+“I can at least have the satisfaction of setting that right,” he said,
+holding two notes toward the little _Mirror_ man, “and I can’t thank
+you enough for giving me the opportunity.”
+
+Bulfinch drew back and stammered, “You don’t think I spoke for that!
+You don’t think I’d have spoken at all if I had known—”
+
+“I do not. And I’m very glad you did not know, for it gives me a chance
+to clear myself. You must have thought me strangely forgetful, Mr
+Bulfinch, when the money was not repaid in due time.”
+
+“I—I didn’t relish the manner in which you met me just now, I confess,
+but I’m very much ashamed of myself. I am indeed.”
+
+“Shake hands,” said Braith, with one of his rare smiles.
+
+The notes were left in Mr Bulfinch’s fingers, and as he thrust them
+hastily out of sight, as if he truly was ashamed, he said, blinking up
+at Braith, “Do you—er—would you—may I offer you a glass of whiskey?”
+adding hastily, “I don’t drink myself.”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Braith, “I don’t mind, but I won’t drink all alone.”
+
+“Coffee is my tipple,” said the other, in a faint voice.
+
+“All right; suit yourself. But I should think that rather hot for such
+a day.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll take it iced.”
+
+“Then let us walk over to the Café by the bandstand. We shall find the
+others somewhere about.”
+
+They strolled through the grove, past the music-stand, and sat down at
+one of the little iron tables under the trees. The band of the Garde
+Republicaine was playing. Bulfinch ordered sugar and Eau de selz for
+Braith, and iced coffee for himself.
+
+Braith looked at the program: No. 1, Faust; No. 2, La Belle Hélène.
+
+“Rex ought to be here, he’s so fond of that.”
+
+Mr Bulfinch was mixing, in a surprisingly scientific manner for a man
+who didn’t drink himself, something which the French call a
+“coquetelle”; a bit of ice, a little seltzer, a slice of lemon, and
+some Canadian Club whiskey. Braith eyed the well-worn flask.
+
+“I see you don’t trust to the Café’s supplies.”
+
+“I only keep this for medicinal purposes,” said the other, blinking
+nervously, “and—and I don’t usually produce it when there are any
+newspapermen around.”
+
+“But you,” said Braith, sipping the mixture with relish, “do you take
+none yourself?”
+
+“I don’t drink,” said the other, and swallowed his coffee in such a
+hurry as to bring on a fit of coughing. Beads of perspiration clustered
+above his canary-colored eyebrows as he set down the glass with a gasp.
+
+Braith was watching the crowd. Presently he exclaimed:
+
+“There’s Rex now,” and rising, waved his glass and his cane and called
+Gethryn’s name. The people sitting at adjacent tables glanced at one
+another resignedly. “More crazy English!”
+
+“Rex! Clifford!” Braith shouted, until at last they heard him. In a few
+moments they had made their way through the crowd and sat down, mopping
+their faces and protesting plaintively against the heat.
+
+Gethryn’s glance questioned Braith, who said, “Mr Bulfinch and I have
+had the deuce of a time to make you fellows hear. You’d have been
+easier to call if you knew what sort of drink he can brew.”
+
+Clifford was already sniffing knowingly at the glass and turning looks
+of deep intelligence on Bulfinch, who responded gayly, “Hope you’ll
+have some too,” and with a sidelong blink at Gethryn, he produced the
+bottle, saying, “I don’t drink myself, as Mr Gethryn knows.”
+
+Rex said, “Certainly not,” not knowing what else to say. But the
+fondness of Clifford’s gaze was ineffable.
+
+Braith, who always hated to see Clifford look like that, turned to
+Gethryn. “Favorite of yours on the program.”
+
+Rex looked.
+
+“Oh,” he cried, “Belle Hélène.” Next moment he flushed, and feeling as
+if the others saw it, crimsoned all the deeper. This escaped Clifford,
+however, who was otherwise occupied. But he joined in the conversation,
+hoping for an argument.
+
+“Braith and Rex go in for the Meistersinger, Walküre, and all that
+rot—but I like some tune to my music.”
+
+“Well, you’re going to get it now,” said Braith; “the band are taking
+their places. Now for La Belle Hélène.” He glanced at Gethryn, who had
+turned aside and leaned on the table, shading his eyes with his
+program.
+
+The leader of the band stood wiping his mustache with one hand while he
+turned the leaves of his score with the other. The musicians came in
+laughing and chattering, munching their bit of biscuit or smacking
+their lips over lingering reminiscences of the intermission.
+
+They hung their bayonets against the wall, and at the rat-tat of
+attention, came to order, standing in a circle with bugles and
+trombones poised and eyes fixed on the little gold-mounted baton.
+
+A slow wave of the white-gloved hand, a few gentle tips of the wand,
+and then a sweep which seemed to draw out the long, rich opening chord
+of the Dream Song and set it drifting away among the trees till it lost
+itself in the rattle and clatter of the Boulevard St Michel.
+
+Braith and Bulfinch set down their glasses and listened. Clifford
+silently blew long wreaths of smoke into the branches overhead. Gethryn
+leaned heavily on the table, one hand shading his eyes.
+
+Oui c’est un rêve;
+Un rêve doux d’amour—
+
+
+The music died away in one last throb. Bulfinch sighed and blinked
+sentimentally, first on one, then on the other of his companions.
+
+Suddenly the little _Mirror_ man’s eyes bulged out, he stiffened and
+grasped Braith’s arm; his fingers were like iron.
+
+“What the deuce!” began Braith, but, following the other’s eyes, he
+became silent and stern.
+
+“Talk of the devil—do you see him—Pick?”
+
+“I see,” growled Braith.
+
+“And—and excuse me, but can that be madame? So like, and yet—”
+
+Braith leaned forward and looked steadily at a couple who were slowly
+moving toward them in deep conversation.
+
+“No,” he said at last; and leaning back in his seat he refused to speak
+again.
+
+Bulfinch chattered on excitedly, and at last he brought his fist down
+on the table at his right, where Clifford sat drawing a caricature on
+the marble top.
+
+“I’d like,” cried Bulfinch, “to take it out of his hide!”
+
+“Hello!” said Clifford, disturbed in his peaceful occupation, “whose
+hide are you going to tan?”
+
+“Nobody’s,” said Braith, sternly, still watching the couple who had now
+almost reached their group.
+
+Clifford’s start had roused Gethryn, who stirred and slowly looked up;
+at the same moment, the girl, now very near, raised her head and Rex
+gazed full into the eyes of Yvonne.
+
+Her glance fell and the color flew to her temples. Gethryn’s face lost
+all its color.
+
+“Pretty girl,” drawled Clifford, “but what a dirty little beggar she
+lugs about with her.”
+
+Pick heard and turned, his eyes falling first on Gethryn, who met his
+look with one that was worse than a kick. He glanced next at Braith,
+and then he turned green under the dirty yellow of the skin. Braith’s
+eyes seemed to strike fire; his mouth was close set. The Jew’s eyes
+shifted, only to fall on the pale, revengeful glare of T. Hoppley
+Bulfinch, who was half rising from his chair with all sorts of
+possibilities written on every feature.
+
+“Let him go,” whispered Braith, and turned his back.
+
+Bulfinch sat down, his eyes like saucers. “I’d like—but not now!” he
+sputtered in a weird whisper.
+
+Clifford had missed the whole thing. He had only eyes for the girl.
+
+Gethryn sat staring after the couple, who were at that moment passing
+the gate into the Boulevard St Michel. He saw Yvonne stop and hastily
+thrust something into the Jew’s hand, then, ignoring his obsequious
+salute, leave him and hurry down the Rue de Medicis.
+
+The next Gethryn knew, Braith was standing beside him.
+
+“Rex, will you join us at the Golden Pheasant for dinner?” was what he
+said, but his eyes added, “Don’t let people see you look like that.”
+
+“I—I—don’t know,” said Gethryn. “Yes, I think so,” with an effort.
+
+“Come along, then!” said Braith to the others, and hurried them away.
+
+Rex sat still till they were out of sight, then he got up and turned
+into the Avenue de l’Observatoire. He stopped and drank some cognac at
+a little café, and then started on, but he had no idea where he was
+going.
+
+Presently he found himself crossing a bridge, and looked up. The great
+pile of Notre Dame de Paris loomed on his right. He crossed the Seine
+and wandered on without any aim—but passing the Tour St Jacques, and
+wishing to avoid the Boulevard, he made a sharp detour to the right,
+and after long wandering through byways and lanes, he crossed the foul,
+smoky Canal St Martin, and bore again to the right—always aimlessly.
+
+Twilight was falling when his steps were arrested by fatigue. Looking
+up, he found himself opposite the gloomy mass of La Roquette prison.
+Sentinels slouched and dawdled up and down before the little painted
+sentry boxes under the great gate.
+
+Over the archway was some lettering, and Gethryn stopped to read it:
+
+La Roquette
+Prison of the Condemned
+
+
+He looked up and down the cheerless street. It was deserted save by the
+lounging sentinels and one wretched child, who crouched against the
+gateway.
+
+“Fiche moi le camp! Allons! En route!” growled one of the sentinels,
+stamping his foot and shaking his fist at the bundle of rags.
+
+Gethryn walked toward him.
+
+“What’s the matter with the little one?” he asked.
+
+The soldier dropped the butt of his rifle with a ring, and said
+deferentially:
+
+“Pardon, Monsieur, but the gamin has been here every day and all day
+for two weeks. It’s disgusting.”
+
+“Is he hungry?”
+
+“Ma foi? I can’t tell you,” laughed the sentry, shifting his weight to
+his right foot and leaning on the cross of his bayonet.
+
+“Are you hungry, little one?” called Gethryn, pleasantly.
+
+The child raised his head, with a wolfish stare, then sank it again and
+murmured: “I have seen him and touched him.”
+
+Gethryn turned to the soldier.
+
+“What does he mean by that?” he demanded.
+
+The sentry shrugged his shoulders. “He means he saw a hunchback. They
+say when one sees a hunchback and touches him, it brings good luck, if
+the hunchback is neither too old nor too young. Dame! I don’t say
+there’s nothing in it, but it can’t save Henri Rigaud.”
+
+“And who is Henri Rigaud?”
+
+“What! Monsieur has not heard of the affair Rigaud? Rigaud who did the
+double murder!”
+
+“Oh, yes! In the Faubourg du Temple.”
+
+The sentry nodded. “He dies this week.”
+
+“And the child?”
+
+“Is his.”
+
+Gethryn looked at the dirty little bundle of tatters.
+
+“No one knows the exact day set for the affair, but,” the sentry sank
+his voice to a whisper, “between you and me, I saw the widow going into
+the yard just before dinner, and Monsieur de Paris is here. That means
+tomorrow morning—click!”
+
+“The—the widow?” repeated Gethryn.
+
+“The guillotine. It will be over before this time tomorrow and the
+gamin there, who thinks the bossu will give him back his father—he’ll
+find out his mistake, all in good time—all in good time!” and
+shouldering his rifle, the sentry laughed and resumed his slouching
+walk before the gateway.
+
+Gethryn nodded to the soldier’s salute and went up to the child, who
+stood leaning sullenly against the wall.
+
+“Do you know what a franc is?” he asked.
+
+The gamin eyed him doggedly.
+
+“But I saw him,” he said.
+
+“Saw what?” said Gethryn, gently.
+
+“The bossu,” repeated the wretched infant vacantly.
+
+“See here,” said Gethryn, “listen to me. What would you do with twenty
+francs?”
+
+“Eat, all day long, forever!”
+
+Rex slipped two twenty-franc pieces into the filthy little fist.
+
+“Eat,” he murmured, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Next morning, when Clifford arrived at the Atelier of MM. Boulanger and
+Lefebvre, he found the students more excited than usual over the advent
+of a “Nouveau.”
+
+Hazing at Julien’s has assumed, of late, a comparatively mild form. Of
+course there are traditions of serious trouble in former years and a
+few fights have taken place, consequent upon the indignant resistance
+of new men to the ridiculous demands forced upon them by their
+ingenious tormentors. Still, the hazing of today is comparatively
+inoffensive, and there is not much of it. In the winter the students
+are too busy to notice a newcomer, except to make him feel strange and
+humble by their lofty scorn. But in the autumn, when the men have
+returned from their long out-of-door rest, with brush and palette, a
+certain amount of friskiness is developed, which sometimes expends
+itself upon the luckless “nouveau.” A harmless search for the
+time-honored “grand reflecteur,” an enforced song and dance, a stern
+command to tread the mazes of the shameless quadrille with an equally
+shameless model, is usually the extent of the infliction. Occasionally
+the stranger is invited to sit on a high stool and read aloud to the
+others while they work, as he would like to do himself. But sometimes,
+if a man resists these reasonable demands in a contumacious manner, he
+is “crucified.” This occurs so seldom, however, that Clifford, on
+entering the barn-like studios that morning, was surprised to see that
+a “crucifixion” was in progress.
+
+A stranger was securely strapped to the top rungs of a twenty-foot
+ladder which a crowd of Frenchmen were preparing to raise and place in
+a slanting position against the wall.
+
+“Who is it that those fellows are fooling with?” he asked.
+
+“An Englishman, and it’s about time we put a stop to it,” answered
+Elliott.
+
+When Americans or Englishmen are hazed by the French students, they
+make common cause in keeping watch that the matter does not go too far.
+
+“How many of us are here this morning?” said Clifford.
+
+“Fourteen who can fight,” said Elliott; “they only want someone to give
+the word.”
+
+Clifford buttoned his jacket and shouldered his way into the middle of
+the crowd. “That’s enough. He’s been put through enough for today,” he
+said coolly.
+
+A Frenchman, who had himself only entered the Atelier the week
+previous, laughed and replied, “We’ll put _you_ on, if you say
+anything.”
+
+There was an ominous pause. Every old student there knew Clifford to be
+one of the most skillful and dangerous boxers in the school.
+
+They looked with admiration upon their countryman. It didn’t cost
+anything to admire him. They urged him on, and he didn’t need much
+urging, for he remembered his own recent experience as a new man, and
+he didn’t know Clifford.
+
+“Go ahead,” cried this misguided student, “he’s a nouveau, and he’s
+going up!”
+
+Clifford laughed in his face. “Come along,” he called, as some dozen
+English and American students pushed into the circle and gathered round
+the prostrate Englishman.
+
+“See here, Clifford, what’s the use of interrupting?” urged a big
+Frenchman.
+
+Clifford began loosening the straps. “You know, Bonin, that we always
+do interfere when it goes as far as this against an Englishman or an
+American.” He laughed good naturedly. “There’s always been a fight over
+it before, but I hope there won’t be any today.”
+
+Bonin grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+After vainly fussing with the ropes, Clifford and the others finally
+cut them and the “nouveau” scrambled to his feet and took an attitude
+which may be seen engraved in any volume of instruction in the noble
+art of self-defense. He was an Englishman of the sandy variety.
+Orange-colored whiskers decorated a carefully scrubbed face,
+terminating in a red-brown mustache. He had blue eyes, now lighted to a
+pale green by the fire of battle, reddish-brown hair, and white hands
+spattered with orange-colored freckles. All this, together with a well
+made suit of green and yellow checks, and the seesaw accent of the
+British Empire, answered, when politely addressed, to the name of
+Cholmondeley Rowden, Esq.
+
+“I say,” he began, “I’m awfully obliged, you know, and all that; but
+I’d jolly well like to give some of these cads a jolly good licking,
+you know.”
+
+“Go in, my friend, go in!” laughed Clifford; “but next time we’ll leave
+you to hang in the air for an hour or two, that’s all.”
+
+“Damn their cheek!” began the Englishman.
+
+“See here,” cried Elliott sharply, “you’re only a nouveau, and you’d
+better shut up till you’ve been here long enough to talk.”
+
+“In other words,” said Clifford, “don’t buck against custom.”
+
+“But I _cahn’t_ see it,” said the nouveau, brushing his dusty trousers.
+“I don’t see it at all, you know. Damn their cheek!”
+
+At this moment the week-weaned Frenchman shoved up to Clifford.
+
+“What did you mean by interfering? Eh! You English pig.”
+
+Clifford looked at him with contempt. “What do you want, my little
+Nouveau?”
+
+“Nouveau!” spluttered the Gaul, “Nouveau, eh!” and he made a terrific
+lunge at the American, who was sent stumbling backward, and slipping,
+fell heavily.
+
+The Frenchman gazed around in triumph, but his grin was not reflected
+on the faces of his compatriots. None of them would have changed places
+with him.
+
+Clifford picked himself up deliberately. His face was calm and mild as
+he walked up to his opponent, who hurriedly put himself into an
+attitude of self-defense.
+
+“Monsieur Nouveau, you are not wise. But some day you will learn
+better, when you are no longer a nouveau,” said Clifford, kindly. The
+man looked puzzled, but kept his fists up.
+
+“Now I am going to punish you a little,” proceeded Clifford, in even
+tones, “not harshly, but with firmness, for your good,” he added,
+walking straight up to the Frenchman.
+
+The latter struck heavily at Clifford’s head, but he ducked like a
+flash, and catching his antagonist around the waist, carried him,
+kicking, to the water-basin, where he turned on the water and shoved
+the squirming Frenchman under. The scene was painful, but brief; when
+one of the actors in it emerged from under the water-spout, he no
+longer asked for anybody’s blood.
+
+“Go and dry yourself,” said Clifford, cheerfully; and walking over to
+his easel, sat down and began to work.
+
+In ten minutes, all trace of the row had disappeared, excepting that
+one gentleman’s collar looked rather limp and his hair was uncommonly
+sleek. The men worked steadily. Snatches of song and bits of whistling
+rose continuously from easel and taboret, all blending in a drowsy hum.
+Gethryn and Elliott caught now and then, from behind them, words of
+wisdom which Clifford was administering to the now subdued Rowden.
+
+“Yes,” he was saying, “many a man has been injured for life by these
+Frenchmen for a mere nothing. I had two brothers,” he paused, “and my
+golden-haired boy—” he ceased again, apparently choking with emotion.
+
+“But—I say—you’re not married, you know,” said the Englishman.
+
+“Hush,” sighed Clifford, “I—I—married the daughter of an African duke.
+She was brought to the States by a slave trader in infancy.”
+
+“Black?” gasped Mr Rowden.
+
+“Very black, but beautiful. I could not keep her. She left me, and is
+singing with Haverley’s Minstrels now.”
+
+Like the majority of his countrymen, Mr Rowden was ready to believe
+anything he heard of social conditions in the States, but one point
+required explanation.
+
+“You said the child had golden hair.”
+
+“Yes, his mother’s hair was red,” sighed Clifford.
+
+Gethryn, glancing round, saw the Englishman’s jaw drop, as he said,
+“How extraordinary!” Then he began to smile as if suspecting a joke.
+But Clifford’s eye met his in gentle rebuke.
+
+“C’est l’heure! Rest!” Down jumped the model. The men leaned back
+noisily. Clifford rose, bowed gravely to the Englishman, and stepped
+across the taborets to join his friends.
+
+Gethryn was cleaning his brushes with turpentine and black soap.
+
+“Going home, Rex?” inquired Clifford, picking up a brush and sending a
+fine spray of turpentine over Elliott, who promptly returned the
+attention.
+
+“Quit that,” growled Gethryn, “don’t ruin those brushes.”
+
+“What’s the nouveau like, Clifford?” asked Elliott. “We heard you
+instructing him a little. He seems to have the true Englishman’s sense
+of humor.”
+
+“Oh, he’s not a bad sort,” said Clifford. “Come and be introduced. I’m
+half ashamed of myself for guying him, for he’s really a very decent,
+plucky fellow, a bit stiff and pig-headed, as many of ’em are at first,
+and as for humor, I suppose they know their own kind, but they do get a
+little confused between fact and fancy when they converse with us.”
+
+The two strolled off with friendly intent, to seek out and ameliorate
+the loneliness of Cholmondeley Rowden, Esq.
+
+Gethryn tied up his brushes, closed his color box and, flinging on his
+hat, hurried down the stairs and into the court, nodding to several
+students who passed with canvas and paint-boxes tucked under their
+arms. He reached the street, and, going through the Passage Brady,
+emerged upon the Boulevard Sebastopol.
+
+A car was passing and he boarded it, climbing up to the imperiale. The
+only vacant seat was between a great, red-faced butcher, and a market
+woman from the Halles, and although the odors of raw beef and fish were
+unpleasantly perceptible, he settled himself back and soon became lost
+in his own thoughts. The butcher had a copy of the _Petit Journal_ and
+every now and then he imparted bits of it across Gethryn, to the market
+woman, lingering with relish over the criminal items.
+
+“Dites donc,” he cried, “here is the affair Rigaud!”
+
+Gethryn roused up and listened.
+
+“This morning, I knew it,” cackled the woman, folding her fat hands
+across her apron. “I said to Sophie, ‘Voyons Sophie,’ I said—”
+
+“Shut up,” interrupted the butcher, “I’m going to read.”
+
+“I was sure of it,” said the woman, addressing Gethryn, “‘Voyons,
+Sophie,’ said—” but the butcher interrupted her, again reading aloud:
+
+“The condemned struggled fearfully, and it required the united efforts
+of six gendarmes—”
+
+“Cochon!” said the woman.
+
+“Listen, will you!” cried the man. “Some disturbance was caused by a
+gamin who broke from the crowd and attacked a soldier. But the
+miserable was seized and carried off, screaming. Two gold pieces of 20
+francs each fell from some hiding-place in his ragged clothes and were
+taken charge of by the police.”
+
+The man paused and gloated over the column. “Here,” he cried,
+“Listen—‘Even under the knife the condemned—’”
+
+Gethryn rose roughly and, crowding past the man, descended the steps
+and, entering the car below, sat down there.
+
+“Butor!” roared the butcher. “Cochon! He trod on my foot!”
+
+“He is an English pig!” sneered the woman, reaching for the newspaper.
+“Let me read it now,” she whined.
+
+“Hands off,” growled the man, “I’ll read you what I think good.”
+
+“But it’s my paper.”
+
+“It’s mine now—shut up.”
+
+The first thing Gethryn did on reaching home was to write a note to his
+friend, the Prefect of the Seine, telling him how the child of Rigaud
+came by the gold pieces. Then he had a quiet smoke, and then he went
+out and lunched at the Café des Écoles, frugally, on a sandwich and a
+glass of beer. After that he returned to his studio and sat down to his
+desk again. He opened a small memorandum book and examined some columns
+of figures. They were rather straggling, not very well kept, but they
+served to convince him that his accounts were forty francs behind, and
+he would have to economize a little for the next week or two. After
+this, he sat and thought steadily. Finally he took a sheet of his best
+cream laid note paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and began to write.
+The note was short, but it took him a long while to compose it, and
+when it was sealed and directed to “Miss Ruth Deane, Lung’ Arno
+Guicciardini, Florence, Italy,” he sat holding it in his hand as if he
+did not know what to do with it.
+
+Two o’clock struck. He started up, and quickly rolling up the shades
+from the glass roof and pulling out his easel, began to squeeze tube
+after tube of color upon his palette. The parrot came down and tiptoed
+about the floor, peering into color boxes, pastel cases, and pots of
+black soap, with all the curiosity of a regulation studio bore. Steps
+echoed on the tiles outside.
+
+Gethryn opened the door quickly. “Ah, Elise! Bon jour!” he said,
+pleasantly. “Entrez donc!”
+
+“Merci, Monsieur Gethryn,” smiled his visitor, a tall, well-shaped girl
+with dark eyes and red cheeks.
+
+“Ten minutes late,” Elise, said Gethryn, laughing, “my time’s worth a
+franc a minute; so prepare to pay up.”
+
+“Very well,” retorted the girl, also laughing and showing her pretty
+teeth, “but I have decided to charge twenty francs an hour from today.
+Now, what do you owe me, Monsieur?”
+
+Gethryn shook his brushes at her. “You are spoiled, Elise—you used to
+pose very well and were never late.”
+
+“And I pose well now!” she cried, her professional pride piqued.
+“Monsieur Bonnat and Monsieur Constant have praised me all this week.
+Voila,” she finished, throwing off her waist and letting her skirts
+fall in a circle to her feet.
+
+“Oh, you can pose if you will,” answered Gethryn, pleasantly. “Come, we
+begin?”
+
+The girl stepped daintily out of the pile of discarded clothes, and
+picking her way across the room with her bare feet, sprang lightly upon
+the model stand.
+
+“The same as last week?” she asked, smiling frankly.
+
+“Yes, that’s it,” he replied, shifting his easel and glancing up at the
+light; “only drop the left elbow a bit—there, that’s it; now a little
+to the left—the knee—that will do.”
+
+The girl settled herself into the pose, glanced at the clock, and then
+turning to Gethryn said, “And I am to look at you, am I not?”
+
+“Where could you find a more charming object?” murmured he, sorting his
+brushes.
+
+“Thank you,” she pouted, stealing a glance at him; “than you?”
+
+“Except Mademoiselle Elise. There, now we begin!”
+
+The rest of the hour was disturbed only by the sharp rattle of brushes
+and the scraping of the palette knife.
+
+“Are you tired?” asked Gethryn, looking at the clock; “you have ten
+minutes more.”
+
+“No,” said the girl, “continue.”
+
+Finally Gethryn rose and stepped back.
+
+“Time,” he said, still regarding his work. “Come and give me a
+criticism, Elise.”
+
+The girl stretched her limbs, and then, stepping down, trotted over to
+Gethryn.
+
+“What do you say?” he demanded, anxiously.
+
+Artists often pay more serious attention to the criticisms of their
+models than to those of a brother artist. For, although models may be
+ignorant of method—which, however, is not always the case—from seeing
+so much good work they acquire a critical acumen which often goes
+straight to the mark.
+
+It was for one of these keen criticisms that the young man was
+listening now.
+
+“I like it very much—very much,” answered the girl, slowly; “but, you
+see—I am not so cold in the face—am I?”
+
+“Hit it, as usual,” muttered the artist, biting his lip; “I’ve got more
+greens and blues in there than there are in a peacock’s tail. You’re
+right,” he added, aloud, “I must warm that up a bit—there in the
+shadows, and keep the high lights pure and cold.”
+
+Elise nodded seriously. “Monsieur Chaplain and I have finished our
+picture,” she announced, after a pause.
+
+It is a naïve way models have of appropriating work in which, truly
+enough, they have no small share. They often speak of “our pictures”
+and “our success.”
+
+“How do you like it?” asked the artist, absently.
+
+“Good,”—she shrugged her shoulders—“but not truth.”
+
+“Right again,” murmured Gethryn.
+
+“I prefer Dagnan,” added the pretty critic.
+
+“So do I—rather!” laughed Gethryn.
+
+“Or you,” said the girl.
+
+“Come, come,” cried the young man, coloring with pleasure, “you don’t
+mean it, Elise!”
+
+“I say what I mean—always,” she replied, marching over to the pups and
+gathering them into her arms.
+
+“I’m going to take a cigarette,” she announced, presently.
+
+“All right,” said Gethryn, squeezing more paint on his palette, “you’ll
+find some mild ones on the bookcase.”
+
+Elise gave the pups a little hug and kiss, and stepped lightly over to
+the bookcase. Then she lighted a cigarette and turned and surveyed
+herself in the mirror.
