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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fighting Chance, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Fighting Chance
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7492]
+Posting Date: August 5, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIGHTING CHANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeffrey Kraus-yao
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot
+on the fender."]
+
+
+
+The Fighting Chance
+
+By Robert W. Chambers
+
+
+Author of "Cardigan," "The Maid at Arms," "The Firing Line," etc.
+
+
+
+DEDICATED TO MY FATHER
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. Acquaintance
+     II. Imprudence
+     III. Shotover
+     IV. The Season Opens
+     V. A Winning Loser
+     VI. Modus Vivendi
+     VII. Persuasion
+     VIII. Confidences
+     IX. Confessions
+     X. The Seamy Side
+     XI. The Call of the Rain
+     XII. The Asking Price
+     XIII. The Selling Price
+     XIV. The Bargain
+     XV. The Enemy Listens
+
+
+
+
+THE FIGHTING CHANCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. ACQUAINTANCE
+
+The speed of the train slackened; a broad tidal river flashed into sight
+below the trestle, spreading away on either hand through yellowing level
+meadows. And now, above the roaring undertone of the cars, from far
+ahead floated back the treble bell-notes of the locomotive; there came
+a gritting vibration of brakes; slowly, more slowly the cars glided to
+a creaking standstill beside a sun-scorched platform gay with the bright
+flutter of sunshades and summer gowns.
+
+"Shotover! Shotover!" rang the far cry along the cars; and an
+absent-minded young man in the Pullman pocketed the uncut magazine he
+had been dreaming over and, picking up gun case and valise, followed a
+line of fellow-passengers to the open air, where one by one they were
+engulfed and lost to view amid the gay confusion on the platform.
+
+The absent-minded young man, however, did not seem to know exactly where
+he was bound for. He stood hesitating, leisurely inspecting the flashing
+ranks of vehicles--depot wagons, omnibusses, and motor cars already
+eddying around a dusty gravel drive centred by the conventional railroad
+flower bed and fountain.
+
+Sunshine blazed on foliage plants arranged geometrically, on scarlet
+stars composed of geraniums, on thickets of tall flame-tinted cannas.
+And around this triumph of landscape gardening, phaeton, Tilbury,
+Mercedes, and Toledo backed, circled, tooted; gaily gowned women, whips
+aslant, horses dancing, greeted expected guests; laughing young men
+climbed into dog-carts and took the reins from nimble grooms; young
+girls, extravagantly veiled, made room in comfortable touring-cars for
+feminine guests whose extravagant veils were yet to be unpacked; slim
+young men in leather trappings, caps adorned with elaborate masks or
+goggles, manipulated rakish steering-gears; preoccupied machinists were
+fussing with valve and radiator or were cranking up; and, through the
+jolly tumult, the melancholy bell of the locomotive sounded, and the
+long train moved out through the September sunshine amid clouds of snowy
+steam.
+
+And all this time the young man, gun case in one hand, suit case in
+the other, looked about him in his good-humoured, leisurely manner
+for anybody or any vehicle which might be waiting for him. His amiable
+inspection presently brought a bustling baggage-master within range of
+vision; and he spoke to this official, mentioning his host's name.
+
+"Lookin' for Mr. Ferrall?" repeated the baggage-master, spinning a trunk
+dexterously into rank with its fellows. "Say, one of Mr. Ferrall's
+men was here just now--there he is, over there uncrating that there
+bird-dog!"
+
+The young man's eyes followed the direction indicated by the grimy
+thumb; a red-faced groom in familiar livery was kneeling beside a dog's
+travelling crate, attempting to unlock it, while behind the bars an
+excited white setter whined and thrust forth first one silky paw then
+the other.
+
+The young man watched the scene for a moment, then:
+
+"Are you one of Mr. Ferrall's men?" he asked in his agreeable voice.
+
+The groom looked up, then stood up:
+
+"Yis, Sorr."
+
+"Take these; I'm Mr. Siward--for Shotover House. I dare say you have
+room for me and the dog, too."
+
+The groom opened his mouth to speak, but Siward took the crate key from
+his fingers, knelt, and tried the lock. It resisted. From the depths of
+the crate a beseeching paw fell upon his cuff.
+
+"Certainly, old fellow," he said soothingly, "I know how you feel
+about it; I know you're in a hurry--and we'll have you out in a
+second--steady, boy!--something's jammed, you see! Only one moment now!
+There you are!"
+
+The dog attempted to bolt as the crate door opened, but the young man
+caught him by the leather collar and the groom snapped on a leash.
+
+"Beg pardon, Sorr," began the groom, carried almost off his feet by the
+frantic circling of the dog--"beg pardon, Sorr, but I'll be afther seem'
+if anny of Mr. Ferrall's men drove over for you--"
+
+"Oh! Are you not one of Mr. Ferrall's men?"
+
+"Yis, Sorr, but I hadn't anny orders to meet anny wan--"
+
+"Haven't you anything here to drive me in?"
+
+"Yis, Sorr--I'll look to see--"
+
+The raw groom, much embarrassed, and keeping his feet with difficulty
+against the plunging dog, turned toward the gravel drive where now
+only a steam motor and a depot-wagon remained. As they looked the motor
+steamed out, honking hoarsely; the depot-wagon followed, leaving the
+circle at the end of the station empty of vehicles.
+
+"Didn't Mr. Ferrall expect me?" asked Siward.
+
+"Aw, yis, Sorr; but the gintlemen for Shotover House does ginerally
+allways coom by Black Fells, Sorr--"
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said the young man, "I remember now. I should have gone on
+to Black Fells Crossing; Mr. Ferrall wrote me!" Then, amused: "I suppose
+you have only a baggage-wagon here?"
+
+"No, Sorr--a phayton"--he hesitated.
+
+"Well? Isn't a phaeton all right?"
+
+"Yis, Sorr--if th' yoong lady says so--beg pardon, Sorr, Miss Landis is
+driving."
+
+"Oh--h! I see. ... Is Miss Landis a guest at Shotover House?"
+
+"Yis, Sorr. An' if ye would joost ask her--the phayton do be coming now,
+Sorr!"
+
+The phaeton was coming; the horse, a showy animal, executed side-steps;
+blue ribbons fluttered from the glittering head-stall; a young girl in
+white was driving.
+
+Siward advanced to the platform's edge as the phaeton drew up; the young
+lady looked inquiringly at the groom, at the dog, and leisurely at him.
+
+So he took off his hat, naming himself in that well-bred and agreeable
+manner characteristic of men of his sort,--and even his smile appeared
+to be part and parcel of a conventional ensemble so harmonious as to
+remain inconspicuous.
+
+"You should have gone on to Black Fells Crossing," observed Miss Landis,
+coolly controlling the nervous horse. "Didn't you know it?"
+
+He said he remembered now that such were the directions given him.
+
+The girl glanced at him incuriously, and with more curiosity at the dog.
+"Is that the Sagamore pup, Flynn?" she asked.
+
+"It is, Miss."
+
+"Can't you take him on the rumble with you?" And, to Siward: "There is
+room for your gun and suit case."
+
+"And for me?" he asked, smiling.
+
+"I think so. Be careful of that Sagamore pup, Flynn. Hold him between
+your knees. Are you ready, Mr. Siward?"
+
+So he climbed in; the groom hoisted the dog to the rumble and sprang up
+behind; the horse danced and misbehaved, making a spectacle of himself
+and an agreeable picture of his driver; then the pretty little phaeton
+swung northward out of the gravel drive and went whirling along a road
+all misty with puffs of yellow dust which the afternoon sun turned to
+floating golden powder.
+
+"Did you send my telegram, Flynn?" she asked without turning her head.
+
+"I did, Miss."
+
+It being the most important telegram she had ever sent in all her life,
+Miss Landis became preoccupied,--quite oblivious to extraneous details,
+including Siward, until the horse began acting badly again. Her slightly
+disdainful and perfect control of the reins interested the young man. He
+might have said something civil and conventional about that, but did not
+make the effort to invade a reserve which appeared to embarrass nobody.
+
+A stacatto note from the dog, prolonged infinitely in hysterical
+crescendo, demanded comment from somebody.
+
+"What is the matter with him, Flynn?" she asked.
+
+Siward said: "You should let him run, Miss Landis."
+
+She nodded, smiling, inattentive, absorbed in her own affairs, still
+theorising concerning her telegram. She drove on for a while, and might
+have forgotten the dog entirely had he not once more lifted his voice in
+melancholy.
+
+"You say he ought to run for a mile or two? Do you think he'll bolt, Mr.
+Siward?"
+
+"Is he a new dog?"
+
+"Yes, fresh from the kennels; supposed to be house-and wagon-broken,
+steady to shot and wing--" She shrugged her pretty shoulders. "You see
+how he's acting already!"
+
+"Do you mind if I try him?" suggested Siward.
+
+"You mean that you are going to let him run?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"And if he bolts?"
+
+"I'll take my chances."
+
+"Yes, but please consider my chances, Mr. Siward. The dog doesn't belong
+to me."
+
+"But he ought to run--"
+
+"But suppose he runs away? He's a horridly expensive creature--if you
+care to take the risk."
+
+"I'll take the risk," said Siward, smiling as she drew rein. "Now Flynn,
+give me the leash. Quiet! Quiet, puppy! Everything is coming your way;
+that's the beauty of patience; great thing, patience!" He took the
+leader; the dog sprang from the rumble. "Now, my friend, look at me! No,
+don't twist and squirm and scramble; look me square in the eye; so! ...
+Now we know each ether and we respect each other--because you are going
+to be a good puppy ... and obey ... Down charge!"
+
+The dog, trembling with eager comprehension, dropped like a shot, muzzle
+laid flat between his paws. Siward unleashed him, looked down at him for
+a second, stooped and caressed the silky head, then with a laugh swung
+himself into the phaeton beside the driver, who, pretty head turned, had
+been looking on intently.
+
+"Your dog is yard-broken," he said. "Look at him."
+
+"I see. Do you think he will follow us?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+The horse started, Miss Landis looking back over her shoulder at the dog
+who lay motionless, crouched flat in the road.
+
+Then Siward turned. "Come on, Sagamore!" he said gaily; and the dog
+sprang forward, circled about the moving phaeton, splitting the air with
+yelps of ecstasy, then tore ahead, mad with the delight of stretching
+cramped muscles amid the long rank grass and shrubbery of the roadside.
+
+The girl watched him doubtfully; when he disappeared far away up the
+road she turned the blue inquiry of her eyes on Siward.
+
+"He'll be back," said the young fellow, laughing; and presently the dog
+reappeared on a tearing gallop, white flag tossing, glorious in his new
+liberty, enchanted with the confidence this tall young man had reposed
+in him--this adorable young man, this wonderful friend who had suddenly
+appeared to release him from an undignified and abominable situation in
+a crate.
+
+"A good dog," said Siward; and the girl looked around at him, partly
+because his voice was pleasant, partly because a vague memory was
+beginning to stir within her, coupling something unpleasant with the
+name of Siward.
+
+She had been conscious of it when he first named himself, but, absorbed
+in the overwhelming importance of her telegram, had left the analysis of
+the matter for the future.
+
+She thought again of her telegram, theorised a little, came to no
+conclusion except to let the matter rest for the present, and mentally
+turned to the next and far less important problem--the question of this
+rather attractive young man at her side, and why the name of Siward
+should be linked in her mind with anything disagreeable.
+
+Tentatively following the elusive mental dews that might awaken
+something definite concerning her hazy impression of the man beside her,
+she spoke pleasantly, conventionally, touching idly any topic that might
+have a bearing; and, under a self-possession so detached as to give an
+impression of indifference, eyes, ears, and intelligence admitted
+that he was agreeable to look at, pleasant of voice, and difficult to
+reconcile with anything unpleasant.
+
+Which gradually aroused her interest--the incongruous usually
+interesting girls of her age--for he had wit enough to amuse her,
+sufficient inconsequence to please her, and something listless, at times
+almost absent-minded, almost inattentive, that might have piqued her
+had it not inoculated her, as it always does any woman, with the nascent
+germ of curiosity. Besides, there was, in the hint of his momentary
+preoccupation, a certain charm.
+
+They discussed shooting and the opening of the season; dogs and the
+training of dogs; and why some go gun-shy and why some ace blinkers.
+From sport and its justification, they became inconsequential; and she
+was beginning to enjoy the freshness of their chance acquaintance, his
+nice attitude toward things, his irrelevancy, his gaiety.
+
+Laughter thawed her; for notwithstanding the fearless confidence she had
+been taught for men of her own kind, self-possession and reserve, if not
+inherent, had also been drilled into her, and she required a great deal
+in a man before she paid him the tribute of one of her pretty laughs.
+
+Apparently they were advancing rather rapidly.
+
+"Don't you think we ought to call the dog in, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Yes; he's had enough!"
+
+She drew rein; he sprang out and whistled; and the Sagamore pup, dusty
+and happy came romping back. Siward motioned him to the rumble, but the
+dog leaped to the front.
+
+"I don't mind," said the girl. "Let him sit here between us. And you
+might occupy yourself by pulling some of those burrs from his ears--if
+you will?"
+
+"Of course I will. Look up here, puppy! No! Don't try to lick my face,
+for that is bad manners. Demonstrations are odious, as the poet says."
+
+"It's always bad manners, isn't it?" asked Miss Landis.
+
+"What? Being affectionate?"
+
+"Yes, and admitting it."
+
+"I believe it is. Do you hear that--Sagamore? But never mind; I'll break
+the rules some day when we're alone."
+
+The dog laid one paw on Siward's knee, looking him wistfully in the
+eyes.
+
+"More demonstrations," observed the girl. "Mr. Siward! You are hugging
+him! This amounts to a dual conspiracy in bad manners."
+
+"Awfully glad to admit you to the conspiracy," he said. "There's one
+vacancy--if you are eligible."
+
+"I am; I was discovered recently kissing my saddle-mare."
+
+"That settles it! Sagamore, give the young lady the grip."
+
+Sylvia Landis glanced at the dog, then impulsively shifting the whip
+to her left hand, held out the right. And very gravely the Sagamore pup
+laid one paw in her dainty white gloved palm.
+
+"You darling!" murmured the girl, resuming her whip.
+
+"I notice," observed Siward, "that you are perfectly qualified for
+membership in our association for the promotion of bad manners. In fact
+I should suggest you for the presidency--"
+
+"I suppose you think all sorts of things because I gushed over that
+dog."
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"Well you need not," she rejoined, delicate nose up-tilted. "I never
+kissed a baby in all my life--and never mean to. Which is probably more
+than you can say."
+
+"Yes, its more than I can say.
+
+"That admission elects you president," she concluded. But after
+a moment's silent driving she turned partly toward him with mock
+seriousness: "Is it not horridly unnatural in me to feel that way about
+babies? And about people, too; I simply cannot endure demonstrations.
+As for dogs and horses--well, I've admitted how I behave; and, being so
+shamelessly affectionate by disposition, why can't I be nice to babies?
+I've a hazy but dreadful notion that there's something wrong about me,
+Mr. Siward."
+
+He scrutinised the pretty features, anxiously; "I can't see it," he
+said.
+
+"But I mean it--almost seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but--I
+don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to
+be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to
+you and who always jump out of your arms at the first opportunity."
+
+He laughed--and there was malice in his eyes, but he did not know her
+well enough to pursue the subject through so easy an opening.
+
+It had occurred to her, too, that her simile might invite elaboration,
+and she sensed the laugh in his silence, and liked him for remaining
+silent where he might easily have been wittily otherwise.
+
+This set her so much at ease, left her so confident, that they were on
+terms of gayest understanding presently, she gossiping about the guests
+at Shotover House, outlining the diversions planned for the two weeks
+before them.
+
+"But we shall see little of one another; you will be shooting most
+of the time," she said--with the very faintest hint of challenge--too
+delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry. But the germ of it was
+there.
+
+"Do you shoot?"
+
+"Yes; why?"
+
+"I am reconciled to the shooting, then."
+
+"Oh, that is awfully civil of you. Sometimes I'd rather play Bridge."
+
+"So should I--sometimes."
+
+"I'll remember that, Mr. Siward; and when all the men are waiting for
+you to start out after grouse perhaps I may take that moment to whisper:
+'May I play?'"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You mean that you really would stay and play double dummy when every
+other living man will be off to the coverts? Double dummy--to improve my
+game?"
+
+"Certainly! I need improvement."
+
+"Then there is something wrong with you, too, Mr. Siward."
+
+She laughed and started to flick her whip, but at her first motion the
+horse gave trouble.
+
+"The bit doesn't fit," observed Siward.
+
+"You are perfectly right," she returned, surprised. "I ought to have
+remembered; it is shameful to drive a horse improperly bitted." And,
+after a moment: "You are considerate toward animals; it is good in a
+man."
+
+"Oh, it's no merit. When animals are uncomfortable it worries me. It's
+one sort of selfishness, you see."
+
+"What nonsense," she said; and her smile was very friendly. "Why doesn't
+a nice man ever admit he's nice when told so?"
+
+It seems they had advanced that far. For she was beginning to find this
+young man not only safe but promising; she had met nobody recently half
+as amusing, and the outlook at Shotover House had been unpromising
+with only the overgrateful Page twins to practise on--the other men
+collectively and individually boring her. And suddenly, welcome as
+manna from the sky, behold this highly agreeable boy to play with--until
+Quarrier arrived. Her telegram had been addressed to Mr. Quarrier.
+
+"What was it you were saying about selfishness?" she asked. "Oh, I
+remember. It was nonsense."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+She laughed, adding: "Selfishness is so simply defined you know."
+
+"Is it? How."
+
+"A refusal to renounce. That covers everything," she concluded.
+
+"Sometimes renunciation is weakness--isn't it?" he suggested.
+
+"In what case for example?"
+
+"Well, suppose we take love."
+
+"Very well, you may take it if you like it."
+
+"Suppose you loved a man!" he insisted.
+
+"Let him beware! What then?"
+
+"--And, suppose it would distress your family if you married him?"
+
+"I'd give him up."
+
+"If you loved him?"
+
+"Love? That is the poorest excuse for selfishness, Mr. Siward."
+
+"So you would ruin your happiness and his--"
+
+"A girl ought to find more happiness in renouncing a selfish love than
+in love itself," announced Miss Landis with that serious conviction
+characteristic of her years.
+
+"Of course," assented Siward with a touch of malice, "if you really do
+find more happiness in renouncing love than in love itself, it would be
+foolish not to do it--"
+
+"Mr. Siward! You are derisive. Besides, you are not acute. A woman is
+always an opportunist. When the event takes place I shall know what to
+do."
+
+"You mean when you want to marry the man you mustn't?
+
+"Exactly. I probably shall."
+
+"Marry him?
+
+"Wish to!"
+
+"I see. But you won't, of course."
+
+She drew rein, bringing the horse to a walk at the foot of a long hill.
+
+"We are going much too fast," said Miss Landis, smiling.
+
+"Driving too fast for--"
+
+"No, not driving, going--you and I."
+
+"Oh, you mean--"
+
+"Yes I do. We are on all sorts of terms, already."
+
+"In the country, you know, people--"
+
+"Yes I know all about it, and what old and valued friends one makes at a
+week's end. But it has been a matter of half-hours with us, Mr. Siward."
+
+"Let us sit very still and think it over," he suggested. And they both
+laughed.
+
+It was perhaps the reaction of her gaiety that recalled to her mind her
+telegram. The telegram had been her promised answer after she had had
+time to consider a suggestion made to her by a Mr. Howard Quarrier. The
+last week at Shotover permitted reflection; and while her telegram was
+no complete answer to the suggestion he had made, it contained material
+of interest in the eight words: "I will consider your request when you
+arrive.
+
+"I wonder if you know Howard Quarrier?" she said.
+
+After a second's hesitation he replied: "Yes--a little. Everybody does."
+
+"You do know him?"
+
+"Only at--the club."
+
+"Oh, the Lenox?"
+
+"The Lenox--and the Patroons."
+
+Preoccupied, driving with careless, almost inattentive perfection, she
+thought idly of her twenty-three years, wondering how life could have
+passed so quickly leaving her already stranded on the shoals of an
+engagement to marry Howard Quarrier. Then her thoughts, errant, wandered
+half the world over before they returned to Siward; and when at length
+they did, and meaning to be civil, she spoke again of his acquaintance
+with Quarrier at the Patroons Club--the club itself being sufficient to
+settle Siward's status in every community.
+
+"I'm trying to remember what it is I have heard about you," she
+continued amiably; "you are--"
+
+An odd expression in his eyes arrested her--long enough to note their
+colour and expression--and she continued, pleasantly; "--you are Stephen
+Siward, are you not? You see I know your name perfectly well--" Her
+straight brows contracted a trifle; she drove on, lips compressed,
+following an elusive train of thought which vaguely, persistently,
+coupled his name with something indefinitely unpleasant. And she could
+not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the train of unlinked
+ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance of a chain. Coupling
+his name with Quarrier's, and with a club, aroused memory; vague
+uneasiness stirred her to a glimmering comprehension. Siward? Stephen
+Siward? One of the New York Siwards then;--one of that race--
+
+Suddenly the truth flashed upon her,--the crude truth lacking definite
+detail, lacking circumstance and colour and atmosphere,--merely the raw
+and ugly truth.
+
+Had he looked at her--and he did, once--he could have seen only the
+unruffled and very sweet profile of a young girl. Composure was one of
+the masks she had learned to wear--when she chose.
+
+And she was thinking very hard all the while; "So this is the man? I
+might have known his name. Where were my five wits? Siward!--Stephen
+Siward! ... He is very young, too ... much too young to be so horrid. ...
+Yet--it wasn't so dreadful, after all; only the publicity! Dear me! I
+knew we were going too fast."
+
+"Miss Landis," he said.
+
+"Mr. Siward?"--very gently. It was her way to be gentle when generous.
+
+"I think," he said, "that you are beginning to remember where you may
+have heard my name."
+
+"Yes--a little--" She looked at him with the direct gaze of a child, but
+the lovely eyes were troubled. His smile was not very genuine, but he
+met her gaze steadily enough.
+
+"It was rather nice of Mrs. Ferrall to ask me," he said, "after the mess
+I made of things last spring."
+
+"Grace Ferrall is a dear," she replied.
+
+After a moment he ventured: "I suppose you saw it in the papers."
+
+"I think so; I had completely forgotten it; your name seemed to--"
+
+"I see." Then, listlessly: "I couldn't have ventured to remind you
+that--that perhaps you might not care to be so amiable--"
+
+"Mr. Siward," she said impulsively, "you are nice to me! Why shouldn't
+I be amiable? It was--it was--I've forgotten just how dreadfully you did
+behave--"
+
+"Pretty badly."
+
+"Very?"
+
+"They say so."
+
+"And what is your opinion Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Oh, I ought to have known better." Something about him reminded her of
+a bad small boy; and suddenly in spite of her better sense, in spite
+of her instinctive caution, she found herself on the very verge
+of laughter. What was it in the man that disarmed and invited a
+confidence--scarcely justified it appeared? What was it now that moved
+her to overlook what few overlook--not the fault, but its publicity? Was
+it his agreeable bearing, his pleasant badinage, his amiably listless
+moments of preoccupation, his youth that appealed to her--aroused her
+charity, her generosity, her curiosity?
+
+And had other people continued to accept him, too? What would Quarrier
+think of his presence at Shotover? She began to realise that she was
+a little afraid of Quarrier's opinions. And his opinions were always
+judgments. However Grace Ferrall had thought it proper to ask him, and
+that meant social absolution. As far as that went she also was perfectly
+ready to absolve him if he needed it. But perhaps he didn't care!--She
+looked at him, furtively. He seemed to be tranquil enough in his
+abstraction. Trouble appeared to slide very easily from his broad
+young shoulders. Perhaps he was already taking much for granted in
+her gentleness with him. And gradually speculation became interest and
+interest a young girl's innocent curiosity to learn something of a
+man whose record it seemed almost impossible to reconcile with his
+personality.
+
+"I was wondering," he said looking up to encounter her clear eyes,
+"whose house that is over there?"
+
+"Beverly Plank's shooting-box; Black Fells," she replied nodding toward
+the vast pile of blackish rocks against the sky, upon which sprawled a
+heavy stone house infested with chimneys.
+
+"Plank? Oh yes."
+
+He smiled to remember the battering blows rained upon the ramparts of
+society by the master of Black Fells.
+
+But the smile faded; and, glancing at him, the girl was surprised to
+see the subtle change in his face--the white worn look, then the old
+listless apathy which, all at once to her, hinted of something graver
+than preoccupation.
+
+"Are we near the sea?" he asked.
+
+"Very near. Only a moment to the top of this hill. ... Now look!"
+
+There lay the sea--the same grey-blue crawling void that had ever
+fascinated and repelled him--always wrinkled, always in flat monotonous
+motion, spreading away, away to the sad world's ends.
+
+"Full of menace--always," he said, unconscious that he had spoken aloud.
+
+"The sea!"
+
+He spoke without turning: "The sea is a relentless thing for a man to
+fight. ... There are other tides more persistent than the sea, but like
+it--like it in its menace."
+
+His face seemed thinner, older; she noticed his cheek bones for the
+first time. Then, meeting her eyes, youth returned with a laugh and a
+touch of colour; and, without understanding exactly how, she was aware,
+presently, that they had insensibly slipped back to their light badinage
+and gay inconsequences--back to a footing which, strangely, seemed to be
+already an old footing, familiar, pleasant, and natural to return to.
+
+"Is that Shotover House?" he asked as they came to the crest of the last
+hillock between them and the sea.
+
+"At last, Mr. Siward," she said mockingly; "and now your troubles are
+nearly ended."
+
+"And yours, Miss Landis?"
+
+"I don't know," she murmured to herself, thinking of the telegram with
+the faintest misgiving.
+
+For she was very young, and she had not had half enough out of life as
+yet; and besides, her theories and preconceived plans for the safe
+and sound ordering of her life appeared to lack weight--nay, they were
+dwindling already into insignificance.
+
+Theory had almost decided her to answer Mr. Quarrier's suggestion with a
+'Yes.' However, he was coming from the Lakes in a day or two. She could
+decide definitely when she had discussed the matter with him.
+
+"I wish that I owned this dog," observed Siward, as the phaeton entered
+the macadamised drive.
+
+"I wish so, too," she said, "but he belongs to Mr. Quarrier."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II IMPRUDENCE
+
+A house of native stone built into and among weather-scarred rocks, one
+massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south among cedars
+and outcropping ledges--the whole silver-grey mass of masonry reddening
+under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame;
+this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it.
+
+Like the craggy vertebrae of a half-buried fossil splitting the sod, a
+ragged line of rock rose as a barrier to inland winds; the foreland, set
+here and there with tiny lawns and pockets of bright flowers, fell
+away to the cliffs; and here, sheer wet black rocks fronted the eternal
+battering of the Atlantic.
+
+As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two
+servants appeared; a rather imposing specimen bowed them through the
+doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a
+drift-wood fire glimmered like a heap of dusty jewels. Bars of sunlight
+slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the
+bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden
+gloom through a high window, sun-tipped tree tops against a sky of azure
+stirred like burnished foliage in a tapestry.
+
+"There is nobody here, of course," observed Miss Landis to Siward as
+they halted in front of the fire-place; "the season opens to-day in this
+county, you see." She shrugged her pretty shoulders: "And the women who
+don't shoot make the first field-luncheon a function."
+
+She turned, nodded her adieux, then, over her shoulder, casually: "If
+you haven't an appointment with the Sand-Man before dinner you may find
+me in the gun-room."
+
+"I'll be there in about three minutes," he said; "and what about this
+dog?"--looking down at the Sagamore pup who stood before him, wagging,
+attentive, always the gentleman to the tips of his toes.
+
+Miss Landis laughed. "Take him to your room if you like. Dogs have the
+run of the house."
+
+So he followed a servant to the floor above where a smiling and very
+ornamental maid preceded him through a corridor and into that heavy wing
+of the house which fronted the sea.
+
+"Tea is served in the gun-room, sir," said the pretty maid, and
+disappeared to give place to a melancholy and silent young man who
+turned on the bath, laid out fresh raiment, and whispering, "Scotch or
+Irish, sir?" presently effaced himself.
+
+Before he quenched his own thirst Siward filled a bowl and set it on the
+floor, and it seemed as though the dog would never finish gulping and
+slobbering in the limpid icy water.
+
+"It's the salt air, my boy," commented the young man, gravely refilling
+his own glass as though accepting the excuse on his own account.
+
+Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out
+through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad
+stairway to the gun-room--an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the sun,
+where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling pieces and
+rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.
+
+Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement
+panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation;
+he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, "Scotch or Irish,
+sir," then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.
+
+He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed
+meditatively at space.
+
+The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence
+which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said:
+"Here endeth our first rendezvous."
+
+"Then let us arrange another immediately," he said, stirring the ice in
+his glass.
+
+The girl considered him with speculative eyes: "I shouldn't exactly know
+what to do with you for the next hour if I didn't abandon you."
+
+"Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble
+of deserting me? That solves the problem."
+
+"I really don't mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward," she
+said, amused; "I mean that I am going to drive again."
+
+"I see."
+
+"No you don't see at all. There's a telegram; I'm not driving for
+pleasure--"
+
+She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had expressed
+herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed request
+of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to Black Fells Crossing to meet his train
+from the Lakes and drive him back to Shotover. The drive, therefore, was
+of course a drive for pleasure.
+
+"I see," repeated Siward amiably.
+
+"Perhaps you do," she observed, rising to her graceful height. He was
+on his feet at once, so carelessly, so good-humouredly acquiescent that
+without any reason at all she hesitated.
+
+"I had meant to show you about--the cliffs--the kennels and stables; I'm
+sorry," she concluded, lingering.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," he rejoined without meaning anything in particular.
+That was the trouble, whatever he said, apparently meant so much.
+
+With the agreeable sensation of being regretted, she leisurely gloved
+herself, then walked through the gun-room and hall, Siward strolling
+beside her.
+
+The dog followed them as they turned toward the door and passed out
+across the terraced veranda to the driveway where a Tandem cart was
+drawn up, faultlessly appointed. Quarrier's mania was Tandem. She
+thought it rather nice of her to remember this.
+
+She inspected the ensemble without visible interest for a few moments;
+the wind freshened from the sea, fluttering her veil, and she turned
+toward the east to face it. In the golden splendour of declining day the
+white sails of yachts crowded landward on the last leg before beating
+westward into Blue Harbour; a small white cruiser, steaming south,
+left a mile long stratum of rose-tinted smoke hanging parallel to the
+horizon's plane; the westering sun struck sparks from her bright-work.
+
+The magic light on land and water seemed to fascinate the girl; she
+had walked a little way toward the cliffs, Siward following silently,
+offering no comment on the beauty of sky and cliff. As they halted once
+more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the
+sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale
+mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks,
+and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden mound, sprayed with
+liquid flame.
+
+They had turned their backs to the Tandem; the grooms looked after them,
+standing motionless at the horses' heads.
+
+"Mr. Siward, this is too fine to miss," she said. "I will walk as far as
+the headland with you. ... Please smoke if you care to."
+
+He did care to; several matches were extinguished by the wind until she
+spread her skids as a barrier; and kneeling in their shelter he got his
+light.
+
+"Tobacco smoke diluted with sea breeze is delicious," she said, as
+the wind whirled the aromatic smoke of his cigarette up into her face.
+"Don't move, Mr. Siward; I like it; there is to me always a faint odour
+of sweet-brier in the melange. Did you ever notice it?"
+
+The breeze-blown conversation became fragmentary, veering as
+capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But
+always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of
+freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humourous and idle perversity
+which stimulates without demanding.
+
+Once, glancing back at the house where the T-cart and horses stood, she
+said that she had better return; or perhaps she only thought she said
+it, for he made no response that time. And a few moments later they
+reached the headland, and the Atlantic lay below, flowing azure from
+horizon to horizon--under a universe of depthless blue. And for a long
+while neither spoke.
+
+With her the spell endured until conscience began to stir. Then she
+awoke, uneasy as always, under the shadow of restraint or pressure,
+until her eyes fell on him and lingered.
+
+A subtle change had come into his face; its leanness struck her for
+the first time; that, and an utter detachment from his surroundings, a
+sombre oblivion to everything--and to her.
+
+How curiously had his face altered, how shadowy it had grown, effacing
+the charm of youth, in it.
+
+The slight amusement with which she had become conscious of her own
+personal exclusion grew to an interest tinged with curiosity.
+
+The interest continued, but when his silence became irksome to her
+she said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers,
+unsmiling.
+
+"I hate the sea," he said.
+
+"You--hate it!" she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.
+
+"There's no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on
+his guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous--a
+whole life of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate
+resistance--one endless uninterrupted fight--a ceaseless human manoeuvre
+against senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless
+monster, the bellowing advance, the shock--and no battle won--nothing
+final, nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of
+surveillance, the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery."
+
+"But--you don't have to fight it!" she said, astonished.
+
+"No; but it is no secret--what it does to those who do. ... Some escape;
+but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us
+reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us."
+
+He was laughing when she said: "It is not a fight with the sea; it is
+the battle of Life itself you mean."
+
+"Yes, in a way, the battle of Life."
+
+"Oh, you are morbid then. Is there anybody ever born who has not a fight
+on his hands?"
+
+"No; only I have known men tired out, unfairly, before life had declared
+war on them."
+
+"Just what do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, something about fair play--what our popular idol summarises as a
+'square deal'." He laughed again, easily, his face clearing.
+
+"Nobody worth a square deal ever laments because he hasn't had it," she
+said.
+
+"I dare say that's true, too," he admitted listlessly.
+
+"Mr. Siward, exactly what did you mean?"
+
+"I was thinking of men I knew; for example a man who through generations
+has inherited every impulse and desire that he should not harbour--a man
+with intellect enough to be aware of it, with decency enough to desire
+decency. ... What chance has he with the storms which have been brewing
+for him even before he opened his eyes on earth? Is that a square deal?"
+
+The troubled concentration of her face was reflected now in his own; the
+wind came whipping and flicking at them from league-wide tossing wastes;
+the steady thunder of the sea accented the silence.
+
+She said: "I suppose everybody has infinite capacity for decency or
+mischief. I know that I have. And I fancy that this capacity always
+remains, no matter how moral one's life may be. 'Watch and pray' was not
+addressed to the guilty alone, Mr. Siward."
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. As for the balanced capacity for good and evil, how
+about the inherited desire for the latter?"
+
+"Who is free from that, too? Do you suppose anybody really desires to be
+good?"
+
+"You mean most people are so afraid not to be, that virtue becomes a
+habit?"
+
+"Perhaps. It's a plain business proposition anyway. It pays."
+
+"Celestial insurance?" he asked, laughing.
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Siward; do you?"
+
+But he, turning to the sea, had become engrossed in his own thoughts
+again; and again she was first curious, then impatient at the ease with
+which he excluded her. She remembered, too, that the cart was waiting;
+that she had scarcely time now to make the train.
+
+She stood irresolute, inert, disinclined to bestir herself. An
+inborn aptitude for drifting, which threatened to become a talent
+for indecision, had always alternated in her with sudden impulsive
+conclusions; and when her pride was involved, in decisions which
+sometimes scarcely withstood the analysis of reason.
+
+Physically healthy, mentally unawakened, sentimentally incredulous,
+totally ignorant of any master passion, and conventionally drilled, her
+beauty and sweet temper had carried her easily on the frothy crest of
+her first season, over the eligible and ineligible alike, leaving her at
+Lenox, a rather tired and breathless girl, in love with pleasure and the
+world which treated her so well.
+
+The death of her mother abroad had made little impression upon her--her
+uncle, Major Belwether, having cared for her since her father's death
+when she was ten years old. So, although the scandal of her mother's
+self-exile had been in a measure condoned by a tardy marriage to the man
+for whom she had left everything, her daughter had grown up ignorant of
+any particular feeling for a mother she could scarcely remember.
+
+However, she wore black and went nowhere for the second winter, during
+which time she learned a great deal concerning the unconventional
+proclivities of the women of her race and family, enough to impress her
+so seriously that on an exaggerated impulse she had come to one of her
+characteristic decisions.
+
+That decision was to break the unsavoury record at the first justifiable
+opportunity. And the opportunity came in the shape of Quarrier. As
+though wedlock were actually the sanctuary which an alarmed nation
+pretends it to be!
+
+Now, approaching the threshold of a third and last season, and having
+put away her almost meaningless mourning, there had stolen into her
+sense of security something irksome in the promise she had made to give
+Quarrier a definite answer before winter.
+
+Perhaps it had been the lack of interest in the people at Shotover,
+perhaps a mental review of her ancestors' capricious records--perhaps a
+characteristic impulse that had directed a telegram to Quarrier after a
+midnight confab with Grace Ferrall.
+
+However it may have been, she had summoned him. And now he was on his
+way to get his answer, the best whip, the most eagerly discussed, and
+one of the wealthiest unmarried men in America.
+
+Lingering irresolutely, considering with idle eyes the shadows
+lengthening across the sun-shot moorland, the sound of Siward's even
+voice aroused her from a meditation bordering on lassitude.
+
+She answered vaguely. He spoke again; all the agreeable, gentle,
+humourous charm dominant once more--releasing her from the growing
+tension of her own thoughts, absolving her from the duty of immediate
+decision.
+
+"I feel curiously lazy," she said; "perhaps from our long drive." She
+seated herself on the turf. "Talk to me, Mr. Siward--in that lazy way of
+yours."
+
+What he had to say proved inconsequent enough, an irrelevant suggestion
+concerning the training of field-dogs for close covert work and the
+reasons for not breaking such dogs on quail. Then the question of
+cross-breeding came up, and he gave his opinion on the qualities of
+"droppers." To which she replied, sleepily; and the conversation veered
+again toward the mystery of heredity, and the hopelessness of escape
+from its laws as illustrated now by the Sagamore pup, galloping nose in
+the wind, having scented afar the traces of the forbidden rabbit.
+
+"His ancestors turned 'round and 'round to flatten the long reeds and
+grasses in their lairs before lying down," observed Siward. "He does it,
+too, where there is nothing to flatten out. Did you ever notice how many
+times a dog turns around before lying down? And there goes the carefully
+schooled Sagamore, chasing rabbits! Why? Because his wild ancestors
+chased rabbits. ... Heredity? It's a steady, unseen, pulling, dragging
+force. Like lightning, too, it shatters, sometimes, where there is
+resistance."
+
+"Do you mean, Mr. Siward, that heredity is an excuse for moral
+weakness?"
+
+"I don't know. Those inheriting nothing of evil say it is no excuse."
+
+"It is no excuse."
+
+"You speak with authority," he said.
+
+"With more than you are aware of," she murmured, not meaning to say it.
+
+She stood up impulsively, her fresh face turned to the distant house,
+her rounded young figure poised in relief against the sky.
+
+"Inherited or not, idleness, procrastination, are my besetting sins.
+Can't you suggest the remedy, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"But they are only the thieves of Time; and we kill the poor old
+gentleman."
+
+"Leagued assassins," she repeated pensively.
+
+Her gown had caught on the cliff briers; he knelt to release it, she
+looking down, noting an ugly tear in the fabric.
+
+"Payment for my iniquities--the first instalment," she said, still
+looking down over his shoulder and watching his efforts to release her.
+"Thank you, Mr. Siward. I think we ought to start, don't you?"
+
+He straightened up, smiling, awaiting her further pleasure. Her pleasure
+being capricious, she seated herself again, saying: "What I meant to say
+was this: evils that spring from heredity are no excuse for misconduct
+in people of our sort. Environment, not heredity, counts. And it's our
+business, who have every chance in the world, to make good!"
+
+He looked down, amused at the piquant incongruity of voice and
+vernacular.
+
+"What time is it?" she asked irrelevantly.
+
+He glanced at his watch. She turned her eyes toward the level sun,
+conscious, and a little conscience-stricken that it was too late for her
+to drive to Black Fells Crossing--unless she started at once.
+
+The sun hung low over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten
+gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little
+birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland into
+undulating flight.
+
+The zenith turned shell pink; through clotted shoals of clouds spread
+spaces of palest green like calm lakes in the sky.
+
+It grew stiller; the wind went down with the sun.
+
+Doubtless he had forgotten to tell her the time; she had almost
+forgotten that she had asked him. With the silence of sunset a languor,
+the indolence of content, crept over her; she saw him close his watch
+with the absent-minded air which she already associated with him, and
+she let the question go from sheer disinclination for the effort of
+repetition--let the projected drive go--acquiescent, content that
+matters shape themselves without any interference from her. The sense of
+ease, of physical well-being invaded her with an agreeable relaxation as
+though tension somewhere had slackened.
+
+They chatted on, casually, impersonally, in rather subdued tones. The
+dog returned now and then to see that all was well. All was well enough,
+it appeared, for she sat beside Siward, quite content, knees clasped in
+her hands, exchanging impressions of life with a man who so far had
+been sympathetically considerate in demanding from her no intellectual
+effort.
+
+The conversation drifted illogically; sometimes he stirred her to
+amusement, even a hushed laughter; sometimes she smilingly agreed with
+his views, sometimes she let them go, uncriticised; or, intent on her
+own ideas, shook her small head in amused disapproval.
+
+The stillness over all, the deepening mellow light, the blessed
+indolence of the young world--and their few years in it--Youth! That was
+perhaps the key to it all, after all.
+
+"To-morrow," she mused aloud, knees cradled in her clasped fingers,
+"to-morrow they'll shoot--with great circumstance and fuss--a few native
+woodcock--there's no flight yet from the north!--a few grouse, fewer
+snipe, a stray duck or two. Others will drive motor cars over bad roads;
+others will ride, sail, golf--anything to kill the eternal enemy."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Je n'en sais rien, monsieur."
+
+"Mais je voudrais savoir."
+
+"Pourquoi?"
+
+"To lay a true course by the stars"; he looked at her blue eyes and she
+laughed easily under the laughing flattery.
+
+"You must seek another compass--to-morrow," she said. Then it occurred
+to her that nobody could guess her decision in regard to Quarrier; and
+she partly raised her eyes, looking at him, indolent speculation under
+the white lids.
+
+She liked him already; in fact she had liked few men as well on such
+brief acquaintance.
+
+"You know the majority of the people here, or coming, don't you?" she
+inquired.
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+She began: "The Leroy Mortimers?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Lord Alderdene and Captain Voucher, and the Page twins and Marion?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Rena Bonnesdel, the Tassel girl, Agatha Caithness, Mrs. Vendenning--all
+sorts, all sets." And, with an effort: "If I'm to drive, I should
+like--to--to know what time it is?"
+
+He informed her; and she, too indolent to pretend surprise, and finding
+reproach easier, told him that he had no business to permit her to
+forget.
+
+His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment
+as though he had taken something for granted.
+
+Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would
+meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train.
+He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She
+didn't exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was
+unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be
+aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed,
+that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration
+grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human
+machine.
+
+And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the
+answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision
+appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting
+fewer creaks.
+
+"You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?" she began thoughtfully.
+
+"Not well."
+
+"I--hope you will like him, Mr. Siward."
+
+"I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to."
+
+She looked up, suddenly remembering: "Oh--since that scrape? What
+has Mr. Quarrier to do--" She did not finish the sentence. A troubled
+silence followed; she was trying to remember the details--something she
+had paid small attention to at the time--something so foreign to her,
+so distant from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely
+enough for her to remember exactly what this young man might have done
+to forfeit the good-will of Howard Quarrier.
+
+She looked at Siward; it was impossible that anything very bad could
+come from such a man. And, pursuing her reasoning aloud: "It couldn't
+have been very awful," she argued; "something foolish about an actress,
+was it not? And that could not concern Mr. Quarrier."
+
+"I thought you did know; I thought you--remembered--while you were
+driving me over from the station--that I was dropped from my club."
+
+She flushed up: "Oh!--but--what had Mr. Quarrier to do with that?"
+
+"He is a governor of that club."
+
+"You mean that Mr. Quarrier had you--dropped?"
+
+"What else could he do? A man who is idiot enough to risk making his
+own club notorious, must take the consequences. And they say I took that
+risk. Therefore Mr. Quarrier, Major Belwether--all the governors did
+their duty. I--I naturally conclude that no governor of the Patroons
+Club feels very kindly toward me."
+
+Miss Landis sat very still, her small head bent, a flush still
+brightening her fair face.
+
+She recalled a few of the details now--the scandal--something of the
+story. Which particular actress it was she could not remember; but some
+men who had dined too freely had made the wager, and this boy sitting
+beside her had accepted it--and won it, by bringing into the sacred
+precincts of the Patroons Club a foolish, shameless girl disguised in a
+man's evening dress.
+
+That was bad enough; that somebody promptly discovered it was worse; but
+worst of all was the publicity, the club's name smirched, the young man
+expelled from one of the two best clubs in the metropolis.
+
+To read of such things in the columns of a daily paper had meant little
+to her except to repell her; to hear it mentioned among people of her
+own sort had left her incurious and indifferent. But now she saw it in
+a new light, with the man who had figured in it seated beside her. Did
+such men as he--such attractive, well-bred, amusing men as he--do that
+sort of thing?
+
+There he sat, hat off, the sun touching his short, thick hair which
+waved a little at the temples--a boyish mould to head and shoulders, a
+cleanly outlined check and chin, a thoroughbred ear set close--a good
+face. What sort of a man, then, was a woman to feel at ease with? What
+eye, what mouth, what manner, what bearing was a woman to trust?
+
+"Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Siward?" she said impulsively.
+
+"It appears that I was; I don't know what I am--or may be."
+
+"The pity of it!" she said, still swayed by impulse. "Why did you
+do--didn't you know--realize what you were doing--bringing discredit on
+your own club?"
+
+"I was in no condition to know, Miss Landis."
+
+The crude brutality of the expression might merely have hurt or
+disgusted her had she been less intelligent. Nor, as it was, did she
+fully understand why he chose to use it--unless that he meant it in
+self-punishment.
+
+"It's rather shameful!" she said hotly.
+
+"Yes," he assented; "it's a bad beginning."
+
+"A--beginning! Do you mean to go on?"
+
+He did not reply; his head was partly turned from her. She sat silent
+for a while. The dog had returned to lie at Siward's feet, its brown
+eyes tirelessly watching the man it had chosen for its friend; and
+the man, without turning his eyes, dropped one hand on the dog's head,
+caressing the silky ears.
+
+Some sentimentalist had once said that no man who cared for animals
+could be wholly bad. Inexperience inclined her to believe it. Then too,
+she had that inclination for overlooking offences committed against
+precept, which appears to be one of those edifying human traits peculiar
+to neither sex and common to both. Besides, her knowledge of such
+matters was as vague as her mind was healthy and body wholesome. Men
+who dined incautiously were not remarkable for their rarity; the actress
+habit, being incomprehensible to her, meant nothing; and she said,
+innocently: "What men like you can find attractive in a common woman I
+do not understand; there are plenty of pretty women of your own sort.
+The actress cult is beyond my comprehension; I only know it is generally
+condoned. But it is not for such things that we drop men, Mr. Siward.
+You know that, of course."
+
+"For what do you drop men?"
+
+"For falsehood, deception, any dishonesty."
+
+"And you don't drop a man when you read in the papers that one of the
+two best clubs in town has expelled him?"
+
+She gave him a troubled glance; and, naively: "But you are still a
+member of the other, are you not?" Then hardening: "It was common!
+common!--thoroughly disgraceful and incomprehensible!"--and with every
+word uttered insensibly warming in her heart toward him whom she was
+chastening; "it was not even bad--it was worse than being simply bad; it
+was stupid!"
+
+He nodded, one hand slowly caressing the dog's head where it lay across
+his knees.
+
+She watched him a moment, hesitated, then smiling a little: "So now I
+know the worst about you; do I not?" she concluded.
+
+He did not answer; she waited, the smile still curving her red mouth.
+Had she been too severe? She wondered. "You may help me to my feet," she
+said sweetly. She was very young.
+
+He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly
+impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the
+purple dusk of the uplands--two people young enough to take one another
+seriously.
+
+"Let me tell you something," she said, facing him, white hands loosely
+linked behind her. "I don't exactly understand how it has happened, but
+you know as well as I do that we have formed a--an acquaintance--the
+sort that under normal conditions requires a long time and several
+conventional and preliminary chapters. ... I should like to know what you
+think of our performance."
+
+"I think," he said laughing, "that it is charming."
+
+"Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to
+know is why I find it so, too?"
+
+"Do you?" A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.
+
+"Certainly I do. Is it because I've had a delightful chance to admonish
+a sinner--and be--just a little sorry--that he had made such a silly
+spectacle of himself?"
+
+He laughed, wincing a trifle.
+
+"Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me," she concluded. "So
+now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go.
+... Don't you?"
+
+They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the
+dusk. After a few moments she began to feel doubtful, a little uneasy,
+partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not
+at all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the
+terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had
+never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a
+temporary interest in Siward--the interest that women always cherish,
+quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented
+to overlook.
+
+As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene
+lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the
+scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.
+
+"Our shooting-party has returned," she said.
+
+They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps;
+people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of
+game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two
+in shooting-tweeds or khaki.
+
+As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable
+smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she
+left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III SHOTOVER
+
+The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who
+favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite
+perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not
+expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.
+
+Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of
+draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward.
+He finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched:
+"Hello, Stephen! Heard you'd arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with
+Sylvia Landis! That's all right, too, but you should have come for
+the opening day. Lots of native woodcock--eh, Blinky?" turning to Lord
+Alderdene; and again to Siward: "You know all these fellows--Mortimer
+yonder--" There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer,
+red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over,
+followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles
+and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a "tic." Captain Voucher,
+a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day,
+came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands
+shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And
+last of all Tom O'Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a
+pair of trooper's spurs over the floor--relics of his bloodless Porto
+Rico campaign with Squadron A.
+
+It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined
+to ignore Siward's recent foolishness, which indicated that he might
+reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of
+which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the
+few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not
+likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable
+to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of
+the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of
+course in New York.
+
+So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch
+and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and
+fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through
+his shooting-goggles at everybody.
+
+"These little brown snipe you call woodcock," he began; "we bagged nine
+brace, d'you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers--"
+
+"Rotten," said Mortimer thickly; "Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps,
+and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs--"
+
+"Where do you expect to find native woodcock?" demanded Ferrall,
+laughing.
+
+"On the table hereafter," growled Mortimer.
+
+"Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants," retorted Ferrall
+amiably; "Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking."
+
+"Not I," said Voucher; "the sport is capital--if one can manage to hit
+the beggars--"
+
+"Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting," observed Ferrall; "that is,
+everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack!
+and," turning to Alderdene, "it's like taking money from you,
+Blinky--which reminds me that we've time for a little Preference before
+dressing."
+
+His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his
+chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed
+knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his
+skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of
+the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a
+servant.
+
+"This salt air keeps one thirsty," he observed to Ferrall; then
+something in his host's expression arrested the glass at his lips. He
+had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody
+was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.
+
+He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept
+into his lean checks.
+
+Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about
+dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the
+result of the first day's shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer
+got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass
+untouched.
+
+One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward
+amiably--all excepting one who may not have seen him--an elderly, pink,
+soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a
+benevolent buck rabbit.
+
+"How do you do, Major Belwether?" said Siward in a low voice without
+offering his hand.
+
+Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward
+continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless
+your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he
+secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.
+
+There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded
+Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had
+been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was
+apparent that the bird had not aged any.
+
+"And now for the shooting!" said the Major with an arch smile. "Now for
+the stag at bay and the winding horn--
+
+    'Where sleeps the moon On Mona's rill--'
+
+Eh, Siward?
+
+    'And here's to the hound With his nose upon the ground--'
+
+Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story--" He chuckled and chuckled,
+his lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the
+pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene's shooting-jacket, hooking the other in
+Siward's reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went
+garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship's bandy little legs
+trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every
+step.
+
+Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story
+with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into
+that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain
+vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his
+listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware
+that the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard
+Quarrier's even, colourless voice: "Ferrall, would you be good enough to
+send Sagamore to your kennels?"
+
+"Oh--he's your dog! I forgot," said Siward turning around.
+
+Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.
+
+"Yes," he said coldly, "he's my dog."
+
+For a fraction of a second the two men's eyes encountered; then Siward
+glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug.
+And that is all there was to the incident--an anxious, perplexed puppy
+lugged off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking
+piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.
+
+So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room
+overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at
+the clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the
+exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the
+window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his
+face. He inspected his darkened features curiously; the blurred and
+sombre-tinted visage returned the stare.
+
+"Not a man at all--the shadow of a man," he said aloud--"with no will,
+no courage--always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions,
+always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?"
+
+As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water,
+he shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he
+dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar,
+when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.
+
+"Stephen," he said bluntly, "I haven't seen you since that break of
+yours at the club."
+
+"Rotten, wasn't it?" commented Siward, tying his tie.
+
+"Perfectly. Of course it doesn't make any difference to Grace or to me,
+but I fancy you've already heard from it."
+
+"Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it."
+
+"Of course; she was cut up I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any
+of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands
+invading the edges, butting in--half or three-quarters inside--are the
+people who can't afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club's
+displeasure--those, and a woman like my mother, and several other
+decent-minded people who happen to count in town."
+
+Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: "Who was the
+girl, Stephen?"
+
+"I don't think the papers mentioned her name," said Siward gravely.
+
+"Oh--I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious
+actress--everybody said so. ... Who were those callow fools who put you
+up to it? ... Never mind if you don't care to tell. But it strikes me they
+are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to
+face the governors I think--"
+
+"No, I think not."
+
+Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.
+
+"Too bad," he mused; "they need not have dropped you--"
+
+"Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live
+that down."
+
+Ferrall nodded: "I came in to say something--a message from
+Grace--confound it! what was it? Oh--could you--before dinner--now--just
+sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch of a man
+chasing a gun-shy dog?"
+
+"Why yes--if Mrs. Ferrall wishes--"
+
+He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank
+sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a
+gun-shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after
+him, bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.
+
+"Put a Vandyke beard on him," grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. "There!
+O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur--there!"
+
+"Who is this supposed to be?" began Siward, looking up. But "Wait!"
+chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.
+
+Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from
+his fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an
+unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room.
+There were two or three people there--Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching
+with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just
+enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning
+in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly
+attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and
+interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford
+the intellectual leisure.
+
+Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down--Marion
+Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen
+Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay
+lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did
+not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant,
+almost boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an
+adolescent.
+
+She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above
+his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.
+
+"Stephen! Stephen!" she said under her breath, "it's because I've a few
+things to scold you about that I've asked you to Shotover."
+
+"I suppose I know," he said.
+
+"I should hope you do. I've a letter to-night from your mother."
+
+"From my mother?"
+
+"I want you to go over it--with me--if we can find a minute after
+dinner." She released his hand, turning partly around: "Kemp, dinner's
+been announced, so cut that dog story in two! Will you give me your arm
+Major Belwether? Howard!"--to her cousin, Mr. Quarrier, who turned from
+Miss Landis to listen--"will you please try to recollect whom you are
+to take in--and do it?" And, as she passed Siward, in a low voice,
+mischievous and slangy: "Sylvia Landis for yours--as she says she didn't
+have enough of you on the cliffs."
+
+The others appeared to know how to pair according to some previous
+notice. Siward turned to Sylvia Landis with the pleasure of his good
+fortune so plainly visible in his face, that her own brightened in
+response.
+
+"You see," she said gaily, "you cannot escape me. There is no use in
+looking wildly at Agatha Caithness"--he wasn't--"or pretending you're
+pleased," slipping her rounded, bare arm through the arm he offered.
+"You can't guess what I've done to-night--nobody can guess except Grace
+Ferrall and one other person. And if you try to look happy beside me,
+I may tell you--somewhere between sherry and cognac--Oh, yes; I've done
+two things: I have your dog for you!"
+
+"Not Sagamore?" he said incredulously as he was seating her.
+
+"Certainly Sagamore. I said to Mr. Quarrier, 'I want Sagamore,' and when
+he tried to give him to me, I made him take my cheque. Now you may
+draw another for me at your leisure, Mr. Siward. Tell me, are you
+pleased?"--for she was looking for the troubled hesitation in his face
+and she saw it dawning.
+
+"Mr. Quarrier doesn't like me, you know--"
+
+"But I do," she said coolly. "I told him how much pleasure it would give
+me. That is sufficient--is it not?--for everybody concerned."
+
+"He knew that you meant to--"
+
+"No, that concerns only you and me. Are you trying to spoil my pleasure
+in what I have done?"
+
+"I can't take the dog, Miss Landis--"
+
+"Oh," she said, vexed; "I had no idea you were vindictive--"
+
+There was a silence; he bent forward a trifle, gravely scrutinising a
+"hand-painted" name card, though it might not have astonished him to
+learn that somebody's foot had held the brush. Somewhere in the vicinity
+Grace Ferrall had discovered a woman who supported dozens of relatives
+by painting that sort of thing for the summer residents at Vermillion
+Point down the coast. So being charitable she left an order, and being
+thrifty, insisted on using the cards, spite of her husband's gibes.
+
+People were now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward
+found his "hand-painting" so unattractive that he had just tipped it
+over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene
+made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel
+looking over Quarrier's shoulder at a card he was holding--not one of
+the "hand"-decorated, but a sheet of note-paper containing a drawing of
+a man rushing after a gun-shy dog.
+
+The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other
+sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and
+held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance,
+Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier--Ferrall's
+malicious request for a Vandyke beard making the caricature dreadfully
+apparent.
+
+Quarrier had at first flushed up; then he forced a smile; but his
+symmetrical features were never cordial when he smiled.
+
+"Who on earth did that?" whispered Sylvia Landis apprehensively. "Mr.
+Quarrier dislikes that sort of thing--but of course he'll take it well."
+
+"Did he ever chase his own dog?" asked Siward, biting his lip.
+
+"Yes--so Blinky says--in the Carolinas last season. It's Blinky!--that's
+his notion of humour. Did you ever hear such a laugh? No wonder Mr.
+Quarrier is annoyed."
+
+The gay uproar had partly subsided, renewed here and there as the sketch
+was passed along, and finally, making the circle, returned like a bad
+penny to Quarrier. He smiled again, symmetrically, as he received it,
+nodding his compliments to Alderdene.
+
+"Oh, no," cackled his lordship; "I didn't draw it, old chap!"
+
+"Nor I! I only wish I could," added Captain Voucher.
+
+"Nor I--nor I--who did it?" ran the chorus along the table.
+
+"I didn't do it!" said Sylvia gravely, looking across at Quarrier. And
+suddenly Quarrier's large, handsome eyes met Siward's for the briefest
+fraction of a second, then were averted. But into his face there crept
+an expressionless pallor that did not escape Siward--no, nor Sylvia
+Landis.
+
+Presently under cover of a rapid fire of chatter she said: "Did you draw
+that?"
+
+"Yes; I had no idea it was meant for him. You may imagine how likely I'd
+be to take any liberty with a man who already dislikes me."
+
+"But it resembles him--in a very dreadful way."
+
+"I know it. You must take my word for what I have told you."
+
+She looked up at him: "I do." Then: "It's a pity; Mr. Quarrier does not
+consider such things humourous. He--he is very sensitive. ... Oh, I wish
+that fool Englishman had been in Ballyhoo!"
+
+"But he didn't do it!"
+
+"No, but he put you up to it--or Grace Ferrall did. I wish Grace would
+let Mr. Quarrier alone; she has always been perfectly possessed to
+plague him; she seems unable to take him seriously and he simply hates
+it. I don't think he'd tolerate her if she were not his cousin.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," was all Siward said; and for a while he gloomily
+busied himself with whatever was brought to him.
+
+"Don't look that way," came a low voice beside him.
+
+"Do I show everything as plainly as that?" he asked, curiously.
+
+"I seem to read you--sometimes."
+
+"It's very nice of you," he said.
+
+"Nice?"
+
+"To look at me--now and then."
+
+"Oh," she cried resentfully, "don't be grateful."
+
+"I--really am not you know," he said laughing.
+
+"That," she rejoined slowly, "is the truth. You say conventional things
+in a manner--in an agreeably personal manner that interests women. But
+you are not grateful to anybody for anything; you are indifferent, and
+you can't help being nice to people, so--some day--some girl will think
+you are grateful, and will have a miserable time of it."
+
+"Miserable time?"
+
+"Waiting for you to say what never will enter your head to say."
+
+"You mean I--I--"
+
+"Flirt? No, I mean that you don't flirt; that you are always dreamily
+occupied with your own affairs, from which listlessly congenial
+occupation, when drawn, you are so unexpectedly nice that a girl
+immediately desires to see how nice you can be."
+
+"What a charming indictment you draw!" he said, amused.
+
+"It's a grave one I assure you. I've been talking about you to Grace
+Ferrall; I asked to be placed beside you at dinner; I told her I hadn't
+had half enough of you on the cliff. Now what do you think of yourself
+for being too nice to a susceptible girl? I think it's immoral."
+
+They both were laughing now; several people glanced at them, smiling
+in sympathy. Alderdene took that opportunity to revert to the sketch,
+furnishing a specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running
+accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina,
+until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him.
+All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned
+his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then dropped them.
+
+The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping
+of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the
+room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.
+
+Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac
+and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously,
+resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether
+buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious
+tale until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly
+wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.
+
+"Old ass!" he muttered; "his chop whiskers look like the chops of a
+Southdown ram--and he's got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear
+you fell into no end of a scrape in town--"
+
+"Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!"
+
+"Just as you like old chap!" returned his lordship unabashed. "All I
+meant was--anything Voucher and I can do--of course--"
+
+"You're very good. I'm not dead you know."
+
+"'Not dead, you know'," repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them
+with his sprightly step; "that reminds me of a good one--" He sat down
+and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance
+as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began
+another endless story.
+
+Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a
+wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word
+before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.
+
+Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy
+expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin
+and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his
+listener's overwhelming hilarity.
+
+The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of
+such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was
+sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable
+noise. This, being the major's cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand
+raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to
+whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for
+the ears of such a sex.
+
+"Ass!" muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in
+his big, shiny pumps. "Give me a peg--somebody!"
+
+Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter,
+mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity;
+then:
+
+"Bridge, Captain?"
+
+"Certainly," said Captain Voucher briskly.
+
+"I'll go and shoo the major into the gun-room," observed
+Ferrall--"unless--" looking questioningly at Siward.
+
+"I've a date with your wife," observed that young man, strolling toward
+the hall.
+
+The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card
+table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack
+lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside
+it, not neglected.
+
+O'Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in
+the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.
+
+About the rooms were distributed girls en tete-a-tete, girls eating
+bon-bons and watching the cards--among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely
+clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier's elbow to observe and profit
+by an expert performance.
+
+As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled
+in silence, and resumed a study of her fiance's game.
+
+A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the melee,
+she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering
+somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and
+disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe
+the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier's game.
+
+But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his
+hostess: "I shall be very glad to read my mother's letter at any time
+you choose."
+
+"It must be later, Stephen. I'm to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has
+a lot of letters to attend to. ... Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia
+Landis?"
+
+"I like her, of course," he replied pleasantly.
+
+Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: "That sketch you made proved a
+great success, didn't it?" And she laughed under her breath.
+
+"Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed--"
+
+"Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He's such a muff, you know,
+that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his
+complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up."
+
+"I don't think you'd best use me for the stick next time," said Siward.
+"He's not my cousin you know."
+
+Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: "By the way"--she said
+curiously--"who was that girl?"
+
+"What girl," he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very
+incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her
+boyish sunburn and freckles.
+
+"You won't tell me I suppose?"
+
+"I'm sorry--"
+
+"Was she pretty, Stephen?"
+
+"Yes," he said sulkily; "I wish you wouldn't--"
+
+"Nonsense! Do you think I'm going to let you off without some sort of
+confession? If I had time now--but I haven't. Kemp has business letters:
+he'll be furious; so I've got to take his cards or we won't have any
+pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes."
+
+She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the
+house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.
+
+"You minx!" she whispered; "aren't you ashamed?"
+
+"Very much, dear. What for?" And catching sight of Siward outside in the
+starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess' meaning, for she
+laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.
+
+"You don't suppose for a moment," she began, "that I have--"
+
+"Yes I do. You always do."
+
+"Not with that sort of man," she returned naively; "he won't."
+
+Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: "You always pick out exactly the
+wrong man to play with--"
+
+They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess' arm linked
+in the arm of the younger girl.
+
+"The wrong man?" repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her
+straight brows beginning to bend inward.
+
+"I didn't mean that--exactly. You know how much I care for his
+mother--and for him." The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the
+narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.
+
+"What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing. There was an affair--"
+
+"This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?"
+
+"Yes--for the present," replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: "For
+goodness' sake, Sylvia, don't cross examine me that way! I care a great
+deal for that boy--"
+
+"So do I. I've made him take my dog."
+
+There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.
+
+"I mean it--really," said Sylvia quietly; "I like him immensely."
+
+"Dearest, you mean it generously--with your usual exaggeration. You have
+heard that he has been foolish, and because he's so young, so likable,
+every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to--to be nice to him--"
+
+"And if that were--"
+
+"There is no harm, dear--" Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes
+softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: "It's rather pathetic,"
+she said in a low voice. "Kemp thinks he's foredoomed--like all the
+Siwards. It's an hereditary failing with him,--no, it's hereditary
+damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know--"
+She bit her lip, thinking a moment. "His grandfather was a friend of
+my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and--doomed! His own
+father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had
+wandered when stupefied--a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that
+outbreak of Stephen's means to those whose families have been New
+Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous--it
+means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall
+never, never admit it to his mother."
+
+The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder's gaze was upon her,
+but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.
+
+"Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present
+fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line," said Mrs. Ferrall
+thoughtfully. "The main thing is to keep him among people, not to
+drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident,
+happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary,
+there's not a chance in the world for him. ... It's a pity. I know he
+meant to make himself the exception to the rule--and look! Already one
+carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!"
+
+Sylvia flushed and looked up: "Grace, may I ask you a plain question?"
+
+"Yes, child," she answered absently.
+
+"Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches
+me very closely?"
+
+Mrs. Ferrall's wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a
+startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.
+
+"You--you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?"
+
+"Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august
+mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity--the danger
+of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done--before I
+came into the world they found so amusing."
+
+"I told you several things," returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. "Your
+uncle thought it best for you to know."
+
+"Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather.
+In fact," she added coolly, "where the women of my race loved they
+usually found the way--rather unconventionally. There was, if I
+understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and
+irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I
+might care to claim--"
+
+"Sylvia!"
+
+The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. "I'm sorry, but could I help
+it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well;
+I'm doing it, am I not?--practically scared into the first solidly
+suitable marriage offered--seizing the unfortunate Howard with both
+hands for fear he'd get away and leave me alone with only a queer
+family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why
+everybody, in my case, didn't go about with sanctimonious faces and
+dolorous mien repeating: 'Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away.
+Poor child, she's doomed! doomed!'"
+
+"Sylvia, I--"
+
+"Yes--why didn't they? That's the way they talk about that boy out
+there!" She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.
+
+"Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you--"
+
+"So did I--nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might
+have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored
+him--I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from
+compromising myself! Can you count them?--all those indiscretions when
+mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter--and only my uncle
+and you to break me in!"
+
+"In other words," said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, "you don't think Mr. Siward
+is getting what is known as a square deal?"
+
+"No, I don't. Major Belwether has already hinted--no, not even that--but
+has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward."
+
+Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her--now very lovely and flushed
+in her suppressed excitement.
+
+"After all," she said, "you are going to marry somebody else. So why
+become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?"
+
+"I shall see him if I desire to!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"I am not taking the black veil, am I?" asked the girl hotly.
+
+"Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have
+something to suggest concerning a common visiting list--"
+
+"He may suggest--certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own
+friends--and afterward, too," she murmured to herself, as her hostess
+rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.
+
+"Go and be good to this poor young man then; I adore rows--and you'll
+have a few on your hands I'll warrant. Let me remind you that your uncle
+can make it unpleasant for you yet, and that your amiable fiance has a
+will of his own under his pompadour and silky beard."
+
+"What a pity to have it clash with mine," said the girl serenely.
+
+Mrs. Ferrall looked at her: "Mercy on us! Howard's pompadour would stick
+up straight with horror if he could hear you! Don't be silly; don't for
+an impulse, for a caprice, break off anything desirable on account of
+a man for whom you really care nothing--whose amiable exterior and
+prospective misfortune merely enlist a very natural and generous
+sympathy in you."
+
+"Do you suppose that I shall endure interference from anybody?--from my
+uncle, from Howard?"
+
+"Dear, you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Don't be emotional;
+don't let loose impulses that you and I know about, knew about in our
+school years, know all about now, and which you and I have decided must
+be eliminated--"
+
+"You mean subdued; they'll always be there."
+
+"Very well; who cares, as long as you have them in leash?"