+
+“I’m thinner than I was last year. What do you think?” she demanded,
+studying her pretty figure in the glass.
+
+“Perhaps a bit, but it’s all the better. Those corsets simply ruined
+you as a model last year.”
+
+Elise looked serious and shook her head.
+
+“I do feel so much better without them. I won’t wear them again.”
+
+“No, you have a pretty, slender figure, and you don’t want them. That’s
+why I always get you when I can. I hate to draw or paint from a girl
+whose hips are all discolored with ugly red creases from her confounded
+corset.”
+
+The girl glanced contentedly at her supple, clean-limbed figure, and
+then, with a laugh, jumped upon the model stand.
+
+“It’s not time,” said Gethryn, “you have five minutes yet.”
+
+“Go on, all the same.” And soon the rattle of the brushes alone broke
+the silence.
+
+At last Gethryn rose and backed off with a sigh.
+
+“How’s that, Elise?” he called.
+
+She sprang down and stood looking over his shoulder.
+
+“Now I’m like myself!” she cried, frankly; “it’s delicious! But hurry
+and block in the legs, why don’t you?”
+
+“Next pose,” said the young man, squeezing out more color.
+
+And so the afternoon wore away, and at six o’clock Gethryn threw down
+his brushes with a long-drawn breath.
+
+“That’s all for today. Now, Elise, when can you give me the next pose?
+I don’t want a week at a time on this; I only want a day now and then.”
+
+The model went over to her dress and rummaged about in the pockets.
+
+“Here,” she said, handing him a notebook and diary.
+
+He selected a date, and wrote his name and the hour.
+
+“Good,” said the girl, reading it; and replacing the book, picked up
+her stockings and slowly began to dress.
+
+Gethryn lay back on the lounge, thoroughly tired out. Elise was humming
+a Normandy fishing song. When, at last, she stood up and drew on her
+gloves, he had fallen into a light sleep.
+
+She stepped softly over to the lounge and listened to the quiet
+breathing of the young man.
+
+“How handsome—and how good he is!” she murmured, wistfully.
+
+She opened the door very gently.
+
+“So different, so different from the rest!” she sighed, and noiselessly
+went her way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Although the sound of the closing door was hardly perceptible, it was
+enough to wake Gethryn.
+
+“Elise!” he called, starting up, “Elise!”
+
+But the girl was beyond earshot.
+
+“And she went away without her money, too; I’ll drop around tomorrow
+and leave it; she may need it,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and
+staring at the door.
+
+It was dinner time, and past, but he had little appetite.
+
+“I’ll just have something here,” he said to himself, and catching up
+his hat ran down stairs. In twenty minutes he was back with eggs,
+butter, bread, a paté, a bottle of wine and a can of sardines. The
+spirit lamp was lighted and the table deftly spread.
+
+“I’ll have a cup of tea, too,” he thought, shaking the blue tea
+canister, and then, touching a match to the well-filled grate, soon had
+the kettle fizzling and spluttering merrily.
+
+The wind had blown up cold from the east and the young man shivered as
+he closed and fastened the windows. Then he sat down, his chin on his
+hands, and gazed into the glowing grate. Mrs Gummidge, who had smelled
+the sardines, came rubbing up against his legs, uttering a soft mew
+from sheer force of habit. She was not hungry—in fact, Gethryn knew
+that the concierge, whose duty it was to feed all the creatures,
+overdid it from pure kindness of heart—at Gethryn’s expense.
+
+“Gummidge, you’re stuffed up to your eyes, aren’t you?” he said.
+
+At the sound of his voice the cat hoisted her tail, and began to march
+in narrowing circles about her master’s chair, making gentle
+observations in the cat language.
+
+Gethryn placed a bit of sardine on a fork and held it out, but the
+little humbug merely sniffed at it daintily, and then rubbed against
+her master’s hand.
+
+He laughed and tossed the bit of fish into the fire, where it
+spluttered and blazed until the parrot woke up with a croak of
+annoyance. Gethryn watched the kettle in silence.
+
+Faces he could never see among the coals, but many a time he had
+constructed animals and reptiles from the embers, and just now he
+fancied he could see a resemblance to a shark among the bits of blazing
+coal.
+
+He watched the kettle dreamily. The fire glowed and flashed and sank,
+and glowed again. Now he could distinctly see a serpent twisting among
+the embers. The clock ticked in measured unison with the slow
+oscillation of the flame serpent. The wind blew hard against the panes
+and sent a sudden chill creeping to his feet.
+
+Bang! Bang! went the blinds. The hallway was full of strange noises. He
+thought he heard a step on the threshold; he imagined that his door
+creaked, but he did not turn around from his study of the fire; it was
+the wind, of course.
+
+The sudden hiss of the kettle, boiling over, made him jump and seize
+it. As he turned to set it down, there was a figure standing beside the
+table. Neither spoke. The kettle burnt his hand and he set it back on
+the hearth; then he remained standing, his eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+After a while Yvonne broke the silence—speaking very low: “Are you
+angry?”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said the girl, with a sigh.
+
+The silence was too strained to last, and finally Gethryn said, “Won’t
+you sit down?”
+
+She did so silently.
+
+“You see I’m—I’m about to do a little cooking,” he said, looking at the
+eggs.
+
+The girl spoke again, still very low.
+
+“Won’t you tell me why you are angry?”
+
+“I’m not,” began Gethryn, but he sat down and glanced moodily at the
+girl.
+
+“For two weeks you have not been to see me.”
+
+“You are mistaken, I have been—” he began, but stopped.
+
+“When?”
+
+“Saturday.”
+
+“And I was not at home?”
+
+“And you were at home,” he said grimly. “You had a caller—it was easy
+to hear his voice, so I did not knock.”
+
+She winced, but said quietly, “Don’t you think that is rude?”
+
+“Yes,” said Gethryn, “I beg pardon.”
+
+Presently she continued: “You and—and he—are the only two men who have
+been in my room.”
+
+“I’m honored, I’m sure,” he answered, drily.
+
+The girl threw back her mackintosh and raised her veil.
+
+“I ask your pardon again,” he said; “allow me to relieve you of your
+waterproof.”
+
+She rose, suffering him to aid her with her cloak, and then sat down
+and looked into the fire in her turn.
+
+“It has been so long—I—I—hoped you would come.”
+
+“Whom were you with in the Luxembourg Gardens?” he suddenly broke out.
+
+She did not misunderstand or evade the question, and Gethryn, watching
+her face, thought perhaps she had expected it. But she resented his
+tone.
+
+“I was with a friend,” she said, simply.
+
+He came and sat down opposite her.
+
+“It is not my business,” he said, sulkily; “excuse me.”
+
+She looked at him for some moments in silence.
+
+“It was Mr Pick,” she said at length.
+
+Gethryn could not repress a gesture of disgust.
+
+“And that—Jew was in your rooms? That Jew!”
+
+“Yes.” She sat nervously rolling and unrolling her gloves. “Why do you
+care?” she asked, looking into the fire.
+
+“I don’t.”
+
+“You do.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“Rex,” she said, very low, “will you listen?”
+
+“Yes, I’ll listen.”
+
+“He is a—a friend of my sister’s. He came from her to—to—”
+
+“To what!”
+
+“To—borrow a little money. I distrusted him the first time he came—the
+time you heard him in my room—and I refused him. Saturday he stopped me
+in the street, and, hoping to avoid a chance of meeting—you, I walked
+through the park.”
+
+“And you gave him the money—I saw you!”
+
+“I did—all I could spare.”
+
+“Is he—is your sister married?”
+
+“No,” she whispered.
+
+“And why—” began Gethryn, angrily, “Why does that scoundrel come to beg
+money—” He stopped, for the girl was in evident distress.
+
+“Ah! You know why,” she said in a scarce audible voice.
+
+The young man was silent.
+
+“And you will come again?” she asked timidly.
+
+No answer.
+
+She moved toward the door.
+
+“We were such very good friends.”
+
+Still he was silent.
+
+“Is it au revoir?” she whispered, and waited for a moment on the
+threshold.
+
+“Then it is adieu.”
+
+“Yes,” he said, huskily, “that is better.”
+
+She trembled a little and leaned against the doorway.
+
+“Adieu, mon ami—” She tried to speak, but her voice broke and ended in
+a sob.
+
+Then, all at once, and neither knew just how it was, she was lying in
+his arms, sobbing passionately.
+
+
+“Rex,” said Yvonne, half an hour later, as she stood before the mirror
+arranging her disordered curls, “are you not the least little bit
+ashamed of yourself?”
+
+The answer appeared to be satisfactory, but the curly head was in a
+more hopeless state of disorder than before, and at last the girl gave
+a little sigh and exclaimed, “There! I’m all rumpled, but its your
+fault. Will you oblige me by regarding my hair?”
+
+“Better let it alone; I’ll only rumple it some more!” he cried,
+ominously.
+
+“You mustn’t! I forbid you!”
+
+“But I want to!”
+
+“Not now, then—”
+
+“Yes—immediately!”
+
+“Rex—you mustn’t. O, Rex—I—I—”
+
+“What?” he laughed, holding her by her slender wrists.
+
+She flushed scarlet and struggled to break away.
+
+“Only one.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“One.”
+
+“None.”
+
+“Shall I let you go?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, but catching sight of his face, stopped short.
+
+He dropped her hands with a laugh and looked at her. Then she came
+slowly up to him, and flushing crimson, pulled his head down to hers.
+
+“Yvonne, do you love me? Truthfully?”
+
+“Rex, can you ask?” Her warm little head lay against his throat, her
+heart beat against his, her breath fell upon his cheek, and her curls
+clustered among his own.
+
+“Yvonne—Yvonne,” he murmured, “I love you—once and forever.”
+
+“Once and forever,” she repeated, in a half whisper.
+
+“Forever,” he said.
+
+
+An hour later they were seated tete-à-tete at Gethryn’s little table.
+She had not permitted him to poach the eggs, and perhaps they were
+better on that account.
+
+“Bachelor habits must cease,” she cried, with a little laugh, and
+Gethryn smiled in doubtful acquiescence.
+
+“Do you like grilled sardines on toast?” she asked.
+
+“I seem to,” he smiled, finishing his fourth; “they are
+delicious—yours,” he added.
+
+“Oh, that tea!” she cried, “and not one bit of sugar. What a hopelessly
+careless man!”
+
+But Gethryn jumped up, crying, “Wait a moment!” and returned
+triumphantly with a huge mass of rock-candy—the remains of one of
+Clifford’s abortive attempts at “rye-and-rock.”
+
+They each broke off enough for their cups, and Gethryn, tasting his,
+declared the tea “delicious.” Yvonne sat, chipping an egg and casting
+sidelong glances at Gethryn, which were always met and returned with
+interest.
+
+“Yvonne, I want to tell you a secret.”
+
+“What, Rex?”
+
+“I love you.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“No—not at all!” cried the girl, shaking her pretty head. Presently she
+gave him a swift glance from beneath her drooping lashes.
+
+“Rex?”
+
+“What, Yvonne?”
+
+“I want to tell you a secret.”
+
+“What, Yvonne?”
+
+“If you eat so many sardines—”
+
+“Oh!” cried Gethryn, half angrily, but laughing, “you must pay for
+that!”
+
+“What?” she said, innocently, but jumped up and kept the table between
+him and herself.
+
+“You know!” he cried, chasing her into a corner.
+
+“We are two babies,” she said, very red, following him back to the
+table. The paté was eaten in comparative quiet.
+
+“Now,” she said, with great dignity, setting down her glass, “behave
+and get me some hot water.”
+
+Gethryn meekly brought it.
+
+“If you touch me while I am washing these dishes!”
+
+“But let me help?”
+
+“No, go and sit down instantly.”
+
+He fled in affected terror and ensconced himself upon the sofa.
+Presently he inquired, in a plaintive voice: “Have you nearly
+finished?”
+
+“No,” said the girl, carefully drying and arranging the quaint Egyptian
+tea-set, “and I won’t for ages.”
+
+“But you’re not going to wash all those things? The concierge does
+that.”
+
+“No, only the wine-glasses and the tea-set. The idea of trusting such
+fragile cups to a concierge! What a boy!”
+
+But she was soon ready to dry her slender hands, and caught up a towel
+with a demure glance at Gethryn.
+
+“Which do you think most of—your dogs, or me?”
+
+“Pups.”
+
+“That parrot, or me?”
+
+“Poll.”
+
+“The raven, or me? The cat, or me?”
+
+“Bird and puss.”
+
+She stole over to his side and knelt down.
+
+“Rex, if you ever tire of me—if you ever are unkind—if you ever leave
+me—I think I shall die.”
+
+He drew her to him. “Yvonne,” he whispered, “we can’t always be
+together.”
+
+“I know it—I’m foolish,” she faltered.
+
+“I shall not always be a student. I shall not always be in Paris, dear
+Yvonne.”
+
+She leaned closer to him.
+
+“I must go back to America someday.”
+
+“And—and marry?” she whispered, chokingly.
+
+“No—not to marry,” he said, “but it is my home.”
+
+“I—I know it, Rex, but don’t let us think of it. Rex,” she said, some
+moments after, “are you like all students?”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“Have you ever loved—before—a girl, here in Paris—like me?”
+
+“There are none—like you.”
+
+“Answer me, Rex.”
+
+“No, I never have,” he said, truthfully. Presently he added, “And you,
+Yvonne?”
+
+She put her warm little hand across his mouth.
+
+“Don’t ask,” she murmured.
+
+“But I do!” he cried, struggling to see her eyes, “won’t you tell me?”
+
+She hid her face tight against his breast.
+
+“You know I have; that is why I am alone here, in Paris.”
+
+“You loved him?”
+
+“Yes—not as I love you.”
+
+Presently she raised her eyes to his.
+
+“Shall I tell you all? I am like so many—so many others. When you know
+their story, you know mine.”
+
+He leaned down and kissed her.
+
+“Don’t tell me,” he said.
+
+But she went on.
+
+“I was only seventeen—I am nineteen now. He was an officer at—at
+Chartres, where we lived. He took me to Paris.”
+
+“And left you.”
+
+“He died of the fever in Tonquin.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“Three weeks ago.”
+
+“And you heard?”
+
+“Tonight.”
+
+“Then he did leave you.”
+
+“Don’t, Rex—he never loved me, and I—I never really loved him. I found
+that out.”
+
+“When did you find it out?”
+
+“One day—you know when—in a—a cab.”
+
+“Dear Yvonne,” he whispered, “can’t you go back to—to your family?”
+
+“No, Rex.”
+
+“Never?”
+
+“I don’t wish to, now. No, don’t ask me why! I can’t tell you. I am
+like all the rest—all the rest. The Paris fever is only cured by death.
+Don’t ask me, Rex; I am content—indeed I am.”
+
+Suddenly a heavy rapping at the door caused Gethryn to spring hurriedly
+to his feet.
+
+“Rex!”
+
+It was Braith’s voice.
+
+“What!” cried Gethryn, hoarsely.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“Aren’t you going to let me in?”
+
+“I can’t, old man; I—I’m not just up for company tonight,” stammered
+Gethryn.
+
+“Company be damned—are you ill?”
+
+“No.”
+
+There was a silence.
+
+“I’m sorry,” began Gethryn, but was cut short by a gruff:
+
+“All right; good night!” and Braith went away.
+
+Yvonne looked inquiringly at him.
+
+“It was nothing,” he murmured, very pale, and then threw himself at her
+feet, crying, “Oh, Yvonne—Yvonne!”
+
+Outside the storm raged furiously.
+
+Presently she whispered, “Rex, shall I light the candle? It is
+midnight.”
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+She slipped away, and after searching for some time, cried, “the
+matches are all gone, but here is a piece of paper—a letter; do you
+want it? I can light it over the lamp.”
+
+She held up an envelope to him.
+
+“I can light it over the lamp,” she repeated.
+
+“What is the address?”
+
+“It is very long; I can’t read it all, only ‘Florence, Italy.’”
+
+“Burn it,” he said, in a voice so low she could scarcely hear him.
+
+Presently she came over and knelt down by his side. Neither spoke or
+moved.
+
+“The candle is lighted,” she whispered, at last.
+
+“And the lamp?”
+
+“Is out.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Cholmondeley Rowden had invited a select circle of friends to join him
+in a “petit diner a la stag,” as he expressed it.
+
+Eight months of Paris and the cold, cold world had worked a wonderful
+change in Mr Rowden. For one thing, he had shaved his whiskers and now
+wore only a mustache. For another, he had learned to like and respect a
+fair portion of the French students, and in consequence was respected
+and liked in return.
+
+He had had two fights, in both of which he had contributed to the glory
+of the British Empire and prize ring.
+
+He was a better sparrer than Clifford and was his equal in the use of
+the foils. Like Clifford, he was a capital banjoist, but he insisted
+that cricket was far superior to baseball, and this was the only bone
+of contention that ever fell between the two.
+
+Clifford played his shameless jokes as usual, accompanied by the
+enthusiastic applause of Rowden. Clifford also played “The Widow
+Nolan’s Goat” upon his banjo, accompanied by the intricate pizzicatos
+of Rowden.
+
+Clifford drank numerous bottles of double X with Rowden, and Rowden
+consumed uncounted egg-flips with Clifford. They were inseparable; in
+fact, the triumvirate, Clifford, Elliott and Rowden, even went so far
+as to dress alike, and mean-natured people hinted that they had but one
+common style in painting. But they did not make the remark to any of
+the triumvirate. They were very fond of each other, these precious
+triumvirs, but they did not address each other by nicknames, and
+perhaps it was because they respected each other enough to refrain from
+familiarities that this alliance lasted as long as they lived.
+
+It was a beautiful sight, that of the three youths, when they sallied
+forth in company, hatted, clothed, and gloved alike, and each followed
+by a murderous-looking bulldog. The animals were of the brindled
+variety, and each was garnished with a steel spiked collar. Timid
+people often crossed to the other side of the street on meeting this
+procession.
+
+Braith laughed at the whole performance, but secretly thought that a
+little of their spare energy and imagination might have been spent to
+advantage upon their artistic productions.
+
+Braith was doing splendidly. His last year’s picture had been hung on
+the line and, in spite of his number three, he had received a third
+class medal and had been praised—even generously—by artists and
+critics, including Albert Wolff. He was hard at work on a large canvas
+for the coming International Exhibition at Paris; he had sold a number
+of smaller studies, and besides had pictures well hung in Munich and in
+more than one gallery at home.
+
+At last, after ten years of hard work, struggles, and disappointments,
+he began to enjoy a measure of success. He and Gethryn saw little of
+each other this winter, excepting at Julien’s. That last visit to the
+Rue Monsieur le Prince was never mentioned between them. They were as
+cordial when they met as ever, but Braith did not visit his young
+friend any more, and Gethryn never spoke to him of Yvonne.
+
+“Good-bye, old chap!” Braith would say when they parted, gripping Rex’s
+hand and smiling at him. But Rex did not see Braith’s face as he walked
+away.
+
+Braith felt helpless. The thing he most dreaded for Rex had happened;
+he believed he could see the end of it all, and yet he could prevent
+nothing. If he should tell Rex that he was being ruined, Rex would not
+listen, and—who was he that he should preach to another man for the
+same fault by which he had wasted his own life? No, Rex would never
+listen to him, and he dreaded a rupture of their friendship.
+
+Gethryn had made his debut in the Salon with a certain amount of éclat.
+True, he had been disappointed in his expectations of a medal, but a
+first mention had soothed him a little, and, what was more important,
+it proved to be the needed sop to his discontented aunt. But somehow or
+other his new picture did not progress rapidly, or in a thoroughly
+satisfactory manner. In bits and spots it showed a certain amount of
+feverish brilliancy, yes, even mature solidity; in fact, it was nowhere
+bad, but still it was not Gethryn and he knew that.
+
+“Confound it!” he would mutter, standing back from his canvas; but even
+at such times he could hardly help wondering at his own marvelous
+technique.
+
+“Technique be damned! Give me stupidity in a pupil every time, rather
+than cleverness,” Harrington had said to one of his pupils, and the
+remark often rang in Gethryn’s ears even when his eyes were most
+blinded by his own wonderful facility.
+
+“Some fools would medal this,” he thought; “but what pleasure could a
+medal bring me when I know how little I deserve it?”
+
+Perhaps he was his own hardest critic, but it was certain that the old,
+simple honesty, the subtle purity, the almost pathetic effort to tell
+the truth with paint and brush, had nearly disappeared from Gethryn’s
+canvases during the last eight months, and had given place to a fierce
+and almost startling brilliancy, never, perhaps, hitting, but always
+threatening some brutal note of discord.
+
+Even Elise looked vaguely troubled, though she always smiled brightly
+at Gethryn’s criticism of his own work.
+
+“It is so very wonderful and dazzling, but—but the color seems to
+me—unkind.”
+
+And he would groan and answer, “Yes, yes, Elise, you’re right; oh, I
+can never paint another like the one of last June!”
+
+“Ah, that!” she would cry, “that was delicious—” but checking herself,
+she would add, “Courage, let us try again; I am not tired, indeed I am
+_not._”
+
+Yvonne never came into the studio when Gethryn had models, but often,
+after the light was dim and the models had taken their leave, she would
+slip in, and, hanging lightly over his shoulder, her cheek against his,
+would stand watching the touches and retouches with which the young
+artist always eked out the last rays of daylight. And when his hand
+drooped and she could hardly distinguish his face in the gathering
+gloom, he would sigh and turn to her, smoothing the soft hair from her
+forehead, saying: “Are you happy, Yvonne?” And Yvonne always answered,
+“Yes, Rex, when you are.”
+
+Then he would laugh, and kiss her and tell her he was always happy with
+La Belle Hélène, and they would stand in the gathering twilight until a
+gurgle from the now well-grown pups would warn them that the hour of
+hunger had arrived.
+
+The triumvirate, with Thaxton, Rhodes, Carleton, and the rest, had been
+frequent visitors all winter at the “Ménagerie,” as Clifford’s bad pun
+had named Gethryn’s apartment; but, of late, other social engagements
+and, possibly, a small amount of work, had kept them away. Clifford was
+a great favorite with Yvonne. Thaxton and Elliott she liked. Rowden she
+tormented, and Carleton she endured. She captured Clifford by suffering
+him to play his banjo to her piano. Rowden liked her because she was
+pretty and witty, though he never got used to her quiet little digs at
+his own respected and dignified person. Clifford openly avowed his
+attachment and spent many golden hours away from work, listening to her
+singing. She had been taught by a good master and her voice was pure
+and pliant, although as yet only half developed. The little concerts
+they gave their friends were really charming—with Clifford’s banjo,
+Gethryn’s guitar, Thaxton’s violin, Yvonne’s voice and piano. Clifford
+made the programs. They were profusely illustrated, and he spent a
+great deal of time rehearsing, writing verses, and rehashing familiar
+airs (he called it “composing”) which would have been as well devoted
+to his easel.
+
+In Rowden, Yvonne was delighted to find a cultivated musician. Clifford
+listened to their talk of chords and keys, went and bought a “Musical
+Primer” on the Quai d’Orsay, spent a wretched hour groping over it,
+swore softly, and closed the book forever.
+
+But neither the triumvirate nor the others had been to the “Ménagerie”
+for over a fortnight, when Rowden, feeling it incumbent upon him to
+return some of Gethryn’s hospitality, issued very proper cards—indeed
+they were very swell cards for the Latin Quarter—for a “dinner,” to be
+followed by a “quiet evening” at the Bal Masqué at the Opera.
+
+The triumvirate had accordingly tied up their brindled bulldogs,
+“Spit,” “Snap” and “Tug”; had donned their white ties and collars of
+awful altitude, and were fully prepared to please and to be pleased.
+Although it was nominally a “stag” party, the triumvirate would as soon
+have cut off their tender mustaches as have failed to invite Yvonne.
+But she had replied to Rowden’s invitation by a dainty little note,
+ending:
+
+and I am sure that you will understand when I say that this time I will
+leave you gentlemen in undisturbed possession of the evening, for I
+know how dearly men love to meet and behave like bears all by
+themselves. But I shall see you all afterward at the Opera. Au revoir
+then—at the Bal Masqué.
+     Y.D.
+
+
+The first sensation to the young men was one of disappointment. But the
+second was that Mademoiselle Descartes’ tact had not failed her.
+
+The triumvirate were seated upon the sideboard swinging their legs.
+Rowden cast a satisfied glance at the table laid for fifteen and
+flicked an imaginary speck from his immaculate shirt front.
+
+“I think it’s all right,” said Elliott, noticing his look, “eh,
+Clifford?”
+
+“Is there enough champagne?” asked that youth, calculating four quart
+bottles to each person.
+
+Rowden groaned.
+
+“Of course there is. What are you made of?”
+
+“Human flesh,” acknowledged the other meekly.
+
+At eleven the guests began to arrive, welcomed by the triumvirs with
+great state and dignity. Rowden, looking about, missed only
+one—Gethryn, and he entered at the same moment.
+
+“Just in time,” said Rowden, and made the move to the table. As Gethryn
+sat down, he noticed that the place on Rowden’s right was vacant, and
+before it stood a huge bouquet of white violets.
+
+“Too bad she isn’t here,” said Rowden, glancing at Gethryn and then at
+the vacant place.
+
+“That’s awfully nice of you, Rowden,” cried Gethryn, with a happy
+smile; “she will have a chance to thank you tonight.”
+
+He leaned over and touched his face to the flowers. As he raised his
+head again, his eyes met Braith’s.
+
+“Hello!” cried Braith, cordially.
+
+Rex did not notice how pale he was, and called back, “Hello!” with a
+feeling of relief at Braith’s tone. It was always so. When they were
+apart for days, there weighed a cloud of constraint on Rex’s mind,
+which Braith’s first greeting always dispelled. But it gathered again
+in the next interval. It rose from a sullen deposit of self-reproach
+down deep in Gethryn’s own heart. He kept it covered over; but he could
+not prevent the ghost-like exhalations that gathered there and showed
+where it was hidden.
+
+Speeches began rather late. Elliott made one—and offered a toast to “la
+plus jolie demoiselle de Paris,” which was drunk amid great enthusiasm
+and responded to by Gethryn, ending with a toast to Rowden. Rowden’s
+response was stiff, but most correct. The same could not be said of
+Clifford’s answer to the toast, “The struggling Artist—Heaven help
+him!”
+
+Towards 1 am Mr Clifford’s conversation had become incoherent. But he
+continued to drink toasts. He drank Yvonne’s health five times, he
+pledged Rowden and Gethryn and everybody else he could think of, down
+to Mrs Gummidge and each separate kitten, and finally pledged himself.
+By that time he had reached the lachrymose state. Tears, it seemed, did
+him good. A heart-rending sob was usually the sign of reviving
+intelligence.
+
+“Well,” said Gethryn, buttoning his greatcoat, “I’ll see you all in an
+hour—at the Opera.”
+
+Braith was not coming with them to the Ball, so Rex shook hands and
+said “Good night,” and calling “Au revoir” to Rowden and the rest, ran
+down stairs three at a time. He hurried into the court and after
+spending five minutes shouting “Cordon!” succeeded in getting out of
+the door and into the Rue Michelet. From there he turned into the
+Avenue de l’Observatoire, and cutting through into the Boulevard, came
+to his hôtel.