+
+Looking at one another, the excited colour cooling in the younger girl's
+cheeks, they laughed, one with relief, the other a little ashamed.
+
+"Kemp will be furious; I simply must cut in!" said Mrs. Ferrall, hastily
+turning toward the gun-room. Miss Landis looked after her, subdued,
+vaguely repentant, the consciousness dawning upon her that she had
+probably made considerable conversation about nothing.
+
+"It's been so all day," she thought impatiently; "I've exaggerated; I've
+worked up a scene about a man whose habits are not the slightest concern
+of mine. Besides that I've neglected Howard shamefully!" She was walking
+slowly, her thoughts outstripping her errant feet, but it seemed that
+neither her thoughts nor her steps were leading her toward the neglected
+gentleman within; for presently she found herself at the breezy veranda
+door, looking rather fixedly at the stars.
+
+The stars, shining impartially upon the just and the unjust, illuminated
+the person of Siward, who sat alone, rather limply, one knee crossed
+above the other. He looked up by chance, and, seeing her star-gazing in
+the doorway, straightened out and rose to his feet.
+
+Aware of him apparently for the first time, she stepped across the
+threshold meeting his advance half-way.
+
+"Would you care to go down to the rocks?" he asked. "The surf is
+terrific."
+
+"No--I don't think I care--"
+
+They stood listening a moment to the stupendous roar.
+
+"A storm somewhere at sea," he concluded.
+
+"Is it very fine--the surf?"
+
+"Very fine--and very relentless--" he laughed; "it is an unfriendly
+creature, the sea, you know."
+
+She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her;
+they spoke little, a word now and then.
+
+The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance;
+dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the
+grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the
+cliffs' edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the
+stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.
+
+For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle
+too far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied
+herself on his arm.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "no swimmer could endure that battering."
+
+"Not long."
+
+"Would there be no chance?"
+
+"Not one."
+
+She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of
+the breakers.
+
+"I--think--," he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left
+hand; and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back.
+Neither spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by
+something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff,
+and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own
+keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over
+hers remained a sensation still--a strong, steady, masterful imprint
+lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though
+her hand still tightened under his--and she was conscious, too, that
+nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no
+tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or
+suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in
+some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a
+woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.
+
+"Was I in any actual danger?" she asked curiously.
+
+"I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me."
+
+"I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in
+future."
+
+"Exactly--if you don't mind," he said smiling.
+
+They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched
+herbage.
+
+"That," she said impulsively, "is not what I said a few moments ago to a
+woman."
+
+"What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?"
+
+"I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a--a certain man to go to
+the devil alone!"
+
+"Do you know any man who is going to the devil?"
+
+"Do you?" she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of
+intimacy she had never dreamed of risking--nor had she the slightest
+idea whither the current would carry her.
+
+They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet grass, the stars
+overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the
+sea.
+
+"You mean me," he concluded.
+
+"Do I?"
+
+He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very
+clear--clear with excitement--but very friendly.
+
+"Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?" she asked.
+
+So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward,
+elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving
+her bare arms and shoulders a marble lustre and tinting her eyes a
+deeper amethyst.
+
+And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart
+quite bare--one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe
+in the influence of their sex individually and collectively, she began
+wrong by telling him of her engagement--perhaps to emphasise her pure
+disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally
+dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so
+preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet platitudes
+which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.
+
+Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had
+her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon
+youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely,
+she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was
+not aware that everybody else had passed that way--it being the first
+immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.
+
+And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for
+Siward's benefit as bearing directly on his case.
+
+Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending
+matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty
+counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself
+a code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own
+discoveries in that dog-eared science.
+
+So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired--nay in
+the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living,
+that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:
+
+"I never imagined you were engaged!"
+
+"Is that what you have been thinking about?" she asked, innocently
+astonished.
+
+"Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed--"
+
+"But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing
+anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?"
+
+"I don't know, but I didn't," he said.
+
+"Of course you didn't; you'd known me for about three hours--there on
+the cliff--"
+
+"But--Quarrier--!"
+
+Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen--flickering, not yet
+settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the
+woman destined to be Quarrier's wife. He had talked too much anyway.
+Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had
+made a plain ass of himself--that was all,--a garrulous ass. And truly
+it seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow
+and divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts
+had taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.
+
+"Don't think the things you are thinking!" she said in a fierce little
+voice, leaning toward him.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked, taken aback.
+
+"You know! Don't! It is unfair--it is--is faithless--to me. I am your
+friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot
+two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other
+and--nobody else!" She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of
+it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed
+and hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint
+intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to
+impulse and emotions.
+
+"Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see--gave me
+a glimpse of yourself--of life's battle as you foresee it? What if
+there is always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that
+miserable French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after
+confessing to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of
+confidence worth the reaction--the subsidence into the armored shell of
+self? Tell me truly, Mr. Siward, isn't it?"
+
+Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her
+face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it,
+expectant, uncertain.
+
+"If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you--to me,
+why should it trouble you that I know--and am thinking of things that
+concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because
+you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to
+balance the account? I do give--interest, deep interest, sympathy if you
+ask it; I give confidence in return--if you desire it!"
+
+"What can a girl like you need of sympathy?" he said smiling.
+
+"You don't know! you don't know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if
+you must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your
+guard, do you think you are the only one?"
+
+"Are you--one?" he said incredulously.
+
+"Yes"--with an involuntary shudder--"not that way. It is easier for me;
+I think it is--I know it is. But there are things to combat--impulses,
+a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not
+know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort--never
+even deep emotion."
+
+"You are in love!"
+
+"Yes, thoroughly," she added with conviction, "but not violently. I--"
+she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through
+the dusk; and: "Mr. Siward! are you laughing?" She rose and he stood up
+instantly.
+
+There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that
+glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the
+storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there
+under the stars.
+
+"Mr. Siward," she breathed, "I don't know what I am laughing at; do you?
+Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is
+it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me--for I
+never knew a man like you before?"
+
+"You don't know what you were laughing at?" he repeated. "It was
+something about love--"
+
+"No I don't know why I laughed! I--I don't wish to, Mr. Siward. I do
+not desire to laugh at anything you have made me say--anything you may
+infer--"
+
+"I don't infer--"
+
+"You do! You made me say something--about my being ignorant of deep,
+of violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly,
+thoroughly in love--"
+
+"Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?"
+
+"You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you--"
+
+"What did I do then?" he asked, far too humbly.
+
+"You--you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too
+ignorant of it to know what I'm talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what
+you have done to me to-night."
+
+"I--I'm sorry--"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"I ought to be anyway," he said.
+
+It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch
+them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.
+
+"How can you laugh!" she said. "How dare you! I don't care for you
+nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would
+not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly--too intimately.
+There is too much mockery in you--" She ceased suddenly, watching
+the sombre alteration of his face; and, "Have I hurt you?" she asked
+penitently.
+
+"No."
+
+"Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it." The attitude, the words,
+slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment's silence,
+stirred him.
+
+"I'm rather ignorant myself of violent emotion," he said. "I suspect
+normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a
+sedative."
+
+"Am I normal--after what I have confessed?" she asked. "Can't love be
+well-bred?"
+
+"Perfectly I should say--only perhaps you are not an expert--"
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In self-analysis, for example."
+
+There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.
+
+"As for our friendship, we'll do the best we can for it, no matter what
+occurs," he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced
+up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the
+veranda above.
+
+There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss
+Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a
+situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the
+girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.
+
+"If your shoes are as wet as my skirts and slippers you had better
+change, Mr. Siward," she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase.
+
+So he took his conge, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and
+mounted to his room.
+
+In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business
+correspondence and was returning to the card-room.
+
+"Here's a letter that Grace wants you to see," he said. "Read it before
+you turn in, Stephen."
+
+"All right; but I'll be down later," replied Siward passing on, the
+letter in his hand. Entering his room he kicked off his wet pumps and
+found dry ones. Then moved about, whistling a gay air from some recent
+vaudeville, busy with rough towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod
+and dry, he was ready to descend once more.
+
+The encounter, the suddenly informal acquaintance with this young girl
+had stirred him agreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration. Even her
+engagement to Quarrier added a tinge of malice to his interest. Besides
+he was young enough to feel the flattery of her concern for him--of
+her rebuke, of her imprudence, her generous emotional and childish
+philosophy.
+
+Perhaps, as like recognises like, he recognised in her the instincts of
+the born drifter, momentarily at anchor--the temporary inertia of the
+opportunist, the latent capacity of an unformed character for all things
+and anything. Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the
+wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain
+unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not
+Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and
+innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank,
+and unworldly friendliness for himself.
+
+Not that he objected to her marrying Quarrier; he rather admired her for
+being able to do it, considering the general scramble for Quarrier. But
+let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious
+intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the
+cheap notoriety which he had brought upon himself. Let him sponge his
+slate clean and begin again a better record, flattered by the solicitude
+she had so prettily displayed.
+
+Whistling under his breath the same gay, empty melody, he opened the top
+drawer of his dresser, dropped in his mother's letter, and locking the
+drawer, pocketed the key. He would have time enough to read the letter
+when he went to bed; he did not just now feel exactly like skimming
+through the fond, foolish sermon which he knew had been preached at him
+through his mother's favourite missionary, Grace Ferrall. What was
+the use of dragging in the sad old questions again--of repeating his
+assurances of good behaviour, of reiterating his promises of moderation
+and watchfulness, of explaining his own self-confidence? Better that the
+letter await his bed time--his prayers would be the sincerer the fresher
+the impression; for he was old-fashioned enough to say the prayers that
+an immature philosophy proved superfluous. For, he thought, if prayer is
+any use, it takes only a few minutes to be on the safe side.
+
+So he went down-stairs leisurely, prepared to acquiesce in any
+suggestion from anybody, but rather hoping to saunter across Sylvia
+Landis' path before being committed.
+
+She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender,
+apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the
+gun-room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the
+volatile odours from decanters.
+
+There were a few women there, and the majority of the men. Lord
+Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves;
+stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green
+explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy
+inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: "Cut out that
+'widow,' and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack
+triples the ante. Come on, Siward, there's a decent chap!"
+
+So he seated himself for a sacrifice to the blind goddess balanced upon
+her winged wheel; and the cards ran high--so high that stacks dwindled
+or toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder,
+and Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene's face wore a
+continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound's tooth, and the
+ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.
+
+It was late when Quarrier "sat in," with an expressionless
+acknowledgment of Siward's presence, and an emotionless raid upon
+his neighbour's resources with the first hand dealt, in which he
+participated without drawing a card.
+
+And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him,
+his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical
+pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth
+blank forehead.
+
+It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing
+deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the
+annoying contempt in Quarrier's woman-like eyes. He felt that he was
+making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow--but with more racket
+than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and
+a decanter.
+
+It was time for him to go--unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an
+explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too
+much noise, too much laughter.
+
+Besides he had a matter to attend to--the careful perusal of his
+mother's letter to Mrs. Ferrall.
+
+Very white, he rose. After an indeterminate interval he found himself
+entering his room.
+
+The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and
+break, but he got the letter, sank down on the bed's edge and strove to
+read,--set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he
+could make nothing of it--nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who
+came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full
+glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the
+stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother's letter
+crushed in his nerveless hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV THE SEASON OPENS
+
+Breakfast at Shotover, except for the luxurious sluggards to whom
+trays were sent, was served in the English fashion--any other method or
+compromise being impossible.
+
+Ferrall, reasonable in most things, detested customs exotic, and usually
+had an Englishman or two about the house to tell them so, being unable
+to jeer in any language except his own. Which is partly why Alderdene
+and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a
+concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although
+the custom had already become practically universal in American country
+houses where guests were entertained.
+
+But at the British breakfast he drew the line. No army of servants,
+always in evidence, would he tolerate, either; no highly ornamented
+human bric-a-brac decorating halls and corners; no exotic pheasants
+hustled into covert and out again; no fusillade at the wretched,
+frightened, bewildered aliens dumped by the thousand into unfamiliar
+cover and driven toward the guns by improvised beaters.
+
+"We walk up our game or we follow a brace of good dogs in this white
+man's country," he said with unnecessary emphasis whenever his bad taste
+and his wife's absence gave him an opportunity to express to the casual
+foreigner his personal opinions on field sport. "You'll load your own
+guns and you'll use your own legs if you shoot with me; and your dogs
+will do their own retrieving, too. And if anybody desires a Yankee's
+opinion on shooting driven birds from rocking-chairs or potting tame
+deer from grand-stands, they can have it right now!"
+
+Usually nobody wanted his further opinion; and sometimes they got it
+and sometimes not, if his wife was within earshot. Otherwise Ferrall
+appeared to be a normal man, energetically devoted to his business, his
+pleasures, his friends, and comfortably in love with his wife. And if
+some considered his vigour in business to be lacking in mercy, that
+vigour was always exercised within the law. He never transgressed the
+rules of war, but his headlong energy sometimes landed him close to the
+dead line. He had already breakfasted, when the earliest risers entered
+the morning room to saunter about the sideboards and investigate the
+simmering contents of silver-covered dishes on the warmers.
+
+The fragrance of coffee was pleasantly perceptible; men in conventional
+shooting attire roamed about the room, selected what they cared for, and
+carried it to the table. Mrs. Mortimer was there consuming peaches that
+matched her own complexion; Marion Page, always more congruous in field
+costume and belted jacket than in anything else, and always, like her
+own hunters, minutely groomed, was preparing a breakfast for her own
+consumption with the leisurely precision characteristic of her whether
+in the saddle, on the box, or grassing her brace of any covey that ever
+flushed.
+
+Captain Voucher and Lord Alderdene discussed prospects between bites,
+attentive to the monosyllabic opinions of Miss Page. Her twin brothers,
+Gordon and Willis, shyly consuming oatmeal, listened respectfully and
+waited on their sister at the slightest lifting of her thinly arched
+eyebrows.
+
+Into this company sauntered Siward, apparently no worse for wear. For
+as yet the Enemy had set upon him no proprietary insignia save a rather
+becoming pallor and faint bluish shadows under the eyes. He strolled
+about, exchanging amiable greetings, and presently selected a chilled
+grape fruit as his breakfast. Opposite him Mortimer, breakfasting upon
+his own dreadful bracer of an apple soaked in port, raised his heavy
+inflamed eyes with a significant leer at the iced grape fruit. For he
+was always ready to make room upon his own level for other men; but the
+wordless grin and the bloodshot welcome were calmly ignored, for as yet
+that freemasonry evoked no recognition from the pallid man opposite,
+whose hands were steady as though that morning's sun had wakened him
+from pleasant dreams.
+
+"The most difficult shot in the world," Alderdene was explaining, "is an
+incoming pheasant, sailing on a slant before a gale."
+
+"A woodcock in alders doing a jack-snipe twist is worse," grunted
+Mortimer, drenching another apple in port.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Page tersely.
+
+"Or a depraved ruffed cock-grouse in the short pines; isn't that the
+limit?" asked Mortimer of Siward.
+
+But Siward only shrugged his comment and glanced out through the leaded
+casements into the brilliant September sunshine.
+
+Outside he could see Major Belwether, pink skinned, snowy chop whiskers
+brushed rabbit fashion, very voluble with Sylvia Landis, who listened
+absently, head partly averted. Quarrier in tweeds and gaiters, his
+morning cigar delicately balanced in his gloved fingers, strolled near
+enough to be within ear-shot; and when Sylvia's inattention to Major
+Belwether's observations became marked to the verge of rudeness, he came
+forward and spoke. But whatever it was that he said appeared to change
+her passive inattention to quiet displeasure, for, as Siward rose from
+the table, he saw her turn on her heel and walk slowly toward a group of
+dogs presided over by some kennel men and gamekeepers.
+
+She was talking to the head gamekeeper when he emerged from the house,
+but she saw him on the terrace and gave him a bright nod of greeting, so
+close to an invitation that he descended the stone steps and crossed the
+dew-wet lawn.
+
+"I am asking Dawson to explain just exactly what a 'Shotover Drive'
+resembles," she said, turning to include Siward in an animated
+conference with the big, scraggy, head keeper. "You know, Mr. Siward,
+that it is a custom peculiar to Shotover House to open the season with
+what is called a Shotover Drive?"
+
+"I heard Alderdene talking about it," he said, smilingly inspecting the
+girl's attire of khaki with its buttoned pockets, gun pads, and Cossack
+cartridge loops, and the tan knee-kilts hanging heavily pleated over
+gaiters and little thick-soled shoes. He had never cared very much to
+see women afield, for, in a rare case where there was no affectation,
+there was something else inborn that he found unpleasant--something
+lacking about a woman who could take life from frightened wild things,
+something shocking that a woman could look, unmoved, upon a twitching,
+blood-soiled heap of feathers at her feet.
+
+Meanwhile Dawson, dog-whip at salute, stood knee deep among his restless
+setters, explaining the ceremony with which Mr. Ferrall ushered in the
+opening of each shooting season:
+
+"It's our own idee, Miss Landis," he said proudly; "onc't a season Mr.
+Ferrall and his guests likes it for a mixed bag. 'Tis a sort of picnic,
+Miss; the guns is in pairs, sixty yards apart in line, an' the rules
+is, walk straight ahead, dogs to heel until first cover is reached; fire
+straight or to quarter, never blankin' nor wipin' no eyes; and ground
+game counts as feathers for the Shotover Cup."
+
+"Oh! It's a skirmish line that walks straight ahead?" said Siward,
+nodding.
+
+"Straight ahead, Sir. No stoppin', no turnin' for hedges, fences, water
+or rock. There is boats f'r deep water and fords marked and corduroy f'r
+to pass the Seven Dreens. Luncheon at one, Miss--an hour's rest--then
+straight on over hill, valley, rock, and river to the rondyvoo atop
+Osprey Ledge. You'll see the poles and the big nests, Sir. It's there
+they score for the cup, and there when the bag is counted, the traps are
+ready to carry you home again." ... And to Siward: "Will you draw for your
+lady, Sir? It is the custom."
+
+"Are you my 'lady'?" he asked, turning to Sylvia.
+
+"Do you want me?"
+
+In the smiling lustre of her eyes the tiniest spark flashed out at
+him--a hint of defiance for somebody, perhaps for Major Belwether who
+had taken considerable pains to enlighten her as to Siward's condition
+the night before; perhaps also for Quarrier, who had naturally expected
+to act as her gun-bearer in emergencies. But the gaily veiled malice
+of the one had annoyed her, and the cold assumption of the other had
+irritated her, and she had, scarcely knowing why, turned her shoulder to
+both of these gentlemen with an indefinite idea of escaping a pressure,
+amounting almost to critical importunity.
+
+"I'm probably a poor shot?" she said, looking smilingly, straight into
+Siward's eyes. "But if you'll take me--"
+
+"I will with pleasure," he said; "Dawson, do we draw for position? Very
+well then"; and he drew a slip of paper from the box offered by the head
+keeper.
+
+"Number seven!" said Sylvia, looking over his shoulder. "Come out to the
+starting line, Mr. Siward. All the positions are marked with golf-discs.
+What sort of ground have we ahead, Dawson?"
+
+"Kind o' stiff, Miss," grinned the keeper. "Pity your gentleman ain't
+drawed the meadows an' Sachem Hill line. Will you choose your dog, Sir?"
+
+"You have your dog, you know," observed Sylvia demurely. And Siward,
+glancing among the impatient setters, saw one white, heavily feathered
+dog, straining at his leash, and wagging frantically, brown eyes fixed
+on him.
+
+The next moment Sagamore was free, devouring his master with caresses,
+the girl looking on in smiling silence; and presently, side by side, the
+man, the girl, and the dog were strolling off to the starting line where
+already people were gathering in groups, selecting dogs, fowling-pieces,
+comparing numbers, and discussing the merits of their respective lines
+of advance.
+
+Ferrall, busily energetic, and in high spirits, greeted them gaily,
+pointing out the red disc bearing their number, seven, where it stood
+out distinctly above the distant scrub of the foreland.
+
+"You two are certainly up against it!" he said, grinning. "There's only
+one rougher line, and you're in for thorns and water and a scramble
+across the back-bone of the divide!"
+
+"Is it any good?" asked Siward.
+
+"Good--if you've got the legs and Sylvia doesn't play baby--"
+
+"I?" she said indignantly. "Kemp, you annoy me. And I will bet you now,"
+she added, flushing, "that your old cup is ours."
+
+"Wait," said Siward, laughing, "we may not shoot straight."
+
+"You will! Kemp, I'll wager whatever you dare!"
+
+"Gloves? Stockings?--against a cigarette case?" he suggested.
+
+"Done," she said disdainfully, moving forward along the skirmish line
+with a nod and smile for the groups now disintegrating into couples, the
+Page boys with Eileen Shannon and Rena Bonnesdel, Marion Page followed
+by Alderdene, Mrs. Vendenning and Major Belwether and the Tassel girl
+convoyed by Leroy Mortimer. Farther along the line, taking post, she
+saw Quarrier and Miss Caithness, Captain Voucher with Mrs. Mortimer, and
+others too distant to recognise, moving across country with glitter and
+glint of sunlight on slanting gun barrels.
+
+And now Ferrall was climbing into his saddle beside his pretty wife, who
+sat her horse like a boy, the white flag lifted high in the sunshine,
+watching the firing line until the last laggard was in position.
+
+"All right, Grace!" said Ferrall briskly. Down went the white flag; the
+far-ranged line started into motion straight across country, dogs at
+heel.
+
+From her saddle Mrs. Ferrall could see the advance, strung out far
+afield from the dark spots moving along the Fells boundary, to the two
+couples traversing the salt meadows to north. Crack! A distant report
+came faintly over the uplands against the wind.
+
+"Voucher," observed Ferrall; "probably a snipe. Hark! he's struck them
+again, Grace."
+
+Mrs. Ferrall, watching curiously, saw Siward's gun fly up as two big
+dark spots floated up from the marsh and went swinging over his head.
+Crack! Crack! Down sheered the black spots, tumbling earthward out of
+the sky.
+
+"Duck," said Ferrall; "a double for Stephen. Lord Harry! how that man
+can shoot! Isn't it a pity that--"
+
+He said no more; his pretty wife astride her thoroughbred sat silent,
+grey eyes fixed on the distant figures of Sylvia Landis and Siward, now
+shoulder deep in the reeds.
+
+"Was it--very bad last night?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+Ferrall shrugged. "He was not offensive; he walked steadily enough
+up-stairs. When I went into his room he lay on the bed as if he'd been
+struck by lightning. And yet--you see how he is this morning?"
+
+"After a while," his wife said, "it is going to alter him some
+day--dreadfully--isn't it, Kemp?"
+
+"You mean--like Mortimer?"
+
+"Yes--only Leroy was always a pig."
+
+As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: "Do
+you know why Sylvia isn't shooting with Howard?"
+
+"No," replied her husband indifferently; "do you?"
+
+"No." She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes
+brightening with suppressed mischief. "But I half suspect."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, all sorts of things, Kemp."
+
+"What's one of 'em?" asked Ferrall, looking around at her; but his wife
+only laughed.
+
+"You don't mean she's throwing her flies at Siward--now that you've
+hooked Quarrier for her! I thought she'd played him to the gaff--"
+
+"Please don't be coarse, Kemp," said Mrs. Ferrall, sending her horse
+forward. Her husband spurred to her side, and without turning her head
+she continued: "Of course Sylvia won't be foolish. If they were only
+safely married; but Howard is such a pill--"
+
+"What does Sylvia expect with Howard's millions? A man?"
+
+Grace Ferrall drew bridle. "The curious thing is, Kemp, that she liked
+him."
+
+"Likes him?"
+
+"No, liked him. I saw how it was; she took his silences for intellectual
+meditation, his gallery, his library, his smatterings for expressions
+of a cultivated personality. Then she remembered how close she came to
+running off with that cashiered Englishman, and that scared her into
+clutching the substantial in the shape of Howard. ... Still, I wish I
+hadn't meddled."
+
+"Meddled how?"
+
+"Oh, I told her to do it. We had talks until daylight. ... She may marry
+him--I don't know--but if you think any live woman could be contented
+with a muff like that!"
+
+"That's immoral."
+
+"Kemp, I'm not. She'd be mad not to marry him; but I don't know what I'd
+do to a man like that, if I were his wife. And you know what a terrific
+capacity for mischief there is in Sylvia. Some day she's going to love
+somebody. And it isn't likely to be Howard. And, oh, Kemp! I do grow
+so tired of that sort of thing. Do you suppose anybody will ever make
+decency a fashion?"
+
+"You're doing your best," said Ferrall, laughing at his wife's pretty,
+boyish face turned back toward him over her shoulder; "you're presenting
+your cousin and his millions to a girl who can dress the part--"
+
+"Don't, Kemp! I don't know why I meddled! ... I wish I hadn't--"
+
+"I do. You can't let Howard alone! You're perfectly possessed to plague
+him when he's with you, and now you've arranged for another woman to
+keep it up for the rest of his lifetime. What does Sylvia want with
+a man who possesses the instincts and intellect of a coachman? She is
+asked everywhere, she has her own money. Why not let her alone? Or is it
+too late?"
+
+"You mean let her make a fool of herself with Stephen Siward? That is
+where she is drifting."
+
+"Do you think--"
+
+"Yes, I do. She has a perfect genius for selecting the wrong man; and
+she's already sorry for this one. I'm sorry for Stephen, too; but it's
+safe for me to be."
+
+"She might make something of him."
+
+"You know perfectly well no woman ever did make anything of a doomed
+man. He'd kill her--I mean it, Kemp! He would literally kill her with
+grief. She isn't like Leila Mortimer; she isn't like most girls of her
+sort. You men think her a rather stunning, highly tempered, unreasonable
+young girl, with a reserve of sufficiently trained intelligence to marry
+the best our market offers--and close her eyes;--a thoroughbred with the
+caprices of one, but also with the grafted instinct for proper mating."
+
+"Well, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Ferrall. "That's the way I
+size her up. Isn't it correct?"
+
+"Yes, in a way. She has all the expensive training of the
+thoroughbred--and all the ignorance, too. She is cold-blooded because
+wholesome; a trifle sceptical because so absolutely unawakened. She
+never experienced a deep emotion. Impulses have intoxicated her once or
+twice--as when she asked my opinion about running off with Cavendish,
+and that boy and girl escapade with Rivington; nothing at all except
+high mettle, the innocent daring lurking in all thoroughbreds, and a
+great deal of very red blood racing through that superb young body.
+But," Ferrall reined in to listen, "but if ever a man awakens her--I
+don't care who he is--you'll see a girl you never knew, a brand-new
+creature emerge with the last rags and laces of conventionality dropping
+from her; a woman, Kemp, heiress to every generous impulse, every
+emotion, every vice, every virtue of all that brilliant race of hers."
+
+"You seem to know," he said, amused and curious.
+
+"I know. Major Belwether told me that he had thought of Howard as
+an anchor for her. It seemed a pity--Howard with all his cold, heavy
+negative inertia. ... I said I'd do it. I did. And now I don't know; I
+wish, almost wish I hadn't."
+
+"What has changed your ideas?"
+
+"I don't know. Howard is safer than Stephen Siward, already in the first
+clutches of his master-vice. Would you mate what she inherits from her
+mother and her mother's mother, with what is that poor boy's heritage
+from the Siwards?"
+
+"After all," observed Ferrall dryly, "we're not in the angel-breeding
+business."
+
+"We ought to be. Every decent person ought to be. If they were,
+inherited vice would be as rare in this country as smallpox!"
+
+"People don't inherit smallpox, dear."
+
+"Never mind! You know what I mean. In our stock farms and kennels, we
+weed out, destroy, exterminate hereditary weakness in everything. We
+pay the greatest attention to the production of all offspring except our
+own. Look at Stephen! How dared his parents bring him into the world?
+Look at Sylvia! And now, suppose they marry!"
+
+"Dearest," said Ferrall, "my head is a whirl and my wits are spinning
+like five toy tops. Your theories are all right; but unless you and I
+are prepared to abandon several business enterprises and take to the
+lecture platform, I'm afraid people are going to be wicked enough to
+marry whom they like, and the human race will he run as usual with money
+the favourite, and love a case of 'also-ran.' ... By the way, how dared
+you marry me, knowing the sort of demon I am?"
+
+The gathering frown on Mrs. Ferrall's brow faded; she raised her clear
+grey eyes and met her husband's gaze, gay, humourous, and with a hint of
+tenderness--enough to bring the colour into her pretty face.
+
+"You know I'm right, Kemp."
+
+"Always, dear. And now that we have the world off our hands for a few
+minutes, suppose we gallop?"
+
+But she held her horse to a walk, riding forward, grave, thoughtful,
+preoccupied with a new problem, only part of which she had told her
+husband.
+
+For that night she had been awakened in her bed to find standing beside
+her a white, wide-eyed figure, shivering, limbs a-chill beneath her
+clinging lace. She had taken the pallid visitor to her arms and warmed
+her and soothed her and whispered to her, murmuring the thousand little
+words and sounds, the breathing magic mothers use with children.
+And Sylvia lay there, chilled, nerveless, silent, ignorant why her
+sleeplessness had turned to restlessness, to loneliness, to an awakening
+perception of what she lacked and needed and began to desire. For that
+sad void, peopled at intervals through her brief years with a vague
+mother-phantom, had, in the new crisis of her career, become suddenly an
+empty desolation, frightening her with her own utter isolation. Fill it
+now she could not, now that she needed that ghost of child-comfort,
+that shadowy refuge, that sweet shape she had fashioned out of dreams to
+symbolise a mother she had never known.
+
+Driven she knew not why, she had crept from her room in search of the
+still, warm, fragrant nest and the whispered reassurance and the caress
+she had never before endured. Yes, now she craved it, invited it,
+longed for safe arms around her, the hovering hand on her hair. Was this
+Sylvia?
+
+And Grace Ferrall, clearing her sleepy eyes, amazed, incredulous of the
+cold, child-like hands upon her shoulders, caught her in her arms with
+a little laugh and sob and drew her to her breast, to soothe and caress
+and reassure, to make up to her all she could of what is every child's
+just heritage.
+
+And for a long while Sylvia, lying there, told her nothing--because
+she did not know how--merely a word, a restless question half ashamed,
+barely enough to shadow forth the something stirring her toward an
+awakening in a new world, where with new eyes she might catch glimpses
+of those dim and splendidly misty visions that float through sunlit
+silences when a young girl dreams awake.
+
+And at length, gravely, innocently, she spoke of her engagement, and the
+worldly possibilities before her; of the man she was to marry, and her
+new and unexpected sense of loneliness in his presence, now that she had
+seen him again after months.
+
+She spoke, presently, of Siward--a fugitive question or two, offered
+indifferently at first, then with shy persistence and curiosity, knowing
+nothing of the senseless form flung face downward across the sheets in
+a room close by. And thereafter the murmured burden of the theme was
+Siward, until one, heavy eyed, turned from the white dawn silvering the
+windows, sighed, and fell asleep; and one lay silent, head half buried
+in its tangled gold, wide awake, thinking vague thoughts that had no
+ending, no beginning. And at last a rosy bar of light fell across the
+wall, and the warm shadows faded from corner and curtain; and, turning
+on the pillow, her face nestled in her hair, she fell asleep.
+
+
+Nothing of this had Mrs. Ferrall told her husband.
+
+For the first time in her life had Sylvia suffered the caresses most
+women invite or naturally lavish; for the first time had she attempted
+confidences, failing because she did not know how, but curiously
+contented with the older woman's arms around her.
+
+There was a change in Sylvia, a great change stealing in upon her as she
+lay there, breathing like a child, flushed lips scarcely parted. Through
+the early slanting sunlight the elder woman, leaning on one arm, looked
+down at her, grey eyes very grave and tender--wise, sweet eyes that
+divined with their pure clairvoyance all that might happen or might fail
+to come to pass in this great change stealing over Sylvia.
+
+
+Nothing of this could her husband understand had she words to convey it.
+There was nothing he need understand except that his wife, meaning well,
+had meddled and regretted.
+
+And now, turning in her saddle with a pretty gesture of her shoulders:
+
+"I meddle no more! Those who need me may come to me. Now laugh at my
+tardy wisdom, Kemp!"
+
+"It's no laughing matter," he said, "if you're going to stand back and
+let this abandoned world spin itself madly to the bow-wows--"
+
+"Don't be horrid. I repent. The mischief take Howard Quarrier!"
+
+"Amen! Come on, Grace."
+
+She gathered bridle. "Do you suppose Stephen Siward is going to make
+trouble?"
+
+"How can he unless she helps him? Nonsense! All's well with Siward and
+Sylvia. Shall we gallop?"
+
+
+All was very well with Siward and Sylvia. They had passed the
+rabbit-brier country scathless, with two black mallard, a jack-snipe,
+and a rabbit to the credit of their score, and were now advancing
+through that dimly lit enchanted land of tall grey alders where, in the
+sudden twilight of the leaves, woodcock after woodcock fluttered upward
+twittering, only to stop and drop, transformed at the vicious crack of
+Siward's gun to fluffy balls of feather whirling earthward from mid-air.
+
+Sagamore came galloping back with a soft, unsoiled mass of chestnut and
+brown feathers in his mouth. Siward took the dead cock, passed it back
+to the keeper who followed them, patted the beautiful eager dog and
+signalled him forward once more.
+
+"You should have fired that time," he said to Sylvia--"that is, if you
+care to kill anything."
+
+"But I don't seem to be able to," she said. "It isn't a bit
+like shooting at clay targets. The twittering whirr takes me by
+surprise--it's all so charmingly sudden--and my heart seems to stop in
+one beat, and I look and look and then--whisk! the woodcock is gone,
+leaving me breathless--"
+
+Her voice ceased; the white setter, cutting up his ground ahead, had
+stopped, rigid, one leg raised, jaws quivering and locking alternately.
+
+"Isn't that a stunning picture!" said Siward in a low voice. "What a
+beauty he is--like a statue in white and blue-veined marble. You may
+talk, Miss Landis; woodcock don't flush at the sound of the human voice
+as grouse do."
+
+"See his brown eyes roll back at us! He wonders why we don't do
+something!" whispered the girl. "Look, Mr. Siward! Now his head is
+moving--oh so gradually to the left!"
+
+"The bird is moving on the ground," nodded Siward; "now the bird has
+stopped."
+
+"I do wish I could see a woodcock on the ground," she breathed. "Do you
+think we might by any chance?"
+
+Siward noiselessly sank to his knees and crouched, keen eyes minutely
+busy among the shadowy browns and greys of wet earth and withered leaf.
+And after a while, cautiously, he signalled the girl to kneel beside
+him, and stretched out one arm, forefinger extended.
+
+"Sight straight along my arm," he said, "as though it were a rifle
+barrel."
+
+Her soft cheek rested against his shoulder; a stray strand of shining
+hair brushing his face.
+
+"Under that bunch of fern," he whispered; "just the colour of the dead
+leaves. Do you see? ... Don't you see that big woodcock squatted flat,
+bill pointed straight out and resting on the leaves?"
+
+After a long while she saw, suddenly, and an exquisite little shock
+tightened her fingers on Siward's extended arm.
+
+"Oh, the feathered miracle!" she whispered; "the wonder of its
+cleverness to hide like that! You look and look and stare, seeing it all
+the while and not knowing that you see it. Then in a flash it is there,
+motionless, a brown-shaped shadow among shadows. ... The dear little
+thing! ... Mr. Siward, do you think--are you going to--"
+
+"No, I won't shoot it."
+
+"Thank you. ... Might I sit here a moment to watch it?"
+
+She seated herself soundlessly among the dead leaves; he sank into place
+beside her, laying his gun aside.
+
+"Rather rough on the dog," he said with a grimace.
+
+"I know. It is very good of you, Mr. Siward to do this for my pleasure.
+Oh--h! Do you see! Oh, the little beauty!"
+
+The woodcock had risen, plumage puffed out, strutting with wings bowed
+and tail spread, facing the dog. The sudden pigmy defiance thrilled her.
+"Brave! Brave!" she exclaimed, enraptured; but at the sound of her voice
+the bird crouched like a flash, large dark liquid eyes shining, long
+bill pointed straight toward them.
+
+"He'll fly the way his bill points," said Siward. "Watch!"
+
+He rose; she sprang lightly to her feet; there came a whirring flutter,
+a twittering shower of sweet notes, soft wings beating almost in their
+very faces, a distant shadow against the sky, and the woodcock was gone.
+
+Quieting the astounded dog, gun cradled in the hollow of his left arm,
+he turned to the girl beside him: "That sort of thing wins no cups," he
+said.
+
+"It wins something else, Mr. Siward,--my very warm regard for you."
+
+"There is no choice between that and the Shotover Cup," he admitted,
+considering her.
+
+"I--do you mean it?"
+
+"Of course I do, vigorously!"
+
+"Then you are much nicer than I thought you. ... And after all, if the
+price of a cup is the life of that brave little bird, I had rather shoot
+clay pigeons. Now you will scorn me I suppose. Begin!"
+
+"My ideal woman has never been a life-taker," he said coolly. "Once,
+when I was a boy, there was a girl--very lovely--my first sweetheart. I
+saw her at the traps once, just after she had killed her seventh pigeon
+straight, 'pulling it down' from overhead, you know--very clever--the
+little thing was breathing on the grass, and it made sounds--" He
+shrugged and walked on. "She killed her twenty-first bird straight; it
+was a handsome cup, too."
+
+And after a silence, "So you didn't love her any more, Mr.
+Siward?"--mockingly sweet.
+
+They laughed, and at the sound of laughter the tall-stemmed alders
+echoed with the rushing roar of a cock-grouse thundering skyward. Crack!
+Crack! Whirling over and over through a cloud of floating feathers, a
+heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird,
+splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson
+bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak.
+
+"Dead!" said Siward to the dog who had dropped to shot; "Fetch!" And,
+signalling the boy behind, he relieved the dog of his burden and tossed
+the dead weight of ruffled plumage toward him. Then he broke his gun,
+and, as the empty shells flew rattling backward, slipped in fresh
+cartridges, locked the barrels, and walked forward, the flush of
+excitement still staining his sunburnt face.
+
+"You deal death mercifully," said the girl in a low voice. "I wonder
+what your ci-devant sweetheart would think of you."
+
+"A bungler had better stick to the traps," he assented, ignoring the
+badinage.
+
+"I am wondering," she said thoughtfully, "what I think of men who kill."
+
+He turned sharply, hesitated, shrugged. "Wild things' lives are brief at
+best--fox or flying-tick, wet nests or mink, owl, hawk, weasel or
+man. But the death man deals is the most merciful. Besides," he added,
+laughing, "ours is not a case of sweethearts."
+
+"My argument is purely in the abstract, Mr. Siward. I am asking you
+whether the death men deal is more justifiable than a woman's gift of
+death?"
+
+"Oh, well, life-taking, the giving of life--there can be only one answer
+to the mystery; and I don't know it," he replied smiling.
+
+"I do."
+
+"Tell me then," he said, still amused.
+
+They had passed swale after swale of silver birches waist deep in
+perfumed fern and brake; the big timber lay before them. She moved
+forward, light gun swung easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and
+on the wood's sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against
+a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees.
+
+"You are feeling the pace a little," he said, coming up and standing in
+front of her.
+
+"The pace? No, Mr. Siward."
+
+"Are you a trifle--bored?" She considered him in silence, then leaned
+back luxuriously, rounded arms raised, wrists crossed to pillow her
+head.
+
+"This is charmingly new to me," she said simply.
+
+"What? Not the open?"
+
+"No; I have camped and done the usual roughing it with only three guides
+apiece and the champagne inadequately chilled. I have endured that sort
+of hardship several times, Mr. Siward. ... What is that furry hunch up
+there in that tall thin tree?"
+
+"A raccoon," he said presently. "Can you see the foxy head peeping so
+slyly down at us? Look at Sagamore nosing the air in that droll blind
+mole-like way. He knows there's something furry up aloft somewhere; and
+he knows it's none of his business."
+
+They watched the motionless ball of fur in the crotch of a slim forest
+elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded;
+the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the
+tangent foliage of an enormous oak, vanished amid bronzing leafy depths.
+
+In the silence the birds began to reappear. A jay screamed somewhere
+deep in the yellowing woods; black-capped chickadees dropped from twig
+to twig, cheeping inquiringly.
+
+She sat listening, bright head pillowed in her arms, idly attentive to
+his low running comment on beast and bird and tree, on forest stillness
+and forest sounds, on life and the wild laws of life and death governing
+the great out-world 'twixt sky and earth. Sunlight and shadows moving,
+speech and silence, waxed and waned. A listless contentment lay warm
+upon her, weighting the heavy white lids. The blue of her eyes was very
+dark now--almost purple like the colour of the sea when the wind-flaws
+turn the blue to violet.
+
+"Did you ever hear of the 'Lesser Children'?" she asked. "Listen then:
+
+     "'Multitudes, multitudes, under the moon they stirred!
+     The weakerbrothers of our earthly breed;
+     All came about my head and at my feet
+     A thousand thousand sweet,
+     With starry eyes not even raised to plead:
+     Bewildered, driven, hiding, fluttering, mute!
+     And I beheld and saw them one by one
+     Pass, and become as nothing in the night.'
+
+"Do you know what it means?
+
+     "'Winged mysteries of song that from the sky
+     Once dashed long music down--'
+
+"Do you understand?" she asked, smiling.
+
+     "'Who has not seen in the high gulf of light
+     What, lower, was a bird!'"
+
+She ceased, and, raising her eyes to his: "Do you know that plea for
+mercy on the lesser children who die all day to-day because the season
+opens for your pleasure, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Is it a woodland sermon?" he inquired, too politely.
+
+"The poem? No; it is the case for the prosecution. The prisoner may
+defend himself if he can."
+
+"The defence rests," he said. "The prisoner moves that he be
+discharged."
+
+"Motion denied," she interrupted promptly.
+
+Somewhere in the woodland world the crows were holding a noisy session,
+and she told him that was the jury debating the degree of his guilt.
+
+"Because you're guilty of course," she continued. "I wonder what your
+sentence is to be?"
+
+"I'll leave it to you," he suggested lazily.
+
+"Suppose I sentenced you to slay no more?"
+
+"Oh, I'd appeal--"
+
+"No use; I am the tribunal of last resort."
+
+"Then I throw myself upon the mercy of the court."
+
+"You do well, Mr. Siward. This court is very merciful. ... How much do you
+care for bird murder? Very much? Is there anything you care for more?
+Yes? And could this court grant it to you in compensation?"
+
+He said, deliberately, roused by the level challenge of her gaze:
+"The court is incompetent to compensate the prisoner or offer any
+compromise."
+
+"Why, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Because the court herself is already compromised in her future
+engagements."
+
+"But what has my--engagement to do with--"
+
+"You offered compensation for depriving me of my shooting. There could
+be only one adequate compensation."
+
+"And that?" she asked, coolly enough.
+
+"Your continual companionship."
+
+"But you have it, Mr. Siward--"
+
+"I have it for a day. The season lasts three months you know."
+
+"And you and I are to play a continuous vaudeville for three months? Is
+that your offer?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+"Then one day with me is not worth those many days of murder?" she asked
+in pretended astonishment.
+
+"Ask yourself why those many days would be doubly empty," he said so
+seriously that the pointless game began to confuse her.
+
+"Then"--she turned lightly from uncertain ground--"then perhaps we had
+better be about that matter of the cup you prize so highly. Are you
+ready, Mr. Siward? There is much to be killed yet--including time, you
+know."
+
+But the hinted sweetness of the challenge had aroused him, and he made
+no motion to rise. Nor did she.
+
+"I am not sure," he reflected, "just exactly what I should ask of you if
+you insist on taking away--" he turned and looked about him through the
+burnt gold foliage, "--if you took away all this out of my life."
+
+"I shall not take it; because I have nothing in exchange to offer ... you
+say," she answered imprudently.
+
+"I did not say so," he retorted.
+
+"You did--reminding me that the court is already engaged for a
+continuous performance."
+
+"Was it necessary to remind you?" he asked with deliberate malice.
+
+She flushed up, vexed, silent, then looked directly at him with
+beautiful hostile eyes. "What do you mean, Mr. Siward? Are you taking
+our harmless, idle badinage as warrant for an intimacy unwarranted?"
+
+"Have I offended?" he asked, so impassively that a flash of resentment
+brought her to her feet, angry and self-possessed.
+
+"How far have we to go?" she asked quietly.
+
+He rose to his feet, turned, hailing the keeper, repeating the question.
+And at the answer they both started forward, the dog ranging ahead
+through a dense growth of beech and chestnut, over a high brown ridge,
+then down, always down along a leafy ravine to the water's edge--a
+forest pond set in the gorgeous foliage of ripening maples.
+
+"I don't see," said Sylvia impatiently, "how we are going to obey
+instructions and go straight ahead. There must be a stupid boat
+somewhere!"
+
+But the game-laden keeper shook his head, pulled up his hip boots, and
+pointed out a line of alder poles set in the water to mark a crossing.
+
+"Am I expected to wade?" asked the girl anxiously.
+
+"This here," observed the keeper, "is one of the most sportin' courses
+on the estate. Last season I seen Miss Page go through it like a scared
+deer--the young lady, sir, that took last season's cup"--in explanation
+to Siward, who stood doubtfully at the water's edge, looking back at
+Sylvia.
+
+Raising her dismayed eyes she encountered his; there was a little laugh
+between them. She stepped daintily across the stones to the water's
+edge, instinctively gathering her kilts in one hand.
+
+"Miles and I could chair you over," suggested Siward.
+
+"Is that fair--under the rules?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss; as long as you go straight," said the keeper.
+
+So they laid aside the guns and the guide's game-sack, and formed a
+chair with their hands, and, bearing the girl between them, they waded
+out along the driven alder stakes, knee-deep in brown water.
+
+Before them herons rose into heavy flapping flight, broad wings
+glittering in the sun; a diver, distantly afloat among the lily pads,
+settled under the water to his eyes as a submarine settles till the
+conning-tower is awash.
+
+Her arm, lightly resting around his neck, tightened a trifle as the
+water rose to his thighs; then the faint pressure relaxed as they
+thrashed shoreward through the shallows, ankle deep once more, and
+landed among the dry reeds on the farther bank.
+
+Miles, the keeper, went back for the guns. Siward stamped about in the
+sun, shaking the drops from water-proof breeches and gaiters, only to be
+half drenched again when Sagamore shook himself vigorously.
+
+"I suppose," said Sylvia, looking sideways at Siward, "your contempt for
+my sporting accomplishments has not decreased. I'm sorry; I don't like
+to walk in wet shoes ... even to gain your approval."
+
+And, as the keeper came splashing across the shallows: "Miles, you may
+carry my gun. I shall not need it any longer--"
+
+The upward roar of a bevey of grouse drowned her voice; poor Sagamore,
+pointing madly in the blackberry thicket all unperceived, cast a
+dismayed glance aloft where the sunlit air quivered under the winnowing
+rush of heavy wings. Siward flung up his gun, heading a big quartering
+bird; steadily the glittering barrels swept in the arc of fire,
+hesitated, wavered; then the possibility passed; the young fellow
+lowered the gun, slowly, gravely; stood a moment motionless with bent
+head until the rising colour in his face had faded.
+
+And that was all, for a while. The astonished and disgusted keeper
+stared into the thicket; the dog lay quivering, impatient for signal.
+Sylvia's heart, which had seemed to stop with her voice, silenced in the
+gusty thunder of heavy wings, began beating too fast. For the ringing
+crack of a gun shot could have spoken no louder to her than the
+glittering silence of the suspended barrels; nor any promise of his
+voice sound as the startled stillness sounded now about her. For he had
+made something a trifle more than mere amends for his rudeness. He was
+overdoing everything--a little.
+
+He stood on the thicket's edge, absently unloading the weapon, scarcely
+understanding what he had done and what he had not done.
+
+A moment later a far hail sounded across the uplands, and against the
+sky figures moved distantly.
+
+"Alderdene and Marion Page," said Siward. "I believe we lunch yonder, do
+we not, Miles?"
+
+They climbed the hill in silence, arriving after a few minutes to
+find others already at luncheon--the Page boys, eager, enthusiastic,
+recounting adventure by flood and field; Rena Bonnesdel tired and
+frankly bored and decorated with more than her share of mud; Eileen
+Shannon, very pretty, very effective, having done more execution with
+her eyes than with the dainty fowling-piece beside her.
+
+Marion Page nodded to Sylvia and Siward with a crisp, business-like
+question or two, then went over to inspect their bag, nodding
+approbation as Miles laid the game on the grass.
+
+"Eight full brace," she commented. "We have five, and an odd
+cock-pheasant--from Black Fells, I suppose. The people to our left have
+been blazing away like Coney Island, but Rena's guide says the ferns are
+full of rabbits that way, and Major Belwether can't hit fur afoot. You,"
+she added frankly to Siward, "ought to take the cup. The birches ahead
+of you are full of woodcock. If you don't, Howard Quarrier will. He's
+into a flight of jack-snipe I hear."
+
+Siward's eyes had suddenly narrowed; then he laughed, patting Sagamore's
+cheeks. "I don't believe I shall shoot very steadily this afternoon,"
+he said, turning toward the group at luncheon under the trees. "I wish
+Quarrier well--with the cup."
+
+"Nonsense," said Marion Page curtly; "you are the cleanest shot I ever
+knew." And she raised her glass to him, frankly, and emptied it with the
+precision characteristic of her: "Your cup! With all my heart!"
+
+"I also drink to your success, Mr. Siward," said Sylvia in a low voice,
+lifting her champagne glass in the sunlight. "To the Shotover Cup--if
+you wish it." And as other glasses sparkled aloft amid a gay tumult of
+voices wishing him success, Sylvia dropped her voice, attuning it to
+his ear alone: "Success for the cup, if you wish it--or, whatever you
+wish--success!" and she meant it very kindly.
+
+His hand resting on his glass he sat, smiling silent acknowledgment to
+the noisy generous toasts; he turned and looked at Sylvia when her low
+voice caught his ear--looked at her very steadily, unsmiling.
+
+Then to the others, brightening again, he said a word or two, wittily,
+with a gay compliment well placed and a phrase to end it in good taste.
+And, in the little gust of hand-clapping and laughter, he turned again
+to Sylvia, smilingly, saying under his breath: "As though winning the
+cup could compensate me now for losing it!"
+
+She leaned involuntarily nearer: "You mean that you will not try for
+it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is not fair--to me!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--because I do not ask it of you."
+
+"You need not, now that I know your wish."
+
+"Mr. Siward, I--my wish--"
+
+But she had no chance to finish; already Rena Bonnesdel was looking
+at them, and there was a hint of amused surprise in Eileen Shannon's
+mischievous eyes, averted instantly, with malicious ostentation.
+
+Then Marion Page took possession of him so exclusively, so calmly, that
+something in her cool certainty vaguely irritated Sylvia, who had never
+liked her. Besides, the girl showed too plainly her indifference to
+other people; which other people seldom find amusing.
+
+"Stephen," called out Alderdene, anxiously counting the web loops in
+his khaki vest, "what do you call fair shooting at these damnable ruffed
+grouse? You needn't be civil about it, you know."
+
+"Five shells to a bird is good shooting," answered Siward. "Don't you
+think so, Miss Page?"
+
+"You have a better score, Mr. Siward," said Marion Page with a hostile
+glance at Alderdene, who had not made good.
+
+"That was chance--and this year's birds. I've taken ten shells to an old
+drummer in hard wood or short pines." He smiled to himself, adding:
+"A drove of six in the open got off scot free a little while ago. Miss
+Landis saw it."
+
+That he was inclined to turn it all to banter relieved her at once. "It
+was pitiable," she nodded gravely to Marion; "his nerve left him when
+they made such a din in the briers."
+
+Miss Page glanced at her indifferently.
+
+"What I need is practice like the chasseurs of Tarascon," admitted
+Siward.
+
+"I willingly offer my hat, monsieur," said Sylvia.
+
+Marion Page, impatient to start, had turned her tailor-made back to the
+company, and was instructing his crestfallen lordship very plainly:
+"You fire too quickly, Blinky; two seconds is what you must count when a
+grouse flushes. You must say 'Mark! Right!' or 'Mark! Left! Bang!'"
+
+"I might as well say 'Bang!' for all I've done to-day," he muttered,
+adjusting his shooting-goggles and snapping his eyes like fury. Then
+exploding into raucous laughter he moved off southward with Marion Page,
+who had exchanged a swift handshake with Siward; the twins followed,
+convoying Eileen and Rena, neither maiden excitedly enthusiastic. And so
+the luncheon party, lord and lady, twins and maidens, guides and dogs,
+trailed away across the ridge, distant silhouettes presently against the
+sky, then gone. And after a little while the far, dry, accentless report
+of smokeless powder announced that the opening of the season had been
+resumed and the Lesser Children were dying fast in the glory of a
+perfect day.
+
+"Are you ready, Mr. Siward?" She stood waiting for him at the edge of
+the thicket; Miles resumed his game sack and her fowling-piece; the dog
+came up, looking him anxiously in the eyes.
+
+So he walked forward beside her into the dappled light of the thicket.
+
+Within a few minutes the dog stood twice; and twice the whirring twitter
+of woodcock startled her, echoed by the futile crack of his gun.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir--"
+
+"Yes, Miles," with a glint of humour.
+
+"Overshot, sir,--excusin' the liberty, Mr. Siward. Both marked down
+forty yard to the left if you wish to start 'em again."
+
+"No," he said indifferently, "I had my chance at them. They're exempt."
+
+Then Sagamore, tail wildly whipping, came smack on the trail of an
+old stager of a cock-grouse--on, on over rock, log, wet gully, and dry
+ridge, twisting, doubling, circling, every wile, every trick employed
+and met, until the dog crawling noiselessly forward, trembled and froze,
+and Siward, far to left, wheeled at the muffled and almost noiseless
+rise. For an instant the slanting barrels wavered, grew motionless;
+but only a stray sunbeam glinting struck a flash of cold fire from
+the muzzle, only the feathery whirring whisper broke the silence of
+suspense. Then far away over sunny tree tops a big grouse sailed up,
+rocketing into the sky on slanted wings, breasting the height of green;
+dipped, glided downward with bowed wings stiffened, and was engulfed in
+the misty barriers of purpling woods.
+
+"Vale!" said Siward aloud, "I salute you!"
+
+He came strolling back across the crisp leaves, the dappled sunshine
+playing over his face like the flicker of a smile.
+
+"Miles," he said, "my nerve is gone. Such things happen. I'm all in.
+Come over here, my friend, and look at the sun with me."
+
+The discomfited keeper obeyed.
+
+"Where ought that refulgent luminary to scintilate when I face Osprey
+Ledge?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"The sun. How do I hold it?"
+
+"On the p'int of your right shoulder, sir.--You ain't quittin', Mr.
+Siward, sir!" anxiously; "that Shotover Cup is easy yours, sir!"
+eagerly; "Wot's a miss on a old drummer, Mr. Siward? Wot's twice
+over-shootin' cock, sir, when a blind dropper can see you are the
+cleanest, fastest, hard-shootin' shot in the null county!"
+
+But Siward shook his head with an absent glance at the dog, and motioned
+the astonished keeper forward.
+
+"Line the easiest trail for us," he said; "I think we are already a
+trifle tired. Twigs will do in short cover; use a hatchet in the big
+timber. ... And go slow till we join you."
+
+And when the unwilling and perplexed keeper had started, Siward,
+unlocking his gun, drew out the smooth yellow cartridges and pocketed
+them.
+
+Sylvia looked up as the sharp metallic click of the locked breech rang
+out in the silence.
+
+"Why do you do this, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"I don't know; really I am honest; I don't know."
+
+"It could not be because I--"
+
+"No, of course not," he said, too seriously to reassure her.
+
+"Mr. Siward," in quick displeasure.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"What you do for your amusements cannot concern me."
+
+"Right as usual," he said so gaily that a reluctant smile trembled on
+her lips.
+
+"Then why have you done this? It is unreasonable--if you don't feel as I
+do about killing things that are having a good time in the world."
+
+He stood silent, absently looking at the fowling-piece cradled in his
+left arm. "Shall we sit here a moment and talk it over?" he suggested
+listlessly.
+
+Her blue gaze swept him; his vague smile was indifferently bland.
+
+"If you are determined not to shoot, we might as well start for Osprey
+Ledge," she suggested; "otherwise, what reason is there for our being
+here together, Mr. Siward?"
+
+Awaiting his comment--perhaps expecting a counter-proposition--she
+leaned against the tree beside which he stood. And after a while, as his
+absent-minded preoccupation continued:
+
+"Do you think the leaves are dry enough to sit on?"
+
+He slipped off his shooting-coat and placed it at the base of the tree.
+She waited for a second, uncertain how to meet an attitude which seemed
+to take for granted matters which might, if discussed, give her at
+least the privilege of yielding. However, to discuss a triviality meant
+forcing emphasis where none was necessary. She seated herself; and, as
+he continued to remain standing, she stripped off her shooting-gloves
+and glanced up at him inquiringly: "Well, Mr. Siward, I am literally at
+your feet."
+
+"Which redresses the balance a little," he said, finding a place near
+her.
+
+"That is very nice of you. Can I always count on you for civil
+platitudes when I stir you out of your day-dreams?"
+
+"You can always count on stirring me without effort."
+
+"No, I can't. Nobody can. You are never to be counted on; you are too
+absent-minded. Like a veil you wrap yourself in a brown study, leaving
+everybody outside to consider the pointed flattery of your withdrawal.
+What happens to you when you are inside that magic veil? Do you change
+into anything interesting?"
+
+He sat there, chin propped on his linked fingers, elbows on knees; and,
+though there was always the hint of a smile in his pleasant eyes, always
+the indefinable charm of breeding in voice and attitude, something now
+was lacking. And after a moment she concluded that it was his attention.
+Certainly his wits were wool-gathering again; his eyes, edged with the
+shadow of a smile, saw far beyond her, far beyond the sunlit shadows
+where they sat.
+
+In his preoccupation she had found him negatively attractive. She
+glanced at him now from time to time, her eyes returning always to the
+beauty of the subdued light where all about them silver-stemmed birches
+clustered like slim shining pillars, crowned with their autumn canopy of
+crumpled gold.
+
+"Enchantment!" she said under her breath. "Surely an enchanted sleeper
+lies here somewhere."
+
+"You," he observed, "unawakened."
+
+"Asleep? I?" She looked around at him. "You are the dreamer here. Your
+eyes are full of dreaming even now. What is your desire?"
+
+He leaned on one arm, watching her; she had dropped her ungloved hand,
+searching among the newly fallen gold of the birch leaves drifted into
+heaps. On the third finger a jewel glittered; he saw it, conscious of
+its meaning--but his eyes followed the hand idly heaping up autumn gold,
+a white slim hand, smoothly fascinating. Then the little, restless hand
+swept near to his, almost touching it; and then instinctively he took
+it in his own, curiously, lifting it a little to consider its nearer
+loveliness. Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of it, perhaps it was
+sheer amazement that left her hand lying idly relaxed like a white
+petalled blossom in his. His bearing, too, was so blankly impersonal
+that for a moment the whole thing appeared inconsequent. Then, as her
+hand lay there, scarcely imprisoned, their eyes encountered,--and
+hers, intensely blue now, considered him without emotion, studied him
+impersonally without purpose, incuriously acquiescent, indifferently
+expectant.
+
+After a little while the consciousness of the contact disconcerted her;
+she withdrew her fingers with an involuntary shiver.
+
+"Is there no chance?" he asked.
+
+Perplexed with her own emotion, the meaning of his low-voiced question
+at first escaped her; then, like its own echo, came ringing back in her
+ears, re-echoed again as he repeated it:
+
+"Is there no chance for me, Miss Landis?"
+
+The very revulsion of self-possession returning chilled her; then anger
+came, quick and hot; then pride. She deliberated, choosing her words
+coolly enough: "What chance do you mean, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"A fighting chance. Can you give it to me?"
+
+"A fighting chance? For what?"--very low, very dangerous.
+
+"For you."
+
+Then, in spite of her, her senses became unsteady; a sudden ringing
+confusion seemed to deafen her, through which his voice, as if very far
+away, sounded again:
+
+"Men who are worth a fighting chance ask for it sometimes--but take it
+always. I take it."
+
+Her pallor faded under the flood of bright colour; the blue of her eyes
+darkened ominously to velvet.
+
+"Mr. Siward," she said, very distinctly and slowly, "I am
+not--even--sorry--for you."
+
+"Then my chance is desperate indeed," he retorted coolly.
+
+"Chance! Do you imagine--" Her anger choked her.
+
+"Are you not a little hard?" he said, paling under his tan. "I supposed
+women dismissed men more gently--even such a man as I am."
+
+For a full minute she strove to comprehend.
+
+"Such a man as you!" she repeated vaguely; "you mean--" a crimson
+wave dyed her skin to the temples and she leaned toward him in
+horror-stricken contrition; "I didn't mean that, Mr. Siward! I--I never
+thought of that! It had no weight, it was not in my thoughts. I meant
+only that you had assumed what is unwarranted--that you--your question
+humiliated me, knowing that I am engaged--knowing me so little--so--"
+
+"Yes, I knew everything. Ask yourself why I risk everything to say this
+to you? There can be only one answer."
+
+Then after a long silence: "Have I ever--" she began tremblingly--"ever
+by word or look--"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have I even--"
+
+"No. I've simply discovered how I feel. That's what I was dreaming about
+when you asked me. I was afraid I might do this too soon; but I meant to
+do it anyway before it became too late."
+
+"It was too late from the very moment we met, Mr. Siward." And, as he
+reddened painfully again, she added quickly: "I mean that I had already
+decided. Why will you take what I say so dreadfully different from the
+way I intend it? Listen to me. I--I believe I am not very experienced
+yet; I was a--astonished--quite stunned for a moment. Then it hurt
+me--and I said that I was not sorry for you ... I am sorry, now."
+
+And, as he said nothing: "You were a little rough, a little sudden with
+me, Mr. Siward. Men have asked me that question--several times; but
+never so soon, so unreasonably soon--never without some preliminary of
+some sort, so that I could foresee, be more or less prepared. ... But you
+gave me no warning. I--if you had, I would have known how to be gentle.
+I--I wish to be now. I like you--enough to say this to you, enough to
+be seriously sorry; if I could bring myself to really believe
+this--feeling--"
+
+Still he said nothing; he sat there listlessly studying the sun spots
+glowing, waxing, waning on the carpet of dead leaves at his feet.
+
+"As for--what you have said," she added, a little smile curving the
+sensitive mouth, "it is impulsive, unconsidered, a trifle boyish, Mr.
+Siward. I pay myself the compliment of your sincerity; it is rather nice
+to be a girl who can awaken the romance in a man within a day or two's
+acquaintance. ... And that is all it is--a romantic impulse with a pretty
+girl. You see I am frank; I am really glad that you find me attractive.
+Tell me so, if you wish. We shall not misunderstand each other again.
+Shall we?"
+
+He raised his head, considering her, forcing the smile to meet her own.
+
+"We shall be better friends than ever," she asserted confidently.
+
+"Yes, better than ever."
+
+"Because what you have done means the nicest sort of friendship, you
+see. You can't escape its duties and responsibilities now, Mr. Siward.
+I shall expect you to spend the greater part of your life in devotedly
+doing things for me. Besides, I am now privileged to worry you with
+advice. Oh, you have invested me with all sorts of powers now!"
+
+He nodded.
+
+She sprang to her feet, flushed, smiling, a trifle excited.
+
+"Is it all over, and are we the very ideals of friends?" she asked.
+
+"The very ideals."
+
+"You are nice!" she said impulsively, holding out both gloveless hands.
+He held them, she looking at him very sweetly, very confidently.
+
+"Allons! Without malice?" she asked.
+
+"Without malice."
+
+"Without afterthoughts?"
+
+"Without afterthoughts."
+
+"And--you are content?" persuasively.
+
+"Of course not," he said.
+
+"Oh, but you must be."
+
+"I must be," he repeated obediently.
+
+"And you are! Say it!"
+
+"But it does not make me unhappy not to be contented--"
+
+"Say it, please; or--do you desire me to be unhappy?"
+
+Her small, smooth hands lying between his, they stood confronting one
+another in the golden light. She might easily have brought the matter
+to an end; and why she did not, she knew no more than a kitten waking to
+consciousness under its first caress.
+
+"Say it," she repeated, laughing uncertainly back into his smiling eyes
+of a boy.
+
+"Say what?"
+
+"That you are contented."
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Mr. Siward, it is unkind, it is shameless--"
+
+"I know it; I am that sort."
+
+"Then I am sorry for you. Look at that!" turning her left hand in his so
+that the jewel on the third finger caught the light.
+
+"I see it."
+
+"And yet--"
+
+"And yet."
+
+"That," she observed with composure, "is sheer obstinacy. ... Isn't it?"
+
+"It is what I said it was: a hopeful discontent."
+
+"How can it be?" impatiently now, for the long, unaccustomed contact was
+unnerving her--yet she made no motion to withdraw her hands. "How can
+you really care for me? Do you actually believe that--devotion--comes
+like that?"
+
+"Exactly like that."
+
+"So suddenly? It is impossible!" with a twist of her pretty shoulders.
+
+"How did it come--to you?" he asked between his teeth.
+
+Then her face grew scarlet and her eyes grew dark, and her hands
+contracted in his--tightened, twisted fingers entangled, until, with
+a little sob, she swayed toward him and he caught her. An instant, a
+minute--more, perhaps, she did not know--she half lay in his arms, her
+untaught lips cold against his. Lassitude, faint consciousness, then
+tiny shock on shock came the burning revulsion; and her voice came back,
+too, sounding strangely to her, a colourless, monotonous voice.
+
+He had freed her; she remembered that somebody had asked him to--perhaps
+herself. That was well; she needed to breathe, to summon strength and
+common-sense, find out what had been done, what reasonless madness she
+had committed in the half-light of the silver-stemmed trees clustering
+in shameful witness on every hand.
+
+Suddenly the hot humiliation of it overwhelmed her, and she covered
+her face with her hands, standing, almost swaying, as wave on wave of
+incredulous shame seemed to sweep her from knee to brow. That phase
+passed after a while; out of it she emerged, flushed, outwardly
+composed, into another phase, in full self-possession once more, able
+to understand what had happened without the disproportion of emotional
+exaggeration. After all, she had only been kissed. Besides she was a
+novice, which probably accounted, in a measure, for the unreasonable
+emotion coincident with a caress to which she was unaccustomed. Without
+looking up at him she found herself saying coolly enough to surprise
+herself: "I never supposed I was capable of that. It appears that I
+am. I haven't anything to say for myself ... except that I feel fearfully
+humiliated. ... Don't say anything now ... I do not blame you, truly I do
+not. It was contemptible of me--to do it--wearing this--" she stretched
+out her slender left hand, not looking at him; "it was contemptible!" ...
+She slowly raised her eyes, summoning all her courage to face him.
+
+But he only saw in the pink confusion of her lovely face the dawning
+challenge of a coquette saluting her adversary in gay acknowledgment of
+his fleeting moment of success. And as his face fell, then hardened
+into brightness, instantly she divined how he rated her, and in a flash
+realized her weapons and her security, and that the control of the
+situation was hers, not in the control of this irresolute young man who
+stood so silently considering her. Strange that she should be ashamed
+of her own innocence, willing that he believe her accomplished in such
+arts, enchanted that he no longer perhaps suspected genuine emotion in
+the swift, confused sweetness of her first kiss. If only all that
+were truly hidden from him, if he dare not in his heart convict her of
+anything save perfection in a gay, imprudent role, what a weight lifted,
+what relief, what hot self-contempt cooled! What vengeance, too, she
+would take on him for the agony of her awakening--the dazed chagrin, the
+dread of his wise, amused eyes--eyes that she feared had often looked
+upon such scenes; eyes no doubt familiar with such unimportant details
+as the shamed demeanour of a novice.
+
+"Why do you take it so seriously?" she said, laughing and studying him,
+certain now of herself in this new disguise.
+
+"Do you take it lightly?" he asked, striving to smile.
+
+"I? Ah, I must, you know. You don't expect to marry me ... do you, Mr.
+Siward?"
+
+"I--" He choked up at that, grimly for a while.
+
+Walking slowly forward together she fell into step frankly beside him,
+near him--too near. "Try to be sensible," she was saying gaily; "I like
+you so much--and it would be horrid to have you mope, you know. And
+besides, even if I cared for you, there are reasons, you know--reasons
+for any girl to marry the man I am going to marry. Does my cynicism
+shock you? What am I to do?" with a shrug. "Such marriages are
+reasonable, and far likelier to be agreeable than when fancy is the sole
+motive--certainly far more agreeable than an ill-considered yielding to
+abstract emotion with nothing concrete in view. ... So, you see, I could
+not marry you even if I--" her voice was inclined to tremble, but she
+controlled it. Would she never learn her role? "even if I loved you--"
+
+Then her tongue stumbled and was silent; and they walked on, side by
+side, through the fading splendour of the year, exchanging no further
+speech.
+
+Toward sunset their guide hailed them, standing high among the rocks,
+a silhouette against the sky. And beyond him they saw the poles crowned
+with the huge nests of the fish-hawks, marking the last rendezvous at
+Osprey Ledge.
+
+She turned to him as they started up the last incline, thanking him in a
+sweet, natural voice for his care of her--quite innocently--until in
+the questioning, unconvinced gaze that met hers she found her own eyes
+softening and growing dim; and she looked away suddenly, lest he read
+her ere she had dared turn the first page in the book of self--ere
+she had studied, pried, probed among the pages of a new chapter whose
+familiar title, so long meaningless to her, had taken on a sudden
+troubling significance. And for the first time in her life she glanced
+uneasily at the new page in the book of self, numbered according to
+her years with the figures 23, and headed with the unconvincing chapter
+title, "Love."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V A WINNING LOSER
+
+The week passed swiftly, day after day echoing with the steady fusillade
+from marsh to covert, from valley to ridge. Guns flashed at dawn and
+dusk along the flat tidal reaches haunted of black mallard and teal; the
+smokeless powder cracked through alder swamp and tangled windfall where
+the brown grouse burst away into noisy blundering flight; where the
+woodcock, wilder now, shrilled skyward like feathered rockets, and the
+big northern hares, not yet flecked with snowy patches of fur, loped off
+into swamps to the sad undoing of several of the younger setters.
+
+There was a pheasant drive at Black Fells to which the Ferralls'
+guests were bidden by Beverly Plank--a curious scene, where ladies and
+gentlemen stood on a lawn, backed by an army of loaders and gun-bearers,
+while another improvised army of beaters drove some thousands of
+frightened, bewildered, homeless foreign pheasants at the guns. And
+the miserable aliens that escaped the guns were left to perish in the
+desolation of a coming winter which they were unfitted to withstand.
+
+So the first week of the season sped gaily, ending on Saturday with a
+heavy flight of northern woodcock and an uproarious fusillade among the
+silver birches.
+
+Once Ferrall loaded two motor cars with pioneers for a day beyond his
+own boundaries; and one day was spent ingloriously with the beagles; but
+otherwise the Shotover estate proved more than sufficient for good bags
+or target practice, as the skill of the sportsmen developed.
+
+Lord Alderdene, good enough on snipe and cock, was driven almost frantic
+by the ruffed grouse; Voucher did better for a day or two, and then lost
+the knack; Marion Page attended to business in her cool and thorough
+style, and her average on the gun-room books was excellent, and was also
+adorned with clever pen-and-ink sketches by Siward.
+
+Leroy Mortimer had given up shooting and established himself as a
+haunter of cushions in sunny corners. Tom O'Hara had gone back to Lenox;
+Mrs. Vendenning to Hot Springs. Beverly Plank, master of Black Fells,
+began to pervade the house after a tentative appearance; and he and
+Major Belwether pottered about the coverts, usually after luncheon--the
+latter doing little damage with his fowling-piece, and nobody knew
+how much with his gossiping tongue. Quarrier appeared in the field
+methodically, shot with judgment, taking no chances for a brilliant
+performance which might endanger his respectable average. As for the
+Page boys, they kept the river ducks stirring whenever Eileen Shannon
+and Rena Bonnesdel could be persuaded to share the canoes with them.
+Otherwise they haunted the vicinity of those bored maidens, suffering
+snubs sorrowfully, but persistently faithful. They were a great nuisance
+in the evening, especially as their sister did not permit them to lose
+more than ten dollars a day at cards.
+
+Cards--that is Bridge and Preference--ruled as usual; and the latter
+game being faster suited Mortimer and Ferrall, but did not aid Siward
+toward recouping his Bridge losses.
+
+Noticing this, late in the week, Major Belwether kindly suggested
+Klondyke for Siward's benefit, which proved more quickly disastrous to
+him than anything yet proposed; and he went back to Bridge, preferring
+rather to "carry" Agatha Caithness at intervals than crumble into
+bankruptcy under the sheer deadly hazard of Klondyke.
+
+Two matters occupied him; since "cup day" he had never had another
+opportunity to see Sylvia Landis alone; that was the first matter. He
+had touched neither wine nor spirits nor malt since the night Ferrall
+had found him prone, sprawling in a stupor on his disordered bed. That
+was the second matter, and it occupied him, at times required all
+his attention, particularly when the physical desire for it set in,
+steadily, mercilessly, mounting inexorably like a tide. ... But, like
+the tide, it ebbed at last, particularly when a sleepless night had
+exhausted him.
+
+He had gone back to his shooting again after a cool review of the
+ethics involved. It even amused him to think that the whimsical
+sermon delivered him by a girl who had cleverness enough to marry
+many millions, with Quarrier thrown in, could have so moved him to
+sentimentality. He had ceded the big cup of antique silver to Quarrier,
+too--a matter which troubled him little, however, as in the irritation
+of the reaction he had been shooting with the brilliancy of a demon; and
+the gun-room books were open to any doubting guests' inspection.
+
+Time, therefore, was never heavy on his hands, save when the tide
+threatened--when at night he stirred and awoke, conscious of its
+crawling advance, aware of its steady mounting menace. Moments at
+table, when the aroma of wine made him catch his breath, moments in
+the gun-room redolent of spicy spirits; a maddening volatile fragrance
+clinging to the card-room, too! Yes, the long days were filled with such
+moments for him.
+
+But afield the desire faded; and even during the day, indoors, he
+shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded--the long hours,
+lying there tense, stark-eyed, sickened with desire.
+
+As for Sylvia, she and Grace Ferrall had taken to motoring, driving
+away into the interior or taking long flights north and south along the
+coast. Sometimes they took Quarrier, sometimes, when Mrs. Ferrall drove,
+they took in ballast in the shape of a superfluous Page boy and a girl
+for him. Once Grace Ferrall asked Siward to join them; but no definite
+time being set, he was scarcely surprised to find them gone when he
+returned from a morning on the snipe meadows. And Sylvia, leagues away
+by that time, curled up in the tonneau beside Grace Ferrall, watched the
+dark pines flying past, cheeks pink, eyes like stars, while the rushing
+wind drove health into her and care out of her--cleansing, purifying,
+overwhelming winds flowing through and through her, till her very soul
+within her seemed shining through the beauty of her eyes. Besides, she
+had just confessed.
+
+
+"He kissed you!" repeated Grace Ferrall incredulously.
+
+"Yes--a number of times. He was silly enough to do it, and I let him."
+
+"Did--did he say--"
+
+"I don't know what he said; I was all nerves--confused--scared--a
+perfect stick in fact! ... I don't believe he'd care to try again."
+
+Then Mrs. Ferrall deliberately settled down in her furs to extract
+from the girl beside her every essential detail; and the girl, frank at
+first, grew shy and silent--reticent enough to worry her friend into a
+silence which lasted a long while for a cheerful little matron of her
+sort.
+
+Presently they spoke of other matters--matters interesting to pretty
+women with much to do in the coming winter between New York, Hot
+Springs, and Florida; surmises as to dinners, dances, and the newcomers
+in the younger sets, and the marriages to be arranged or disarranged,
+and the scandals humanity is heir to, and the attitude of the bishop
+toward divorce.
+
+And the new pavillion to be built for Saint Berold's Hospital, and the
+various states of the various charities each was interested in, and the
+chances of something new at the opera, and the impossibility of saving
+Fifth Avenue from truck traffic, and the increasing importance of
+Washington as a social centre, and the bad manners of a foreign
+ambassador, and the better manners of another diplomat, and the lack of
+discrimination betrayed by our ambassador to a certain great Power
+in choosing people for presentation at court, and the latest unhappy
+British-American marriage, and the hopelessness of the French as decent
+husbands, and the recent accident to the Claymores' big yacht, and the
+tendency of well-born young men toward politics, and the anything but
+distinguished person of Lord Alderdene, which was, however, vastly
+superior to the demeanour and person of others of his rank recently
+imported, and the beauty of Miss Caithness, and the chance that Captain
+Voucher had if Leila Mortimer would let him alone, and the absurdity
+of the Page twins, and the furtive coarseness of Leroy Mortimer and his
+general badness, and the sadness of Leila Mortimer's lot when she had
+always been in love with other people,--and a little scandalous surmise
+concerning Tom O'Hara, and the new house on Seventy-ninth Street
+building for Mrs. Vendenning, and that charming widow's success at last
+year's horse show--and whether the fashion of the function was reviving,
+and whether Beverly Plank had completely broken into the social sets
+he had besieged so long, or whether a few of the hunting and shooting
+people merely permitted him to drive pheasants for them, and why
+Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to
+die unwed, and--and--and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a
+circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer
+muzzle toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more--having
+travelled half the world over to find him.
+
+"He is the sweetest fellow with his mother," sighed Grace; "and that
+counts heavily with me. But there's trouble ahead for her--sorrow and
+trouble enough for them both, if he is a true Siward."
+
+"Heredity again!" said Sylvia impatiently. "Isn't he man enough to win
+out? I'll bet you he settles down, marries, and--"
+
+"Marries? Not he! How many girls do you suppose have believed that--were
+justified in believing he meant anything by his attractive manner and
+nice ways of telling you how much he liked you? He had a desperate
+affair with Mrs. Mortimer--innocent enough I fancy. He's had a dozen
+within three years; and in a week Rena Bonnesdel has come to making eyes
+at him, and Eileen gives him no end of chances which he doesn't see. As
+for Marion Page, the girl had been on the edge of loving him for years!
+You laugh? But you are wrong; she is in love with him now as much as she
+ever can be with anybody."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"Yes I do. Hadn't you suspected it?"
+
+And as Sylvia had suspected it she remained silent.
+
+"If any woman in this world could keep him to the mark, she could,"
+continued Mrs. Ferrall. "He's a perfect fool not to see how she cares
+for him."
+
+Sylvia said: "He is indeed."
+
+"It would be a sensible match, if she cared to risk it, and if he would
+only ask her. But he won't."
+
+"Perhaps," ventured Sylvia, "she'll ask him. She strikes me as that
+sort. I do not mean it unkindly--only Marion is so tailor-made and
+cigaretteful--"
+
+Mrs. Ferrall looked up at her.
+
+"Did he propose to you?"
+
+"Yes--I think so."
+
+"Then it's the first time for him. He finds women only too willing to
+play with him as a rule, and he doesn't have to be definite. I wonder
+what he meant by being so definite with you?"
+
+"I suppose he meant marriage," said Sylvia serenely; yet there was the
+slightest ring in her voice; and it amused Mrs. Ferrall to try her a
+little further.
+
+"Oh, you think he really intended to commit himself?"
+
+"Why not?" retorted Sylvia, turning red. "Do you think he found me
+over-willing, as you say he finds others?"
+
+"You were probably a new sensation for him," inferred Mrs. Ferrall
+musingly. "You mustn't take him seriously, child--a man with his
+record. Besides, he has the same facility with a girl that he has with
+everything else he tries; his pen--you know how infernally clever he is;
+and he can make good verse, and write witty jingles, and he can carry
+home with him any opera and play it decently, too, with the proper
+harmonies. Anything he finds amusing he is clever with--dogs, horses,
+pen, brush, music, women"--that was too malicious, for Sylvia had
+flushed up painfully, and Grace Ferrall dropped her gloved hand on the
+hand of the girl beside her: "Child, child," she said, "he is not that
+sort; no decent man ever is unless the girl is too."
+
+Sylvia, sitting up very straight in her furs, said: "He found me
+anything but difficult--if that's what you mean."
+
+"I don't. Please don't be vexed, dear. I plague everybody when I see an
+opening. There's really only one thing that worries me about it all."
+
+"What is that?" asked Sylvia without interest.
+
+"It's that you might be tempted to care a little for him, which, being
+useless, might be unwise."
+
+"I am ... tempted."
+
+"Not seriously!"
+
+"I don't know." She turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to
+her. "Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I'm glad
+I've said it. The things he knows about and doesn't know have been a
+revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too
+much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. I've
+said it; I'm glad I have. He seemed different at Newport; he seemed nice
+at Lenox. The truth is, he's a horrid disappointment--and I'm bored to
+death at my brilliant prospects."
+
+The low whizzing hum of the motor filled a silence that produced
+considerable effect upon Grace Ferrall. And, after mastering her wits,
+she said in a subdued voice:
+
+"Of course it's my meddling."
+
+"Of course it isn't. I asked your opinion, but I knew what I was
+going to do. Only, I did think him personally possible--which made the
+expediency, the mercenary view of it easier to contemplate."
+
+She was becoming as frankly brutal as she knew how to be, which made the
+revolt the more ominous.
+
+"You don't think you could endure him for an hour or two a day, Sylvia?"
+
+"It is not that," said the girl almost sullenly.
+
+"But--"
+
+"I'm afraid of myself--call it inherited mischief if you like! If I let
+a man do to me what Mr. Siward did when I was only engaged to Howard,
+what might I do--"
+
+"You are not that sort!" said Mrs. Ferrall bluntly. "Don't be exotic,
+Sylvia."
+
+"How do you know--if I don't know? Most girls are kissed; I--well I
+didn't expect to be. But I was! I tell you, Grace, I don't know what I
+am or shall be. I'm unsafe; I know that much."
+
+"It's moral and honest to realize it," said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; "and
+in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't
+meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give
+Howard his conge for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell
+upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the
+impulse of the moment."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"You are too clever not to. Consider the matter wisely, dispassionately,
+intelligently, dear; then if by April you simply can't stand it--talk
+the thing over with me again," she ended rather vaguely and wistfully;
+for it had been her heart's desire to wed Sylvia's beauty and Quarrier's
+fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent
+enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier,
+as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in
+somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her
+fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!--oh, vexation!--the
+neglected but essentially constructive detail of human architecture had
+buckled, knocking the dream palace and its princess and its splendour
+about her ears.
+
+"Things never happen in real life," she observed plaintively; "only
+romances have plots where things work out. But we people in real life,
+we just go on and on in a badly constructed, plotless sort of way with
+no villains, no interesting situations, no climaxes, no ensemble. No, we
+grow old and irritable and meaner and meaner; we lose our good looks and
+digestions, and we die in hopeless discord with the unity required in a
+dollar and a half novel by a master of modern fiction."
+
+"But some among us amass fortunes," suggested Sylvia, laughing.
+
+"But we don't live happy ever after. Nobody ever had enough money in
+real life."
+
+"Some fall in love," observed Sylvia, musing.
+
+"And they are not content, silly!"
+
+"Why? Because nobody ever had enough love in real life," mocked Sylvia.
+
+"You have said it, child. That is the malady of the world, and nobody
+knows it until some pretty ninny like you babbles the truth. And that is
+why we care for those immortals in romance, those fortunate lovers who,
+in fable, are given and give enough of love; those magic shapes in verse
+and tale whose hearts are satisfied when the mad author of their being
+inks his last period and goes to dinner."
+
+Sylvia laughed awhile, then, chin on wrist, sat musing there, muffled in
+her furs.
+
+"As for love, I think I should be moderate in the asking, in the giving.
+A little--to flavour routine--would be sufficient for me I fancy."
+
+"You know so much about it," observed Mrs. Ferrall ironically.
+
+"I am permitted to speculate, am I not?"
+
+"Certainly. Only speculate in sound investments, dear."
+
+"How can you make a sound investment in love? Isn't it always sheerest
+speculation?"
+
+"Yes, that is why simple matrimony is usually a safer speculation than
+love."
+
+"Yes, but--love isn't matrimony."
+
+"Match that with its complementary platitude and you have the essence
+of modern fiction," observed Mrs. Ferrall. "Love is a subject talked
+to death, which explains the present shortage in the market I suppose.
+You're not in love and you don't miss it. Why cultivate an artificial
+taste for it? If it ever comes naturally, you'll be astonished at your
+capacity for it, and the constant deterioration in quantity and quality
+of the visible supply. Goodness! my epigrams make me yawn--or is it
+age and the ill humour of the aged when the porridge spills over on the
+family cat?"
+
+"I am the cat, I suppose," asked Sylvia, laughing.
+
+"Yes you are--and you go tearing away, back up, fur on end, leaving me
+by the fire with no porridge and only the aroma of the singeing fur to
+comfort me. ... Still there's one thing to comfort me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Kitty-cats come back, dear."
+
+"Oh, I suppose so. ... Do you believe I could induce him to wear his hair
+any way except pompadour? ... and, dear, his beard is so dreadfully silky.
+Isn't there anything he could take for it?"
+
+"Only a razor I'm afraid. Those long, thick, soft, eyelashes of his are
+ominous. Eyes of that sort ruin a man for my taste. He might just as
+reasonably wear my hat."
+
+"But he can't follow the fashions in eyes," laughed Sylvia. "Oh, this is
+atrocious of us--it is simply horrible to sit here and say such things.
+I am cold-blooded enough as it is--material enough, mean, covetous,
+contemptible--"
+
+"Dear!" said Grace Ferrall mildly, "you are not choosing a husband; you
+are choosing a career. To criticise his investments might be bad taste;
+to be able to extract what amusement you can out of Howard is a direct
+mercy from Heaven. Otherwise you'd go mad, you know."
+
+"Grace! Do you wish me to marry him?"
+
+"What is the alternative, dear?"
+
+"Why, nothing--self-respect, dowdiness, and peace."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All I can see."
+
+"Not Stephen Siward?"
+
+"To marry? No. To enjoy, yes. ... Grace, I have had such a good time with
+him; you don't know! He is such a boy--sometimes; and I--I believe that
+I am rather good for him. ... Not that I'd ever again let him do that
+sort of thing. ... Besides, his curiosity is quenched; I am the sort he
+supposed. Now he's found out he will be nice. ... It's been days since
+I've had a talk with him. He tried to, but I wouldn't. Besides, the
+major has said nasty things about him when Howard was present; nothing
+definite, only hints, smiling silences, innuendoes on the verge of
+matters rather unfit; and I had nothing definite to refute. I could not
+even appear to understand or notice--it was all done in such a horridly
+vague way. But it only made me like him; and no doubt that actress he
+took to the Patroons is better company than he finds in nine places out
+of ten among his own sort."
+
+"Oh," said Grace Ferrall slowly, "if that is the way you feel, I don't
+see why you shouldn't play with Mr. Siward whenever you like."
+
+"Nor I. I've been a perfect fool not to. ... Howard hates him."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"What a question! A woman knows such things. Then, you remember that
+caricature--so dreadfully like Howard? Howard has no sense of humour;
+he detests such things. It was the most dreadful thing that Mr. Siward
+could have done to him."
+
+"Meddled again!" groaned Grace. "Doesn't Howard know that I did that?"
+
+"Yes, but nothing I can say alters his conviction that the likeness was
+intended. You know it was a likeness! And if Mr. Siward had not told
+me that it was not intended, I should never have believed it to be an
+accident."
+
+After a prolonged silence Sylvia said, overcarelessly: "I don't quite
+understand Howard. With me anger lasts but a moment, and then I'm open
+to overtures for peace ... I think Howard's anger lasts."
+
+"It does," said Grace. "He was a muff as a boy--a prig with a prig's
+memory under all his shallow, showy surface. I'm frank with you; I never
+could take my cousin either respectfully or seriously, but I've known
+him to take his own anger so seriously that years after he has visited
+it upon those who had really wronged him. And he is equipped for
+retaliation if he chooses. That fortune of his reaches far. ... Not that
+I think him capable of using such a power to satisfy a mere personal
+dislike. Howard has principles, loads of them. But--the weapon is
+there."
+
+"Is it true that Mr. Siward is interested in building electric roads?"
+asked Sylvia curiously.
+
+"I don't know, child. Why?"
+
+"Nothing. I wondered."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Mr. Mortimer said so."
+
+"Then I suppose he is. I'll ask Kemp if you like. Why? Isn't it all
+right to build them?"
+
+"I suppose so. Howard is in it somehow. In fact Howard's company is
+behind Mr. Siward's, I believe."
+
+Grace Ferrall turned and looked at the girl beside her, laughing
+outright.
+
+"Oh, Howard doesn't do mysterious financial things to nice young men
+because they draw impudent pictures of him running after his dog--or
+for any other reason. That, dear, is one of those skilfully developed
+portions of an artistic plot; and plots exist only in romance. So do
+villains; and besides, my cousin isn't one. Besides that, if Howard is
+in that thing, no doubt Kemp and I are too. So your nice young man is in
+very safe company."
+
+"You draw such silly inferences," said Sylvia coolly; but there was a
+good deal of colour in her cheeks; and she knew it and pulled her big
+motor veil across her face, fastening it under her chin. All of which
+amused Grace Ferrall infinitely until the subtler significance of the
+girl's mental processes struck her, sobering her own thoughts. Sylvia,
+too, had grown serious in her preoccupation; and the partie-a-deux
+terminated a few minutes later in a duet of silence over the tea-cups in
+the gun-room.
+
+The weather had turned warm and misty; one of those sudden sea-coast
+changes had greyed the blue in the sky, spreading a fine haze over land
+and water, effacing the crisp sparkle of the sea, dulling the westering
+sun.
+
+A few moments later Sylvia, glancing over her shoulder, noticed that a
+fine misty drizzle had clouded the casements. That meant that her usual
+evening stroll on the cliffs with Quarrier, before dressing for dinner,
+was off. And she drew a little breath of unconscious relief as Marion
+Page walked in, her light woollen shooting-jacket, her hat, shoes, and
+the barrels of the fowling-piece tucked under her left arm-pit, all
+glimmering frostily with powdered rain drops.
+
+She said something to Grace Ferrall about the mist promising good
+point-shooting in the morning, took the order book from a servant,
+jotted down her request to be called an hour before sunrise, filled in
+the gun-room records with her score--the species and number bagged, and
+the number of shells used--and accepting the tea offered, drew out a
+tiny cigarette-case of sweet-bay wood heavily crusted with rose-gold.
+
+"With whom were you shooting?" asked Grace, as Marion dropped one
+well-shaped leg over the other and wreathed her delicately tanned
+features in smoke.
+
+"Stephen Siward and Blinky. They're at it yet, but I had some letters
+to write." She glanced leisurely at Sylvia and touched the ash-tray with
+the whitening end of her cigarette. "That dog you let Mr. Siward have is
+a good one. I'm taking him to Jersey next week for the cock-shooting."
+
+Sylvia returned her calm gaze blankly.
+
+An unreasonable and disagreeable shock had passed through her.
+
+"My North Carolina pointers are useless for close work," observed Marion
+indifferently; and she leaned back, watching the blue smoke curling
+upward from her cigarette.
+
+Sylvia, distrait, but with downcast eyes on fire under the fringed
+lids, was thinking of the cheque Siward had given her for Sagamore. The
+transaction, for her, had been a business one on the surface only. She
+had never meant to use the cheque. She had laid it away among a few
+letters, relics, pleasant souvenirs of the summer. To her the affair
+had been softened by a delicate hint of intimacy,--the delight he was to
+take in something that had once been hers had given her a faint taste
+of the pleasure of according pleasure to a man. And this is what he had
+done!
+
+The drizzle had turned to fog, through which rain was now pelting the
+cliffs; people were returning from the open; a motor-car came whizzing
+into the drive, and out of it tumbled Rena and Eileen and the faithful
+Pages, the girls irritable and ready for tea, and the boys like a
+pair of eager, wagging, setter puppies, pleased with everything and
+everybody, utterly oblivious to the sombre repose brooding above the
+tea-table.
+
+Their sister calmly refused them the use of her cigarettes. Eileen
+presented her pretty shoulder, Rena nearly yawned at them, but,
+nothing dampened, they recounted a number of incidents with reciprocal
+enthusiasm to Sylvia, who was too inattentive to smile, and to Grace
+Ferrall, who smiled the more sweetly through sheer inattention.
+
+Then Alderdene came in, blinking a greeting through his foggy goggles,
+sloppy, baggy, heavy shoes wheezing, lingered in the vicinity long
+enough to swallow his "peg" and acquire a disdainful opinion of his
+shooting from Marion, and then took himself off, leaving the room noisy
+with his laugh, which resembled the rattle of a startled kingfisher.
+
+In ones and twos the guests reported as the dusk-curtained fog closed in
+on Shotover. Quarrier came, dry as a chip under his rain-coat, but his
+silky beard was wet with rain, and moisture powdered his long, soft
+eyelashes and white skin; and his flexible, pointed fingers, as he
+drew off his gloves, seemed startling in their whiteness through the
+gathering gloom.
+
+"I suppose our evening walk is out of the question," he said, standing
+by Sylvia, who had nodded a greeting and then turned her head rather
+hastily to see who had entered the room. It was Siward, only a vague
+shape in the gloom, but perfectly recognisable to her. At the same
+moment Marion Page rose leisurely and strolled toward the billiard-room.
+
+"Our walk?" repeated Sylvia absently--"it's raining, you know." Yet only
+a day or two ago she had walked to church with Siward through the rain,
+the irritated Major feeling obliged to go with them. Her eyes followed
+Siward's figure, suddenly dark against the door of the lighted
+billiard-room, then brilliantly illuminated, as he entered, nodded
+acceptance to Mortimer's invitation, and picked up the cue just laid
+aside by Agatha Caithness, who had turned to speak to Marion. Then
+Mortimer's bulk loomed nearer; voices became gay and animated in the
+billiard-room. Siward's handsome face was bent toward Agatha Caithness
+in gay challenge; Mortimer's heavy laugh broke out; there came the
+rattle of pool-balls, and the dull sound of cue-butts striking the
+floor; then, crack! and the game began, with Marion Page and Siward
+fighting Mortimer and Miss Caithness for something or other.
+
+Quarrier had been speaking for some time before Sylvia became aware
+of it--something about a brisk walk in the morning somewhere; and she
+nodded impatiently, watching Marion's supple waist-line as she bent far
+over the illuminated table for a complicated shot at the enemy.
+
+His fiancee's inattention was not agreeable to Quarrier. A dozen things
+had happened since his arrival which had not been agreeable to him:
+her failure to meet him at the Fells Crossing, and the reason for her
+failure; and her informal acquaintance with Siward, whose presence at
+Shotover he had not looked for, and her sudden intimacy with the man he
+had never particularly liked, and whom within six months he had come to
+detest and to avoid.
+
+These things--the outrageous liberty Siward had permitted himself in
+caricaturing him, the mortifying caprice of Sylvia for Siward on the day
+of the Shotover cup-drive--had left indelible impressions in a cold and
+rather heavy mind, slow to waste effort in the indulgence of any vital
+emotion.
+
+In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive
+disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the
+scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life
+he understood what it was to fear the man he disliked. For if Siward
+had committed the insane imprudence which had cost him his title to
+membership, he had also done something, knowingly or otherwise, which
+awoke in Quarrier a cold, slow fear; and that fear was dormant, but
+present, now, and it, for the time being, dictated his attitude and
+bearing toward the man who might or might not be capable of using
+viciously a knowledge which Quarrier believed that he must possess.
+
+For that reason, when it was not possible to avoid Siward, his bearing
+toward him was carefully civil; for that reason he dampened Major
+Belwether's eagerness to tell everybody all he knew about the
+shamelessly imprudent girl who had figured with Siward in the scandal,
+but whose identity the press had not discovered.
+
+Silence was always desirable to Quarrier; silence concerning all matters
+was a trait inborn and congenially cultivated to a habit by him in every
+affair of life--in business, in leisure, in the methodical pursuits of
+such pleasures as a limited intellect permitted him, in personal and
+family matters, in public questions and financial problems.
+
+He listened always, but never invited confidences; he had no opinion to
+express when invited. And he became very, very rich.
+
+And over it all spread a thin membrane of vanity, nervous, not
+intellectual, sensitiveness; for all sense of humour was absent in this
+man, whose smile, when not a physical effort, was automatically and
+methodically responsive to certain fixed cues. He smiled when he said
+"Good morning," when declining or accepting invitations, when taking
+his leave, when meeting anybody of any financial importance, and
+when everybody except himself had begun to laugh in a theatre or a
+drawing-room. This limit to any personal manifestation he considered a
+generous one. And perhaps it was.
+
+
+A sudden rain-squall, noisy against the casements, had darkened the
+room; then the electric lights broke out with a mild candle-like lustre,
+and Quarrier, standing beside Sylvia's chair, discovered it to be empty.
+
+It was not until he had dressed for dinner that he saw her again, seated
+on the stairs with Marion Page--a new appearance of intimacy for both
+women, who heretofore had found nothing except a passing civility in
+common.
+
+Marion was discussing dog-breeding with that cool, crude, direct
+insouciance so unpleasant to some men. Sylvia was attentive, curious,
+and instinctively shrinking by turns, secretly dismayed at the
+overplainness of terms employed in kennel lore by the girl at her side.
+
+The conversation veered toward the Sagamore pup. Marion explained that
+Siward was too busy to do any Southern shooting, which was why he was
+glad to have her polish Sagamore on Jersey woodcock.
+
+"I thought it was not good for a dog to be used by anybody except his
+master," said Sylvia carelessly.
+
+"Only second-raters suffer. Besides, I have shot enough, now, with Mr.
+Siward to use his dog as he does."
+
+"He is an agreeable shooting companion, smiled Sylvia.
+
+"He is perfect," answered Marion coolly. "The only test for a
+thoroughbred is the field. He rings true."
+
+They exchanged carefully impersonal views on Siward's good qualities
+for a moment or two; then Marion said bluntly: "Do you know anything in
+particular about that Patroons Club affair?"
+
+"No," said Sylvia, "nothing in particular."
+
+"Neither do I; and I don't care to; I mean, that I don't care what he
+did; and I wish that gossiping old Major would stop trying to hint it to
+me."
+
+"My uncle!"
+
+"Oh! I forgot. Beg your pardon, you know, but--"
+
+"I'm not offended," observed Sylvia, with a shrug of her pretty, bare
+shoulders.
+
+Marion laughed. "Such a gadabout! Besides, I'm no prude, but he and
+Leroy Mortimer have no business to talk to unmarried women the way they
+do. No matter how worldly wise we are, men have no right to suppose we
+are."
+
+"Pooh!" shrugged Sylvia. "I have no patience to study out
+double-entendre, so it never shocks me. Besides--"
+
+She was going to add that she was not at all versed in doubtful worldly
+wisdom, but decided not to, as it might seem to imply disapproval of
+Marion's learning. So she went on: "Besides, what have innuendoes to do
+with Mr. Siward?"
+
+"I don't know whether I care to understand them. The Major hinted
+that the woman--the one who figured in it--is--rather exclusively Mr.
+Siward's 'property.'"
+
+"Exclusively?" repeated Sylvia curiously. "She's a public actress, isn't
+she?"
+
+"If you call the manoeuvres of a newly fledged chorus girl acting, yes,
+she is. But I don't believe Mr. Siward figures in that unfashionable
+role. Why, there are too many women of his own sort ready for mischief."
+Marion turned to Sylvia, her eyes hard with a cynicism quite lost on the
+other. "That sort of thing might suit Leroy Mortimer, but it doesn't fit
+Mr. Siward," she concluded, rising as their hostess appeared from above
+and the butler from below.
+
+And all through dinner an indefinitely unpleasant remembrance of the
+conversation lingered with Sylvia, and she sat silent for minutes at a
+time, returning to actualities with a long, curious side-glance across
+at Siward, and an uncomprehending smile of assent for whatever Quarrier
+or Major Belwether had been saying to her.
+
+Cards she managed to avoid after dinner, and stood by Quarrier's chair
+for half an hour, absently watching the relentless method and steady
+adherence to rule which characterised his Bridge-playing, the eager,
+unslaked brutality of Mortimer, the set, selfish face of his pretty
+wife, the chilled intensity of Miss Caithness.
+
+And Grace Ferrall's phrase recurred to her, "Nobody ever has enough
+money!"--not even these people, whose only worry was to find investment
+for the surplus they were unable to spend. Something of the meanness
+of it all penetrated her. Were these the real visages of these people,
+whose faces otherwise seemed so smooth and human? Was Leila Mortimer
+aware of the shrillness of her voice? Did Agatha Caithness realise how
+pinched her mouth and nose had grown? Did even Leroy Mortimer dream how
+swollen the pouches under his eyes were; how red and puffy his hands,
+shuffling a new pack; how pendulous and dreadful his red under-lip when
+absorbedly making up his cards?
+
+Instinctively she moved a step forward for a glimpse of Quarrier's face.
+The face appeared to be a study in blankness. His natural visage was
+emotionless and inexpressive enough, but this face, from which every
+vestige of colour had fled, fascinated her with its dead whiteness; and
+the hair brushed high, the long, black lashes, the silky beard, struck
+her as absolutely ghastly, as though they had been glued to a face of
+wax.
+
+She turned on her heel, restless, depressed, inclined for companionship.
+The Page boys had tempted Rena and Eileen to the billiard-room; Voucher,
+Alderdene, and Major Belwether were huddled over a table, immersed in
+Preference; Katharyn Tassel and Grace Ferrall sat together looking over
+the announcements of Sylvia's engagement in a batch of New York papers
+just arrived; Ferrall was writing at a desk, and Siward and Marion were
+occupied in the former's sketch for an ideal shooting vehicle, to be
+built on the buckboard principle, with a clever arrangement for dogs,
+guns, ammunition, and provisions. Siward's profile, as it bent in
+the lamplight over the paper, was very engaging. The boyish note
+predominated as he talked while he drew, his eyes now smiling, now
+seriously intent on the sketch which was developing so swiftly under his
+facile pencil.
+
+Marion's clean-cut blond head was close to his, her supple body twisted
+in her seat, one bare arm hanging over the back of the chair. Something
+in her attitude seemed to exclude intrusion; her voice, too, was hushed
+in comment, though his was pitched in his naturally agreeable key.
+
+Sylvia had taken a hesitating step toward them, but halted,
+turning irresolutely; and suddenly over her crept a sensation of
+isolation--something of that feeling which had roused her at midnight
+from her bed and driven her to Grace Ferrall for a refuge from she knew
+not what.
+
+The rustle of her silken dinner gown was scarcely perceptible as she
+turned. Siward, moving his head slightly, glanced up, then brought his
+sketch to a brilliant finish.
+
+"Don't you think something of this sort is practicable?" he asked
+pleasantly, including Mrs. Ferrall and Katharyn Tassel in a general
+appeal which brought them into the circle of two. Grace Ferrall leaned
+forward, looking over Marion's shoulder, and Siward rose and stepped
+back, with a quick glance into the hall--in time to catch a glimmer of
+pale blue and lace on the stairs.
+
+"I suppose my cigarettes are in my room as usual," he said aloud to
+himself, wheeling so that he could not have time to see Marion's offer
+of her little gold-encrusted case, or notice her quickly raised eyes,
+bright with suspicion and vexation. For she, too, had observed Sylvia's
+distant entrance, had been perfectly aware of Siward's cognizance
+of Sylvia's retreat; and when Siward went on sketching she had been
+content. Now she could not tell whether he had deliberately and
+skillfully taken his conge to follow Sylvia, or whether, in his quest
+for his cigarettes, chance might meddle, as usual. Even if he returned,
+she could not know with certainty how much of a part hazard had played
+on the landing above, where she already heard the distant sounds of
+Sylvia's voice mingling with Siward's, then a light footfall or two, and
+silence.
+
+
+He had greeted her in his usual careless, happy fashion, just as she
+had reached her chamber door; and she turned at the sound of his voice,
+confused, unsmiling, a little pale.
+
+"Is it headache, or are you too in quest of cigarettes?" he asked, as he
+stopped in passing her where she stood, one slender hand on the knob of
+her door.
+
+"I don't smoke, you know," she said, looking up at him with a cool
+little laugh. "It isn't headache either. I was--boring myself, Mr.
+Siward."
+
+"Is there any virtue in me as a remedy?"
+
+"Oh, I have no doubt you have lots of virtues. ... Perhaps you might do
+as a temporary remedy--first aid to the injured." She laughed again,
+uncertainly. "But you are on a quest for cigarettes."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"A rendezvous--with the Sand-Man. ... Good night."
+
+"Good night ... if you must say it."
+
+"It's polite to say something ... isn't it?"
+
+"It would be polite to say, 'With pleasure, Mr. Siward!'"
+
+"But you haven't invited me to do anything--not even to accept a
+cigarette. Besides, you didn't expect to meet me up here?"
+
+The trailing accent made it near enough a question for him to say, "Yes,
+I did."
+
+"How could you?"
+
+"I saw you leave the room."
+
+"You were sketching for Marion Page. Do you wish me to believe that you
+noticed me--"
+
+"--And followed you? Yes, I did follow you." She looked at him, then
+past him toward a corner of the wide hall where a maid in cap and apron
+sat pretending to be sewing. "Careful!" she motioned with smiling lips,
+"servants gossip. ... Good night, again."
+
+"Won't you--"
+
+"Oh, dear! you mustn't speak so loud," she motioned, with her fresh,
+sweet lips curving on the edge of that adorable smile once more.
+
+"Couldn't we have a moment--"
+
+"No--"
+
+"One minute--"
+
+"Hush! I must open my door"--lingering. "I might come out again, if you
+have anything particularly important to communicate to me."
+
+"I have. There's a big bay-window at the end of the other corridor. Will
+you come?"
+
+But she opened her door, with a light laugh, saying "good night" again,
+and closed it noiselessly behind her.
+
+He walked on, turning into his corridor, but kept straight ahead,
+passing his own door, on to the window at the end of the hall,
+then north along a wide passageway which terminated in a bay-window
+overlooking the roof of the indoor swimming tank.
+
+Rain rattled heavily, against the panes and on the lighted roof of
+opalescent glass below, through which he could make out the shadowy
+fronds of palms.
+
+It appeared that he had cigarettes enough, for he lighted one presently,
+and, leaving his chair, curled up in the cushioned and pillowed
+window-seat, gathering his knees together under his arm.
+
+The cigarette he had lighted went out. He had bitten into it and twisted
+it so roughly that it presently crumbled; and he threw the rags of it
+into a metal bowl, locking his jaws in silence. For the night threatened
+to be a bad one for him. A heavy fragrance from his neighbour's
+wine-glass at dinner had stirred up what had for a time lain dormant;
+and, by accident, something--some sweetmeat he had tasted--was saturated
+in brandy.
+
+Now, his restlessness at the prospect of a blank night had quickened to
+uneasiness, with a hint of fever tinting his skin, but, as yet, the dull
+ache in his body was scarcely more than a premonition.
+
+He had his own devices for tiding him over such periods--reading,
+tobacco, and the long, blind, dogged tramps he took in town. But here,
+to-night, in the rain, one stood every chance of walking off the cliffs;
+and he was sick of reading himself sightless over the sort of books sent
+wholesale to Shotover; and he was already too ill at ease, physically,
+to make smoking endurable.
+
+Were it not for a half-defiant, half-sullen dread of the coming night,
+he might have put it from his mind in spite of the slowly increasing
+nervous tension and the steady dull consciousness of desire. He drew
+another Sirdar from his case and sat staring at the rain-smeared night,
+twisting the frail fragrant cigarette to bits between his fingers.
+
+After a while he began to walk monotonously to and fro the length of the
+corridor, like a man timing his steps to the heavy ache of body or
+mind. Once he went as far as his own door, entered, and stepping to the
+wash-basin, let the icy water run over hands and wrists. This sometimes
+helped to stimulate and soothe him; it did now, for a while--long enough
+to change the current of his thoughts to the girl he had hoped might
+have the imprudence to return for a tryst, innocent enough in itself,
+yet unconventional and unreasonable enough to prove attractive to them
+both.
+
+Probably she wouldn't come; she had kept her fluffy skirts clear of him
+since Cup Day--which simply corroborated his vague estimate of her.
+Had she done the contrary, his estimate would have been the same; for,
+unconsciously but naturally, he had prejudged her. A girl who could
+capture Quarrier at full noontide, and in the face of all Manhattan,
+was a girl equipped for anything she dared--though she was probably too
+clever to dare too much; a girl to be interested in, to amuse and be
+amused by; a girl to be reckoned with. His restlessness and his fever
+subdued by the icy water, he stood drying his hands, thinking, coolly,
+how close he had come to being seriously in love with this young girl,
+whose attitude was always a curious temptation, whose smile was a
+charming provocation, whose youth and beauty were to him a perpetual
+challenge. He admitted to himself, calmly, that he had never seen a
+woman he cared as much for; that for the brief moment of his declaration
+he had known an utterly new emotion, which inevitably must have become
+the love he had so quietly declared it to be. He had never before felt
+as he felt then, cared as he cared then. Anything had been possible
+for him at that time--any degree of love, any devotion, any generous
+renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him,
+and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it,
+emboldened by her soft hands so eloquent in his.
+
+And in his arms he held it for an instant, he thought, spite of the
+sudden inertia, spite of the according of cold lips and hands still
+colder, relaxed, inert; held it until he doubted. That was all; he had
+been wise to doubt such sudden miracles as that. She, consummate and
+charming, had soon set him right. And, after all, she liked him; and
+she had been sure enough of herself to permit the impulse of a moment
+to carry her with him--a little way, a very little way--merely to the
+formal symbol of a passion the germ of which she recognised in him.
+
+Then she had become intelligent again, with a little laughter, a little
+malice, a becoming tint of hesitation and confusion; all the sense, all
+the arts, all the friendly sweetness of a woman thorough in training,
+schooled in self-possession, clear enough to be audacious and perverse
+without danger to herself, to the man, or to the main chance.
+
+Standing there alone in his lighted room, he wondered whether, had her
+trained and inbred policy been less precise, less worldly, she might
+have responded to such a man as he. Perfectly conscious that he had been
+capable of loving her; aware, too, that his experience had left him on
+that borderland only through his cool refusal to cross it and face a
+hopeless battle already lost, he leisurely and mentally took the measure
+of his own state of mind, and found all well, all intact; found himself
+still master of his affections, and probably clear-minded enough to
+remain so under the circumstances.
+
+To such a man as he, impulse to love, capacity to love, did not mean
+instant capsizing with a flop into sentimental tempests, where swamped,
+ardent and callow youth raises a hysterically selfish clamour for
+reciprocity or death. His nature partly, partly his character, accounted
+for this balance; and, in part, a rather wide experience with women of
+various degrees counted more.
+
+So, by instinct and experience, normally temperate, only what
+was abnormal and inherited might work a mischief in this man. His
+listlessness, his easy acquiescence, were but consequent upon the
+self-knowledge of self-control. But mastery of the master-vice required
+something different; he was sick of a sickness; and because, in this
+sickness, will, mind, and body are tainted too, reason and logic lack
+clarity; and, to the signals of danger his reply had always been either
+overconfident or weak--and it had been always the same reply: "Not yet.
+There is time." And now, this last week, it had come upon him that
+the time was now; the skirmish was already on; and it had alarmed him
+suddenly to find that the skirmish was already a battle, and a rough
+one.
+
+
+As he stood there he heard voices on the stairs. People had already
+begun to retire, because late cards and point-shooting at dawn do
+not agree. And a point-shooting picnic in snugly elaborate blinds was
+popular with women--or was supposed to be.
+
+He could distinguish by their voices, by their laughter and step,
+the people who were mounting the stairway and lingering for gossip or
+passing through the various corridors to court the sleep denied him;
+he heard Mortimer's heavy tread and the soft shuffling step of Major
+Belwether as they left the elevator; and the patter of his hostess's
+satin slippers, and her gay "good night" on the stairs.
+
+Little by little the tumult died away. Quarrier's measured step came,
+passed; Marion Page's cool, crisp voice and walk, and the giggle and
+amble of the twins, and Rena and Eileen,--the last laggards, with
+Ferrall's brisk, decisive tones and stride to close the procession.
+
+He turned and looked grimly at his bed, then, shutting off the lights,
+he opened his door and went out into the deserted corridor, where the
+elevator shaft was dark and only the dim night-lights burned at angles
+in the passageways.
+
+He had his rain-coat and cap with him, not being certain of what
+he might be driven to; but for the present he found the bay-window
+overlooking the swimming tank sufficient to begin the vigil.
+
+Secure from intrusion, as there were no bedrooms on that corridor, he
+tossed coat and cap into the window-seat, walked to and fro for a while
+listening to the rain, then sat down, his well-shaped head between his
+hands. And in silence he faced the Enemy.
+
+How long he had sat there he did not know. When he raised his face,
+all gray and drawn with the tension of conflict, his eyes were not very
+clear, nor did the figure standing there in the dim light from the hall
+mean anything for a moment.
+
+"Mr. Siward?" in an uncertain voice, almost a whisper.
+
+He stood up mechanically, and she saw his face.
+
+"Are you ill? What is it?"
+
+"Ill? No." He passed his hand over his eyes. "I fancy I was close to the
+edge of sleep." Some colour came back into his face; he stood smiling
+now, the significance of her presence dawning on him.
+
+"Did you really come?" he asked. "This isn't a very lovely but
+impalpable astral vision, is it?"
+
+"It's horridly imprudent, isn't it?" she murmured, still considering the
+rather drawn and pallid face of the man before her. "I came out of pure
+curiosity, Mr. Siward."
+
+She glanced about her. He moved a big bunch of hothouse roses so she
+could pass, and she settled down lightly on the edge of the window-seat.
+When he had piled some big downy cushions behind her back, she made a
+quick gesture of invitation.
+
+"I have only a moment," she said, as he seated himself beside her. "Part
+of my curiosity is satisfied in finding you here; I didn't suppose you
+so faithful."
+
+"I can be fairly faithful. What else are you curious about?"
+
+"You said you had something important--"
+
+"--To tell you? So I did. That was bribery, perjury, false pretences,
+robbery under arms, anything you will! I only wanted you to come."
+
+"That is a shameful confession!" she said; but her smile was gay enough,
+and she noiselessly shook out her fluffy skirts and settled herself a
+trifle more deeply among the pillows.
+
+"Of course," she observed absently, "you are dreadfully mortified at
+yourself."
+
+"Naturally," he admitted.
+
+The patter of the rain attracted her attention; she peered out through
+the blurred casements into the blackness. Then, picking up his cap and
+indicating his raincoat, "Why?" she asked.
+
+"Oh--in case you hadn't come--"
+
+"A walk? By yourself? A night like this on the cliffs! You are not
+perfectly mad, are you?"
+
+"Not perfectly."
+
+Her face grew serious and beautiful.
+
+"What is the matter, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Things."
+
+"Do you care to be more explicit?"
+
+"Well," he said, with a humourous glance at her, "I haven't seen you for
+ages. That's not wholesome for me, you know."
+
+"But you see me now; and it does not seem to benefit you."
+
+"I feel much better," he insisted, laughing; and her blue eyes grew very
+lovely as the smile broke from them in uncertain response.
+
+"So you had nothing really important to tell me, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Only that I wanted you."
+
+"Oh! ... I said important."
+
+But he did not argue the question; and she leaned forward, broke a rose
+from its stem, then sank back a little way among the cushions, looking
+at him, idly inhaling the hothouse perfume.
+
+"Why have you so ostentatiously avoided me, Mr. Siward?" she asked
+languidly.
+
+"Well, upon my word!" he said, with a touch of irritation.
+
+"Oh, you are so dreadfully literal!" she shrugged, brushing her
+straight, sensitive nose with the pink blossom; "I only said it to give
+you a chance. ... If you are going to be stupid, good night!" But she
+made no movement to go. ... "Yes, then; I have avoided you. And it doesn't
+become you to ask why."
+
+"Because I kissed you?"
+
+"You hint at the true reason so chivalrously, so delicately," she said,
+"that I scarcely recognise it." The cool mockery of her voice and the
+warm, quick colour tinting neck and face were incongruous. He thought
+with slow surprise that she was not yet letter-perfect in her role of
+the material triumphant over the spiritual. A trifle ashamed, too, he
+sat silent, watching the silken petals fall one by one as she slowly
+detached them with delicate, restless lips.
+
+"I am sorry I came," she said reflectively. "You don't know why I came,
+do you? Sheer loneliness, Mr. Siward; there is something of the child in
+me still, you see. I am not yet sufficiently resourceful to take it out
+in a quietly tearful obligato; I never learned how to produce tears. ...
+So I came to you." She had stripped the petals from the rose, and now,
+tossing the crushed branch from her, she leaned forward and broke from
+its stem a heavy, perfumed bud, half unfolded.
+
+"It seems my fate to pass my life in bidding you good night," she said,
+straightening up and turning to him with the careless laughter touching
+mouth and eyes again. Then, resting her weight on one hand, her smooth,
+white shoulder rounded beside her cheek, she looked at him out of
+humourous eyes:
+
+"What is it that women find so attractive in you? The man's experienced
+insouciance? The boy's unconscious cynicism? The mystery of your
+self-sufficiency? The faulty humanity in you? The youth in you already
+showing traces of wear that hint of future scars? What will you be at
+thirty-five? At forty? ... Ah," she added softly, "what are you now? For
+I don't know, and you cannot tell me if you would. ... Out of these little
+windows called eyes we look at one another, and study surfaces, and
+try to peep into neighbours' windows. But all is dark behind the
+windows--always dark, in there where they tell us souls hide."
+
+She laid the shell-pink bud against her cheek that matched it, smiling
+with wise sweetness to herself.
+
+"What counts with you?" he asked after a moment.
+
+"Counts? How?"
+
+"In your affections. What prepossesses you?"
+
+She laughed audaciously: "Your traits--some of them--all of them
+that you reveal. You must be aware of that much already, considering
+everything--"
+
+"Then, what is it I lack? Where do I fail?"
+
+"But you don't lack--you don't fail! I ask nothing more of you, Mr.
+Siward."
+
+"A man from whom a woman desires nothing is already convicted of
+insufficiency. ... You would recognise this very quickly if I made love to
+you."
+
+"Is that the only way I am to discover your insufficiency, Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Or my sufficiency. ... Have you enough curiosity to try?"
+
+"Oh! I thought you were to try." Then, quickly: "But I think you have
+already experimented; and I did not notice your shortcomings. So there
+is no use in pursuing that line of investigation any farther--is there?"
+
+And always with her the mischief lay in the trailing upward inflection;
+in the confused sweetness of her eyes, and their lovely uncertainty.
+
+One slim white hand held the rose against her cheek; the other lay idly
+on her knee, fresh and delicate as a fallen petal; and he laid both
+hands over it and lifted it between them.
+
+"Mr. Siward, I am afraid this is becoming a habit with you." The gay
+mockery was not quite genuine; the curve of lips too sensitive for a
+voice so lightly cynical.
+
+He smiled, bending there, considering her hand between his; and after a
+moment her muscles relaxed, and bare round arm and hand lay abandoned to
+him.
+
+"Quite flawless--perfect," he said aloud to himself.
+
+"Do you--read hands?"
+
+"Vaguely." He touched the smooth palm: "Long life, clear mind, and"--he
+laughed--"heart supreme over reason! There is written a white lie--but a
+pretty one."
+
+"It is no lie."
+
+He laughed again, unconvinced.
+
+"It is the truth," she said, seriously insisting and bending sideways
+above her own hand where it lay in his. "It is a miserable confession to
+admit it, but I'm afraid intelligence would fight a losing battle with
+heart if the conflict ever came. You see, I know, having nobody to study
+except myself all these years. ... There is the proof of it--that selfish,
+smooth contour, where there should be generosity. Then, look at the
+tendency of imagination toward mischief!" She laid her right forefinger
+on the palm of the left hand which he held, and traced the developments
+arising in the Mount of Hermes. "Is it not a horrid hand, Mr. Siward? I
+don't know how much you know about palms, but--" She suddenly flushed,
+and attempted to close her hand, doubling the thumb over. There was
+a little half-hearted struggle, freeing one of his arms, which fell,
+settling about her slender waist; a silence, a breathless moment, and he
+had kissed her. Her lips were warm, this time.
+
+She recovered herself, avoiding his eyes, and moved backward, shielding
+her face with pretty upflung elbows out-turned. "I told you it was
+becoming a habit with you!" The loud beating of her pulses marred her
+voice. "Must I establish a dead-line every time I commit the folly of
+being alone with you?"
+
+"I'll draw that line," he said, taking her in his arms.
+
+"I--I beg you will draw it quickly, Mr. Siward."
+
+"I do; it passes through your heart and mine!"
+
+"Is--do you mean a declaration--again? You are compromising yourself,
+you know. I warn you that you are committing yourself."
+
+"So are you. Look at me!"
+
+In his arms, her own arms pressed against his breast, resisting, she
+raised her splendid youthful eyes; and through and through her shot
+pulse on pulse, until every nerve seemed aquiver.
+
+"While I'm still sane," he said with a dry catch in his throat, "before
+I tell you that I love you, look at me."
+
+"I will, if you wish," she said with a trembling smile, "but it is
+useless--"
+
+"That is what I shall find out in time. ... You must meet my eyes. That is
+well; that is frank and sweet--"
+
+"And useless--truly it is. ... Please don't tell me--anything."
+
+"You will not listen?"
+
+"There is no chance for you--if you mean love. I--I tell you in time,
+you see. ... I am utterly frivolous--quite selfish and mercenary."
+
+"I take my chance!"
+
+"No, I give you none! Why do you interfere! A--a girl's policy costs her
+something if it be worth anything; whatever it costs it is worth it to
+me. ... And I do not love you. In so short a time how could I?"
+
+Then in his arms she fell a-trembling. Something blinded her eyes, and
+she turned her head sharply, only to encounter his lips on hers in a
+deep, clinging embrace that left her dazed, still resisting with the
+fragments of breath and voice.
+
+"Not again--I beg--you. Let me go now. It is not best. Oh! truly, truly
+it is all wrong with us now." She bent her head, blinded with tears,
+swaying, stunned; then, with a breathless sound, turned in his arms
+to meet his lips, her hands contracting in his; and, confronting, they
+paused, suspending the crisis, young faces close, and hearts afire.
+
+"Sylvia, I love you."
+
+For an instant their lips clung; she had rendered him his kiss. Then,
+tremblingly, "It is useless ... even though I loved you."
+
+"Say it!"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Say it!"
+
+"I--I cannot! ... And it is no use--no use! I do not know myself--this
+way. My eyes--are wet. It is not like me; there is nothing of me in this
+girl you hold so closely, so confidently. ... I do care for you--how can I
+help it? How could any woman help it? Is not that enough?"
+
+"Until you are a bride, yes."
+
+"A bride? Stephen!--I cannot--"
+
+"You cannot help it, Sylvia."
+
+"I must! I have my way to go."
+
+"My way lies that way."
+
+"No! no! I cannot do it; it is not best for me--not best for you. ... I
+do care for you; you have taught me how to say it. But--you know what
+I have done--and mean to do, and must carry through. Then, how can you
+love a girl like that?"
+
+"Dear, I know the woman I love."
+
+"Silly, she is what her life has made her--material, passionately
+selfish, unable to renounce the root of all evil. ... Even if this--this
+happiness were ours always--I mean, if this madness could last our
+wedded life--I am not good enough, not noble enough, to forget what I
+might have had, and put away. ... Is it not dreadful to admit it? Do you
+not know that self-contempt is part of the price? ... I have no money. I
+know what you have. ... I asked. And it is enough for a man who remains
+unmarried. ... For I cannot 'make things do'; I cannot 'contrive'; I will
+not cling to the fringe of things, or play that heartbreaking role of
+the shabby expatriated on the Continent. ... No person in this world ever
+had enough. I tell you I could find use for every flake of metal ever
+mined! ... You see you do not know me. From my pretty face and figure you
+misjudge me. I am intelligent--not intellectual, though I might have
+been, might even be yet. I am cultivated, not learned; though I care for
+learning--or might, if I had time. ... My role in life is to mount to a
+security too high for any question as to my dominance. ... Can you take me
+there?"
+
+"There are other heights, Sylvia."
+
+"Higher?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"The spiritual; I know. I could not breathe there, if I cared to climb.
+... And I have told you what I am--all silk and lace and smooth-skinned
+selfishness." She looked at him wistfully. "If you can change me, take
+me." And she rose, facing him.
+
+"I do not give you up," he said, with a savage note hardening his voice;
+and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body
+leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling,
+confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.
+
+The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in
+his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last,
+responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the
+white lids--these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed
+flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:
+
+"Good night. Love me while you can--and forgive me! ... Good night. ...
+Where are we? All--all this must have stunned me, blinded me. ... Is this
+my door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear--to be here under the
+light again. ... If you take me again, my knees will give way. ... And I
+must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it! ... Good night ... good
+night. I--I love you!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI MODUS VIVENDI
+
+After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened
+to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield
+he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had
+become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion;
+his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's
+snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously.
+Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss,
+and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the
+end. That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And,
+following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished
+with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in
+the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet
+done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him
+within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to
+the rites of the table and the card-room.
+
+He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air
+made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a
+pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired
+of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.
+
+Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room,
+with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether,
+always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly
+dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer
+sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance
+of his wife's moving elsewhere. Which she did, unobtrusively carrying
+Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy
+mornings now too frequent along the coast.
+
+Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the
+financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But,
+plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income
+through confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even
+Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did
+not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing
+point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short,
+lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas
+out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous
+to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in
+hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when
+opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.
+
+Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had
+snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field
+was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale
+and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion
+Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who,
+knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and
+sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman
+of forty-eight--until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled
+everything, as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and
+perplexed between doubt and disgust.
+
+Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found
+encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality.
+There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York;
+but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at
+the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at
+closer quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much
+discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not
+a question as to "which would be good to him," observed Major Belwether,
+with his misleading and benevolent mirth; "it was, which would be
+goodest quickest!"
+
+And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token,
+displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her
+husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.
+
+But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently
+had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the
+situation with his wife--perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal
+arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible
+alliance.
+
+The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests
+had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only
+was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the
+card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and
+port had disagreed with him.
+
+As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an
+aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated,
+bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his
+room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb
+over last week's sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.
+
+But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber.
+He walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at
+the rain-smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly
+flavoured cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in
+pity's name, was he to do?
+
+Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife's locked and
+bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to
+fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his
+houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!
+
+He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under
+the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife's bed-chamber.
+He listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness
+to wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the
+subdued rustle of the departing maid.
+
+Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his
+wife's door and knocked discreetly.
+
+Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for
+the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Are you point-shooting to-morrow?"
+
+"I wanted to chat with you."
+
+"I'm sorry. I'm driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly
+Plank, and I need sleep."
+
+"I want to talk to you," he repeated doggedly.
+
+She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting
+gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily
+apprehensive but resolved.
+
+She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over
+the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her
+slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black
+eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.
+
+"Leila," he said, "why can't we have--"
+
+"A cigarette?" she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.
+
+He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her
+own from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue
+smoke-rings jetting upward to the ceiling.
+
+"About this man Plank," he began, louder than he had intended through
+sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of
+caution, which subdued his voice instantly. "Why can't we take him
+up--together, Leila?" he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in
+a matter which might concern him vitally.
+
+"I see no necessity of your taking him up," observed his wife serenely.
+"I can do what may be useful to him in town."
+
+"So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen--"
+
+"I can manage such matters much better."
+
+"You can't manage everything," he insisted sullenly. "There are chances
+of various sorts--"
+
+"Investments?" asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.
+
+"See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make
+damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to. ... It becomes you
+to be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I
+want you to listen, too."
+
+A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. "I am listening," she
+said.
+
+"Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to
+me. ... I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is
+to have a frank, honourable--"
+
+"A--what?"
+
+"--An honourable understanding with you, I said," he repeated,
+reddening.
+
+"Oh!" She snapped her cigarette into the grate. "Oh! I see. And what
+then?"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Yes; what then?"
+
+"Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town,
+can't we?"
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then--damn it!--the beggar can show his gratitude, can't he?"
+
+"How?" she asked listlessly.
+
+"By making good. How else?" he retorted savagely. "He can't welch
+because there's little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he
+can't ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can
+in yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me
+isn't going to cancel his obligations to you."
+
+"I know him better than you do," she observed, bending her head and
+pleating the lace on her knee. "There is Dutch blood in him."
+
+"Not good Hollander, but common Dutch," sneered Mortimer. "And you mean
+he'll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don't you?"
+
+She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.
+
+"Well, that's all right, too," laughed Mortimer easily; "let the
+Audubon Society worry over the eagle. It's a perfectly plain business
+proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can't do
+for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila," he said, waving
+a mottled fat hand at her.
+
+"I--have," she said under her breath.
+
+"Then, is it settled?
+
+"Settled--how?"
+
+"That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of
+Plank?"
+
+"I--I don't want to, Roy," she said slowly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile
+stuff clinging to her knee.
+
+"Why not?" he repeated menacingly. Her unexpectedly quiescent attitude
+had emboldened him to a bullying tone--something he had not lately
+ventured on.
+
+She raised her eyes to his: "I--rather like him," she said quietly.
+
+"Then, by God! he'll pay for that!" he burst out, mask off, every
+inflamed feature shockingly congested.
+
+"Roy! You dare not--"
+
+"I tell you I--"
+
+"You dare not!"
+
+The palpitating silence lengthened; slowly the blood left the swollen
+veins. Heavy pendulous lip hanging, he stared at her from distended
+eyes, realising that he had forgotten himself. She was right. He dared
+not. And she held the whip-hand as usual.
+
+For every suspicion he could entertain, she had evidence of a certainty
+to match it; for every chance that he might have to prove anything, she
+had twenty proven facts. And he knew it. Why they had, during all these
+years, made any outward pretence of conjugal unity they alone knew. The
+modus vivendi suited them better than divorce: that was apparent, or had
+been until recently. Recently Leila Mortimer had changed--become subdued
+and softened to a degree that had perplexed her husband. Her attitude
+toward him lacked a little of the bitterness and contempt she usually
+reserved for him in private; she had become more prudent, almost
+cautious at times.
+
+"I'll tell you one thing," he said with a sudden snarl: "You'd better be
+careful there is no gossip about you and Plank."
+
+She reddened under the insult.
+
+"Now we'll see," he continued venomously, "how far you can go alone."
+
+"Do you suppose," she asked calmly, "that I am afraid of a divorce
+court?"
+
+The question so frankly astonished him that he sat agape, unable to
+reply. For years he had very naturally supposed her to be afraid of
+it--afraid of not being qualified to obtain it. Indeed, he had taken
+that for granted as the very corner-stone of their mutual toleration.
+Had he been an ass to do so? A vague alarm took possession of him;
+for, with that understanding, he had not been at all careful of his own
+behaviour, neither had he been at any particular pains to conceal his
+doings from her. His alarm increased. What had he against her, after
+all, except ancient suspicions, now so confused and indefinite that
+memory itself outlawed the case, if it ever really existed. What had she
+against him? Facts--unless she was more stupid than any of her sex he
+had ever encountered. And now, this defiance, this increasing prudence,
+this subtle change in her, began to make him anxious for the permanency
+of the small income she had allowed him during all these years--doled
+out to him, as he believed, though her dormant fear of him.
+
+"What are you talking about?" he said harshly.
+
+"I believe I mentioned divorce."
+
+"Well, cut it out! D'ye see? Cut it, I say. You'd stand as much chance
+before a referee as a snowball in hell."
+
+"There's no telling," she said coolly, "until one tries."
+
+He glared at her, then burst into a laugh. "Rot!" he said thickly. "Talk
+sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you
+feel that way about it. I don't want to butt in. I only thought--for old
+times' sake--perhaps you'd--"
+
+"Good night," she managed to say, her disgust almost strangling her.
+
+And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his
+blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken
+for a dozing cat.
+
+For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful,
+chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and
+stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at
+Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such
+emergencies.
+
+Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?--if his
+wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency?
+Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own
+household.
+
+His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric
+button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came;
+he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find
+the hour was three o'clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only
+appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to
+descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he
+thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon
+two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that
+was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody's
+wife? Who?
+
+Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer's head. In his excitement
+he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing
+his door without a sound.
+
+"Sylvia Landis, by all that's holy!" he breathed to himself, and sat
+down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.
+
+After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes
+to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own
+corridor alone.
+
+And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became
+conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that
+it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.
+
+"But--but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that
+sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there
+are men I know--women, too--scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that
+information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!"
+
+He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the
+night had turned warm.
+
+"Scoundrels!" he said, with milder emphasis. "Blackmailers! Contemptible
+pups!"
+
+He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about
+scoundrels and blackmail.
+
+And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise
+of knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring--a low voice here and
+there, lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels,
+the rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at
+Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east,
+ring with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty
+blinds.
+
+
+The unusual stillness of the house in the late morning sunshine was
+pleasant to Miss Landis. She had risen very late, unconscious of the
+stir and movement before dawn; and it was only when a maid told her,
+as she came from her bath, that she remembered the projected
+point-shooting, and concluded, with an odd, happy sense of relief, that
+she was almost alone in the house.
+
+A little later, glancing from her bedroom window for a fulfilment of the
+promise of the sun which a glimpse of blue sky heralded, she saw Leila
+Mortimer settling herself in the forward seat of a Mercedes, and Beverly
+Plank climbing in beside her; and she watched Plank steer the big
+machine across the wet lawn, while the machinist swung himself into
+the tonneau; and away they rolled, faster, faster, rushing out into the
+misty hinterland, where the long streak of distant forest already began
+to brighten, edged with the first rays of watery sunshine.
+
+So she had the big house to herself--every bit of it and with it freedom
+from obligation, from comment, from demand or exaction; freedom from
+restraint; liberty to roam about, to read, to dream, to idle, to
+remember! Ah, that was what she needed--a quiet interval in this
+hurrying youth of hers to catch her breath once more, and stand still,
+and look back a day or two and remember.
+
+So, to breakfast all alone was delicious; to stroll, unhurried, to the
+sideboard and leisurely choose among the fresh cool fruits; to loiter
+over cream-jug and cereal; to saunter out into the freshness of the
+world and breathe it, and feel the sun warming cheek and throat, and
+the little breezes from a sunlit sea stirring the bright strands of her
+hair.
+
+In the increasing brilliancy of the sunshine she stretched out her
+hands, warming them daintily as she might twist them before the fire on
+the hearth. And here, at the fragrant hearth of the world, she stood,
+sweet and fresh as the morning itself, untroubled gaze intensely blue
+with the tint of the purple sea, sensitive lips scarcely parting in the
+dreaming smile that made her eyes more wonderful.
+
+As the warmth grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly
+delicious glow responded in her heart,--nothing at first wistful in the
+serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in
+the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively
+unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her
+to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers
+uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young
+figure straightened, confronting the sea.
+
+Out over the rain-wet, odorous grass she picked her way, skirts swung
+high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb, following a little
+descending path she knew full of rocky angles, swept by pendant sprays
+of blackberry, and then down under the jutting rock, south through
+thickets of wild cherry along the crags, until, before her the way
+opened downward again where a tiny crescent beach glimmered white hot in
+the sun.
+
+From his bedroom window Mortimer peeped forth, following her progress
+with a leer.
+
+As she descended, noticing the rifts of bronzing seaweed piled along
+the tide mark, her foot dislodged a tiny triangle of rock, which rolled
+clattering and ringing below; and as she sprang lightly to the sand,
+a man, lying full length and motionless as the heaped seaweed, raised
+himself on one arm, turning his sun-dazzled eyes on her.
+
+The dull shock of surprise halted her as Siward rose to his feet, still
+dazed, the sand running from his brown shooting-clothes over his tightly
+strapped puttees.
+
+"Have you the faintest idea that I supposed you were here?" she asked
+briefly. Then, frank in her disappointment, she looked up at the cliffs
+overhead, where her line of retreat lay.
+
+"Why did you not go with the others?" she added, unsmiling.
+
+"I--don't know. I will, if you wish." He had coloured slowly, the frank
+disappointment in her face penetrating his surprise; and now he turned
+around, instinctively, also looking for the path of retreat.
+
+"Wait," she said, aware of her own crude attitude and confused by it;
+"wait a moment, Mr. Siward. I don't mean to drive you away."
+
+"It's self-exile," he said quietly; "quite voluntary, I assure you."
+
+"Mr. Siward!"
+
+And, as he looked up coolly, "Have you nothing more friendly to say to
+me? Is your friendship for me so limited that my first caprice oversteps
+the bounds? Must I always be in dread of wounding you when I give you
+the privilege of knowing me better than anybody ever knew me--of seeing
+me as I am, with all my faults, my failings, my impulses, my real self?
+... I don't know why the pleasure of being alone to-day should have meant
+exclusion for you, too. It was the unwelcome shock of seeing anybody--a
+selfish enjoyment of myself--that surprised me into rudeness. That is
+all. ... Can you not understand?"
+
+"I think so. I meant no criticism--"
+
+"Wait, Mr. Siward!" as he moved slowly toward the path. "You force me
+to say other things, which you have no right to hear. ... After last
+night"--the vivid tint grew in her face--"after such a night, is it
+not--natural--for a girl to creep off somewhere by herself and try to
+think a little?"
+
+He had turned full on her; the answering colour crept to his forehead.
+
+"Is that why?" he asked slowly.
+
+"Is it not a reason?"
+
+"It was my reason--for being here."