+
+Yvonne was standing before the mirror, tying the hood of a white silk
+domino under her chin. Hearing Gethryn’s key in the door, she hurriedly
+slipped on her little white mask and confronted him.
+
+“Why, who is this?” cried Gethryn. “Yvonne, come and tell me who this
+charming stranger is!”
+
+“You see before you the Princess Hélène, Monsieur, she said, gravely
+bending the little masked head.”
+
+“Oh, in that case, you needn’t come, Yvonne, as I have an engagement
+with the Princess Hélène of Troy.”
+
+“But you mustn’t kiss me!” she cried, hastily placing the table between
+herself and Gethryn; “you have not yet been presented. Oh, Rex! Don’t
+be so—so idiotic; you spoil my dress—there—yes, only one, but don’t you
+dare to try—_Oh Rex!_ Now I am all in wrinkles—you—you bear!”
+
+“Bears hug—that’s a fact,” he laughed. “Come, are you ready—or I’ll
+just—”
+
+“Don’t you dare!” she cried, whipping off her mask and attempting an
+indignant frown. She saw the big bunch of white violets in his hand and
+made a diversion by asking what those were. He told her, and she
+declared, delightedly, that she should carry them with Rex’s roses to
+the Ball.
+
+“They shall have the preference, Monsieur,” she said, teasingly. “Oh,
+Rex! don’t—please—” she entreated.
+
+“All right, I won’t,” he said, drawing her wrap around her; and Yvonne,
+replacing the mask and gathering up her fluffy skirts, slipped one
+small gloved hand through his arm and danced down the stairs.
+
+On the corner of the Vaugirard and the Rue de Medicis one always finds
+a line of cabs, and presently they were bumping and bouncing away down
+the Rue de Seine to the river.
+
+Je fais ce que sa fantaisie
+    Veut m’ordonner,
+Et je puis, s’il lui faut ma vie
+    La lui donner
+
+
+sang Yvonne, deftly thrusting tierce and quarte with her fan to make
+Gethryn keep his distance.
+
+“Do you know it is snowing?” he said presently, peering out of the
+window as the cab rattled across the Pont Neuf.
+
+“Tant mieux!” cried the girl; “I shall make a snowball—a—” she opened
+her blue eyes impressively, “a very, very large one, and—”
+
+“And?”
+
+“Drop it on the head of Mr Rowden,” she announced, with cheerful
+decision.
+
+“I’ll warn poor Rowden of your intention,” he laughed, as the cab
+rolled smoothly up the Avenue de l’Opera, across the Boulevard des
+Italiens, and stopped before the glittering pile of the great Opera.
+
+She sprang lightly to the curbstone and stood tapping her little feet
+against the pavement while Gethryn fumbled about for his fare.
+
+The steps of the Opera and the Plaza were covered with figures in
+dominoes, blue, red or black, many grotesque and bizarre costumes, and
+not a few sober claw hammers. The great flare of yellow light which
+bathed and flooded the shifting, many-colored throng, also lent a
+strangely weird effect to the now heavily falling snowflakes. Carriages
+and cabs kept arriving in countless numbers. It was half past two, and
+nobody who wanted to be considered anybody thought of arriving before
+that hour. The people poured in a steady stream through the portals.
+Groups of English and American students in their irreproachable evening
+attire, groups of French students in someone else’s doubtful evening
+attire, crowds of rustling silken dominoes, herds of crackling muslin
+dominoes, countless sad-faced Pierrots, fewer sad-faced Capuchins, now
+and then a slim Mephistopheles, now and then a fat, stolid Turk, ’Arry,
+Tom, and Billy, redolent of plum pudding and Seven Dials, Gontran,
+Gaston and Achille, savoring of brasseries and the Sorbonne. And then,
+from the carriages and fiacres: Mademoiselle Patchouli and good old
+Monsieur Bonvin, Mademoiselle Nitouche and bad young Monsieur de
+Sacrebleu, Mademoiselle Moineau and Don Cæsar Imberbe; and the pink
+silk domino of “La Pataude”—mais n’importe!
+
+Allons, Messieurs, Mesdames, to the cloak room—to the foyer! To the
+escalier! or you, Madame la Comtesse, to your box, and smooth out your
+crumpled domino; as for “La Pataude,” she is going to dance tonight.
+
+Gethryn, with Yvonne clinging tightly to his arm, entered the great
+vestibule and passed through the railed lanes to the broad inclined
+aisle which led to the floor.
+
+“Do you want to take a peep before we go to our box?” he asked, leading
+her to the doorway.
+
+Yvonne’s little heart beat faster as she leaned over and glanced at the
+dazzling spectacle.
+
+“Come, hurry—let us go to the box!” she whispered, dragging Gethryn
+after her up the stairway.
+
+He followed, laughing at her excitement, and in a few minutes they
+found the door of their lodge and slipped in.
+
+Gethryn lighted a cigarette and began to unstrap his field glasses.
+
+“Take these, Yvonne,” he said, handing them to her while he adjusted
+her own tiny gold ones.
+
+Yvonne’s cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled under the little mask, as
+she leaned over the velvet railing and gazed at the bewildering
+spectacle below. Great puffs of hot, perfumed air bore the crash of two
+orchestras to their ears, mixed with the distant clatter and whirl of
+the dancers, and the shouts and cries of the maskers.
+
+At the end of the floor, screened by banks of palms, sat the musicians,
+and round about, rising tier upon tier, the glittering boxes were
+filled with the elite of the demimonde, who ogled and gossiped and
+sighed, entirely content with the material and social barriers which
+separate those who dance for ten francs from those who look on for a
+hundred.
+
+But there were others there who should not by any means be confounded
+with their sisters of the “half-world.”
+
+The Faubourg St Germain, the Champs Elysées, and the Parc Monceau were
+possibly represented among those muffled and disguised beauties, who
+began the evening with their fans so handy in case of need. Ah,
+well—now they lay their fans down quite out of reach in case of
+emergency, and who shall say if disappointment lurks under these dainty
+dominoes, that there is so little to bring a blush to modest
+cheeks—alas! few emergencies.
+
+And you over there—you of the “American Colony,” who are tossed like
+shuttlecocks in the social whirl, you, in your well-appointed masks and
+silks, it is all very new and exciting—yes, but why should you come?
+American women, brought up to think clean thoughts and see with
+innocent eyes, to exact a respectful homage from men and enjoy a
+personal dignity and independence unknown to women anywhere else—why do
+you want to come here? Do you not know that the foundations of that
+liberty which makes you envied in the old world are laid in the respect
+and confidence of men? Undermine that, become wise and cynical, learn
+the meaning of doubtful words and gestures whose significance you never
+need have suspected, meet men on the same ground where they may any day
+meet fast women of the continent, and fix at that moment on your free
+limbs the same chains which corrupt society has forged for the women of
+Europe.
+
+Yvonne leaned back in her box with a little gasp.
+
+“But I can’t make out anyone at all,” she said; “it’s all a great,
+sparkling sea of color.”
+
+“Try the field glasses,” replied Gethryn, giving them to her again, at
+the same time opening her big plumy fan and waving it to and fro beside
+the flushed cheek.
+
+Presently she cried out, “Oh, look! There is Mr Elliott and Mr Rowden,
+and I think Mr Clifford—but I hope not.”
+
+He leaned forward and swept the floor with the field glass.
+
+“It’s Clifford, sure enough,” he muttered; “what on earth induces him
+to dance in that set?”
+
+It was Clifford.
+
+At that moment he was addressing Elliott in pleading, though hazy,
+phrases.
+
+“Come ’long, Elliott, don’t be so—so uncomf’t’ble ’n’ p’tic’lar! W’t’s
+use of be’ng shnobbish?” he urged, clinging hilariously to his partner,
+a pigeon-toed ballet girl. But Elliott only laughed and said:
+
+“No; waltzes are all I care for. No quadrille for me—”
+
+The crash of the orchestra drowned his voice, and Clifford, turning and
+bowing gravely to his partner, and then to his vis-à-vis, began to
+perform such antics and cut such pigeonwings that his pigeon-toed
+partner glared at him through the slits of her mask in envious
+astonishment. The door was dotted with numerous circles of maskers, ten
+or fifteen deep, all watching and applauding the capers of the
+hilarious couples in the middle.
+
+But Clifford’s set soon attracted a large and enthusiastic audience,
+who were connoisseurs enough to distinguish a voluntary dancer from a
+hired one; and when the last thundering chords of Offenbach’s “March
+into Hell” scattered the throng into a delirious waltz, Clifford reeled
+heavily into the side scenes and sat down, rather unexpectedly, in the
+lap of Mademoiselle Nitouche, who had crept in there with the Baron
+Silberstein for a nice, quiet view of a genuine cancan.
+
+Mademoiselle did not think it funny, but the Baron did, and when she
+boxed Clifford’s ears he thought it funnier still.
+
+Rowden and Elliot, who were laboriously waltzing with a twin pair of
+flat-footed Watteau Shepherdesses, immediately ran to his assistance;
+and later, with a plentiful application of cold water and still colder
+air, restored Mr Clifford to his usual spirits.
+
+“You’re not a beauty, you know,” said Rowden, looking at Clifford’s
+hair, which was soaked into little points and curls; “you’re certainly
+no beauty, but I think you’re all right now—don’t you, Elliott? ”
+
+“Certainly,” laughed the triumvir, producing a little silver
+pocket-comb and presenting it to the woebegone Clifford, who
+immediately brought out a hand glass and proceeded to construct a
+“bang” of wonderful seductiveness.
+
+In ten minutes they sallied forth from the dressing room and wended
+their way through the throngs of masks to the center of the floor. They
+passed Thaxton and Rhodes, who, each with a pretty nun upon his arm,
+were trying to persuade Bulfinch into taking the third nun, who might
+have been the Mother Superior or possibly a resuscitated 14th century
+abbess.
+
+“No,” he was saying, while he blinked painfully at the ci-devant
+abbess, “I can’t go that; upon my word, don’t ask me, fellows—I—I
+can’t.”
+
+“Oh, come,” urged Rhodes, “what’s the odds?”
+
+“You can take her and I’ll take yours,” began the wily little man, but
+neither Rhodes nor Thaxton waited to argue longer.
+
+“No catacombs for me,” growled Bulfinch, eyeing the retreating nuns,
+but catching sight of the triumvirate, his face regained its bird-like
+felicity of expression.
+
+“Glad to see you—indeed I am! That Colossus is too disinterested in
+securing partners for his friends; he is, I assure you. If you’re
+looking for a Louis Quatorze partner, warranted genuine, go to Rhodes.”
+
+“Rex ought to be here by this time,” said Rowden; “look in the boxes on
+that side and Clifford and I will do the same on this.”
+
+“No need,” cried Elliott, “I see him with a white domino there in the
+second tier. Look! he’s waving his hand to us and so is the domino.”
+
+“Come along,” said Clifford, pushing his way toward the foyer, “I’ll
+find them in a moment. Let me see,”—a few minutes later, pausing
+outside a row of white and gilt doors—“let me see, seventh box, second
+tier—here we are,” he added, rapping loudly.
+
+Yvonne ran and opened the door.
+
+“Bon soir, Messieurs,” she said, with a demure curtsy.
+
+Clifford gallantly kissed the little glove and then shook hands with
+Gethryn.
+
+“How is it on the floor?” asked the latter, as Elliott and Rowden came
+forward to the edge of the box. “I want to take Yvonne out for a turn
+and perhaps a waltz, if it isn’t too crowded.”
+
+“Oh, it’s pretty rough just now, but it will be better in half an
+hour,” replied Rowden, barricading the champagne from Clifford.
+
+“We saw you dancing, Mr Clifford,” observed Yvonne, with a wicked
+glance at him from under her mask.
+
+Clifford blushed.
+
+“I—I don’t make an ass of myself but once a year, you know,” he said,
+with a deprecatory look at Elliott.
+
+“Oh,” murmured the latter, doubtfully, “glad to hear it.”
+
+Clifford gazed at him in meek reproof and then made a flank movement
+upon the champagne, but was again neatly foiled by Rowden.
+
+Yvonne looked serious, but presently leaned over and filled one of the
+long-stemmed goblets.
+
+“Only one, Mr Clifford; one for you to drink my health, but you must
+promise me truthfully not to take any more wine this evening!”
+
+Clifford promised with great promptness, and taking the glass from her
+hand with a low bow, sprang recklessly upon the edge of the box and
+raised the goblet.
+
+“A la plus belle demoiselle de Paris!” he cried, with all the strength
+of his lungs, and drained the goblet.
+
+A shout from the crowd below answered his toast. A thousand faces were
+turned upward, and people leaned over their boxes, and looked at the
+party from all parts of the house.
+
+Mademoiselle Nitouche turned to Monsieur de Sacrebleu.
+
+“What audacity!” she murmured.
+
+Mademoiselle Goujon smiled at the Baron Silberstein.
+
+“Tiens!” she cried, “the gayety has begun, I hope.”
+
+Little Miss Ducely whispered to Lieutenant Faucon:
+
+“Those are American students,” she sighed; “how jolly they seem to be,
+especially Mr Clifford! I wonder if she _is_ so pretty!”
+
+Half a dozen riotous Frenchmen in the box opposite jumped to their feet
+and waved their goblets at Clifford.
+
+“A la plus jolie femme du monde!” they roared.
+
+Clifford seized another glass and filled it.
+
+“She is here!” he shouted, and sprang to the edge again. But Gethryn
+pulled him down.
+
+“That’s too dangerous,” he laughed; “you could easily fall.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” cried Clifford, draining the glass, and shaking it at the
+opposite box.
+
+Yvonne put her hand on Gethryn’s arm.
+
+“Don’t let him have any more,” she whispered.
+
+“Give us the goblet!” yelled the Frenchmen.
+
+“Le voila!” shouted Clifford, and stepping back, hurled the glass with
+all his strength across the glittering gulf. It fell with a crash in
+the box it was aimed at, and a howl of applause went up from the floor.
+
+Yvonne laughed nervously, but coming to the edge of the box buried her
+mask in her bouquet and looked down.
+
+“A rose! A rose!” cried the maskers below; “a rose from the most
+charming demoiselle in Paris!”
+
+She half turned to Gethryn, but suddenly stepping forward, seized a
+handful of flowers from the middle of the bouquet and flung them into
+the crowd.
+
+There was a shout and a scramble, and then she tore the bouquet end
+from end, sending a shower of white buds into the throng.
+
+“None for me?” sighed Clifford, watching the fast-dwindling bouquet.
+
+She laughed brightly as she tossed the last handful below, and then
+turned and leaned over Gethryn’s chair.
+
+“You destructive little wretch!” he laughed, “this is not the season
+for the Battle of Flowers. But white roses mean nothing, so I’m not
+jealous.”
+
+“Ah, mon ami, I saved the red rose for you,” she whispered; and
+fastened it upon his breast.
+
+And at his whispered answer her cheeks flushed crimson under the white
+mask. But she sprang up laughing.
+
+“I would so like to go onto the floor,” she cried, pulling him to his
+feet, and coaxing him with a simply irresistible look; “don’t you think
+we might—just for a minute, Mr Rowden?” she pleaded. “I don’t mind a
+crowd—indeed I don’t, and I am masked so perfectly.”
+
+“What’s the harm, Rex?” said Rowden; “she is well masked.”
+
+“And when we return it will be time for supper, won’t it?”
+
+“Yes, I should think so!” murmured Clifford.
+
+“Where do we go then?”
+
+“Maison Dorée.”
+
+“Come along, then, Mademoiselle Destructiveness!” cried Gethryn,
+tossing his mask and field glass onto a chair, where they were
+appropriated by Clifford, who spent the next half hour in staring
+across at good old Colonel Toddlum and his frisky companion—an
+attention which drove the poor old gentleman almost frantic with
+suspicion, for he was a married man, bless his soul!—and a pew-holder
+in the American Church.
+
+“My love,” said the frisky one, “who is the gentleman in the black mask
+who stares?”
+
+“I don’t know,” muttered the dear old man, in a cold sweat, “I don’t
+know, but I wish I did.”
+
+And the frisky one shrugged her shoulders and smiled at the mask.
+
+“What are they looking at?” whispered Yvonne, as she tripped along,
+holding very tightly to Gethryn’s arm.
+
+“Only a quadrille—‘La Pataude’ is dancing. Do you want to see it?”
+
+She nodded, and they approached the circle in the middle of which ‘La
+Pataude’ and ‘Grille d’Egout’ were holding high carnival. At every
+ostentatious display of hosiery the crowd roared.
+
+“Brava! Bis!” cried an absinthe-soaked old gentleman; “vive La
+Pataude!”
+
+For answer the lady dexterously raised his hat from his head with the
+point of her satin slipper.
+
+The crowd roared again. “Brava! Brava, La Pataude!”
+
+Yvonne turned away.
+
+“I don’t like it. I don’t find it amusing,” she said, faintly.
+
+Gethryn’s hand closed on hers.
+
+“Nor I,” he said.
+
+“But you and your friends used to go to the students’ ball at
+‘Bullier’s,’” she began, a little reproachfully.
+
+“Only as Nouveaux, and then, as a rule, the high-jinks are pretty
+genuine there—at least, with the students. We used to go to keep cool
+in spring and hear the music; to keep warm in winter; and amuse
+ourselves at Carnival time.”
+
+“But—Mr Clifford knows all the girls at ‘Bullier’s.’ Do—do you?”
+
+“Some.”
+
+“How many?” she said, pettishly.
+
+“None—now.”
+
+A pause. Yvonne was looking down.
+
+“See here, little goose, I never cared about any of that crowd, and I
+haven’t been to the Bullier since—since last May.”
+
+She turned her face up to his; tears were stealing down from under her
+mask.
+
+“Why, Yvonne!” he began, but she clung to his shoulder, as the
+orchestra broke into a waltz.
+
+“Don’t speak to me, Rex—but dance! Dance!”
+
+They danced until the last bar of music ceased with a thundering crash.
+
+“Tired?” he asked, still holding her.
+
+She smiled breathlessly and stepped back, but stopped short, with a
+little cry.
+
+“Oh! I’m caught—there, on your coat!”
+
+He leaned over her to detach the shred of silk.
+
+“Where is it? Oh! Here!”
+
+And they both laughed and looked at each other, for she had been held
+by the little golden clasp, the fleur-de-lis.
+
+“You see,” he said, “it will always draw me to you.”
+
+But a shadow fell on her fair face, and she sighed as she gently took
+his arm.
+
+When they entered their box, Clifford was still tormenting the poor
+Colonel.
+
+“Old dog thinks I know him,” he grinned, as Yvonne and Rex came in.
+Yvonne flung off her mask and began to fan herself.
+
+“Time for supper, you know,” suggested Clifford.
+
+Yvonne lay back in her chair, smiling and slowly waving the great
+plumes to and fro.
+
+“Who are those people in the next box?” she asked him. “They do make
+such a noise.”
+
+“There are only two, both masked.”
+
+“But they have unmasked now. There are their velvets on the edge of the
+box. I’m going to take a peep,” she whispered, rising and leaning
+across the railing.
+
+“Don’t; I wouldn’t—” began Gethryn, but he was too late.
+
+Yvonne leaned across the gilded cornice and instantly fell back in her
+chair, deathly pale.
+
+“My God! Are you ill, Yvonne?”
+
+“Oh, Rex, Rex, take me away—home—”
+
+Then came a loud hammering on the box door. A harsh, strident voice
+called, “Yvonne! Yvonne!”
+
+Clifford thoughtlessly threw it open, and a woman in evening dress,
+very decolletée, swept by him into the box, with a waft of sickly
+scented air.
+
+Yvonne leaned heavily on Gethryn’s shoulder; the woman stopped in front
+of them.
+
+“Ah! here you are, then!”
+
+Yvonne’s face was ghastly.
+
+“Nina,” she whispered, “why did you come?”
+
+“Because I wanted to make you a little surprise,” sneered the woman; “a
+pleasant little surprise. We love each other enough, I hope.” She
+stamped her foot.
+
+“Go,” said Yvonne, looking half dead.
+
+“Go!” mimicked the other. “But certainly! Only first you must introduce
+me to these gentlemen who are so kind to you.”
+
+“You will leave the box,” said Gethryn, in a low voice, holding open
+the door.
+
+The woman turned on him. She was evidently in a prostitute’s tantrum of
+malicious deviltry. Presently she would begin to lash herself into a
+wild rage.
+
+“Ah! this is the one!” she sneered, and raising her voice, she called,
+“Mannie, Mannie, come in here, quick!”
+
+A sidling step approached from the next box, and the face of Mr Emanuel
+Pick appeared at the door.
+
+“This is the one,” cried the woman, shrilly. “Isn’t he pretty?”
+
+Mr Pick looked insolently at Gethryn and opened his mouth, but he did
+not say anything, for Rex took him by the throat and kicked him
+headlong into his own box. Then he locked the door, and taking out the
+key, returned and presented it to the woman.
+
+“Follow him!” he said, and quietly, but forcibly, urged her toward the
+lobby.
+
+“Mannie! Mannie!” she shrieked, in a voice choked by rage and
+dissipation, “come and kill him! He’s insulting me!”
+
+Getting no response, she began to pour forth shriek upon shriek,
+mingled with oaths and ravings. “I shall speak to my sister! Who dares
+prevent me from speaking to my sister! You—” she glared at Yvonne and
+ground her teeth. “You, the good one. You! the mother’s pet! Ran away
+from home! Took up with an English hog!”
+
+Yvonne sprang to her feet again.
+
+“Leave the box,” she gasped.
+
+“Ha! ha! Mais oui! leave the box! and let her dance while her mother
+lies dying!”
+
+Yvonne gave a cry.
+
+“Ah! Ah!” said her sister, suddenly speaking very slowly, nodding at
+every word. “Ah! Ah! go back to your room and see what is there—in the
+room of your lover—the little letter from Vernon. She wants you. She
+wants _you._ That is because you are so good. She does not want me. No,
+it is you who must come to see her die. I—I dance at the Carnival!”
+
+Then, suddenly turning on Gethryn with a devilish grin, “You! tell your
+mistress her mother is dying!” She laughed hatefully, but preserved her
+pretense of calm, walked to the door, and as she reached it swung round
+and made an insulting gesture to Gethryn.
+
+“You! I will remember you!”
+
+The door slammed and a key rattled in the next box.
+
+Clinging to Gethryn, Yvonne passed down the long corridor to the
+vestibule, while Elliott and Rowden silently gathered up the masks and
+opera glasses. Clifford stood holding her crushed and splintered fan.
+He looked at Elliott, who looked gloomily back at him, as Braith
+entered hurriedly.
+
+“What’s the matter? I saw something was wrong from the floor. Rex ill?”
+
+“Ill at ease,” said Clifford, grimly. “There’s a sister turned up. A
+devil of a sister.”
+
+Braith spoke very low. “Yvonne’s sister?”
+
+“Yes, a she-devil.”
+
+“Did you hear her name?”
+
+“Name’s Nina.”
+
+Braith went quietly out again. Passing blindly down the lobby, he ran
+against Mr Bulfinch. Mr Bulfinch was in charge of a policeman.
+
+“Hello, Braith!” he called, hilariously.
+
+Braith was going on with a curt nod when the other man added:
+
+“I’ve taken it out of Pick,” and he stopped short. “I got my two
+hundred francs worth,” the artist of the _London Mirror_ proceeded,
+“and now I shall feel bound to return you yours—the first time I have
+it,” he ended, vaguely.
+
+Braith made an impatient gesture.
+
+“Are you under arrest?”
+
+“Yes, I am. He couldn’t help it,” smiling agreeably at the Sergeant de
+Ville. “He saw me hit him.”
+
+The policeman looked stolid.
+
+“But what excuse?” began Braith.
+
+“Oh! none! Pick just passed me, and I felt as if I couldn’t stand it
+any longer, so I pitched in.”
+
+“Well, and now you’re in for fine and imprisonment.”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Bulfinch, beaming.
+
+“Have you any money with you?”
+
+“No, unless I have some in your pocket?” said the little man, with a
+mixture of embarrassment and bravado that touched Braith, who saw what
+the confession cost him.
+
+“Lots!” said he, cordially. “But first let us try what we can do with
+Bobby. Do you ever drink a petit verre, Monsieur le Sergeant de Ville?”
+with a winning smile to the wooden policeman.
+
+The latter looked at the floor.
+
+“No,” said he.
+
+“Never?”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“Well, I was only thinking that over on the Corner of the Rue Taitbout
+one finds excellent wine at twenty francs.”
+
+The officer now gazed dreamily at the ceiling.
+
+“Mine costs forty,” he said.
+
+And a few minutes later the faithful fellow stood in front of the Opera
+house quite alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The cab rolled slowly over the Pont au Change, and the wretched horse
+fell into a walk as he painfully toiled up the hill of St Michel.
+Yvonne lay back in the corner; covered with all her own wraps and
+Gethryn’s overcoat, she shivered.
+
+“Poor little Yvonne!” was all he said as he leaned over now and then to
+draw the cloak more closely around her. Not a sound but the rumble of
+the wheels and the wheezing of the old horse broke the silence. The
+streets were white and deserted. A few ragged flakes fell from the
+black vault above, or were shaken down from the crusted branches.
+
+The cab stopped with a jolt. Yvonne was trembling as Rex lifted her to
+the ground, and he hurried her into the house, up the black stairway
+and into their cold room.
+
+When he had a fire blazing in the grate, he looked around. She was
+kneeling on the floor beside a candle she had lighted, and her tears
+were pouring down upon the page of an open letter. Rex stepped over and
+touched her.
+
+“Come to the fire.” He raised her gently, but she could not stand, and
+he carried her in his arms to the great soft chair before the grate.
+Then he knelt down and warmed her icy hands in his own. After a while
+he moved her chair back, and drawing off her dainty white slippers,
+wrapped her feet in the fur that lay heaped on the hearth. Then he
+unfastened the cloak and the domino, and rolling her gloves from elbow
+to wrist, slipped them over the helpless little hands. The firelight
+glanced and glowed on her throat and bosom, tingeing their marble with
+opalescent lights, and searching the deep shadows under her long
+lashes. It reached her hair, touching here and there a soft, dark wave,
+and falling aslant the knots of ribbon on her bare shoulders, tipped
+them with points of white fire.
+
+“Is it so bad, dearest Yvonne?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then you must go?”
+
+“Oh, yes!”
+
+“When?”
+
+“At daylight.”
+
+Gethryn rose and went toward the door; he hesitated, came back and
+kissed her once on the forehead. When the door closed on him she wept
+as if her heart would break, hiding her head in her arms. He found her
+lying so when he returned, and, throwing down her traveling bag and
+rugs, he knelt and took her to his breast, kissing her again and again
+on the forehead. At last he had to speak.
+
+“I have packed the things you will need most and will send the rest. It
+is getting light, dearest; you have to change your dress, you know.”
+
+She roused herself and sat up, looking desolately about her.
+
+“Forever!” she whispered.
+
+“No! No!” cried Gethryn.
+
+“Ah! oui, mon ami!”
+
+Gethryn went and stood by the window. The bedroom door was closed.