+
+She bit her bright lip. This trend to the conversation was ominous, and
+she had meant to do her drifting alone in still sun-dreams, fearing
+no witness, no testimony, no judgment save her own self in court with
+herself.
+
+"I--I suppose you cannot go--now," she reflected innocently.
+
+"Indeed I can, and must."
+
+"And leave me here to dig in the sand with my heels? Merci!"
+
+"Do you mean--"
+
+"I certainly do, Mr. Siward. I don't want to dream, now; I don't care to
+reflect. I did, but here you come blundering into my private world and
+upset my calculations and change my intentions! It's a shame, especially
+as you've been lying here doing what I wished to do for goodness knows
+how long!"
+
+"I'm going," he said, looking at her curiously.
+
+"Then you are very selfish, Mr. Siward."
+
+"We will call it that," he said with an odd laugh.
+
+"Very well." She seated herself on the sand and calmly shook out her
+skirts.
+
+"About what time would you like to be called?" he asked smilingly.
+
+"Thank you, I shall do no sun-dreaming."
+
+"Please. It is good for you."
+
+"No, it isn't good at all. And I am grateful to you for waking me," she
+retorted with a sudden gay malice that subdued him. And she, delicate
+nose in the air, laughingly watching him, went on with her punishment:
+"You see what you've done, don't you?--saved me from an entire morning
+wasted in sentimental reverie over what might have been. Now you can
+appreciate it, can't you?--your wisdom in appearing in the flesh to save
+a silly girl the effort of evoking you in the spirit! Ah, Mr. Siward, I
+am vastly obliged to you! Pray sit here beside me in the flesh, for fear
+that in your absence I might commit the folly that tempted me here."
+
+His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a
+gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear
+of him she had been barely conscious of.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?"
+
+"Did I? And can't you resume them?"
+
+"You save me the necessity."
+
+"Oh, that is a second-hand compliment," she said disdainfully--"a weak
+plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really
+asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder."
+
+He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed
+about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for
+himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the
+sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his
+eyes.
+
+"Upon--my word!" she breathed aloud.
+
+He unclosed his eyes. "Now you may dream; you can't avoid it," he
+observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor
+questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him
+from his immobility.
+
+She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her
+thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze,
+arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm,
+through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart
+echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.
+
+She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden
+threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her,
+settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred,
+groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and
+through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours
+seemed to beckon.
+
+Now lost, now restless, conscious of the perils of the shining path she
+followed, the rhythm of an ocean soothing her to false security, she
+dreamed on awake, unconscious of the tinted sea and sky which stained
+her eyes to hues ineffable. A long while afterward a small cloud floated
+across the sun; and, in the sudden shadow on the world, doubt sounded
+its tiny voice, and her ears listened, and the enchantment faded and
+died away.
+
+Turning, she looked across the sand at the man lying there; her eyes
+considered him--how long she did not know, she did not heed--until,
+stirring, he looked up; and she paled a trifle and closed her eyes,
+stunned by the sudden clamour of pulse and heart.
+
+When he rose and walked over, she looked up gravely, pouring the last
+handful of white sand through her stretched fingers.
+
+"Did you dream?" he asked lightly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you dream true?"
+
+"Nothing of my dream can happen," she said. "You know that, ... don't
+you?"
+
+"I know that we love ... and that we dare not ignore it."
+
+She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers--a
+close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes' response.
+
+"Stephen," she faltered, "how can you make it so hard for me? How can
+you force me to this shame!"
+
+"Shame?" he repeated vaguely.
+
+"Yes--this treachery to myself--when I cannot hope to be more to
+you--when I dare not love you too much!"
+
+"You must dare, Sylvia!"
+
+"No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is
+offered--for you!--dearly, dearly as I do love you!" She turned and
+caught his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. "I cannot--I
+simply cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness?
+How can you still care for such a girl as I am--worse than mercenary,
+because I have a heart--or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the
+only part of me not all ignoble."
+
+"I will keep it--in trust," he said, "until you give yourself with it."
+
+But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and
+for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.
+
+Then--"There is another reason," she said wistfully.
+
+He looked up at her, hesitated, and--"My habits?" he asked simply.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have them in check."
+
+"Are you--certain?"
+
+"I think I may be--now."
+
+"Yet," she said timidly, "you lost one fight--since you knew me."
+
+The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively
+and laid both hands on his shoulders. "That chance I would take, with
+all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I
+love you enough for that; and if it turned out that--that you could not
+stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it,
+the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance--if you loved me
+through it all. ... But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say
+while I find the words--something else you do not understand. ... Turn
+your face a little; please don't look at me. This is what you do not
+know--that, in three generations, every woman of my race has--gone
+wrong. ... Every one! and I am beginning--with such a marriage! ...
+deliberately, selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the
+frivolous, erratic blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.
+
+"Once, when I knew nothing--before I--I met you--I believed such a
+marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor
+me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am
+fashioned to become--autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now!
+and now! I don't know--truly I don't know what I may become. Your
+love forces my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness,
+pettiness, all the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be
+truly my real self. ... Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run
+the risk of what I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all
+I have renounced. If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what
+you cost me. Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him
+bear with me when I remember that he cost me you!"
+
+She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched
+hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair,
+heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny
+close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth,
+childlike contour and mould--rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body
+and limb--all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.
+
+Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out--perhaps a
+tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of
+aspiration to better things. Whatever it was, material, spiritual, was
+gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed
+twilit doubt crept in--the same dull acquiescence--the same uncertainty
+of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency
+to drift; and with it came weariness--perhaps reaction from the recent
+skirmishes with that master-vice.
+
+"I suppose," he said in a dull voice, "you are right."
+
+"No, I am wrong--wrong!" she said, lifting her lovely face and heavy
+eyes. "But I have chosen my path. ... And you will forget."
+
+"I hope so," he said simply.
+
+"If you hope so, you will."
+
+He nodded, unconvinced, watching a flock of sand-pipers whirling into
+the cove like a gray snow-squall and fearlessly settling on the beach.
+
+After a while, with a long breath: "Then it is settled," she concluded.
+
+If she expected corroboration from him she received none; and perhaps
+she was not awaiting it. She sat very still, her eyes lost in thought.
+
+And Mortimer, peeping down at them over the thicket above, yawned
+impatiently and glanced about him for the most convenient avenue of
+self-effacement when the time arrived.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII PERSUASION
+
+The days of the house-party at Shotover were numbered. A fresh relay of
+guests was to replace them on Monday, and so they were making the most
+of the waning week on lawn and marsh, in covert and blind, or motoring
+madly over the State, or riding in parties to Vermillion Light. Tennis
+and lawn bowls came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated
+on days too raw for more rugged sport.
+
+And during all these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging
+persistence and assiduity, until his familiar, big, round head and
+patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover,
+indoors and out.
+
+It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was
+simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading
+presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think
+about it at all.
+
+The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as much
+to his own obstinate and good-tempered persistence as to Mrs. Mortimer.
+He was a Harvard graduate--there are all kinds of them--enormously
+wealthy, and though he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he
+was willing and able to gratify the tastes of others. He did whatever
+anybody else did, and did it well enough to be amusing; and as lack of
+intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the
+fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he
+wanted to, sooner or later.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was
+her perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have
+house-parties of his own at Black Fells--not the kind he had wisely
+denied himself the pleasure of giving, with such neighbours as the
+Ferralls to observe, but the sort he desired. However, there were many
+things to be accomplished for him and by him before he could expect to
+use his great yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast
+granite mansion recently completed and facing Central Park just north
+of the new palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth
+Avenue fringes the hundreds.
+
+Meanwhile, he had become in a measure domesticated at Shotover, and
+Shotover people gradually came to ride, drive, and motor over the
+Fells, which was a good beginning, though not necessarily a promise for
+anything definite in the future.
+
+Mortimer, riding a huge chestnut--he could still wedge himself into
+a saddle--had now made it a regular practice to affect the jocular
+early-bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position
+to be anything but flattered by such sans gene, laboriously and
+gratefully splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast
+plates, and mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops
+with Mortimer.
+
+His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had
+no means of determining the latter's social value except through hearsay
+and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of
+Mortimer's perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded
+to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative
+sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by
+misgivings.
+
+Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how
+much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to
+admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into
+this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was
+always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a
+responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.
+
+There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple,
+in one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn
+adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the
+society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked--people
+nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily
+liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when
+rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside
+from gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual
+recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on
+something valuable--a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for
+an instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and
+calculations.
+
+It was nothing--a vague word or two--a forced laugh--and the scared
+silence of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a
+confidence to a man he liked.
+
+A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and
+Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger--a big, fat, friendly,
+jocose tiger:
+
+"Plank, is that what you're up to!"
+
+"Up to! Why, I never thought of such a--"
+
+"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer. "If you could only see your face!"
+
+And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance
+under the reaction from his scare, attempted to refute the other's
+conclusions: "It doesn't mean anything, Mortimer. She's just the
+handsomest girl I ever saw. I know she's engaged. I only admired her a
+lot."
+
+"You're not the only man," said Mortimer blandly, still striving to
+reconcile his preconceived theories with the awkward half-confession of
+this great, red-fisted, hulking horseman riding at his stirrup.
+
+"I wouldn't have her dream," stammered Plank, "that I had ever thought
+of such a--"
+
+"Why not? It would only flatter her."
+
+"Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!" gasped Plank.
+
+"Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this
+world?" asked Mortimer coolly. "And as for Sylvia Landis, she'd be
+tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her."
+
+"Good Lord!" exclaimed Plank, alarmed; "You wouldn't make a joke of it!
+you wouldn't be careless about such a thing! And there's Quarrier! I'm
+not on joking terms with him; I'm on most formal terms."
+
+"Quarrier!" sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop.
+"He's on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never
+laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth
+in; that's his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a
+better man looked sideways at her?" And, reversing his riding crop, he
+deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.
+
+"A--a better man!" muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.
+
+"Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make
+better is it with the ladies--God bless 'em!" he added, displaying a
+heavy set of teeth.
+
+Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately
+suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared
+to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought
+it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough:
+
+"Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But--"
+
+Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.
+
+"But--what?" he blurted out.
+
+"Plank," said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling,
+"Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a--a vital question."
+
+But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly
+that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:
+
+"Look here, Plank: you don't suppose I'm capable of repeating a
+confidence, do you?--if you choose to make me understand it's a
+confidence."
+
+"It isn't a confidence; it isn't anything; I mean it is confidential, of
+course. All there's in it is what I said--or rather what you took me up
+on so fast," ended Plank, abashed.
+
+"About your being in love with Syl--"
+
+"Confound it!" roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy
+spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer
+followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and
+deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the
+varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few
+days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward
+in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no
+matter what they hunt--the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which
+marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because
+it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.
+
+And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of
+neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that
+he meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had,
+of course, information which certain degraded men might use in a
+contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any
+particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was
+nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour. ... And God knew
+a wealthy man's gratitude was necessary to him at that very
+moment--gratitude substantially acknowledged. ... He liked Plank--wished
+him well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn't wish
+himself well also. ... Two birds with one stone. ... Three! for he hated
+Quarrier. Four! ... for he had no love for his wife. ... Besides, it would
+teach Leila a wholesome lesson--teach her that he still counted; serve
+her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.
+
+No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he
+would be very careful about. ... Probably Major Belwether might express
+his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and
+volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed
+between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o'clock in the morning
+in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap
+and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he
+had discovered later in the bay-window. ... Yes, probably Major Belwether
+would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he
+needed Quarrier in his business. ... But, faugh! that was close enough
+to blackmail to rub off! ... No! ... No! He wouldn't go to Belwether and
+promise any such thing! ... On the contrary, he felt it his duty to
+inform Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he
+was threatened with for life! ... A man ought not to let another man go
+blindly into such a marriage. ... Men owed each other something, even
+if they were not particularly close friends. ... And he had always had
+a respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him--yes, a distinct
+liking! ... And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get
+together and stand for one another!
+
+Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick! ... And, in her
+humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap
+up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ...
+But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very
+nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to
+be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his
+money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful--very useful, a very
+good friend to have. ... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer,
+had cut his wisdom teeth, by God!
+
+As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that
+contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he
+had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of
+the social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any
+self-respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes
+carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying
+fol-de-rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short
+order. En garde, Madame!--ou Mademoiselle--tant pis!
+
+He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows
+and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of
+all he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife's
+astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the
+triumph of Quarrier's elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly
+Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether,
+too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated,
+crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white
+suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only
+a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a
+very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.
+
+"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the
+slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be
+suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and
+regarded his environment with a subdued grin.
+
+Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was
+simple--absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was
+off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer;
+man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly
+Plank--the girl's rescuer at a pinch--her preserver, the saviour of her
+"face," the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she
+take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new "face"?
+And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh,
+not at all!
+
+And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn't good for
+him, and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he
+might cut down on his wine and spirits.
+
+The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not
+tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that
+there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young
+man's hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection
+to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted
+guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank's. All he had to do
+was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when
+once convinced of Sylvia's behaviour.
+
+He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but
+necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not
+now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into
+acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town--unless Plank
+invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By
+Heaven! That was the idea! And there'd be a chance for him at cards! ...
+Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too. ... But what did he care! He
+was no longer afraid of her; he'd soon be independent of her and her
+pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her--
+
+He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously
+enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly
+dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings
+had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and
+carelessness of conduct.
+
+Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere
+bluff on Leila's part, this sudden coquetting with the question of
+divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his
+elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior
+gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?
+
+His wife's possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply
+didn't care--had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained.
+And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the
+indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived
+everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody
+outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the
+house of Leroy Mortimer--which, after all, was all anybody cared about.
+
+And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered
+over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and
+fro, dressing himself--his neuralgia being much better--and presently
+descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant
+explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he
+strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built
+for the squash-courts and swimming pool.
+
+There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer
+walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much
+splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle
+of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.
+
+The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last
+match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the
+other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through
+storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it
+away; then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena
+Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung
+both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at
+Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about
+him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery,
+where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the
+blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.
+
+Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of
+breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were
+right. He ignored his wife's smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense
+in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to
+make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one
+with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the
+losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.
+
+Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale
+in her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch
+the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute,
+for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her.
+A pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been
+on betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and
+presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a
+dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds
+of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and
+prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.
+
+Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big,
+glistening ball shot aloft and remained.
+
+"Blue! Blue!" exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little
+whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the
+breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind
+enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing
+crowd above.
+
+Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody
+to play cards with--it being his temperament and his temper to throw
+good money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already
+returned to the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their
+several dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall's party, equipped for
+motoring, to the lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing
+into the golden haze which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the
+cloudless afternoon's sunshine.
+
+However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a
+practice of taking away his money--Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene.
+He hadn't particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play
+with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not
+that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least
+permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.
+
+But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he
+had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank's game, and Siward,
+seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with
+Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division
+of the ginger-ale.
+
+Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always
+instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank's sort whom she
+occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who
+had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising
+her, found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of
+persistent mental intoxication.
+
+That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which
+instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which
+had been responsible, in Sylvia's brief life, for more mistakes than
+anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the
+mistake that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were
+particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly
+enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them,
+and whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also
+appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was
+a wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl's responsive and delicious
+laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could
+be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the
+while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick,
+amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had
+turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without
+a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural
+and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an
+informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy
+and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she
+had proved, why--why--
+
+His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of
+what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which
+included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.
+
+Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for
+dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted
+his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to
+climb.
+
+There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his
+climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him,
+which had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had
+concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his
+obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had
+come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry
+him through sheer merit to the inner temple--that inner temple of raw
+gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!
+
+
+Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into
+which Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man's
+infatuation as he sat there on the pool's marble edge, exchanging
+trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.
+
+But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome
+except when she made it so for her husband's benefit. Features, person,
+personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with
+their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom,
+the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the
+audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise,
+or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming
+because of its setting.
+
+Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been
+very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the
+danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the
+frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so
+naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both
+an agreeable after-taste--a sort of gay understanding which almost
+invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something
+appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage--something of
+the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with
+significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle
+of Plank's calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer's bored smile had
+lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed
+her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a
+shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward's eyes;
+and during a moment's hesitation they considered one another with an
+increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her
+eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward's: "Oho, my friend! So it
+bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to
+Howard Quarrier!"
+
+And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly
+narrowed in vexed retaliation: "Speak for yourself, my lady! You're no
+more pleased than I am!"
+
+The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There
+had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that.
+No; a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a
+fortnight's time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the
+brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing
+with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed
+her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not
+at all certain. ... But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself,
+and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from
+her shrinking lips. Who knows! "Stephen," she said under her breath, "I
+didn't mean to hurt you. ... Don't scowl. Listen. I have already entirely
+forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please."
+
+He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed
+critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a
+rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.
+
+Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so
+skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had
+been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a
+perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant
+retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the
+decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he
+had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming
+a devil of a fellow!
+
+Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to
+laugh consciously:
+
+"What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?"
+
+"He'd be an ornament to a stock farm," replied Siward, out of humour.
+
+"How brutal you can be!" she mused, smiling.
+
+"Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?"
+
+"I don't know. ... Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly--even
+pathetically; they usually do, that sort. ... As though the trouble they
+took could ever be worth the time they lose! ... There are dozens of men
+I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust
+young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of
+things--like degenerate horses, you know--always pathetic to me; but
+they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same
+genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule.
+... And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and
+let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme
+of things. ... Now I have been brutal. But--I'm easily coloured by my
+environment."
+
+She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked
+skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.
+
+"Are you reconciled?" she asked presently.
+
+"To what?"
+
+"To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all
+go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my
+poor friend:
+
+"'Yon rising moon that looks for us again--How oft hereafter will she
+wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same
+mansion--and for one in vain!'"
+
+"That is I--the one, you know. You may be here again; but I--I shall not
+be I if I ever come to Shotover again."
+
+Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of
+the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering
+branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white
+blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: "I'm accustoming myself to this
+most significant perfume," she said, looking at him askance. And she
+deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his
+sullen face.
+
+"If you had the courage of a sparrow you'd make life worth something for
+us both," he said.
+
+"I know it; I haven't; but I seem to possess the remainder of his
+lordship's traits--inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct
+for Fifth Avenue nest-building--all the feathered vices, all the
+unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype. ...
+Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage."
+
+"I don't know how much courage it requires to do what you're going to
+do," he said sulkily.
+
+"Don't you? Sometimes, when you wear a scowl like that, I think that
+it may require no more courage than I am capable of. ... And sometimes--I
+don't know."
+
+She crossed her knees, one slender ankle imprisoned in her hand, leaning
+forward thoughtfully above the water.
+
+"Our last day," she mused; "for we shall never be just you and I
+again--never again, my friend, after we leave this rocky coast of Eden.
+... I shall have hints of you in the sea-wind and the sound of the sea; in
+the perfume of autumn woods, in the whisper of stirring leaves when the
+white birches put on their gold crowns next year." She smiled, turning
+to him, a little gravely: "When the Lesser Children return with April,
+I shall not forget you, Mr. Siward, nor forget your mercy of a day on
+them; nor your comradeship, nor your sweetness to me. ... Nor your charity
+for me, nor all that you overlook so far in me,--under the glamour of
+a spell that seems to hold you still, and that still holds me. ... I can
+answer for my constancy so far, until one more spring and summer have
+come and gone--until one more autumn comes, and while it lasts--as long
+as any semblance of the setting remains which had once framed you; I can
+answer for my constancy as long as that. ... Afterwards, the snow!--symbol
+of our separation. I am to be married a year from November first."
+
+He looked up at her in dark surprise, for he had heard that their
+wedding date had been set for the coming winter.
+
+"A year's engagement?" he repeated, unconvinced.
+
+"It was my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned."
+Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour:
+"A year is little enough," she said impatiently. "I--what has happened
+to us requires an interval--a decent interval for its burial. ... Death
+is respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no
+resurrection under the snow. ... So I bring to the burial my tribute--a
+year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I
+could have given you had I been worth it." She looked up, flushed, the
+forced smile stamped on lips still trembling. "Sentiment in such a woman
+as I! 'A spectacle for Gods and men,' you are saying--are you not?
+And perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent
+ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use." She was
+laughing easily. "No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for
+that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it
+once served its purpose, too. ... Stephen Siward, what do you think of me
+now?"
+
+"I am learning," he replied simply.
+
+"What, if you please?"
+
+"Learning a little about what I am losing."
+
+"You mean--me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She bent forward impulsively, balancing her body on the pool's rim with
+both arms, dropping her knee until her ankles swung interlocked above
+the water. "Listen," she said in a low, distinct voice: "What you lose
+is no other man's gain! If I warm and expand in your presence--if I
+say clever things sometimes--if I am intelligent, sympathetic, and
+amusing--it is because of you. You inspire it in me. Normally I am the
+sort of girl you first met at the station. I tell you that I don't know
+myself now--that I have not known myself since I knew you. Qualities
+of understanding, ability to appreciate, to express myself without
+employing the commonplaces, subtleties of intercourse--all, maybe, were
+latent in me, but sterile, until you came into my life. ... And when
+you go, then, lacking impulse and incentive, the new facility, the new
+sensitive alertness, the unconscious self-confidence, all will smoulder
+and die out in me. ... I know it; I realise that it was due to you--part
+of me that I should never have known, of which I should have remained
+totally ignorant, had it not blossomed suddenly, stimulated by you
+alone."
+
+Slowly the clouded seriousness of her blue eyes cleared, and the smile
+began to glimmer again. "That is your revenge; you recommit me to my
+commonplace self; you restore me to my tinsel career, practically a
+dolt. Shame on you, Stephen Siward, to treat a poor girl so! ... But it's
+just as well. Blunted perceptions, according to our needs, you know; and
+so life is tempered for us all, else we might not endure it long. ... A
+pleasantly morbid suggestion for a day like this, is it not? ... Shall we
+take a farewell plunge, and dress? You know we say good-bye to-morrow."
+
+"Where do you go from here?"
+
+"To Lenox; the Claymores have asked us for a week; after that, Hot
+Springs for another two weeks or so; after that, to Oyster Bay. ... Mr.
+Quarrier opens his house on Sedge Point," she added demurely, "but I
+don't think he expects to invite you to 'The Sedges.'"
+
+"How long do you stay there?" asked Siward irritably.
+
+"Until we go to town in December."
+
+"What will you find to do all that time in Oyster Bay?" he asked more
+irritably.
+
+"What a premature question! The yacht is there. Besides, there's the
+usual neighbourhood hunting, with the usual packs and inevitable set;
+the usual steeple-chasing; the usual exchange of social amenities; the
+usual driving and riding; the usual, my poor friend, the usual, in all
+its uncompromising certainty. ... And what are you to do?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"After you leave here?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You don't know where you are going?"
+
+"I'm going to town."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Oh, but haven't you been asked somewhere? You have, of course."
+
+"Yes, and I have declined."
+
+"Matters of business," she inferred. "Too bad!"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Then," she concluded, laughing, "you don't care to tell me where you
+are going."
+
+"No," he said thoughtfully, "I don't care to tell you."
+
+She laughed again carelessly, and, placing one hand on the tiled
+pavement, sprang lightly to her feet.
+
+"A last plunge?" she asked, as he rose at her side.
+
+"Yes, one last plunge together. Deep! Are you ready?"
+
+She raised her white arms above her head, finger-tips joined, poised
+an instant on the brink, swaying forward; then, at his brief word, they
+flashed downward together, cutting the crystalline sea-water, shooting
+like great fish over the glass-tiled bed, shoulder to shoulder under
+the water; and opening their eyes, they turned toward one another with
+a swift outstretch of hands, an uncontrollable touch of lips, the very
+shadow of contact; then cleaving upward, rising to the surface to lie
+breathlessly floating, arms extended, and the sun filtering down through
+the ground-glass roof above.
+
+"We are perfectly crazy," she breathed. "I'm quite mad; I see that. On
+land it's bad enough for us to misbehave; but submarine sentiment! We'll
+be growing scales and tails presently. ... Did you ever hear of a Southern
+bird--a sort of hawk, I think--that almost never alights; that lives and
+eats and sleeps its whole life away on the wing? and even its courtship,
+and its honeymoon? Grace Ferrall pointed one out to me last winter, near
+Palm Beach--a slender bird, part black, part snowy white, with long,
+pointed, delicate wings like an enormous swallow; and all day, all
+night, it floats and soars and drifts in the upper air, never resting,
+never alighting except during its brief nesting season. ... Think of the
+exquisite bliss of drifting one's life through in mid-air--to sleep,
+balanced on light wings, upborne by invisible currents flowing under the
+stars--to sail dreamily through the long sunshine, to float under the
+moon! ... And at last, I suppose, when its time has come, down it whirls
+out of the sky, stone dead! ... There is something thrilling in such
+a death--something magnificent. ... And in the exquisitely spiritual
+honeymoon, vague as the shadow of a rainbow, is the very essence and
+aroma of that impalpable Paradise we women prophesy in dreams! ... More
+sentiment! Heigho! My brother is the weeping crocodile, and the five
+winds are my wits. ... Shall we dress? Even with a maid and the electric
+air-blast it will take time to dry my hair and dress it."
+
+
+When he came out of his dressing-room she was apparently still in the
+hands of the maid. So he sauntered through the house as far as the
+library, and drawing a cheque-book from one pocket, fished out a
+memorandum-book from another, and began to cast up totals with a view to
+learning something about the various debts contracted at Shotover.
+
+He seemed to owe everybody. Fortune had smitten him hip and thigh; and,
+a trifle concerned, he began covering a pad with figures until he knew
+where he stood. Then he drew a considerable cheque to Major Belwether's
+order, another to Alderdene. Others followed to other people for various
+amounts; and he was very busily at work when, aware of another presence
+near, he turned around in his chair. Sylvia Landis was writing at a desk
+in the corner, and she looked up, nodding the little greeting that she
+always reserved for him even after five minutes' separation.
+
+"I'm writing cheques," she said. "I suppose you're writing to your
+mother."
+
+"Why do you think so?" he asked curiously.
+
+"You write to her every day, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "but how do you know?"
+
+She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. "You wrote every day. ...
+If it was to a woman, I wanted to know. ... And I told Grace Ferrall that
+it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of
+my own pettiness that I can make to you."
+
+"Did you really care to whom I was writing?" he asked slowly.
+
+"Care? I--it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? 'Sisters
+under our skin,' you know--I and the maid who dresses me. She would have
+snooped; I didn't; that's the only generic difference. I wanted to know
+just the same. ... But--that was before--"
+
+"Before what?"
+
+"Before I--please don't ask me to say it. ... I did, once, when you asked
+me."
+
+"Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me. ... You are
+interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money,
+and I'm trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close
+accounts with Marion Page."
+
+Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of
+cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat
+packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips
+expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and
+glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in
+counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly
+to his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother--the same tender,
+affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of
+confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on
+the heels of the letter.
+
+In his first letter to her from Shotover he had spoken casually of a
+Miss Landis. It seemed the name was familiar enough to his mother, who
+asked about her; and he had replied in another letter or two, a trifle
+emphatic in his praise of her, because from his mother's letters it
+was quite evident that she knew a good deal concerning the very
+unconventional affairs of Sylvia's family.
+
+Of his swift and somewhat equivocal courtship he had had nothing to say
+in his letters; in fact recently he had nothing to say about Sylvia
+at all, reserving that vital confidence for the clear sympathy and
+understanding which he looked forward to when he should see her, and
+which, through dark days and bitter aftermaths, through struggle and
+defeat by his master-vice, had never failed him yet, never faltered for
+an instant.
+
+So he brought his letter to a close with a tender and uneasy inquiry
+concerning her health, which, she had intimated, was not exactly
+satisfactory, and for that reason she had opened the house in town in
+order to be near Dr. Grisby, their family doctor.
+
+Sealing and directing the letter, he looked up to see Sylvia standing at
+his elbow. She dropped a light hand on his shoulder for a second, barely
+touching him--a fugitive caress, delicate as the smile hovering on her
+lips, as the shy tenderness in her eyes.
+
+"More letters to your sweetheart?" she asked, abandoning her hand to
+him.
+
+"One more--the last before I see her. ... I wish you could see her,
+Sylvia."
+
+"I wish so, too," she answered simply, seating herself on the arm of his
+chair as though it were a side-saddle.
+
+They sat there very silent for a few moments, curiously oblivious to the
+chance curiosity of any one who might enter or pass.
+
+"Would she--care for me--do you think?" asked the girl in a low voice.
+
+"I think so,--for your real self."
+
+"I know. She could only feel contempt for me--as I am."
+
+"She is old-fashioned," he said reverently.
+
+"That means all that is best in a woman. ... The old fashion of truth
+and faith; the old fashion of honour, and faith in honour; the old, old
+fashion of--love. ... All that is best, Stephen; all that is worth the
+love of a man. ... Some day somebody will revive those fashions."
+
+"Will you?"
+
+"Dear, they would not become me," she said, the tenderness in her
+eyes deepening a little; and she touched his head lightly in humourous
+caress.
+
+"What shall we do with the waning daylight?" she asked. "It is my last
+day with you. I told Howard it was my last day with you, and I did not
+care to be disturbed."
+
+"You probably didn't say it that way," he commented, amused.
+
+"I did."
+
+"How much of that sort of thing is he prepared to stand?" asked Siward
+curiously.
+
+"How much? I don't know. I don't believe he cares. It is my uncle, Major
+Belwether, who is making things unpleasant for me. I had to tell Howard,
+you know."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Siward incredulously.
+
+"Certainly. Do you think my conduct has passed without protest?"
+
+"You told Quarrier!" he repeated.
+
+"Did you imagine I could do otherwise?" she asked coolly. "I have that
+much decency left. Certainly I told him. Do you suppose that, after what
+we did--what I admitted to you--that I could meet him as usual? Do you
+think I am afraid of him?"
+
+"I thought you were afraid of losing him," muttered Siward.
+
+"I was, dreadfully. And the morning after you and I had been imprudent
+enough to sit up until nearly daylight--and do what we did--I made him
+take a long walk with me, and I told him plainly that I cared for
+you, that I was too selfish and cowardly to marry you, and that if he
+couldn't endure the news he was at liberty to terminate the engagement
+without notice."
+
+"What did he say?" stammered Siward.
+
+"A number of practical things."
+
+"You mean to say he stands it!"
+
+"It appears so. What else is there for him to do, unless he breaks the
+engagement?"
+
+"And he--hasn't?"
+
+"No. I was informed that he held me strictly and precisely to my
+promise; that he would never release me voluntarily, though I was, of
+course, at liberty to do what I chose. ... My poor friend, he cares no
+more for love than do I. I happen to be the one woman in New York whom
+he considers absolutely suitable for him; by race, by breeding, by
+virtue of appearance and presence, eminently fitted to complete the
+material portion of his fortune and estate."
+
+Her voice had hardened as she spoke; now it rang a little at the end,
+and she laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"It appears that I was a little truer to myself than you gave me credit
+for--a little truer to you--a little less treacherous, less shameless,
+than you must have thought me. But I have gone to my limit of decency;
+... and, were I ten times more in love with you than I am, I could not put
+away the position and power offered me. But I will not lie for it, nor
+betray for it. ... Do you remember, once you asked me for what reasons I
+dropped men from my list? And I told you, because of any falsehood or
+treachery, any betrayal of trust--and for no other reason. You remember?
+And did you suppose that elemental standard of decency did not include
+women--even such a woman as I?"
+
+She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it,
+staring at space across his shoulders.
+
+"That's how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you.
+There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it
+was all off; but I found that I didn't know the man. I knew he was
+sensitive, but I didn't know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only,
+and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I--I suppose,
+from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever
+touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me. ... He will
+be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned," she added
+naively. "It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its
+degradation."
+
+Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both
+hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair, pressing
+her hot cheeks against his hands--a moment only; then slipping to her
+feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back,
+blue gaze concentrated on him.
+
+"The thing for you to do," she said, "is to ambush me some night, and
+throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson's. I'd hate you
+for it as much as I'd love you, but I'd make you an interesting wife."
+
+"I may do that yet," he said, lifting his head from his hands.
+
+"You've a year to do it in," she observed. ... "By the way, you're to take
+me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked
+Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago,
+wasn't it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and
+perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to
+Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear, ... I didn't mean to
+hurt you! You know it, silly! Mayn't I have my little joke about your
+badness--your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just
+better smile. ... How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt
+you! ... Besides, you are probably unrepentant."
+
+She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, "Are you
+unrepentant?"
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About your general wickedness? About--" she hesitated--"about that
+girl, for example."
+
+"What girl?" he asked coldly.
+
+"That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her."
+
+"There is nothing to tell," he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in
+its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.
+
+Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into
+which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a
+significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he
+had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to
+him--an actress, a woman of common antecedents?
+
+She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to
+just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what
+he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of
+tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.
+
+Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise
+shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of
+matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste,
+partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate
+delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies
+itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest
+surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.
+
+But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her
+which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page's worldly
+wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke
+of Siward's escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.
+
+She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction
+toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though
+it appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and
+undignified--part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate
+foolishness which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained
+discretion.
+
+But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a
+seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the
+subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little
+hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.
+
+Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.
+
+"Sylvia," he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of
+the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, "Suppose, as you
+suggested, I did ambush you--say after the opera--seize you under the
+very nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?"
+
+"I know of no other way," she said demurely.
+
+"Would you resist, physically?"
+
+"I would, if nobody were looking."
+
+"Desperately?
+
+"How do I know? Besides, it couldn't last long," she said, thinking of
+his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume.
+Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own
+wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in
+saddle and afoot.
+
+"I should advise you to chloroform me," she said defiantly. "You don't
+realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag."
+
+"So you mean to resist?"
+
+"Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off
+to church with you now."
+
+"Wenniston church!" he said promptly. "I'll order the Mercedes."
+
+She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. "Suppose
+it were our fire?" she smiled. "There would be a dog lying across that
+rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and--you,
+cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped
+back against my knees."
+
+The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily:
+"Don't! I--I can't stand that sort of thing, you know."
+
+She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her
+own limits in the same direction.
+
+"Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery."
+
+"I know. ... After a while a man finds laughter difficult."
+
+"I was not laughing at--anything. I was only pretending to be happy."
+
+"Your happiness is before you," he said sullenly.
+
+"My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other. ... And
+some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the
+depravity of the monstrous trade I made. ... And then--and then--"
+
+She passed one slim hand over her face--"then you will shake yourself
+free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands
+will begin. ... Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a
+girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has
+invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a
+magic that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician,
+enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this
+fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to
+think what I shall appear to you--what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless
+shell, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements--a jewelled
+mummy-case--a thing that never was! ... Do you understand my punishment a
+little, now?"
+
+"If it were true," he said in a dull voice, "you will have forgotten,
+too."
+
+"I pray I may," she said under her breath.
+
+And, after a long silence: "Do you think, before the year is out, that
+you might be granted enough courage?" he asked.
+
+"No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire
+it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the
+poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am
+what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop
+me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you,
+being a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly
+frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not. ... And now,
+what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and
+courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the
+certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I
+could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance
+the sacrifice. And that is final."
+
+
+Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress
+under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.
+
+"Another quarrel," she commented, turning on the current of the
+drop-light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance.
+"You quarrel enough to marry. Why don't you?"
+
+"I wish we could," said Sylvia simply.
+
+Grace laughed. "What a little fool you are!" she said tenderly, seating
+herself in Siward's chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested
+on the arm. "Stephen, can't you make her--a big, strong fellow like you?
+Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first
+time, and I'll never meddle again." She gave Siward's hand a perfunctory
+pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. "I'm disgracefully
+sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a
+good time at Shotover--the time of your life?"
+
+Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward's.
+
+"I certainly have," she said faintly.
+
+"C'est bien, cherie. Can you be as civil, Stephen--conscientiously? Oh,
+that is very nice of you! But there's one thing: why on earth didn't you
+make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse
+and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I'm meddling again! Pinch me,
+Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge,
+Stephen? What--bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful--this gambling
+the way people do! I'm shocked and I'm going up to dress. Are you
+coming, Sylvia?"
+
+
+The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup,
+which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech
+of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his
+smile--which was the only humorous thing he contributed.
+
+The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing
+no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of
+contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a
+bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation
+of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of
+scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the
+waking struggle so sure to follow.
+
+Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly,
+"Good Hunting!" as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it,
+and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half
+buried among the orchids: "To you!" she murmured for Siward's ear alone;
+then drank gaily, mischievously, "To the best shot at Shotover!" And
+Siward took the cup: "I salute victory," he said, smiling, "always, and
+everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the
+best man! Health!" And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to
+Quarrier, and with death in his heart.
+
+Later, the irony of it struck him so grimly that he laughed; and Sylvia,
+beside him, looked up, dismayed to see the gray change in his face.
+
+"What is it?" she faltered, catching his eye; "why do you--why are you
+so white?"
+
+But he only smiled, as though he had misunderstood, saying:
+
+"The survival of the fittest; that is the only test, after all. The man
+who makes good doesn't whine for justice. There's enough of it in the
+world to go round, and he who misses it gets all that's due him just the
+same."
+
+Later, at cards, the aromatic odour from Alderdene's decanter roused him
+to fierce desire, but he fought it down until only the deadened,
+tearing ache remained to shake and loosen every nerve. And when Ferrall,
+finishing his usual batch of business letters, arrived to cut in if
+needed, Siward dropped his cards with a shudder, and rose so utterly
+unnerved that Captain Voucher, noticing his drawn face, asked him if he
+were not ill.
+
+He was leaving on an earlier train than the others, having decided to
+pass through Boston and Deptford, at which latter place he meant to
+leave Sagamore for the winter in care of the manager of his mother's
+farm. So he took a quiet leave of those to whom the civility might not
+prove an interruption--a word to Alderdene and Voucher as he passed
+out, a quick clasp for Ferrall and for Grace, a carefully and cordially
+formal parting from the Page boys, which pleased them ineffably.
+
+Eileen and Rena, who had never had half a chance at him, took it now,
+delighted to discipline their faithful Pages; and he submitted in his
+own engagingly agreeable way, and so skilfully that both Eileen and Rena
+felt sorry that they had not earlier understood how civilly anxious he
+had been to devote himself to them alone. And they looked at the Pages,
+exasperated.
+
+In the big hall he passed Marion, and stopped to take his leave.
+
+No, he would do no hunting this season either at Carysford or with the
+two trial packs at Eastwood. Possibly at Warrenton later, but probably
+not; business threatened to detain him in town more or less. ... Of course
+he'd come to see her when she returned to town. ... And it had been a
+jolly party, and it was a shame to sound "lights out" so soon! Good-bye.
+... Good night. And that was all.
+
+And that was all, unless he disturbed Sylvia, seated at cards with
+Quarrier and Major Belwether and Leila Mortimer--and very intent on the
+dummy, very still, and a trifle pallid with the pallor of concentration.
+
+So--that was all, then.
+
+Ascending the stairs, a servant handed him a letter bearing the crest of
+the Lenox Club. He pocketed it unopened and continued his way.
+
+In the darkness of his own room he sat down, the devil's own clutch on
+his shrinking nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and
+every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot. He had been too long without
+it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught from
+Quarrier's loving-cup.
+
+The awakened fury of his desire appalled him, and for a while that
+occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed
+in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat
+starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across
+the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that
+he was holding out, unconscious how long he could hold out.
+
+Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved
+blindly about the room.
+
+Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he
+stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy
+awake and seize him.
+
+He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a
+glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back
+at him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into
+something resembling self-command.
+
+"Damn you!" he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his
+reflected face, "I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!"
+
+Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down,
+resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through
+the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among
+the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared
+and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed
+desire.
+
+Once he said to himself, weakly--for he was deadly tired--"What am I
+making the fight for, anyway?" And "Who are you making the fight for?"
+echoed his heavy pulses.
+
+He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all,
+it had been for his mother's sake alone. And now--and now?--his heart
+beat out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to
+open, fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his
+mother's grave, gray eyes.
+
+After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to
+do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his
+confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.
+
+Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation
+was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons
+unassigned.
+
+The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull
+report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad
+enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort
+of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance? ... And what would
+his mother say?
+
+Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with
+a deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied
+acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered
+where the brunt of the disgrace would fall--where the centre of
+suffering must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused,
+appalled, almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter,
+beginning to realise what it would mean to his mother. A passion of
+remorse and resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must
+be some way--some punishment for his offence that could not strike her
+through him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike
+her! What were the governors of the Lenox about--a lot of snivelling
+hypocrites, pandering to the horrified snobbery at the Patroons! Who
+were they, anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the
+members of the two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!
+
+But that tempest of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him
+standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his
+shaking hand.
+
+He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do
+something--something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall's step on the landing?
+
+He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor,
+turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod
+almost imperceptible.
+
+"Quarrier!" he called, swept by a sudden impulse.
+
+Quarrier halted and turned.
+
+"Could you give me a moment--here in my room? I won't detain you."
+
+The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier's face; he quietly
+retraced his steps, and, entering Siward's room, stood silently
+confronting its pallid tenant.
+
+"Will you sit down a moment?"
+
+Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found
+a chair opposite.
+
+"Quarrier," said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on
+his visitor, "I want to ask you something. I'll not mince matters. You
+know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter,
+if I could, you were sitting on that Board."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I denied the charge, but refused to explain. ... You remember?"
+
+Quarrier nodded coldly.
+
+"And I was dropped by the club!"
+
+A slight inclination of Quarrier's symmetrical head corroborated him.
+
+"Now," said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, "I shall tell you
+unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially."
+And, as he began speaking, Quarrier's face flushed, then the features
+became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as
+though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking
+back into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps
+defiant.
+
+"Mr. Quarrier," said Siward quietly, "I did not take that girl to the
+Patroons Club--and you know it."
+
+Quarrier was all surface now; he had drawn away internally so far that
+even his eyes seemed to recede until they scarcely glimmered through the
+slits in his colourless mask. And Siward went on:
+
+"I knew perfectly well what sort of women I was to meet at that fool
+supper Billy Fleetwood gave; and you must have, too, for the girl you
+took in was no stranger to you. ... Her name is Lydia Vyse, I believe."
+
+The slightest possible glimmer in the elder man's eyes was all the
+answer he granted.
+
+"What happened," said Siward calmly, "was this: She bet me she could so
+disguise herself that I could safely take her into any club in New York.
+I bet her she couldn't. I never dreamed of trying. Besides, she was
+your--dinner partner," he added with a shrug.
+
+His concentrated gaze seemed at length to pierce the expressionless
+surface of the other man, who moved slightly in his chair and moistened
+his thin lips under the glossy beard.
+
+"Quarrier," said Siward earnestly, "What happened in the club lobby I
+don't exactly know, because I was not in a condition to know. I admit
+it; that was the trouble with me. When I left Fleetwood's rooms I left
+with a half dozen men. I remember crossing Fifth Avenue with them; and
+the next thing I remember distinctly was loud talking in the club lobby,
+and a number of men there, and a slim young fellow in Inverness and
+top hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl,
+Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all. But I couldn't do more than deny
+that I took her there unless I told what I knew; and of course that was
+not possible, even in self-defence. But it was for you to admit that I
+was right. And you did not. You dared not! You let another man blunder
+into your private affairs and fall a victim to circumstantial evidence
+which you could have refuted; and it was up to you to say something!
+And you did not! ... And now--what are you going to do? The Lenox Club has
+taken this thing up. A man can't stand too much of that sort of thing.
+What am I to do? I can't defend myself by betraying my accidental
+knowledge of your petty, private affairs. So I leave it to you. I ask
+you what are you going to do?"
+
+"Do you mean"--Quarrier's voice was not his own, and he brought it
+harshly under command--"do you mean that you think it necessary for me
+to say I knew her? What object would be attained by that? I did not take
+her to the Patroons'."
+
+"Nor did I. Ask her how she got there. Learn the truth from her, man!"
+
+"What proof is there that I ever met her before I took her into supper
+at Fleetwood's?"
+
+"Proof! Are you mad? All I ask of you is to say to the governors what I
+cannot say without using your name."
+
+"You wish me," asked Quarrier icily, "to deny that you made that wager?
+I can do that."
+
+"You can't do it! I did make that bet."
+
+"Oh! Then, what is it you wish me to say?"
+
+"Tell them the truth. Tell them you know I did not take her to the club.
+You need not tell them why you know it. You need not tell them how much
+you know about her, whose brougham she drove home in. I can't defend
+myself at your expense--intrench myself behind your dirty little
+romance. What could I say? I denied taking her to the club. Then Major
+Belwether confronted me with my wager. Then I shut up. And so did you,
+Quarrier--so did you, seated there among the governors, between Leroy
+Mortimer and Belwether. It was up to you, and you did not stir!"
+
+"Stir!" echoed the other man, exasperated. "Of course I did not stir.
+What did I know about it? Do you think I care to give a man like
+Mortimer a hold on me by admitting I knew anything?--or Belwether--do
+you think I care to have that man know anything about my private and
+personal business? Did you expect me to say that I was in a position
+to prove anything one way or another? And," he added with increasing
+harshness, "how do you know what I might or might not prove? If she went
+to the Patroons Club, I did not go with her; I did not see her; I don't
+know whether or not you took her."
+
+"I have already told you that I did not take her," said Siward, turning
+whiter.
+
+"You told that to the governors, too. Tell them again, if you like. I
+decline to discuss this matter with you. I decline to countenance your
+unwarranted intrusion into what you pretend to believe are my private
+affairs. I decline to confer with Belwether or Mortimer. It's enough
+that you are inclined to meddle--" His cold anger was stirring. He rose
+to his full, muscular height, slow, menacing, his long, pale fingers
+twisting his silky beard. "It's enough that you meddle!" he repeated.
+"As for the matter in question, a dozen men, including myself, heard you
+make a wager; and later I myself was a witness that the terms of that
+wager had been carried out to the letter. I know absolutely nothing
+except that, Mr. Siward; nor, it appears, do you, for you were drunk at
+the time, and you have admitted it to me."
+
+"I have asked you," said Siward, rising, and very grave, "I have asked
+you to do the right thing. Are you going to do it?"
+
+"Is that a threat?" inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his
+well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand
+that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am
+frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you
+attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making
+me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is it really
+intimidation?"
+
+And still Siward stared into his half-veiled, sneering eyes, speechless.
+
+"There is only one name used for this kind of thing," added Quarrier,
+taking a quick involuntary step backward to the door as the blaze of
+fury broke out in Siward's eyes.
+
+"Good God! Quarrier," whispered Siward with dry lips, "what a cur you
+are! What a cur!"
+
+And long after Quarrier had passed the door and disappeared in the
+corridor, Siward stood there, frozen motionless under the icy waves of
+rage that swept him.
+
+He had never before had an enemy worth the name; he knew he had one now.
+He had never before hated; he now understood something of that, too.
+The purely physical craving to take this man and crush him into eternal
+quiescence had given place to a more terrible mental desire to punish.
+His brain surged and surged under the first flood of a mortal hatred.
+That the hatred was sterile made it the more intense, and, blinded
+by it, he stood there or paced the room minute after minute, hearing
+nothing but the wild clamour in his brain, seeing nothing but the
+smooth, expressionless face of the man whom he could not reach.
+
+Toward midnight, seated in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude
+weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the
+click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple
+of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening
+and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding
+heels of departure--a stillness that settled like a mist through
+hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then
+absolute, echoless silence. And for a long while he sat there listening.
+
+The cool wind from the ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where
+they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again
+in the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions,
+stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the
+window on the south for purposes of air.
+
+As he turned to adjust his transom, something white thrust under the
+door caught his eye, and he walked over and drew it across the sill.
+It was a sealed note. He opened it, reading it as he walked back to the
+drop-light burning beside his bed:
+
+"Did you not mean to say good-bye? Because it is to be good-bye for a
+long, long time--for all our lives--as long as we live--as long as the
+world lasts, and longer. ... Good-bye--unless you care to say it to me."
+
+He stood studying the note for a while; presently, lighting a match,
+he set fire to it and carried it blazing to the grate and flung it in,
+watching the blackened ashes curl up, glow, whiten, and fall in flakes
+to the hearth. Then he went out into the corridor, and traversed the
+hall to the passage which led to the bay-window. There was nobody there.
+The stars looked in on him, twinkling with a frosty light; beneath, the
+shadowy fronds of palms traced a pale pattern on the glass roof of the
+swimming pool. He waited a moment, turned, retraced his steps to his own
+door and stood listening. Then, moving swiftly, he walked the length of
+the corridor, and, halting at her door, knocked once.
+
+After a moment the door swung open. He stepped forward into the room,
+closing the door behind him, and confronted the tall girl standing there
+silhouetted against the lamp behind her.
+
+"You are insane to do this!" she whispered. "I let you in for fear you'd
+knock again!"
+
+"I went to the bay-window," he said.
+
+"You went too late. I was there an hour ago. I waited. Do you know what
+time it is?"
+
+"Come to the bay-window," he said, "if you fear me here."
+
+"Do you know it is nearly three o'clock?" she repeated. "And you leave
+at six.
+
+"Shall we say good-bye here?" he asked coolly.
+
+"Certainly. I dare not go out. And you--do you know the chances we are
+running? You must be perfectly mad to come to my room. Do you think
+anybody could have seen--heard you--"
+
+"No. Good night." He offered his hand; she laid both of hers in it. He
+could scarcely distinguish her features where she stood dark against the
+brilliant light behind her.
+
+"Good-bye," he whispered, kissing her hands where they lay in his.
+
+"Good-bye." Her fingers closed convulsively, retaining his hands. "I
+hope--I think that--you--" Her head was drooping; she could not control
+her voice.
+
+"Good-bye, Sylvia," he said again.
+
+It was quite useless, she could not speak; and when he took her in his
+arms she clung to him, quivering; and he kissed the wet lashes, and the
+hot, trembling lips, and the smooth little hands crushed to his breast.
+
+"We have a year yet," she gasped. "Dear, take me by force before it
+ends. I--I simply cannot endure this. I told you to take me--to tear
+me from myself. Will you do it? I will love you--truly, truly! Oh, my
+darling, my darling! Don't--don't give me up! Can't you do something for
+us? Can't you--"
+
+"Will you come with me now?"
+
+"How can--"
+
+"Will you?"
+
+A sudden sound broke out in the night--the distant pealing of the
+lodge-gate bell. Startled, she shrank back; somebody in the adjoining
+room had sprung to the floor and was opening the window.
+
+"What is it?" she motioned with whitening lips. "Quick! oh, quick,
+before you are seen! Grace may come! I--I beg of you to go!"
+
+As he stepped into the corridor he heard, below, a sound at the great
+door, and the stirring of the night watchman on post. At his own door
+he turned, listening to the movement and whispering. Ferrall, in
+dressing-gown and slippers, stepped into the corridor; below, the chains
+were rattling as the wicket swung open. There was a brief parley at
+the door, sounds of retreating steps on the gravel outside, sounds of
+approaching steps on the stairway.
+
+"What's that? A telegram?" said Ferrall sharply. "Here, give it to me. ...
+Wait! It isn't for me. It's for Mr Siward!"
+
+Siward, standing at his open door, swayed slightly. A thrill of pure
+fear struck him through and through. He laid one hand on the door to
+steady himself, and stepped forward as Ferrall came up.
+
+"Oh! You're awake, Stephen. Here's a telegram." He extended his hand.
+Siward took the yellow envelope, fumbled it, tore it open.
+
+"Good God!" whispered Ferrall; "is it bad?"
+
+And Siward's glazed eyes stared and stared at the scrawled and inky
+message:
+
+"YOUR MOTHER IS VERY ILL. COME AT ONCE."
+
+The signature was the name of their family physician, Grisby.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII CONFIDENCES
+
+By January the complex social mechanism of the metropolis was whirling
+smoothly again; the last ultra-fashionable December lingerer had
+returned from the country; those of the same caste outward bound for
+a Southern or exotic winter had departed; and the glittering machine,
+every part assembled, refurbished, repolished, and connected, having
+been given preliminary speed-tests at the horse show, and a tuning up at
+the opera, was now running under full velocity; and its steady,
+subdued whir quickened the clattering pulse of the city, keying it to a
+sublimely syncopated ragtime.
+
+The commercial reaction from the chaos of the holidays had become a
+carnival of recovery; shop windows grew brighter and gayer than ever,
+bursting into gaudy winter florescence; the main arteries of the town
+roared prosperity; cross streets were packed; Fifth Avenue, almost
+impassible in the morning, choked up after three o'clock; and all
+the afternoon through, and late into the night, mounted police of the
+traffic squad, adrift in the tide of carriages, stemmed the flashing
+currents pouring north and south from the white marble arch to the
+gilded bronze battle-horse and its rider on guard at the portals of the
+richest quarter of the wealthiest city in the world.
+
+So far, that winter, snow had fallen only twice, lasting but a day
+or two each time; street and avenue remained bone dry where the
+white-uniformed cleaning squads worked amid clouds of dust; and all day
+long the flinty asphalt echoed the rattling slap of horses' feet; all
+day long the big, shining motor-cars sped up town and down town,
+droning their distant warnings. It was an open winter in New York, and,
+financially, a prosperous one; and that meant a brilliant social season.
+Like a set piece of fireworks, with its interdependent parts taking fire
+in turn, function after function, spectacle after spectacle, glittered,
+fizzed, and was extinguished, only to give place to newer and more
+splendid spectacles; separate circles, sets, and groups belonging to the
+social solar system whizzed, revolved, rotated, with edifying effects
+on everybody concerned, unconcerned, and not at all concerned; and at
+intervals, when for a moment or two something hung fire, the twinkle of
+similar spectacles sputtering away in distant cities beyond the
+horizon was faintly reflected in the social sky above the incandescent
+metropolis. For the whole nation was footing it, heel and toe, to the
+echoes of strains borne on the winds from the social capital of the
+republic; and the social arbiter at Bird Centre was more of a facsimile
+of his New York confrere than that confrere could ever dream of even in
+the most realistic of nightmares.
+
+Three phenomena particularly characterised that metropolitan winter:
+the reckless rage for private gambling through the mediums of bridge
+and roulette; the incorporation of a company known as The Inter-County
+Electric Company, capitalised at a figure calculated to disturb nobody,
+and, so far, without any avowed specific policy other than that which
+served to decorate a portion of its charter which otherwise might have
+remained ornately and comparatively blank; the third phenomenon was the
+retirement from active affairs of Stanley S. Quarrier, the father of
+Howard Quarrier, and the election of the son to the presidency of the
+great Algonquin Loan and Trust Company, with its network system of
+dependent, subsidiary, and allied corporations.
+
+The day that the newspapers gave this interesting information to the
+Western world, Leroy Mortimer, on being bluntly notified that he
+had overdrawn his account with the Algonquin Loan and Trust, began
+telephoning in every direction until he located Beverly Plank at the
+Saddle Club--an organisation of wealthy men, and sufficiently exclusive
+not to compromise Plank's possible chances for something better; in
+fact, the Saddle Club, into which Leroy Mortimer had already managed to
+pilot him, was one riser and tread upward on the stair he was climbing,
+though it was more of a lobby for other clubs than a club in itself. To
+be seen there was, perhaps, rather to a man's advantage, if he did not
+loaf there in the evenings or use it too frequently. As Plank carefully
+avoided doing either, Mortimer was fortunate in finding him there; and
+he crawled out of his hansom, saying that the desk clerk would pay, and
+entered the reading-room, where Plank sat writing a letter.
+
+Beverly Plank had grown stouter since he had returned to town from Black
+Fells; but the increase of weight was evenly distributed over his
+six feet odd, which made him only a trifle more ponderous and not
+abdominally fat. But Mortimer had become enormous; rolls of flesh
+crowded his mottled ear-lobes outward and bulged above his collar;
+cushions of it padded the backs of his hands and fingers; shaving left
+his heavy, distended face congested and unpleasantly shiny. But he was
+as minutely groomed as ever, and he wore that satiated air of prosperity
+which had always been one of his most important assets.
+
+The social campaign inaugurated by Leila Mortimer in behalf of Beverly
+Plank had, so far, received no serious reverses. His box at the horse
+show, of course, produced merely negative results; his box at the opera
+might mean something some day. His name was up at the Lenox and the
+Patroons; he had endowed a ward in the new pavilion of St. Berold's
+Hospital; he had presented a fine Gainsborough--The Countess of
+Wythe--to the Metropolitan Museum; and it was rumoured that he had
+consulted several bishops concerning a new chapel for that huge bastion
+of the citadel of Faith looming above the metropolitan wilderness in the
+north.
+
+So far, so good. If, as yet, he had not been permitted to go where he
+wanted to go, he at least had been instructed where not to go and what
+not to do; and he was as docile as he was dogged, understanding how much
+longer it takes to shuffle in by way of the mews and the back door than
+to sit on the front steps and wait politely for somebody to unchain the
+front door.
+
+Meanwhile he was doggedly docile; his huge house, facing the wintry park
+midway between the squat palaces of the wealthy pioneers and the outer
+hundreds, remained magnificently empty save for certain afternoon
+conferences of very solemn men, fellow directors and associates in
+business and financial matters--save for the periodical presence of the
+Mortimers: a mansion immense and shadowy, haunted by relays of yawning,
+livened servants, half stupefied under the vast silence of the twilit
+splendour. He was patient, not only because he was told to be, but also
+because he had nothing better to do. Society stared at him as blankly
+as the Mountain confronted Mahomet. But the stubborn patience of the man
+was itself a strain on the Mountain; he was aware of that, and he waited
+for it to come to him. As yet, however, he could detect no symptoms of
+mobility in the Mountain.
+
+"Things are moving all the same," said Mortimer, as he entered the
+reading room of the Saddle Club. "Quarrier and Belwether have listened
+a damned sight more respectfully to me since they read that column about
+you and the bishops and that chapel business."
+
+Plank turned his heavy head with a disturbed glance around the room; for
+he always dreaded Mortimer's indiscretions of speech--was afraid of his
+cynical frankness in the presence of others; even shrank from the brutal
+bonhomie of the man when alone with him.
+
+"Can't you be careful?" he said; "there was a man here a moment ago."
+He picked up his unfinished letter, folded and pocketed it, touched an
+electric bell, and when a servant came, "Take Mr. Mortimer's order,"
+he said, supporting his massive head on his huge hands and resting his
+elbow on the writing-desk.
+
+"I've got to cut out this morning bracer," said Mortimer, eyeing the
+servant with indecision; but he gave his order nevertheless, and later
+accepted a cigar; and when the servant had returned and again retired,
+he half emptied his tall glass, refilled it with mineral water, and,
+settling back in the padded arm-chair, said: "If I manage this thing as
+it ought to be managed, you'll go through by April. What do you think of
+that?"
+
+Plank's phlegmatic features flushed. "I'm more obliged to you than I
+can say," he began, but Mortimer silenced him with a gesture: "Don't
+interrupt. I'm going to put you through The Patroons Club by April.
+That's thirty yards through the centre; d'ye see, you dunderheaded
+Dutchman? It's solid gain, and it's our ball. The Lenox will take
+longer; they're a 'holier-than-thou' bunch of nincompoops, and it always
+horrifies them to have any man elected, no matter who he is. They'd
+rather die of dry rot than elect anybody; it shocks them to think that
+any man could have the presumption to be presented. They require
+the spectacle of fasting and prayer--a view of a candidate seated in
+sackcloth and ashes in outer darkness. You've got to wait for the Lenox,
+Plank."
+
+"I am waiting," said Plank, squaring his massive jaws.
+
+"You've got to," growled Mortimer, emptying his glass aggressively.
+
+Plank looked out of the window, his shrewd blue eyes closing in
+retrospection.
+
+"Another thing," continued Mortimer thickly; "the Kemp Ferralls
+are disposed to be decent. I don't mean in asking you to meet some
+intellectual second-raters, but in doing it handsomely. I don't know
+whether it's time yet," he added, with a sidelong glance at Plank's
+stolid face; "I don't want to push the mourners too hard ... Well, I'll
+see about it ... And if it's the thing to do, and the time to do it"--he
+turned on Plank with his boisterous and misleading laugh and clapped
+him on the shoulder--"it will be done, as sure as snobs are snobs; and
+that's the surest thing you ever bet on. Here's to them!" and he emptied
+his glass and fell back into his chair, wheezing and sucking at his
+unlighted cigar.
+
+"I want to say," began Plank, speaking the more slowly because he was
+deeply in earnest, "that all this you are doing for me is very handsome
+of you, Mortimer. I'd like to say--to convey to you something of how I
+feel about the way you and Mrs. Mortimer--"
+
+"Oh, Leila has done it all."
+
+"Mrs. Mortimer is very kind, and you have been so, too. I--I wish there
+was something--some way to--to--"
+
+"To what?" asked Mortimer so bluntly that Plank flushed up and
+stammered:
+
+"To be--to do a--to show my gratitude."
+
+"How? You're scarcely in a position to do anything for us," said
+Mortimer, brutally staring him out of countenance.
+
+"I know it," said Plank, the painful flush deepening.
+
+Mortimer, fussing and growling over his cigar, was nevertheless
+stealthily intent on the game which had so long absorbed him. His
+wits, clogged, dulled by excesses, were now aroused to a sort of gross
+activity through the menace of necessity. At last Plank had given him an
+opening. He recognised his chance.
+
+"There's one thing," he said deliberately, "that I won't stand for, and
+that's any vulgar misconception on your part of my friendship for you.
+Do you follow me?"
+
+"I don't misunderstand it," protested Plank, angry and astonished; "I
+don't--"
+
+"--As though," continued Mortimer menacingly, "I were one of those needy
+social tipsters, one of those shabby, pandering touts who--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Mortimer, don't talk like that! I had no
+intention--"
+
+"--One of those contemptible, parasitic leeches," persisted Mortimer,
+getting redder and hoarser, "who live on men like you. Confound you,
+Plank, what the devil do you mean by it?"
+
+"Mortimer, are you crazy, to talk to me like that?"
+
+"No, I'm not, but you must be! I've a mind to drop the whole cursed
+business! I've every inclination to drop it! If you haven't horse-sense
+enough--if you haven't innate delicacy sufficient to keep you from
+making such a break--"
+
+"I didn't! It wasn't a break, Mortimer. I wouldn't have hurt you--"
+
+"You did hurt me! How can I feel the same again? I never imagined you
+thought I was that sort of a social mercenary. Why, so little did I
+dream that you looked on our friendship in that light that I was--on my
+word of honour!--I was just now on the point of asking you for three
+or four thousand, to carry me to the month's end and square my bridge
+balance."
+
+"Mortimer, you must take it! You are a fool to think I meant anything by
+saying I wanted to show my gratitude. Look here; be decent and fair with
+me. I wouldn't offer you an affront--would I?--even if I were a cad. I
+wouldn't do it now, just when you're getting things into shape for me.
+I'm not a fool, anyway. This is in deadly earnest, I tell you, Mortimer,
+and I'm getting angry about it. You've got to show your confidence in
+me; you've got to take what you want from me, as you would from any
+friend. I resent your failure to do it now, as though you drew a line
+between me and your intimates. If you're really my friend, show it!"
+
+There was a pause. A curious and unaccustomed sensation had silenced
+Mortimer, something almost akin to shame. It astonished him a little.
+He did not quite understand why, in the very moment of success over this
+stolid, shrewd young man and his thrifty Dutch instincts, he should feel
+uncomfortable. Were not his services worth something? Had he not earned
+at least the right to borrow from this rich man who could afford to pay
+for what was done for him? Why should he feel ashamed? He had not been
+treacherous; he really liked the fellow. Why shouldn't he take his
+money?
+
+"See here, old man," said Plank, extending a huge highly coloured hand,
+"is all square between us now?"
+
+"I think so," muttered Mortimer.
+
+But Plank would not relinquish his hand.
+
+"Then tell me how to draw that cheque! Great Heaven, Mortimer, what
+is friendship, anyhow, if it doesn't include little matters like
+this--little misunderstandings like this? I'm the man to be sensitive,
+not you. You have been very good to me, Mortimer. I could almost wish
+you in a position where the only thing I possess might square something
+of my debt to you."
+
+A few minutes later, while he was filling in the cheque, a dusty youth
+in riding clothes and spurs came in and found a seat by one of the
+windows, into which he dropped, and then looked about him for a servant.
+
+"Hello, Fleetwood!" said Mortimer, glancing over his shoulder to see
+whose spurs were ringing on the polished floor.
+
+Fleetwood saluted amiably with his riding-crop; including Plank, whom he
+did not know, in a more formal salute.
+
+"Will you join us?" asked Mortimer, taking the cheque which Plank
+offered and carelessly pocketing it without even a nod of thanks. "You
+know Beverly Plank, of course? What! I thought everybody knew Beverly
+Plank."
+
+Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. Plank shook hands and resumed their seats.
+
+"Ripping weather!" observed Fleetwood, replacing his hat and rebuttoning
+the glove which he had removed to shake hands with Plank. "Lot of jolly
+people out this morning. I say, Mortimer, do you want that roan hunter
+of mine you looked over? I mean King Dermid, because Marion Page wants
+him, if you don't. She was out this morning, and she spoke of it again."
+
+Mortimer, lifting a replenished glass, shook his head, and drank
+thirstily in silence.
+
+"Saw you at Westbury, I think," said Fleetwood politely to Plank, as the
+two lifted their glasses to one another.
+
+"I hunted there for a day or two," replied Plank, modestly. "If it's
+that big Irish thoroughbred you were riding that you want to sell I'd
+like a look in, if Miss Page doesn't fancy him."
+
+Fleetwood laughed, and glanced amusedly at Plank over his glass. "It
+isn't that horse, Mr. Plank. That's Drumceit, Stephen Siward's famous
+horse." He interrupted himself to exchange greetings with several men
+who came into the room rather noisily, their spurs resounding across the
+oaken floor. One of them, Tom O'Hara, joined them, slamming his crop on
+the desk beside Plank and spreading himself over an arm-chair, from the
+seat of which he forcibly removed Mortimer's feet without excuse.
+
+"Drink? Of course I want a drink!" he replied irritably to
+Fleetwood--"one, three, ten, several! Billy, whose weasel-bellied pinto
+was that you were kicking your heels into in the park? Some of the
+squadron men asked me--the major. Oh, beg pardon! Didn't know you were
+trying to stick Mortimer with him. He might do for the troop ambulance,
+inside! ... What? Oh, yes; met Mr. Blank--I mean Mr. Plank--at Shotover,
+I think. How d'ye do? Had the pleasure of potting your tame pheasants.
+Rotten sport, you know. What do you do it for, Mr. Blank?"
+
+"What did you come for, if it's rotten sport?" asked Plank so simply
+that it took O'Hara a moment to realise he had been snubbed.
+
+"I didn't mean to be offensive," he drawled.
+
+"I suppose you can't help it," said Plank very gently; "some people
+can't, you know." And there was another silence, broken by Mortimer,
+whose entire hulk was tingling with a mixture of surprise and amusement
+over his protege's developing ability to take care of himself. "Did you
+say that Stephen Siward is in Westbury, Billy?"
+
+"No; he's in town," replied Fleetwood. "I took his horses up to hunt
+with. He isn't hunting, you know."
+
+"I didn't know. Nobody ever sees him anywhere," said Mortimer. "I guess
+his mother's death cut him up."
+
+Fleetwood lifted his empty glass and gently shook the ice in it. "That,
+and--the other business--is enough to cut any man up, isn't it?"
+
+"You mean the action of the Lenox Club?" asked Plank seriously.
+
+"Yes. He's resigned from this club, too, I hear. Somebody told me that
+he has made a clean sweep of all his clubs. That's foolish. A man may be
+an ass to join too many clubs but he's always a fool to resign from any
+of 'em. You ask the weatherwise what resigning from a club forecasts.
+It's the first ominous sign in a young man's career."
+
+"What's the second sign?" asked O'Hara, with a yawn.
+
+"Squadron talk; and you're full of it," retorted Fleetwood--"'I said to
+the major,' and 'The captain told the chief trumpeter'--all that sort
+of thing--and those Porto Rico spurs of yours, and the ewe-necked
+glyptosaurus you block the bridle-path with every morning. You're an
+awful nuisance, Tom, if anybody should ask me."
+
+Under cover of a rapid-fire exchange of pleasantries between Fleetwood
+and O'Hara, Plank turned to Mortimer, hesitating:
+
+"I rather liked Siward when I met him at Shotover," he ventured. "I'm
+very sorry he's down and out."
+
+"He drinks," shrugged Mortimer, diluting his mineral water with Irish
+whisky. "He can't let it alone; he's like all the Siwards. I could have
+told you that the first time I ever saw him. We all told him to cut it
+out, because he was sure to do some damfool thing if he didn't. He's
+done it, and his clubs have cut him out. It's his own funeral. ... Well,
+here's to you!"
+
+"Cut who out?" asked Fleetwood, ignoring O'Hara's parting shot
+concerning the decadence of the Fleetwood stables and their owner.
+
+"Stephen Siward. I always said that he was sure, sooner or later, to
+land in the family ditch. He has a right to, of course; the gutter is
+public property."
+
+"It's a damned sad thing," said Fleetwood slowly.
+
+After a pause Plank said: "I think so, too. ... I don't know him very
+well."
+
+"You may know him better now," said O'Hara insolently.
+
+Plank reddened, and, after a moment: "I should be glad to, if he cares
+to know me."
+
+"Mortimer doesn't care for him, but he's an awfully good fellow, all
+the same," said Fleetwood, turning to Plank; "he's been an ass, but who
+hasn't? I like him tremendously, and I feel very bad over the mess he
+made of it after that crazy dinner I gave in my rooms. What? You hadn't
+heard of it? Why man, it's the talk of the clubs."
+
+"I suppose that is why I haven't heard," said Plank simply; "my
+club-life is still in the future."
+
+"Oh!" said Fleetwood with an involuntary stare, surprised, a trifle
+uncomfortable, yet somehow liking Plank, and not understanding why.
+
+"I'm not in anything, you see; I'm only up for the Patroons and the
+Lenox," added Plank gravely.
+
+"I see. Certainly. Er--hope you'll make 'em; hope to see you there soon.
+Er--I see by the papers you've been jollying the clergy, Mr. Plank.
+Awfully handsome of you, all that chapel business. I say: I've a
+cousin--er--young architect; Beaux Arts, and all that--just over. I'd
+awfully like to have him given a chance at that competition; invited to
+try, you see. I don't suppose it could be managed, now--"
+
+"Would you like to have me ask the bishops?" inquired Plank, naively
+shrewd. And the conversation became very cordial between the two, which
+Mortimer observed, keeping one ironical eye on Plank, while he continued
+a desultory discussion with O'Hara concerning a very private dinner
+which somebody told somebody that somebody had given to Quarrier and the
+Inter-County Electric people; which, if true, plainly indicated who was
+financing the Inter-County scheme, and why Amalgamated stock had tumbled
+again yesterday, and what might be looked for from the Algonquin Trust
+Company's president.
+
+"Amalgamated Electric doesn't seem to like it a little bit," said
+O'Hara. "Ferrall, Belwether, and Siward are in it up to their necks; and
+if Quarrier is really the god in the machine, and if he really is doing
+stunts with Amalgamated Electric, and is also mixing feet with the
+Inter-County crowd, why, he is virtually paralleling his own road;
+and why, in the name of common sense, is he doing that? He'll kill it;
+that's what he'll do."
+
+"He can afford to kill it," observed Mortimer, punching the electric
+button and making a significant gesture toward his empty glass as the
+servant entered; "a man like Quarrier can afford to kill anything."
+
+"Yes; but why kill Amalgamated Electric? Why not merge? Why, it's a
+crazy thing to do, it's a devil of a thing to do, to parallel your own
+line!" insisted O'Hara. "That is dirty work. People don't do such things
+these days. Nobody tears up dollar bills for the pleasure of tearing."
+
+"Nobody knows what Quarrier will do," muttered Mortimer, who had tried
+hard enough to find out when the first ominous rumours arose concerning
+Amalgamated, and the first fractional declines left the street
+speechless and stupefied.
+
+O'Hara sat frowning, and fingering his glass. "As a matter of fact," he
+said, "a little cold logic shows us that Quarrier isn't in it at all.
+No sane man would ruin his own enterprise, when there is no need to.
+His people are openly supporting Amalgamated and hammering Inter-County;
+and, besides, there's Ferrall in it, and Mrs. Ferrall is Quarrier's
+cousin; and there's Belwether in it, and Quarrier is engaged to marry
+Sylvia Landis, who is Belwether's niece. It's a scrap with Harrington's
+crowd, and the wheels inside of wheels are like Chinese boxes. Who knows
+what it means? Only it's plain that Amalgamated is safe, if Quarrier
+wants it to be. And unless he does he's crazy."
+
+Mortimer puffed stolidly at his cigar until the smoke got into his eyes
+and inflamed them. He sat for a while, wiping his puffy eyelids with his
+handkerchief; then, squinting sideways at Plank, and seeing him still
+occupied with Fleetwood, turned bluntly on O'Hara:
+
+"See here: what do you mean by being nasty to Plank?" he growled. "I'm
+backing him. Do you understand?"
+
+"It is curious," mused O'Hara coolly, "how much of a cad a fairly decent
+man can be when he's out of temper!"
+
+"You mean Plank, or me?" demanded Mortimer, darkening angrily.
+
+"No; I mean myself. I'm not that way usually. I took him for a bounder,
+and he's caught me with the goods on. I've been thinking that the men
+who bother with such questions are usually open to suspicion themselves.
+Watch me do the civil, now. I'm ashamed of myself."
+
+"Wait a moment. Will you be civil enough to do something for him at the
+Patroons? That will mean something."
+
+"Is he up? Yes, I will;" and, turning in his chair, he said to Plank:
+"Awfully sorry I acted like a bounder just now, after having accepted
+your hospitality at the Fells. I did mean to be offensive, and I'm sorry
+for that, too. Hope you'll overlook it, and be friendly."
+
+Plank's face took on the dark-red hue of embarrassment; he looked
+questioningly at Mortimer, whose visage remained non-committal, then
+directly at O'Hara.
+
+"I should be very glad to be friends with you," he said with an
+ingenuous dignity that surprised Mortimer. It was only the native
+simplicity of the man, veneered and polished by constant contact
+with Mrs. Mortimer, and now showing to advantage in the grain. And
+it gratified Mortimer, because he saw that it was going to make many
+matters much easier for himself and his protege.
+
+The tall glasses were filled and drained again before they departed to
+the cold plunge and dressing-rooms above, whence presently they emerged
+in street garb to drive down town and lunch together at the Lenox Club,
+Plank as Fleetwood's guest.
+
+Mortimer, very heavy and inert after luncheon, wedged himself into a
+great stuffed arm-chair by the window, where he alternately nodded over
+his coffee and wheezed in his breathing, and leered out at Fifth Avenue
+from half-closed, puffy eyes. And there he was due to sit, sodden and
+replete, until the fashionable equipages began to flash past. He'd
+probably see his wife driving with Mrs. Ferrall or with Miss Caithness,
+or perhaps with some doddering caryatid of the social structure; and
+he'd sit there, leering with gummy eyes out of the club windows, while
+servants in silent processional replenished his glass from time to time,
+until in the early night the trim little shopgirls flocked out into
+the highways in gossiping, fluttering coveys, trotting away across
+the illuminated asphalt, north and south to their thousand dingy
+destinations. And after they had gone he would probably arouse himself
+to read the evening paper, or perhaps gossip with Major Belwether and
+other white-haired familiars, or perhaps doze until it was time to
+summon a cab and go home to dress.
+
+That afternoon, however, having O'Hara and Fleetwood to give him
+countenance, he managed to arouse himself long enough to make Plank
+known personally to several of the governors of the club and to a dozen
+members, then left him to his fate. Whence, presently, Fleetwood
+and O'Hara extracted him--fate at that moment being personified by a
+garrulous old gentleman, one Peter Caithness, who divided with Major
+Belwether the distinction of being the club bore--and together they
+piloted him to the billiard room, where he beat them handily for a
+dollar a point at everything they suggested.
+
+"You play almost as pretty a game as Stephen Siward used to play," said
+O'Hara cordially. "You've something of his cue movement--something of
+his infernal facility and touch. Hasn't he, Fleetwood?"
+
+"I wish Siward were back here," said Fleetwood thoughtfully, returning
+his cue to his own rack. "I wonder what he does with himself--where he
+keeps himself all the while? What the devil is there for a man to do, if
+he doesn't do anything? He's not going out anywhere since his mother's
+death; he has no clubs to go to, I understand. What does he do--go to
+his office and come back, and sit in that shabby old brick house all day
+and blink at the bum portraits of his bum and distinguished ancestors?
+Do you know what he does with himself?" to O'Hara.
+
+"I don't even know where he lives," observed O'Hara, resuming his coat.
+"He's given up his rooms, I understand."
+
+"What? Don't know the old Siward house?"
+
+"Oh! does he live there now? Of course; I forgot about his mother. He
+had apartments last year, you remember. He gave dinners--corkers they
+were. I went to one--like that last one you gave."
+
+"I wish I'd never given it," said Fleetwood gloomily. "If I hadn't, he'd
+be a member here still. ... What do you suppose induced him to take that
+little gin-drinking cat to the Patroons? Why, man, it wasn't even an
+undergraduate's trick! it was the act of a lunatic."
+
+For a while they talked of Siward, and of his unfortunate story and the
+pity of it; and when the two men ceased,
+
+"Do you know," said Plank mildly, "I don't believe he ever did it."
+
+O'Hara looked up surprised, then shrugged. "Unfortunately he doesn't
+deny it, you see."
+
+"I heard," said Fleetwood, lighting a cigarette, "that he did deny it;
+that he said, no matter what his condition was, he couldn't have done
+it. If he had been sober, the governors would have been bound to take
+his word of honour. But he couldn't give that, you see. And after they
+pointed out to him that he had been in no condition to know exactly what
+he did do, he shut up. ... And they dropped him; and he's falling yet."
+
+"I don't believe that sort of a man ever would do that sort of thing,"
+repeated Plank obstinately, his Delft-blue eyes partly closing, so that
+all the Dutch shrewdness and stubbornness in his face disturbed its
+highly coloured placidity. And he walked away toward the wash-room to
+cleanse his ponderous pink hands of chalk-dust.
+
+"That's what's the matter with Plank," observed O'Hara to Fleetwood as
+Plank disappeared. "It isn't that he's a bounder; but he doesn't know
+things; he doesn't know enough, for instance, to wait until he's a
+member of a club before he criticises the judgment of its governors. Yet
+you can't help tolerating the fellow. I think I'll write a letter for
+him, or put down my name. What do you think?"
+
+"It would be all right," said Fleetwood. "He'll need all the support he
+can get, with Leroy Mortimer as his sponsor. ... Wasn't Mortimer rather
+nasty about Siward though, in his role of the alcoholic prophet? Whew!"
+
+"Siward never had any use for Mortimer," observed O'Hara.
+
+"I'll bet you never heard him say so," returned Fleetwood. "You know
+Stephen Siward's way; he never said anything unpleasant about any man.
+I wish I didn't either, but I do. So do you. So do most men. ... Lord!
+I wish Siward were back here. He was a good deal of a man, after all,
+Tom."
+
+They were unconsciously using the past tense in discussing Siward, as
+though he were dead, either physically or socially.
+
+"In one way he was always a singularly decent man," mused O'Hara,
+walking toward the great marble vestibule and buttoning his overcoat.
+
+"How exactly do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, about women."
+
+"I believe it, too. If he did take that Vyse girl into the Patroons, it
+was his limit with her--and, I believe his limit with any woman. He was
+absurdly decent that way; he was indeed. And now look at the reputation
+he has! Isn't it funny? isn't it, now?"
+
+"What sort of an effect do you suppose all this business is going to
+have on Siward?"
+
+"It's had one effect already," replied Fleetwood, as Plank came up,
+ready for the street. "Ferrall says he looks sick, and Belwether says
+he's going to the devil; but that's the sort of thing the major is
+likely to say. By the way, wasn't there something between that pretty
+Landis girl and Siward? Somebody--some damned gossiping somebody--talked
+about it somewhere, recently."
+
+"I don't believe that, either," said Plank, in his heavy, measured,
+passionless voice, as they descended the steps of the white portico and
+looked around for a cab.
+
+"As for me, I've got to hustle," observed O'Hara, glancing at his watch.
+"I'm due to shine at a function about five. Are you coming up-town
+either of you fellows? I'll give you a lift as far as Seventy-second
+Street, Plank."
+
+"Tell you what we'll do," said Fleetwood, impulsively, turning to Plank:
+"We'll drive down town, you and I, and we'll look up poor old Siward!
+Shall we? He's probably all alone in that God-forsaken red brick family
+tomb! Shall we? How about it, Plank?"
+
+O'Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed
+into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.
+
+"I'd like to, but I don't think I know Mr. Siward well enough to do
+that," said Plank diffidently. He hesitated, colouring up. "He might
+misunderstand my going with you--as a liberty--which perhaps I might not
+have ventured on had he been less--less unfortunate."
+
+Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him.
+"See here," he said, "you are going as a friend of mine--if you care to
+look at it that way."
+
+"Thank you," said Plank; "I should be very glad to go in that way."
+
+The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of
+the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces
+of the young men.
+
+Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so
+spoken of--a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions,
+surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting
+of the thickness of wall and foundation. Window-curtains of obsolete
+pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes. Three massive
+wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled
+upward to the roof, dividing the facade equally, and furnishing some
+relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals
+of window and door. Two huge and unsymmetrical catalpa trees stood
+sentinels before it, dividing curb from asphalt; and from the centres of
+the shrivelled, brown grass-plots flanking the stoop under the basement
+windows two aged Rose-of-Sharon trees bristled naked to the height of
+the white marble capitals of the flaking pillars supporting the stained
+portico.
+
+An old New York house, in the New York sense. Old in another sense,
+too, where in a rapid land Time outstrips itself, painting, with the
+antiquity of centuries, the stone and mortar which were new scarce ten
+years since.
+
+"Nice old family mausoleum," commented Fleetwood, descending from the
+hansom, followed by Plank. The latter instinctively mounted the stoop on
+tiptoe, treading gingerly as one who ventures into precincts unknown but
+long respected; and as Fleetwood pulled the old-fashioned bell, Plank
+stole a glance over the facade, where wisps of straw trailed from
+sparrows' nests, undisturbed, wedged between plinth and pillar; where,
+behind the lace pane-screens, shadowy edges of heavy curtains framed
+the obscurity; where the paint had blistered and peeled from the iron
+railings, and the marble pillars of the portico glimmered, scarred by
+frosts of winters long forgotten.
+
+"Cheerful monument," repeated Fleetwood with a sarcastic nod. Then
+the door was opened by a very old man wearing the black "swallow-tail"
+clothes and choker of an old-time butler, spotless, quite immaculate,
+but cut after a fashion no young man remembers.
+
+"Good evening," said Fleetwood, entering, followed on tiptoe by Plank.
+
+"Good evening, sir." ... A pause; and in the unsteady voice of age: "Mr.
+Fleetwood, sir. ... Mr.--." A bow, and the dim eyes peering up at Plank,
+who stood fumbling for his card-case.
+
+Fleetwood dropped both cards on the salver unsteadily extended. The
+butler ushered them into a dim room on the right.
+
+"How is Mr. Siward?" asked Fleetwood, pausing on the threshold and
+dropping his voice.
+
+The old man hesitated, looking down, then still looking away from
+Fleetwood: "Bravely, sir, bravely, Mr. Fleetwood."
+
+"The Siwards were always that," said the young man gently.
+
+"Yes, sir. ... Thank you. Mr. Stephen--Mr. Siward," he corrected,
+quaintly, "is indisposed, sir. It was a--a great shock to us all, sir!"
+He bowed and turned away, holding his salver stiffly; and they heard him
+muttering under his breath, "Bravely, sir, bravely. A--a great shock,
+sir! ... Thank you."
+
+Fleetwood turned to Plank, who stood silent, staring through the fading
+light at the faded household gods of the house of Siward. The dim light
+touched the prisms of a crystal chandelier dulled by age, and edged the
+carved foliations of the marble mantel, above which loomed a tarnished
+mirror reflecting darkness. Fleetwood rose, drew a window-shade higher,
+and nodded toward several pictures; and Plank moved slowly from one to
+another, peering up at the dead Siwards in their crackled varnish.
+
+"This is the real thing," observed Fleetwood cynically, "all this Fourth
+Avenue antique business; dingy, cumbersome, depressing. Good God! I see
+myself standing it. ... Look at that old grinny-bags in a pig-tail over
+there! To the cellar for his, if this were my house. ... We've got some,
+too, in several rooms, and I never go into 'em. They're like a scene
+in a bum play, or like one of those Washington Square rat-holes, where
+artists eat Welsh-rabbits with dirty fingers. Ugh!"
+
+"I like it," said Plank, under his breath.
+
+Fleetwood stared, then shrugged, and returned to the window to watch a
+brand-new French motor-car drawn up before a modern mansion across the
+avenue.
+
+The butler returned presently, saying that Mr. Siward was at home and
+would receive them in the library above, as he was not yet able to pass
+up and down stairs.
+
+"I didn't know he was as ill as that," muttered Fleetwood, as he and
+Plank followed the old man up the creaking stairway. But Gumble, the
+butler, said nothing in reply.
+
+Siward was sitting in an arm-chair by the window, one leg extended, his
+left foot, stiffly cased in bandages, resting on a footstool.
+
+"Why, Stephen!" exclaimed Fleetwood, hastening forward, "I didn't know
+you were laid up like this!"
+
+Siward offered his hand inquiringly; then his eyes turned toward Plank,
+who stood behind Fleetwood; and, slowly disengaging his hand from
+Fleetwood's sympathetic grip, he offered it to Plank.
+
+"It is very kind of you," he said. "Gumble, Mr. Fleetwood prefers rye,
+for some inscrutable reason. Mr. Plank?" His smile was a question.
+
+"If you don't mind," said Plank, "I should like to have some tea--that
+is, if--"
+
+"Tea, Gumble, for two. We'll tipple in company, Mr. Plank," he added.
+"And the cigars are at your elbow, Billy," with another smile at
+Fleetwood.
+
+"Now," said the latter, after he had lighted his cigar, "what is the
+matter, Stephen?"
+
+Siward glanced at his stiffly extended foot. "Nothing much." He reddened
+faintly, "I slipped. It's only a twisted ankle."
+
+For a moment or two the answer satisfied Fleetwood, then a sudden,
+curious flash of suspicion came into his eyes; he glanced sharply at
+Siward, who lowered his eyes, while the red tint in his hollow cheeks
+deepened.
+
+Neither spoke for a while. Plank sipped the tea which Wands, the second
+man, brought. Siward brooded over his cup, head bent. Fleetwood made
+more noise than necessary with his ice.
+
+"I miss you like hell!" said Fleetwood musingly, measuring out the
+old rye from the quaint decanter. "Why did you drop the Saddle Club,
+Stephen?"
+
+"I'm not riding; I have no use for it," replied Siward.
+
+"You've cut out the Proscenium Club, too, and the Owl's Head, and the
+Trophy. It's a shame, Stephen."
+
+"I'm tired of clubs."
+
+"Don't talk that way."
+
+"Very well, I won't," said Siward, smiling. "Tell me what is
+happening--out there," he made a gesture toward the window; "all the
+gossip the newspapers miss. I've talked Dr. Grisby to death; I've talked
+Gumble to death; I've read myself stupid. What's going on, Billy?"
+
+So Fleetwood sketched for him a gay cartoon of events, caricaturing
+various episodes in the social kaleidoscope which might interest him.
+He gossiped cynically, but without malice, about people they both knew,
+about engagements, marriages, and divorces, plans and ambitions; about
+those absent from the metropolis and the newcomers to be welcomed.
+He commented briefly on the opera, reviewed the newer plays at the
+theatres, touched on the now dormant gaiety which had made the season at
+nearby country clubs conspicuous; then drifted into the hunting field,
+gossiping pleasantly in the vernacular about horses and packs and
+drag-hunts and stables, and what people thought of the new English
+hounds of the trial pack, and how the new M. F. H., Maitland Gray, had
+managed to break so many bones at Southbury.
+
+Politics were touched upon, and they spoke of the possibility of
+Ferrall going to the Assembly, the sport of boss-baiting having become
+fashionable among amateurs, and providing a new amusement for the idle
+rich.
+
+So city, State, and national issues were run through lightly, business
+conditions noticed, the stock market speculated upon; and presently
+conversation died out, with a yawn from Fleetwood as he looked into his
+empty glass at the last bit of ice.
+
+"Don't do that, Billy," smiled Siward. "You haven't discoursed upon art,
+literature, and science yet, and you can't go until you've adjusted the
+affairs of the nation for the next twenty-four hours."
+
+"Art?" yawned Fleetwood. "Oh, pictures? Don't like 'em. Nobody ever
+looks at 'em except debutantes, who do it out of deviltry, to floor a
+man at a dinner or a dance."
+
+"How about literature?" inquired Siward gravely. "Anything doing?"
+
+"Nothing in it," replied Fleetwood more gravely still. "It's another
+feminine bluff--like all that music talk they hand you after the opera."
+
+"I see. And science?"
+
+"Spider Flynn is matched to meet Kid Holloway; is that what you mean,
+Stephen? Somebody tumbled out of an air-ship the other day; is that what
+you mean? And they're selling scientific jewelry on Broadway at a dollar
+a quart; is that what you want to know?"
+
+Siward rested his head on his hand with a smile. "Yes, that's about
+what I wanted to know, Billy--all about the arts and sciences. ... Much
+obliged. You needn't stay any longer, if you don't want to."
+
+"How soon will you be out?" inquired Fleetwood.
+
+"Out? I don't know. I shall try to drive to the office to-morrow."
+
+"Why the devil did you resign from all your clubs? How can I see you
+if I don't come here?" began Fleetwood impatiently. "I know, of course,
+that you're not going anywhere, but a man always goes to his club. You
+don't look well, Stephen. You are too much alone."
+
+Siward did not answer. His face and body had certainly grown thinner
+since Fleetwood had last seen him. Plank, too, had been shocked at the
+change in him--the dark, hard lines under the eyes; the pallor, the
+curious immobility of the man, save for his fingers, which were always
+restless, now moving in search of some small object to worry and turn
+over and over, now nervously settling into a grasp on the arm of his
+chair.
+
+"How is Amalgamated Electric?" asked Fleetwood, abruptly.
+
+"I think it's all right. Want to buy some?" replied Siward, smiling.
+
+Plank stirred in his chair ponderously. "Somebody is kicking it to
+pieces," he said.
+
+"Somebody is trying to," smiled Siward.
+
+"Harrington," nodded Fleetwood. Siward nodded back. Plank was silent.
+
+"Of course," continued Fleetwood, tentatively, "you people need not
+worry, with Howard Quarrier back of you."
+
+Nobody said anything for a while. Presently Siward's restless hands,
+moving in search of something, encountered a pencil lying on the table
+beside him, and he picked it up and began drawing initials and scrolls
+on the margin of a newspaper; and all the scrolls framed initials,
+and all the initials were the same, twining and twisting into endless
+variations of the letters S. L.
+
+"Yes, I must go to the office to-morrow," he repeated absently. "I am
+better--in fact I am quite well, except for this sprain." He looked down
+at his bandaged foot, then his pencil moved listlessly again, continuing
+the endless variations on the two letters. It was plain that he was
+tired.
+
+Fleetwood rose and made his adieux almost affectionately. Plank moved
+forward on tiptoe, bulky and noiseless; and Siward held out his hand,
+saying something amiably formal.
+
+"Would you like to have me come again?" asked Plank, red with
+embarrassment, yet so naively that at first Siward found no words to
+answer him; then--
+
+"Would you care to come, Mr. Plank?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Siward looked at him curiously, almost cautiously. His first impressions
+of the man had been summed up in one contemptuous word. Besides, barring
+that, what was there in common between himself and such a type as Plank?
+He had not even troubled himself to avoid him at Shotover; he had merely
+been aware of him when Plank spoke to him; never otherwise, except that
+afternoon beside the swimming pool, when he had made one of his rare
+criticisms on Plank.
+
+Perhaps Plank had changed, perhaps Siward had; for he found nothing
+offensive in the bulky young man now--nothing particularly attractive,
+either, except for a certain simplicity, a certain direct candour in the
+heavy blue eyes which met his squarely.
+
+"Come in for a cigar when you have a few moments idle," said Siward
+slowly.
+
+"It will give me great pleasure," said Plank, bowing.
+
+And that was all. He followed Fleetwood down the stairs; Wands held
+their coats, and bowed them out into the falling shadows of the winter
+twilight.
+
+Siward, sitting beside his window, watched them enter their hansom and
+drive away up the avenue. A dull flush had settled over his cheeks; the
+aroma of spirits hung in the air, and he looked across the room at the
+decanter. Presently he drank some of his tea, but it was lukewarm, and
+he pushed the cup from him.
+
+The clatter of the cup brought the old butler, who toddled hither
+and thither, removing trays, pulling chairs into place, fussing and
+pattering about, until a maid came in noiselessly, bearing a lamp. She
+pulled down the shades, drew the sad-coloured curtains, went to the
+mantelpiece and peered at the clock, then brought a wineglass and a
+spoon to Siward, and measured the dose in silence. He swallowed
+it, shrugged, permitted her to change the position of his chair and
+footstool, and nodded thanks and dismissal.
+
+"Gumble, are you there?" he asked carelessly.
+
+The butler entered from the hallway. "Yes, sir."
+
+"You may leave that decanter."
+
+But the old servant may have misunderstood, for he only bowed and
+ambled off downstairs with the decanter, either heedless or deaf to his
+master's sharp order to return.
+
+For a while Siward sat there, eyes fixed, scowling into vacancy; then
+the old, listless, careworn expression returned; he rested one elbow
+on the window-sill, his worn cheek on his hand, and with the other hand
+fell to weaving initials with his pencil on the margin of the newspaper
+lying on the table beside him.
+
+Lamplight brought out sharply the physical change in him--the angular
+shadows flat under the cheek-bones, the hard, slightly swollen flesh
+in the bluish shadows around the eyes. The mark of the master-vice was
+there; its stamp in the swollen, worn-out hollows; its imprint in the
+fine lines at the corners of his mouth; its sign manual in the faintest
+relaxation of the under lip, which had not yet become a looseness.
+
+For the last of the Siwards had at last stepped into the highway which
+his doomed forebears had travelled before him.
+
+"Gumble!" he called irritably.
+
+A quavering voice, an unsteady step, and the old man entered again. "Mr.
+Stephen, sir?"
+
+"Bring that decanter back. Didn't you hear me tell you just now?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Didn't you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Stephen, sir."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Gumble!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Are you going to bring that decanter?"
+
+The old butler bowed, and ambled from the room, and for a long while
+Siward sat sullenly listening and scoring the edges of the paper with
+his trembling pencil. Then the lead broke short, and he flung it from
+him and pulled the bell. Wands came this time, a lank, sandy, silent
+man, grown gray as a rat in the service of the Siwards. He received his
+master's orders, and withdrew; and again Siward waited, biting his under
+lip and tearing bits from the edges of the newspaper with fingers never
+still; but nobody came with the decanter, and after a while his tense
+muscles relaxed; something in his very soul seemed to snap, and he sank
+back in his chair, the hot tears blinding him.
+
+He had got as far as that; moments of self-pity were becoming almost as
+frequent as scorching intervals of self-contempt.
+
+So they all knew what was the matter with him--they all knew--the
+doctor, the servants, his friends. Had he not surprised the quick
+suspicion in Fleetwood's glance, when he told him he had slipped, and
+sprained his ankle? What if he had been drunk when he fell--fell on his
+own doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants,
+drunk as his forefathers? It was none of Fleetwood's business. It was
+none of the servants' business. It was nobody's business except his own.
+Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor
+him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide
+decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle
+with him? Of what concern to them were his vices or his virtues?
+
+The tears dried in his hot eyes; he jerked the old-fashioned bell
+savagely; and after a long while he heard servants whispering together
+in the passageway outside his door.
+
+He lay very still in his chair; his hearing had become abnormally
+acute, but he could not make out what they were saying; and as the dull,
+intestinal aching grew sharper, parching, searing every strained muscle
+in throat and chest, he struck the table beside him, and clenched his
+teeth in the fierce rush of agony that swept him from head to foot,
+crying out an inarticulate menace on his household. And Dr. Grisby came
+into the room from the outer shadows of the hall.
+
+He was very small, very meagre, very bald, and clean-shaven, with a face
+like a nut-cracker; and the brown wig he wore was atrocious, and curled
+forward over his colourless ears. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles,
+each glass divided into two lenses; and he stood on tiptoe to look out
+through the upper lenses on the world, and always bent almost double to
+use the lower or reading lenses.
+
+Besides that, he affected frilled shirts, and string ties, which nobody
+had ever seen snugly tied. His loose string tie was the first thing
+Siward could remember about the doctor; and that the doctor had
+permitted him to pull it when he had the measles, at the age of six.
+
+"What's all this racket?" said the little old doctor harshly. "Got
+colic? Got the toothache? I'm ashamed of you, Stephen, cutting capers
+and pounding the furniture! Look up! Look at me! Out with your tongue!
+Well, now, what the devil's the trouble?"
+
+"You--know," muttered Siward, abandoning his wrist to the little man,
+who seated himself beside him. Dr. Grisby scarcely noted the pulse; the
+delicate pressure had become a strong caress.
+
+"Know what?" he grunted. "How do I know what's the matter with you? Hey?
+Now, now, don't try to explain, Steve; don't fly off the handle! All
+right; grant that I do know what's bothering you; I want to see that
+ankle first. Here, somebody! Light that gas. Why the mischief don't
+you have the house wired for electricity, Stephen? It's wholesome.
+Gas isn't. Lamps are worse, sir. Do as I tell you!" And he went on
+loquaciously, grumbling and muttering, and never ceasing his talk, while
+Siward, wincing as the dressing was removed, lay back and closed his
+eyes.
+
+Half an hour later Gumble appeared, to announce dinner.
+
+"I don't want any," said Siward.
+
+"Eat!" said Dr. Grisby harshly.
+
+"I--don't care to."
+
+"Eat, I tell you! Do you think I don't mean what I say?"
+
+So he ate his broth and toast, the doctor curtly declining to join him.
+He ate hurriedly, closing his eyes in aversion. Even the iced tea was
+flat and distasteful to him.
+
+And at last he lay back, white and unstrung, the momentarily deadened
+desperation glimmering under his half-closed eyes. And for a long while
+Dr. Grisby sat, doubled almost in two, cuddling his bony little knees
+and studying the patterns in the faded carpet.
+
+"I guess you'd better go, Stephen," he said at length.
+
+"Up the river--to Mulqueen's?"
+
+"Yes. Let's try it, Steve. You'll be on your feet in two weeks. Then
+you'd better go--up the river--to Mulqueen's."
+
+"I--I'll go, if you say so. But I can't go now."
+
+"I didn't say go now. I said in two weeks."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Will you give me your word?" demanded the doctor sharply.
+
+"No, doctor."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I may have to be here on business. There seems to be some sort
+of crisis coming which I don't understand."
+
+"There's a crisis right here, Steve, which I understand!" snapped Dr.
+Grisby. "Face it like a man! Face it like a man! You're sick--to your
+bones, boy--sick! sick! Fight the fight, Steve! Fight a good fight.
+There's a fighting chance; on my soul of honour, there is, Steve, a
+fighting chance for you! Now! now, boy! Buckle up tight! Tuck up your
+sword-sleeve! At 'em, Steve! Give 'em hell! Oh, my boy, my boy, I know;
+I know!" The little man's voice broke, but he steadied it instantly with
+a snap of his nut-cracker jaws, and scowled on his patient and shook his
+little withered fist at him.
+
+His patient lay very still in the shadow.
+
+"I want you to go," said the doctor harshly, "before your self-control
+goes. Do you understand? I want you to go before your decision is
+undermined; before you begin to do devious things, sly things, cheating
+things, slinking things--anything and everything to get at the thing
+you crave. I've given you something to fight with, and you won't take it
+faithfully. I've given you free rein in tobacco and tea and coffee. I've
+helped you as much as I dare to weather the nights. Now, you help me--do
+you hear?"
+
+"Yes ... I will."
+
+"You say so; now do it. Do something for yourself. Do anything! If
+you're sick of reading--and I don't blame you, considering the stuff
+you read--get people down here to see you; get lots of people. Telephone
+'em; you've a telephone there, haven't you? There it is, by your elbow.
+Use it! Call up people. Talk all the time."
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"Good! Now, Steve, we know what's the matter, physically, don't we? Of
+course we do! Now, then, what's the matter mentally?"
+
+"Mentally?" repeated Siward under his breath.
+
+"Yes, mentally. What's the trouble? Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?" the
+slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses.
+"Love?" he repeated harshly. "Which is it, boy? They're all good to let
+alone."
+
+"Business," said Siward. But, being a Siward, he was obliged to add
+"partly."
+
+"Business--partly," repeated the doctor. "What's the matter with
+business--partly?"
+
+"I don't know. There are rumours. Hetherington is pounding
+us--apparently. That Inter-County crowd is acting ominously, too.
+There's something underhand, somewhere." He bent his head and fell to
+plucking at the faded brocade on the arm of his chair, muttering to
+himself, "somewhere, somehow, something underhand. I don't know what; I
+really don't."
+
+"All right--all right," said the doctor testily; "let it go at that!
+There's treachery, eh? You suspect it? You're sure of it--as reasonably
+sure as a gentleman can be of something he is not fashioned to
+understand? That's it, is it? All right, sir--all right! Very
+well--ver-y well. Now, sir, look at me! Business symptoms admitted, what
+about the 'partly,' Stephen?--what about it, eh? What about it?"
+
+But Siward fell silent again.
+
+"Eh? Did you say something? No? Oh, very well, ver-y well, sir. ...
+Perfectly correct, Stephen. You have not earned the right to admit
+further symptoms. No, sir, you have not earned the right to admit them
+to anybody, not even to yourself. Nor to--her!"
+
+"Doctor!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I have--admitted them."
+
+"To yourself, Steve? I'm sorry. You have no right to--yet. I'm sorry--"
+
+"I have admitted them--admitted them--to her."
+
+"That settles it," said the doctor grimly, "that clinches it! That locks
+you to the wheel! That pledges you. The squabble is on, now. It's your
+honour that's engaged now, not your nerves, not your intestines. It's
+a good fight--a very good fight, with no chance of losing anything but
+life. You go up the river to Mulqueen's. That's the strategy in this
+campaign; that's excellent manoeuvring; that's good generalship! Eh?
+Mask your purpose, Steve; make a feint of camping out here under my
+guns; then suddenly fling your entire force up the Hudson and fortify
+yourself at Mulqueen's! Ho, that'll fix 'em! That's going to astonish
+the enemy!"
+
+His harsh, dry, crackling laughter broke out like the distant rattle of
+musketry.
+
+The ghost of a smile glimmered in Siward's haunted eyes, then faded as
+he leaned forward.
+
+"She has refused me," he said simply.
+
+The little doctor, after an incredulous stare, began chattering
+with wrath. "Refused you! Pah! Pooh! That's nothing! That signifies
+absolutely nothing! It's meaningless! It's a detail. You get well--do
+you hear? You go and get well; then try it again! Then you'll see! And
+if she is an idiot--in the event of her irrational persistence in an
+incredible and utterly indefensible attitude"--he choked up, then fairly
+barked at Siward--"take her anyway, sir! Run off with her! Dominate
+circumstances, sir! take charge of events! ... But you can't do it till
+you've clapped yourself into prison for life. ... And God help you if you
+let yourself escape!"
+
+And after a long while Siward said: "If I should ever marry--and--and--"
+
+"Had children, eh? Is that it? Oh, it is, eh? Well, I say, marry! I say,
+have children! If you're a man, you'll breed men. The chances are they
+may not inherit what you have. It skips some generations--some, now and
+then. But if they do, good God! I say it's better to be born and have
+a chance to fight than never to come into the arena at all! By winning
+out, the world learns; by failure, the world is no less wise. The
+important thing is birth. The main point is to breed--to produce--to
+reproduce! but not until you stand, sword in hand, and your armed heel
+on the breast of your prostrate and subconscious self!"
+
+He jumped up and began running about the room with short little bantam
+steps, talking all the while.
+
+"People say, 'Shall criminals be allowed to mate and produce young?
+Shall malefactors be allowed to beget? No!' And I say no, too. Never so
+long as they remain criminals and malefactors; so long as the evil in
+them is in the ascendant. Never, until they are cured. That's what I
+say; that's what I maintain. Crime is a disease; criminals are sick
+people. No marriage for them until they're cured; no children for them
+until they're well. If they cure themselves, let 'em marry; let 'em
+breed; for then, if their children inherit the inclination, they also
+inherit the grit to cauterise the malady."
+
+He produced a huge handkerchief from the tails of his coat, and wiped
+his damp features and polished his forehead so violently that his wig
+took a new and jaunty angle.
+
+"I'm talking too much," he said fretfully; "I'm talking a great
+deal--all the time--continually. I've other patients--several--plenty!
+Do you think you're the only man I know who's trying to disfigure his
+liver and make spots come out all over inside him? Do you?"
+
+Siward smiled again, a worn, pallid smile.
+
+"I can stand it while you are here, doctor, but when I'm alone
+it's--hard. One of those crises is close now. I've a bad night ahead--a
+bad outlook. Couldn't you--"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Just enough--"
+
+"No, Stephen."
+
+"--Enough to dull it--just a little? I don't ask for enough to make
+me sleep--not even to make me doze. You have your needle; haven't you,
+doctor?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, just this once--for the last time."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why? Are you afraid? You needn't be, doctor. I don't care for it except
+to give me a little respite, a little rest on a night like this. I'm so
+tired of this ache. If I could only have some sleep, and wake up in good
+shape, I'd stand a better chance of fighting. ... Wait, doctor! Just one
+moment. I don't mean to be a coward, but I've had a hard fight, and--I'm
+tired. ... If you could see your way to helping me--"
+
+"I dare not help you any more that way."
+
+"Not this once?"
+
+"Not this once."
+
+There was a dead silence, broken at last by the doctor with a violent
+gesture toward the telephone. "Talk to the girl! Why don't you talk to
+the girl! If she's worth a hill o' beans she'll help you to hang on.
+What's she for, if she isn't for such moments? Tell her you need her
+voice; tell her you need her faith in you. Damn central! Talk out in
+church! Don't make a goddess of a woman. The men who want to marry her,
+and can't, will do that! The nincompoop can always be counted on to
+deify the commonplace. And she is commonplace. If she isn't, she's no
+good! Commend me to sanity and the commonplace. I take off my hat to it!
+I honour it. God bless it! Good-night!"
+
+Siward lay still for a long while after the doctor had gone. More than
+an hour had passed before he slowly sat up and groped for the telephone
+book, opened it, and searched in a blind, hesitating way until he found
+the number he was looking for.
+
+He had never telephoned to her; he had never written her except once,
+in reply to her letter in regard to his mother's death--that strange,
+timid, formal letter, in which, grief-stunned as he was, he saw only
+the formality, and had answered it more formally still. And that was all
+that had come of the days and nights by that northern sea--a letter and
+its answer, and silence.
+
+And, thinking of these things, he shut the book wearily, and lay back in
+the shadow of the faded curtain, closing his sunken eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX CONFESSIONS
+
+In a city in transition, where yesterday is as dead as a dead century,
+where those who prepare the old year for burial are already taking the
+ante-mortem statement of the new, the future fulfils the functions
+of the present. Time itself is considered merely as a by-product of
+horse-power, discounted with flippancy as the unavoidable friction
+clogging the fly-wheel of progress.
+
+Memory, once a fine art, is becoming a lost art in Manhattan.
+
+His world and his city had almost ceased to think of Siward.
+
+For a few weeks men spoke of him in the several clubs of which he had
+lately been a member--spoke of him always in the past tense; and after a
+little while spoke of him no more.
+
+In that section of the social system which he had inhabited, his absence
+on account of his mother's death being taken for granted, people laid
+him away in their minds almost as ceremoniously as they had laid away
+the memory of his mother. Nothing halted because he was not present;
+nothing was delayed, rearranged, or abandoned because his familiar
+presence chanced to be missing. There remained only one more place to
+fill at a cotillion, dinner, or bridge party; only another man for opera
+box or week's end; one man the more to be counted on, one more man to
+be counted out--transferred to the credit of profit and loss, and the
+ledger closed for the season.
+
+They who remembered him, among those who had not yet lost that
+old-fashioned art, were very few--a young girl here and there, over
+whom he had been absent-mindedly sentimental; a debutante or two who had
+adored him from a distance as a friend of elder sister or brother; here
+and there an old, old lady to whom he had been considerate, and who
+perhaps remembered something of the winning charm of the Siwards when
+the town was young--his father, perhaps, perhaps his grandfather--these
+thought of him at intervals; the remainder had no leisure to remember
+even if they had not forgotten how to do it. Several cabmen missed him
+for a while; now and then a privileged cafe waiter inquired about him
+from gay, noisy parties entering some old haunt of his. Mr. Desmond, of
+art gallery and roulette notoriety, whose business is not to forget, was
+politely regretful at his absence from certain occult ceremonies which
+he had at irregular intervals graced with votive offerings. And the list
+ended there--almost, not quite; for there were two people who had not
+forgotten Siward: Howard Quarrier and Beverly Plank; and one other, a
+third, who could not yet forget him if she would--but, as yet, she had
+not tried very desperately.
+
+The day that Siward left New York to visit everybody's friend, Mr.
+Mulqueen, in the country, Plank called on him for the second time in his
+life, and was presently received in the south drawing-room, the library
+being limited to an informality and intimacy not for Mr. Plank.
+
+Siward, still lame, and using unskilfully two shiny new crutches, came
+down the stairs and stumped into the drawing-room, which, in spite of
+the sombre, clustering curtains, was brightly illuminated by the winter
+sunshine reflected from the snow in the street. Plank was shocked at the
+change in him--at the ghost of a voice, listlessly formal; at the thin,
+nerveless hand offered; startled, so that he forgot his shyness, and
+retained the bony hand tightly in his, and instinctively laid his other
+great cushion-like paw over it, holding it imprisoned, unable to speak,
+unconscious, in the impulse of the moment, of the liberty he permitted
+himself, and which he had never dreamed of taking with such a man as
+Siward.
+
+The effect on Siward was composite; his tired voice ceased; surprise,
+inability to understand tinged with instinctive displeasure, were
+succeeded by humourous curiosity; and, very slowly it became plain to
+him that this beefy young man liked him, was naively concerned about
+him, felt friendly toward him, and was showing it as spontaneously as a
+child. Because he now understood something of how it is with a man who
+is in the process of being forgotten, his perceptions were perhaps the
+finer in these days, and the direct unconsciousness of Plank touched him
+more heavily than the pair of heavy hands enclosing his.
+
+"I thought I'd come," began Plank, growing redder and redder as he began
+to realise the enormity of familiarity committed only on the warrant of
+impulse. "You don't look well."
+
+"It was good of you to think of me," said Siward. "Come up to the
+library, if you've a few minutes to spare an invalid. Please go first;
+I'm a trifle lame yet."
+
+"I--I am sorry," muttered Plank, "very, very sorry."
+
+At first, in the library, Plank was awkward and silent, finding nothing
+to say, and nowhere to dispose of his hands, until Siward gave him
+a cigar to occupy his fingers. Even then he continued to sit
+uncomfortably, his bulk balanced on a rickety, spindle-legged chair,
+which he stubbornly refused to exchange for another, at Siward's
+suggestion, out of sheer embarrassment, and with a confused idea that
+his refusal would somehow ultimately put him at his ease with his
+surroundings.
+
+Siward, secretly amused, rang for tea, although the hour was early.
+After a little while, either the toast or the tea appeared to act on
+Plank as a lingual laxative, for he began suddenly to talk, which is
+characteristic of bashful men; and Siward gravely helped him on when he
+floundered and turned shy. After a little, matters went very well with
+them, and Plank, much more at ease than he had ever dared to hope he
+could be with Siward, talked and talked; and Siward, his crutches
+across his knees, lay back in his arm-chair, chatting with that winning
+informality so becoming to men who are unconscious of their charm.
+
+Watching Plank, it occurred to him gradually that this great, cumbersome
+creature was not a shrewd, thrifty, self-made and self-finished adult at
+all; only a big, wistful, lonely boy, without comrades and with nowhere
+to play. On Plank's round face there remained no trace of shrewdness, of
+stubbornness, nothing even of the heavy, saturnine placidity of a dogged
+man who waits his turn.
+
+Plank spoke of himself after a while, sounding the personal note with
+tentative timidity. Siward gravely encouraged him, and in a little
+while the outlines of his crude autobiography appeared, embodying his
+eventless boyhood in a Pennsylvania town; his career at the high school;
+the dawning desire for college equipment, satisfied by his father, who
+owned shares in the promising Deepvale Steel Plank Company; the unhappy
+years at Harvard--hard years, for he learned with difficulty; solitary
+years, for he was not sought by those whom he desired to know. Then he
+ventured to speak of his father's growing interest in steel; the merging
+and absorbing of independent plants; his own entry upon the scene on
+the death of his father; and--the rest--material fortune and prosperity,
+which, perhaps, might stand substitute as a social sponsor for him;
+stand, perhaps, for something of what he lacked in himself, which only
+long residence amid the best, long-formed habits for the best, or a long
+inheritance of the best could give. Did Siward think so? Was the best
+beyond his reach? Was it hopeless for such a man as he to try? And why?
+
+The innocent snobbery, the abashed but absolute simplicity of this
+ponderous pilgrim from the smelting pits clambering upward through the
+high school of the smoky town, groping laboriously through the chilly
+halls of Harvard toward the outer breastworks of Manhattan, interested
+Siward; and he said so in his pleasant way, without offence, and with a
+smiling question at the end.
+
+"Worth while?" repeated Plank, flushing heavily, "it is worth while to
+me. I have always desired to be a part of the best that there is in my
+own country; and the best is here, isn't it?"
+
+"Not necessarily," said Siward, still smiling. "The noisiest is here,
+and some of the best."
+
+"Which is the best?" inquired Plank naively.
+
+"Why, all plain people, whose education, breeding, and fortune permit
+them the luxury of thinking, and whose tastes, intelligence, and sanity
+enable them to express their thoughts. There are such people here, and
+some of them form a portion of the gaudier and noisier galaxy we call
+society."
+
+"That is what I wish to be part of," said Plank. "Could you tell me what
+are the requirements?"
+
+"I don't believe I could, exactly," said Siward, amused. "With us, the
+social system, as an established and finished system, has too recently
+been evolved from outer chaos to be characteristic of anything except
+the crudity and energy of the chaos from which it emerged. The
+balance between wealth, intelligence, and breeding has not yet been
+established--not from lack of wealth or intelligence. The formula has
+not been announced, that is all."
+
+"What is the formula?" insisted Plank.
+
+"The formula is the receipt for a real society," replied Siward,
+laughing. "At present we have its uncombined ingredients in the
+raw--noisy wealth and flippant fashion, arrogant intelligence and
+dowdy breeding--all excellent materials, when filtered and fused in the
+retort; and many of our test tubes have already precipitated pure metal
+besides, and our national laboratory is turning out fine alloys. Some
+day we'll understand the formula, and we'll weld the entire mass; and
+that will be society, Mr. Plank."
+
+"In the meanwhile," repeated Plank, unsmiling, "I want to be part of
+the best we have. I want to be part of the brightness of things. I mean,
+that I cannot be contented with an imitation."
+
+"An imitation?"
+
+"Of the best--of what you say is not yet society. I ask no more than
+your footing among the people of this city. I wish to be able to go
+where such men as you go; be permitted, asked, desired to be part of
+what you always have been part of. Is it a great deal I ask? Tell me,
+Mr. Siward--for I don't know--is it too much to expect?"
+
+"I don't think it is a very high ambition," said Siward, smiling. "What
+you ask is not very much to ask of life, Mr. Plank."
+
+"But is there any reason why I may not hope to go where I wish to go?"
+
+"I think it depends upon yourself," said Siward, "upon your capacity for
+being, or for making people believe you to be exactly what they require.
+You ask me whether you may be able to go where you desire; and I answer
+you that there is no limit to any journey except the sprinting ability
+of the pilgrim."
+
+Plank laughed a little, and his squared jaws relaxed; then, after a few
+moments' thought:
+
+"It is curious that what you cast away from you so easily, I am waiting
+for with all the patience I have in me. And yet it is always yours to
+pick up again whenever you wish; and I may never live to possess it."
+
+He was so perfectly right that Siward said nothing; in fact, he could
+have no particular interest or sympathy for a man's quest of what
+he himself did not understand the lack of. Those born without a tag
+unmistakably ticketing them and their positions in the world were
+perforce ticketed. Siward took it for granted that a man belonged where
+he was to be met; and all he cared about was to find him civil, whether
+he happened to be a policeman or a master of fox-hounds.
+
+He was, now that he knew Plank, contented to accept him anywhere he met
+him; but Plank's upward evolutions upon the social ladder were of no
+interest to him, and his naive snobbery was becoming something of a
+bore.
+
+So Siward directed the conversation into other channels, and Plank,
+accepting another cup of tea, became very communicative about his
+stables and his dogs, and the preservation of game; and after a while,
+looking up confidently at Siward, he said:
+
+"Do you think it beastly to drive pheasants the way I did at Black
+Fells? I have heard that you were disgusted."
+
+"It isn't my idea of a square deal," said Siward frankly.
+
+"That settles it, then."
+
+"But you should not let me interfere with--"
+
+"I'll take your opinion, and thank you for it. It didn't seem to me to
+be the thing; only it's done over here, you know. The De Coursay's and
+the--"
+
+"Yes, I know. ... Glad you feel that way about it, Plank. It's pretty
+rotten sportsmanship. Don't you think so?"
+
+"I do. I--would you--I should like to ask you to try some square
+shooting at the Fells," stammered Plank, "next season, if you would care
+to."
+
+"You're very good. I should like to, if I were going to shoot at all;
+but I fancy my shooting days are over, for a while."
+
+"Over!"
+
+"Business," nodded Siward, absently grave again. "I see no prospect of
+my idling for the next year or two."
+
+"You are in--in Amalgamated Electric, I think," ventured Plank.
+
+"Very much in," replied the other frankly. "You've read the papers and
+heard rumours, I suppose?"
+
+"Some. I don't suppose anybody quite understands the attacks on
+Amalgamated."
+
+"I don't--not yet. Do you?"
+
+Plank sat silent, then his shrewd under lip began to protrude.
+
+"I'm wondering," he began cautiously, "how much the Algonquin crowd
+understands about the matter?"
+
+Siward's troubled eyes were on him as he spoke, watching closely,
+narrowly.
+
+"I've heard that rumour before," he said.
+
+"So have I," said Plank, "and it seems incredible." He looked warily
+at Siward. "Suppose it is true that the Algonquin Trust Company is
+godfather to Inter-County. That doesn't explain why a man should kick
+his own door down when there's a bell to ring and servants to let him
+in--and out again, too."
+
+"I have wondered," said Siward, "whether the door he might be inclined
+to kick down is really his own door any longer."
+
+"I, too," said Plank simply. "It may belong to a personal enemy--if he
+has any. He could afford to have an enemy, I suppose."
+
+Siward nodded.
+
+"Then, hadn't you better--I beg your pardon! You have not asked me to
+advise you."
+
+"No. I may ask your advice some day. Will you give it when I do?"
+
+"With pleasure," said Plank, so warmly disinterested, so plainly proud
+and eager to do a service that Siward, surprised and touched, found no
+word to utter.
+
+Plank rose. Siward attempted to stand up, but had trouble with his
+crutches.
+
+"Please don't try," said Plank, coming over and offering his hand. "May
+I stop in again soon? Oh, you are off to the country for a month or two?
+I see. ... You don't look very well. I hope it will benefit you. Awfully
+glad to have seen you. I--I hope you won't forget me--entirely."
+
+"I am the man people are forgetting," returned Siward, "not you. It was
+very nice of you to come. You are one of very few who remember me at
+all."
+
+"I have very few people to remember," said Plank; "and if I had as many
+as I could desire I should remember you first."
+
+Here he became very much embarrassed. Siward offered his hand again.
+Plank shook it awkwardly, and went away on tiptoe down the stairs which
+creaked decorously under his weight.
+
+And that ended the first interview between Plank and Siward in the first
+days of the latter's decline.
+
+The months that passed during Siward's absence from the city began to
+prove rather eventful for Plank. He was finally elected a member of the
+Patroons Club, without serious opposition; he had dined twice with
+the Kemp Ferralls; he and Major Belwether were seen together at
+the Caithness dance, and in the Caithness box at the opera. Once a
+respectable newspaper reported him at Tuxedo for the week's end; his
+name, linked with the clergy, frequently occupied such space under the
+column headed "Ecclesiastical News" as was devoted to the progress of
+the new chapel, and many old ladies began to become familiar with his
+name.
+
+At the right moment the Mortimers featured him between two fashionable
+bishops at a dinner. Mrs. Vendenning, who adored bishops, immediately
+remembered him among those asked to her famous annual bal poudre; a
+celebrated yacht club admitted him to membership; a whole shoal of
+excellent minor clubs which really needed new members followed suit, and
+even the rock-ribbed Lenox, wearied of its own time-honoured immobility,
+displayed the preliminary fidgets which boded well for the stolid
+candidate. The Mountain was preparing to take the first stiff step
+toward Mohammed. It was the prophet's cue to sit tight and yawn
+occasionally.
+
+Meanwhile he didn't want to; he was becoming anxious to do things for
+himself, which Leila Mortimer, of course, would not permit. It was
+difficult for him to understand that any effort of his own would
+probably be disastrous; that progress could come only through his
+own receptive passivity; that nothing was demanded, nothing required,
+nothing permitted from him as yet, save a capacity for assimilating such
+opportunities as sections of the social system condescended to offer.
+
+For instance, he wanted to open his art gallery to the public; he said
+it was good strategy; and Mrs. Mortimer sat upon the suggestion with
+a shrug of her pretty shoulders. Well, then, couldn't he possibly do
+something with his great, gilded ball-room? No, he couldn't; and the
+less in evidence his galleries and his ball-rooms were at present the
+better his chances with people who, perfectly aware that he possessed
+them, were very slowly learning to overlook the insolence of the
+accident that permitted him to possess what they had never known the
+want of. First of all people must tire of repeating to each other that
+he was nobody, and that would happen when they wearied of explaining to
+one another why he was ever asked anywhere. There was time enough for
+him to offer amusement to people after they had ceased to find amusement
+in snubbing him; plenty of time in the future for them to lash him to
+a gallop for their pleasure. In the meanwhile he was doing very well,
+because he began to appear regularly in the Caithness-Bonnesdel box, and
+old Peter Caithness was already boring him at the Patroons; which meant
+that the thrifty old gentleman considered Plank's millions as a possible
+underpinning for the sagging house of Caithness, of which his pallid
+daughter Agatha was the sole sustaining caryatid in perspective.
+
+Yes, he was doing well; for that despotic beauty, Sylvia Landis, whose
+capricious perversity had recently astonished those who remembered her
+in her first season as a sweet, reasonable, and unspoiled girl, was
+always friendly with him. That must be looked upon as important,
+considering Sylvia's unassailable position, and her kinship to the
+autocratic old lady whose kindly ukase had for generations remained the
+undisputed law in the social system of Manhattan.
+
+"There is another matter," said Leila Mortimer innocently, as Plank,
+lingering after a disastrous rubber of bridge with her, her husband, and
+Agatha Caithness, had followed her into her own apartments to write his
+cheque for what he owed. "You've driven with me so much and you come
+here so often and we are seen together so frequently that the clans are
+sharpening up their dirks for us. And that helps some."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Plank, reddening, and twisting around in his chair.
+
+"Certainly. You didn't suppose I could escape, did you?"
+
+"Escape! What?" demanded Plank, getting redder.
+
+"Escape being talked about, savagely, mercilessly. Can't you see how it
+helps? Oh dear, are you stupid, Beverly?
+
+"I don't know," replied Plank, staring, "just how stupid I am. If you
+mean that I'm compromising you--"
+
+"Oh, please! Why do you use back-stairs words? Nobody talks about
+compromising now; all that went out with New Year's calls and
+brown-stone stoops."
+
+"What do they call it, then?" asked Plank seriously.
+
+"Call what? you great boy!"
+
+"What you say I'm doing?"
+
+"I don't say it."
+
+"Who does?"
+
+Leila laughed, leaned back in her big, padded chair, dropping one knee
+over the other. Her dark eyes with the Japanese slant to them rested
+mockingly on Plank, who had now turned completely around in his chair,
+leaving his half-written cheque on her escritoire behind him.
+
+"You're simply credited with an affair with a pretty woman," she said,
+watching the dull colour mounting to his temples, "and that is certain
+to be useful to you, and it doesn't affect me. What on earth are you
+blushing about?" And as he said nothing, she added, with a daring little
+laugh: "You are credited with being very agreeable, you see."
+
+"If--if that's the way you take it--" he began.
+
+"Of course! What do you expect me to do--call for help before I'm hurt?"
+
+"You mean that this talk--gossip--doesn't hurt?"
+
+"How silly!" She looked at him, smiling. "You know how likely I am to
+require protection from your importunities." She dropped her pretty
+head, and began plaiting with her fingers the silken gown over her knee.
+"Or how likely I would be to shriek for it even if"--she looked up with
+childlike directness--"even if I needed it."
+
+"Of course you can take care of yourself," said Plank, wincing.
+
+"I could, if I wanted to."
+
+"Everybody knows that. I know it, Leroy knows it; only I don't care to
+figure as that kind of man."
+
+Already he had lost sight of her position in the matter; and she drew a
+long, quiet breath, almost like a sigh.
+
+"Time enough after you marry," she said deliberately, and lighted a
+cigarette from a candle, recreating her knees the other way.
+
+He considered her, started to speak, checked himself, and swung around
+to the desk again. His pen hovered over the space to be filled in. He
+tried to recollect the amount, hesitated, dated the cheque and affixed
+his signature, still trying to remember; then he looked at her over his
+shoulder.
+
+"I forget the exact amount."
+
+She surveyed him through the haze of her cigarette, but made no answer.
+
+"I forget the amount," he repeated.
+
+"So do I," she nodded indolently.
+
+"But I--"
+
+"Let it go. Besides, I shall not accept it."
+
+He flushed up, astonished. "You can't refuse to take a gambling debt."
+
+"I do," she retorted coolly. "I'm tired of taking your money."
+
+"But you won it."
+
+"I'm tired of winning it. It is all I ever do win ... from you."
+
+Her pretty head was wreathed in smoke. She tipped the ashes from the
+cigarette's end, watching them fall to powder on the rug.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," he persisted doggedly.
+
+"Don't you? I don't believe I do, either. There are intervals in my
+career which might prove eloquent if I opened my lips. But I don't,
+except to make floating rings and cabalistic signs out of cigarette
+smoke. Can you read their meaning? Look! There goes one, and there's
+another, and another--all twisting and uncurling into hieroglyphics.
+They are very significant; they might tell you a lot of things, if you
+would only translate them. But you haven't the key--have you?"
+
+There was a heavy, jarring step in the main living-room, and Mortimer's
+bulk darkened the doorway.
+
+"Entrez, mon ami," nodded Leila, glancing up. "Where is Agatha?"
+
+"I'm going to Desmond's," he grunted, ignoring his wife's question; "do
+you want to try it again, Beverly?"
+
+"I can't make Leila take her own winnings," said Plank, holding out the
+signed but unfilled cheque to Mortimer, who took it and scrutinised it
+for a moment, rubbing his heavy, inflamed eyes; then, gesticulating, the
+cheque fluttering in his puffy fingers:
+
+"Come on," he insisted. "I've a notion that I can give Desmond a whirl
+that he won't forget in a hurry. Agatha's asleep; she's going to that
+ball--where is it?" he demanded, turning on his wife. "Yes, yes; the
+Page blow-out. You're going, I suppose?"
+
+Leila nodded, and lighted another cigarette.
+
+"All right," continued Mortimer impatiently; "you and Agatha won't start
+before one. And if you think Plank had better go, why, we'll be back
+here in time."
+
+"That means you won't be back at all," observed his wife coolly; "and
+it's good policy for Beverly to go where he's asked. Can't you turn in
+and sleep, now, and amuse your friend Desmond to-morrow night?"
+
+"No, I can't. What a fool I'd be to let a chance slip when I feel like a
+winner!"
+
+"You never feel otherwise when you gamble," said Leila.
+
+"Yes, I do," he retorted peevishly. "I can tell almost every time what
+the cards are going to do to me. Leila, go to sleep. We'll be back here
+for you by one, or half past."
+
+"Look here, Leroy," began Plank, "there's one thing I can't stand for,
+and that's this continual loss of sleep. If I go with you I'll not be
+fit to go to the Pages."
+
+"What a farmer you are!" sneered Mortimer. "I believe you roost on the
+foot-board of your bed, like a confounded turkey. Come on! You'd better
+begin training, you know. People in this town are not going to stand for
+the merry ploughboy game, you see!"
+
+But Plank was shrewdly covering his principal reason for declining;
+he had too often "temporarily" assisted Mortimer at Desmond's and
+Burbank's, when Mortimer, cleaned out and unable to draw against a
+balance non-existent, had plucked him by the sleeve from the faro table
+with the breathless request for a loan.
+
+"I tell you I can wring Desmond dry to-night," repeated Mortimer
+sullenly. "It isn't a case of 'want to,' either; it's a case of 'got
+to.' That old pink-and-white rabbit, Belwether, got me into a game this
+afternoon, and between him and Voucher and Alderdine I'm stripped clean
+as a kennel bone."
+
+But Plank shook his head, pretending to yawn; and Mortimer, glowering
+and lingering, presently went off, his swollen hands thrust into his
+trousers' pockets, his gross features dark with disgust; and presently
+they heard the front door slam, and a rattling tattoo of horses' feet
+on the asphalt; and Leila sprang up impatiently, and, passing Plank,
+traversed the passage to the windows of the front room.
+
+"He's taken the horses--the beast!" she said calmly, as Plank joined
+her at the great windows and looked out into the night, where the round,
+drooping, flower-like globes of the electric lamps spread a lake of
+silver before the house.
+
+It was rather rough on Leila. The Mortimers maintained one pair of
+horses only; and the use given them at all hours resulted in endless
+scenes, and an utter impossibility for Leila to retain the same coachman
+and footman for more than a few weeks at a time.
+
+"He won't come back; he'll keep Martin and the horses standing in front
+of Delmonico's all night. You'd better call up the stables, Beverly."
+
+So Plank called up a livery and arranged for transportation at one;
+and Leila seated herself at a card-table and began to deal herself cold
+decks, thoughtfully.
+
+"That bit in 'Carmen,'" she said, "it always brings the shudder; it
+never palls on me, never grows stale." She whipped the ominous spade
+from the pack and held it out. "La Mort!" she exclaimed in mock tragedy,
+yet there was another undertone ringing through it, sounding, too, in
+her following laugh. "Draw!" she commanded, holding out the pack; and
+Plank drew a diamond.
+
+"Naturally," she nodded, shuffling the pack with her smooth, savant
+fingers and laying them out as she repeated the formula: "Qui frappe?
+Qui entre? Qui prend chaise? Qui parle? Oh, the deuce! it's always the
+same! Tiens! je m'ennui!" There was a flash of her bare arm, a flutter,
+and the cards fell in a shower over them both.
+
+Plank flipped a card from his knee, laughing uncertainly, aware of
+symptoms in his pretty vis-a-vis which always made him uncomfortable.
+For months, now, at certain intervals, these recurrent symptoms had made
+him wary; but what they might portend he did not know, only that, alone
+with her, moments occurred when he was heavily aware of a tension
+which, after a while, affected even his few thick nerves. One of those
+intervals was threatening now: her flushed cheeks, her feverish activity
+with her hands, the unconscious reflex movement of her silken knees
+and restless slippers, all foreboded it. Next would come the nervous
+laughter, the swift epigram which bored and puzzled him, the veiled
+badinage he was unequal to; and then the hint of weariness, the curious
+pathos of long silences, the burnt-out beauty of her eyes from which the
+fire had gone as though quenched by invisible tears within.
+
+He ascribed it--desired to ascribe it--to her relations with her
+husband. He had naturally learned and divined how matters stood with
+them; he had learned considerable in the last month or two--something
+of Mortimer's record as a burly brother to the rich; something of his
+position among those who made no question of his presence anywhere.
+Something of Leila, too, he had heard, or rather deduced from hinted
+word or shrug or smiling silence, not meant for him, but indifferent to
+what he might hear and what he might think of what he heard.
+
+He did listen; he did patiently add two and two in the long solitudes of
+his Louis XV chamber; and if the results were not always four, at least
+they came within a fraction of the proper answer. And this did not alter
+his policy or weaken his faith in his mentors; nor did it impair his
+real gratitude to them, and his real and simple friendship for them
+both. He was faithful in friendship once formed, obstinately so, for
+better or for worse; but he was shrewd enough to ignore opportunities
+for friendships which he foresaw could do him no good on his plodding
+pilgrimage toward the temple of his inexorable desire.
+
+Lifting, now, his Delft-coloured eyes furtively, he studied the
+silk-and-lace swathed figure of the young matron opposite, flung back
+into the depths of her great chair, profile turned from him, her chin
+imprisoned in her ringed fingers. The brooding abandon of the attitude
+contrasted sharply with the grooming of the woman, making both the more
+effective.
+
+"Turn in, if you want to," she said, her voice indistinct, smothered by
+her pink palm. "You're to dress in Leroy's quarters."
+
+"I don't want to turn in just yet."
+
+"You said you needed sleep."
+
+"I do. But it's not eleven yet."
+
+She slipped into another posture, reaching for a cigarette, and, setting
+it afire from the match he offered, exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked
+dreamily through it at him.
+
+"Who is she?" she asked in a colourless voice. "Tell me, for I don't
+know. Agatha? Marion Page? Mrs. Vendenning? or the Tassel girl?"
+
+"Nobody--yet," he admitted cheerfully.
+
+"Nobody--yet," she repeated, musing over her cigarette. "That's good
+politics, if it's true."
+
+"Am I untruthful?" he asked simply.
+
+"I don't know. Are you? You're a man."
+
+"Don't talk that way, Leila."
+
+"No, I won't. What is it that you and Sylvia Landis have to talk about
+so continuously every time you meet?"
+
+"She's merely civil to me," he explained.
+
+"That's more than she is to a lot of people. What do you talk about?"
+
+"I don't know--nothing in particular; mostly about Shotover, and the
+people there last summer."
+
+"Doesn't she ever mention Stephen Siward?"
+
+"Usually. She knows I like him."
+
+"She likes him, too," said Leila, looking at him steadily.
+
+"I know it. Everybody likes him--or did. I do, yet."
+
+"I do, too," observed Mrs. Mortimer coolly. "I was in love with him. He
+was only a boy then."
+
+Plank nodded in silence.
+
+"Where is he now--do, you know?" she asked. "Everybody says he's gone to
+the devil."
+
+"He's in the country somewhere," replied Plank cautiously. "I stopped
+in to see him the other day, but nobody seemed to know when he would
+return."
+
+Mrs. Mortimer tossed her cigarette onto the hearth. For a long interval
+of silence she lay there in her chair, changing her position restlessly
+from moment to moment; and at length she lay quite still, so long that
+Plank began to think she had fallen asleep in her chair.
+
+He rose. She did not stir, and, passing her, he instinctively glanced
+down. Her cheeks, half buried against the back of the chair, were
+overflushed; under the closed lids the lashes glistened wet in the
+lamplight.
+
+Surprised, embarrassed, he halted, as though afraid to move; and she sat
+up with a nervous shake of her shoulders.
+
+"What a life!" she said, under her breath; "what a life for a woman to
+lead!"
+
+"Wh-whose?" he blurted out.
+
+"Mine!"
+
+He stared at her uneasily, finding nothing to say. He had never before
+heard anything like this from her.
+
+"Can't anybody help me out of it?" she said quietly.
+
+"Who? How? ... Do you mean--"
+
+"Yes, I mean it! I mean it! I--"
+
+And suddenly she broke down, in a strange, stammering, tearless
+way, opening the dry flood-gates over which rattled an avalanche of
+words--bitter, breathless phrases rushing brokenly from lips that shrank
+as they formed them.
+
+Plank sat inert, the corroding echo of the words clattering in his ears.
+And after a while he heard his own altered voice sounding persistently
+in repetition:
+
+
+"Don't say those things, Leila; don't tell me such things."
+
+"Why? Don't you care?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I care; but I can't do anything! I have no business to
+hear--to see you this way."
+
+"To whom can I speak, then, if I can not speak to you? To whom can I
+turn? Where am I to turn, in all the world?"
+
+"I don't know," he said fearfully; "the only way is to go on."
+
+"What else have I done? What else am I doing?" she cried. "Go on? Am I
+not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind
+me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to
+turn--to other beasts like him?--sitting patiently around, grinning and
+slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the
+mud?"
+
+She stretched out a rounded, quivering arm, and laid the small fingers
+of the left hand on its flawless contour. "Look!" she said, exasperated,
+"I am young yet; the horror has not yet corrupted the youth in me. I am
+fashioned for some reason, am I not?--for some purpose, some happiness.
+I am not bad; I am human. What poison has soaked into me can be
+eliminated. I tell you, no woman is capable of being so thoroughly
+poisoned that the antidote proves useless.