+
+Day was breaking. He opened the window and looked into the white
+street. Lamps burned down there with a sickly yellow; a faint light
+showed behind the barred windows of the old gray barracks. One or two
+stiff sparrows hopped silently about the gutters, flying up hurriedly
+when the frost-covered sentinel stamped his boots before the barracks
+gate. Now and then a half-starved workman limped past, his sabots
+echoing on the frozen pavement. A hooded and caped policeman, a
+red-faced cabman stamping beside his sleepy horse—the street was empty
+but for them.
+
+It grew lighter. The top of St Sulpice burned crimson. Far off a bugle
+fluttered, and then came the tramp of the morning guard mount. They
+came stumbling across the stony court and leaned on their rifles while
+one of them presented arms and received the word from the sentry.
+Little by little people began to creep up and down the sidewalks, and
+the noise of wooden shutters announced another day of toil begun. The
+point of the Luxembourg Palace struck fire as the ghastly gas-lamps
+faded and went out. Suddenly the great bell of St Sulpice clashed the
+hour—Eight o’clock!
+
+Again a bugle blew sharply from the barracks, and a troop of cavalry
+danced and pawed through the gate, clattering away down the Rue de
+Seine.
+
+Gethryn shut the window and turned into the room. Yvonne stood before
+the dying embers. He went to her, almost timidly. Neither spoke. At
+last she took up her satchel and wrap.
+
+“It is time,” she whispered. “Let us go.”
+
+He clasped her once in his arms; she laid her cheek against his.
+
+
+The train left Montparnasse station at nine. There was hardly anyone in
+the waiting room. The Guard flung back the grating.
+
+“Vernon, par Chartres?” asked Gethryn.
+
+“Vernon—Moulins—Chartres—direct!” shouted the Guard, and stamped off
+down the platform.
+
+Gethryn showed his ticket which admitted him to the platform, and they
+walked slowly down the line of dismal-looking cars.
+
+“This one?” and he opened a door.
+
+She stood watching the hissing and panting engine, while Gethryn
+climbed in and placed her bags and rugs in a window corner. The car
+smelt damp and musty, and he stepped out with a choking sensation in
+his chest. A train man came along, closing doors with a slam.
+
+“All aboard—ladies—gentlemen—voyageurs?” he growled, as if to himself
+or some familiar spirit, and jerked a sullen clang from the station
+bell. The engine panted impatiently.
+
+Rex struggled against the constraint that seemed to be dividing them.
+
+“Yvonne, you will write?”
+
+“I don’t know!”
+
+“You don’t know! Yvonne!”
+
+“I know nothing except that I am wicked, and my mother is dying!” She
+said it in low, even tones, looking away from him.
+
+The gong struck again, with a startling clash.
+
+The engine shrieked; a cloud of steam rose from under the wheels. Rex
+hurried her into the carriage; there was no one else there. Suddenly
+she threw herself into his arms.
+
+“Oh! I love you! I love you! One kiss, no; no; on the lips. Good-bye,
+my own Rex!”
+
+“You will come again?” he said, crushing her to him.
+
+Her eyes looked into his.
+
+“I will come. I love you! Be true to me, Rex. I will come back.”
+
+Her lover could not speak. Doors slamming, and an impatient
+voice—“Descendez donc, M’sieu!”—roused him; he sprang from the
+carriage, and the train rolled slowly out of the smoke-filled station.
+
+How heavy the smoke was! Gethryn could hardly breathe—hardly see. He
+walked away and out into the street. The city was only half awake even
+yet. After, as it seemed, a long time, he found himself looking at a
+clock which said a quarter past ten. The winter sunshine slanted now on
+roof and pane, flooding the western side of the shabby boulevard,
+dappling the snow with yellow patches. He had stopped in the chilly
+shadow of a gateway and was looking vacantly about. He saw the sunshine
+across the street and shivered where he was, and yet he did not leave
+the shadow. He stood and watched the sparrows taking bold little baths
+in the puddles of melted snow water. They seemed to enjoy the sunshine,
+but it was cold in the shade, cold and damp—and the air was hard to
+breathe. A policeman sauntered by and eyed him curiously. Rex’s face
+was haggard and pinched. Why had he stood there in the cold for half an
+hour, without ever changing his weight from one foot to the other?
+
+The policeman spoke at last, civilly:
+
+“Monsieur!”
+
+Gethryn turned his head.
+
+“Is it that Monsieur seeks the train?” he asked, saluting.
+
+Rex looked up. He had wandered back to the station. He lifted his hat
+and answered with the politeness dear to French officials.
+
+“Merci, Monsieur!” It made him cough to speak, and he moved on slowly.
+
+Gethryn would not go home yet. He wanted to be where there was plenty
+of cool air, and yet he shivered. He drew a deep breath which ended in
+a pain. How cold the air must be—to pain the chest like that! And yet,
+there were women wheeling handcarts full of yellow crocus buds about.
+He stopped and bought some for Yvonne.
+
+“She will like them,” he thought. “Ah!”—he turned away, leaving flowers
+and money. The old flower-woman crossed herself.
+
+No—he would not go home just yet. The sun shone brightly; men passed,
+carrying their overcoats on their arms; a steam was rising from the
+pavements in the Square.
+
+There was a crowd on the Pont au Change. He did not see any face
+distinctly, but there seemed to be a great many people, leaning over
+the parapets, looking down the river. He stopped and looked over too.
+The sun glared on the foul water eddying in and out among the piles and
+barges. Some men were rowing in a boat, furiously. Another boat
+followed close. A voice close by Gethryn cried, angrily:
+
+“Dieu! who are you shoving?”
+
+Rex moved aside; as he did so a gamin crowded quickly forward and
+craned over the edge, shouting, “Vive le cadavre!”
+
+“Chut!” said another voice.
+
+“Vive la Mort! Vive la Morgue!” screamed the wretched little creature.
+
+A policeman boxed his ears and pulled him back. The crowd laughed. The
+voice that had cried, “Chut!” said lower, “What a little devil, that
+Rigaud!”
+
+Rex moved slowly on.
+
+In the Court of the Louvre were people enough and to spare. Some of
+them bowed to him; several called him to turn and join them. He lifted
+his hat to them all, as if he knew them, but passed on without
+recognizing a soul. The broad pavements were warm and wet, but the air
+must have been sharp to hurt his chest so. The great pigeons of the
+Louvre brushed by him. It seemed as if he felt the beat of their wings
+on his brains. A shabby-looking fellow asked him for a sou—and, taking
+the coin Rex gave him, shuffled off in a hurry; a dog followed him, he
+stooped and patted it; a horse fell, he went into the street and helped
+to raise it. He said to a man standing by that the harness was too
+heavy—and the man, looking after him as he walked away, told a friend
+that there was another crazy foreigner.
+
+Soon after this he found himself on the Quai again, and the sun was
+sinking behind the dome of the Invalides. He decided to go home. He
+wanted to get warm, and yet it seemed as if the air of a room would
+stifle him. However, once more he crossed the Seine, and as he turned
+in at his own gate he met Clifford, who said something, but Rex pushed
+past without trying to understand what it was.
+
+He climbed the dreary old stairs and came to his silent studio. He sat
+down by the fireless hearth and gazed at a long, slender glove among
+the ashes. At his feet her little white satin slippers lay half hidden
+in the long white fur of the rug.
+
+He felt giddy and weak, and that hard pain in his chest left him no
+peace. He rose and went into the bedroom. Her ball dress lay where she
+had thrown it. He flung himself on the bed and buried his face in the
+rustling silk. A faint odor of violets pervaded it. He thought of the
+bouquet that had been placed for her at the dinner. Then the flowers
+reminded him of last summer. He lived over again their gay life—their
+excursions to Meudon, Sceaux, Versailles with its warm meadows, and
+cool, dark forests; Fontainebleau, where they lunched under the trees;
+St Cloud—Oh! he remembered their little quarrel there, and how they
+made it up on the boat at Suresnes afterward.
+
+He rose excitedly and went back into the studio; his cheeks were aflame
+and his breath came sharp and hard. In a corner, with its face to the
+wall, stood an old, unfinished portrait of Yvonne, begun after one of
+those idyllic summer days.
+
+When Braith walked in, after three times knocking, he found Gethryn
+painting feverishly by the last glimmer of daylight on this portrait.
+The room was full of shadows, and while they spoke it grew quite dark.
+
+That night Braith sat by his side and listened to his incoherent talk,
+and Dr White came and said “Pleuro-pneumonia” was what ailed him.
+Braith had his traps fetched from his own place and settled down to
+nurse him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+C arnival was over. February had passed, like January, for most of the
+fellows, in a bad dream of unpaid bills. March was going in much the
+same way. This is the best account Clifford, Elliott and Rowden could
+have given of it. Thaxton and Rhodes were working. Carleton was engaged
+to a new pretty girl—the sixth or seventh.
+
+Satan found the time passing delightfully. There was no one at present
+to restrain him when he worried Mrs Gummidge. The tabby daily grew
+thinner and sadder-eyed. The parrot grew daily more blasé. He sneered
+more and more bitterly, and his eyelid, when closed, struck a chill to
+the soul of the raven.
+
+At first the pups were unhappy. They missed their master. But they were
+young, and flies were getting plentiful in the studio.
+
+For Braith the nights and the days seemed to wind themselves in an
+endless chain about Rex’s sickbed. But when March had come and gone Rex
+was out of danger, and Braith began to paint again on his belated
+picture. It was too late, now, for the Salon; but he wanted to finish
+it all the same.
+
+One day, early in April, he came back to Gethryn after an unusually
+long absence at his own studio.
+
+Rex was up and trying to dress. He turned a peaked face toward his
+friend. His eyes were two great hollows, and when he smiled and spoke,
+in answer to Braith’s angry exclamation, his jaws worked visibly.
+
+“Keep cool, old chap!” he said, in the ghost of a voice.
+
+“What are you getting up for, all alone?”
+
+“Had to—tired of the bed. Try it yourself—six weeks!”
+
+“You want to go back there and never quit it alive—that’s what you
+want,” said Braith, nervously.
+
+“Don’t, either. Come and button this collar and stop swearing.”
+
+“I suppose you’re going back to Julien’s the day after tomorrow,” said
+Braith, sarcastically, after Rex was dressed and had been helped to the
+lounge in the studio.
+
+“No,” said he, “I’m going to Arcachon tomorrow.”
+
+“Arca—- twenty thousand thunders!”
+
+“Not at all,” smiled Rex—a feeble, willful smile.
+
+Braith sat down and drew his chair beside Gethryn.
+
+“Wait a while, Rex.”
+
+“I can’t get well here, you know.”
+
+“But you can get a bit stronger before you start on such a journey.”
+
+“I thought the doctor told you the sooner I went south the better.”
+
+That was true; Braith was silent a while.
+
+At last he said, “I have all the money you will want till your own
+comes, you know, and I can get you ready by the end of this week, if
+you will go.”
+
+Rex was no baby, but his voice shook when he answered.
+
+“Dear old, kind, unselfish friend! I’d almost rather remain poor, and
+let you keep on taking care of me, but—see here—” and he handed him a
+letter. “That came this morning, after you left.”
+
+Braith read it eagerly, and looked up with a brighter face than he had
+worn for many a day.
+
+“By Jove!” he said. “By Jupiter!”
+
+Rex smiled sadly at his enthusiasm.
+
+“This means health, and a future, and—everything to you, Rex!”
+
+“Health and wealth, and happiness,” said Gethryn bitterly.
+
+“Yes, you ungrateful young reprobate—that’s exactly what it means. Go
+to your Arcachon, by all means, since you’ve got a fortune to go on—I
+say—you—you didn’t know your aunt very well, did you? You’re not cut up
+much?”
+
+“I never saw her half a dozen times in my whole life. But she’s been
+generous to me, poor old lady!”
+
+“I should think so. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a nice
+sum for a young fellow to find in his pocket all on a sudden. And
+now—you want to go away and get well, and come back presently and begin
+where you left off—a year ago. Is that it?”
+
+“That is it. I shall never get well here, and I mean to get well if I
+can,”—he paused, and hesitated. “That was the only letter in my box
+this morning.”
+
+Braith did not answer.
+
+“It is nearly two months now,” continued Rex, in a low voice.
+
+“What are your plans?” interrupted Braith, brusquely.
+
+Rex flushed.
+
+“I’m going first”—he answered rather drily, “to Arcachon. You see by
+the letter my aunt died in Florence. Of course I’ve got to go and
+measure out a lot of Italian red tape before I can get the money. It
+seems to me the sooner I can get into the pine air and the sea breezes
+at Arcachon, the better chance I have of being fit to push on to
+Florence, via the Riviera, before the summer heat.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“You will come back?”
+
+“When I am cured.”
+
+There was a long silence. At last Gethryn put a thin hand on Braith’s
+shoulder and looked him lovingly in the face.
+
+“You know, and I know, how little I have ever done to deserve your
+goodness, to show my gratitude and—and love for you. But if I ever come
+back I will prove to you—”
+
+Braith could not answer, and did not try to. He sat and looked at the
+floor, the sad lines about his mouth deeply marked, his throat moving
+once or twice as he swallowed the lump of grief that kept rising.
+
+After a while he muttered something about its being time for Rex’s
+supper and got up and fussed about with a spirit lamp and broths and
+jellies, more like Rex’s mother than a rough young bachelor. In the
+midst of his work there came a shower of blows on the studio door and
+Clifford, Rowden and Elliott trooped in without more ado.
+
+They set up a chorus of delighted yells at seeing Rex dressed and on
+the studio lounge. But Braith suppressed them promptly.
+
+“Don’t you know any better than that?” he growled. “What did you come
+for, anyway? It’s Rex’s supper time.”
+
+“We came, Papa,” said Clifford, “to tell Rex that I have reformed. We
+wanted him to know it as soon as we did ourselves.”
+
+“Ah! he’s a changed man! He’s worked all day at Julien’s for a week
+past,” cried Elliott and Rowden together.
+
+“And my evenings?” prompted Clifford sweetly.
+
+“Are devoted to writing letters home!” chanted the chorus.
+
+“Get out!” was all Rex answered, but his face brightened at the three
+bad boys standing in a row with their hats all held politely against
+their stomachs. He had not meant to tell them, dreading the fatigue of
+explanations, but by an impulse he held out his hand to them.
+
+“I say, you fellows, shake hands! I’m going off tomorrow.”
+
+Their surprise having been more or less noisily and profusely
+expressed, Braith stepped decidedly in between them and his patient,
+satisfied their curiosity, and gently signified that it was time to go.
+
+He only permitted one shake apiece, foiling all Clifford’s rebellious
+attempts to dodge around him and embrace Gethryn. But Rex was lying
+back by this time, tired out, and he was glad when Braith closed the
+studio door. It flew open the next minute and an envelope came spinning
+across to Rex.
+
+“Letter in your box, Reggy—good-bye, old chap!” said Clifford’s voice.
+
+The door did not quite close again and the voices and steps of his
+departing friends came echoing back as Braith raised a black-edged
+letter from the floor. It bore the postmark: Vernon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+R ound about the narrow valley which is cut by the rapid Trauerbach,
+Bavarian mountains tower, their well timbered flanks scattered here and
+there with rough slides, or opening out in long green alms, and here at
+evening one may sometimes see a spot of yellow moving along the bed of
+a half dry mountain torrent.
+
+Miss Ruth Dene stood in front of the Forester’s lodge at Trauerbach one
+evening at sunset, and watched such a spot on the almost perpendicular
+slope that rose opposite, high above her head. Some Jaegers and the
+Forester were looking, too.
+
+“My glass, Federl! Ja! ’s ist’n gams!”
+
+“Gems?” inquired Miss Dene, excited by her first view of a chamois.
+
+“Ja! ’n Gams,” said the Forester, sticking to his dialect.
+
+The sun was setting behind the Red Peak, his last rays pouring into the
+valley. They fell on rock and alm, on pine and beech, and turned the
+silver Trauerbach to molten gold.
+
+Mr Isidor Blumenthal, sitting at a table under one of the windows,
+drinking beer, beheld this phenomenon, and putting down his quart
+measure, he glared at the waste of precious metal. Then he lighted the
+stump of a cigar; then he looked at his watch, and it being almost
+supper time, he went in to secure the best place. He liked being early
+at table; he liked the first cut of the meats, hot and fat; he loved
+plenty of gravy. While waiting to be served he could count the antlers
+on the walls and estimate “how much they would fetch by an antiquar,”
+as he said to himself. There was nothing else marketable in the large
+bare room, full of deal tables and furnished with benches built against
+the wall. But he could pick his teeth demonstratively—toothpicks were
+not charged in the bill—and he could lean back on two legs of his
+chair, with his hands in his pockets, and stare through the windows at
+Miss Dene.
+
+The Herr Förster and the two Jaegers had gone away. Miss Dene stood now
+with her slender hands clasped easily behind her, a Tam O’Shanter
+shading her sweet face. She was tall, and so far as Mr Blumenthal had
+ever seen, extremely grave for her years. But Mr Blumenthal’s
+opportunities of observing Miss Dene had been limited.
+
+The “gams” had disappeared. Miss Dene was looking down the road that
+leads to Schicksalsee. There was not much visible there except a whirl
+of dust raised by the sudden evening wind.
+
+Sometimes it was swept away for a moment; then she saw a weather-beaten
+bridge and a bend in the road where it disappeared among the noble firs
+of a Bavarian forest.
+
+The sun sank and left the Trauerbach a stream of molten lead. The
+shadows crept up to the Jaeger’s hut and then to the little chapel
+above that. Gusts of whistling martins swept by.
+
+A silk-lined, Paris-made wool dress rustled close beside her, and she
+put out one of the slender hands without turning her head.
+
+“Mother, dear,” said she, as a little silver-haired old lady took it
+and came and leaned against her tall girl’s shoulder, “haven’t we had
+enough of the ‘Först-haus zu Trauerbach?’”
+
+“Not until a certain girl, who danced away her color at Cannes, begins
+to bloom again.”
+
+Ruth shrugged, and then laughed. “At least it isn’t so—so indigestible
+as Munich.”
+
+“Oh! Absurd! Speaking of digestion, come to your Schmarn und
+Reh-braten. Supper is ready.”
+
+Mother and daughter walked into the dingy “Stube” and took their seats
+at the Forester’s table.
+
+Mr Blumenthal’s efforts had not secured him a place there after all;
+Anna, the capable niece of the Frau Förster, having set down a large
+foot, clad in a thick white stocking and a carpet slipper, to the
+effect that there was only room for the Herr Förster’s family and the
+Americans.
+
+“I also am an American!” cried Mr Blumenthal in Hebrew-German.
+Nevertheless, when Ruth and her mother came in he bowed affably to them
+from the nearest end of the next table.
+
+“Mamma,” said Ruth, very low, “I hope I’m not going to begin being
+difficult, but do you know, that is really an odious man?”
+
+“Yes, I do know,” laughed her easy-tempered mother, “but what is that
+to us?”
+
+Mr Blumenthal was reveling in hot fat. After he had bowed and smiled
+greasily, he tucked his napkin tighter under his chin and fell once
+more upon the gravy. He sopped his bread in it and scooped it up with
+his knife. But after there was no more gravy he wished to converse. He
+scrubbed his lips with one end of the napkin and called across to Ruth,
+who shrank behind her mother: “Vell, Miss Dene, you have today a shammy
+seen, not?”
+
+Ruth kept out of sight, but Mrs Dene nodded, good-naturedly.
+
+“Ja! soh! and haf you auch dose leetle deer mit der mamma seen? I haf
+myself such leetle deer myself many times shoot, me and my neffe. But
+not here. It is not permitted.” No one answered. Ruth asked Anna for
+the salt.
+
+“My neffe, he eats such lots of salt—” began Mr Blumenthal.
+
+“Herr Förster,” interrupted Mrs Dene—“Is the room ready for our friend
+who is coming this evening?”
+
+“Your vriendt, he is from New York?”
+
+“Ja, ja, Gnädige Frau!” said the Forester, hastily.
+
+“I haf a broader in New York. Blumenthal and Cohen, you know dem, yes?”
+
+Mrs Dene and her daughter rose and went quietly out into the porch,
+while the Frau Förster, with cold, round gray eyes and a tight mouth,
+was whispering to her frowning spouse that it was none of his business,
+and why get himself into trouble? Besides, Mrs Dene’s Herr Gemahl,
+meaning the absent colonel, would come back in a day or two; let him
+attend to Mr Blumenthal.
+
+Outside, under the windows, were long benches set against the house
+with tables before them. One was crowded with students who had come
+from everywhere on the foot-tours dear to Germans.
+
+Their long sticks, great bundles, tin botanizing boxes, and sketching
+tools lay in untidy heaps; their stone krugs were foaming with beer,
+and their mouths were full of black bread and cheese.
+
+Underneath the other window was the Jaeger’s table. There they sat,
+gossiping as usual with the Forester’s helpers, a herdsman or two, some
+woodcutters on their way into or out from the forest, and a pair of
+smart revenue officers from the Tyrol border, close by.
+
+Ruth said to the nearest Jaeger in passing:
+
+“Herr Loisl, will you play for us?”
+
+“But certainly, gracious Fraulein! Shall I bring my zither to the table
+under the beech tree?”
+
+“Please do!”
+
+Miss Dene was a great favorite with the big blond Jaegers.
+
+“Ja freili! will I play for the gracious Fraulein!” said Loisl, and cut
+slices with his hunting knife from a large white radish and ate them
+with black bread, shining good-humor from the tip of the black-cock
+feather on his old green felt hat to his bare, bronzed knees and his
+hobnailed shoes.
+
+At the table under the beech trees were two more great fellows in gray
+and green. They rose promptly and were moving away; Mrs Dene begged
+them to remain, and they sat down again, diffidently, but with dignity.
+
+“Herr Sepp,” said Ruth, smiling a little mischievously, “how is this?
+Herr Federl shot a stag of eight this morning, and I hear that
+yesterday you missed a Reh-bock!”
+
+Sepp reddened, and laughed. “Only wait, gracious Fraulein, next week it
+is my turn on the Red Peak.”
+
+“Ach, ja! Sepp knows the springs where the deer drink,” said Federl.
+
+“And you never took us there!” cried Ruth, reproachfully. “I would give
+anything to see the deer come and drink at sundown.”
+
+Sepp felt his good breeding under challenge. “If the gracious Frau
+permits,” with a gentlemanly bow to Mrs Dene, “and the ladies care to
+come—but the way is hard—”
+
+“You couldn’t go, dearest,” murmured Ruth to her mother, “but when papa
+comes back—”
+
+“Your father will be delighted to take you wherever there is a
+probability of breaking both your necks, my dear,” said Mrs Dene.
+
+“Griffin!” said Ruth, giving her hand a loving little squeeze under the
+table.
+
+Loisl came up with his zither and they all made way before him. Anna
+placed a small lantern on the table and the light fell on the handsome
+bearded Jaeger’s face as he leaned lovingly above his instrument.
+
+The incurable “Sehnsucht” of humanity found not its only expression in
+that great Symphony where “all the mightier strings assembling, fell a
+trembling.” Ruth heard it as she leaned back in the deep shade and
+listened to those silvery melodies and chords of wonderful purity,
+coaxed from the little zither by Loisl’s strong, rough hand, with its
+tender touch. To all the airs he played her memory supplied the words.
+Sometimes a Sennerin was watching from the Alm for her lover’s visit in
+the evening. Sometimes the hunter said farewell as he sprang down the
+mountainside. Once tears came into Ruth’s eyes as the simple tune
+recalled how a maiden who died and went to Heaven told her lover at
+parting:
+
+“When you come after me I shall know you by my ring which you will
+wear, and me you will know by your rose that rests on my heart.”
+
+Loisl had stopped playing and was tuning a little, idly sounding chords
+of penetrating sweetness. There came a noise of jolting and jingling
+from the road below.
+
+Mrs Dene spoke softly to Ruth. “That is the Mail; it is time he was
+here.” Ruth assented absently. She cared at that moment more for
+hearing a new folk-song than for the coming of her old playmate.
+
+Rapid wheels approaching from the same direction overtook and passed
+the “Post” and stopped below. Mrs Dene rose, drawing Ruth with her. The
+three tall Jaegers rose too, touching their hats. Thanking them all,
+with a special compliment to Loisl, the ladies went and stood by some
+stone steps which lead from the road to the Först-haus, just as a young
+fellow, proceeding up them two at a time, arrived at the top, and
+taking Mrs Dene’s hand began to kiss it affectionately.
+
+“At last!” she cried, “and the very same boy! after four years! Ruth!”
+Ruth gave one hand and Reginald Gethryn took two, releasing one the
+next moment to put his arm around the little old lady, and so he led
+them both into the house, more at home already than they were.
+
+“Shall we begin to talk about how we are not one bit changed, only a
+little older, first, or about your supper?” said Mrs Dene.
+
+“Oh! supper, please!” said Rex, of the sun-browned face and laughing
+eyes. Smiling Anna, standing by, understood, aided by a hint from Ruth
+of “Schmarn und Reh-braten”—and clattered away to fetch the
+never-changing venison and fried batter, with which, and Schicksalsee
+beer, the Frau Förster sustained her guests the year round, from
+“Georgi” to “Michaeli” and from “Michaeli” to “Georgi,” reasoning that
+what she liked was good enough for them. The shapeless cook was ladling
+out dumplings, which she called “Nudel,” into some soup for a Munich
+opera singer, who had just arrived by the stage. Anna confided to her
+that this was a “feiner Herr,” and must be served accordingly. The kind
+Herr Förster came up to greet his guest. Mrs Dene introduced him as Mr
+Gethryn, of New York. At this Mr Blumenthal bounced forward from a
+corner where he had been spying and shook hands hilariously. “Vell! and
+how it goes!” he cried. Rex saw Ruth’s face as she turned away, and
+stepping to her side, he whispered, “Friend of yours?” The teasing tone
+woke a thousand memories of their boy and girl days, and Ruth’s young
+lady reserve had changed to the frank camaraderie of former times when
+she shook her head at him, laughing, as he looked back at them from the
+stairs, up which he was following Grethi and his portmanteau to the
+room prepared for him.
+
+Half an hour later Mrs Dene and her daughter were looking with approval
+at Rex and his hearty enjoyment of the Frau Förster’s fare. The cook,
+on learning that this was a “feiner Herr,” had added trout to the
+regulation dishes; and although she was convinced that the only proper
+way to cook them was “blau gesotten”—meaning boiled to a livid bluish
+white—she had learned American tastes from the Denes and sent them in
+to Gethryn beautifully brown and crisp.
+
+Rex turned one over critically. “Good little fish. Who is the angler?”
+
+“Oh! angler! They were caught with bait,” said Ruth, wrinkling her
+nose.
+
+Rex gave her a quick look. “I suppose you have forgotten how to cast a
+fly.”
+
+“No, I think not,” she answered quietly.
+
+Mrs Dene opened her mouth to speak, and then discreetly closed it again
+in silence, reflecting that whatever there was to come on that point
+would get itself said without any assistance from her.
+
+“I had a look at the water as I came along,” continued Rex. “It seemed
+good casting.”
+
+“I never see it but I think how nice it would be to whip,” said Ruth.
+
+“No! really? Not outgrown the rod and fly since you grew into ball
+dresses?”
+
+“Try me and see.”