+
+"But I tell you men, also, that unless she find that antidote she will
+surely reinfect herself. A man can not do what that man has done to me
+and expect me to recover unaided. People talk of me, and I have given
+them subjects enough! But--look at me! Straight between the eyes! Every
+law have I broken except that! Do you understand? That one, which you
+men consider yourselves exempt from, I have not broken--yet! Shall I
+speak plainer? It is the fashion to be crude. But--I can't be; I am
+unfashionable, you see."
+
+She laughed, her haunted eyes fixed on his.
+
+"Is there no chance for me? Because I drag his bedraggled name about
+with me is there no decent chance, no decent hope? Is there only
+indecency in prospect, if a man comes to care for a married woman? Can't
+a decent man love her at all? I--I think--"
+
+Her hands, outstretched, trembled, then flew to her face; and she stood
+there swaying, until Plank perforce stepped to her side and steadied her
+against him.
+
+So they remained for a while, until she looked up dazed, weary,
+ashamed, expecting nothing of him; and when it came, leaving her still
+incredulous, his arms around her, his tense, flushed face recoiling from
+their first kiss, she did not seem to comprehend.
+
+"I can't turn on him," he stammered, "I--we are friends, you see. How
+can I love you, if that is so?"
+
+"Could you love me?" she asked calmly.
+
+"I--I don't know. I did love--I do care for--another woman. I can't
+marry her, though I am given to understand there is a chance. Perhaps
+it is partly ambition," he said honestly, "for I am quite sure she has
+never cared for me, never thought of me in that way. I think a man can't
+stand that long."
+
+"No; only women can. Who is she?"
+
+"You won't ask me, will you?"
+
+"No. Are you sorry that I am in love with you?"
+
+His arms unclasped her body, and he stepped back, facing her.
+
+"Are you?" she asked violently.
+
+"No."
+
+"You speak like a man," she said tremulously. "Am I to be permitted to
+adore you in peace, then--decently, and in peace?"
+
+"Don't speak that way, Leila. I--there is no woman, no friend, I care
+for as much as I do you. It is easy, I think, for a woman, like you, to
+make a man care for her. You will not do it, will you?"
+
+"I will," she said softly.
+
+"It's no use; I can't turn on him. I can't! He is my friend, you see."
+
+"Let him remain so. I shall do what I can. Let him remain a monument
+to his fellow-beasts. What do I care? Do you think I desire to turn you
+into his image? Do you think I hope for your degradation and mine? Are
+you afraid I should not recognise love unaccompanied by the attendant
+beast? I--I don't know; you had better teach me, if I prove blind. If
+you can love me, do so in charity before I go blind forever."
+
+She laid one hand on his arm, looked at him, then turned and passed
+slowly through the doorway.
+
+"If you are going to sleep before we start you had better be about it!"
+she said, looking back at him from the stairs.
+
+But he had no further need of sleep; and for a long while he stood at
+the windows watching the lamps of cabs and carriages sparkling through
+the leafless thickets of the park like winter fire-flies.
+
+At one o'clock, hearing Agatha Caithness speak to Leila's maid, he left
+the window, and sitting down at the desk, telephoned to Desmond's; and
+he was informed that Mortimer, hard hit, had signified his intention of
+recouping at Burbank's. Then he managed to get Burbank's on the wire,
+and finally Mortimer himself, but was only cursed for his pains and cut
+off in the middle of his pleading.
+
+So he wandered up-stairs into Mortimer's apartments, where he tubbed and
+dressed, and finally descended, to find Agatha Caithness alone in
+the library, spinning a roulette wheel and whistling an air from "La
+Bacchante."
+
+"That's pretty," he said; "sing it."
+
+"No; it's better off without the words; and so are you," added Agatha
+candidly, relinquishing the wheel and strolling with languid grace about
+the room, hands on her hips, timing her vagrant steps to the indolent,
+wicked air. And,
+
+"'Je rougirais de men ivresse Si tu conservais ta raison!'"
+
+she hummed deliberately, pivoting on her heels and advancing again
+toward Plank, her pretty, pale face delicate as an enamelled cameo under
+the flood of light from the crystal chandeliers.
+
+"I understand that Mr. Mortimer is not coming with us," she said
+carelessly. "Are you going to dance with me, if I find nobody better?"
+
+He expressed himself flattered, cautiously. He was one of many who never
+understood this tall, white, low-voiced girl, with eyes too pale for
+beauty, yet strangely alluring, too. Few men denied the indefinable
+enchantment of her; few men could meet her deep-lidded, transparent
+gaze unmoved. In the sensitive curve of her mouth there was a kind of
+sensuousness; in her low voice, in her pallor, in the slim grace of her
+a vague provocation that made men restless and women silently curious
+for something more definite on which to base their curiosity.
+
+She was wearing, over the smooth, dead-white skin of her neck, a collar
+of superb diamonds and aquamarines--almost an effrontery, as the latter
+were even darker than her eyes; yet the strange and effective harmony
+was evident, and Plank spoke of the splendour of the gems.
+
+She nodded indifferently, saying they were new, and that she had picked
+them up at Tiffany's; and he mentally sketched out the value of the
+diamonds, a trifle surprised, because Leila Mortimer had carefully
+informed him about the condition of the Caithness exchequer.
+
+That youthful matron herself appeared in a few moments, very lustrous,
+very lovely in her fragrant, exotic brightness, and Plank for the first
+time thought that she was handsome--the vigorous, youthful incarnation
+of Life itself, in contrast to Agatha's almost deathly beauty. She
+greeted him not only without a trace of embarrassment, but with such a
+friendly, fresh, gay confidence that he scarcely recognised in her the
+dry-eyed, feverish woman of an hour ago, whose very lips shrank back,
+scorched by the torrent of her own invective.
+
+And so they drove the three short blocks to the Page's in their hired
+livery; the street was inadequate for the crush of vehicles; and the
+glittering pressure within the house was outrageous; all of which
+confused Plank, who became easily confused by such things.
+
+How they got in--how they managed to present themselves--who took Leila
+and Agatha from him--where they went--where he himself might be--he
+did not understand very clearly. The house was large, strange, full
+of strangers. He attempted to obtain his bearings by wandering about
+looking for a small rococo reception-room where he remembered he had
+once talked kennel talk with Marion Page, and had on another occasion
+perspired freely under the arrogant and strabismic glare of her mother.
+That good lady had really rather liked him; he never suspected it.
+
+But he couldn't find the rococo room--or perhaps he didn't recognise it.
+So many people--so many, many people whom he did not know, whom he had
+never before laid eyes on--high-bred faces hard as diamonds; young, gay,
+laughing faces; brilliant eyes encountering his without a softening
+of recognition; clean-cut, attractive men in swarms, all animated, all
+amused, all at home among themselves and among the silken visions of
+loveliness passing and repassing, with here an extended gloved arm and
+the cordial greeting of camaraderie, there a quick smile, a swift turn
+in passing, a capricious bending forward for a whisper, a compliment,
+a jest--all this swept by him, around him, enveloping him with its
+brightness, its gaiety, its fragrance, and left him more absolutely
+alone than he had ever been in all his life.
+
+He tried to find Leila, and gave it up. He saw Quarrier talking to
+Agatha, but the former saluted him so coldly that he turned away.
+
+After a while he found Marion, but she hadn't a dance left for him;
+neither had Rena Bonnesdel, whom he encountered while she was adroitly
+avoiding one of the ever-faithful twins. The twin caught up with her in
+consequence, and she snubbed Plank for his share in the disaster, which
+depressed him, and he started for the smoking-room, wherever that haven
+might be found. He got into the ball-room, however, by mistake,
+and adorned the wall, during the cotillon, as closely as his girth
+permitted, until an old lady sent for him; and he went and talked about
+bishops for nearly an hour to her, until his condition bordered on
+frenzy, the old lady being deaf and peevish.
+
+Later, Alderdene used him to get rid of an angular, old harridan who
+seemed to be one solid diamond-mine, and who drove him into a corner
+and talked indelicacies until Plank's broad face flamed like the setting
+sun. Then Captain Voucher unloaded a frightened debutante on him who
+tried to talk about horses and couldn't; and they hated each other for
+a while, until, looking around her in desperation, she found he had
+vanished--which was quick work for a man of his size.
+
+Kathryn Tassel employed him for supper, and kept him busy while she
+herself was immersed in a dawning affair with Fleetwood. She did
+everything to him except to tip him; and her insolence was the last
+straw.
+
+Then, unexpectedly in the throng, two wonderful sea-blue eyes
+encountered his, deepening to violet with pleasure, and the trailing
+sweetness of a voice he knew was repeating his name, and a slim,
+white-gloved hand lay in his own.
+
+Her escort, Ferrall, nodded to him pleasantly. She leaned forward from
+Ferrall's arm, saying, under her breath, "I have saved a dance for you.
+Please ask me at once. Quick! do you want me?"
+
+"I--I do," stammered Plank.
+
+Ferrall, suspicious, stepped forward to exchange civilities, then
+turning to the girl beside him: "See here, Sylvia, you've dragged me all
+over this house on one pretext or another. Do you want any supper, or
+don't you? If you don't, it's our dance."
+
+"No, I don't. No, it isn't. Kemp, you annoy me!"
+
+"That's a nice thing to say! Is it your delicately inimitable way of
+giving me my conge?"
+
+"Yes, thank you," nodded Miss Landis coolly; "you may go now."
+
+"You're spoiled, that's what's the matter," retorted Ferrall wrathfully.
+"I thought I was to have this dance. You said--"
+
+"I said 'perhaps,' because I didn't see Mr. Plank coming to claim it.
+Thank you, Kemp, for finding him."
+
+Her nod and smile took the edge from her malice. Ferrall, who really
+adored dancing, glared about for anybody, and presently cornered the
+frightened and neglected debutante who had hated Plank.
+
+Sylvia, standing beside Plank, looked up at him with her confident and
+friendly smile.
+
+"You don't care to dance, do you? Would you mind if we sat out this
+dance?"
+
+"If you'd rather," he said, so wistfully that she hesitated; then with
+a little shrug laid one hand on his arm, and they swung out across the
+floor together, into the scented whirl.
+
+Plank, like many heavy men, danced beautifully; and Sylvia, who still
+loved dancing with all the ardour of a schoolgirl, permitted a moment
+or two of keen delight to sweep her dreamily from her purpose. But that
+purpose must have been a strong one, for she returned to it in a few
+minutes, and, looking up at Plank, said very gently that she cared to
+dance no more.
+
+Her hand resting lightly on his arm, it did not seem possible that any
+pressure of hers was directing them to the conservatory; yet he did not
+know where he was going, and she was familiar with the house, and they
+soon entered the conservatory, where, in the shadow of various palms
+various youths looked up impatiently as they passed, and various maidens
+sat up very straight in their chairs.
+
+Threading their dim way into the farther recesses they found seats among
+thickets of forced lilacs over-hung by early wistaria. A spring-like
+odour hung in the air; somewhere a tiny fountain grew musical in the
+semi-darkness.
+
+"Marion told me you had been asked," she said. "We have been so
+friendly; you've always asked me to dance whenever we have met; so I
+thought I'd save you one. Are you flattered, Mr. Plank?"
+
+He said he was, very pleasantly, perfectly undeceived, and convinced of
+her purpose--a purpose never even tacitly admitted between them; and the
+old loneliness came over him again--not resentment, for he was willing
+that she should use him. Why not? Others used him; everybody used
+him; and if they found no use for him they let him alone. Mortimer,
+Fleetwood, Belwether--all, all had something to exact from him. It was
+for that he was tolerated--he knew it; he had slowly and unwillingly
+learned it. His intrusion among these people, of whom he was not one,
+would be endured only while he might be turned to some account. The
+hospital used him, the clergy found plenty for him to do for them, the
+museum had room for other pictures of his. Who among them all had ever
+sought him without a motive? Who among them all had ever found unselfish
+pleasure in him? Not one.
+
+Something in the dull sadness of his face, as he sat there, checked
+the first elaborately careless question her lips were already framing.
+Leaning a little nearer in the dim light she looked at him inquiringly
+and he returned her gaze in silence.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Plank," she said; "is anything wrong?"
+
+He knew that she did not mean to ask if anything was amiss with him. She
+did not care. Nobody cared. So, recognising his cue, he answered: "No,
+nothing is wrong that I have heard of."
+
+"You wear a very solemn countenance."
+
+"Gaiety affects me solemnly, sometimes. It is a reaction from frivolity.
+I suppose that I am over-enjoying life; that is all."
+
+She laughed, using her fan, although the place was cool enough and they
+had not danced long. To and fro flitted the silken vanes of her fan, now
+closing impatiently, now opening again like the wings of a nervous moth
+in the moonlight.
+
+He wished she would come to her point, but he dared not lead her to it
+too brusquely, because her purpose and her point were supposed to be
+absolutely hidden from his thick and credulous understanding. It
+had taken him some time to make this clear to himself; passing from
+suspicion, through chagrin and overwounded feeling, to dull certainty
+that she, too, was using him, harmlessly enough from her standpoint, but
+how bitterly from his, he alone could know.
+
+The quickened flutter of her fan meant impatience to learn from him what
+she had come to him to learn, and then, satisfied, to leave him alone
+again amid the peopled solitude of clustered lights.
+
+He wished she would speak; he was tired of the sadness of it all.
+Whenever in his isolation, in his utter destitution of friendship, he
+turned guilelessly to meet a new advance, always, sooner or later, the
+friendly mask was lifted enough for him to divine the cool, fixed gaze
+of self-interest inspecting him through the damask slits.
+
+Sylvia was speaking now, and the plumy fan was under savant control,
+waving graceful accompaniment to her soft voice, punctuating her
+sentences at times, at times making an emphasis or outlining a gesture.
+
+It was the familiar sequence; topics that led to themes which adroitly
+skirted the salient point; returned capriciously, just avoiding it--a
+subtly charming pattern of words which required so little in reply
+that his smile and nod were almost enough to keep her aria and his
+accompaniment afloat.
+
+It began to fascinate him to watch the delicacy of her strategy, the
+coquetting with her purpose; her naive advance to the very edges of
+it, the airy retreat, the innocent detour, the elaborate and circuitous
+return. And at last she drifted into it so naturally that it seemed
+impossible that fatuous man could have the most primitive suspicion of
+her premeditation.
+
+And Plank, now recognising his cue, answered her: "No, I have not heard
+that he is in town. I stopped to see him the other day, but nobody there
+knew how soon he intended to return from the country."
+
+"I didn't know he had gone to the country," she said without apparent
+interest.
+
+And Plank was either too kind to terminate the subject, or too anxious
+to serve his turn and release her; for he went on: "I thought I told you
+at Mrs. Ferrall's that Mr. Siward had gone to the country."
+
+"Perhaps you did. No doubt I've forgotten."
+
+"I'm quite sure I did, because I remember saying that he looked very
+ill, and you said, rather sharply, that he had no business to be ill. Do
+you remember?"
+
+"Yes," she said slowly. "Is he better?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"You hope so?"--with the controlled emphasis of impatience.
+
+"Yes. Don't you, Miss Landis? When I saw him at his home, he was
+lame--on crutches--and he looked rather ghastly; and all he said was
+that he expected to leave for the country. I asked him to shoot next
+year at Black Fells, and he seemed bothered about business, and said it
+might keep him from taking any vacation."
+
+"He spoke about his business?"
+
+"Yes, he--"
+
+"What is the trouble with his business? Is it anything about Amalgamated
+and Inter-County?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Is he worried?"
+
+Plank said deliberately: "I should be, if my interests were locked up in
+Amalgamated Electric."
+
+"Could you tell me why that would worry you?" she asked, smiling
+persuasively across at him.
+
+"No," he said, "I can't tell you."
+
+"Because I wouldn't understand?"
+
+"Because I myself don't understand."
+
+She thought awhile, brushing the rose velvet of her mouth with the fan's
+edge, then, looking up confidently:
+
+"Mr. Siward is such a boy. I'm so glad he has you to advise him in such
+matters."
+
+"What matters?" asked Plank bluntly.
+
+"Why, in--in financial matters."
+
+"But I don't advise him."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because he hasn't asked me to, Miss Landis."
+
+"He ought to ask you. ... He must ask you. ... Don't wait for him, Mr.
+Plank. He is only a boy in such things."
+
+And, as Plank was silent:
+
+"You will, won't you?"
+
+"Do what--make his business my business, without an invitation?" asked
+Plank, so quietly that she flushed with annoyance.
+
+"If you pretend to be his friend is it not your duty to advise him?" she
+asked impatiently.
+
+"No; that is for his business associates to do. Friendship comes to
+grief when it crosses the frontiers of business."
+
+"That is a narrow view to take, Mr. Plank."
+
+"Yes, straight and narrow. The boundaries of friendship are straight and
+narrow. It is best to keep to the trodden path; best not to walk on the
+grass or trample the flowers."
+
+"I think you are sacrificing friendship for an epigram," she said,
+careless of the undertone of contempt in her voice.
+
+"I have never sacrificed friendship." He turned, and looked at her
+pleasantly. "I never made an epigram consciously, and I have never
+required of a friend more than I had to offer in return. Have you?"
+
+The flush of hot displeasure stained her cheeks.
+
+"Are you really questioning me, Mr. Plank?"
+
+"Yes. You have been questioning me rather seriously--have you not?"
+
+"I did not comprehend your definition of friendship. I did not agree
+with it. I questioned it, not you! That is all."
+
+Plank rested his head on one big hand and stared at the clusters of
+dim blossoms behind her; and after a while he said, as though thinking
+aloud:
+
+"Many have taken my friendship for granted, and have never offered their
+own in return. I do not know about Mr. Siward. There is nothing I can do
+for him, nothing he can do for me. If there is to be friendship between
+us it will be disinterested; and I would rather have that than anything
+in the world, I think."
+
+There was a pause; but when Sylvia would have broken it his gesture
+committed her to silence with the dignity one might use in checking a
+persistent child.
+
+"You question my definition of friendship, Miss Landis. I should have
+let your question pass, however keenly it touched me, had it not also
+touched him. Now I am going to say some things which lie within the
+straight and narrow bounds I spoke of. I never knew a man I cared for as
+much as I care for Mr. Siward. I know why, too. He is disinterested. I
+do not believe he wastes very many thoughts on me. Perhaps he will. I
+want him to like me, if it's possible. But one thing you and I may be
+sure of: if he does not care to return the friendship I offer him he
+will never accept anything else from me, though he might give at my
+request; and that is the sort of a man he is; and that is why he is
+every inch a man; and so I like him, Miss Landis. Do you wonder?"
+
+She did not reply.
+
+"Do you wonder?" he repeated sharply.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Then--" He straightened up, and the silent significance of his waiting
+attitude was plain enough to her.
+
+But she shook her head impatiently, saying: "I don't know whose dance
+it is, and I don't care. Please go on. It is--is pleasant. I like Mr.
+Siward; I like to hear men speak of him as you do. I like you for doing
+it. If you should ever come to care for my friendship that is the best
+passport to it--your loyalty to Mr. Siward."
+
+"No man can truthfully speak otherwise than I have spoken," he said
+gravely.
+
+"No, not of these things. But--you know w-what is--is usually said when
+his name comes up among men."
+
+"Do you mean about his habits?" he asked simply.
+
+"Yes. Is it not an outrage to drag in that sort of thing? It angers me
+intensely, Mr. Plank. Why do they do it? Is there a single one among
+them qualified to criticise Mr. Siward? And besides, it is not true any
+more! ... is it?--what was once said of him with--with some truth? Is it?"
+
+The dull red blood mantled Plank's heavy visage. The silence grew
+grim as he did his slow, laborious thinking, the while his eyes,
+expressionless and almost opaque in the dim light, never left her's,
+until, under the unchanging, merciless inspection, the mask dropped for
+an instant from her anxious face, and he saw what he saw.
+
+He was no fool. What he had come to believe she at last had only
+confirmed; and now the question became simple: was she worth
+enlightening? And by what title did she demand his confidence?
+
+"You ask me if it is true any more. You mean about his habits. If I
+answer you it is because I cannot be indifferent to what concerns him.
+But before I answer I ask you this: Would your interest in his fortunes
+matter to him?"
+
+She waited, head bent; then:
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Plank," very low.
+
+"Did your interest in his fortunes ever concern him?"
+
+"Yes, once."
+
+He looked at her sternly, his jaw squaring until his heavy under lip
+projected. "Within my definition of friendship, is he your friend?"
+
+"You mean he--"
+
+"No, I mean you! I can answer for him. How is it with you? Do you return
+what he gives--if there is really friendship between you? Or do you take
+what he offers, offering nothing in return?"
+
+She had turned rather white under the direct impact of the questions.
+The jarring repetition of his voice itself was like the dull echo
+of distant blows. Yet it never occurred to her to resent it, nor his
+attitude, nor his self-assumed privilege. She did not care; she no
+longer cared what he said to her or thought about her; nor did she care
+that her mask had fallen at last. It was not what he was saying, but
+what her own heart repeated so heavily that drove the colour from her
+face. Not he, but she herself had become the pitiless attorney for the
+prosecution; not his voice, but the clamouring conscience within her
+demanded by what right she used the name of friendship to characterise
+the late relations between her and the man to whom she had denied
+herself.
+
+Then a bitter impatience swept her, and a dawning fear, too; for she had
+set her foot on the fallen mask, and the impulse rendered her reckless.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" she said. "Yes, I have a right to know. I care
+for him as much as you do. Why don't you answer me? I tell you I care
+for him!"
+
+"Do you?" he said in a dull voice. "Then help me out, if you can, for
+I don't know what to do; and if I did, I haven't the authority of
+friendship as my warrant. He is in New York. He did go to the country;
+and, at his home, the servants suppose he is still away. But he isn't;
+he is here, alone, and sick--sick of his old sickness. I saw him,
+and"--Plank rested his head on his hand, dropping his eyes--"and he
+didn't know me. I--I do not think he will remember that he met me, or
+that I spoke. And--I could do nothing, absolutely nothing. And I don't
+know where he is. He will go home after a while. I call--every day--to
+see--see what can be done. But if he were there I would not know what to
+do. When he does go home I won't know what to say--what to try to do. ...
+And that is an answer to your question, Miss Landis. I give it, because
+you say you care for him as I do. Will you advise me what to do?--you,
+who are more entitled than I am to know the truth, because he has given
+you the friendship which he has as yet not accorded to me."
+
+But Sylvia, dry-eyed, dry-lipped, could find no voice to answer; and
+after a little while they rose and moved through the fragrant gloom
+toward the sparkling lights beyond.
+
+Her voice came back as they entered the brilliant rooms: "I should
+like to find Grace Ferrall," she said very distinctly. "Please keep the
+others off, Mr. Plank."
+
+Her small hand on his arm lay with a weight out of all proportion to its
+size. Fair head averted, she no longer guided him with that impalpable
+control; it was he who had become the pilot now, and he steered his own
+way through the billowy ocean of silk and lace, master of the course he
+had set, heavily bland to the interrupter and the importunate from whom
+she turned a deaf ear and dumb lips, and lowered eyes that saw nothing.
+
+Fleetwood had missed his dance with her, but she scarcely heard his
+eager complaints. Quarrier, coldly inquiring, confronted them; was
+passed almost without recognition, and left behind, motionless, looking
+after them out of his narrowing, black-fringed eyes of a woman.
+
+Then Ferrall came, and hearing his voice, she raised her colourless
+face.
+
+"Will you take me home with you, Kemp, when you take Grace?" she asked.
+
+"Of course. I don't know where Grace is. Are you in a hurry to go? It's
+only four o'clock."
+
+They were at the entrance to the supper-room. Plank drew up a chair
+for her, and she sank down, dropping her elbows on the small table, and
+resting her face between her fingers.
+
+"Pegged out, Sylvia?" exclaimed Ferrall incredulously. "You? What's the
+younger set coming to?" and he motioned a servant to fill her glass. But
+she pushed it aside with a shiver, and gave Plank a strange look which
+he scarcely understood at the moment.
+
+"More caprices; all sorts of 'em on the programme," muttered Ferrall,
+looking down at her from where he stood beside Plank. "O tempora! O
+Sylvia! ... Plank, would you mind hunting up my wife? I'll stay and see
+that this infant doesn't fall asleep."
+
+But Sylvia shook her head, saying: "Please go, Kemp. I'm a little
+tired, that's all. When Grace is ready, I'll leave with her." And at
+her gesture Plank seated himself, while Ferrall, shrugging his square
+shoulders, sauntered off in quest of his wife, stopping a moment at
+a neighbouring table to speak to Agatha Caithness, who sat there with
+Captain Voucher, the gemmed collar on her slender throat a pale blaze of
+splendour.
+
+Plank was hungry, and he said so in his direct fashion. Sylvia nodded,
+and exchanged a smile with Agatha, who turned at the sound of Plank's
+voice. For a while, as he ate and drank largely, she made the effort to
+keep up a desultory conversation, particularly when anybody to whom she
+owed an explanation hove darkly in sight on the horizon. But Plank's
+appetite was in proportion to the generous lines on which nature had
+fashioned him, and she paid less and less attention to convention and a
+trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the
+small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle
+of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a glass refilled.
+
+Major Belwether, his white, fluffy, chop-whiskers brushed rabbit
+fashion, peeped in at the door, started to tiptoe out again, caught
+sight of them, and came trotting back, beaming rosy effusion. He leaned
+roguishly over the table, his moist eyes a-twinkle with suppressed
+mirth; then, bestowing a sprightly glance on Plank, which said very
+plainly, "I'm up to one of my irrepressible jokes again!" he held up a
+smooth, white, and over-manicured forefinger:
+
+"I was in Tiffany's yesterday," he said, "and I saw a young man in there
+who didn't see me, and I peeped over his shoulder, and what do you think
+he was doing?"
+
+She lifted her eyes a little wearily:
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+"I do," he chuckled. "He was choosing a collar of blue diamonds and aqua
+marines!--Te-he!--probably to wear himself!--Te-he! Or perhaps he
+was going to be married!--He-he-he!--next winter--ahem!--next
+November--Ha-ha! I don't know, I'm sure, what he meant to do with that
+collar. I only--"
+
+Something in Sylvia's eyes stopped him, and, following their direction,
+he turned around to find Quarrier standing at his elbow, icy and
+expressionless.
+
+"Oh," said the aged jester, a little disconcerted, "I'm caught talking
+out in church, I see! It was only a harmless little fun, Howard."
+
+"Do you mean you saw me?" asked Quarrier, pale as a sheet. "You are in
+error. I have not been in Tiffany's in months."
+
+Belwether, crestfallen under the white menace of Quarrier's face,
+nodded, and essayed a chuckle without success.
+
+Sylvia, at first listless and uninterested, looked inquiringly from the
+major to Quarrier, surprised at the suppressed feeling exhibited over so
+trivial a gaucherie. If Quarrier had chosen a collar like Agatha's for
+her, what of it? But as he had not, on his own statement, what did
+it matter? Why should he look that way at the foolish major, to whose
+garrulous gossip he was accustomed, and whose inability to refrain from
+prying was notorious enough.
+
+Turning disdainfully, she caught a glimpse of Plank's shocked and
+altered face. It relapsed instantly into the usual inert expression; and
+a queer, uncomfortable perplexity began to invade her. What had happened
+to stir up these three men? Of what importance was an indiscretion of an
+old gentleman whose fatuous vanity and consequent blunders everybody
+was familiar with? And, after all, Howard had not bought anything at
+Tiffany's; he said so himself. ... But it was evident that Agatha had
+chanced on the collar that Belwether thought he saw somebody else
+examining.
+
+She turned, and looked at the dead-white neck of the girl. The collar
+was wonderful--a miracle of pale fire. And Sylvia, musing, let her
+thoughts run on, dreamy eyes brooding. She was glad that Agatha's means
+permitted her now to have such things. It had been understood, for some
+years, that the Caithness fortune was in rather an alarming condition.
+Howard had been able recently to do a favour or two for old Peter
+Caithness. She had heard the major bragging about it. Evidently Mr.
+Caithness must have improved the chance, if he was able to present such
+gems to his daughter. And now somebody would marry her; perhaps Captain
+Voucher; perhaps even Alderdene; perhaps, as rumour had it now and then,
+Plank might venture into the arena. ... Poor Plank! More of a man than
+people understood. She understood. She--
+
+And her thoughts swung back like the returning tide to Siward, and her
+heart began heavily again, and the slightly faint sensation returned.
+She passed her ungloved, unsteady fingers across her eyelids and
+forehead, looking up and around. The major and Howard had disappeared;
+Plank, beside her, sat staring stupidly into his empty wine-glass.
+
+"Isn't Mrs. Ferrall coming?" she said wearily.
+
+Plank gathered his cumbersome bulk and stood up, trying to see through
+the entrance into the ball-room. After a moment he said: "They're in
+there, talking to Marion. It's a good chance to make our adieux."
+
+As they passed out of the supper-room Sylvia paused behind Agatha's
+chair and bent over her. "The collar is beautiful," she said, "and so
+are you, Agatha"; and with a little impulsive caress for the jewels she
+passed on, unconscious of the delicate flush that spread from Agatha's
+shoulders to her hair. And Agatha, turning, encountered only the stupid
+gaze of Plank, moving ponderously past on Sylvia's heels.
+
+"If you'll find Leila, I'm ready at any time," she said carelessly, and
+resumed her tete-a-tete with Voucher, who had plainly been annoyed at
+the interruption.
+
+Plank went on, a new trouble dawning on his thickening mental horizon.
+He had completely forgotten Leila. Even with all the demands made upon
+him; even with all the time he had given to those whose use of him
+he understood, how could he have forgotten Leila and the recent scene
+between them, and the new attitude and new relations with her that he
+must so carefully consider and ponder over before he presented himself
+at the house of Mortimer again!
+
+Ferrall and his wife and Sylvia were making their adieux to Marion and
+her mother when he came up; and he, too, took that opportunity.
+
+Later, on his quest for Leila, Sylvia, passing through the great hall,
+shrouded in silk and ermine, turned to offer him her hand, saying in a
+low voice: "I am at home to you; do you understand? Always," she added
+nervously.
+
+He looked after her with an unconscious sigh, unaware that anything
+in himself had claimed her respect. And after a moment he swung on his
+broad heels to continue his search for Mrs. Mortimer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X THE SEAMY SIDE
+
+About four o'clock on the following afternoon Mrs. Mortimer's maid, who
+had almost finished drying and dressing her mistress' hair, was called
+to the door by a persistent knocking, which at first she had been bidden
+to disregard.
+
+It was Mortimer's man, desiring to know whether Mrs. Mortimer could
+receive Mr. Mortimer at once on matters of importance.
+
+"No," said Leila petulantly. "Tell Mullins to say that I can not see
+anybody," and catching a glimpse of the shadowy Mullins dodging about
+the dusky corridor: "What is the matter? Is Mr. Mortimer ill?"
+
+But Mullins could not say what the matter might be, and he went away,
+only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master,
+badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation,
+took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and
+unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark,
+fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' shoulder. It
+ran, without preliminaries:
+
+"I'm going to talk to you, whether you like it or not. Do you understand
+that? If you want to know what's the matter with me you'll find out fast
+enough. Fire that French girl out before I arrive."
+
+She closed the note thoughtfully, folding and double-folding it into
+a thick wad. The ink had come off, discolouring her finger-tips; she
+dropped the soiled paper on the floor, and held out her hands, plump
+fingers spread. And when the maid had finished removing the stains
+and had repolished the pretty hands, her mistress sipped her chocolate
+thoughtfully, nibbled a bit of dry toast, then motioned the maid to take
+the tray and her departure, leaving her the cup.
+
+A few minutes later Mortimer came in, stood a moment blinking around
+the room, then dropped into a seat, sullen, inert, the folds of his chin
+crowded out on his collar, his heavy abdomen cradled on his short, thick
+legs. He had been freshly shaved; linen and clothing were spotless, yet
+the man looked unclean.
+
+Save for the network of purple veins in his face, there was no colour
+there, none in his lips; even his flabby hands were the hue of clay.
+
+"Are you ill?" asked his wife coolly.
+
+"No, not very. I've got the jumps. What's that? Tea? Ugh! it's
+chocolate. Push it out of sight, will you? I can smell it."
+
+Leila set the delicate cup on a table behind her.
+
+"What time did you return this morning?" she asked, stifling a yawn.
+
+"I don't know; about five or six. How the devil should I know what time
+I came in?"
+
+Sitting there before the mirror of her dresser she stole a second glance
+at his marred features in the glass. The loose mouth, the smeared eyes,
+the palsy-like tremors that twitched the hands where they tightened on
+the arms of his chair, became repulsive to the verge of fascination. She
+tried to look away, but could not.
+
+"You had better see Dr. Grisby," she managed to say.
+
+"I'd better see you; that's what I'd better do," he retorted thickly.
+"You'll do all the doctoring I want. And I want it, all right."
+
+"Very well. What is it?"
+
+He passed his swollen hand across his forehead.
+
+"What is it?" he repeated. "It's the limit, this time, if you want to
+know. I'm all in."
+
+"Roulette?" raising her eyebrows without interest
+
+"Yes, roulette, too. Everything! They got me upstairs at Burbank's.
+The game's crooked! Every box, every case, every wheel, every pack is
+crooked! crooked! crooked, by God!" he burst out in a fever, struggling
+to sit upright, his hands always tightening on the arms of the chair.
+"It's nothing but a creeping joint, run by a bunch of hand-shakers!
+I--I'll--"
+
+Stuttering, choking, stammering imprecations, his hoarse clamour
+died away after a while. She sat there, head bent, silent, impassive,
+acquiescent under the physical and mental strain to which she had never
+become thoroughly hardened. How many such scenes had she witnessed! She
+could not count them. They differed very little in detail, and not at
+all in their ultimate object, which was to get what money she had. This
+was his method of reimbursing himself for his losses.
+
+He made an end to his outburst after a while. Only his dreadful fat
+breathing now filled the silence; and supposing he had finished, she
+found her voice with an effort:
+
+"I am sorry. It comes at a bad time, as you know--"
+
+"A bad time!" he broke out violently. "How can it come at any other sort
+of time? With us, all times are bad. If this is worse than the average
+it can't be helped. We are in it for keeps this time!"
+
+"We?"
+
+"Yes, we!" he repeated; but his face had grown ghastly, and his
+uncertain eyes were fastened on her's in the mirror.
+
+"What do you mean--exactly?" she asked, turning from the dresser to
+confront him.
+
+He made no effort to answer; an expression of dull fright was growing
+on his visage, as though for the first time he had begun to realise what
+had happened.
+
+She saw it, and her heart quickened, but she spoke disdainfully: "Well,
+I am ready to listen--as usual. How much do you want?"
+
+He made no sign; his lower lip hung loose; his eyes blinked at her.
+
+"What is it?" she repeated. "What have you been doing? How much have you
+lost? You can't have lost very much; we hadn't much to lose. If you have
+given your note to any of those gamblers, it is a shame--a shame! Leroy,
+look at me! You promised me, on your honour, never to do that again.
+Have you lied, after all the times I have helped you out, stripped
+myself, denied myself, put off tradesmen, faced down creditors? After
+all I have done, do you dare come here and ask for more--ask for what
+I have not got--with not one bill settled, not one servant paid since
+December--"
+
+"Leila, I--I've got--to tell you--"
+
+"What?" she demanded, appalled by the change in his face. If he was
+overdoing it, he was overdoing it realistically enough.
+
+"I--I've used Plank's cheque!" he mumbled, and moistened his lips with
+his tongue.
+
+She stared back at him, striving to comprehend. "Plank's!" she repeated
+slowly, "Plank's cheque? What cheque? What do you mean?"
+
+"The one he gave you last night. I've used that. Now you know!"
+
+"The one he--But you couldn't! How could you? It was not filled in."
+
+"I filled it."
+
+Her dawning horror was reacting on him, as it always did, like a fierce
+tonic; and his own courage came back in a sort of sullen desperation.
+
+"You ... You are trying to frighten me, Leroy," she stammered. "You are
+trying to make me do something--give you what you want--force me to give
+you what you want! You can't frighten me. The cheque was made out to
+me--to my order. How could you have used it, if I had not indorsed it?"
+
+"I indorsed it. Do you understand that!" he said savagely.
+
+"No, I don't; because, if you did, it's forgery."
+
+"I don't give a damn what you think it is!" he broke in fiercely. "All
+I'm worried over is what Plank will think. I didn't mean to do it; I
+didn't dream of doing it; but when Burbank cleaned me up I fished about,
+and that cursed cheque came tumbling out!"
+
+In the rising excitement of self-defence the colour was coming back into
+his battered face; he sat up straighter in his chair, and, grasping
+the upholstered arms, leaned forward, speaking more distinctly and with
+increasing vigour and anger:
+
+"When I saw that cheque in my hands I thought I'd use it
+temporarily--merely as moral collateral to flash at Burbank--something
+to back my I. O. U.'s. So I filled it in."
+
+"For how much?" she asked, not daring to believe him; but he ignored the
+question and went on: "I filled it and indorsed it, and--"
+
+"How could you indorse it?" she interrupted coolly, now unconvinced
+again and suspicious.
+
+"I'll tell you if you'll stop that fool tongue a moment. The cheque was
+made to 'L. Mortimer,' wasn't it? So I wrote 'L. Mortimer' on the back.
+Now do you know? If you are L. Mortimer, so am I. Leila begins with L;
+so does Leroy, doesn't it? I didn't imitate your two-words-to-a-page
+autograph. I put my own fist to a cheque made out to one L. Mortimer;
+and I don't care what you think about it as long as Plank can stand it.
+Now put up your nose and howl, if you like."
+
+But under her sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to
+bolster up his courage with bluster and noise, as usual:
+
+"Howl all you like!" he jeered. "It won't alter matters or square
+accounts with Plank. What are you staring at? Do you suppose I'm not
+sorry? Do you fancy I don't know what a fool I've been? What are you
+turning white for? What in hell--"
+
+"How much have you--" She choked, then, resolutely: "How much have
+you--taken?"
+
+"Taken!" he broke out, with an oath. "What do you mean? I've borrowed
+about twenty thousand dollars. Now yelp! Eh? What?--no yelps? Probably
+some weeps, then. Turn 'em on and run dry; I'll wait." And he managed to
+cross one bulky leg over the other and lean back, affecting resignation,
+while Leila, bolt upright in her low chair, every curved outline rigid
+under the flowing, silken wrap, stared at him as though stunned.
+
+"Well, we're good for it, aren't we?" he said threateningly. "If he's
+going to turn ugly about it, here's the house."
+
+"My--house?"
+
+"Yes, your house! I suppose you'd rather raise something on the house
+than have the thing come out in the papers."
+
+"Do you think so?" she asked, staring into his bloodshot eyes.
+
+"Yes, I do. I'm damn sure of it!"
+
+"You are wrong."
+
+"You mean that you are not inclined to stand by me?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes, I mean that."
+
+"You don't intend to help me out?"
+
+"I do not intend to--not this time."
+
+He began to show his big teeth, and that nervous snickering "tick"
+twitched his upper lip.
+
+"How about the courts?" he sneered. "Do you want to figure in them with
+Plank?"
+
+"I don't want to," she said steadily, "but you can not frighten me any
+more by that threat."
+
+"Oh! Can't frighten you! Perhaps you think you'll marry Plank when I get
+a decree? Do you? Well, you won't for several reasons; first, because
+I'll name other corespondents and that will make Plank sick; second,
+because Plank wants to marry somebody else and I'm able to assist him.
+So where do you come out in the shuffle?"
+
+"I don't know," she said, under her breath, and rested her head against
+the back of the chair, as though suddenly tired.
+
+"Well, I know. You'll come out smirched, and you know it," said
+Mortimer, gazing intently at her. "Look here, Leila: I didn't come here
+to threaten you. I'm no black-mailer; I'm no criminal. I'm simply a
+decent sort of a man, who is pretty badly scared over what he's done in
+a moment of temptation. You know I had no thought of anything except to
+borrow enough on my I. O. U.'s to make a killing at Burbank's. I had to
+show them something big, so I filled in that cheque, not meaning to use
+it; and before I knew it I'd indorsed it, and was plunging against it.
+Then they stacked everything on me--by God, they did! and if I had not
+been in the condition I was in I'd have stopped payment. But it was too
+late when I realised what I was against. Leila, you know I'm not a bad
+man at heart. Can't you help a fellow?"
+
+His manner, completely changed, had become the resentful and fretful
+appeal of the victim of plot and circumstance. All the savage brutality
+had been eliminated; the sneer, the truculent attempts to browbeat, the
+pitiful swagger, the cynical justification, all were gone. It was really
+the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; the frightened,
+overfed pensioner on his wife's bounty; not the human beast maddened by
+fear and dissipation, half stunned, half panic-stricken, driven by sheer
+terror into a role which even he shrank from--had shrunk from all these
+years. For, leech and parasite that he was, Mortimer, however much
+the dirty acquisition of money might tempt him in theory, had not yet
+brought himself to the point of attempting the practice, even when in
+sorest straits and bitterest need. He didn't want to do it; he wished to
+get along without it, partly because of native inertia and an aversion
+to the mental nimbleness that he would be required to show as a
+law-breaker, partly because the word "black-mail" stood for what he did
+not dare suggest that he had come to, even to himself. His distaste was
+genuine; there were certain things which he didn't want to commit, and
+extortion was one of them. He could, at a pinch, lie to his wife, or try
+to scare her into giving him money; he could, when necessary, "borrow"
+from such men as Plank; but he had never cheated at cards, and he had
+never attempted to black-mail anybody except his wife--which, of course,
+was purely a family matter, and concerned nobody else.
+
+Now he was attempting it again, with more sincerity, energy, and
+determination than he ever before had been forced to display. Even in
+his most profane violence the rage and panic were only partly real. He
+was, it is true, genuinely scared, and horribly shaken physically, but
+he had counted on violence, and he stimulated his own emotions and made
+them serve him, knowing all the while that in the reaction his ends
+would be accomplished, as usual. This policy of alternately frightening,
+dragooning, and supplicating Leila had carried him so far; and though
+it was true that this was a more serious situation than he had ever yet
+faced, he was convinced that his wife would pull him out somehow; and
+how that was to be accomplished he did not very much care, as long as he
+was pulled out safely.
+
+"What this household requires," he said, "is economy." He spread his
+legs, denting the Aubusson carpet with his boot-heels, and glanced
+askance at his wife. "Economy," he repeated, furtively wetting his lips
+with a heavily coated tongue; "that's the true solution; economical
+administration in domestic matters. Retrenchment, Leila! retrenchment!
+Fewer folderols. I've a notion to give up that farm, and stop trying to
+breed those damfool sheep. They cost a thousand apiece, and do you know
+what I got for those six I sent to Westbury? Just twelve hundred dollars
+from Fleetwood--the bargaining shopkeeper! Twelve hundred! Think of
+that! And along comes Granby and sells a single ram for six thousand
+plunks!"
+
+Leila's head was lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had
+always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble,
+so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he
+believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him
+among some men, even among some women.
+
+"We'll fix it somehow," he said reassuringly; "don't you worry, Leila.
+I've confidence in you, little girl! You've got me out of sticky messes
+before, eh? Well, we've weathered a few, haven't we?"
+
+Even the horrible parody on wedded loyalty left her silent, unmoved,
+dark eyes brooding; and he began to grow a little restless and anxious
+as his jocularity increased without a movement in either response or
+aversion from his wife.
+
+"You needn't be scared, if I'm not," he said reproachfully. "The house
+is worth two hundred and fifty thousand, and there's only fifty on it
+now. If that fat, Dutch skinflint, Plank, shows his tusks, we can clap
+on another fifty." And as she made no sound or movement in reply: "As
+far as Plank goes, haven't I done enough for him to square it? What have
+we ever got out of him, except a thousand or two now and then when the
+cards went against me? If I took it, it was practically what he owes
+me. And if he thinks it's too much--look here, Leila! I've a trick up my
+sleeve. I can make good any time I wish to. I'm in a position to marry
+that man to the girl he's mad about--stark, raving mad."
+
+Mrs. Mortimer slowly raised her head and looked at her husband.
+
+"Leroy, are you mad?"
+
+"I! Not much!" he exclaimed gleefully. "I can make him the husband of
+the most-run-after girl in New York--if I want to. And at the same
+time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish,
+purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a
+director's table. O-ho! Now you're staring, Leila. I can do it; I can
+make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I've got a hundred ways to
+square that cheque, and each separate way is a winner."
+
+He rose, shook out the creases in his trousers, and adjusted the squat,
+gold fob which ornamented his protruding waistcoat.
+
+"So you'll fix it, won't you, Leila?" he said, apparently oblivious that
+he had expressed himself as able to adjust the matter in one hundred
+equally edifying and satisfactory manners.
+
+She did not answer. He lingered a moment at the door, looking back with
+an ingratiating leer; but she paid him no attention, and he took
+himself off, confident that her sulkiness could not result in anything
+unpleasant to anybody except herself.
+
+Nor did it, as far as he could see. The days brought no noticeable
+change in his wife's demeanour toward him. Plank, when he met him, was
+civil enough, though it did occur to Mortimer that he saw very little of
+Plank in these days.
+
+"Ungrateful beggar!" he thought bitterly; "he's toadying to Belwether
+now. I can't do anything more for him, so I don't interest him."
+
+And for a while he wore either a truculent, aggrieved air in
+Plank's presence, or the meeker demeanour of a martyr, sentimentally
+misunderstood, but patient under the affliction.
+
+Then there came a time when he needed money. During the few days he
+spent circling tentatively and apprehensively around his wife he learned
+enough to know that there was nothing to be had from her at present. No
+doubt the money she raised to placate Plank--if she had placated him in
+that fashion--was a strain on her resources, whatever those resources
+were.
+
+One thing was certain: Plank had not remained very long in ignorance of
+the cheque drawn against his balance, if indeed, as Mortimer feared, the
+bank itself had not communicated with Plank as soon as the cheque was
+presented for payment. Therefore Plank must have been placated by Leila;
+how, Mortimer was satisfied not to know.
+
+"Some of these days," he said to himself, "I'll catch her tripping,
+and then there'll be a decent division of property, or--there'll be a
+divorce." But, as usual, Mortimer found such practices more attractive
+in theory than in execution, and he was really quite contented to go
+on as things were going, if somebody would see that he had some money
+occasionally.
+
+One of these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made
+a "killing" at Desmond's, and had used the money to stop up the
+more threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his
+"personal accounts." The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime
+he needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried
+everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank
+just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his
+borrowing capacity exhausted, and himself once more face to face with
+the only hope, Plank, he sat down to consider seriously the possibility
+of the matter.
+
+Of course Plank owed him more than he could ever pay--the ungrateful
+parvenu!--but what Plank had thought of that cheque transaction he had
+never been able to discover.
+
+Somehow or other he must put Plank under fresh obligations; and that
+might have been possible had not Leila invaded the ground, leaving
+nothing, now that Plank was secure in club life.
+
+Of course the first thing that presented itself to Mortimer's
+consideration was the engineering of Plank's matrimonial ambitions.
+Clearly the man had not changed. He was always at Sylvia's heels; he was
+seen with her in public; he went to the Belwether house a great deal. No
+possible doubt but that he was as infatuated as ever. And Quarrier was
+going to marry her next November--that is, if he, Mortimer, chose to
+keep silent about a certain midnight episode at Shotover.
+
+It was his inclination, except in theory, to keep silent, partly because
+of his native inertia and unwillingness to go to the physical and
+intellectual exertion of being a rascal, partly because he didn't really
+want to be a rascal of that sort.
+
+Like a man with premonitions of toothache, who walks down to the
+dentist's just to see what the number of the house looks like, and then
+walks around the block to think it over, so Mortimer, suffering from
+lack of money, walked round and round the central idea, unable to bring
+himself to the point.
+
+Several times he called up Quarrier on the 'phone and made appointments
+to lunch with him; but these meetings never resulted in anything except
+luncheons which Mortimer paid for, and matters were becoming desperate.
+
+So one day, after having lunched too freely, he sat down and wrote Plank
+the following note:
+
+My Dear Beverly: You will remember that I once promised you my aid in
+securing what, to you, is the dearest object of your existence. I have
+thought, I have pondered, I have given the matter deep and, I may add
+without irreverence, prayerful consideration, knowing that the life's
+happiness of my closest friend depended on my judgment and wisdom and
+intelligence to secure for him the opportunity to crown his life's
+work by the acquisition of the brightest jewel in the diadem of old
+Manhattan.
+
+"By George! that's wickedly good, though!" chuckled Mortimer, refreshing
+himself with his old stand-by, an apple, quartered, and soaked in very
+old port. So he sopped his apple and swallowed it, and picked up his pen
+again, chary of overdoing it.
+
+All I say to you is, be ready! The time is close at hand when you
+may boldly make your avowal. But be ready! All depends upon the
+psychological moment. An instant too soon, an instant too late, and you
+are lost. And she is lost forever. Remember! Be faithful; trust in me,
+and wait. And the instant I say, "Speak!" pour out your soul, my dear
+friend, and be certain you are not pouring it out in vain. L. M.
+
+Writing about "pouring out" made him thirsty, so he fortified himself
+several times, and then, sealing the letter, went out to a letter-box
+and stood looking at it.
+
+"If I mail it I'm in for it," he muttered. After a while he put the
+letter in his pocket and walked on.
+
+"It really doesn't commit me to anything," he reflected at last, halting
+before another letter-box. And as he stood there, hesitating, he glanced
+up and saw Quarrier entering the Lenox Club. The next moment he flung up
+the metal box lid, dropped in his letter, and followed Quarrier into the
+club.
+
+Then events tumbled forward almost without a push from him. Quarrier was
+alone in a window corner, drinking vichy and milk and glancing over
+the afternoon papers. He saw Mortimer, and invited him to join him; and
+Mortimer, being thirsty, took champagne.
+
+"I've been trying a new coach," said Quarrier, in his colourless and
+rather agreeable voice; and he went on leisurely explaining the points
+of the new mail-coach which had been built in Paris after plans of his
+own, while Mortimer gulped glass after glass of chilled wine, which
+seemed only to make him thirstier. Meantime he listened, really
+interested, except that his fleshy head was too full of alcohol and
+his own project to contain additional statistics concerning coaching.
+Besides, Quarrier, who had never been over-cordial to him, was more so
+now--enough for Mortimer to venture on a few tentative suggestions of a
+financial nature; and though, as usual, Quarrier was not responsive, he
+did not, as usual, get up and go away.
+
+A vague hope stirred Mortimer that it might not be beyond his persuasive
+tongue to make this chilly, reticent young man into a friend some day--a
+helpful friend. For Mortimer all his life had trusted to his tongue; and
+though poorly enough repaid, the few lingual victories remained in his
+memory, along with an inexhaustible vanity and hope; while his countless
+defeats and the many occasions on which his tongue had played him false
+were all forgotten. Besides, he had been drinking more heavily all day
+than was his custom.
+
+So Quarrier talked, sparingly, about his new coach, about Billy
+Fleetwood's renowned string of hunters, about Ashley Spencer's new
+stable and his chances at Saratoga with Roy-a-neh, for which he had paid
+a fabulous sum--the sum and the story probably equally fabulous.
+
+Mortimer's head was swimming with ideas; he was also talking a great
+deal, much more than he had intended; he was saying things he had not
+exactly intended to say, either, in just that way. He realised it,
+but he went on, unable to stop his own tongue, the noise of which
+intoxicated him.
+
+Once or twice he thought Quarrier looked at him rather strangely; but he
+would show Quarrier that he was nobody's fool; he'd show Quarrier that
+he was a friend, a good, staunch friend; and that Quarrier had long,
+long undervalued him. Waves of sentiment spread through and through him;
+his affection for Quarrier dampened his eyes; and still he blabbed on
+and on, gazing with brimming eyes upon Quarrier, who sat back silent
+and attentive as Mortimer circled and blundered nearer and nearer to the
+crucial point of his destination.
+
+Midway in one of his linguistic ellipses Quarrier leaned forward and
+caught his arm in a grip of steel. Another man had entered the room.
+Mortimer, made partly conscious by the pain of Quarrier's vise-like
+grip, was sober enough to recognise the impropriety of his continuing
+aloud the veiled story he had been constructing with what he supposed to
+be a cunning as matchless as it was impenetrable.
+
+Later he found himself upstairs in a private card-room, facing Quarrier
+across a table, and still talking and quenching his increasing thirst.
+He knew now what he was telling Quarrier; he was unveiling the parable;
+he was stripping metaphor from a carefully precise story. He used
+Siward's name presently; presently he used Sylvia's name. A moment
+later--or was it an hour?--Quarrier stopped him, coldly, without a
+trace of passion, demanding corroborative detail. And Mortimer gave it,
+wagging his head and one fat forefinger as emphasis.
+
+"You saw that?" repeated Quarrier, deadly white of a sudden.
+
+"Yes; an' I--"
+
+"At three in the morning?"
+
+"Yes; an' I want--"
+
+"You saw him enter her room?"
+
+"Yes; an' I wan' tersay thish to you, because I'm your fr'en'. Don' wan'
+anny fr'en's mine get fooled on women! See? Thash how I feel. I respec'
+the sect! See! Women, lovely women! See? Respec' sect! Gimme y'han',
+buzzer--er--brother Quar'er! Your m' fr'en'; I'm your fr'en'. I know
+how it is. Gotter wife m'own. Rotten one. Stingy! Takes money outter m'
+pockets. Dam 'stravagant. Ruin me! ... Say, old boy, what about dividend
+due 'morrow on Orange County Eclectic--mean Erlextic--no!--mean 'Letric!
+Damn!--Wasser masser tongue?"
+
+Opening his fond and foggy eyes, and finding himself alone in the
+card-room, he began to cry; and a little later, attempting to push the
+electric button, he fell over a lounge and lay there, his shirt-front
+soiled with wine, one fat leg trailing to the floor; not the ideal
+position for slumber, perhaps, but what difference do attitudes and
+postures and poses make when a gentleman, in the sacred seclusion of
+his own club, is wooing the drowsy goddess with blasts of votive music
+through his empurpled nose?
+
+In the meantime, however, he was due to dine at the Belwether house; and
+when eight o'clock approached, and he had not returned to dress, Leila
+called up Sylvia Landis on the telephone:
+
+"My dear, Leroy hasn't returned, and I suppose he's forgotten about the
+Bridge. I can bring Mr. Plank, if you like."
+
+"Very well," said Sylvia, adding, "if Mr. Plank is there, may I speak to
+him a moment?"
+
+So Leila rose, setting the receiver on the desk, and Plank came in from
+the library and settled himself heavily in the chair:
+
+"Did you wish to speak to me, Miss Landis?"
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Plank? Yes; will you dine with us at eight? Bridge
+afterward, if you don't mind."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"And, Mr. Plank, you had a note from me this morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Please disregard it."
+
+"If you wish."
+
+"I do. It is not worth while." And as Plank made no comment, "I have no
+further interest in the matter. Do you understand?"
+
+"No," said Plank doggedly.
+
+"I have nothing more to say. I am sorry. We dine at eight," concluded
+Sylvia hurriedly.
+
+Plank hung up the receiver and sat eyeing it for a while in silence.
+Then his jaw began to harden and his under lip protruded, and he folded
+his great hands, resting them in front of him on the edge of the desk,
+brooding there, with eyes narrowing like a sleepy giant at prayer.
+
+When Leila entered, in her evening wraps, she found him there, so
+immersed in reverie that he failed to hear her; and she stood a moment
+at the doorway, smiling to herself, thinking how pleasant it was to come
+down ready for the evening and find him there, as though he belonged
+where he sat, and was part of the familiar environment.
+
+Recently she had grown younger in a smooth-skinned, full-lipped way--so
+much younger that it was spoken of. Something girlish in figure, in
+spontaneity, in the hesitation of her smile, in the lack of that hard,
+brilliant confidence which once characterised her, had developed; as
+though she were beginning her debut again, reverting to a softness
+and charm prematurely checked. Truly, her youth's discoloured blossom,
+forced by the pale phantom of false spring, was refolding to a bud once
+more; and the harsher tints of the inclement years were fading.
+
+"Beverly," she said, "I am ready."
+
+Plank stood up, dazed from his reverie, and walked toward her. His
+white tie had become disarranged; she raised her hands, halting him, and
+pulled it into shape for him, consciously innocent of the intimacy.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "Do you know how pretty you are this evening?"
+
+"Yes; I was very happy at my mirror. Do you know, the withered years
+seem to be dropping from me like leaves from an autumn sapling. And I
+feel young enough to say so poetically. ... Did Sylvia try to flirt with
+you over the wire?"
+
+"Yes, as usual," he said drily, descending the stairs beside her.
+
+"And really you don't love her any more?" she queried.
+
+"Scarcely." His voice was low and rather disagreeable, and she looked
+up.
+
+"I wish I knew what you and Sylvia find to talk about so frequently, if
+you're not in love."
+
+But he made no answer; and they drove away to the Belwether house, a
+rather wide, old-style mansion of brown stone, with a stoop dividing
+its ugly facade, and a series of unnecessary glass doors blockading the
+vestibule.
+
+A drawing-room and a reception-room flanked the marble-tiled hall;
+behind these the dining-room ran the width of the rear. It was a typical
+gentlefolk's house of the worst period of Manhattan, and Major Belwether
+belonged in it as fittingly as a melodeon belongs in a west-side flat.
+The hall-way was made for such a man as he to patter through; the
+velvet-covered stairs were as peculiarly fitted for him as a runway is
+for a rabbit; the suave pink-and-white drawing-room, the discreet, gray
+reception-room, the soft, fat rugs, the intricacies of banisters and
+alcoves and curtained cubby-holes--all reflected his personality, all
+corroborated the ensemble. It was his habitat, his distinctly, from the
+pronounced but meaningless intricacy of the architecture to the studied
+but unconvincing tints, like a man who suddenly starts to speak, but
+checks himself, realising he has nothing in particular to say.
+
+There were half a dozen people there lounging informally between the
+living-room on the second floor and Sylvia's apartments in the rear--the
+residue from a luncheon and Bridge party given that afternoon by Sylvia
+to a score or so of card-mad women. A few of these she had asked to
+remain for an informal dinner, and a desperate game later--the sort
+of people she knew well enough to lose to heavily or win from without
+remorse--Grace Ferrall, Marion Page, Agatha Caithness. Trusting to the
+telephone that morning, she had secured the Mortimers and Quarrier,
+failing three men; and now the party, with Plank as Mortimer's
+substitute, was complete, all thorough gamesters--sex mattering nothing
+in the preparation for such a seance.
+
+In Sylvia's boudoir Grace Ferrall and Agatha Caithness sat before the
+fire; Sylvia, at the mirror of her dresser, was correcting the pallor
+incident to the unbroken dissipation of a brilliant season; Marion, with
+her inevitable cigarette, wandered between Sylvia's quarters and the
+library, where Quarrier and Major Belwether were sitting in low-voiced
+confab.
+
+Leila, greeted gaily from the boudoir, went in. Plank entered the
+library, was mauled effusively by the major, returned Quarrier's firm
+hand shake, and sat down with an inquiring smile.
+
+"Oh, yes, we're out for blood to-night," tittered Major Belwether,
+grasping Quarrier's arm humourously and shaking it to emphasise his
+words--a habit that Quarrier thoroughly disliked. "Sylvia had a lot of
+women here playing for the season score, so I suggested she keep the
+pick of them for dinner, and call in a few choice ones to make a night
+of it."
+
+"It's agreeable to me," said Plank, still looking at Quarrier with
+the same inquiring expression, which that gentleman presently chose to
+understand.
+
+"I haven't had a chance to look into that matter," he said carelessly.
+"Some day, when you have time to go over it--"
+
+"I have time now," said Plank; "there's nothing to go over; there's no
+reason for any secrecy. All I wrote you was that I proposed to control
+the stock of Amalgamated Electric and that I wished your advice in the
+matter."
+
+"I could not give you any advice off-hand on such an extraordinary
+suggestion," returned Quarrier coldly. "If you know where the stock is,
+you'll understand."
+
+"Do you mean what it is quoted at, or who owns it?" interrupted Plank.
+
+"Who owns it. Everybody knows where it has dropped to, I suppose. Most
+people know, too, where it is held."
+
+"Yes; I do."
+
+"And who is manipulating it," added Quarrier indifferently.
+
+"Do you mean Harrington's people?"
+
+"I don't mean anybody in particular, Mr. Plank."
+
+"Oh!" said Plank, staring, "I was sure you couldn't have meant
+Harrington; because," he went on deliberately, "there are other theories
+floating about that mysterious pool, one of which I've proved."
+
+Quarrier looked at him out of his velvety-lidded eyes:
+
+"What have you proved?"
+
+"I'll tell you, if you'll appoint an interview."
+
+"I'll come too," began Belwether, who had been listening, loose-mouthed
+and intent; "we're all in it--Howard, Kemp Ferrall, and I--"
+
+"And Stephen Siward," observed Plank, so quietly that Quarrier never
+even raised his eyes to read the stolid face opposite.
+
+Presently he said: "Do you know anybody who can deliver you any
+considerable block of Amalgamated Electric at the market figures?"
+
+"I could deliver you several blocks, if you care to bid," said Plank
+bluntly.
+
+Belwether grew red, then pale. Quarrier stiffened in his chair, but his
+eyes were only sceptical. Plank's under lip had begun to protrude again;
+he swung his massive head, looking from Belwether back to Quarrier:
+
+"Pool or no pool," he continued, "you Amalgamated people will want to
+see the stock climb back into the branches from which somebody shook it
+out; and I propose to put it there. That is all I had meant to say to
+you, Mr. Quarrier. I'm not averse to saying it here to you, and I do.
+There's no secrecy about it. Figure out for yourself how much stock I
+control, and who let it go. Settle your family questions and put your
+house in order; then invite me to call, and I'll do it. And I have an
+idea that we are going to stand on our own legs again, and recover our
+self-respect and our fighting capacity; and I rather think we'll stop
+this hold-up business, and that our Inter-County friend will let go the
+sand-bag and pocket the jimmy, and talk business across the line-fence."
+
+Quarrier's characteristic pallor was no index to his feelings, nor was
+his icy reticence. All hell might be boiling below.
+
+When anybody gave Quarrier a letter to read he took a long time reading
+it; but if he was slow he was also minute; he went over every word
+again and again, studying, absorbing each letter, each period, the
+conformation of every word. And when he ended he had in his brain a
+photograph of the letter which he would never forget.
+
+And now, slowly, minutely, methodically, he was going over and over
+Plank's words, and his manner of saying them, and their surface import,
+and the hidden one, if any.
+
+If Plank had spoken the truth--and there was no reason to doubt
+it--Plank had quietly acquired a controlling interest in Amalgamated
+Electric. That meant treachery in somebody. Who? Probably Siward,
+perhaps Belwether. He would not look at the latter just yet; not for
+a minute or two. There was time enough to see through that withered,
+pink-and-white old fraud. But why had Plank done this? And why did Plank
+suspect him of any desire to wreck his own property? He did suspect him,
+that was certain.
+
+After a silence, he spoke quietly and without emotion:
+
+"Everybody concerned will be glad to see Amalgamated Electric declaring
+dividends. This is a shock to us," he glanced impassively at the
+shrunken major, "but a pleasant shock. I think it well to arrange a
+meeting as soon as possible."
+
+"To-morrow," said Plank, with a manner of closing discussion. And in his
+brusque ending of the matter Quarrier detected the ringing undertone of
+an authority he never had and never would endure; and though his pale,
+composed features betrayed not the subtlest shade of emotion, he was
+aware that a new element had come into his life--a new force was growing
+out of nothing to confront him, an unfamiliar shape loomed vaguely
+ahead, throwing its huge distorted shadow across his path. He sensed it
+with the instinct of kind for kind, not because Plank's millions meant
+anything to him as a force; not because this lumbering, red-faced
+meddler had blundered into a family affair where confidence consisted in
+joining hands lest a pocket be inadvertently picked; not because Plank
+had knocked at the door, expecting treachery to open, and had found it,
+but because of the awful simplicity of the man and his methods.
+
+If Plank suspected him, he must also suspect him of complicity in the
+Inter-County grab; he must suspect him of the ruthless crushing
+power that corrupts or annihilates opposition, making a mockery
+of legislation, a jest of the courts, and an epigram of a people's
+indignation.
+
+And yet, in the face of all this, careless, fearless, frank to the
+outer verge of stupidity--which sometimes means the inability to be
+afraid--this man Plank was casually telling him things which men regard
+as secrets and as weapons of defence--was actually averting him of his
+peril, and telling him almost contemptuously to pull up the drawbridge
+and prepare for siege, instead of rushing the castle and giving it to
+the sack.
+
+As Quarrier sat there meditating, his long, white fingers caressing his
+soft, pointed beard, Sylvia came in, greeting the men collectively with
+a nod, and offering her hand to Plank.
+
+"Dinner is announced," she said; "please go in farm fashion. Wait!" as
+Plank, following the major and Quarrier, stood aside for her to pass.
+"No, you go ahead, Howard; and you," to the major.
+
+Left for a moment in the room with Plank, she stood listening to the
+others descending the stairs; then:
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Yes," said Plank.
+
+"Oh! Is he well?"
+
+"Not very."
+
+"Is he well enough to read a letter, and to answer one?"
+
+"Oh, yes; he's well enough in that way."
+
+"I supposed so. That is why I said to you, over the wire, not to trouble
+him with my request."
+
+"You mean that I am not to say anything about your offer to buy the
+hunter?"
+
+"No. If I make up my mind that I want the horse I'll write
+him--perhaps."
+
+Lingering still, she let one hand fall on the banisters, turning back
+toward Plank, who was following:
+
+"I understood you to mean that--that Mr. Siward's financial affairs
+were anything but satisfactory?"--the sweet, trailing, upward inflection
+making it a question.
+
+"When did I say that?" demanded Plank.
+
+"Once--a month ago."
+
+"I didn't," said Plank bluntly.
+
+"Oh, I had inferred it, then, from something you said, or something you
+were silent about. Is that it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Am I quite wrong, then?" she asked, looking him in the eyes.
+
+And Plank, who never lied, found no answer. Considering him for a moment
+in silence, she turned again and descended the stairs.
+
+The dinner was one of those thoroughly well-chosen dinners of few
+courses and faultless service suitable for card-players, who neither
+care to stuff themselves as a preliminary to a battle royal, nor to
+dawdle through courses, eliminating for themselves what is not good for
+them. The men drank a light, sound, aromatic Irish of the major's; the
+women--except Marion, who took what the men took--used claret sparingly.
+Coffee was served where they sat; the men smoking, Agatha and Marion
+producing their own cigarettes.
+
+"Don't you smoke any more?" asked Grace Ferrall of Leila Mortimer, and
+at the smiling negative, "Oh, that perhaps explains it. You're growing
+positively radiant, you know. You'll he wearing a braid and a tuck in
+your skirt if you go on getting younger."
+
+Leila laughed, colouring up as Plank turned in his chair to look at her
+closer.
+
+"No, it won't rub off, Mr. Plank," said Marion coolly, "but mine will.
+This," touching a faint spot of colour under her eyes, "is art."
+
+"Pooh! I'm all art!" said Grace. "Observe, Mr. Plank, that under this
+becoming flush are the same old freckles you saw at Shotover." And she
+laughed that sweet, careless laugh of an adolescent and straightened
+her boyish figure, pretty head held high, adding: "Kemp won't let me
+'improve' myself, or I'd do it."
+
+"You are perfect," said Sylvia, rising from the table, her own
+lovely, rounded, youthful figure condoning the exaggeration; "you're
+sufficiently sweet as you are. Good people, if you are ready, we will
+go through the ceremony of cutting for partners--unless otherwise you
+decide. How say you?"
+
+"I don't care to enter the scramble for a man," cried Grace. "If it's to
+choose, I'd as soon choose Marion."
+
+Plank looked at Leila, who laughed.
+
+"All right; choose, then!" said Sylvia. "Howard, you're dying, of
+course, to play with me, but you're looking very guiltily at Agatha."
+
+The major asked Leila at once; so Plank fell to Sylvia, pitted against
+Marion and Grace Ferrall.
+
+A few moments later the quiet of the library was broken by the butler
+entering with decanters and ice, and glasses that tinkled frostily.
+
+Play began at table Number One on a passed make of no trumps by Sylvia,
+and at the other table on a doubled and redoubled heart make, which
+sent a delicate flush into Agatha's face, and drove the last vestige of
+lingering thoughtfulness from Quarrier's, leaving it a tense, pallid,
+and expressionless mask, out of which looked the velvet-fringed eyes of
+a woman.
+
+Of all the faces there at the two tables, Sylvia's alone had not
+changed, neither assuming the gambler's mask nor the infatuated glare
+of the amateur. She was thoughtful, excited, delighted, or dismayed by
+turns, but always wholesomely so; the game for its own sake, and not the
+stakes, absorbing her, partly because she had never permitted herself to
+weigh money and pleasure in the same balance, but kept a mental pair of
+scales for each.