+
+“Now, my dearest child!—”
+
+“Yes, my dearest mother!—”
+
+“Yes, dearest Mrs Dene!—”
+
+“Oh! nonsense! listen to me, you children. Ruth danced herself ill at
+Cannes; and she lost her color, and she had a little cough, and she has
+it still, and she is very easily tired—”
+
+“Only of _not_ fishing and hunting, dearest, most perfect of mothers!
+You won’t put up papa to forbid my going with him and Rex!”
+
+“Your mother is incapable of such an action. How little you know her
+worth! She is only waiting to be assured that you are to have my
+greenheart, with a reel that spins fifty yards of silk. She shall have
+it, Mrs Dene.”
+
+“Is it as good as the hornbeam?” asked Ruth, smiling.
+
+“The old hornbeam! do you remember that? I say, Ruth, you spoke of
+shooting. Really, can you still shoot?”
+
+“Could I ever forget after such teaching?”
+
+“Well, now, I call _that_ a girl!” cried Rex, enthusiastically.
+
+“Let us hope some people won’t call it a hoyden!” said Mrs Dene, with
+the tender pride that made her faultfinding like a caress. “The idea of
+a girl carrying an absurd little breech-loading rifle all over Europe!”
+
+“What! the one I had built for her?”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Mrs Dene, with a shade more of reserve.
+
+“Miss Dene, you shall kill the first chamois that I see!”
+
+“I fear, Mr Gethryn, the Duke Alfons Adalbert Maximilian in Baiern will
+have something to say about that!”
+
+“Oh—h—h! Preserved?”
+
+“Yes, indeed, preserved!”
+
+“But they told me I might shoot on the Sonnewendjoch.”
+
+“Ah! But that’s in Tyrol, just across the line. You can see it from
+here. Austrian game laws aren’t Bavarian game laws, sir!”
+
+“How much of this country does your duke own?”
+
+“Just half a dozen mountains, and half a dozen lakes, and half a
+hundred trout streams, with all the splendid forests belonging to
+them.”
+
+“Lucky duke! And is the game preserved in the whole region? Can’t one
+get a shot?”
+
+“One cannot even carry a gun without a permit.”
+
+Rex groaned. “And the trout—I suppose they are preserved, too?”
+
+“Yes, but the Herr Förster has the right to fish and so have his
+guests. There are, however, conditions. The fish you take are not
+yours. You must buy as many of them as you want to keep, afterward. And
+they must be brought home alive—or as nearly alive as is consistent
+with being shut up in a close, round, green tin box, full of water
+which becomes tepid as it is carried along by a peasant boy in the
+heat. They usually die of suffocation. But to the German mind that is
+all right. It is only not right when one kills them instantly and lays
+them in a cool creel, on fresh wet ferns and moss.”
+
+“Nevertheless, I think we will dispense with the boy and the green box,
+in favor of the ferns and moss, assisted by a five franc piece or two.”
+
+“It isn’t francs any more; you’re not in France. It’s marks here, you
+know.”
+
+“Well, I have the same faith in the corrupting power of marks as of
+francs, or lire, or shillings, or dollars.”
+
+“And I think you will find your confidence justified,” said Mrs Dene,
+smiling.
+
+“Mamma trying to be cynical!” said Ruth, teasingly. “Isn’t she funny,
+Rex!”
+
+A thoughtful look stole over her mother’s face. “I can be terrible,
+too, sometimes—” she said in her little, clear, high soprano voice; and
+she gazed musingly at the edge of a letter, which just appeared above
+the table, and then sank out of sight in her lap.
+
+“A letter from papa! It came with the stage! What does he say?”
+
+“He says—several things; for one, he is coming back tomorrow instead of
+the next day.”
+
+“Delightful! But there is more?”
+
+Mrs Dene’s face became a cheerful blank. “Yes, there is more,” she
+said. A pause.
+
+“Mamma,” began Ruth, “do you think Griffins desirable as mothers?”
+
+“Very, for bad children!” Mrs Dene relapsed into a pleasant reverie.
+Ruth looked at her mother as a kitten does in a game of tag when the
+old cat has retired somewhere out of reach and sits up smiling through
+the barrier.
+
+“You find her sadly changed!” she said to Gethryn, in that silvery,
+mocking tone which she had inherited from her mother.
+
+“On the contrary, I find her the same adorable gossip she always was.
+Whatever is in that letter, she is simply dying to tell us all about
+it.”
+
+“Suppose we try not speaking, and see how long she can stand that?”
+
+Rex laid his repeater on the table. Two pairs of laughing eyes watched
+the dear little old lady. At the end of three minutes she raised her
+own; blue, sweet, running over with fun and kindness.
+
+“The colonel has a polite invitation from the duke for himself, and his
+party, to shoot on the Red Peak.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In July the sun is still an early riser, but long before he was up next
+day a succession of raps on the door woke Gethryn, and a voice outside
+inquired, “Are you going fishing with me today, you lazy beggar?”
+
+“Colonel!” cried Rex, and springing up and throwing open the door, he
+threatened to mingle his pajamas with the natty tweeds waiting there in
+a loving embrace. The colonel backed away, twisting his white mustache.
+“How do, Reggy! Same boy, eh? Yes. I drove from Schicksalsee this
+morning.”
+
+“This morning? Wasn’t it last night?” said Rex, looking at the shadows
+on the opposite mountain.
+
+“And I am going to get some trout,” continued the colonel, ignoring the
+interruption. “So’s Daisy. See my new waterproof rig?”
+
+“Beautiful! but—is it quite the thing to wear a flower in one’s fishing
+coat?”
+
+“I’m not aware—” began the other stiffly, but broke down, shook his
+seal ring at Rex, and walking over to the glass, rearranged the bit of
+wild hyacinth in his buttonhole with care.
+
+“And now,” he said, “Daisy and I will give you just three quarters of
+an hour.” Rex sent a shower from the water basin across the room.
+
+“Look out for those new waterproof clothes, Colonel.”
+
+“I’ll take them out of harm’s way,” said the colonel, and disappeared.
+
+Before the time had expired Rex stood under the beech tree with his rod
+case and his creel. The colonel sat reading a novel. Mrs Dene was
+pouring out coffee. Ruth was coming down a path which led from a low
+shed, the door of which stood wide open, suffering the early sunshine
+to fall on something that lay stretched along the floor. It was a stag,
+whose noble head and branching antlers would never toss in the sunshine
+again.
+
+“Only think!” cried Ruth breathlessly, “Federl shot a stag of ten this
+morning at daybreak on the Red Peak, and he’s frightened out of his
+wits, for only the duke has a right to do that. Federl mistook it for a
+stag of eight. And they’re in the velvet, besides!” she added rather
+incoherently. “ _What_ luck! Poor Federl! I asked him if that meant
+_strafen,_ and he said he guessed not, only _zanken._”
+
+“What’s ‘strafen’ and what’s ‘zanken,’ Daisy?” asked the Colonel,
+pronouncing the latter like “z” in buzz.
+
+Ruth went up to her father and took his face between her hands,
+dropping a light kiss on his eyebrow.
+
+“ _Strafen_ is when one whips bad boys and t—s—_zanken_ is when one
+only scolds them. Which shall we do to you, dear? Both?”
+
+“We’ll take coffee first, and then we’ll see which there’s time for
+before we leave you hemming a pocket handkerchief while Rex and I go
+trout fishing.”
+
+“Such parents!” sighed Ruth, nestling down beside her father and
+looking over her cup at Rex, who gravely nodded sympathy.
+
+After breakfast, as Ruth stood waiting by the table where the fishing
+tackle lay, perfectly composed in manner, but unable to keep the color
+from her cheek and the sparkle of impatience from her eye, Gethryn
+thought he had seldom seen anything more charming.
+
+A soft gray Tam crowned her pretty hair. A caped coat, fastened to the
+throat, hung over the short kilt skirt, and rough gaiters buttoned down
+over a wonderful little pair of hobnailed boots.
+
+“I say! Ruth! what a stunner you are!” cried he with enthusiasm. She
+turned to the rod case and began lifting and arranging the rods.
+
+“Rex,” she said, looking up brightly, “I feel about sixteen today.”
+
+“Or less, judging from your costume,” said her mother. “Schicksalsee
+isn’t Rangely, you know. I only hope the good people in the little
+ducal court won’t call you theatrical.”
+
+“A theatrical stunner!” mused Ruth, in her clearest tones. “It is good
+to know how one strikes one’s friends.”
+
+“The disciplining of this young person is to be left to me,” said the
+colonel. “Daisy, everything else about you is all wrong, but your frock
+is all right.”
+
+“That is simple and comprehensive and reassuring,” murmured Ruth
+absently, as she bent over the fly-book with Gethryn.
+
+After much consultation and many thoughtful glances at the bit of water
+which glittered and dashed through the narrow meadow in front of the
+house, they arranged the various colored lures and leaders, and
+standing up, looked at Colonel Dene, reading his novel.
+
+“What? Oh! Come along, then!” said he, on being made aware that he was
+waited for, and standing up also, he dropped the volume into his creel
+and lighted a cigar.
+
+“Are you going to take that trash along, dear?” asked his daughter.
+
+“What trash? The work of fiction? That’s literature, as the gentleman
+said about Dante.”
+
+“Rex,” said Mrs Dene, buttoning the colonel’s coat over his snowy
+collar, “I put this expedition into your hands. Take care of these two
+children.”
+
+She stood and watched them until they passed the turn beyond the
+bridge. Mr Blumenthal watched them too, from behind the curtains in his
+room. His leer went from one to the other, but always returned and
+rested on Rex. Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air,
+he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears
+and rolling himself in a cocoon of featherbeds, until he should emerge
+about noon, like some sleek, fat moth.
+
+The anglers walked briskly up the wooded road, chatting and laughing,
+with now and then a sage and critical glance at the water, of which
+they caught many glimpses through the trees. Gethryn and Ruth were soon
+far ahead. The colonel sauntered along, switching leaves with his rod
+and indulging in bursts of Parisian melody.
+
+“Papa,” called Ruth, looking back, “does your hip trouble you today, or
+are you only lazy?”
+
+“Trot along, little girl; I’ll be there before you are,” said the
+colonel airily, and stopped to replace the wild hyacinth in his coat by
+a prim little pink and white daisy. Then he lighted a fresh cigar and
+started on, but their voices were already growing faint in the
+distance. Observing this, he stopped and looked up and down the road.
+No one was in sight. He sat down on the bank with his hand on his hip.
+His face changed from a frown to an expression of sharp pain. In five
+minutes he had grown from a fresh elderly man into an old man, his face
+drawn and gray, but he only muttered “the devil!” and sat still. A big
+bronze-winged beetle whizzed past him, z—z—ip! “like a bullet,” he
+thought, and pressed both hands now on his hip. “Twenty-five years
+ago—pshaw! I’m not so old as that!” But it was twenty-five years ago
+when the blue-capped troopers, bursting in to the rescue, found the
+dandy “—-th,” scorched and rent and blackened, still reeling beneath a
+rag crowned with a gilt eagle. The exquisite befeathered and gold laced
+“—-th.” But the shells have rained for hours among the “Dandies”—and
+some are dead, and some are wishing for death, like that youngster
+lying there with the shattered hip.
+
+Colonel Dene rose up presently and relighted his cigar; then he flicked
+some dust from the new tweeds, picked a stem of wild hyacinth, and
+began to whistle. “Pshaw! I’m not so old as all that!” he murmured,
+sauntering along the pleasant wood-road. Before long he came in sight
+of Ruth and Gethryn, who were waiting. But he only waved them on,
+laughing.
+
+“Papa always says that old wound of his does not hurt him, but it does.
+I know it does,” said Ruth.
+
+Rex noted what tones of tenderness there were in her cool, clear voice.
+He did not answer, for he could only agree with her, and what could be
+the use of that?
+
+They strolled on in silence, up the fragrant forest road. Great
+glittering dragonflies drifted along the river bank, or hung quivering
+above pools. Clouds of lazy sulphur butterflies swarmed and floated,
+eddying up from the road in front of them and settling down again in
+their wake like golden dust. A fox stole across the path, but Gethryn
+did not see him. The mesh of his landing net was caught just then in a
+little gold clasp that he wore on his breast.
+
+“How quaint!” cried Ruth; “let me help you; there! One would think you
+were a French legitimist, with your fleur-de-lis.”
+
+“Thank you”—was all he answered, and turned away, as he felt the blood
+burn his face. But Ruth was walking lightly on and had not noticed. The
+fleur-de-lis, however, reminded her of something she had to say, and
+she began again, presently—
+
+“You left Paris rather suddenly, did you not, Rex?”
+
+This time he colored furiously, and Ruth, turning to him, saw it. She
+flushed too, fearing to have made she knew not what blunder, but she
+went on seriously, not pausing for his answer:
+
+“The year before, that is three years ago now, we waited in Italy, as
+we had promised to do, for you to join us. But you never even wrote to
+say why you did not come. And you haven’t explained it yet, Rex.”
+
+Gethryn grew pale. This was what he had been expecting. He knew it
+would have to come; in fact he had wished for nothing more than an
+opportunity for making all the amends that were possible under the
+circumstances. But the possible amends were very, very inadequate at
+best, and now that the opportunity was here, his courage failed, and he
+would have shirked it if he could. Besides, for the last five minutes,
+Ruth had been innocently stirring memories that made his heart beat
+heavily.
+
+And now she was waiting for her answer. He glanced at the clear profile
+as she walked beside him. Her eyes were raised a little; they seemed to
+be idly following the windings of a path that went up the opposite
+mountainside; her lips rested one upon the other in quiet curves. He
+thought he had never seen such a pure, proud looking girl. All the
+chivalry of a generous and imaginative man brought him to her feet.
+
+“I cannot explain. But I ask your forgiveness. Will you grant it? I
+won’t forgive myself!”
+
+She turned instantly and gave him her hand, not smiling, but her eyes
+were very gentle. They walked on a while in silence, then Rex said:
+
+“Ever since I came, I have been trying to find courage to ask pardon
+for that unpardonable conduct, but when I looked in your dear mother’s
+face, I felt myself such a brute that I was only fit to hold my tongue.
+And I believed,” he added, after a pause, “that she would forgive me
+too. She was always better to me than I deserved.”
+
+“Yes,” said Ruth.
+
+“And you also are too good to me,” he continued, “in giving me this
+chance to ask your pardon.” His voice took on the old caressing tone in
+which he used to make peace after their boy and girl tiffs. “I knew
+very well that with you I should have a stricter account to settle than
+with your mother,” he said, smiling.
+
+“Yes,” said Ruth again. And then with a little effort and a slight
+flush she added:
+
+“I don’t think it is good for men when too many excuses are made for
+them. Do you?”
+
+“No, I do not,” answered Rex, and thought, if all women were like this
+one, how much easier it would be for men to lead a good life! His heart
+stopped its heavy beating. The memories which he had been fighting for
+two years faded away once more; his spirits rose, and he felt like a
+boy as he kept step with Ruth along the path which had now turned and
+ran close beside the stream.
+
+“Now tell me something of your travels,” said Ruth. “You have been in
+the East.”
+
+“Yes, in Japan. But first I stopped a while in India with some British
+officers, nice fellows. There was some pheasant shooting.”
+
+“Pheasants! No tigers?”
+
+“One tiger.”
+
+“You shot him! Oh! tell me about it!”
+
+“No, I only saw him.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In a jungle.”
+
+“Did you fire?”
+
+“No, for he was already dead, and the odor which pervaded his resting
+place made me hurry away as fast as if he had been alive.”
+
+“You are a provoking boy!”
+
+Rex laughed. “I did shoot a cheetah in China.”
+
+“A dead one?”
+
+“No, he was snarling over a dead buck.”
+
+“Then you do deserve some respect.”
+
+“If you like. But it was very easy. One bullet settled him. I was fined
+afterward.”
+
+“Fined! for what?”
+
+“For shooting the Emperor’s trained cheetah. After that I always looked
+to see if the game wore a silver collar before I fired.”
+
+Ruth would not look as if she heard.
+
+Rex went on teasingly: “I assure you it was embarrassing, when the
+pheasants were bursting cover, to be under the necessity of inquiring
+at the nearest house if those were really pheasants or only Chinese
+hens.”
+
+“Rex,” exclaimed Ruth, indignantly, “I hope you don’t think I believe a
+word you are saying.”
+
+They had stopped to rest beside the stream, and now the colonel
+sauntered into view, his hands full of wild flowers, his single
+eyeglass gleaming beside his delicate straight nose.
+
+“Do you know,” he asked, strolling up to Ruth and tucking a cluster of
+bluebells under her chin, “do you know what old Hugh Montgomery would
+say if he were here?”
+
+“He’d say,” she replied promptly, “that ‘we couldn’t take no traout
+with the pesky sun a shinin’ and a brilin’ the hull crick.’”
+
+“Yes,” said Rex. “Rise at four, east wind, cloudy morning, that was
+Hugh. But he could cast a fly.”
+
+“Couldn’t he!” said the colonel. “‘I cal’late ter chuck a bug ez fur ez
+enny o’ them city fellers, ’n I kin,’ says Hugh. Going to begin here,
+Rex?”
+
+“What does Ruth think?”
+
+“She thinks she isn’t in command of this party,” Ruth replied.
+
+“It will take us until late in the afternoon to whip the stream from
+here to the lowest bridge.” Rex smiled down at her and pushed back his
+cap with a boyish gesture.
+
+She had forgotten it until that moment. Now it brought a perfect flood
+of pleasant associations. She had seen him look that way a hundred
+times when, in their teens, they two had lingered by the Northern
+Lakes. Her whole face changed and softened, but she turned away,
+nodding assent, and went and stood by her father, looking down at him
+with the bantering air which was a family trait. The lively colonel had
+found a sunny log on the bank, where he was sitting, leisurely joining
+his rod.
+
+“Hello!” he cried, glancing up, “what are you two amateurs about? As
+usual, I’m ready to begin before Rex is awake!” and stepping to the
+edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree. Rex
+came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with perfect
+self-possession.
+
+“Now see the new waterproof rig wade!” said Ruth, saucily.
+
+“Go and wade yourself and don’t bully your old father!” cried the
+colonel.
+
+“Old! this child old!”
+
+“Oh! come along, Ruth!” called Rex, waiting on the shore and falling
+unconsciously into the tone of sixteen speaking to twelve.
+
+For answer she slipped the cover from her slender rod and dexterously
+fitted the delicate tip to the second joint.
+
+“Hasn’t forgotten how to put a rod together! Wonderful girl!”
+
+“Oh, I knew you were waiting to see me place the second joint in the
+butt first!” She deftly ran the silk through the guides, and then
+scientifically knotting the leader, slipped on a cast of three flies
+and picked her way daintily to the river bank. As she waded in the
+sudden cold made her gasp a little to herself, but she kept straight on
+without turning her head, and presently stepped on a broad, flat rock
+over which the water was slipping smoothly.
+
+Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk
+hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled,
+and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down
+lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the
+boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded
+by the soft woolen Tam.
+
+Swish—h—h! Swish—h—h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing back at
+Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous splash,
+just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white wrist, and
+then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like a thread of
+smoke. Gethryn’s eyes glittered with excitement, and the colonel took
+his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn’t shout, “You have him! Go
+easy on him! Want any help!” They kept quiet.
+
+Cautiously, and by degrees, Ruth laced her little gloved fingers over
+the flying line, and presently a quiver of the rod showed that the fish
+was checked. She reeled in, slowly and steadily for a moment, and then,
+whiz—z—z! off he dashed again. At seventy feet the rod trembled and the
+trout was still. Again and again she urged him toward the shore,
+meeting his furious dashes with perfect coolness and leading him
+dexterously away from rocks and roots. When he sulked she gave him the
+butt, and soon the full pressure sent him flying, only to end in a
+furious full length leap out of water, and another sulk.
+
+The colonel’s cigar went out.
+
+At last she spoke, very quietly, without looking back.
+
+“Rex, there is no good place to beach him here; will you net him,
+please?” Rex was only waiting for this; he had his landing net already
+unslung and he waded to her side.
+
+“Now!” she whispered. The fiery side of a fish glittered just beneath
+the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay
+quivering on the bank.
+
+Gethryn quickly ended his life and held him up to view.
+
+“Beautiful!” cried the colonel. “Good girl, Daisy! but don’t spoil your
+frock!” And picking up his own rod he relighted his cigar and essayed
+some conscientious casting on his own account. But he soon wearied of
+the paths of virtue and presently went in search of a grasshopper, with
+evil intent.
+
+Meanwhile Ruth was blushing to the tips of her ears at Gethryn’s
+praises.
+
+“I never saw a prettier sight!” he cried. “You’re—you’re splendid,
+Ruth! Nerve, judgment, skill—my dear girl, you have everything!”
+
+Ruth’s eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he
+sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing to
+be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water.
+It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the
+colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of
+meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex’s brutal remarks, he silently
+inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into
+the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in
+the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.
+
+“Papa! are you a bait fisherman!” cried his daughter severely.
+
+The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and
+standing up said “No!” very loud.
+
+It was no use—Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was seated
+comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the stream, in his
+hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for wear, bearing on
+its back the legend “Calman Levy, Editeur.”
+
+Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one
+remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, “If
+you don’t mind, we’re going on.”
+
+“All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first
+bridge.” Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still there,
+he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his book, and
+knocked the ashes from his cigar.
+
+“Here,” said Gethryn two hours later, “is the bridge, but no colonel.
+Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?”
+
+“Yes, both, but happier than either!”
+
+“Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I think.”
+
+They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside
+the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.
+
+“I wish papa would come,” said Ruth, with an anxious look up the road.
+“He ought to be hungry too, by this time.”
+
+Rex poured her a cup of red Tyroler wine and handed her a sandwich.
+Then, calling the boy, he gave him such a generous “Viertel” for
+himself as caused him to retire precipitately and consume it with
+grins, modified by boiled sausage. Ruth looked after him and smiled in
+sympathy. “I wonder how papa got rid of the other one with the green
+tin water-box.”
+
+“I know; I was present at the interview,” laughed Rex. “Your father
+handed him a ten mark piece and said, ‘Go away, you superfluous
+Bavarian!’”
+
+“In English?”
+
+“Yes, and he must have understood, for he grinned and went.”
+
+It was good to hear the ring of Ruth’s laugh. She was so happy that she
+found the smallest joke delightful, and her voice was very sweet. Rex
+lighted a cigarette and leaned back against a tree, in great comfort.
+Ruth, perched on a log, watched the smoke drift and curl. Gethryn
+watched her. They each cared as much for the hours they had spent in
+the brook, and for their wet clothing, as vigorous, happy, and
+imprudent youth ever cares about such things.
+
+“So you are happy, Ruth?”
+
+“Perfectly. And you?—But it takes more to make a spoiled young man
+happy than—”
+
+“Than a spoiled young woman? I don’t know about that. Yes, I—am—happy.”
+Was the long puff of smoke ascending slowly responsible for the pauses
+between his words? A slight shadow was in his eyes for one moment. It
+passed, and he turned on her his most charming smile, as he repeated,
+“Perfectly happy!”
+
+“Still no colonel!” he went on; “when he comes he will be tired. We
+don’t want any more trout, do we? We have eighteen, all good ones.
+Suppose we rest and go back all together by the road?” Ruth nodded,
+smiling to see him fondle the creel full of shining fish, bedded on
+fragrant leaves.
+
+Rex’s cap lay beside him, his head leaned back against the tree, his
+face was turned up to the bending branches. Presently he closed his
+eyes.
+
+It might have been one minute, or ten. Ruth sat and watched him. He had
+grown very handsome. He had that pleasant air of good breeding which
+some men retain under any and all circumstances. It has nothing to do
+with character, and yet it is difficult to think ill of a man who
+possesses it. When she had seen him last, his nose was too near a snub
+to inspire much respect, and his mustache was still in the state of
+colorless scarcity. Now his hair and mustache were thick and tawny, and
+his features were clear and firm. She noticed the pleasant line of the
+cheek, the clean curve of the chin, the light on the crisp edges of his
+close-cut hair—the two freckles on his nose, and she decided that that
+short, straight nose, with its generous and humorous nostrils, was
+wholly fascinating. As girls always will, she began to wonder about his
+life—idly at first, but these speculations lead one sometimes farther
+than one was prepared to go at the start. How much of his delightful
+manner to them all was due to affection, and how much to kindliness and
+good spirits? How much did he care for those other friends, for that
+other life in Paris? Who were the friends? What was the life? She
+looked at him, it seemed to her, a long time. Had he ever loved a
+woman? Was he still in love, perhaps, with someone? Ruth was no child.
+But she was a lady, and a proud one. There were things she did not
+choose to think about, although she knew of their existence well
+enough. She brought herself up at this point with a sharp pull, and
+just then Gethryn, opening his eyes, smiled at her.
+
+She turned quickly away; to her perfect consternation her cheeks grew
+hot. Bewildered by her own confusion, she rose as she turned, and
+saying how lovely the water looked, went and stood on the bridge,
+leaning over. Rex was on his feet in an instant, so covered with
+confusion too, that he never saw hers.
+
+“I say, Ruth, I haven’t been such a brute as to fall asleep! Indeed I
+haven’t! I was thinking of Braith.”
+
+“And if you had fallen asleep you wouldn’t be a brute, you tired boy!
+And who is Braith?”
+
+Ruth turned smiling to meet him, restored to herself and thankful for
+the diversion.
+
+“Braith,” said Rex earnestly. “Braith is the best man in this wicked
+world, and my dearest friend. To whom,” he added, “I have not written
+one word since I left him two ears ago.”
+
+Ruth’s face fell. “Is that the way you treat your dearest friends?”—and
+she thought: “No wonder one is neglected when one is only an old
+playmate!”—but she was instantly ashamed of the little bitterness, and
+put it aside.
+
+“Ah! you don’t know of what we are capable,” said Gethryn; and once
+more a shadow fell on his face.
+
+A familiar form came jauntily down the road. Ruth hastened to meet it.
+“At last, Father! You want your luncheon, poor dear!”
+
+“I do indeed, Daisy!”
+
+The colonel came as gallantly up as if he had thirty pounds of trout to
+show instead of a creel that contained nothing but a novel by the
+newest and wickedest master of French fiction. He made a mild attempt
+to perjure himself about a large fish that had somehow got away from
+him, but desisted and merely added that a caning would be good for Rex.
+
+Tired he certainly was, and when he was seated on the log and Ruth was
+bringing him his wine, he looked sharply at her and said, “You too,
+Daisy; you’ve done enough for the first day. We’ll go home by the
+road.”
+
+“It is what I was just proposing to her,” said Rex.
+
+“Yes, you are both right,” said Ruth. “I am tired.”
+
+“And happy?” laughed Rex. But perhaps Ruth did not hear, for she spoke
+at the same time to her father.
+
+“Dear, you haven’t told Rex yet how you got the invitation to shoot.”
+
+“Oh, yes! It was at an officers’ dinner in Munich. The duke was there
+and I was introduced to him. He spoke of it as soon as they told him we
+were stopping here.”
+
+“He’s a brick,” said Rex, rising. “Shall we start for home, Colonel?
+Ruth must be tired.”
+
+When they turned in at the Forester’s door, the colonel ordered Daisy
+to her room, where Mrs Dene and their maid were waiting to make her
+luxuriously comfortable with dry things, and rugs, and couches, and
+cups of tea that were certainly not drawn from the Frau Förster’s
+stores. Tea in Germany being more awful than tobacco, or tobacco more
+awful than tea, according as one cares most for tea or tobacco.
+
+The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth,
+from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then, hear
+their voices.
+
+Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased
+thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a
+long letter to him.
+
+It began: “You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured. Well,
+you are hearing from me now, are you not?”
+
+And it ended: “Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you
+and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In
+September I shall come back.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+After the colonel’s return, Mr Blumenthal found many difficulties in
+the way of that social ease which was his ideal. The ladies were never
+to be met with unaccompanied by the colonel or Gethryn; usually both
+were in attendance. If he spoke to Mrs Dene, or Ruth, it was always the
+colonel who answered, and there was a gleam in that trim warrior’s
+single eyeglass which did not harmonize with the grave politeness of
+his voice and manner.
+
+Rex had never taken Mr Blumenthal so seriously. He called him “Our
+Bowery brother,” and “the Gentleman from West Brighton,” and he passed
+some delightful moments in observing his gruesome familiarity with the
+maids, his patronage of the grave Jaegers, and his fraternal attitude
+toward the head of the house. It was great to see him hook a heavy arm
+in an arm of the tall, military Herr Förster, and to see the latter
+drop it.
+
+But there came an end to Rex’s patience.
+
+One morning, when they were sitting over their coffee out of doors, Mr
+Blumenthal walked into their midst. He wore an old flannel shirt, and
+trousers too tight for him, inadequately held up by a strap. He
+displayed a tin bait box and a red and green float, and said he had
+come to inquire of Rex “vere to dig a leetle vorms,” and also to borrow
+of him “dot feeshpole mitn seelbern ringes.”
+
+The request, and the grossness of his appearance before the ladies,
+were too much for a gentleman and an angler.
+
+Rex felt his gorge rise, and standing up brusquely, he walked away.
+Ruth thoughtlessly slipped after him and murmured over his shoulder:
+
+“Friend of yours?”
+
+Gethryn’s fists unclenched and came out of his pockets and he and Ruth
+went away together, laughing under the trees.
+
+Mr Blumenthal stood where Rex had left him, holding out the bait-box
+and gazing after them. Then he turned and looked at the colonel and his
+wife. Perspiration glistened on his pasty, pale face and the rolls of
+fat that crowded over his flannel collar. His little, dead,
+white-rimmed, pale gray eyes had the ferocity of a hog’s which has
+found something to rend and devour. He looked into their shocked faces
+and made a bow.
+
+“Goot ma—a—rnin, Mister and Missess Dene!” he said, and turned his
+back.
+
+The elderly couple exchanged glances as he disappeared.
+
+“We won’t mention this to the children,” said the gentle old lady.
+
+That was the last they saw of him. Nobody knew where he kept himself in
+the interval, but about a week later he came running down with a valise
+in his hand and jumped into a carriage from the “Green Bear” at
+Schicksalsee, which had just brought some people out and was returning
+empty. He forgot to give the usual “Trinkgeld” to the servants, and a
+lively search in his room discovered nothing but a broken collar button
+and a crumpled telegram in French. But Grethi had her compensation that
+evening, when she led the conversation in the kitchen and Mr Blumenthal
+was discussed in several South German dialects.
+
+By this time August was well advanced, but there had been as yet no
+“Jagd-partie,” as Sepp called the hunting excursion planned with such
+enthusiasm weeks before. After that first day in the trout stream, Ruth
+not only suffered more from fatigue than she had expected, but the
+little cough came back, causing her parents to draw the lines of
+discipline very tight indeed.
+
+Ruth, whose character seemed made of equal parts of good taste and
+reasonableness, sweet temper and humor, did not offer the least
+opposition to discipline, and when her mother remarked that, after all,
+there was a difference between a schoolgirl and a young lady, she did
+not deny it. The colonel and Rex went off once or twice with the
+Jaegers, but in a halfhearted way, bringing back more experience than
+game. Then Rex went on a sketching tour. Then the colonel was suddenly
+called again to Munich to meet some old army men just arrived from
+home, and so it was not until about a week after Mr Blumenthal’s
+departure that, one evening when the Sennerins were calling the cows on
+the upper Alm, a party of climbers came up the side of the Red Peak and
+stopped at “Nani’s Hütterl.”
+
+Sepp threw down the green sack from his shoulders to the bench before
+the door and shouted:
+
+“Nani! du! Nani!” No answer.
+
+“Mari und Josef!” he muttered; then raising his voice, again he called
+for Nani with all his lungs.
+
+A muffled answer came from somewhere around the other side of the
+house. “Ja! komm glei!” And then there was nothing to do but sit on the
+bench and watch the sunset fade from peak to peak while they waited.
+
+Nani did not come “glei”—but she came pretty soon, bringing with her
+two brimming milk-pails as an excuse for the delay.
+
+She and Sepp engaged at once in a conversation, to which the colonel
+listened with feelings that finally had to seek expression.
+
+“I believe,” he said in a low voice, “that German is the language of
+the devil.”
+
+“I fancy he’s master of more than one. And besides, this isn’t German,
+any more than our mountain dialects are English. And really,” Ruth went
+on, “if it comes to comparing dialects, it seems to me ours can’t stand
+the test. These are harsh enough. But where in the world is human
+speech so ugly, so poverty-stricken, so barren of meaning and feeling,
+and shade and color and suggestiveness, as the awful talk of our
+rustics? A Bavarian, a Tyroler, often speaks a whole poem in a single
+word, like—”
+
+“Do you think one of those poems is being spoken about our supper now,
+Daisy?”
+
+“Sybarite!” cried Ruth, with that tinkle of fun in her voice which was
+always sounding between her and her parents; “I won’t tell you.” The
+truth was she did not dare to tell her hungry companions that, so far
+as she had been able to understand Sepp and Nani, their conversation
+had turned entirely on a platform dance—which they called a
+“Schuh-plattl”—and which they proposed to attend together on the
+following Sunday.
+
+But Sepp, having had his gossip like a true South German hunter-man,
+finally did ask the important question:
+
+“Ach! supper! du lieber Himmel!” There was little enough of that for
+the Herrschaften. There was black bread and milk, and there were some
+Semmel, but those were very old and hard.
+
+“No cheese?”
+
+“Nein!”
+
+“No butter?”
+
+“Nein!”
+
+“Coffee?”
+
+“Yes, but no sugar.”
+
+“Herr Je!”
+
+When Sepp delivered this news to his party they all laughed and said
+black bread and milk would do. So Nani invited them into her only
+room—the rest of the “Hütterl” was kitchen and cow-shed—and brought the
+feast.
+
+A second Sennerin came with her this time, in a costume which might
+have startled them, if they had not already seen others like it. It
+consisted of a pair of high blue cotton trousers drawn over her skirts,
+the latter bulging all round inside the jeans. She had no teeth and
+there was a large goiter on her neck.
+
+“Good Heavens!” muttered the colonel, setting down his bowl of milk and
+twisting around to stare out of the window behind him.
+
+“Poor thing! she can’t help it!” murmured Ruth.
+
+“No more she can, you dear, good girl!” said Rex, and his eyes shone
+very kindly. Ruth caught her breath at the sudden beating of her heart.
+
+What was left of daylight came through the little window and fell upon
+her face; it was as white as a flower, and very quiet.
+
+Dusk was setting in when Sepp made his appearance. He stood about in
+some hesitation, and finally addressed himself to Ruth as the one who
+could best understand his dialect. She listened and then turned to her
+father.
+
+“Sepp doesn’t exactly know where to lodge me. He had thought I could
+stay here with Nani—”
+
+“Not if I can help it!” cried the colonel.
+
+“While,” Ruth went on—“while you and Rex went up to the Jaeger’s hut
+above there on the rocks. He says it’s very rough at the Jagd-hütte.”
+
+“Is anyone else there? What does Sepp mean by telling us now for the
+first time? ” demanded the colonel sharply.
+
+“He says he was afraid I wouldn’t come if I knew how rough it was—and
+that—” added Ruth, laughing—“he says would have been such a pity!
+Besides, he thought Nani was alone—and I could have had her room while
+she slept on the hay in the loft. I’m sure this is as neat as a
+mountain shelter could be,” said Ruth—looking about her at the high
+piled feather beds, covered in clean blue and white check, and the
+spotless floor and the snow white pine table. “I’d like to stay here,
+only the—the other lady has just arrived too!”
+
+“The lady in the blue overalls?”
+
+“Yes—and—” Ruth stopped, unwilling to say how little relish she felt
+for the society of the second Sennerin. But Rex and her father were on
+their feet and speaking together.
+
+“We will go and see about the Jagd-hütte. You don’t mind being left for
+five minutes?”
+
+“The idea! go along, you silly boys!”
+
+The colonel came back very soon, and in the best of spirits.
+
+“It’s all right, Daisy! It’s a dream of luxury!” and carried her off,
+hardly giving her time to thank Nani and to say a winningly kind word
+to the hideous one, who gazed back at her, pitchfork in hand, without
+reply. No one will ever know whether or not she felt any more cheered
+by Ruth’s pleasant ways than the cows did who were putting their heads
+out from the stalls where she was working.
+
+The dream of luxury was a low hut of two rooms. The outer one had a
+pile of fresh hay in one corner and a few blankets. Some of the dogs
+were already curled up there. The inner room contained two large bunks
+with hay and rugs and blankets; a bench ran where the bunks were not,
+around the sides; a shelf was above the bunks; there was a cupboard and
+a chest and a table.
+
+“Why, this _is_ luxury!” cried Ruth.
+
+“Well—I think so, too. I’m immensely relieved. Sepp says artists bring
+their wives up here to stay over for the sunrise. You’ll do? Eh?”
+
+“I should think so!”
+
+“Good! then Rex and I and Sepp and the Dachl”—he always would say
+“Dockles”—“will keep guard outside against any wild cows that may
+happen to break loose from Nani. Good night, little girl! Sure you’re
+not too tired?”
+
+Rex stood hesitating in the open door. Ruth went and gave him her hand.
+He kissed it, and she, meaning to please him with the language she knew
+he liked best, said, smiling, “Bonne nuit, mon ami!” At the same moment
+her father passed her, and the two men closed the door and went away
+together. The last glimmer of dusk was in the room. Ruth had not seen
+Gethryn’s face.
+
+“Bonne nuit, mon ami!” Those tender, half forgotten—no! never, never
+forgotten words! Rex threw himself on the hay and lay still, his hands
+clenched over his breast.
+
+The kindly colonel was sound asleep when Sepp came in with a tired but
+wagging hound, from heaven knows what scramble among the higher cliffs
+by starlight. The night air was chilly. Rex called the dog to his side
+and took him in his arms. “We will keep each other warm,” he said,
+thinking of the pups. And Zimbach, assenting with sentimental whines,
+was soon asleep. But Gethryn had not closed his eyes when the Jaeger
+sprang up as the day broke. A faint gray light came in at the little
+window. All the dogs were leaping about the room. Sepp gave himself a
+shake, and his toilet was made.
+
+“Colonel,” said Rex, standing over a bundle of rugs and hay in which no
+head was visible, “Colonel! Sepp says we must hurry if we want to see a
+‘gams.’”
+
+The colonel turned over. What he said was: “Damn the Gomps!” But he
+thought better of that and stood up, looking cynical.
+
+“Come and have a dip in the spring,” laughed Rex.
+
+When they took their dripping heads out of the wooden trough into which
+a mountain spring was pouring and running out again, leaving it always
+full, and gazed at life—between rubs of the hard crash towel—it had
+assumed a kinder aspect.
+
+Half an hour later, when they all were starting for the top, Ruth let
+the others pass her, and pausing for a moment with her hand on the
+lintel, she looked back into the little smoke-blackened hut. The door
+of the inner room was open. She had dreamed the sweetest dream of her
+life there.
+
+Before the others could miss her she was beside them, and soon was
+springing along in advance, swinging her alpenstock. It seemed as if
+she had the wings as well as the voice of a bird.
+
+Der Jaeger zieht in grünem Wald
+Mit frölichem Halloh!
+
+
+she sang.
+
+Sepp laughed from the tip of his feather to the tip of his beard.
+
+“Wie’s gnädige Fraulein hat G’müth!” he said to Rex.
+
+“What’s that?” asked the colonel.
+
+“He says,” translated Rex freely, “What a lot of every delightful
+quality Ruth possesses!”
+
+But Ruth heard, and turned about and was very severe with him. “Such
+shirking! Translate me _Gemüth_ at once, sir, if you please!”
+
+“Old Wiseboy at Yarvard confessed he couldn’t, short of a treatise, and
+who am I to tackle what beats Wiseboy?”
+
+“Can you, Daisy?” asked her father.
+
+“Not in the least, but that’s no reason for letting Rex off.” Her voice
+took on a little of the pretty bantering tone she used to her parents.
+She was beginning to feel such a happy confidence in Rex’s presence.
+
+They were in the forest now, moving lightly over the wet, springy
+leaves, probing cautiously for dangerous, loose boulders and
+treacherous slides. When they emerged, it was upon a narrow plateau;
+the rugged limestone rocks rose on one side, the precipice plunged down
+on the other. Against the rocks lay patches of snow, grimy with dirt
+and pebbles; from a cleft the long greenish white threads of “Peter’s
+beard” waved at them; in a hollow bloomed a thicket of pink
+Alpen-rosen.
+
+They had just reached a clump of low firs, around the corner of a huge
+rock, when a rush of loose stones and a dull sound of galloping made
+them stop. Sepp dropped on his face; the others followed his example.
+The hound whined and pulled at the leash.
+
+On the opposite slope some twenty Hirsch-cows, with their fawns, were
+galloping down into the valley, carrying with them a torrent of earth
+and gravel. Presently they slackened and stopped, huddling all together
+into a thicket. The Jaeger lifted his head and whispered “Stück”; that
+being the complimentary name by which one designates female deer in
+German.
+
+“All?” said Rex, under his breath. At the same moment Ruth touched his
+shoulder.
+
+On the crest of the second ridge, only a hundred yards distant, stood a
+stag, towering in black outline, the sun just coming up behind him.
+Then two other pairs of antlers rose from behind the ridge, two more
+stags lifted their heads and shoulders and all three stood silhouetted
+against the sky. They tossed and stamped and stared straight at the
+spot where their enemies lay hidden.
+
+A moment, and the old stag disappeared; the others followed him.
+
+“If they come again, shoot,” said Sepp.
+
+Rex passed his rifle to Ruth. They waited a few minutes; then the
+colonel jumped up.
+
+“I thought we were after chamois!” he grumbled.
+
+“So we are,” said Rex, getting on his feet.
+
+A shot rang out, followed by another. They turned, sharply. Ruth,
+looking half frightened, was lowering the smoking rifle from her
+shoulder. Across the ravine a large stag was swaying on the edge; then
+he fell and rolled to the bottom. The hound, loosed, was off like an
+arrow, scrambling and tumbling down the side. The four hunters
+followed, somehow. Sepp got down first and sent back a wild Jodel. The
+stag lay there, dead, and his splendid antlers bore eight prongs.
+
+When Ruth came up she had her hand on her father’s arm. She stood and
+leaned on him, looking down at the stag. Pity mingled with a wild
+intoxicating sense of achievement confused her. A rich color flushed
+her cheek, but the curve of her lips was almost grave.
+
+Sepp solemnly drew forth his flask of Schnapps and, taking off his hat
+to her, drank “Waidmann’s Heil!”—a toast only drunk by hunters to
+hunters.
+
+Gethryn shook hands with her twenty times and praised her until she
+could bear no more.
+
+She took her hand from her father’s arm and drew herself up, determined
+to preserve her composure. The wind blew the little bright rings of
+hair across her crimson cheek and wrapped her kilts about her slender
+figure as she stood, her rifle poised across her shoulder, one hand on
+the stock and one clasped below the muzzle.
+
+“Are you laughing at me, Rex?”
+
+“You know I am not!”
+
+Never had she been so happy in her whole life.
+
+The game drawn and hung, to be fetched later, they resumed their climb
+and hastened upward toward the peak.
+
+Ruth led. She hardly felt the ground beneath her, but sprang from rock
+to moss and from boulder to boulder, till a gasp from Gethryn made her
+stop and turn about.
+
+“Good Heavens, Ruth! what a climber you are!”
+
+And now the colonel sat down on the nearest stone and flatly refused to
+stir.
+
+“Oh! is it the hip, Father?” cried Ruth, hurrying back and kneeling
+beside him.
+
+“No, of course it isn’t! It’s indignation!” said her father, calmly
+regarding her anxious face. “If you can’t go up mountains like a human
+girl, you’re not going up any more mountains with me.”
+
+“Oh! I’ll go like a human snail if you want, dear! I’ve been too
+selfish! It’s a shame to tire you so!”
+
+“Indeed, it is a perfect shame!” cried the colonel.
+
+Ruth had to laugh. “As I remarked to Rex, early this morning,” her
+father continued, adjusting his eyeglass, “hang the Gomps!” Rex
+discreetly offered no comment. “Moreover,” the colonel went on,
+bringing all the severity his eyeglass permitted to bear on them both,
+“I decline to go walking any longer with a pair of lunatics. I shall
+confide you both to Sepp and will wait for you at the upper Shelter.”
+
+“But it’s only indignation; it isn’t the hip, Father?” said Ruth, still
+hanging about him, but trying to laugh, since he would have her laugh.
+
+He saw her trouble, and changing his tone said seriously, “My little
+girl, I’m only tired of this scramble, that’s all.”
+
+She had to be contented with this, and they separated, her father
+taking a path which led to the right, up a steep but well cleared
+ascent to a plateau, from which they could see the gable of a roof
+rising, and beyond that the tip-top rock with its white cross marking
+the highest point. The others passed to the left, around and among huge
+rocks, where all the hollows were full of grimy snow. The ground was
+destitute of trees and all shrubs taller than the hardy Alpen-rosen.
+Masses of rock lay piled about the limestone crags that formed the
+summit. The sun had not yet tipped their peak with purple and orange,
+but some of the others were lighting up. No insects darted about them;
+there was not a living thing among the near rocks except the bluish
+black salamanders, which lay here and there, cold and motionless.
+
+They walked on in silence; the trail grew muddy, the ground was beaten
+and hatched up with small, sharp hoof prints. Sepp kneeled down and
+examined them.
+
+“Hirsch, Reh, and fawn, and ja! ja! Sehen Sie? Gams!”
+
+After this they went on cautiously. All at once a peculiar shrill hiss,
+half whistle, half cry, sounded very near.
+
+A chamois, followed by two kids, flashed across a heap of rocks above
+their heads and disappeared. The Jaeger muttered something, deep in his
+beard.
+
+“You wouldn’t have shot her?” said Ruth, timidly.
+
+“No, but she will clear this place of chamois. It’s useless to stay
+here now.”
+
+It was an hour’s hard pull to the next peak. When at last they lay
+sheltered under a ledge, grimy snow all about them, the Jaeger handed
+his glass to Ruth.
+
+“Hirsch on the Kaiser Alm, three Reh by Nani’s Hütterl, and one in the
+ravine,” he said, looking at Gethryn, who was searching eagerly with
+his own glass. Ruth balanced the one she held against her alpenstock.
+
+“Yes, I see them all—and—why, there’s a chamois!”
+
+Sepp seized the glass which she held toward him.
+
+“The gracious Fraülein has a hunter’s eyesight; a chamois is feeding
+just above the Hirsch.”
+
+“We are right for the wind, but is this the best place?” said Rex.
+
+“We must make the best of it,” said Sepp.
+
+The speck of yellow was almost imperceptibly approaching their knoll,
+but so slowly that Ruth almost doubted if it moved at all.
+
+Sepp had the glass, and declining the one Rex offered her, she turned
+for a moment to the superb panorama at their feet. East, west, north
+and south the mountain world extended. By this time the snow mountains
+of Tyrol were all lighted to gold and purple, rose and faintest violet.
+Sunshine lay warm now on all the near peaks. But great billowy oceans
+of mist rolled below along the courses of the Alp-fed streams, and,
+deep under a pall of heavy, pale gray cloud, the Trauerbach was rushing
+through its hidden valley down to Schicksalsee and Todtstein. There was
+perfect silence, only now and then made audible by the tinkle of a
+distant cowbell and the Jodel of a Sennerin. Ruth turned again toward
+the chamois. She could see it now without a glass. But Sepp placed his
+in her hand.
+
+The chamois was feeding on the edge of a cliff, moving here and there,
+leaping lightly across some gully, tossing its head up for a
+precautionary sniff. Suddenly it gave a bound and stood still, alert.
+Two great clumsy “Hirsch-kühe” had taken fright at some imaginary
+danger, and, uttering their peculiar half grunt, half roar, were
+galloping across the alm in half real, half assumed panic with their
+calves at their heels.
+
+The elderly female Hirsch is like a timorous granny who loves to scare
+herself with ghost stories, and adores the sensation of jumping into
+bed before the robber under it can catch her by the ankle.
+
+It was such an alarm as this which now sent the two fussy old deer,
+with their awkward long legged calves, clattering away with
+terror-stricken roars which startled the delicate chamois, and for one
+moment petrified him. The next, with a bound, he fairly flew along the
+crest, seeming to sail across the ravine like a hawk, and to cover
+distances in the flash of an eye. Sepp uttered a sudden exclamation and
+forgot everything but what he saw. He threw his rifle forward, there
+was a sharp click!—the cartridge had not exploded. Next moment he
+remembered himself and turned ashamed and deprecating to Gethryn. The
+latter laid his hand on the Jaeger’s arm and pointed. The chamois’
+sharp ear had caught the click!—he swerved aside and bounded to a point
+of rock to look for this new danger. Rex tried to put his rifle in
+Ruth’s hands. She pressed it back, resolutely. “It is your turn,” she
+motioned with her lips, and drew away out of his reach. That was no
+time for argument. The Jaeger nodded, “Quick!” A shot echoed among the
+rocks and the chamois disappeared.
+
+“Is he hit? Oh, Rex! did you hit him?”
+
+“Ei! Zimbach!” Sepp slipped the leash, the hound sprang away, and in a
+moment his bell-like voice announced Rex’s good fortune.
+
+Ruth flew like the wind, not heeding their anxious calls to be careful,
+to wait for help. It was not far to go, and her light, sure foot
+brought her to the spot first. When Rex and Sepp arrived she was
+kneeling beside the dead chamois, stroking the “beard” that waved along
+its bushy spine. She sprang up and held out her hand to Gethryn.
+
+“Look at that beard—Nimrod!” she said. Her voice rang with an
+excitement she had not shown at her own success.
+
+“It _is_ a fine beard,” said Rex, bending over it. His voice was not
+quite steady. “Herrlich!” cried Sepp, and drank the “Waidmann’s Heil!”
+toast to him in deep and serious draughts. Then he took out a thong,
+tied the four slender hoofs together and opened his game sack; Rex
+helped him to hoist the chamois in and onto his broad shoulders.
+
+Now for the upper Shelter. They started in great spirits, a happy trio.
+Rex was touched by Ruth’s deep delight in his success, and by the pride
+in him which she showed more than she knew. He looked at her with eyes
+full of affection. Sepp was assuring himself, by all the saints in the
+Bavarian Calendar, that here was a “Herrschaft” which a man might be
+proud of guiding, and so he meant to tell the duke. Ruth’s generous
+heart beat high.
+
+Their way back to the path where they had separated from Colonel Dene
+was long and toilsome. Sepp did his best to beguile it with hunter’s
+yarns, more or less true, at any rate just as acceptable as if they had
+been proved and sworn to.
+
+Like a good South German he hated Prussia and all its works, and his
+tales were mostly of Berliners who had wandered thither and been
+abused; of the gentleman who had been told, and believed, that the
+“gams” slept by hooking its horns into crevices of the rock, swinging
+thus at ease, over precipices; of another whom Federl once deterred
+from going on the mountains by telling how a chamois, if enraged,
+charged and butted; of a third who went home glad to have learned that
+the chamois produced their peculiar call by bringing up a hind leg and
+whistling through the hoof.
+
+It was about half past two in the afternoon and Ruth began to be very,
+very tired, when a Jodel from Sepp greeted the “Hütte” and the white
+cross rising behind it. As they toiled up the steep path to the little
+alm, Ruth said, “I don’t see Papa, but there are people there.” A man
+in a summer helmet, wound with a green veil, came to the edge of the
+wooden platform and looked down at them; he was presently joined by two
+ladies, of whom one disappeared almost immediately, but they could see
+the other still looking down until a turn in the path brought them to
+the bottom of some wooden steps, close under the platform. On climbing
+these they were met at the top by the gentleman, hat in hand, who spoke
+in French to Gethryn, while the stout, friendly lady held out both
+hands to Ruth and cried, in pretty broken English:
+
+“Ah! dear Mademoiselle! ees eet possible zat we meet a—h—gain!”
+
+“Madame Bordier!” exclaimed Ruth, and kissed her cordially on both
+cheeks. Then she greeted the husband of Madame, and presented Rex.
+
+“But we know heem!” smiled Madame; and her quiet, gentlemanly husband
+added in French that Monsieur the colonel had done them the honor to
+leave messages with them for Miss Dene and Mr Gethryn.
+
+“Papa is not here?” said Ruth, quickly.
+
+Monsieur the colonel, finding himself a little fatigued, had gone on to
+the Jaeger-hütte, where were better accommodations.
+
+Ruth’s face fell, and she lost her bright color.
+
+“But no! my dear!” said Madame. “Zere ees nossing ze mattaire. Your
+fazzer ees quite vell,” and she hurried her indoors.
+
+Rex and Monsieur Bordier were left together on the platform. The
+amiable Frenchman did the honors as if it were a private salon.
+Monsieur the colonel was perfectly well. But perfectly! It was really
+for Mademoiselle that he had gone on. He had decided that it would be
+quite too fatiguing for his daughter to return that day to Trauerbach,
+as they had planned, and he had gone on to secure the Jagd-hütte for
+the night before any other party should arrive.
+
+“He watched for you until you turned into the path that leads up here,
+and we all saw that you were quite safe. It is only half an hour since
+he left. He did us the honor to say that Mademoiselle Dene could need
+no better chaperon than my wife—Monsieur the colonel was a little
+fatigued, but badly, no.”
+
+Monsieur Bordier led the way to the usual spring and wooden trough
+behind the house, and, while Rex was enjoying a refreshing dip, he
+continued to chat.
+
+Yes, as he had already had the honor to inform Rex, Mademoiselle had
+been his wife’s pupil in singing, the last two winters, in Paris.
+Monsieur Gethryn, perhaps, was not wholly unacquainted with the name of
+Madame Bordier?
+
+“Madame’s reputation as an artist, and a professor of singing, is
+worldwide,” said Rex in his best Parisian, adding:
+
+“And you, then, Monsieur, are the celebrated manager of ‘La Fauvette’?”
+
+The manager replied with a politely gratified bow.
+
+“The most charming theater in Paris,” added Rex.
+
+“Ah! murmured the other, Monsieur is himself an artist, though not of
+our sort, and artists know.”
+
+“Colonel Dene has told you that I am studying in Paris,” said Rex
+modestly.