+
+As usual, the fever of gain was fiercest in those who could afford to
+lose most. Quarrier, playing to rule with merciless precision, coldly
+exacted every penalty that a lapse in his opponents permitted. Agatha,
+her teeth set in her nether lip, her eyes like living jewels, answered
+Quarrier's every signal, interpreted every sign, her play fitting in
+exactly with his, as though she were his subconscious self balancing the
+perfectly adjusted mechanism of his body and mind.
+
+Now and then lifting her eyes, she sent a long, limpid glance at
+Quarrier like a pale shaft of light; and under his heavy-fringed lashes,
+at moments, his level gaze encountered her's with a slow narrowing of
+lids--as though there was more than one game in progress, more than one
+stake being played for under the dull rose glow of the clustered lights.
+
+Sylvia, sitting dummy at the other tables mechanically alert to Plank's
+cards dropping in rapid sequence as he played alternately from his
+own hand and the dummy, permitted her thoughtful eyes to wander toward
+Agatha from moment to moment. How alluring her subtle beauty, in its own
+strange way! How perfect her accord with her partner! How faultless
+her intelligence, divining the very source of every hidden motive
+controlling him, forestalling his intent--acquiescent, delicate,
+marvellous intelligence--the esoteric complement of two parts of a
+single mind.
+
+The collar of diamonds and aqua marines shimmered like the reflection of
+shadowy lightning across her throat; a single splendid jewel glowed on
+her left hand as her fingers flashed among the cards for the make-up.
+
+"A hundred aces," broke in Plank's heavy voice as he played the last
+trick and picked up the scoring card and pencil.
+
+Sylvia's blue eyes were laughing as Plank cut the new pack. Marion Page
+coolly laid aside her cigarette, dealt, and made it "without" in the
+original.
+
+"May I play?" asked Sylvia sweetly.
+
+"Please," growled Plank.
+
+So Sylvia serenely played from the "top of nothing," and Grace Ferrall
+whisked a wonderful dummy across the green; and Plank's thick under lip
+began to protrude, and he lowered his heavy head like a bull at bay.
+
+Once Marion, over-intent, touched a card in the dummy when she should
+have played from her own hand; and Sylvia would have let it pass, had
+not Plank calmly noted the penalty.
+
+"Oh, dear! It's too much like business," sighed Sylvia. "Can't we play
+for the sake of the sport? I don't think it good sportsmanship to profit
+by a blunder."
+
+"Rule," observed Marion laconically. "'Ware barbed wire, if you want the
+brush."
+
+"I myself never was crazy for the brush," murmured Sylvia.
+
+Grace whispered maliciously: "But you've got it, with the mask and
+pads," and her mischievous head barely tipped backward in the direction
+of Quarrier.
+
+"Especially the mask," returned Sylvia, under her breath, and laid on
+the table the last card of a Yarborough.
+
+Plank scored without comment. Marion cut, and resumed her cigarette.
+Sylvia dealt with that witchery of rounded wrists and slim fingers
+fascinating to men and women alike. Then, cards en regle, passed the
+make. Plank, cautiously consulting the score, made it spades, which
+being doubled, Grace led a "singleton" ace, and Plank slapped down a
+strong dummy and folded his great arms.
+
+Toward midnight, Sylvia, absorbed in her dummy, fancied she heard the
+electric bell ringing at the front door. Later, having barely made the
+odd, she was turning to look at the major, when, beyond him, she saw
+Leroy Mortimer enter the room, sullen, pasty-skinned, but perfectly
+sober and well groomed.
+
+"You are a trifle late," observed Sylvia carelessly. Grace Ferrall and
+Marion ignored him. Plank bade him good evening in a low voice.
+
+The people at the other table, having completed their rubber, looked
+around at Mortimer in disagreeable surprise.
+
+"I'll cut in, if you want me. If you don't, say so," observed Mortimer.
+
+It was plain that they did not; so he settled himself in an arm-chair,
+with an ugly glance at his wife and an insolent one at Quarrier; and the
+game went on in silence; Leila and the major still losing heavily under
+the sneering gaze of Mortimer.
+
+At last, "Who's carrying you?" he broke out, exasperated; and in the
+shocked silence Leila, very white, made a movement to rise, but Quarrier
+laid his long fingers across her arm, pressing her backward.
+
+"You don't know what you're saying," he remarked, looking coldly at
+Mortimer.
+
+Plank laid down his cards, rose, and walked over to Mortimer:
+
+"May I have a word with you?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"You may. And I'll help myself to a word or two with you," retorted
+Mortimer, following Plank out of the room, down the stairs to the
+lighted reception-room, where they wheeled, confronting one another.
+
+"What is the matter?" demanded Plank. "At the club they told me you were
+asleep in the card-room. I didn't tell Leila. What is wrong?"
+
+"I'm--I'm dead broke," said Mortimer harshly. "Billy Fleetwood took my
+paper. Can you help me out? It's due to-morrow."
+
+Plank looked at him gravely, but made no answer.
+
+"Can you?" repeated Mortimer violently. "Haven't I done enough for you?
+Haven't I done enough for everybody? Is anybody going to show me any
+consideration? Look at Quarrier's manner to me just now! And this very
+day I did him a service that all his millions can't repay. And there
+you stand, too, staring at me as though I were some damned importuning
+shabby-genteel, hinting around for an opening to touch you. Yes, you
+do! And this very day I have done for you the--the most vital thing--the
+most sacred favour one man can do for another--"
+
+He halted, stammered something incoherent, his battered eyes wet with
+tears. The man was a wreck--nerves, stamina, mind on the very verge of
+collapse.
+
+"I'll help you, of course," said Plank, eyeing him. "Go home, now, and
+sleep. I tell you I'll help you in the morning. ... Don't give way! Have
+you no grit? Pull up sharp, I tell you!"
+
+But Mortimer had fallen into a chair, his ravaged face cradled in his
+hands. "I've got all that's c-coming to me," he said hoarsely; "I'm all
+in--all in! God! but I've got the jumps this trip. ... You'll stand for
+this, won't you, Plank? I was batty, but I woke up in time to grasp the
+live wire Billy Fleetwood held--three shocks in succession--and his were
+queens full to my jacks--aces to kings twice!--Alderdene and Voucher
+sitting in until they'd started me off hiking hellward!"
+
+He began to ramble, and even to laugh weakly, passing his puffy, shaking
+hands across his eyes.
+
+"It's good of you, Beverly; I appreciate it. But I've been good to you.
+You're all to the good, my boy! Understand? All to the good. I fixed it;
+I did it for you. You can have your innings now. You can have her when
+you want her, I tell you."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Plank menacingly.
+
+"Mean! I mean what I told you that day at Black Fells, when we were
+riding. I told you you had a chance to win out. Now the chance has
+come--same's I told you. Start in, and by the time you're ready to say
+'When?' she'll be there with the bottle!"
+
+"I don't think you are perfectly sane yet," said Plank slowly.
+
+"Let it go at that, then," sniggered Mortimer, struggling to his feet.
+"Bring Leila back; I'm all in; I'm going home. You'll be around in the
+morning, won't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Plank. "Have you got a cab?"
+
+Mortimer had one. The glass and iron doors clanged behind him, and
+Plank, waiting a moment, sighed, raised his head, and, encountering the
+curious gaze of a servant, trudged off up-stairs again.
+
+The game had ended at both tables. Quarrier and Agatha stood by the
+window together, conversing in low voices. Belwether, at a desk, sat
+muttering and fussing with a cheque-book. The others were in Sylvia's
+apartments.
+
+A few moments later Kemp Ferrall arrived, in the best of spirits, very
+much inclined to consider the night as still young; but his enthusiasm
+met with no response, and presently he departed with his wife and Marion
+in their big Mercedes, wheeling into the avenue at a reckless pace, and
+streaming away through the night like a meteor run mad.
+
+Leila, in her wraps, emerged in a few moments, looking at Plank out of
+serious eyes; and they made their brief adieux and went away in Plank's
+brougham.
+
+When Agatha's maid arrived, Quarrier also started to take his leave; but
+Sylvia, seated at a card-table, idly arranging the cards in geometrical
+designs and fanciful arabesques, looked up at him, saying:
+
+"I wanted to say something to you, Howard."
+
+Agatha passed them, going into Sylvia's room for her wraps; and Quarrier
+turned to Sylvia:
+
+"Well?" he said, with the slightest hint of impatience.
+
+"Can't you stay a minute?" asked Sylvia, surprised.
+
+"Agatha is going in the motor with me. Is it anything important?"
+
+She considered him without replying. She had never before detected that
+manner, that hardness in a voice always so even in quality.
+
+"What is it?" he repeated.
+
+She thought a moment, putting aside for the time his manner, which she
+could not comprehend; then:
+
+"I wanted to ask you a question--a rather ignorant one, perhaps. It's
+about your Amalgamated Electric Company. May I ask it, Howard?"
+
+After a second's stare, "Certainly," he said.
+
+"It's only this: If the other people--the Inter-County, I mean--are
+slowly ruining Amalgamated, why don't you stop it?"
+
+Quarrier's eyes narrowed. "Oh! And who have you been discussing the
+matter with?"
+
+"Mr. Plank," she said simply. "I asked him. He shook his head, and said
+I'd better ask you. And I do ask you."
+
+For a moment he stood mute; then his lips began to shrink back over his
+beautiful teeth in one of his rare laughs.
+
+"I'll be very glad to explain it some day," he said; but there was
+no mirth in his voice or eyes, only the snickering lip wrinkling the
+pallor.
+
+"Will you not answer now?" she asked.
+
+"No, not now. But I desire you to understand it some day--some day
+before November. And one or two other matters that it is necessary for
+you to understand. I want to explain them, Sylvia, in such a manner that
+you will never be likely to forget them. And I mean to; for they are
+never out of my mind, and I wish them to be as ineffaceably impressed on
+yours. ... Good night."
+
+He took her limp hand almost briskly, released it, and stepped down the
+stairs as Agatha entered, cloaked, to say good night.
+
+They kissed at parting--"life embracing death"--as Mortimer had sneered
+on a similar occasion; then Sylvia, alone, stood in her bedroom, hands
+linked behind her, her lovely head bent, groping with the very ghosts of
+thought which eluded her, fleeing, vanishing, reappearing, to peep out
+at her only to fade into nothing ere she could follow where they flitted
+through the dark labyrinths of memory.
+
+The major, craning his neck in the bay-window, saw Agatha and Quarrier
+enter the big, yellow motor, and disappear behind the limousine. And it
+worried him horribly, because he knew perfectly well that Quarrier had
+lied to him about a jewelled collar precisely like the collar worn
+by Agatha Caithness; and what to do or what to say to anybody on
+the subject was, for the first time in his life, utterly beyond his
+garrulous ability. So, for the first time also in his chattering
+career, he held his tongue, reassured at moments, at other moments
+panic-stricken lest this marriage he had engineered should go amiss, and
+his ambitions be nipped at the very instant of triumphant maturity.
+
+"This sort of thing--in your own caste--among your own kind," his
+panicky thoughts ran on, "is b-bad form--rotten bad taste on both sides.
+If they were married--one of them, anyway! But this isn't right; no, by
+gad! it's bad taste, and no gentleman could countenance it!"
+
+It was plain that he could, however, his only fear being that somebody
+might whisper something to turn Sylvia's innocence into a terrible
+wisdom which would ruin everything, and knock the underpinning from the
+new tower which his inflated fancy beheld slowly growing heavenward,
+surmounting the house of Belwether.
+
+Another matter: he had violated his word, and had been caught at it by
+his prospective nephew-in-law--broken his pledged word not to sell his
+Amalgamated Electric holdings, and had done it. Yet, how could Plank
+dominate, unless another also had done what he had done? And it made
+him a little more comfortable to know he was sharing the fault with
+somebody--probably with Siward, whom he now had the luxury of despising
+for the very thing he himself had done.
+
+"Drunkard!" he muttered to himself; "he's in the gutter at last!"
+
+And he repeated it unctuously, almost reconciled to his own shortcoming,
+because it was the first time, as far as he knew, that a Belwether might
+legitimately enjoy the pleasures of holding the word of a Siward in
+contempt.
+
+Sylvia had dismissed her maid, the old feeling of distaste for the touch
+of another had returned since the last mad, crushed embrace in Siward's
+arms had become a memory. More and more she was returning to old
+instincts, old habits of thought, reverting to type once more, virgin of
+lip and thought and desire, save when the old memory stopped her heart
+suddenly, then sent it racing, touching her face with quick, crimson
+imprint.
+
+Now, blue eyes dreaming under the bright masses of her loosened hair,
+she sat watching the last glimmer amid the ashes whitening on the
+hearth, thinking of Siward and of what had been between them, and of
+what could never be--never, never be.
+
+One red spark among the ashes--her ambition, deathless amid the ashes of
+life! When that, too, went out, life must be extinct.
+
+What he had roused in her had died when he went away. It could never
+awake again, unless he returned to awaken it. And he never would; he
+would never come again.
+
+One brief interlude of love, of passion, in her life could neither tint
+nor taint the cool, normal sequence of her days. All that life held for
+a woman of her caste--all save that--was hers when she stretched out her
+hand for it--hers by right of succession, of descent; hers by warrant
+unquestioned, by the unuttered text of the ukase to be launched, if
+necessary, by that very, very old lady, drowsing, enthroned, as the
+endless pageant wound like a jewelled river at her feet.
+
+So Siward could never come again, sauntering toward her through the
+sunlight, smiling his absent smile. She caught her breath painfully,
+straightening up; a single ash fell in the fire; the last spark went
+out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI THE CALL OF THE RAIN
+
+The park was very misty and damp and still that morning.
+
+There was a scent of sap and new buds in the February haze, a glimmer
+of green on southern slopes, a distant bird note, tentative, then
+confident, rippling from the gray tangle of naked thickets. Here and
+there in hollows the tips of amber-tinted shoots pricked the soil's dark
+surface; here and there in the sparse woodlands a withered leaf still
+clinging to oak or beech was forced to let go by the swelling bud at its
+base and fell rustling stiffly in the silence.
+
+Far away on the wooded bridle-path the dulled double gallop of horses
+sounded, now muffled in a hollow, now louder, jarring the rising ground,
+nearer, heavier, then suddenly checked to a trample, as Sylvia drew
+bridle by the reservoir, and, straightening in her saddle, raised her
+flushed face to the sky.
+
+"Rain?" she asked, as Quarrier, controlling his beautiful, restive
+horse, ranged up beside her.
+
+"Probably," he said, scarcely glancing at the sky, where, above the
+great rectangular lagoons, hundreds of sea-gulls, high in the air, hung
+flapping, stemming some rushing upper gale unfelt below.
+
+She walked her mount, head lifted, watching the gulls; he followed,
+uninterested, imperturbable in his finished horsemanship. With horses he
+always appeared to advantage, whether on the box of break or coach, or
+silently controlling a spike or tandem, or sitting his saddle in his
+long-limbed, faultless fashion, maintaining without effort the very
+essence of form. Here he was at his best, perfectly informal, informally
+perfect.
+
+They had ridden every day since the weather permitted--even before it
+permitted--thrashing and slashing through the rotting ice and snow,
+galloping over the frozen, gravelly loam, amid leafless trees and a
+winter-smitten perspective--drearier for the distant, eastern glimpse of
+the avenue's marble and limestone facades and the vast cliffs of masonry
+and brick looming above the west and south.
+
+On these daily rides together it was her custom to discuss practical
+matters concerning their future; and it was his custom to listen until
+pressed for a suggestion, an assent, or a reply.
+
+Sparing words--cautious, chary of self-commitment, and seldom offering
+to assume the initiative--this was the surface character which she had
+come to recognise and acquiesce in; this was Quarrier as he had been
+developed from her hazy, preconceived ideas of the man before she had
+finally accepted him at Shotover the autumn before. She also knew him
+as a methodical man, exacting from others the orderly precision which
+characterised his own dealings; a man of education and little learning,
+of attainments and little cultivation, conversant with usages, formal,
+intensely sensitive to ridicule, incapable of humour.
+
+This was Quarrier as she knew him or had known him. Recently she had,
+little by little, become aware of an indefinable change in the man. For
+one thing, he had grown more reticent. At times, too, his reserve seemed
+to have something almost surly about it; under his cold composure a hint
+of something concealed, watchful, and very quiet.
+
+Confidences she had never looked for in him nor desired. It appalled her
+at moments to realise how little they had in common, and that only
+on the surface--a communion of superficial interest incident to the
+fulfilment of social duties and the pursuit of pleasure. Beyond that she
+knew nothing of him, required nothing of him. What was there to know?
+what to require?
+
+Now that the main line of her route through life had been surveyed and
+carefully laid out, what was there more for her in life than to set
+out upon her progress? It was her own road. Presumptive leader already,
+logical leader from the day she married--leader, in fact, when the
+ukase, her future legacy, so decreed; it was a royal road laid out for
+her through the gardens and pleasant places; a road for her alone, and
+over it she had chosen to pass. What more was there to desire?
+
+From the going of Siward, all that he had aroused in her of love, of
+intelligence, of wholesome desire and sane curiosity--the intellectual
+restlessness, the capacity for passion, the renaissance of the simpler
+innocence--had subsided into the laissez faire of dull quiescence. If
+in her he had sown, imprudently, subtle, impulsive, unworldly
+ideas, flowering into sudden brilliancy in the quick magic of his
+companionship, now those flowers were dead under the inexorable winter
+of her ambition, where all such things lay; her lonely childhood, with
+its dimmed visions of mother-love ineffable; the strange splendour of
+the dreams haunting her adolescence--pageants of bravery and the
+glitter of the cross, altars of self-denial and pure intent, service
+and sacrifice and the scorn of wrong; and sometimes, seen dimly with
+enraptured eyes through dissolving mists--the man! glimmering for an
+instant, then fading, resolved into the starry void which fashioned him.
+
+
+Riding there, head bent, her pulses timing the slow pacing of her
+horse, she presently became aware, without looking up, that Quarrier was
+watching her. Dreams vanished. A perfectly unreasonable sense of being
+spied upon, of something stealthy about it all, flashed to her mind and
+was gone, leaving her grave and perplexed. What a strange suspicion!
+What an infernal inference! What grotesque train of thought could have
+culminated in such a sinister idea!
+
+She moved slightly in her saddle to look at him, and for an instant
+fancied that there was something furtive in his eyes; only for an
+instant, for he quietly picked up the thread of conversation where
+she had dropped it, saying that it had been raining for the last ten
+minutes, and that they might as well turn their horses toward shelter.
+
+"I don't mind the rain," she said; "there is a spring-like odour in it.
+Don't you notice it?"
+
+"Not particularly," he replied.
+
+"I was miles away a moment ago," she said; "years away, I mean--a little
+girl again, with two stiff yellow braids, trying to pretend that a big
+arm-chair was my mother's lap and that I could hear her whispering to
+me. And there I sat, on a day like this, listening, pretending, cuddled
+up tight, and looking out at the first rain of the year falling in the
+backyard. There was an odour like this about it all. Memory, they say,
+is largely a matter of nose!" She laughed, fearing that he might have
+thought her sentimental, already regretting the familiarity of thrusting
+such trivial and personal incidents upon his notice. He was probably too
+indifferent to comment on it, merely nodding as she ended.
+
+Then, without reason, through and through her shot a shiver of
+loneliness--utter loneliness and isolation. Without reason, because from
+him she expected nothing, required nothing, except what he offered--the
+emotionless reticence of indifference, the composure of perfect
+formality. What did she want, then--companions? She had them. Friends?
+She could scarcely escape from them. Intimates? She had only to choose
+one or a hundred attuned responsive to her every mood, every caprice.
+Lonely? With the men of New York crowding, shouldering, crushing their
+way to her feet? Lonely? With the women of New York struggling already
+for precedence in her favour?--omen significant of the days to come, of
+those future years diamond-linked in one unbroken, triumphant glitter.
+
+Lonely!
+
+The rain was falling out of the hanging mist, something more than a
+drizzle now. Quarrier spoke of it again, but she shook her head, walking
+her horse slowly onward. The train of thought she followed was slower
+still, winding on and on, leading her into half light and shadow, and in
+and out through hidden trails she should have known by this time--always
+on, skirting the objective, circling it through sudden turns. And now
+she was becoming conscious of the familiar way; now she recognised the
+quiet, still by-ways of the maze she seemed doomed to wander in forever.
+But, for that matter, all paths of thought were alike to her, for,
+sooner or later, all ultimately led to him; and this she was already
+aware of as a disturbing phenomenon to consider and account for and to
+provide against--when she had leisure.
+
+"About that Amalgamated Electric Company," she began without prelude;
+"would you mind answering a question or two, Howard?"
+
+"You could not understand it," he said, unpleasantly disturbed by her
+abruptness.
+
+"As you please. It is quite true I can make nothing of what the
+newspapers are saying about it, except that Mr. Plank seems to be doing
+a number of things."
+
+"Injunctions, and other matters," observed Quarrier.
+
+"Is anybody going to lose any money in it?"
+
+"Who, for example?"
+
+"Why--you, for example," she said, laughing.
+
+"I don't expect to."
+
+"Then it is going to turn out all right? And Mr. Plank and Kemp Ferrall
+and the major and--the other people interested, are not going to be
+almost ruined by the Inter-County people?"
+
+"Do you think a man like Plank is likely to be ruined, as you say, by
+Amalgamated Electric?"
+
+"No. But Kemp and the major--"
+
+"I think the major is out of danger," replied Quarrier, looking at her
+with the new, sullen narrowing of his eyes.
+
+"I am glad of that. Is Kemp--and the others?"
+
+"Ferrall could stand it if matters go wrong. What others?"
+
+"Why--the other owners and stockholders--"
+
+"What others? Who do you mean?"
+
+"Mr. Siward, for example," she said in an even voice, leaning over to
+pat her horse's neck with her gloved hand.
+
+"Mr. Siward must take the chances we all take," observed Quarrier.
+
+"But, Howard, it would really mean ruin for him if matters went badly.
+Wouldn't it?"
+
+"I am not familiar with the details of Mr. Siward's investments."
+
+"Nor am I," she said slowly.
+
+He made no reply.
+
+Lack of emotion in the man beside her she always expected, and therefore
+this new, sullen note in his voice perplexed her. Too, at times, in
+his increasing reticence there seemed to be almost a hint of cold
+effrontery. She felt it now--an indefinite suggestion of displeasure and
+the power to retaliate; something evasive, watchful, patiently hostile;
+and, try as she might, she could not rid herself of the discomfort of
+it, and the perplexity.
+
+She spoke about other things; he responded in his impassive manner.
+Presently she turned her horse and Quarrier wheeled his, facing a warm,
+fine rain, slanting thickly from the south.
+
+His silky, Vandyke beard was all wet with the moisture. She noticed it,
+and unbidden arose the vision of the gun-room at Shotover: Quarrier's
+soft beard wet with rain; the phantoms of people passing and repassing;
+Siward's straight figure swinging past, silhouetted against the glare of
+light from the billiard-room. And here she made an effort to efface the
+vision, shutting her eyes as she rode there in the rain. But clearly
+against the closed lids she saw the phantoms passing--spectres of dead
+hours, the wraith of an old happiness masked with youth and wearing
+Siward's features!
+
+She must stop it! What was all this crowding in upon her as she rode
+forward through the driving rain--all this resurgence of ghosts long
+laid, long exorcised? Had the odour of the rain stolen her senses,
+awakening memory of childish solitude? Was it that which was drugging
+her with remembrance of Siward and the rattle of rain in the bay-window
+above the glass-roofed swimming-pool?
+
+She opened her eyes wide, staring straight ahead into the thickening
+rain; but her thoughts were loosened now, tuned to the increasing rhythm
+of her heart: and she saw him seated there, his head buried in his hands
+as she stole through the dim corridors to her first tryst; saw him
+look up; saw herself beside him among the cushions; tasted again the
+rose-petals that her lips had stripped from the blossoms; saw once more
+the dawn of something in his steady eyes; felt his arm about her, his
+breath--
+
+Her horse, suddenly spurred, bounded forward through the rain, and she
+rode breathless, with lips half parted, as if afraid, turning her head
+to look behind--as though she could outride the phantom clinging to her
+stirrup, masked like youth, wearing the shadowy eyes of Love!
+
+
+In her drenched habit, standing before her dressing-room fire, she
+heard her maid soliciting entrance, and paid no heed, the door being
+locked--as though a spectre could be bolted out of rooms and houses!
+Pacing the floor, restless, annoyed, and dismayed by turns, she flung
+her wet skirt and coat from her, piece by piece, and stood for awhile,
+like some slender youth in riding breeches and shirt, facing the fire,
+her fingers resting on her hips.
+
+In the dull light of a rainy noon-day the fire reddened the ceiling,
+throwing her giant shadow across the wall, where it towered, swaying,
+like a ghost above her. She caught sight of it over her shoulder, and
+watched it absently; then gazed into the coals again, her chin dropping
+on her bared chest.
+
+At her maid's repeated knocking she turned, her boots and the single
+spur sparkling in the firelight, and opened the door.
+
+An hour later, fresh from her bath, luxurious in loose and filmy lace,
+her small, white feet shod with silk, she lunched alone, cradled among
+the cushions of her couch.
+
+Twice she strolled through the rooms leisurely, summoned by her maid
+to the telephone; the first time to chat with Grace Ferrall, who, it
+appeared, was a victim of dissipation, being still abed, and out of
+humour with the rainy world; the second time to answer in the negative
+Marion's suggestion that she motor to Lakewood with her for the week's
+end before they closed their house.
+
+Sauntering back again, she sipped her milk and vichy, tasted the
+strawberries, tasted a big black grape, discarded both, and lay back
+among the cushions, her naked arms clasped behind her head, and dropping
+one knee over the other, stared at the ceiling.
+
+Restlessness and caprice ruled her. She seldom smoked, but seeing on the
+table a stray cigarette of the sort she kept for any intimates who might
+desire them, she stretched out her arm, scratched a match, and lighted
+it with a dainty grimace.
+
+Lying there, she tried to make rings; but the smoke only got into her
+delicate uptilted nose and stung her tongue, and she very soon had
+enough of her cigarette.
+
+Watching the slow fire consume it between her fingers she lay supine,
+following the spirals of smoke with inattentive eyes. By-and-by the
+lengthening ash fell, powdering her, and she threw the cigarette into
+the grate, flicked the ashes from her bare, round arm, and, clasping her
+hands under her neck, turned over and closed her eyes.
+
+Sleep?--with every pulse awake and throbbing, every heart-beat sending
+the young blood rushing out through a body the incarnation of youth
+and life itself! There was a faint flush in the hollow of each upturned
+palm, where the fingers like relaxed petals curled inward; a deepening
+tint in the parted lips; and under the lids, through the dusk of the
+lashes, a glimmer of blue.
+
+Lying there, veiled gaze conscious of the rose-light which glowed and
+waned on the ceiling, she awaited the flowing tide on which so often
+she had embarked and drifted out into that golden gloom serene, where,
+spirit becalmed, Time and Grief faded, and Desire died out upon the
+unshadowed sea of dreams.
+
+It is long waiting for the tide when the wakeful heart beats loudly,
+when the pulses quicken at a memory, and the thousand idle little
+cellules of the brain, long sealed, long unused, and consigned to the
+archives of What Is Ended, open one by one, releasing each its own
+forgotten ghost.
+
+And how can the heart rest, the pulse sleep, startled to a flutter, as
+one by one the tiny cells unclose unbidden, and the dead remembrance,
+from its cerements freed, brightens to life?
+
+Words he had used, the idle lifting of his head, the forgotten
+inflection of his voice, the sunlight on his hair and the sea-wind
+stirring it; his figure as it turned to move away, the half-caught echo
+of his laugh, faint, faint!--so that her own ears, throbbing, strained
+to listen; the countless unimportant moments she had thought unmarked,
+yet carefully stored up, without her knowledge, in the magic cellules
+of her brain--all, all were coming back to life, more and more distinct,
+startlingly clear.
+
+And she lay like one afraid to move, lest her stirring waken a vague
+something that still slept, something she dared not arouse, dared not
+meet face to face, even in dreams. An interval--perhaps an hour, perhaps
+a second--passed, leaving her stranded so close to the shoals of slumber
+that sleep passed only near enough to awaken her.
+
+The room was very still and dim, but the clamour in her brain unnerved
+her, and she sat up among the cushions, looking vacantly about her with
+the blue, confused eyes, the direct, unseeing gaze of a child roused by
+a half-heard call.
+
+The call--low, imperative, sustained--continued softly persistent
+against her windows--the summons of the young year's rain.
+
+She went to the window and stood among the filmy curtains, looking out
+into the mist; a springlike aroma penetrated the room. She opened the
+window a little way, and the sweet, virile odour enveloped her.
+
+A thousand longings rose within her; unnumbered wistful questions
+stirred her, sighing, unanswered.
+
+Aware that her lips were moving unconsciously, she listened to the words
+forming automatic repetitions of phrases long forgotten:
+
+"And those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the door shall
+be shut in the streets."
+
+What was it she was repeating?
+
+"Also they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall be in
+the way."
+
+What echo of the past was this?
+
+"And desire shall fail: because--"
+
+Intent, absorbed in retracing the forgotten sequence to its source, she
+stood, breathing the thickening incense of the rain; and every breath
+was drawing her backward, nearer, nearer to the source of memory. Ah,
+the cliff chapel in the rain!--the words of a text mumbled deafly--the
+yearly service for those who died at sea! And she, seated there in the
+chapel dusk thinking of him who sat beside her, and how he feared a
+heavier, stealthier, more secret tide crawling, purring about his feet!
+
+Enfin! Always, always at the end of everything, He! Always, reckoning
+step by step, backward through time, He! the source, the inception, the
+meaning of all!
+
+Unmoored at last, her spirit swaying, enveloped in memories of him, she
+gave herself to the flood--overwhelmed, as tide on tide rose, rushing
+over her--body, mind, and soul.
+
+She closed her eyes, leaning there heavily amid the cloudy curtains; she
+moved back into the room and stood staring at space through wet lashes.
+The hard, dry pulse in her throat hurt her till her under lip, freed
+from the tyranny of her small teeth, slipped free, quivering rebellion.
+
+She had been walking her room to and fro, to and fro, for a long time
+before she realised that she had moved at all.
+
+And now, impulse held the helm; a blind, unreasoning desire for relief
+hurried into action on the wings of impulse.
+
+There was a telephone at her elbow. No need to hunt through lists to
+find a number she had known so long by heart--the three figures which
+had reiterated themselves so often, monotonously insistent, slyly
+persuasive; repeating themselves even in her dreams, so that she
+awoke at times shivering with the vision in which she had listened to
+temptation, and had called to him across the wilderness of streets and
+men.
+
+
+"Is he at home?"
+
+"--!"
+
+"Would you ask him to come to the telephone?"
+
+"--!"
+
+"Please say to him that it is a--a friend. ... Thank you."
+
+In the throbbing quiet of her room she heard the fingers of the prying
+rain busy at her windows; the ticking of the small French clock, very
+dull, very far away--or was it her heart? And, faintly ringing in the
+receiver pressed against her ear, millions of tiny stirrings, sounds
+like instruments of an elfin orchestra tuning, echoes as of steps
+passing through the halls of fairy-land, a faint confusion of human-like
+tones; then:
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+Her voice left her for an instant; her dry lips made no answer.
+
+"Who is it?" he repeated in his steady, pleasant voice.
+
+"It is I."
+
+There was absolute silence--so long that it frightened her. But before
+she could speak again his voice was sounding in her ears, patient,
+unconvinced:
+
+"I don't recognise your voice. Who am I speaking to?"
+
+"Sylvia."
+
+There was no response, and she spoke again:
+
+"I only wanted to say good morning. It is afternoon now; is it too late
+to say good morning?"
+
+"No. I'm badly rattled. Is it you, Sylvia?"
+
+"Indeed it is. I am in my own room. I--I thought--"
+
+"Yes, I am listening."
+
+"I don't know what I did think. Is it necessary for me to telephone you
+a minute account of the mental processes which ended by my calling you
+up--out of the vasty deep?"
+
+The old ring in her voice hinting of the laughing undertone, the same
+trailing sweetness of inflection--could he doubt his senses any longer?
+
+"I know you, now," he said.
+
+"I should think you might. I should very much like to know how you
+are--if you don't mind saying?"
+
+"Thank you. I seem to be all right. Are you all right, Sylvia?"
+
+"Shamefully and outrageously well. What a season, too! Everybody else is
+in rags--make-up rags! Isn't that a disagreeable remark? But I'll come
+to the paint-brush too, of course. ... We all do. Doesn't anybody ever see
+you any more?"
+
+She heard him laugh to himself unpleasantly; then: "Does anybody want
+to?"
+
+"Everybody, of course! You know it. You always were spoiled to death."
+
+"Yes--to death."
+
+"Stephen!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Are you becoming cynical?"
+
+"I? Why should I?"
+
+"You are! Stop it! Mercy on us! If that is what is going on in a certain
+house on lower Fifth Avenue, facing the corner of certain streets, it's
+time somebody dropped in to--"
+
+"To--what?"
+
+"To the rescue! I've a mind to do it myself. They say you are not well,
+either."
+
+"Who says that?"
+
+"Oh, the usual little ornithological cockatrice--or, rather, cantatrice.
+Don't ask me, because I won't tell you. I always tell you too much,
+anyway. Don't I?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Of course I do. Everybody spoils you and so do I."
+
+"Yes--I am rather in that way, I suppose."
+
+"What way?"
+
+"Oh--spoiled."
+
+"Stephen!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+And in a lower voice: "Please don't say such things--will you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Especially to me."
+
+"Especially to you. No, I won't, Sylvia."
+
+And, after a hesitation, she continued sweetly:
+
+"I wonder what you were doing, all alone in that old house of yours,
+when I called you up?"
+
+"I? Let me see. Oh, I was superintending some packing."
+
+"Are you going off somewhere?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know, Sylvia."
+
+"Stephen, how absurd! You must know where you are going! If you mean
+that you don't care to tell me--"
+
+"I mean--that."
+
+"I decline to be snubbed. I'm shameless, and I wish to be informed.
+Please tell me."
+
+"I'd rather not tell you."
+
+"Very well. ... Good-bye. ... But don't ring off just yet, Stephen. ... Do you
+think that, sometime, you would care to see--any people--I mean when you
+begin to go out again?"
+
+"Who, for example?"
+
+"Why, anybody?"
+
+"No; I don't think I should care to."
+
+"I wish you would care to. It is not well to let go every tie, drop
+everybody so completely. No man can do that to advantage. It would be so
+much better for you to go about a bit--see and be seen, you know; just
+to meet a few people informally; go to see some pretty girl you know
+well enough to--to--"
+
+"To what? Make love to?"
+
+"That would he very good for you," she said.
+
+"But not for the pretty girl. Besides, I'm rather too busy to go about,
+even if I were inclined to."
+
+"Are you really busy, Stephen?"
+
+"Yes--waiting. That is the very hardest sort of occupation. And I'm
+obliged to be on hand every minute."
+
+"But you said that you were going out of town."
+
+"Did I? Well, I did not say it, exactly, but I am going to leave town."
+
+"For very long?" she asked.
+
+"Perhaps. I can't tell yet."
+
+"Stephen, before you go--if you are going for a very, very long
+while--perhaps you will--you might care to say good-bye?"
+
+"Do you think it best?"
+
+"No," she said innocently; "but if you care--"
+
+"Do you care to have me?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+There was a silence; and when his voice sounded again it had altered:
+
+"I do not think you would care to see me, Sylvia. I--they say I am--I
+have--changed--since my--since a slight illness. I am not over it yet,
+not cured--not very well yet; and a little tired, you see--a little
+shaken. I am leaving New York to--to try once more to be cured. I expect
+to be well--one way or another--"
+
+"Stephen, where are you going? Answer me!"
+
+"I can't answer you."
+
+"Is your illness serious?"
+
+"A--it is--it requires some--some care."
+
+Her fingers tightening around the receiver whitened to the delicate
+nails under the pressure. Mute, struggling with the mounting impulse,
+voice and lip unsteady, she still spoke with restraint:
+
+"You say you require care? And what care have you? Who is there with
+you? Answer me!"
+
+"Why--everybody; the servants. I have care enough."
+
+"Oh, the servants! Have you a physician to advise you?"
+
+"Certainly--the best in the world. Sylvia, dea--, Sylvia, I didn't mean
+to give you an impression--"
+
+"Stephen, I will have you truthful with me! I know perfectly well you
+are ill. I--if I could only--if there was something, some way--Listen: I
+am--I am going to do something about it, and I don't care very much what
+I do!"
+
+"What sweet nonsense!" he laughed, but his voice was no steadier than
+hers.
+
+"Will you drive with me?" she asked impulsively, "some afternoon--"
+
+"Sylvia, dear, you don't really want me to do it. Wait, listen: I--I've
+got to tell you that--that I'm not fit for it. I've got to be honest
+with you; I am not fit, not in physical condition to go out just yet.
+I've really been ill--for weeks. Plank has been very nice to me. I
+want to get well; I mean to try very hard. But the man you
+knew--is--changed."
+
+"Changed?"
+
+"Not in that way!" he said in a slow voice.
+
+"H-how, then?" she stammered, all a-thrill.
+
+"Nerve gone--almost. Going to get it back again, of course. Feel a
+million times better already for talking with you."
+
+"Do--does it really help?"
+
+"It's the only panacea for me," he said too quickly to consider his
+words.
+
+"The only one?" she faltered. "Do you mean to say that your
+trouble--illness--has anything to do with--"
+
+"No, no! I only--"
+
+"Has it, Stephen?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Because, if I thought--"
+
+"Sylvia, I'm not that sort! You mustn't talk to me that way. There's
+nothing to be sorry for about me. Any man may lose his nerve, and, if
+he is a man, go after it and get it back again. Every man has a fighting
+chance. You said it yourself once--that a man mustn't ask for a fighting
+chance; he must take it. And I'm going to take it and win out one way or
+another."
+
+"What do you mean by 'another,' Stephen?"
+
+"I--Nothing. It's a phrase."
+
+"What do you mean? Answer me!"
+
+"It's a phrase," he said again; "no meaning, you know."
+
+"Stephen, Mr. Plank says that you are lame."
+
+"What did he say that for?" demanded Siward wrathfully.
+
+"I asked him. Kemp saw you on crutches at your window. So I asked Mr.
+Plank, and he said you had discarded your crutches too soon and had
+fallen and lamed yourself again. Are you able to walk yet?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Outdoors?"
+
+"A--no, not just yet."
+
+"In other words, you are practically bedridden."
+
+"No, no! I can get about the room very well."
+
+"You couldn't go down-stairs--for an hour's drive, could you?"
+
+"Can't manage that for awhile," he said hastily.
+
+"Oh, the vanity of you, Stephen Siward! the vanity! Ashamed to let me
+see you when you are not your complete and magnificently attractive
+self! Silly, I shall see you! I shall drive down on the first sunny
+morning and sit outside in my victoria until you can't stand the
+temptation another instant. I'm going to do it. You cannot stop me;
+nobody can stop me. I desire to do it, and that is sufficient, I think,
+for everybody concerned. If the sun is out to-morrow, I shall be out
+too! ... I am so tired of not seeing you! Let central listen! I don't
+care. I don't care what I am saying. I've endured it so long--I--There's
+no use! I am too tired of it, and I want to see you. ... Can't we see each
+other without--without--thinking about things that are settled once and
+for all?"
+
+"I can't," he said.
+
+"Then you'd better learn to! Because, if you think I'm going through
+life without seeing you frequently you are simple! I've stood it too
+long at a time. I won't go through this sort of thing again! You'd
+better be amiable; you'd better be civil to me, or--or--nobody on earth
+can tell what will happen! The idea of you telling me you had lost your
+nerve! You've got to get it back--and help me find mine! Yes, it's gone,
+gone, gone! I lost it in the rain, somewhere, to-day. ... Does the scent
+of the rain come in at your window? ... Do you remember--There! I can't
+say it. ... Good-bye. Good-bye. You must get well and I must, too.
+Good-bye."
+
+
+The fruit of her imprudence was happiness--an excited happiness, which
+lasted for a day. The rain lasted, too, for another day, then turned to
+snow, choking the city with such a fall as had not been seen since the
+great blizzard--blocking avenues, barricading cross-streets, burying
+squares and circles and parks, and still falling, drifting, whirling
+like wind-whipped smoke from cornice and roof-top. The electric cars
+halted; even the great snow-ploughs roared impotent amid the snowy
+wastes; waggons floundered into cross-streets and stuck until dug out;
+and everywhere, in the thickening obscurity, battalions of emergency
+men with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and
+Broadway. Then the storm ended at daybreak.
+
+All day long squadrons of white gulls wheeled and sailed in the sky
+above the snowy expanse of park where the great, rectangular sheets of
+water glimmered black in their white setting. As she sat at her desk she
+could see them drifting into and out of the gray squares of sky framed
+by her window-panes. Two days ago she had seen them stemming the sky
+blasts, heralding the coming of unfelt tempests, flapping steadily
+through the fragrant rain. Now, the false phantom which had mimicked
+spring turned on the world the glassy glare of winter, stupefying hope,
+stunning desire, clogging the life essence in all young, living things.
+The first vague summons, the restlessness of awakening aspiration, the
+first delicate, indrawn breath, were stilled to deathly immobility.
+
+Sylvia, at her escritoire, chin cradled in her hollowed hand,
+sat listlessly inspecting her mail--the usual pile of bills and
+advertisements, social demands and interested appeals, with here and
+there a frivolous note from some intimate to punctuate the endless
+importunities.
+
+Her housekeeper had come and gone; the Belwether establishment could jog
+through another day. Various specialists, who cared for the health and
+beauty of her body, had entered and made their unctuous exits. The major
+had gone to Tuxedo for the week's end; her maid had bronchitis; two
+horses required the veterinary, and the kitchen range a new water-back.
+
+Cards had come for the Caithness function; cards for young Austin
+Wadsworth's wedding to a Charleston girl of rumoured beauty; Caragnini
+was to sing for Mrs. Vendenning; a live llama, two-legged, had consented
+to undermine Christianity for Mrs. Pyne-Johnson and her guests.
+
+"Would Sylvia be ready for the inspection of imported head-gears to
+harmonise with the gowns being built by Constantine?
+
+"When--
+
+"Would she receive the courteous agent of 'The Reigning Beauties of
+Manhattan,' to arrange for her portrait and biographical sketch?
+
+"When--
+
+"Would she realise that Jefferson B. Doty could turn earth into heaven
+for any young chatelaine by affixing to the laundry his anti-microbe
+drying machine emitting sixty sterilised hot-air blasts in thirty
+seconds, at a cost of one-tenth of one mill per blast?
+
+"And when--"
+
+But she turned her head, looking wearily across the room at the brightly
+burning fire beside which Mrs. Ferrall sat, nibbling mint-paste, very
+serious over one of those books that "everybody was reading."
+
+"How far have you read?" inquired Sylvia without interest, turning over
+a new letter to cut with her paper-knife.
+
+Grace ruffled the uncut pages of her book without looking up, then
+yawned shamelessly: "She's decided to try living with him for awhile,
+and if they find life agreeable she'll marry him. ... Pleasant situation,
+isn't it? Nice book, very; and they say that somebody is making a play
+of it. I"--She yawned again, showing her small, brilliant teeth--"I
+wonder what sort of people write these immoral romances!"
+
+"Probably immoral people," said Sylvia indifferently. "Drop it on the
+coals, Grace."
+
+But Mrs. Ferrall reopened the book where she had laid her finger to mark
+the place. "Do you think so?" she asked.
+
+"Think what?"
+
+"That rotten books and plays come from morally rotten people?"
+
+"I don't think about it at all," observed Sylvia, opening another letter
+impatiently.
+
+"You're probably not very literary," said Grace mischievously.
+
+"Not in that way, I suppose."
+
+Mrs. Ferrall took another bonbon: "Did you see 'Mrs. Lane's
+Experiment'?"
+
+"I did," said Sylvia, looking up, the pink creeping into her cheeks.
+
+"You thought it very strong, I suppose?" asked Grace innocently.
+
+"I thought it incredible."
+
+"But, dear, it was sheer realism! Why blink at truth? And when an author
+has the courage to tell facts why not have the courage to applaud?"
+
+"If that is truth, it doesn't concern me," said Sylvia. "Grace, why will
+you pose, even if you are married? for you have a clean mind, and you
+know it!"
+
+"I know it," sighed Mrs. Ferrall, closing her book again, but keeping
+the place with her finger; "and that's why I'm so curious about all
+these depraved people. I can't understand why writers have not found out
+that we women are instinctively innocent, even after we are obliged to
+make our morality a profession and our innocence an art. They all hang
+their romances to motives that no woman recognises as feminine; they
+ascribe to us instincts which we do not possess, passions of which we
+are ignorant--a ridiculous moral turpitude in the overmastering presence
+of love. Pooh! If they only knew what a small part love plays with us,
+after all!"
+
+Sylvia said slowly: "It sometimes plays a small part, after all."
+
+"Always," insisted Grace with emphasis. "No carefully watched girl knows
+what it is, whatever her suspicions may be. When she marries, if
+she doesn't marry from family pressure or from her own motives of
+common-sense ambition, she marries because she likes the man, not
+because she loves him."
+
+Sylvia was silent.
+
+"Because, even if she wanted to love him," continued Grace, "she would
+not know how. It's the ingrained innocence which men encounter that
+they don't allow for or understand in us. Even after we are married, and
+whether or not we learn to love our husbands, it remains part of us
+as an educated instinct; and it takes all the scientific, selfish
+ruthlessness of a man to break it down. That's why I say so few among
+us ever comprehend the motives attributed to us in romance or in that
+parody of it called realism. Love is rarer with us than men could ever
+believe--and I'm glad of it," she said maliciously, with a final snap of
+her pretty teeth.
+
+"It was on that theory you advised me, I think," said Sylvia, looking
+into the fire.
+
+"Advised you, child?"
+
+"Yes--about accepting Howard."
+
+"Certainly. Is it not a sound theory? Doesn't it stand inspection?
+Doesn't it wear?"
+
+"It--wears," said Sylvia indifferently. Grace looked up from her open
+book. "Is anything amiss?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Of course you know, child. What is wrong? Has Howard made himself
+insufferable? He's a master at it. Has he?"
+
+"No; I don't remember that he has. ... I'm tired, physically. I'm tired of
+the winter."
+
+"Go to Florida for Lent."
+
+"Horror! It's as stupid as a hothouse. It isn't that, either,
+dear--only, when it was raining so deliciously the other day I was silly
+enough to think I scented the spring in the park. I was glad of a change
+you know--any excuse to stop this eternal carnival I live in."
+
+"What is the matter?" demanded Mrs. Ferrall, withdrawing her finger from
+the pages and plumping the closed book down on her knee. "You'd better
+tell me, Sylvia; you might just as well tell me now as later when my
+persistence has vexed us both. Now, what has happened?"
+
+"I have been--imprudent," said Sylvia, in a low voice.
+
+"You mean,"--Mrs. Ferrall looked at her keenly--"that he has been here?"
+
+"No. I telephoned him; and I asked him to drive with me."
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, what nonsense! Why on earth do you stir yourself up by that
+sort of silliness at this late date? What use is it? Can't you let him
+alone?"
+
+"I--No, I can't, it seems. Grace, I was--I felt so--so strangely about
+it all."
+
+"About what, little idiot?"
+
+"About leaving him--alone."
+
+"Are you Stephen Siward's keeper?" demanded Mrs. Ferrall, exasperated.
+
+"I felt as though I were, for awhile. He is ill."
+
+"With an illness that, thank God, you are not going to nurse through
+life. Don't look at me that way, dear. I'm obliged to speak harshly;
+I'm obliged to harden my heart to such a monstrous idea. You know I love
+you; you know I care deeply for that poor boy--but do you think I could
+be loyal to either of you and not say what I do say? He is doomed, as
+sure as you sit there! He has fallen, and no one can help him. Link
+after link he has broken with his own world; his master-vice holds him
+faster, closer, more absolutely, than hell ever held a lost soul!"
+
+"Grace, I cannot endure--"
+
+"You must! Are you trying to drug your silly self with romance so you
+won't recognise truth when you see it? Are you drifting back into old
+impulses, unreasoning whims of caprice? Have you forgotten what I know
+of you, and what you know of yourself? Is the taint of your transmitted
+inheritance beginning to show in you--the one woman of your race who is
+fashioned to withstand it and stamp it out?"
+
+"I am mistress of my emotions," said Sylvia, flushing.
+
+"Then suppress them," retorted Grace Ferrall hotly, "before they begin
+to bully you. There was no earthly reason for you to talk to Stephen.
+No disinterested impulse moved you. It was a sheer perverse, sentimental
+restlessness--the delicate, meddlesome deviltry of your race. And if
+that poison is in you, it's well for you to know it."
+
+"It is in me," said Sylvia, staring at the fire.
+
+"Then you know what to do for it."
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Well, I do," said Grace decisively; "and the sooner you marry Howard
+and intrench yourself behind your pride, the better off you'll be.
+That's where, fortunately enough, you differ from your ancestors; you
+are unable to understand marital treachery. Otherwise you'd make it
+lively for us all."
+
+"It is true," said Sylvia deliberately, "that I could not be treacherous
+to anybody. But I am wondering; I am asking myself just what constitutes
+treachery to myself."
+
+"Sentimentalising over Stephen might fill the bill," observed Grace
+tartly.
+
+"But it doesn't seem to," mused Sylvia, her blue gaze on the coals.
+"That is what I do not understand. I have no conscience concerning what
+I feel for him."
+
+"What do you feel?"
+
+"I was in love with him. You knew it."
+
+"You liked him," insisted Grace patiently.
+
+"No--loved him. I know. Dear, your theories are sound in a general way,
+but what is a girl going to do about it when she loves a man? You say
+a young girl can't love--doesn't know how. But I do love, though it
+is true that I don't know how to love very wisely. What is the use in
+denying it? This winter has been a deafening, stupefying fever to me.
+The sheer noise of it stunned me until I forgot how I did feel about
+anything. Then--I don't know--somehow, in the rain out there, I began
+to wake ... Dear, the old instincts, the old desires, the old truths, came
+back out of chaos; that full feeling here"--she laid her fingers on
+her throat--"the sense of expectancy, the restless hope growing out
+of torpid acquiescence--all returned; and, dearest, with them all came
+memories of him. What am I to do? Could you tell me?"
+
+For a long while Mrs. Ferrall sat in troubled silence, her hand shading
+her eyes. Sylvia, leaning over her desk, idling with pen and pencil,
+looked around from time to time, as though awaiting the opinion of
+some specialist who, in full possession of the facts, now had become
+responsible for the patient.
+
+"If you marry him," said Mrs. Ferrall quietly, "your life will become a
+hell."
+
+"Yes. But would it make life any easier for him?" asked Sylvia.
+
+"How--to know that you had been dragged down?"
+
+"No. I mean could I do anything for him?"
+
+"No woman ever did. That is a sentimental falsehood of the emotional.
+No woman ever did help a man in that way. Sylvia, if love were the only
+question, and if you do truly love him, I--well, I suppose I'd be fool
+enough to advise you to be a fool. Even then you'd be sorry. You know
+what your future may be; you know what you are fitted for. What can
+you do without Howard? In this town your role would be a very minor one
+without Howard's money, and you know it."
+
+"Yes, I know it."
+
+"And your sacrifice could not help that doomed boy."
+
+Sylvia nodded assent.
+
+"Then, is there any choice? Is there any question of what to do?"
+
+Sylvia looked out into the winter sky, through the tops of snowy trees;
+everywhere the stark, deathly rigidity of winter. Under it, frozen, lay
+the rain that had scented the air. Under her ambition lay the ghosts of
+yesterday.
+
+"No," she said, "there is no question of choice. I know what must be."
+
+Grace, seated in the firelight, looked up as Sylvia rose from her desk
+and came across the room; and when she sank down on the rug at her feet,
+resting her cheek against the elder woman's knees, nothing was said
+for a long time--a time of length sufficient to commit a memory to its
+grave, lay it away decently and in quiet befitting.
+
+Sore doubt assailed Grace Ferrall, guiltily aware that once again
+she had meddled; and in the calm tenor of her own placid, marital
+satisfaction, looking backward along the pleasant path she had trodden
+with its little monuments to love at decent intervals amid the agreeable
+monotony of content, her heart and conscience misgave her lest she
+had counselled this young girl wrongly, committing her to the arid
+lovelessness which she herself had never known.
+
+Leaning there, her fingers lingering in light caress on Sylvia's bright
+hair, for every doubt she brought up argument, to every sentimental
+wavering within her heart she opposed the chilling reason of common
+sense. Destruction to happiness lay in Sylvia's yielding to her
+caprice for Siward. There was other happiness in the world besides the
+non-essential one of love. That must be Sylvia's portion. And after
+all--and after all, love was a matter of degree; and it was well for
+Sylvia that she had the malady so lightly--well for her that it had
+advanced so little, lest she suspect what its crowning miracles might be
+and fall sick of a passion for what she had forever lost.
+
+
+For a week or more the snow continued; colder, gloomier weather set in,
+and the impending menace of Ash Wednesday redoubled the social pace,
+culminating in the Westervelt ball on the eve of the forty days.
+And Sylvia had not yet seen Siward or spoken to him again across the
+wilderness of streets and men.
+
+In the first relaxation of Lent she had instinctively welcomed an
+opportunity for spiritual consolation and a chance to take her spiritual
+bearings; not because of bodily fatigue--for in the splendour of her
+youthful vigour she did not know what that meant.
+
+Saint Berold was a pretty good saint, and his church was patronised by
+Major Belwether's household. The major liked two things high: his game
+and his church. Sylvia cared for neither, but had become habituated to
+both the odours of sanctity and of pheasants; so to Saint Berold's she
+went in cure of her soul. Besides, she was fond of Father Curtis, who,
+if he were every inch a priest, was also every foot of his six feet a
+man--simple, good, and brave.
+
+However, she found little opportunity, save at her brief confession, for
+a word with Father Curtis. His days were full days to the overbrimming,
+and a fashionable pack was ever at his heels, fawning and shoving and
+importuning. It was fashionable to adore Father Curtis, and for that
+reason she shrank from venturing any demand upon his time, and nobody
+else at Saint Berold's appealed to her. Besides, the music was hard,
+commonplace, even blatant at times, and, having a delicate ear, she
+shrank from this also. It is probable then that what comfort she found
+under Saint Berold's big, brand-new Episcopal cross she extracted from
+observing the rites, usages, and laws of a creed that had been accepted
+for her by that Christian gentleman, Major Belwether. Also, she may have
+found some solace from the still intervals devoted to an inventory of
+her sins and the wistful searching of a heart too young for sadness. If
+she did it was her own affair, not Grace Ferrall's, who went with her
+to Saint Berold's determined always to confess to too much gambling, but
+letting it go from day to day so that the penance could not interfere
+with the next seance.
+
+Agatha Caithness was there a great deal, looking like a saint in her
+subdued plumage; and very devout, dodging nothing--neither confession
+nor Quarrier's occasionally lifted eyes, though their gaze, meeting,
+seemed lost in dreamy devotion or drowned in the contemplation of the
+spiritual and remote.
+
+Plank came docilely from his Dutch Reformed church to sit beside
+Leila. As for Mortimer, once a vestryman, he never came at all--made no
+pretence or profession of what he elegantly expressed as "caring a damn"
+for anything "in the church line," though, he added, there were "some
+good lookers to be found in a few synagogues." His misconception of the
+attractions of the church amused the new set of men among whom he had
+recently drifted, to the unfeigned disgust of gentlemen like Major
+Belwether; "club" men, in the commoner and more sinister interpretation
+of the word; unfit men, who had managed to slip into good clubs;
+men, once fit, who had deteriorated to the verge of ostracism; heavy,
+over-fed, idle, insolent men in questionable financial situation, hard
+card players, hard drinkers, hard riders, negative in their virtues,
+merciless in their vices, and whose cynical misconduct formed the
+sources of the stock of stories told where such men foregather.
+
+Mortimer had already furnished his world with sufficient material for
+jests of that flavour; now they were telling a new one: how, as Leila
+was standing before Tiffany's looking for her carriage, a masher
+accosted her, and, at her haughty stare, said sneeringly: "Oh, you can't
+play that game on me; I've seen you with Leroy Mortimer!"
+
+The story was repeated frequently enough. Leila heard it with a shrug;
+but such things mattered to her now, and she cried over it at night,
+burning that Plank should hear her name used jestingly to emphasise the
+depth of her husband's degradation.
+
+Mortimer stayed out at night very frequently now. Also, he appeared
+to make his money go farther, or was luckier at his "card killings,"
+because he seldom attempted to bully Leila, being apparently content
+with his allowance.
+
+Once or twice Plank saw him with an unusually attractive girl belonging
+to a world very far removed from Leila's. Somebody said she was
+an actress when she did anything at all--one Lydia Vyse, somewhat
+celebrated for an audacity not too delicate. But Plank was no more
+interested than any man who can't afford to endanger his prospects by a
+closer acquaintance with that sort of pretty woman.
+
+Meanwhile Mortimer kept away from home, wife, and church, and Plank
+frequented them, so the two men did not meet very often; and the less
+they met the less they found to say to one another.
+
+Now that the forty days had really begun, Major Belwether became
+restless for the flesh-pots of the south, although Lenten duties sat
+lightly enough upon the house of Belwether. These decent observances
+were limited to a lax acknowledgment of fast days, church in moderation,
+and active participation in the succession of informal affairs
+calculated to sustain life in those intellectually atrophied and wealthy
+people entirely dependent upon others for their amusements.
+
+To these people no fear of punishment hereafter can equal the terror
+of being left to their own devices; and so, though the opera was over,
+theatres unfashionable, formal functions suspended and dances ended, the
+pace still continued at a discreet and decorous trot; and those who had
+not fled to California or Palm Beach, remained to pray and play Bridge
+with an unction most edifying.
+
+And all this while Sylvia had not seen Siward.
+
+Sylvia was changing. The characteristic amiability, the sensitive
+reserve, the sweet composure which the world had always counted on in
+her, had become exceptions and no longer the rules which governed the
+caprice and impulse always latent. An indifference so pointed as to
+verge on insolence amazed her intimates at times; a sudden, flushed
+impatience startled the habitues of her shrine. There was a new,
+unseeing hardness in her eyes; in her attitude the faintest hint
+of cynicism. She acquired a habit of doing selfish things coldly,
+indifferent to the canons of the art; and true selfishness, the most
+delicate of all the arts, requires an expert.
+
+That which had most charmed--her unfeigned pleasure in pleasure, her
+unfailing consideration for all, her gentleness with ignorance, her
+generous unconsciousness of self--all these still remained, it is true,
+though no longer characteristic, no longer to be counted on.
+
+For the first time a slight sense of fear tinctured the general
+admiration.
+
+In public her indifference and growing impatience with Quarrier had not
+reached the verge of bad taste, but in private she was scarcely at pains
+to conceal her weariness and inattention, showing him less and less
+of the formal consideration which had been their only medium of
+coexistence. That he noticed it was evident even to her who carelessly
+ignored the consequences of her own attitude.
+
+Once, speaking of the alterations in progress at The Sedges, his place
+near Oyster Bay, he casually asked her opinion, and she as casually
+observed that if he had an opinion about anything he wouldn't know what
+to do with it.
+
+Once, too, she had remarked in Quarrier's hearing to Ferrall, who was
+complaining about the loss of his hair, that a hairless head was a
+visitation from Heaven, but a beard was a man's own fault.
+
+Once they came very close to a definite rupture, close enough to scare
+her after all the heat had gone out of her and the matter was ended.
+Quarrier had lingered late after cards, and something was said about the
+impending kennel show and about Marion Page judging the English setters.
+
+"Agatha tells me that you are going with Marion," continued Quarrier.
+"As long as Marion has chosen to make herself conspicuous there is
+nothing to be said. But do you think it very good taste for you to
+figure publicly on the sawdust with an eccentric girl like Marion?"
+
+"I see nothing conspicuous about a girl's judging a few dogs," said
+Sylvia, merely from an irritable desire to contradict.
+
+"It's bad taste and bad form," remarked Quarrier coldly; "and Agatha
+thought it a mistake for you to go there with her."
+
+"Agatha's opinions do not concern me."
+
+"Perhaps mine may have some weight."
+
+"Not the slightest."
+
+He said patiently: "This is a public show; do you understand? Not one of
+those private bench exhibitions."
+
+"I understand. Really, Howard, you are insufferable at times."
+
+"Do you feel that way?"
+
+"Yes, I do. I am sorry to be rude, but I do feel that way!" Flushed,
+impatient, she looked him squarely between his narrowing, woman's eyes:
+"I do not care for you very much, Howard, and you know it. I am marrying
+you with a perfectly sordid motive, and you know that, too. Therefore
+it is more decent--if there is any decency left in either of us--to
+interfere with one another as little as possible, unless you desire a
+definite rupture. Do you?"
+
+"I? A--a rupture?"
+
+"Yes," she said hotly; "do you?"
+
+"Do you, Sylvia?"
+
+"No; I'm too cowardly, too selfish, too treacherous to myself. No, I
+don't."
+
+"Nor do I," he said, lifting his furtive eyes.
+
+"Very well. You are more contemptible than I am, that is all."
+
+Her voice had grown unsteady; an unreasoning rush of anger had set her
+whole body a-thrill, and the white heat of it was driving her to provoke
+him, as though that might cleanse her of the ignominy of the bargain--as
+though a bargain did not require two of the same mind to make it.
+
+"What do you want of me?" she said, still stinging under the angry waves
+of self-contempt. "What are you marrying me for? Because, divided,
+we are likely to cut small figures in our tin-trumpet world? Because,
+united, we can dominate the brainless? Is there any other reason?"
+
+Showing his teeth in that twitching snicker that contracted the muscles
+of his upper lip: "Children!" he said, looking at her.
+
+She turned scarlet to her hair; the deliberate grossness stunned her.
+Confused, she stood confronting him, dumb under a retort the coarseness
+of which she had never dreamed him capable.
+
+"I mean what I say," he repeated calmly. "A man cares for two things:
+his fortune, and the heirs to it. If you didn't know that you have
+learned it now. You hurt me deliberately. I told you a plain truth very
+bluntly. It is for you to consider the situation."
+
+But she could not speak; anger, humiliation, shame, held her
+tongue-tied. The instinctive revolt at the vague horror--the monstrous,
+meaningless threat--nothing could force words from her to repudiate, to
+deny what he had dared to utter.
+
+Except as the effrontery of brutality, except as a formless menace born
+of his anger, the reason he flung at her for his marrying her conveyed
+nothing to her in its grotesque impossibility. Only the intentional
+coarseness of it was to be endured--if she chose to endure it; for the
+rest was empty of concrete meaning to her.
+
+
+Lent was half over before she saw him again. Neither he nor she had
+taken any steps to complete the rupture; and at the Mi-careme dance,
+given by the Siowa Hunt, Quarrier, who was M. F. H., took up the thread
+of their suspended intercourse as methodically and calmly as though
+it had never quivered to the breaking point. He led the cotillon with
+agreeable precision and impersonal accuracy, favouring her at intervals;
+and though she wasted no favours on him, she endured his, which was
+sufficient evidence that matters were still in statu quo.
+
+She returned to town next morning with Grace Ferrall, irritable, sulky,
+furious with herself at the cowardly relief she felt. For, spite of her
+burning anger against Quarrier, the suspense at times had been wearing;
+and she would not make the first move--had not decided even to accept
+his move if it came--at least, had not admitted to herself that she
+would accept it. It had come and the tension was over, and now, entering
+Mrs. Ferrall's brougham which met them at Thirty-fourth Street Ferry,
+she was furious with herself for her unfeigned feeling of relief.
+
+All hot with self-contempt she lay back in the comfortably upholstered
+corner of the brougham, staring straight before her, sullen red mouth
+unresponsive to the occasional inconsequent questions of Grace Ferrall.
+
+"After awhile," observed Grace, "people will begin to talk about the
+discontented beauty of your face."
+
+Sylvia's eyebrows bent still farther inward.
+
+"A fretful face, but rather pretty," commented Grace maliciously.
+"It won't do, dear. Your role is dignified comedy. O dear! O my!" She
+stifled a yawn behind her faultlessly gloved hand. "I'm feeling these
+late hours in my aged bones. It wasn't much of a dance, was it? Or am
+I disillusioned? Certainly that Edgeworth boy fell in love with me--the
+depraved creature--trying his primitive wiles there in the conservatory!
+Little beast! There are no nice boys any more; they're all too young or
+too sophisticated. ... Howard does lead well, I admit that. ... You're on
+the box seat together again I see. Pooh! I wasn't a bit alarmed."
+
+"I was," said Sylvia, curling her lip in biting self-contempt.
+
+"Well, that's a wholesome confession, anyway. O dear, how I do yawn! and
+Lent only half over. ... Sylvia, what are you staring at? Oh, I--see."
+
+They had driven south to Washington Square, where Mrs. Ferrall had
+desired to leave a note, and were now returning. Sylvia had leaned
+forward to look up at Siward's house, but with Mrs. Ferrall's first word
+she sank back, curiously expressionless and white; for she had seen a
+woman entering the front door and had recognised her as Marion Page.
+
+"Well, of all indiscretions!" breathed Grace, looking helplessly at
+Sylvia. "Oh, no, that sort of thing is sheer effrontery, you know! It's
+rotten bad taste; it's no worse, of course--but it's bad taste. I don't
+care what privileges we concede to Marion, we're not going to concede
+this--unless she puts on trousers for good. It's all very well for her
+to talk her plain kennel talk, and call spades by their technical
+names, and smoke all over people's houses, and walk all over people's
+prejudices; but there's no sense in her hunting for trouble; and she'll
+get it, sure as scandal is scandal!"
+
+And still Sylvia remained pale and silent, eyes downcast, shrinking
+close into her upholstered corner, as though some reflex instinct of
+self-concealment was still automatically dominating her.
+
+"She ought to be spanked!" said Grace viciously. "If she were my
+daughter I'd do it, too!"
+
+Sylvia did not stir.
+
+"Little idiot! Going into a man's house in the face of all Fifth Avenue
+and the teeth of decency!"
+
+"She has courage," said Sylvia, still very white.
+
+"Courage! Do you mean fool-hardiness?"
+
+"No, courage--the courage I lacked. I knew he was too ill to leave his
+room and I lacked the courage to go and see him."
+
+"You mean, alone?"
+
+"Certainly, alone."
+
+"You dare tell me you ever contemplated--"
+
+"Oh, yes. I think I should have done it yet, but--but Marion--"
+
+Suddenly she bent forward, resting her face in her hands; and between
+the fingers a bright drop ran, glimmered, and fell.
+
+"O Lord!" breathed Mrs. Ferrall, and sank back, nerveless, into her own
+corner of the rocking brougham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII THE ASKING PRICE
+
+Siward, at his desk, over which the May sunshine streamed, his crutches
+laid against his chair, sat poring over the piles of papers left there
+by Beverly Plank some days before with a curt recommendation that he
+master their contents.
+
+Some of the papers were typewritten, some appeared to be engraved
+certificates of stock, a few were in Plank's heavy, squat handwriting.
+There were several packages tied in pink tape, evidently legal papers of
+some sort; and also a pile of scrap-books containing newspaper clippings
+to which Siward referred occasionally, or read them at length, resting
+his thin, fatigued face between two bony hands.
+
+The curious persistence of youth in his features seemed unaccountable in
+view of the heavy marks imprinted there; but they were marks, not
+lines; bluish hollows under eyes still young, marred contours of the
+cheek-bone; a hardness about the hollow temples above which his short,
+bright hair clustered with all its soft, youthful allure undimmed; and
+in every movement, every turn of his head, there still remained much
+of that indefinable attractiveness which had always characterised his
+race--much of the unconscious charm usually known as breeding.
+
+In men of Mortimer's fibre, dissipation produced coarser
+symptoms--distended veins, and sagging flesh--where in Siward it seemed
+to bruise and harden, driving the colour of blood out of him and leaving
+the pallor of marble, and the bluish shadows of it staining the hollows.
+Only the eyes had begun to change radically; something in them had been
+quenched.
+
+That he could never hope to become immune he had learned at last when
+he had returned, physically wholesome, from his long course of training
+under the famous Irish specialist on the Hudson. He had expected to be
+immune, spite of the blunt and forcible language of Mulqueen when he
+turned him out into the world again:
+
+"Ye'll be afther notin'," said Mr. Mulqueen, "that a poonch in the
+plexis putts a man out; but it don't kill him. That's you! Whin a man
+mixes it up wid the booze, l'ave him come here an' I'll tache him a
+thrick. But it's not murther I tache; it's the hook on the jaw that
+shtops, an' the poonch in the plexis that putts the booze-divil on the
+bum! L'ave him take the count; he'll niver rise to the chune o' the bell
+av ye l'ave him lie. But he ain't dead, Misther Sayward; mark that, me
+son! An' don't ye be afther sayin', 'Th' inimy is down an' out fur good!