+
+“He has told me that Monsieur exhibited in the salon with a number
+one.”
+
+Rex scrubbed his brown and rosy cheeks with the big towel.
+
+Monsieur Bordier went on: “But the talent of Mademoiselle! Mon Dieu!
+what a talent! What a voice of silver and crystal! And today she will
+meet another pupil of Madame—of ours—a genius. My word!”
+
+“Today?”
+
+“Yes, she is with us here. She makes her debut at the Fauvette next
+autumn.”
+
+Rex concealed a frown in the ample folds of the towel. It crossed his
+mind that the colonel might better have stayed and taken care of his
+own daughter. If he, Rex, had had a sister, would he have liked her to
+be on a Bavarian mountaintop in a company composed of a gamekeeper, the
+manager of a Paris theater and his wife, and a young person who was
+about to make her debut in opera-bouffe, and to have no better guardian
+than a roving young art student? Rex felt his unfitness for the post
+with a pang of compunction. Meantime he rubbed his head, and Monsieur
+Bordier talked tranquilly on. But between vexation and friction Gethryn
+lost the thread of Monsieur’s remarks for a while.
+
+The first word which recalled his wandering attention was “Chamois?”
+and he saw that Monsieur Bordier was pointing to the game bag and
+looking amiably at Sepp, who, divided between sulkiness at Monsieur’s
+native language and goodwill toward anyone who seemed to be accepted by
+his “Herrschaften,” was in two minds whether to open the bag and show
+the game to this smiling Frenchman, or “to say him a Grobheit” and go
+away. Sepp’s “Grobheit” could be very insulting indeed when he cared to
+make it so. Rex hastened to turn the scale.
+
+“Yes, Herr Director, this is Sepp, one of the duke’s best
+gamekeepers—Monsieur speaks German?” he interrupted himself to ask in
+French.
+
+“Parfaitement! Well,” he went on in Sepp’s native tongue, “Herr
+Director, in Sepp you see one of the best woodsmen in Bavaria, one of
+the best shots in Germany. Sepp, we must show the Herr Director our
+Gems.”
+
+And there was nothing for Sepp but to open the bag, sheepish, beaten,
+laughing in spite of himself, and before he knew it they all three had
+their heads together over the game in perfect amity.
+
+A step sounded along the front platform, and Madame looked round the
+corner of the house, saying that lunch was ready. Her husband and Rex
+joined her immediately. “Ze young ladees are wizin,” she said, and led
+the way.
+
+The sun-glare on the limestone rocks outside made the little room seem
+almost black at first, and all Rex could distinguish as he followed the
+others was Ruth’s bright smile as she stood near the door and a jumble
+of dark figures farther back.
+
+“Permit me,” said Monsieur, “to introduce you to our Belle Hélène.” Rex
+had already bowed low, seeing nothing. “Mademoiselle Descartes—Monsieur
+Gethryn—” Rex raised his head and looked into the white face of Yvonne.
+
+“Ah, yes! as I was saying,” gossiped Monsieur while they were taking
+their places at table, “I shoot when I can, but merely the partridge
+and rabbit of the turnip. Bah! a man may not boast of that!”
+
+Rex kept his eyes fixed on the speaker and forced himself to understand
+what was being said.
+
+“But the sanglier?” His voice sounded in his ears like noises one hears
+with the head under water.
+
+“Mon Dieu! the sanglier! yes, that is also noble game. I do not deny
+it.” Monsieur talked on evenly and quietly in his self-possessed,
+reasonable voice, about the habits and the hunt of the wild boar.
+
+Ruth, sitting opposite, forcing herself to swallow the food, to answer
+Madame gaily and look at her ease, felt her heart settle down like lead
+in her breast.
+
+What was this? Oh! what was it? She looked at Mademoiselle Descartes.
+This young, gentle stranger with the dark hair and the face like
+marble, this girl whom she had never heard of until an hour ago, was
+hiding from Rex behind the broad shoulders of Madame Bordier. The
+pupils of her blue eyes were so dilated that the sad, frightened eyes
+themselves looked black. Ruth turned to Gethryn. He was listening and
+answering. About his nostrils and temples the hollows showed; the flush
+of sunburn was gone, leaving only a pallid brown over the ashen grey of
+his face; his expression varied between a strained smile and a fixed
+stare. The cold weight at her heart melted and swelled in a passion of
+pity.
+
+“Someone must keep up! Someone must keep up!” she said to herself; and
+turned to assure Madame in tones which deserved the name of “crystal
+and silver,” that, Yes, for her part she had not been able to see any
+reason why hearing Parsifal at Bayreuth should make one forget that
+Bizet was also a great master.
+
+But the strain became too great, and at the first possible moment she
+said brightly to Rex, “I’m going to feed Zimbach. Sepp said I might.”
+She collected some scraps on a plate and went out. The hound rose
+wagging as she approached. Ruth stood a moment looking down at him.
+Then she knelt and took his brown head in her arms. Her eyes were full
+of tears. Zimbach licked her face, and then wrenching his head away
+began to dance about her, barking and running at the platter. She took
+a bone and gave it to him; it went with a snap; so bit by bit she fed
+him with her own hands, and the tears dried without one falling.
+
+She heard Rex come out and stood up to meet him with clear grey eyes
+that seemed to see nothing but a jest.
+
+“Look at this dog, Rex! He hasn’t a word to say about the bones he’s
+eaten already; he merely remarks that there don’t seem to be any more
+at present!”
+
+Rex was taking down his gun. “Monsieur wants to see this,” he said in a
+dull, heavy voice. “And Ruth—when you are ready—your father, perhaps—”
+
+“Yes, I really would like to join him as soon as possible—” They went
+in together.
+
+An hour later they were taking leave. All the usual explanations had
+been made; everyone knew where the others were stopping, and why they
+were there, and how long they meant to stay, and where they intended to
+go afterward.
+
+The Bordiers, with Yvonne, were at a lake on the opposite side of the
+mountain, but a visit to the Forester’s house at Trauerbach was one of
+the excursions they had already planned.
+
+It only remained now, as Ruth said, to fix upon an early day for
+coming.
+
+The hour just past had been Ruth’s hour.
+
+Without effort, or apparent intention, she had taken and kept the lead
+from the moment when she returned with Rex. She it was who had given
+the key, who had set and kept the pitch, and it was due to her that not
+one discordant note had been struck. Vaguely yet vividly she felt the
+emergency. Refusing to ask herself the cause, she recognized a crisis.
+Something was dreadfully wrong. She made no attempt to go beyond that.
+Of all the deep emotions which she was learning now so suddenly, for
+the first time, the dominant one with her at present was a desire to
+help and to protect. All her social experience, all her tact, were
+needed to shield Rex and this white-faced, silent stranger, who,
+without her, must have betrayed themselves, so stunned, so dazed they
+were. And the courage of her father’s daughter kept her fair head erect
+above the dead weight at her heart.
+
+And now, having said “Au revoir” to Monsieur and Madame, and fixed upon
+a day for their visit to the Försthaus, she turned to Yvonne and took
+her hand.
+
+“Mademoiselle, I regret so much to hear that you are not quite strong.
+But when you come to Trauerbach, Mama and I will take such good care of
+you that you will not mind the fatigue.”
+
+The sad blue eyes looked into the clear grey ones, and once more Ruth
+responded with a passion of grief and pity.
+
+How Rex made his adieux Ruth never knew.
+
+When he overtook her, she and Sepp were well started down the path to
+the Jagd-hütte. They seemed to be having a duet of silence, which Rex
+turned into a trio when he joined them.
+
+For such walkers as they all were the distance they had to go was
+nothing. Soft afternoon lights were still lying peacefully beside the
+long afternoon shadows as they approached the little hut, and Sepp
+answered the colonel’s abortive attempt at a Jodel with one so long and
+complicated that it seemed as if he were taking that means to express
+all he should have liked to say in words. The spell broken, he turned
+about and asked:
+
+“Also! what did the French people,”—he wouldn’t call them
+Herrschaft—“say to the gracious Fraulein’s splendid shot?”
+
+Ruth stopped and looked absently at him, then flushed and recovered
+herself quickly. It was the first time she had remembered her stag.
+
+“I fear,” said she, “that French people would disapprove a young lady’s
+shooting. I did not tell them.”
+
+Sepp went on again with long strides. The four little black hoofs of
+the chamois stuck pitifully up out of the bag on his broad back. When
+he was well out of hearing he growled aloud:
+
+“Hab’ ’s schon g’ wusst! Jesses, Marie and Josef! was is denn dös!”
+
+That evening, when Rex and the Jaeger were fussing over the chamois’
+beard and dainty horns inside the Hütte, Ruth and her father stood
+without, before the closed door. The skies were almost black, and full
+of stars. Through the wide fragrant stillness came up now and then a
+Jodel from some Bursch going to visit his Sennerin. A stamp, and a
+comfortable sigh, came at times from Nani’s cows in their stall below.
+
+Ruth put both arms around her father’s neck and laid her head down on
+his shoulder.
+
+“Tired, Daisy?”
+
+“Yes, dear.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Supper was over, evening had fallen; but there would be no music
+tonight under the beech tree; the sky was obscured by clouds and a wet
+wind was blowing.
+
+Mrs Dene and Ruth were crossing the hall; Gethryn came in at the front
+door and they met.
+
+“Well?” said Rex, forcing a smile.
+
+“Well,” said Ruth. “Mademoiselle Descartes is better. Madame will bring
+her down stairs by and by. It appears that wretched peasant who drove
+them has been carrying them about for hours from one inn to another,
+stopping to drink at all of them. No wonder they were tired out with
+the worry and his insolence!”
+
+“It appears Miss Descartes has had attacks of fainting like this more
+than once before. The doctor in Paris thinks there is some weakness of
+the heart, but forbids her being told,” said Mrs Dene.
+
+Ruth interposed quickly, not looking at Gethryn:
+
+“Papa and Monsieur Bordier, where are they?”
+
+“I left them visiting Federl and Sepp in their quarters.”
+
+“Well, you will find us in that dreadful little room yonder. It’s the
+only alternative to sitting in the Bauernstube with all the
+woodchoppers and their bad tobacco, since out of doors fails us. We
+must go now and make it as pleasant as we can.”
+
+Ruth made a motion to go, but Mrs Dene lingered. Her kind eyes, her
+fair little faded face, were troubled.
+
+“Madame Bordier says the young lady tells her she has met you before,
+Rex.”
+
+“Yes, in Paris”; for his life he could not have kept down the crimson
+flush that darkened his cheeks and made his temples throb.
+
+Mrs Dene’s manner grew a little colder.
+
+“She seems very nice. You knew her people, of course.”
+
+“No, I never met any of her people,” answered Rex, feeling like a
+kicked coward. Ruth interposed once more.
+
+“People!” said Ruth, impatiently. “Of course Rex only knows nice
+people. Come, mother!”
+
+Putting her arm around the old lady, she moved across the hall with
+decision. As they passed into the cheerless little room, Rex held open
+the door. Ruth, entering after her mother, looked in his face. It had
+grown thinner; shadows were deep in the temples; from the dark circles
+under the eyes to the chin ran a line of pain. She held out her hand to
+him. He bent and kissed it.
+
+He went and stood in the porch, trying to collect his thoughts. The
+idea of this meeting between Ruth and Yvonne was insupportable. Why had
+he not taken means—any, every means to prevent it? He cursed himself.
+He called himself a coward. He wondered how much Ruth divined. The
+thought shamed him until his cheeks burned again. And all the while a
+deep undercurrent of feeling was setting toward that drooping little
+figure in black, as he had seen it for a moment when she alighted from
+the carriage and was supported to a room upstairs. Heavens! How it
+reminded him of that first day in the Place de la Concorde! Why was she
+in mourning? What did the doctor mean by “weakness of the heart”? What
+was she doing on mountaintops, and on the stage of a theater if she had
+heart disease? He started with a feeling that he must go and put a stop
+to all this folly. Then he remembered the letter. She had told him
+another man had the right to care for her. Then she was at this moment
+deserted for the second time, as well as faithless to still another
+lover!—to how many more? And it was through him that a woman of such a
+life was brought into contact with Ruth! And Ruth’s parents had trusted
+him; they thought him a gentleman. His brain reeled.
+
+The surging waves of shame and self-contempt subsided, were forgotten.
+He heard the wind sough in the Luxembourg trees, he smelled the pink
+flowering chestnuts, a soft voice was in his ear, a soft touch on his
+arm, her breath on his cheek, the old, old faces came crowding up.
+Clifford’s laugh rang faintly, Braith’s grave voice; odd bits and ends
+of song floated out from the shadows of that past and through the
+troubled dream of face and laugh and music, so long, so long passed
+away, he heard the gentle voice of Yvonne: “Rex, Rex, be true to me; I
+will come back!”
+
+“I loved her!” he muttered.
+
+There was a stir, a door opened and shut, voices and steps sounded in
+the room on his left. He leaned forward a little and looked through the
+uncurtained window.
+
+It was a bare and dingy room containing only a table, some hard chairs,
+and an old “Flügel” piano with a long inlaid case.
+
+They sat together at the table. Ruth’s back was toward him; she was
+speaking. Yvonne was in the full light. Her eyes were cast down, and
+she was nervously plaiting the edge of her little black-bordered
+handkerchief. All at once she raised her eyes and looked straight at
+the window. How blue her eyes were!
+
+Rex dropped his face in his hands.
+
+“Oh God! I love her!” he groaned.
+
+“Gute Nacht, gnädige Herrn!”
+
+Sepp and Federl stood in their door with a light. Two figures were
+coming down from the Jaeger’s cottage. Gethryn recognized the colonel
+and Monsieur Bordier.
+
+At the risk of scrutiny from those cool, elderly, masculine eyes, Rex’s
+manhood pulled itself together. He went back to meet them, and
+presently they all joined the ladies in the apology for a parlor, where
+coffee was being served.
+
+Coming in after the older men, Rex found no place left in the little,
+crowded room, excepting one at the table close beside Yvonne. Ruth was
+on the other side. He went and took the place, self-possessed and
+smiling.
+
+Yvonne made a slight motion as if to rise and escape. Only Rex saw it.
+Yes, one more: Ruth saw it.
+
+“Mademoiselle has studied seriously since I had the honor—”
+
+“Oui, Monsieur.”
+
+Her faint voice and timid look were more than Ruth could bear. She
+leaned forward so as to shield the girl as much as possible, and
+entered into the lively talk at the other end of the table.
+
+Rex spoke again: “Mademoiselle is quite strong, I trust—the
+stage—Sugar? Allow me!—As I was saying, the stage is a calling which
+requires a good constitution.” No answer.
+
+“But pardon. If you are not strong, how can you expect to succeed in
+your career?” persisted Rex. His eyes rested on one frail wrist in its
+black sleeve. The sight filled him with anger.
+
+“I would make my debut if I knew it would kill me.” She spoke at last,
+low but clearly.
+
+“But why? Mon Dieu!”
+
+“Madame has set her heart on it. She thinks I shall do her credit. She
+has been good to me, so good!” The sad voice fainted and sank away.
+
+“One is good to one’s pupils when they are going to bring one fame,”
+said Rex bitterly.
+
+“Madame took me when she did not know I had a voice—when she thought I
+was dying—when I was homeless—two years ago.”
+
+“What do you mean?” said Rex sternly, sinking his voice below the pitch
+of the general conversation. “What did you tell me in your letter?
+_Homeless!_”
+
+“I never wrote you any letter.” Yvonne raised her blue eyes, startled,
+despairing, and looked into his for the first time.
+
+“You did not write that you had found a—a home which you preferred
+to—to—any you had ever had? And that it would be useless to—to offer
+you any other?”
+
+“I never wrote. I was very ill and could not. Afterward I went to—you.
+You were gone.” Her low voice was heartbreaking to hear.
+
+“When?” Rex could hardly utter a word.
+
+“In June, as soon as I left the hospital.”
+
+“The hospital? And your mother?”
+
+“She was dead. I did not see her. Then I was very ill, a long time. As
+soon as I could, I went to Paris.”
+
+“To me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And the letter?”
+
+“Ah!” cried Yvonne with a shudder. “It must have been my sister who did
+that!”
+
+The room was turning round. A hundred lights were swaying about in a
+crowd of heads. Rex laid his hand heavily on the table to steady
+himself. With a strong effort at self-control he had reduced the number
+of lights to two and got the people back in their places when, with a
+little burst of French exclamations and laughter, everyone turned to
+Yvonne, and Ruth, bending over her, took both her hands.
+
+The next moment Monsieur Bordier was leading her to the piano.
+
+A soft chord, other chords, deep and sweet, and then the dear voice:
+
+Oui c’est un rêve,
+Un rêve doux d’amour,
+La nuit lui prête son mystére
+
+
+The chain is forged again. The mists of passion rise thickly, heavily,
+and blot out all else forever.
+
+Hélène’s song ceased. He heard them praise her, and heard “Good nights”
+and “Au revoirs” exchanged. He rose and stood near the door. Ruth
+passed him like a shadow. They all remained at the foot of the stairs
+for a moment, repeating their “Adieus” and “Remerciements.” He was
+utterly reckless, but cool enough still to watch for his chance in this
+confusion of civilities. It came; for one instant he could whisper to
+her, “I must see you tonight.” Then the voices were gone and he stood
+alone on the porch, the wet wind blowing in his face, his face turned
+up to a heavy sky covered with black, driving clouds. He could hear the
+river and the moaning of the trees.
+
+It seemed as if he had stood there for hours, never moving. Then there
+was a step in the dark hall, on the threshold, and Yvonne lay trembling
+in his arms.
+
+
+The sky was beginning to show a tint of early dawn when they stepped
+once more upon the silent porch. The wind had gone down. Clouds were
+piled up in the west, but the east was clear. Perfect stillness was
+over everything. Not a living creature was in sight, excepting that far
+up, across the stream, Sepp and Zimbach were climbing toward the
+Schinder.
+
+“I must go in now. I must you—child!” said Yvonne in her old voice,
+smoothing her hair with both hands. Rex held her back.
+
+“My wife?” he said.
+
+“Yes!” She raised her face and kissed him on the lips, then clung to
+him weeping.
+
+“Hush! hush! It is I who should do that,” he murmured, pressing her
+cheek against his breast.
+
+Once more she turned to leave him, but he detained her.
+
+“Yvonne, come with me and be married today!”
+
+“You know it is impossible. Today! what a boy you are! As if we could!”
+
+“Well then, in a few days—in a week, as soon as possible.”
+
+“Oh! my dearest! do not make it so hard for me! How could I desert
+Madame so? After all she has done for me? When I know all her hopes are
+set on me; that if I fail her she has no one ready to take my place!
+Because she was so sure of me, she did not try to bring on any other
+pupil for next autumn. And last season was a bad one for her and
+Monsieur. Their debutante failed; they lost money. Behold this child!”
+she exclaimed, with a rapid return to her old gay manner, “to whom I
+have explained all this at least a hundred times already, and he asks
+me why we cannot be married today!”
+
+Then with another quick change, she laid her cheek tenderly against his
+and murmured:
+
+“I might have died but for her. You would not have me desert her so
+cruelly, Rex?”
+
+“My love! No!” A new respect mingled with his passion. Yes, she was
+faithful!
+
+“And now I will go in! Rex, Rex, you are quite as bad as ever! Look at
+my hair!” She leaned lightly on his shoulder, her old laughing self.
+
+He smiled back sadly.
+
+“Again! After all! You silly, silly boy! And it is such a little while
+to wait!”
+
+“Belle Hélène is very popular in Paris. The piece may run a long time.”
+
+“Rex, I must. Don’t make it so hard for me!” Tears filled her eyes.
+
+He kissed her for answer, without speaking.
+
+“Think! think of all she did for me; saved me; fed me, clothed me,
+taught me when she believed I had only voice and talent enough to
+support myself by teaching. It was half a year before she and Monsieur
+began to think I could ever make them any return for their care of me.
+And all that time she was like a mother to me. And now she has told
+everyone her hopes of me. If I fail she will be ridiculed. You know
+Paris. She and Monsieur have enemies who will say there never was any
+pupil, nor any debut expected. Perhaps she will lose her prestige. The
+fashion may turn to some other teacher. You know what malice can do
+with ridicule in Paris. Let me sing for her this once, make her one
+great success, win her one triumph, and then never, never sing again
+for any soul but you—my husband!”
+
+Her voice sank at the last words, from its eager pleading, to an
+exquisite modest sweetness.
+
+“But—if you fail?”
+
+“I shall not fail. I have never doubted that I should have a success.
+Perhaps it is because for myself I do not care, that I have no fear.
+When I had lost you—I only thought of that. And now that I have found
+you again—!”
+
+She clung to him in passionate silence.
+
+“And I may not see your debut?”
+
+“If you come I shall surely fail! I must forget you. I must think only
+of my part. What do I care for the house full of strange faces? I will
+make them all rise up and shout my name. But if you were there—Ah! I
+should have no longer any courage! Promise me to come only on the
+second night.”
+
+“But if you do fail, I may come and take you immediately before
+Monsieur the Maire?”
+
+“If you please!” she whispered demurely.
+
+And they both laughed, the old happy-children laugh of the Atelier.
+
+“I suppose you are bad enough to hope that I will fail,” added she
+presently, with a little _moue._
+
+“Yvonne,” said Rex earnestly, “I hope that you will succeed. I know you
+will, and I can wait for you a few weeks more.”
+
+“We have waited for our happiness two years. We will make the happiness
+of others now first, n’est ce pas?” she whispered.
+
+The sky began to glow and the house was astir. Rex knew how it would
+soon be talking, but he cared for nothing that the world could do or
+say.
+
+“Ah! we will be happy! Think of it! A little house near the Parc
+Monceau, my studio there, Clifford, Elliott, Rowden—Bra—- all of them
+coming again! And it will be my wife who will receive them!”
+
+She placed a little soft palm across his lips.
+
+“Taisez-vous, mon ami! It is too soon! See the morning! I must go.
+There! yes—one more!—my love, Adieu!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Fewer tourists and more hunters had been coming to the Lodge of late;
+the crack of the rifle sounded all day. There was great talk of a hunt
+which the duke would hold in September, and the colonel and Rex were
+invited. But though September was now only a few days off, the colonel
+was growing too restless to wait.
+
+After Yvonne’s visit, he and Ruth were much together. It seemed to
+happen so. They took long walks into the woods, but Ruth seemed to
+share now her father’s aversion to climbing, and Gethryn stalked the
+deer with only the Jaegers for company.
+
+Ruth and her father used to come home with their arms full of wild
+flowers—the fair, lovely wild blossoms of Bavaria which sprang up
+everywhere in their path. The colonel was great company on these
+expeditions, singing airs from obsolete operas of his youth, and
+telling stories of La Grange, Brignoli and Amodio, of the Strakosches
+and Maretzeks, with much liveliness. Sometimes there would be a
+silence, however, and then if Ruth looked up she often met his eyes.
+Then he would smile and say:
+
+“Well, Daisy!” and she would smile and say:
+
+“Well, dear!”
+
+But this could not last. About a week after Yvonne’s visit, the
+colonel, after one of these walks, instead of joining Rex for a smoke,
+left him sitting with Ruth under the beech tree and mounted the stairs
+to Mrs Dene’s room.
+
+It was an hour later when he rose and kissed his wife, who had been
+sitting at her window all the time of their quiet talk, with eyes fixed
+on the young people below.
+
+“I never dreamed of it!” said he.
+
+“I did, I wished it,” was her answer. “I thought he was—but they are
+all alike!” she ended sadly and bitterly. “To think of a boy as
+wellborn as Rex—” But the colonel, who possibly knew more about
+wellborn boys than his wife did, interrupted her:
+
+“Hang the boys! It’s Ruth I’m grieved for!”
+
+“My daughter needs no one’s solicitude, not even ours!” said the old
+lady haughtily.
+
+“Right! Thank God!” said the veteran, in a tone of relief. “Good night,
+my dear!”
+
+Two days later they left for Paris.
+
+Rex accompanied them as far as Schicksalsee, promising to follow them
+in a few days.
+
+The handsome, soldierly-looking Herr Förster stood by their carriage
+and gave them a “Glück-liche Reise!” and a warm “Auf Wiedersehen!” as
+they drove away. Returning up the steps slowly and seriously, he caught
+the eye of Sepp and Federl, who had been looking after the carriage as
+it turned out of sight beyond the bridge:
+
+“Schade!” said the Herr Förster, and went into the house.
+
+“Schade!” said Federl.
+
+“Jammer-schade!” growled Sepp.
+
+On the platform at Schicksalsee, Rex and Ruth were walking while they
+waited for the train. “Ruth,” said Rex, “I hope you never will need a
+friend’s life to save yours from harm; but if you do, take mine.”
+
+“Yes, Rex.” She raised her eyes and looked into the distance. Far on
+the horizon loomed the Red Peak.
+
+The clumsy mail drew up beside the platform. It was the year when all
+the world was running after a very commonplace Operetta with one lovely
+stolen song: a Volks-song. One heard it everywhere, on both continents;
+and now as the postillion, in his shiny hat with the cockade, his light
+blue jacket and white small clothes, and his curly brass horn, came
+rattling down the street, he was playing the same melody:
+
+Es ist im Leben häßlich eingerichtet—
+
+
+The train drew into the station. When it panted forth again, Gethryn
+stood waving his hand, and watched it out of sight.
+
+Turning at last to leave the platform, he found that the crowd had
+melted away; only a residue of crimson-capped officials remained. He
+inquired of one where he could find an expressman and was referred to a
+mild man absorbing a bad cigar. With him Gethryn arranged for having
+his traps brought from Trauerbach and consigned to the brothers Schnurr
+at the “Gasthof zur Post,” Schicksalsee, that inn being close to the
+station.
+
+This settled, he lighted a cigarette and strolled across to his hotel,
+sitting down on a stone bench before the door, and looking off at the
+lake.
+
+It was mid-afternoon. The little place was asleep. Nothing was stirring
+about the inn excepting a bandy Dachshund, which came wheezing up and
+thrust a cold nose into the young man’s hand. High in the air a hawk
+was wheeling; his faint, querulous cry struck Gethryn with an unwonted
+sense of loneliness. He noticed how yellow some of the trees were on
+the slopes across the lake. Autumn had come before summer was ended. He
+leaned over and patted the hound. A door opened, a voice cried, “Ei
+Dachl! du! Dachl!” and the dog made off at the top of his hobbyhorse
+gait.
+
+The silence was unbroken except for the harsh cries of the hawk,
+sailing low now in great circles over the lake. The sun flashed on his
+broad, burnished wings as he stooped; Gethryn fancied he could see his
+evil little eyes; finally the bird rose and dwindled away, lost against
+the mountainside.
+
+He was roused from his reverie by angry voices.
+
+“Cochon! Kerl! Menteur!” cried someone.
+
+The other voice remonstrated with a snarl.
+
+“Bah!” cried the first, “you lie!”
+
+“Alsatians,” thought Rex; “what horrible French!”
+
+The snarling began again, but gradually lapsed into whining. Rex looked
+about him.
+
+The quarreling seemed to come from a small room which opened out of the
+hotel restaurant. Windows gave from it over the front, but the blinds
+were down.
+
+“No! No! I tell you! Not one sou! Starve? I hope you will!” cried the
+first voice, and a stamp set some bottles and glasses jingling.
+
+“Alsatians and Jews!” thought Rex. One voice was unpleasantly familiar
+to him, and he wondered if Mr Blumenthal spoke French as he did
+English. Deciding with a careless smile that of course he did, Rex
+ceased to think of him, not feeling any curiosity to go and see with
+whom his late fellow-lodger might be quarreling. He sat and watched
+instead, as he lounged in the sunshine, some smart carriages whirling
+past, their horses stepping high, the lackeys muffled from the mountain
+air in winter furs, crests on the panels.
+
+An adjutant in green, with a great flutter of white cock’s feathers
+from his chapeau, sitting up on the box of an equipage, accompanied by
+flunkies in the royal blue and white of Bavaria, was a more agreeable
+object to contemplate than Mr Blumenthal, and Gethryn felt as much
+personal connection with the Prince Regent hurrying home to Munich,
+from his little hunting visit to the emperor of Austria, as with the
+wrangling Jews behind the close-drawn blinds of the coffee-room at his
+back.
+
+The sun was slowly declining. Rex rose and idled into the smoking-room.
+It was deserted but for the clerk at his desk, a railed enclosure, one
+side of which opened into the smoking-room, the other side into the
+hall. Across the hall was a door with “Café—Restaurant,” in gilt
+letters above it. Rex did not enter the café; he sat and dreamed in the
+empty smoking-room over his cigarette.
+
+But it was lively in the café, in spite of the waning season. A good
+many of the tables were occupied. At one of them sat the three
+unchaperoned Miss Dashleighs, in company with three solemn,
+high-shouldered young officers, enjoying something in tall, slender
+tumblers which looked hot and smelled spicy. At another table Mr
+Everett Tweeler and Mrs Tweeler were alternately scolding and stuffing
+Master Irving Tweeler, who expressed in impassioned tones a desire for
+tarts.
+
+“Ur—r—ving!” remonstrated Mr Tweeler.
+
+“Dahling!” argued Mrs Tweeler. “If oo eats too many ’ittle cakies then
+oo tant go home to Salem on the puffy, puffy choo-choo boat.”
+
+Old Sir Griffin Damby overheard and snorted.
+
+When Master Tweeler secured his tarts, Sir Griffin blessed the meal
+with a hearty “damn!”
+
+He did not care for Master Tweeler’s nightly stomach aches, but their
+rooms adjoined. When “Ur—r—ving” reached unmolested for his fourth, Sir
+Griffin rose violently, and muttering, “Change me room, begad!” waddled
+down to the door, glaring aggressively at the occupants of the various
+tables. Near the exit a half suppressed squeal caused him to swing
+round. He had stepped squarely on the toe of a meager individual, who
+now sat nursing his foot in bitter dejection.
+
+“Pardon—” began Sir Griffin, then stopped and glared at the
+sallow-faced person.
+
+Sir Griffin stared hard at the man he had stepped on, and at his female
+companion.
+
+“Damn it!” he cried. “Keep your feet out of the way, do you hear?”
+puffed his cheeks, squared his shoulders and snorted himself out of the
+café.
+
+The yellow-faced man was livid with rage.
+
+“Don’t be a fool, Mannie,” whispered the woman; “don’t make a row—do
+you know who that is?”
+
+“He’s an English hog,” spluttered the man with an oath; “he’s a cursed
+hog of an Englishman!”
+
+“Yes, and he knows us. He was at Monaco a few summers ago. Don’t forget
+who turned us out of the Casino.”
+
+Emanuel Pick turned a shade more sallow and sank back in his seat.
+
+Neither spoke again for some moments. Presently the woman began to stir
+the bits of lemon and ice in her empty tumbler. Pick watched her
+sulkily.
+
+“You always take the most expensive drinks. Why can’t you order coffee,
+as others do?” he snarled.
+
+She glanced at him. “Jew,” she sneered.
+
+“All right; only wait! I’ve come to the end of my rope. I’ve got just
+money enough left to get back to Paris—”
+
+“You lie, Mannie!”
+
+He paid no attention to this compliment, but lighted a cigar and
+dropped the match on the floor, grinding it under his heel.
+
+“You have ten thousand francs today! You lie if you say you have not.”
+
+Mr Pick softly dropped his eyelids.
+
+“That is for me, in case of need. I will need it too, very soon!”
+
+His companion glared at him and bit her lip.
+
+“If you and I are to remain dear friends,” continued Mr Pick, “we must
+manage to raise money, somehow. You know that as well as I do.”
+
+Still she said nothing, but kept her eyes on his face. He glanced up
+and looked away uneasily.
+
+“I have seen my uncle again. He knows all about your sister and the
+American. He says it is only because of him that she refuses the
+handsome offer.”
+
+The woman’s face grew tigerish, and she nodded rapidly, muttering, “Ah!
+yes! Mais oui! the American. I do not forget him!”
+
+“My dear uncle thinks it is our fault that your sister refuses to
+forget him, which is more to the purpose,” sneered Pick. “He says you
+did not press that offer he made Yvonne with any skill, else she would
+never have refused it again—that makes four times,” he added. “Four
+times she has refused an establishment and—”
+
+“Pst! what are you raising your voice for?” hissed the woman. “And how
+is it my fault?” she went on.
+
+“I don’t say it is. I know better—who could wish more than we that your
+sister should become the mistress of my dear rich uncle? But when I
+tried to tell him just now that we had done our best, he raved at me.
+He has guessed somehow that they mean to marry. I did not tell him that
+we too had guessed it. But he said I knew it and was concealing it from
+him. I asked him for a little money to go on with. Curse him, he would
+not lend me a sou! Said he never would again—curse him!”
+
+There was a silence while Pick smoked on. The woman did not smoke too
+because she had no cigarette, and Pick did not offer her any. Presently
+he spoke again.
+
+“Yes, you certainly are an expensive luxury, under the circumstances.
+And since you have so mismanaged your fool of a sister’s affair, I
+don’t see how the circumstances can improve.”
+
+She watched him. “And the ten thousand francs? You will throw me off
+and enjoy them at your ease?”
+
+He cringed at her tone. “Not enjoy—without you—”
+
+“No,” she said coolly, “for I shall kill you.”
+
+Mr Pick smiled uncomfortably. “That would please the American,” he
+said, trying to jest, but his hand trembled as he touched the stem of
+his cigar-holder to shake off the ashes.
+
+A sudden thought leaped into her face. “Why not please—me—instead?” she
+whispered.
+
+Their eyes met. Her face was hard and bold—his, cowardly and ghastly.
+She clenched her hands and leaned forward; her voice was scarcely
+audible. Mr Pick dropped his oily black head and listened.
+
+“He turned me out of his box at the Opera; he struck you—do you hear?
+he kicked you!”
+
+The Jew’s face grew chalky.
+
+“Today he stands between you and your uncle, you and wealth, you and
+me! Do you understand? Cowards are stupid. You claim Spanish blood. But
+Spanish blood does not forget insults. Is yours only the blood of a
+Spanish Jew? Bah! Must I talk? You saw him? He is here. Alive. And he
+kicked you. And he stands between you and riches, you and me, you
+and—life!”
+
+They sat silent, she holding him fascinated with her little black eyes.
+His jaw fallen, the expression of his loose mouth was horrible.
+Suddenly she thrust her face close to his. Her eyes burned and the
+blood surged through the distended veins under the cracking rouge. Her
+lips formed the word, “Tonight!”
+
+Without a word he crept from his seat and followed her out of the room
+by a side door.
+
+Gethryn, lounging in the smoking-room meanwhile, was listening with
+delight to the bellowing of Sir Griffin Damby, who stood at the clerk’s
+desk in the hall.
+
+“Don’t contradict me!” he roared—the weak-eyed clerk had not dreamed of
+doing so—“Don’t you contradict me! I tell you it’s the same man!”
+
+“But Excellence,” entreated the clerk, “we do not know—”
+
+“What! Don’t know! Don’t I tell you?”
+
+“We will telegraph to Paris—”
+
+“Telegraph to hell! Where’s my man? Here! Dawson! Do you remember that
+infernal Jew at Monaco? He’s here. He’s in there!” jerking an angry
+thumb at the café door. “Keep him in sight till the police come for
+him. If he says anything, kick him into the lake.”
+
+Dawson bowed.
+
+The clerk tried to say that he would telegraph instantly, but Sir
+Griffin barked in his face and snorted his way down the hall, followed
+by the valet.
+
+Rex, laughing, threw down his cigarette and sauntered over to the
+clerk.
+
+“Whom does the Englishman want kicked out?”
+
+The clerk made a polite gesture, asking Rex to wait until he had
+finished telegraphing. At that moment the postillion’s horn heralded
+the coming of the mail coach, and that meant the speedy arrival of the
+last western train. Rex forgot Sir Griffin and strolled over to the
+post office to watch the distribution of the letters and to get his
+own.
+
+A great deal of flopping and pounding seemed to be required as a
+preliminary to postal distribution. First the mail bags seemed to be
+dragged all over the floor, then came a long series of thumps while the
+letters were stamped, finally the slide was raised and a face the color
+of underdone pie crust, with little angry eyes, appeared. The owner had
+a new and ingenious insult for each person who presented himself. The
+Tweelers were utterly routed and went away not knowing whether there
+were any letters for them or not. Several valets and ladies’ maids
+exchanged lively but ineffectual compliments with the face in the post
+office window. Then came Sir Griffin. Rex looked on with interest. What
+the ill-natured brute behind the grating said, Rex couldn’t hear, but
+Sir Griffin burst out with a roar, “Damnation!” that made everybody
+jump. Then he stuck his head as far as he could get it in at the little
+window and shouted—in fluent German, awfully pronounced—“Here! You!
+It’s enough that you’re so stupid you don’t know what you’re about.
+Don’t you try to be impudent too! Hand me those letters!” The official
+bully handed them over without a word.
+
+Rex took advantage of the lull and stepped to the window. “Any letters
+for Mr Gethryn?”
+
+“How you spell him?” Rex spelled him.
+
+“Yet once again!” demanded the intelligent person. Rex wrote it in
+English and in German script.
+
+“From Trauerbach—yes?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The man went away, looked through two ledgers, sent for another, made
+out several sets of blanks, and finally came back to the window, but
+said nothing.
+
+“Well?” said Rex, pleasantly.
+
+“Well,” said the man.
+
+“Anything for me?”
+
+“Nothing for you.”
+
+“Kindly look again,” said Rex. “I know there are letters for me.”
+
+In about ten minutes the man appeared again.
+
+“Well?” said Gethryn.
+
+“Well,” said the man.
+
+“Nothing for me?”
+
+“Something.” And with ostentatious delay he produced three letters and
+a newspaper, which Rex took, restraining an impulse to knock him down.
+After all, the temptation was not very great, presenting itself more as
+an act of justice than as a personal satisfaction. The truth was, all
+day long a great gentleness tinged with melancholy had rested on
+Gethryn’s spirit. Nothing seemed to matter very much. And whatever
+engaged his attention for a moment, it was only for a moment, and then
+his thoughts returned where they had been all day.
+
+Yvonne, Yvonne! She had not been out of his thoughts since he rose that
+morning. In a few steps he reached his room and read his letters by the
+waning daylight.
+
+The first began:
+
+“My Darling—in three more days I shall stand before a Paris audience. I
+am not one bit nervous. I am perfectly happy. Yesterday at rehearsal
+the orchestra applauded and Madame Bordier kissed me. Some very droll
+things happened. Achilles was intoxicated and chased Ajax the Less with
+a stick. Ajax fled into my dressing room, and although I was not there
+I told Achilles afterward that I would never forgive him. Then he
+wept.”
+
+
+The letter ran on for a page more of lively gossip and then, with a
+sudden change, ended:
+
+
+“But why do I write these foolish things to you? Ah! you know it is
+because I am too happy! too happy! and I cannot say what is in my
+heart. I dare not. It is too soon. I dare not!
+
+“If it is that I am happy, who but you knows the reason? And now listen
+to my little secret. I pray for you, yes, every morning and every
+evening. And for myself too—now.
+
+“God forgives. It is in my faith. Oh! my husband, we will be good!
+
+
+“Thy Yvonne”
+
+
+Gethryn’s eyes blurred on the page and he sat a long time, very still,
+not offering to open his remaining letters. Presently he raised his
+head and looked into the street. It was dusk, and the lamps along the
+lake side were lighted. He had to light his candles to read by.
+
+The next was from Braith—a short note.
+
+
+“Everything is ready, Rex, your old studio cleaned and dusted until you
+would not know it.
+
+“I have kept the key always by me, and no one but myself has ever
+entered it since you left.
+
+“I will meet you at the station—and when you are really here I shall
+begin to live again.
+
+
+“Au revoir,
+Braith”
+
+
+It seemed as if Gethryn would never get on with his correspondence. He
+sat and held this letter as he had done the other. A deep melancholy
+possessed him. He did not care to move. At last, impatiently, he tore
+the third envelope. It contained a long letter from Clifford.
+
+“My blessed boy,” it said.
+
+
+“We learn from Papa Braith that you will be here before long, but the
+old chump won’t tell when. He intends to meet you all alone at the
+station, and wishes to dispense with a gang and a brass band. We think
+that’s deuced selfish. You are our prodigal as well as his, and we are
+considering several plans for getting even with Pa.
+
+“One is to tell you all the news before he has a chance. And I will
+begin at once.
+
+“Thaxton has gone home, and opened a studio in New York. The Colossus
+has grown two more inches and hates to hear me mention the freak
+museums in the Bowery. Carleton is a hubby, and wifey is English and
+captivating. Rowden told me one day he was going to get married too.
+When I asked her name he said he didn’t know. Someone with red hair.
+
+“When I remarked that he was a little in that way himself, he said yes,
+he knew it, and he intended to found a race of that kind, to be known
+as the Red Rowdens. Elliott’s brindle died, and we sold ours. We now
+keep two Russian bloodhounds. When you come to my room, knock first,
+for “Baby” doesn’t like to be startled.
+
+“Braith has kept your family together, in your old studio. The parrot
+and the raven are two old fiends and will live forever. Mrs Gummidge
+periodically sheds litters of kittens, to Braith’s indignation. He
+gives them to the concierge who sells them at a high price, I don’t
+know for what purpose; I have two of the Gummidge children. The bull
+pups are pups no longer, but they are beauties and no mistake. All the
+same, wait until you see “Baby.”
+
+“I met Yvonne in the Louvre last week. I’m glad you are all over that
+affair, for she’s going to be married, she told me. She looked prettier
+than ever, and as happy as she was pretty. She was with old Bordier of
+the Fauvette, and his wife, and—think of this! she’s coming out in
+Belle Hélène! Well! I’m glad she’s all right, for she was too nice to
+go the usual way.
+
+“Poor little Bulfinch shot himself in the Bois last June. He had
+delirium tremens. Poor little chap!
+
+“There’s a Miss Dene here, who knows you. Braith has met her. She’s a
+beauty, he says, and she’s also a stunning girl, possessing manners,
+and morals, and dignity, and character, and religion and all that you
+and I have not, my son. Braith says she isn’t too good for you when you
+are at your best; but we know better, Reggy; any good girl is too good
+for the likes of us.
+
+“Hasten to my arms, Reginald! You will find them at No. 640 Rue Notre
+Dame des Champs, chez,
+
+
+“Foxhall Clifford, Esq.”
+
+
+Leaving Clifford’s letter and the newspapers on the table, Rex took his
+hat, put out the light, and went down to the street. As he stood in the
+door, looking off at the dark lake, he folded Yvonne’s letter and
+placed it in his breast. He held Braith’s a moment more and then laid
+it beside hers.
+
+The air was brisk; he buttoned his coat about him. Here and there a
+moonbeam touched the lapping edge of the water, or flashed out in the
+open stretch beyond the point of pines. High over the pines hung a
+cliff, blackening the water all around with fathomless shadow.
+
+A waiter came lounging by, his hands tucked beneath his coattails.
+“What point is that? The one which overhangs the pines there?” asked
+Rex.
+
+“Gracious sir!” said the waiter, “that is the Schicksalfels.”
+
+“Why ‘Schicksal-fels’?”
+
+“Has the gracious gentleman never heard the legend of the ‘Rock of
+Fate’?”
+
+“No, and on second thoughts, I don’t care to hear it now. Another time.
+Good night!”
+
+“Ah! the gentleman is too good! Thousand thanks! Gute Nacht, gnädiger
+Herr!”
+
+Gethryn remained looking at the crags.
+
+“They cannot be half a mile from here,” he thought. “I suppose the path
+is good enough; if not, I can turn back. The lake will look well from
+there by moonlight.” And he found himself moving up a little footpath
+which branched below the hotel.
+
+It was pleasant, brisk walking. The air had a touch of early frost in
+it. Gethryn swung along at a good pace, pulling his cap down and
+fastening the last button of his coat. The trees threw long shadows
+across the path, hiding it from view, except where the moonlight fell
+white on the moist gravel. The moon herself was past the full and not
+very bright; a film of mist was drawing over the sky. Gethryn, looking
+up, thought of that gentle moon which once sailed ghostlike at high
+noon through the blue zenith among silver clouds while a boy lay beside
+the stream with rod and creel; and then he remembered the dear old
+yellow moon that used to flood the nursery with pools of light and pile
+strange moving shades about his bed. And then he saw, still looking up,
+the great white globe that hung above the frozen river, striking blue
+sparks from the ringing skates.
+
+He felt lonely and a trifle homesick. For the first time in his life—he
+was still so young—he thought of his childhood and his boyhood as
+something gone beyond recall.
+
+He had nearly reached his destination; just before him the path entered
+a patch of pine woods and emerged from it, shortly, upon the
+flat-topped rock which he was seeking. Under the first arching branches
+he stopped and looked back at the marred moon in the mist-covered sky.
+
+“I am sick of this wandering,” he thought. “Wane quickly! Your
+successor shall shine on my home: Yvonne’s and mine.”
+
+And, thinking of Yvonne, he passed into the shadows which the pines
+cast upon the Schicksalfels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Paris lay sparkling under a cold, clear sky. The brilliant streets lay
+coiled along the Seine and stretched glittering from bank to bank, from
+boulevard to boulevard; cafés, brasseries, concert halls and theaters
+in the yellow blaze of gas and the white and violet of electricity.
+
+It was not late, but people who entered the lobby of the Theater
+Fauvette turned away before the placard “Standing room only.”
+
+Somewhere in the city a bell sounded the hour, and with the last stroke
+the drop curtain fell on the first act of “La Belle Hélène.”
+
+It fell amidst a whirlwind of applause, in which the orchestra led.
+
+The old leader of the violins shook his head, however. He had been
+there twenty years, and he had never before heard of such singing in
+comic opera.
+
+“No, no,” he said, “she can’t stay here. Dame! she sings!”
+
+Madame Bordier was pale and happy; her good husband was weak with joy.
+The members of the troupe had not yet had time to be jealous and they,
+too, applauded.
+
+As for the house, it was not only conquered, it was wild with
+enthusiasm. The lobbies were thronged.
+
+Braith ran up against Rowden and Elliott.
+
+“By Jove!” they cried, with one voice, “who’d have thought the little
+girl had all that in her? I say, Braith, does Rex know about her? When
+is he coming?”
+
+“Rex doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Rex is cured,” said Braith. “And
+he’s coming next week. Where’s Clifford?” he added, to make a
+diversion.
+
+“Clifford promised to meet us here. He’ll be along soon.”
+
+The pair went out for refreshments and Braith returned to his seat.
+
+The wait between the acts proved longer than was agreeable, and people
+grumbled. The machinery would not work, and two heavy scenes had to be
+shifted by hand. Good Monsieur Bordier flew about the stage in a
+delirium of excitement. No one would have recognized him for the
+eminently reasonable being he appeared in private life. He called the
+stage hands “Prussian pigs!” and “Spanish cattle!” and expressed his
+intention to dismiss the whole force tomorrow.
+
+Yvonne, already dressed, stood at the door of her room, looking along
+the alley of dusty scenery to where a warm glow revealed the close
+proximity of the footlights. There was considerable unprofessional
+confusion, and not a little skylarking going on among the company, who
+took advantage of the temporary interruption.
+
+Yvonne stood in the door of her dressing room and dreamed, seeing
+nothing.
+
+Her pretty figure was draped in a Grecian tunic of creamy white,
+bordered with gold; her soft, dark hair was gathered in a simple knot.
+
+Presently she turned and entered her dressing room, closing the door.
+Then she sat down before the mirror, her chin resting on her hands, her
+eyes fixed on her reflected eyes, a faint smile curving her lips.
+
+“Oh! you happy girl!” she thought. “You happy, happy girl! And just a
+little frightened, for tomorrow he will come. And when he says—for he
+will say it—‘Yvonne must we wait?’ I shall tell him, No! take me now if
+you will!”
+
+Without a knock the door burst open. A rush of music from the orchestra
+came in. Yvonne thought “So they have begun at last!” The same moment
+she rose with a faint, heartsick cry. Her sister closed the door and
+fastened it, shutting out all sound but that of her terrible voice.
+Yvonne blanched as she looked on that malignant face. With a sudden
+faintness she leaned back, pressing one hand to her heart.
+
+“You received my letter?” said the woman.
+
+Yvonne did not answer. Her sister stamped and came nearer. “Speak!” she
+cried.
+
+Yvonne shrank and trembled, but kept her resolute eyes on the cruel
+eyes approaching hers.
+
+“Shall I tear an answer from you?” said the woman, always coming
+nearer. “Do you think I will wait your pleasure, now?”
+
+No answer.
+
+“He is here—Mr Blumenthal; he is waiting for you. You dare not refuse
+him again! You will come with us now, after the opera. Do you hear? You
+will come. There is no more time. It must be now. I told you there
+would be time, but there is none—none!”
+
+Yvonne’s maid knocked at the door and called:
+
+“Mademoiselle, c’est l’heuer!”
+
+“Answer!” hissed the woman.
+
+Yvonne, speechless, holding both hands to her heart, kept her eyes on
+her sister’s face. That face grew ashen; the eyes had the blank glare
+of a tiger’s; she sprang up to Yvonne and grasped her by the wrists.
+
+“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! c’est l’heure!” called the maid, shaking
+the door.
+
+“Fool!” hissed her sister, “you think you will marry the American!”
+
+“Mademoiselle Descartes! mais Mademoiselle Descartes!” cried Monsieur’s
+voice without.
+
+“Let me go!” panted Yvonne, struggling wildly.
+
+“Go!” screamed the woman, “go, and sing! You cannot marry him! He is
+dead!” and she struck the girl with her clenched fist.
+
+The door, torn open, crashed behind her and immediately swung back
+again to admit Madame.
+
+“My child! my child! What is it? What ails you? Quick, or it will be
+too late! Ah! try, try, my child!”
+
+She was in tears of despair.
+
+Taking her beseeching hand, Yvonne moved toward the stage.
+
+“Oui, chère Madame!” she said.
+
+The chorus swelled around her.
+
+Oh! reine en ce jour!
+
+
+rose, fell, ebbed away, and left her standing alone.
+
+She heard a voice—“Tell me, Venus—” but she hardly knew it for her own.
+It was all dark before her eyes—while the mad chorus of Kings went on,
+“For us, what joy!”—thundering away along the wings.
+
+“Fear Calchas!”
+
+“Seize him!”
+
+“Let Calchas fear!”
+
+And then she began to sing—to sing as she had never sung before. Sweet,
+thrilling, her voice poured forth into the crowded auditorium. The
+people sat spellbound. There was a moment of silence; no one offered to
+applaud. And then she began again.
+
+Oui c’est un réve,
+Un réve doux d’amour—
+
+
+She faltered—
+
+La nuit lui préte son mystère,
+Il doit finir avec le jour—
+
+
+the voice broke. Men were standing up in the audience. One cried out:
+
+“Il—doit—finir—”
+
+The music clashed in one great discord.
+
+Why did the stage reel under her? What was the shouting?
+
+Her heavy, dark hair fell down about her little white face as she sank
+on her knees, and covered her as she lay her slender length along the
+stage.
+
+The orchestra and the audience sprang to their feet. The great blank
+curtain rattled to the ground. A whirlwind swept over the house.
+Monsieur Bordier stepped before the curtain.
+
+“My friends!” he began, but his voice failed, and he only added, “C’est
+fini!”
+
+With hardly a word the audience moved to the exits. But Braith, turning
+to the right, made his way through a long, low passage and strode
+toward a little stage door. It was flung open and a man hurried past
+him.
+
+“Monsieur!” called Braith. “Monsieur!”
+
+But Monsieur Bordier was crying like a child, and kept on his way,
+without answering.
+
+The narrow corridor was now filled with hurrying, excited figures in
+gauze and tinsel, sham armor, and painted faces. They pressed Braith
+back, but he struggled and fought his way to the door.
+
+A Sergeant de Ville shouldered through the crowd. He was dragging a
+woman along by the arm. Another policeman came behind, urging her
+forward. Somehow she slipped from them and sank, cowering against the
+wall. Braith’s eyes met hers. She cowered still lower.
+
+A slender, sallow man had been quietly slipping through the throng. A
+red-faced fellow touched him on the shoulder.
+
+“Pardon! I think this is Mr Emanuel Pick.”
+
+“No!” stammered the man, and started to run.
+
+Braith blocked his way. The red-faced detective was at his side.
+
+“So, you are Mr Emanuel Pick!”
+
+“No!” gasped the other.
+
+“He lies! He lies!” yelled the woman, from the floor.
+
+The Jew reeled back and, with a piercing scream, tore at his handcuffed
+wrists. Braith whispered to the detective:
+
+“What has the woman done? What is the charge?”
+
+“Charge? There are a dozen. The last is murder.”
+
+The woman had fainted and they carried her away. The light fell a
+moment on the Jew’s livid face, the next Braith stood under the dark
+porch of the empty theater. The confusion was all at the stage
+entrance. Here, in front, the deserted street was white and black and
+silent under the electric lamps. All the lonelier for two wretched
+gamins, counting their dirty sous and draggled newspapers.
+
+When they saw Braith they started for him; one was ahead in the race,
+but the other gained on him, reached him, dealt him a merciless blow,
+and panted up to Braith.
+
+The defeated one, crying bitterly, gathered up his scattered papers
+from the gutter.
+
+“Curse you, Rigaud! you hound!” he cried, in a passion of tears. “Curse
+you, son of a murderer!”
+
+The first gamin whipped out a paper and thrust it toward Braith.
+
+“Buy it, Monsieur!” he whined, “the last edition, full account of the
+Boulangist riot this morning; burning of the Prussian flags; explosion
+on a warship; murder in Germany, discovered by an English Milord—”
+
+Braith was walking fast; the gamin ran by his side for a moment, but
+soon gave it up. Braith walked faster and faster; he was almost running
+when he reached his own door. There was a light in his window. He
+rushed up the stairs and into his room.
+
+Clifford was sitting there, his head in his hands. Braith touched him,
+trying to speak lightly.
+
+“Are you asleep, old man?”
+
+Clifford raised a colorless face to his.
+
+“What is it? Can’t you speak?”
+
+But Clifford only pointed to a crumpled telegram lying on the table,
+and hid his face again as Braith raised the paper to the light.
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
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