+Pore lad! Sure, I'll shake hands over a dhrink wid him, for he can do me
+no hurrt anny more!' No, sorr! L'ave him lie, an' l'ave the years av ver
+life count him out; fur the day you die, he dies, an' not wan shake o'
+the mixer sooner! G'wan, now, fur the rub-down. Ye've faught yer lasht
+round, if ye ain't a fool!"
+
+He had been a fool. He had imagined that he could control himself, and
+practise the moderation that other men practised when they chose. The
+puerile restraint annoyed him; his implied inability to master himself
+humiliated him, the more so because, secretly, he was horribly afraid in
+the remote depths of his heart.
+
+Exactly how it happened he did not remember, except that he had gone
+down town on business and had lunched with several men. There was
+claret. Later he remembered another cafe, farther up town, and another,
+more brilliantly lighted. After that there were vague hours--the fierce
+fever of debauch wrapping night and day in flame through which he moved,
+unseeing, unheeding, deafened, drenched soul and body in the living
+fire; or dreaming, feeling the subsiding fury of desire pulse and ebb
+and flow, rocking him to unconsciousness.
+
+His father's old servants had found him again, this time in the area;
+and this time the same ankle, not yet strong, had been broken.
+
+Through the waning winter days, as he lay brooding in bitterness,
+realising that it was all to do over again, Plank's shy visits became
+gradually part of the routine. But it was many days before Siward
+perceived in the big, lumbering, pink-fisted man anything to attract
+him beyond the faintly amused curiosity of one man for another who is in
+process of establishing himself as the first of a race.
+
+As for reciprocation in other forms except the most superficial, or of
+permitting a personal note to sound ever so discreetly, Siward
+tolerated no such idea. Even the tentative advances of Plank hinting
+on willingness, and perhaps ability, to help Siward in the Amalgamated
+tangle were pleasantly ignored. Unpaid services rendered by men like
+Plank were impossible; any obligation to Plank was utterly out of the
+question. Meanwhile they began to like one another--at least Siward
+often found himself looking forward with pleasure to a visit from
+Plank. There had never been any question of the latter's attitude toward
+Siward.
+
+Plank began to frequent the house, but never informally. It is doubtful
+whether he could have practised informality in that house even at
+Siward's invitation. Something of the attitude of a college lower
+classman for a man in a class above seemed to typify their relations;
+and that feeling is never entirely eradicated between men, no matter how
+close their relationship in after-life.
+
+One very bad night Plank came to the house and was admitted by
+Gumble. Wands, the second man, stood behind the aged butler; both were
+apparently frightened.
+
+That something was amiss appeared plainly enough; and Plank,
+instinctively producing a card, dropped it on a table and turned to go.
+It may have been that the old butler recognised the innate delicacy
+of the motive, or it may have been a sudden confidence born of the
+necessities of the case, for he asked Plank to see his young master.
+
+And Plank, looking him in the eyes, considered, until his courage began
+to fail. Then he went up-stairs.
+
+It was a bad night outside, and it was a bad night for Siward. The
+master-vice had him by the throat. He sat there, clutching the arms of
+his chair, his broken leg, in its plaster casing, extended in front of
+him; and when he saw Plank enter he glared at him.
+
+Hour after hour the two men sat there, the one white with rage, but
+helpless; the other, stolid, inert, deaf to demands for intercession
+with the arch-vice, dumb under pleadings for a compromise. He refused to
+interfere with the butler, and Siward insulted him. He refused to go and
+find the decanters himself, and Siward deliberately cursed him.
+
+Outside the storm raged all night. Inside that house Plank faced a more
+awful tempest. There was a sedative on the mantel and he offered it to
+Siward, who struck it from his hand.
+
+Once, toward morning, Siward feigned sleep, and Plank, heavy head on his
+breast, feigned it, too. Then Siward bent over stealthily and opened a
+drawer in his desk; and Plank was on his feet like a flash, jerking the
+morphine from Siward's fingers.
+
+The doctor arrived at daylight, responding to Plank's summons by
+telephone, and Plank went away with the morphine and Siward's revolver
+bulging in the side-pockets of his dinner coat.
+
+He did not come again for a week. A short note from Siward started him
+toward lower Fifth Avenue.
+
+There was little said when he came into the room:
+
+"Hello, Plank! Glad to see you."
+
+"Hello! Are you all right?"
+
+"All right. ... Much obliged for pulling me through. Wish you'd pull me
+through this Amalgamated Electric knot-hole, too--some day!"
+
+"Do--do you mean it?" ventured Plank, turning red with delight.
+
+"Mean it? Indeed I do--if you do. Sit here; ring for whatever you
+want--or perhaps you'd better go down to the sideboard. I'm not to be
+trusted with the odour in the room just yet."
+
+"I don't care for anything," said Plank.
+
+"Whenever you please, then. You know the house, and you don't mind my
+being unceremonious, do you?"
+
+"No," said Plank.
+
+"Good!" rejoined Siward, laughing. "I expect the same friendly lack of
+ceremony from you."
+
+But that, for Plank, was impossible. All he could do was to care the
+more for Siward without crossing the border line so suddenly made free;
+all he could do was to sit there rolling and unrolling his gloves into
+wads with his clumsy, highly coloured hands, and gaze consciously at
+everything in the room except Siward.
+
+On that day, at Plank's shy suggestion, they talked over Siward's
+business affairs for the first time. After that day, and for many days,
+the subject became the key-note to their intercourse; and Siward at
+last understood that this man desired to do him a service absolutely and
+purely from a disinterested liking for him, and as an expression of that
+liking. Also he was unexpectedly made aware of Plank's serenely unerring
+business sagacity.
+
+That surface cynicism which all must learn, sooner or later, or remain
+the victims of naive credulity, was, in Siward, nothing but an outer
+skin, as it is in all who acquire wisdom with their cynicism. It was not
+long proof against Plank's simple attitude and undisguised pleasure in
+doing something for a man he liked. Under that simplicity no motive, no
+self-interest could skulk; and Siward knew it.
+
+As for the quid pro quo, Siward had insisted from the first on a
+business arrangement. The treachery of Major Belwether through sheer
+fright had knocked the key-stone from the syndicate, and the dam which
+made the golden pool possible collapsed, showering Plank's brokers who
+worked patiently with buckets and mops.
+
+The double treachery of Quarrier was now perfectly apparent to Plank.
+Siward, true to his word, held his stock in the face of ruin. Kemp
+Ferrall, furious with the major, and beginning to suspect Quarrier, came
+to Plank for consultation.
+
+Then the defence formed under Plank. Legal machinery was set in motion,
+meeting followed meeting, until Harrington cynically showed his hand and
+Quarrier smiled his rare smile; and the fight against Inter-County
+was on in the open, preceded by a furious clamour of charge and
+counter-charge in the columns of the daily press.
+
+That Quarrier had been guilty of something or other was the vague
+impression of that great news-reading public which, stunned by the
+reiteration of figures in the millions, turns to the simpler pleasures
+of a murder trial. Besides, whatever Quarrier had done was no doubt done
+within the chalk-marked courts of the game, though probably his shoes
+may have become a little dusty.
+
+But who could hope to bring players like Quarrier before the ordinary
+umpire, or to investigate his methods with the everyday investigations
+reserved for everyday folk, whose road through business life lay always
+between State's prison and the penitentiary and whose guide-posts were
+policemen?
+
+Let the great syndicates join in battle; they could only slay each
+other. Let the millions bury their millions; the public, though poorer,
+could never be the wiser.
+
+
+Siward, at his desk, the May sunshine pouring over him, sat conning the
+heaps of typewritten sheets, striving to see between the lines some
+sign of fortune for his investments, some promise of release from the
+increasing financial stringency, some chance of justice being done on
+those high priests who had been performing marvellous tricks upon their
+altar so that by miracle, mine and thine spelled "ours," and all the
+tablets of the law were lettered upside down and hind-side before, like
+the Black Mass.
+
+Gumble knocked presently. Siward raised his perplexed eyes.
+
+"Miss Page, sir."
+
+"Oh," said Siward doubtfully; then, "Ask Miss Page to come up."
+
+Marion strolled in a moment later, exchanged a vigorous hand shake with
+Siward, pulled up a chair and dropped into it. She was in riding-habit
+and boots, faultlessly groomed as usual, her smooth, pale hair sleek in
+its thick knot, collar and tie immaculate as her gloves.
+
+"Well," she said, "any news of your ankle, Stephen?"
+
+"I inquired about my ankle," said Siward, amused, "and they tell me it
+is better, thank you."
+
+"Sit a horse pretty soon?" she asked, dropping one leg over the other
+and balancing the riding-crop across her knee.
+
+"Not for awhile. You have a fine day for a gallop, Marion," looking
+askance at the sunshine filtering through the first green leaves of the
+tree outside his window.
+
+"It's all right--the day. I'm trying Tom O'Hara's new mare. They say
+she's a little devil. I never saw a devil of a horse--did you? There may
+be some out West."
+
+"Don't break that pretty neck of yours, Marion," he said.
+
+She lifted her eyes; then, briefly, "No fear."
+
+"Yes, there is," he said. "There's no use looking for trouble in a
+horse. Women who hunt as you hunt take all that's legitimately coming to
+them. Why doesn't Tom ride his own mare?"
+
+"She rolled on him," said Marion simply.
+
+"Oh. Is he hurt?"
+
+"Ribs."
+
+"Well, he's lucky."
+
+"Isn't he! He'll miss a few drills with his precious squadron, that's
+all."
+
+She was looking about her, preoccupied. "Where are your cigarettes,
+Stephen? Oh, I see. Don't try to move--don't be silly."
+
+She leaned over the desk, her fresh young face close to his, and reached
+for the cigarettes. The clean-cut head, the sweetness of her youth and
+femininity, boyish in its allure, were very attractive to him--more so,
+perhaps, because of his isolation from the atmosphere of women.
+
+"It's all very well, Marion, your coming here--and it's very sweet of
+you, and I enjoy it immensely," he said: "but it's a deuced imprudent
+thing for you to do, and I feel bound to say so for your sake every time
+you come."
+
+She leaned back in her chair and coolly blew a wreath of smoke at him.
+
+"All right," he said, unconvinced.
+
+"Certainly it's all right. I've done what suited me all my life. This
+suits me."
+
+"It suits me, too," he said, "only I wish you'd tell your mother before
+somebody around this neighbourhood informs her first."
+
+"Let 'em. You'll be out by that time. Do you think I'm going to tell my
+mother now and have her stop it?"
+
+"Oh, Marion, you know perfectly well that it won't do for a girl to
+ignore first principles. I'm horribly afraid somebody will talk about
+you."
+
+"What would you do, then?"
+
+"I?" he asked, disturbed. "What could I do?"
+
+"Why, I suppose," she said slowly, "you'd have to marry me."
+
+"Then," he rejoined with a laugh, "I should think you'd be scared into
+prudence by the prospect."
+
+"I am not easily--scared," she said, looking down.
+
+"Not at that prospect?" he said jestingly.
+
+She looked up at him; and he remembered afterward the poise of her small
+head, and the slow, clear colour mounting; remembered that it conveyed
+to him, somehow, a hint of courage and sincerity.
+
+"I am not frightened," she said gravely.
+
+Gravity fell upon him, too. In this young girl's eyes there was no
+evasion. For a long while he had felt vaguely that matters were not
+perfectly balanced between them. At moments, even, he had felt an
+indefinable uneasiness in her presence. The situation troubled him, too;
+and though he had known her from childhood and had long ago learned
+to discount her vagaries of informality, her manners sans facon, her
+careless ignoring of convention, and the unembarrassed terms of her
+speech, his common-sense could not countenance this defiance of social
+usage, sure to involve even such a privileged girl as she in some
+unpleasantness.
+
+This troubled him; and now, partly sceptical, yet partly conscious,
+too, of her very frank liking for himself, he looked at her, perplexed,
+apprehensive, unwilling to credit her with any deeper meaning than her
+words expressed.
+
+She had grown pink and restless under his gaze, using her cigarette
+frequently, and continually flicking the ashes to the floor, until the
+little finger of her glove was blackened.
+
+But courage characterised her race. It had required more than he knew
+for her to come into his house; and now that she was there loyalty to
+her professed principles--that a man and a woman were by right endowed
+with equal privileges--forced her to face the consequences of her theory
+in the practise.
+
+She had, with calm face and quivering heart, given him an opening. That
+was a concession to her essential womanhood and a cowardice on her part;
+and, lest she turn utterly traitor to herself, she faced him again,
+cool, quiet, and terror in her heart:
+
+"I'd be very glad to marry you--if you c-cared to," she said.
+
+"Marion!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Oh--I--it is--of course it's a joke."
+
+"No; I'm serious."
+
+"Serious! Nonsense!"
+
+"Please don't say that."
+
+He looked at her, appalled.
+
+"But I--but you don't love--can't be in love with me!" he stammered.
+
+"I am."
+
+Gloved hands tightening on either end of her riding-crop, she bent her
+knee against it, balancing there, looking straight at him.
+
+"I meant to tell you so," she said, "if you didn't tell me first. So--I
+was rather--tired waiting. So I've told you."
+
+"It is only a fancy," he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
+
+"I don't think so, Stephen."
+
+But he could not meet her candour, and he sat, silent, miserable,
+staring at the papers on his desk.
+
+After a while she drew a deep, even breath, and rose to her feet.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said simply.
+
+"Marion--I never dreamed that--"
+
+"You should dream truer," she said. There was a suspicion of mist in her
+clear eyes; she turned abruptly to the window and stood there for a few
+moments, looking down at her brougham waiting in front of the house. "It
+can't be helped, can it!" she said, turning suddenly.
+
+He found no answer to her question.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, walking to him with outstretched hand; "it's all
+in a lifetime, Steve, and that's too short for a good, clean friendship
+like ours to die in. I don't think I'd better come again. Look me up for
+a gallop when you're fit. And you might drop me a line to say how you're
+getting on. Is it all right, Stephen?"
+
+"All right," he said hoarsely.
+
+Their hands tightened in a crushing clasp; then she swung on her spurred
+heel and walked out, leaving him haggard, motionless. He heard the front
+door close, and he swayed forward, dropping his face in his hands, arms
+half buried among the papers on his desk.
+
+Plank found him there, an hour later, fumbling among the papers, and
+at first feared that he read in Siward's drawn and sullen face a
+premonition of the ever-dreaded symptoms.
+
+"Quarrier has telephoned asking for a conference at last," he said
+abruptly, sitting down beside Siward.
+
+"Well," inquired Siward, "how do you interpret that--favourably?"
+
+"I am inclined to think he is a bit uneasy," said Plank cautiously.
+"Harrington made a secret trip to Albany last week. You didn't know
+that."
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, he did. It looks to me as though there were going to be a ghost
+of a chance for an investigation. That is how I am inclined to consider
+Harrington's trip and Quarrier's flag of truce. But--I don't know.
+There's nothing definite, of course. You are as conversant with the
+situation as I am."
+
+"No, I am not. That is like you, Plank, to ascribe to me the same
+business sense that you possess, but I haven't got it. It's very nice
+and considerate of you, but I haven't it, and you know it."
+
+"I think you have."
+
+"You think so because you think generously. That doesn't alter the
+facts. Now tell me what you have concluded that we ought to do and I'll
+say 'Amen,' as usual."
+
+Plank laughed, and looked over several sheets of the typewritten matter
+on the desk beside him.
+
+"Suppose I meet Quarrier?" he said.
+
+"All right. Did he suggest a date?"
+
+"At four, this afternoon."
+
+"Do you think you had better go?"
+
+"I think it might do no harm," said Plank.
+
+"Amen!" observed Siward, laughing, and touched the electric button for
+the early tea, which Plank adored at any hour.
+
+For a while they dropped business and discussed their tea, chatting very
+comfortably together. Long ago Siward had found out something of the
+mental breadth of the man beside him, and that he was worth listening to
+as well as talking to. For Plank had formed opinions upon a great many
+subjects; and whatever culture he possessed was from sheer desire for
+self-cultivation.
+
+"You know, Siward," he was accustomed to say with a smile, "you inherit
+what I am qualifying myself to transmit."
+
+"It will be all one in a thousand years," was Siward's usual rejoinder.
+
+"That is not going to prevent my efforts to become a good ancestor to
+my descendants," Plank would say laughingly. "They shall have a chance,
+every one of them. And it will be up to them if they don't make good."
+
+Sipping their tea in the pleasant, sunny room, they discussed matters
+of common interest--Plank's recent fishing trip on Long Island and the
+degeneracy of liver-fed trout; the North Side Club's Experiments with
+European partridges; Billy Fleetwood's new stables; forestry, and the
+chance of national legislation concerning it--a subject of which Plank
+was very fond, and on which he had exceedingly sound ideas.
+
+Drifting from one topic to another through the haze of their cigars,
+silent when it pleased them to be so, there could be no doubt of their
+liking for each other upon a basis at least superficially informal; and
+if Plank's manner retained at times a shade of quaint reserve, Siward's
+was perhaps the more frankly direct for that reason.
+
+"I think," observed Plank, laying his half-consumed cigar on the silver
+tray, "that I'd better go down town and see what our pre-glacial friend
+Quarrier wants. I may be able to furnish him with a new sensation."
+
+"I wonder if Quarrier ever experienced a genuine sensation," mused
+Siward, arranging the papers before him into divisional piles.
+
+"Plenty," said Plank drily.
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"Plenty," repeated Plank. "It's your thin-lipped, thin-nosed,
+pasty-pale, symmetrical brother who is closer to the animal under his
+mask than any of us imagine. I--" He hesitated. "Do you want to know
+my opinion of Quarrier? I've never told you. I don't usually talk about
+my--dislikes. Do you want to know?"
+
+"Certainly," said Siward curiously.
+
+"Then, first of all, he is a sentimentalist."
+
+"Oh! oh!" jeered Siward.
+
+"A sentimentalist of the weakest type," continued Plank obstinately;
+"because he sentimentalises over himself. Siward, look out for the man
+with elaborate whiskers! Look out for a pallid man with eccentric hair
+and a silky beard! He's a sentimentalist of the sort I told you, and is
+usually utterly remorseless in his dealings with women. I suppose you
+think me a fool."
+
+"I think Quarrier is indifferent concerning women," said Siward.
+
+"You are wrong. He is a sensualist," insisted Plank.
+
+"Oh, no, Plank--not that!"
+
+"A sensualist. His sentimental vanity he lavishes upon himself--the
+animal in him on women. His caution, born of self-consideration, is the
+caution of a beast. Such men as he believe they live in the focus of a
+million eyes. Part of his vanity is to deceive those eyes and be what he
+is under the mask he wears; and to do that one must be the very master
+of caution. That is Quarrier's vanity. To conceal, is his monomania."
+
+"I cannot see how you draw that conclusion."
+
+"Siward, he is a bad man, and crafty--every inch of him."
+
+"Oh, come, now! Only characters in fiction have no saving qualities. You
+never heard of anybody in real life being entirely bad."
+
+"No, I didn't; and Quarrier isn't. For example, he is kind to valuable
+animals--I mean, his own."
+
+"Good to animals! The bad man's invariable characteristic!" laughed
+Siward. "I'm kind to 'em, too. What else is he good to?"
+
+"Everybody knows that he hasn't a poor relation left; not one. He is
+loyal to them in a rare way; he filled one subsidiary company full of
+them. It is known down town as the 'Home for Destitute Nephews.'"
+
+"Seriously, Plank, the man must have something good in him."
+
+"Because of your theory?"
+
+"Yes. I believe that nobody is entirely bad. So do the great masters of
+fiction."
+
+Plank said gravely: "He is a good son to his father. That is perfectly
+true--kind, considerate, dutiful, loyal. The financial world is
+perfectly aware that Stanley Quarrier is to-day the most unscrupulous
+old scoundrel who ever crushed a refinery or debauched a railroad! and
+his son no more believes it than he credits the scandalous history of
+the Red Woman of Wall Street. Why, when I was making arrangements
+for that chapel Quarrier came to me, very much perturbed, because he
+understood that all the memorial chapels for the cathedral had been
+arranged for, and he had desired to build one to the memory of his
+father! His father! Isn't it awful to think of!--a chapel to the memory
+of the briber of judges and of legislatures, the cynical defier of
+law!--this hoary old thief, who beggared the widow and stripped the
+orphan, and whose only match, as a great unpunished criminal, was that
+sinister little predecessor of his, who dreamed even of debauching the
+executive of these United States!"
+
+Siward had never before seen Plank aroused, and he said so, smiling.
+
+"That is true," said Plank earnestly; "I waste little temper over my
+likes and dislikes. But what I know, and what I legitimately infer
+concerning the younger Quarrier is enough to rouse any man's anger.
+I won't tell you what I know. I can't. It has nothing to do with his
+financial methods, nothing to do with this business; but it is bad--bad
+all through! The blow his father struck at the integrity of the bench
+the son strikes at the very key-stone of all social safeguard. It isn't
+my business; I cannot interfere; but Siward, I'm a damned restless
+witness, and the old, primitive longing comes back on me to strike--to
+take a stick and use it to splinters on that man whom I am going down
+town to politely confer with! ... And I must go now. Good-bye. ... Take
+care of that ankle. Any books I can send you--anything you want? No? All
+right. And don't worry over Amalgamated Electric, for I really believe
+we are beginning to frighten them badly."
+
+"Good-bye," said Siward. "Don't forget that I'm always at home."
+
+"You must get out," muttered Plank; "you must get well, and get out into
+the sunshine." And he went ponderously down-stairs to the square hall,
+where Gumble held his hat and gloves ready for him.
+
+He had come in a big yellow and black touring-car; and now, with a brief
+word to his mechanic, he climbed into the tonneau, and away they sped
+down town--a glitter of bull's-eye, brass, and varnish, with the mellow,
+horn notes floating far in their wake.
+
+It was exactly four o'clock when he was ushered into Quarrier's private
+suite in the great marble Algonquin Loan and Trust Building, the upper
+stories of which were all golden in the sun against a sky of sapphire.
+
+Quarrier was alone, gloved and hatted, as though on the point of
+leaving. He showed a slight surprise at seeing Plank, as if he had
+not been expecting him; and the manner of offering his hand subtly
+emphasised it as he came forward with a trace of inquiry in his
+greeting.
+
+"You said four o'clock, I believe," observed Plank bluntly.
+
+"Ah, yes. It was about that--ah--matter--ah--I beg your pardon; can you
+recollect?"
+
+"I don't know what it is you want. You requested this meeting," said
+Plank, yawning.
+
+"Certainly. I recollect it perfectly now. Will you sit here, Mr.
+Plank--for a moment--"
+
+"If it concerns Inter-County, it will take longer than a moment--unless
+you cannot spare the time now," said Plank. "Shall we call it off?"
+
+"As a matter of fact I am rather short of time just now."
+
+"Then let us postpone it. I shall probably be at my office if you are
+anxious to see me."
+
+Quarrier looked at him, then laid aside his hat and sat down. There was
+little to be done in diplomacy with an oaf like that.
+
+"Mr. Plank," he said, without any emphasis at all, "there should be some
+way for us to come together. Have you considered it?"
+
+"No, I haven't," replied Plank.
+
+"I mean, for you and me to try to understand each other."
+
+"For us?" asked Plank, raising his blond eyebrows. "Do you mean
+Amalgamated Electric and Inter-County, impersonally?"
+
+"I mean for us, personally."
+
+"There is no way," said Plank, with conviction.
+
+"I think there is."
+
+"You are wasting time thinking it, Mr. Quarrier."
+
+Quarrier's velvet-fringed eyes began to narrow, but his calm voice
+remained unchanged: "We are merely wasting energy in this duel," he
+said.
+
+"Oh, no; I don't feel wasted."
+
+"We are also wasting opportunities," continued Quarrier slowly. "This
+whole matter is involving us in a tangle of litigation requiring our
+constant effort, constant attention."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Quarrier, but you take it too seriously. I
+have found, in this affair, nothing except a rather agreeable mental
+exhilaration."
+
+"Mr. Plank, if you are not inclined to be serious--"
+
+"I am," said Plank so savagely that Quarrier, startled, could not doubt
+him. "I like this sort of thing, Mr. Quarrier. Anything that is hard
+to overcome, I like to overcome. The pleasure in life, to me, is to
+win out. I am fighting you with the greatest possible satisfaction to
+myself."
+
+"Perhaps you see victory ahead," said Quarrier calmly.
+
+"I do, Mr. Quarrier, I do. But not in the manner you fear I may hope for
+it."
+
+"Do you mind saying in what manner you are already discounting your
+victory, Mr Plank?"
+
+"No, I don't mind telling you. I have no batteries to mask. I don't care
+how much you know about my resources; so I'll tell you what I see, Mr.
+Quarrier. I see a parody of the popular battle between razor-back and
+rattler. The rattler only strives to strike and kill, not to swallow.
+Mr. Quarrier, that old razor-back isn't going home hungry; but--he's
+going home."
+
+"I'm afraid I am not familiar enough with the natural history you quote
+to follow you," said Quarrier with a sneer, his long fingers busy with
+the silky point of his beard.
+
+"No, you won't follow me home; you'll come with me, when it's all over.
+Now is it very plain to you, Mr. Quarrier?"
+
+Quarrier said, without emotion: "I repeat that it would be easy for you
+and me to merge our differences on a basis absolutely satisfactory to
+you and to me--and to Harrington."
+
+"You are mistaken," said Plank, rising. "Good afternoon."
+
+Quarrier rose, too. "You decline to discuss the matter?" he asked.
+
+"It has been discussed sufficiently."
+
+"Then why did you come here?"
+
+"To see for myself how afraid of me you really are," said Plank. "Now I
+know, and so do you."
+
+"You desire to make it a personal matter?" inquired Quarrier, in a low
+voice, his face dead white in the late sunlight which illuminated the
+room.
+
+"Personal? No--impersonal; because there could be absolutely nothing
+personal between us, Mr. Quarrier; and the only thing in the world that
+there ought to be between us are a few stout, steel bars. Beg pardon
+for talking shop. I'm a shopkeeper, and I'm in the steel business, and I
+lack opportunities for cultivation. Good day."
+
+"Mr. Plank--"
+
+"Mr. Quarrier, I want to tell you something. Never before, in business
+differences, has private indignation against any individual interfered
+or modified my course of action. It does now; but it does not dictate
+my policy toward you; it merely, as I say, modifies it. I am perfectly
+aware of what I am doing; what social disaster I am inviting by this
+attitude toward you personally; what financial destruction I am courting
+in arousing the wrath of the Algonquin Trust Company and of the powerful
+interests intrenched behind Inter-County Electric. I know what the
+lobby is; I know what judge cannot be counted on; I know my peril and my
+chances, every one; and I take them--every one. For it is a good fight,
+Mr. Quarrier; it will be talked of for years to come, wonderingly; not
+because of your effrontery, not because of my obstinacy, but because
+such monstrous immorality could ever have existed in this land of ours.
+Your name, Harrington's, mine, will have become utterly forgotten long,
+long before the horror of these present conditions shall cease to be
+remembered."
+
+He stretched out one ponderous arm, pointing full between Quarrier's
+unwinking eyes.
+
+"Take your fighting chance--it is the cleanest thing you ever touched;
+and use it cleanly, or there'll be no mercy shown you when your time
+comes. Let the courts alone--do you hear me? Let the legislature alone.
+Keep your manicured hands off the ermine. And tell Harrington to shove
+his own cold, splay fingers into his own pockets for a change. They'll
+be warmer than his feet by this time next year."
+
+For a moment he towered there, powerful, bulky, menacing; then his arm
+dropped heavily--the old stolid expression came back into his face,
+leaving it calm, bovine, almost stupid again. And he turned, moving
+slowly toward the door, holding his hat carefully in his gloved hand.
+
+Stepping out of the elevator on the ground floor he encountered
+Mortimer, and halted instinctively. He had not seen Mortimer for weeks;
+neither had Leila; and now he looked at him inquiringly, disturbed at
+his battered and bloodshot appearance.
+
+"Oh," said Mortimer, "you down here?"
+
+"Have you been out of town?" asked Plank cautiously.
+
+Mortimer nodded, and started to pass on toward the bronze cage of the
+elevator, but something seemed to occur to him suddenly; he checked his
+pace, turned, and waddled after Plank, rejoining him on the marble steps
+of the rotunda.
+
+"See here," he panted, holding Plank by the elbow and breathing heavily
+even after the short chase across the lobby, "I meant to tell you
+something. Come over here and sit down a moment."
+
+Still grasping Plank's elbow in his puffy fingers, he directed him
+toward a velvet seat in a corner of the lobby; and here they sat down,
+while Mortimer mopped his fat neck with his handkerchief, swearing at
+the heat under his breath.
+
+"Look here," he said; "I promised you something once, didn't I?"
+
+"Did you?" said Plank, with his bland, expressionless stare of an
+overgrown baby.
+
+"Oh, cut that out! You know damn well I did; and when I say a thing I
+make good. D'ye see?"
+
+"I don't see," said Plank, "what you are talking about."
+
+"I'm talking about what I said I'd do for you. Haven't I made good?
+Haven't I put you into everything I said I would? Don't you go
+everywhere? Don't people ask you everywhere?"
+
+"Yes--in a way," said Plank wearily. "I am very grateful; I always will
+be. ... Can I do anything for you, Leroy?"
+
+Mortimer became indignant at the implied distrust of the purity of his
+motives; and Plank, failing to stem the maudlin tirade, relapsed into
+patient silence, speculating within himself as to what it could be that
+Mortimer wanted.
+
+It came out presently. Mortimer had attended a "killing" at Desmond's,
+and, as usual, had provided the piece de resistance for his soft-voiced
+host. All he wanted was a temporary deposit to tide over matters. He had
+never approached Plank in vain, and he did not do so now, for Plank had
+a pocket cheque-book and a stylograph.
+
+"It's damn little to ask, isn't it?" he muttered resentfully. "That will
+only square matters with Desmond; it doesn't leave me anything to go on
+with," and he pocketed his cheque with a scowl.
+
+Plank was discreetly silent.
+
+"And that is not what I chased you for, either," continued Mortimer. "I
+didn't intend to say anything about Desmond; I was going to fix it
+in another way!" He cast an involuntary and sinister glance at the
+elevators gliding ceaselessly up and down at the end of the vast marble
+rotunda; then his protruding eyes sought Plank's again:
+
+"Beverly, old boy, I've got a certain mealy-faced hypocrite where any
+decent man would like to have him--by the scruff of his neck. He's fit
+only to kick; and I'm going to kick him good and plenty; and in the
+process he's going to let go of several things." Mortimer leered,
+pleased with his own similes, then added rather hastily: "I mean, he's
+going to drop several things that don't belong to him. Leave it to me to
+shake him down; he'll drop them all right. ... One of 'em's yours."
+
+Plank looked at him.
+
+"I told you once that I'd let you know when to step up and say 'Good
+evening' didn't I?"
+
+Plank continued to stare.
+
+"Didn't I?" repeated Mortimer peevishly, beginning to lose countenance.
+
+"I don't understand you," said Plank, "and I don't think I want to
+understand you."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Mortimer thickly; "don't you want to marry
+that girl!" but he shrank dismayed under the slow blaze that lighted
+Plank's blue eyes.
+
+"All right," he stammered, struggling to his fat legs and instinctively
+backing away; "I thought you meant business. I--what the devil do I care
+who you marry! It's the last time I try to do anything for you, or for
+anybody else! Mark that, my friend. I've plenty to worry over; I've
+a lot to keep me busy without lying awake to figure out how to do
+kindnesses to old friends. Damn this ingratitude, anyway!"
+
+Plank gazed at him for a moment; the anger in his face had died out.
+
+"I am not ungrateful," he said. "You may say almost anything except
+that, Leroy. I am not disloyal, no matter what else I may be. But you
+have made a bad mistake. You made it that day at Black Fells when you
+offered to interfere. I supposed you understood then that I could never
+tolerate from anybody anything of such a nature. It appears that you
+didn't. However, you understand it now. So let us forget the matter."
+
+But Mortimer, keenly appreciative of the pleasures of being
+misunderstood, squeezed some moisture out of his distended eyes, and sat
+down, a martyr to his emotions. "To think," he gulped, "that you, of all
+men, should turn on me like this!"
+
+"I didn't mean to. Can't you understand, Leroy, that you hurt me?"
+
+"Hurt hell!" retorted Mortimer vindictively. "You've had sensation
+battered out of you by this time. I guess society has landed you a few
+while I was boosting you over the outworks. Don't play that old con game
+on me! You tried to get her and you couldn't. Now I come along and
+offer to put you next and you yell about your hurt feelings! Oh, splash!
+There's another lady, that's all."
+
+"Let it go at that, then," said Plank, reddening.
+
+"But I tell you--"
+
+"Drop it!" snapped Plank.
+
+"Oh, very well! if you're going to take it that way again--"
+
+"I am. Cut it! And now let me ask you a question: Where were you going
+when I met you?"
+
+"What do you want to know for?" asked Mortimer sullenly.
+
+"Why, I'll tell you, Leroy. If you have any idea of identifying yourself
+with Quarrier's people, of seeking him at this juncture with the
+expectation of investing any money in his schemes, you had better not do
+so."
+
+"Investing!" sneered Mortimer. "Well, no, not exactly, having nothing
+to invest, thanks to my being swindled into joining his Amalgamated
+Electric gang. Don't worry. If there's any shaking down to be done, I'll
+do it, my friend," and he rose, and started toward the elevators.
+
+"Wait," said Plank. "Why, man, you can't frighten Quarrier! What did you
+sell your holdings for? Why didn't you come to us--to me? What's the
+use of going to Quarrier now, and scolding? You can't scare a man like
+that."
+
+Mortimer fairly grinned in his face.
+
+"Your big mistake," he sneered, "is in undervaluing others. You don't
+think I amount to very much, do you, Beverly? But I'm going to try to
+take care of myself all the same." He laughed, showing his big teeth,
+and the vanity in him began to drug him. "No, you think I don't know
+much. But men like you and Quarrier will damn soon find out! I want you
+to understand," he went on excitedly, forgetting the instinctive caution
+which in saner moments he was only too certain that his present business
+required--"I want you to understand a few things, my friend, and one of
+them is that I'm not afraid of Quarrier, and another is, I'm not afraid
+of you!"
+
+"Leroy--"
+
+"No, not afraid of you, either!" repeated Mortimer with an ugly stare.
+"Don't try any of your smug, aint-it-a-shame-he-drinks ways on me,
+Beverly! I'm getting tired of it; I'm tired of it now, by God! You keep
+a civil tongue in your head after this--do you understand?--and we'll
+get on all right. If you don't, I've the means to make you!"
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+
+"Not a bit of it! Too damn sane for you and Leila to hoodwink!"
+
+"You are crazy!" repeated Plank, aghast.
+
+"Am I? You and Leila can take the matter into court, if you want
+to--unless I do. And"--here he leaned forward, showing his teeth
+again--"the next time you kiss her, close the door!"
+
+Then he went away up the marble steps and entered an elevator; and
+Plank, grave and pale, went out into the street and entered his big
+touring-car. But the drive up town and through the sunlit park gave him
+no pleasure, and he entered his great house with a heavy, lifeless step,
+head bent, as though counting every crevice in the stones under his
+lagging feet. For the first time in all his life he was afraid of a man.
+
+
+The man he was afraid of had gone directly to Quarrier's office, missing
+the gentleman he was seeking by such a small fraction of a minute
+that he realised they must have passed each other in the elevators, he
+ascending while Quarrier was descending.
+
+Mortimer turned and hurried to the elevator, hoping to come up with
+Quarrier in the rotunda, or possibly in the street outside; but he was
+too late, and, furious to think of the time he had wasted with Plank, he
+crawled into a hansom and bade the driver take him to a number he gave,
+designating one of the new limestone basement houses on the upper west
+side.
+
+All the way up town, as he jolted about in his seat, he angrily
+regretted the meeting with Plank, even in spite of the cheque. What
+demon had possessed him to boast--to display his hand when there
+had been no necessity? Plank was still ready to give him aid at a
+crisis--had always been ready. Time enough when Plank turned stingy to
+use persuasion; time enough when Plank attempted to dodge him to employ
+a club. And now, for no earthly reason, intoxicated with his own vanity,
+catering to his own long-smouldering resentment, he had used his club on
+a willing horse--deliberately threatened a man whose gratitude had been
+good for many a cheque yet.
+
+"Ass that I am!" fumed Mortimer; "now when I'm stuck I'll have to go at
+him with the club, if I want any money out of him. Confound him,
+he's putting me in a false position! He's trying to make it look like
+extortion! I won't do it! I'm no blackmailer! I'll starve, before I go
+to him again! No blundering, clumsy Dutchman can make a blackmailer out
+of me by holding hands with that scoundrelly wife of mine! That's the
+reason he did it, too! Between them they are trying to make my loans
+from Plank look like blackmail! It would serve them right if I took them
+up--if I called their bluff, and stuck Plank up in earnest! But I won't,
+to please them! I won't do any dirty thing like that, to humour them!
+Not much!"
+
+He lay back, rolling about in the jouncing cab, scowling at space.
+
+"Not much!" he repeated. "I'll shake down Quarrier, though! I'll make
+him pay for his treachery--scaring me out of Amalgamated! That will be
+restitution, not extortion!"
+
+He was the angrier because he had been for days screwing up his courage
+to the point of seeking Quarrier face to face. He had not wished to do
+it; the scene, and his own attitude in it, could only be repugnant
+to him, although he continually explained to himself that it was
+restitution, not extortion.
+
+But whatever it was, he didn't like to figure in it, and he had hung
+back as long as circumstances permitted. But his new lodgings and his
+new friends were expensive; and Plank, he supposed, was off somewhere
+fishing; so he hung on as long as it was possible; then, exasperated
+by necessity, started for Quarrier's office, only to miss him by a
+few seconds because he was fool enough to waste his temper and his
+opportunity in making an enemy out of a friend!
+
+"Oh," he groaned, "what an ass I am!" And he got out of his cab in front
+of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on
+the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.
+
+The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean
+fashion. There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a
+wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany
+handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy,
+Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where
+a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass
+chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.
+
+All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at
+the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as
+newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be
+conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.
+
+Yet there was something about it all--about the bluish silvery
+half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid
+in her flamboyant cap and apron--that arrested attention and fixed it.
+The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast
+between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was
+nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains
+were drawn over the lace window hangings; no shadows anywhere, no
+half-lights. The very stillness was gay with suspense, like a pretty
+woman's suppressed laughter glimmering in her eyes.
+
+And into this tinted light, framed in palest blue and white, waddled
+Mortimer, appropriate as a June-bug scrambling in a Sevres teacup.
+
+"Anybody here?" he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny
+grand piano cased in unvarnished Circassian walnut.
+
+"There is nobody at home, sir," said the maid.
+
+"Music lesson over?"
+
+"Yes, sir, at three."
+
+He began to ascend the stairway, breathing heavily, thud, thud over the
+deep velvet strip, his fat hand grasping the banister rail.
+
+Somewhere on the second floor a small dog barked, and Mortimer traversed
+the ball and opened the door into a room hung with gold Spanish leather
+and pale green curtains.
+
+"Hello, Tinto!" he said affably as a tiny Japanese spaniel hurled
+herself at him, barking furiously, then began writhing and weaving
+herself about him, gurgling recognition and welcome.
+
+He sat down heavily in a padded easy-chair. The spaniel sprang into his
+lap, wheezing, sniffling, goggling its protruding eyes. Mortimer liked
+the dog, but he didn't like what the owner of the dog said about the
+resemblance between his own and Tinto's eyes.
+
+"Get down!" he said; "you're shedding black and white hairs all over
+me." But the dog didn't want to get down, and Mortimer's good nature
+permitted her to curl up on his fat knees and sleep that nervous,
+twitching sleep peculiar to overpampered toy canines.
+
+The southern sun was warm in the room; the windows open, but not a
+silken hanging stirred.
+
+Presently another maid entered, with an apple cut into thin wafers and a
+decanter of port; and Mortimer lay back in his chair, sopping his apple
+in the thick, crimson wine, and feeding morsels of the combination to
+himself and to Tinto at intervals until the apple was all gone and the
+decanter three-fourths empty.
+
+It was very still in the room--so still, that Mortimer, opening his eyes
+at longer and longer intervals to peer at the door, finally opened them
+no more.
+
+The droning gurgle that he made kept Tinto awake. When his lower jaw
+sagged, and he began to really show what snoring could be, Tinto, very
+nervous, got up and hopped down.
+
+
+It was still daylight when Mortimer awoke, conscious of people about
+him. As he opened his eyes, a man laughed; several people seated by
+the windows joined in. Then, straightening up with an effort, something
+tumbled from his head to the floor and he started to rise.
+
+"Oh, look out, Leroy! Don't step on my hat!" cried a girl's voice; and
+he sank back in his chair, gazing stupidly around.
+
+"Hello! you people!" he said, amused; "I guess I've been asleep. Oh, is
+that you Millbank? Whose hat was that--yours, Lydia?"
+
+He yawned, laughed, turning his heavy eyes from one to another,
+recognising a couple of young girls at the window. He didn't want to
+get up; but there is, in the society he now adorned, a stringency of
+etiquette known as "re-finement," and which, to ignore, is to become
+unpopular.
+
+So he got onto his massive legs and went over to shake hands with a
+gravity becoming the ceremony.
+
+"How d'ye do, Miss Hutchinson? Thought you were at Asbury Park. How de
+do, Miss Del Garcia. Have you been out in Millbank's motor yet?"
+
+"We broke down at McGowan's Pass," said Miss Del Garcia, laughing the
+laugh that had made her so attractive in "A Word to the Wise."
+
+"Muddy gasoline," nodded Millbank tersely--an iron-jawed, over-groomed
+man of forty, with a florid face shaved blue.
+
+"We passed Mr. Plank's big touring-car," observed Lydia Vyse, shifting
+Tinto to the couch and brushing the black and white hairs from her
+automobile coat. "How much does a car like that cost, Leroy?"
+
+"About twenty-five thousand," he said gloomily. Then, looking up, "Hold
+on, Millbank, don't be going! Why can't you all dine with us? Never
+mind your car; ours is all right, and we'll run out into the country for
+dinner. How about it, Miss Del Garcia?"
+
+But both Miss Del Garcia and Miss Hutchinson had accepted another
+invitation, in which Millbank was also included.
+
+They stood about, veils floating, leather decorated coats thrown back,
+lingering for awhile to talk the garage talk which fascinates people of
+their type; then Millbank looked at the clock, made his adieux to Lydia,
+nodded significantly to Mortimer, and followed the others down-stairs.
+
+There was something amiss with his motor, for it made a startling racket
+in the street, finally plunging forward with a kick.
+
+Lydia laughed as the two young girls in the tonneau turned to nod to her
+in mock despair; then she came running back up-stairs, holding her skirt
+free from her hurrying little feet.
+
+"Well?" she inquired, as Mortimer turned back from the window to
+confront her.
+
+"Nothing doing, little girl," he said with a sombre smile.
+
+She looked at him, slowly divesting herself of her light leather-trimmed
+coat.
+
+"I missed him," said Mortimer.
+
+She flung the coat over a chair, stood a moment, her fingers busy with
+her hair-pegs, then sat down on the couch, taking Tinto into her lap.
+She was very pretty, dark, slim, marvellously graceful in her every
+movement.
+
+"I missed him," repeated Mortimer.
+
+"Can't you see him to-morrow?" she asked.
+
+"I suppose so," said Mortimer slowly. "Oh, Lord! how I hate this
+business!"
+
+"Hasn't he misused your confidence? Hasn't he taken your money?" she
+asked. "It may be unpleasant for you to make him unbelt, but you're a
+coward if you don't!"
+
+"Easy! easy, now!" muttered Mortimer; "I'm going to shake it out of him.
+I said I would, and I will."
+
+"I should hope so; it's yours."
+
+"Certainly it's mine. I wish I'd held fast now. I never supposed Plank
+would take hold. It was that drivelling old Belwether who scared me
+stiff! The minute I saw him scurrying to cover like a singed cat I was
+fool enough to climb the first tree. I've had my lesson, little girl."
+
+"I hope you'll give Howard his. Somebody ought to," she said quietly.
+
+Then gathering up her hat and coat she went into her own apartments.
+Mortimer picked up a cheap magazine, looked over the portraits of
+the actresses, then, hunching up into a comfortable position, settled
+himself to read the theatrical comment.
+
+Later, Lydia not appearing, and his own valet arriving to turn on
+the electricity, bring him his White Rock and Irish and the Evening
+Telegraph, he hoisted his legs into another chair and sprawled there
+luxuriously over his paper until it was time to dress.
+
+About half past eight they dined in a white and pink dining-room
+furnished in dull gray walnut, and served by a stealthy, white-haired,
+pink-skinned butler, chiefly remarkable because it seemed utterly
+impossible to get a glimpse of his eyes. Nobody could tell whether there
+was anything the matter with them or not--and whether they were only
+very deep set or were weak, like an albino's, or were slightly crossed,
+the guests of the house never knew. Lydia herself didn't know, and had
+given up trying to find out.
+
+They had planned to go for a spin in Mortimer's motor after dinner, but
+in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the mood for anything.
+
+Mortimer, as usual, ate and drank heavily. He was a carnivorous man, and
+liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat. As for Lydia, her appetite
+was as erratic as her own impulses. Her table, always wastefully
+elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her
+household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to
+make a decent profit on.
+
+"Do you know, Leroy," she observed, as they left the table and sauntered
+back into the pale blue drawing-room, "do you know that the servants
+haven't been paid for three months?"
+
+"Oh, for Heaven's sake," he expostulated, "don't begin that sort of
+thing! I get enough of that at home; I get it every time I show my
+nose!"
+
+"I only mentioned it," she said carelessly.
+
+"I heard you all right. It isn't any pleasanter for me than for you. In
+fact, I'm sick of it; I'm dead tired of being up against it every day
+of my life. When a man has anything somebody gets it before he can
+sidestep. When a man's dead broke there's nobody in sight to touch."
+
+"You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back."
+
+"Didn't I tell you I missed him?"
+
+"Yes. What are you going to do?"
+
+"Do?"
+
+"Of course. You are going to do something, I suppose."
+
+They had reached the gold and green room above. Lydia began pacing the
+length of a beautiful Kermanshah rug--a pale, delicate marvel of rose
+and green on a ground of ivory--lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than
+the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet.
+
+Mortimer had not responded to her last question. She said presently:
+"You have never told me how you intend to make him pay you back."
+
+"What?" inquired Mortimer, turning very red.
+
+"I said that you haven't yet told me how you intend to make Howard
+return the money you lost through his juggling with your stock."
+
+"I don't exactly know myself," admitted Mortimer, still overflushed.
+"I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I
+asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is
+morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously
+like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the
+company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he
+could scrape together, is a swindler!"
+
+"I think so too," she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug.
+
+There was a little click of her teeth when she ended her inspection and
+looked across at Mortimer. Something in her expressionless gaze seemed
+to reassure him, and give him a confidence he may have lacked.
+
+"I want him to understand that I won't swallow that sort of contemptible
+treatment," asserted Mortimer, lighting a thick, dark cigar.
+
+"I hope you'll make him understand," she said, seating herself and
+resting her clasped, brilliantly ringed hands in her lap.
+
+"Oh, I will--never fear! He has abused my confidence abominably; he has
+practically swindled me, Lydia. Don't you think so?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I'll tell him so, too," blustered Mortimer, shaking himself into an
+upright posture, and laying a pudgy, clinched fist on the table. "I'm
+not afraid of him! He'll find that out, too. I know enough to stagger
+him. Not that I mean to use it. I'm not going to have him think that my
+demands on him for my own property resemble extortion."
+
+"Extortion?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes. I don't want him to think I'm trying to intimidate him. I won't
+have him think I'm a grafter; but I've half a mind to shake that money
+out of him, in one way or another."
+
+He struck the table and looked at her for further sign of approval.
+
+"I'm not afraid of him," he repeated. "I wish to God he were here, and
+I'd tell him so!"
+
+She said coolly: "I was wishing that too."
+
+For a while they sat silent, preoccupied, avoiding each other's direct
+gaze. When she rose he started, watching her in a dazed way as she
+walked to the telephone.
+
+"Shall I?" she asked quietly, turning to him, her hand on the receiver.
+
+"Wait. W-what are you going to do?" he stammered.
+
+"Call him up. Shall I?"
+
+A dull throb of fright pulsed through him.
+
+"You say you are not afraid of him, Leroy."
+
+"No!" he said with an oath, "I am not. Go ahead!"
+
+She unhooked the receiver. After a second or two her low, even voice
+sounded. There came a pause. She rested one elbow on the walnut shelf,
+the receiver tight to her ear. Then:
+
+"Mr. Quarrier, please. ... Yes, Mr. Howard Quarrier. ... No, no name. Say it
+is on business of immediate importance. ... Very well, then; you may say
+that Miss Vyse insists on speaking to him. ... Yes, I'll hold the wire."
+
+She turned, the receiver at her ear, and looked narrowly at Mortimer.
+
+"Won't he speak to you?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm going to find out. Hush a moment!" and in the same calm, almost
+childish voice: "Oh, Howard, is that you? Yes, I know I promised not to
+do this, but that was before things happened! ... Well, what am I to do
+when it is necessary to talk to you? ... Yes, it is necessary! ... I tell
+you it is necessary! ... I am sorry it is not convenient for you to talk
+to me, but I really must ask you to listen! ... No, I shall not write. I
+want to talk to you to-night--now! Yes, you may come here, if you care
+to! ... I think you had better come, Howard. ... Because I am liable to
+continue ringing your telephone until you are willing to listen. ... No,
+there is nobody here. I am alone. What time? ... Very well; I shall expect
+you. Good-bye."
+
+She hung up the receiver and turned to Mortimer:
+
+"He's coming up at once. Did I say anything to scare him particularly?"
+
+"One thing's sure as preaching," said Mortimer; "he's a coward, and I'm
+dammed glad of it," he added naively, relighting his cigar, which had
+gone out.
+
+"If he comes up in his motor he'll be here in a few minutes," she said.
+"Suppose you take your hat and go out. I don't want him to think what
+he will think if he walks into the room and finds you waiting. You have
+your key, Leroy. Walk down the block; and when you see him come in, give
+him five minutes."
+
+Her voice had become a little breathless, and her colour was high.
+Mortimer, too, seemed apprehensive. Things had suddenly begun to work
+themselves out too swiftly.
+
+"Do you think that's best?" he faltered, looking about for his hat.
+"Tell Merkle that nobody has been here, if Quarrier should ask him. Do
+you think we're doing it in the best way, Lydia? By God, it smells of a
+put-up job to me! But I guess it's all right. It's better for me to just
+happen in, isn't it? Don't forget to put Merkle wise."
+
+He descended the stairs hastily. Merkle, of the invisible eyes, held his
+hat and gloves and opened the door for him.
+
+Once on the dark street, his impulse was to flee--get out, get away from
+the whole business. A sullen shame was pumping the hot blood up into his
+neck and cheeks. He strove to find an inoffensive name for what he was
+proposing to do, but ugly terms, synonym after synonym, crowded in to
+characterise the impending procedure, and he walked on angrily, half
+frightened, looking back from moment to moment at the house he had just
+left.
+
+On the corner he halted, breathing spasmodically, for he had struck a
+smarter pace than he had been aware of.
+
+Few people passed him. Once he caught a glimmer of a policeman's buttons
+along the park wall, and an unpleasant shiver passed over him. At the
+same moment an electric hansom flew noiselessly past him. He shrank
+back into the shadow of a porte-cochere. The hansom halted before the
+limestone basement house. A tall figure left it, stood a moment in
+the middle of the sidewalk, then walked quickly to the front door. It
+opened, and the man vanished.
+
+The hansom still waited at the door. Mortimer, his hands shaking, looked
+at his watch by the light of the electric bulbs flanking the gateway
+under which he stood.
+
+There was not much time in which to make up his mind, yet his fright
+was increasing to a pitch which began to enrage him with that coward's
+courage which it is impossible to reckon with.
+
+He had missed Quarrier once to-day when he had been keyed to the
+encounter. Was he going to miss him again through sheer terror? Besides,
+was not Quarrier a coward? Besides, was it not his own money? Had he not
+been vilely swindled by a pretended friend? Urging, lashing himself into
+a heavy, shuffling motion, he emerged from the porte-cochere and lurched
+off down the street. No time to think now, no time for second thought,
+for hesitation, for weakness. He had waited too long already. He had
+waited ten minutes, instead of five. Was Quarrier going to escape again?
+Was he going to get out of the house before--
+
+Fumbling with his latch-key, but with sense enough left to make no
+noise, he let himself in, passed silently through the reception-hall
+and up to the drawing-room floor, where for a second he stood listening.
+Then something of the perverted sportsman sent the blood quivering into
+his veins. He had him! He had run him down! The game was at bay.
+
+An inrush of exhilaration steadied him. He laid his hand on the banister
+and mounted, gloves and hat-brim crushed in the other hand. When he
+entered the room he pretended to see only Lydia.
+
+"Hello, little girl!" he said, laughing, "are you surprised to--"
+
+At that moment he caught sight of Quarrier, and the start he gave
+was genuine enough. Never had he seen in a man's visage such white
+concentration of anger.
+
+"Quarrier!" he stammered, for his acting was becoming real enough to
+supplant art.
+
+Quarrier had risen; his narrowing eyes moved from Mortimer to Lydia,
+then reverted to the man in the combination.
+
+"Rather unexpected, isn't it?" said Mortimer, staring at Quarrier.
+
+"Is it?" returned Quarrier in a low voice.
+
+"I suppose so," sneered Mortimer. "Did you expect to find me here?"
+
+"No. Did you expect to find me?" asked the other, with emphasis
+unmistakable.
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Mortimer hoarsely. "What the devil do you
+mean by asking me if I expected to find you here? If I had, I'd not have
+travelled down to your office to-day to see you; I'd have come here for
+you. Naturally people suppose that an engaged man is likely to give up
+this sort of thing."
+
+Quarrier, motionless, white to the lips, turned his eyes from one to the
+other.
+
+"It doesn't look very well, does it?" asked Mortimer; and he stood
+there, smiling, danger written all over him. "It's beginning rather
+early," he continued, with a sneer. "Most engaged men with a conscience
+wait until they're married before they return to the gay and frivolous.
+But here you are, it seems, handsome, jolly, and irresistible as ever!"
+
+Quarrier looked at Lydia, and his lips moved: "You asked me to come," he
+said.
+
+"No; you offered to. I wished to talk to you over the wire, but "--her
+lip curled, and she shrugged her shoulders--"you seemed to be afraid of
+something or other."
+
+"I couldn't talk to you in my own house, with guests in the room."
+
+"Why not? Did I say anything your fashionable guests might take
+exception to? Am I likely to do anything of that kind?--you coward!"
+
+Quarrier stood very still, then noiselessly turned and made one step
+toward the door.
+
+"One moment," interposed Mortimer blandly. "As long as I travelled down
+town to see you, and find you here so unexpectedly, I may as well take
+advantage of this opportunity to regulate a little matter. You don't
+mind our talking shop for a moment, Lydia? Thank you. It's just a little
+business matter between Mr. Quarrier and myself--a matter concerning a
+few shares of stock which I once held in one of his companies, bought at
+par, and tumbled to ten and--What is the fraction, Quarrier? I forget."
+
+Quarrier thought deeply for a moment; then he raised his head, looking
+full at Mortimer, and under his silky beard an edge of teeth glimmered.
+"Did you wish me to take back those shares at par?" he asked.
+
+"Exactly! I knew you would! I knew you'd see it in that way!" cried
+Mortimer heartily. "Confound it all, Quarrier, I've always said you were
+that sort of man--that you'd never let a friend in on the top floor, and
+kick him clear to the cellar! As a matter of fact, I sold out at ten and
+three-eighths. Wait! Here's a pencil. Lydia, give me that pad on your
+desk. Here you are, Quarrier. It's easy enough to figure out how much
+you owe me."
+
+And as Quarrier slowly began tracing figures on the pad, Mortimer
+rambled on, growing more demonstrative and boisterous every moment.
+"It's white of you, Quarrier--I'll say that! Legally, of course, you
+could laugh at me; but I've always said your business conscience would
+never let you stand for this sort of thing. 'You can talk and talk,'
+I've told people, many a time, 'but you'll never convince me that Howard
+Quarrier hasn't a heart.' No, by jinks! they couldn't make me believe
+it. And here's my proof--here's my vindication! Lydia, would you mind
+hunting up that cheque-book I left here before dinn--"
+
+He had made a mistake. The girl flushed. He choked up, and cast a
+startled glance at Quarrier. But Quarrier, if he heard, made no motion
+of understanding. Perhaps it had not been necessary to convince him of
+the conspiracy.
+
+When he had finished his figures he reviewed them, tracing each total
+with his pencil's point; then quietly handed the pad to Mortimer who
+went over it, and nodded that it was correct.
+
+Lydia rose. Quarrier said, without looking at her: "I have a blank
+cheque with me. May I use one of these pens?"
+
+So he had brought a cheque! Had he supposed that a cheque might be
+necessary when Lydia called him up? Was he prepared to meet any demand
+of hers, too, even before Mortimer appeared on the scene?
+
+"As long as you have a cheque with you, Howard," said Lydia quietly,
+"suppose you simply add to Mr. Mortimer's amount what you had intended
+to offer me?"
+
+He stared at her without answering.
+
+"That little remembrance for old time's sake. Don't you recollect?"
+
+"No," said Quarrier.
+
+"Why, Howard! Didn't you promise me all sorts of things when I wanted
+to go to your friend Mr. Siward, and explain that it was not his fault I
+got into the Patroons Club? Don't you remember I felt dreadfully that he
+was expelled--that I was simply wild to write to the governors and tell
+them how I took Merkle's clothes and drove to the club and waited until
+I saw a lot of men go in, and then crowded in with the push?"
+
+Mortimer was staring at Quarrier out of his protruding eyes. The girl
+leaned forward, deliberate, self-possessed, the red lips edged with
+growing scorn.
+
+"That was a dirty trick!" said Mortimer heavily. He took the pad, added
+a figure, passed it to Lydia, and she coolly wrote a total, underscoring
+it heavily.
+
+"That is the amount," she said.
+
+Quarrier looked at the pad which she had tossed upon the desk. Then he
+slowly wetted his pen with ink, and, laying the loose cheque flat, began
+to fill it in. Afterward he dried it, and, reading it carefully, pushed
+it aside and rose.
+
+"It wouldn't be advisable for you to stop payment, you know," observed
+Mortimer insolently, lying back in his chair and stretching his legs.
+
+"I know," said Quarrier, pausing to turn on them a deathly stare. Then
+he went away. After awhile they heard the door close. But there was
+no sound from the electric hansom, and Mortimer rose and walked to the
+window.
+
+"He's gone," he said.
+
+Lydia stood at the desk, examining the cheque.
+
+"We ought to afford a decent touring-car now," she suggested--"like that
+yellow and black Serin-Chanteur car of Mr. Plank's."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII THE SELLING PRICE
+
+The heat, which had been severe in June, driving the last fashionable
+loiterer into the country, continued fiercely throughout July. August
+was stifling; the chestnut leaves in the parks curled up and grew
+brittle; the elms were blotched; brown stretches scarred the lawns; the
+blazing colour of the geranium beds seemed to intensify the heat, like a
+bed of living coals.
+
+Nobody who was anybody remained in town--except some wealthy business
+men and their million odd employes; but the million, being nobodies,
+didn't count.
+
+Nobody came into town; that is to say that a million odd strangers came
+as usual, swelling the sweltering, resident population sufficiently to
+animate the main commercial thoroughfares morning and evening, but they
+didn't count; the money they spent was, however, very carefully counted.
+
+The fashionable columns of the newspapers informed the fashionable
+ex-urbanated that the city was empty--though the East Side reeked like
+a cattle-pen, and another million or two gasped on the hot, tin roofs
+under the stars, or buried their dirty faces in the parched park grass.
+
+What the press meant to say was that the wealthy section of the city
+within the shadow of St. Patrick's twin white spires and north of
+Fifty-ninth Street was as empty and silent as an abandoned gold-mine.
+Which was true. Miles of elaborate, untenanted dwellings glimmered blank
+under the moon and stood tomb-like in barren magnificence against the
+blazing blue of noon. Miles of plate-glass windows, boarded, or bearing
+between lowered shade and dusty pane the significant parti-coloured
+placard warning the honest thief, stared out at the heated park or, in
+the cross streets, confronted each other with inert hauteur, awaiting
+the pleasure of their absent owners.
+
+The humidity increased; the horses' heads hung heavily under their
+ridiculously pitiful straw bonnets. When the sun was vertical nobody
+stirred; when the bluish shadows began to creep out over baked
+sidewalks, broadening to a strip of superheated shade, a few stirred
+abroad in the deserted streets; here a policeman, thin blue summer tunic
+open, helmet in hand, swabbing the sweat from forehead and neck; there
+a white uniformed street sweeper dragging his rubber-edged mop or a
+section of wet hose; perhaps a haggard peddler of lemonade making for
+the Park wall around the Metropolitan Museum where, a little later, the
+East Side would venture out to sit on the benches, or the great electric
+tourists' busses would halt to dump out a living cargo--perhaps only
+the bent figure of a woman, very shabby, very old, dragging her ancient
+bones along the silent splendour of Fifth Avenue, and peering about the
+gutters for something she never finds--always peering, always mumbling
+the endless, wordless, soundless miserere of the poor.
+
+Quarrier's huge limestone mansion, looming golden in the sun, was
+tenantless; its owner, closing even The Sedges, his Long Island house,
+and driven northward for a breath of air, was expected at Shotover.
+
+The house of Mrs. Mortimer was closed and boarded up; the Caithness
+mansion was closed; the Ferralls', the Bonnesdels', the Pages',
+the Shannons', Mrs. Vendenning's, all were sealed up like vaults. A
+caretaker apparently guarded Major Belwether's house, peeping out at
+intervals from behind the basement windows. As for Plank's great pile of
+masonry, edging the outer Hundreds in the north, several lighted windows
+were to be seen in it at night, and a big yellow and black touring-car
+whizzed down town from its bronze gateway every morning with perfect
+regularity.
+
+For there was a fight on that had steadily grown hotter with the
+weather, and Plank had little time to concern himself with the
+temperature or to mop his red features over the weather bureau report.
+Harrington and Quarrier were after him, horse, foot, and dragoons;
+Harrington had even taken a house at Seabright in order to be near in
+person; and Quarrier's move from Long Island to Shotover House was not
+as flippant as it might appear, for he had his private car there and a
+locomotive at Black Fells Crossing station, and he was within striking
+distance of Rochester, Utica, Syracuse, and Albany. Which was what
+Harrington thought necessary.
+
+The vast unseen machinery set in motion by Harrington and Quarrier had
+begun to grind in May; and, at the first audible rumble, the aspect
+of things financial in the country changed. A few industrials began to
+rocket, nobody knew why; but the market's first tremor left it baggy and
+spineless, and the reaction, already overdue, became a sodden and soggy
+slump. Nobody knew why.
+
+The noise of the fray in the papers, which had first excited then
+stunned the outside public, continued in a delirium of rumour, report,
+forecast, and summing up at the week's end.
+
+Scare heads, involving everybody and everything, from the
+District-Attorney to Plank's office boy, succeeded one another. Plank's
+name headed column after column. Already becoming familiar in the
+society and financial sections, it began to appear in neighbouring
+paragraphs. Who was Plank? And the papers told people with more or less
+inaccuracy, humour, or sarcasm. What was he trying to do? The papers
+tried to tell that, too, making a pretty close guess, with comments
+good-natured or ill-natured according to circumstances over which
+somebody ought to have some control. What was Harrington trying to do to
+Plank--if he was trying to do anything? They told that pretty clearly.
+What was Quarrier going to do to Plank? That, also, they explained in
+lively detail. A few clergymen who stuck to their churches began
+to volunteer pulpit opinions concerning the ethics of the battle. A
+minister who was generally supposed to make an unmitigated nuisance of
+himself in politics dealt Plank an unexpected blow by saying that he was
+a "hero." Some papers called him "Hero" Plank for awhile, but soon tired
+of it or forgot it under the stress of the increasing heat.
+
+Besides Plank scarcely noticed what the press said of him. He was
+too busy; his days were full days, brimming over deep into the night.
+Brokers, lawyers, sycophants, tipsters, treacherous ex-employes of
+Quarrier, detectives, up-State petty officials, lobbyists from Albany,
+newspaper men, men from Wall Street, Broad Street, Mulberry
+Street, Forty-second Street--all these he saw in units, relays,
+regiments--either at his offices or after dinner--and sometimes after
+midnight in his own house. And these were only a few, picked from the
+interested or disinterested thousands who besieged him with advice,
+importunity, threats, and attempted blackmail. And he handled them all
+in turn, stolidly but with decision. His obstinate under lip protruded
+further and further with rare recessions; his heavy head was like the
+lowered head of a bull. Undaunted, inexorable, slow to the verge of
+stupidity at times, at times swift as a startled tiger, this new,
+amazing personality steadily developing, looming higher, heavier,
+athwart the financial horizon--in stature holding his own among giants,
+then growing, gradually, inch by inch, dominated his surrounding level
+sky line.
+
+The youth in him was the tragedy to the old; the sudden silence of the
+man the danger to the secretive. Harrington was already an old man;
+Quarrier's own weapon had always been secrecy; but the silence of Plank
+confused him, for he had never learned to parry well another's use of
+his own weapon. The left-handed swordsman dreads to cross with a man
+who fights with the left hand. And Harrington, hoary, seamed, scarred,
+maimed in onslaughts of long forgotten battles, looked long and hard
+upon this weird of his own dead youth which now rose towering to
+confront him, menacing him with the armed point of the same shield
+behind which he himself had so long found shelter--the Law!
+
+The closing of the courts enforced armed truces along certain lines of
+Plank's battle front; the adjournment of the legislature emptied Albany.
+Once it was rumoured that Plank had passed an entire morning with the
+Governor of the greatest State in the Union and that the conference was
+to be repeated. A swarm of newspaper men settled about the Governor's
+summer cottage at Saratoga, but they learned nothing, nor could they
+find a trace of Plank's tracks in the trodden trails of the great Spa.
+
+Besides, the racing had begun; Desmond, Burbank, Sneed, and others of
+the gilded guild had opened new club-houses; the wretched, half-starved
+natives in the surrounding hills were violating the game-laws to distend
+the paunches of the overfed with five-inch troutlings and grouse and
+woodcock slaughtered out of season; so there was plenty of copy for
+newspaper men without the daily speculative paragraph devoted to the
+doings of Beverly Plank. Some scandal, too--but newspapers never touch
+that; and after all it was nobody's affair that Leroy Mortimer drove a
+large yellow and black Serin-Chanteur touring-car, new model, all over
+Saratoga county. Perhaps the similarity of machines gave rise to the
+rumour of Plank's presence; perhaps not, because the car was often
+driven by a tall, slender girl with dark eyes and hair; and nobody ever
+saw that sort of pretty woman in Plank's Serin, or saw Leroy Mortimer
+for many days without a companion of that species.
+
+Mortimer's health was excellent. The races had not proved remunerative
+however, and his new motor-car was horribly expensive. So was Lydia. And
+he began to be seriously afraid that by the end of August he would be
+obliged to apply to Quarrier once more for some slight temporary token
+of that gentleman's goodwill. He told Lydia this, and she seemed to
+agree with him. This pleased him. She had not pleased him very much
+recently. For one thing she was becoming too friendly with some of his
+friends--Desmond in particular.
+
+Plank, it was known, had opened his great house at Black Fells. His
+servants, gamekeepers, were there; his stables, kennels, greenhouses,
+model stock-farm--all had been put in immaculate condition pending the
+advent of the master. But Plank had not appeared; his new sea-going
+steam yacht still lay in the East River, and, at rare intervals, a
+significant glimmer of bunting disclosed the owner's presence aboard
+for an hour or two. That was all, however; and the cliff-watchers at
+Shotover House and the Fells looked seaward in vain for the big Siwanoa,
+as yacht after yacht, heralded by the smudge on the horizon, turned from
+a gray speck to a white one, and crept in from the sea to anchor.
+
+The Ferralls were at Shotover with their first instalment of guests.
+Sylvia was there, Quarrier expected--because Kemp Ferrall's break with
+him was not a social one, and Grace's real affection for Sylvia blinded
+neither her nor her husband to the material and social importance of the
+intimacy. Siward was not invited; neither had an invitation to him been
+even discussed in view of what Grace was aware of, and what everybody
+knew concerning the implacable relations existing between him,
+personally, and Howard Quarrier.
+
+Bridge, yachting, and motoring were the August sports; the shooting set
+had not yet arrived, of course; in fact there was still another relay
+expected before the season opened and brought the shooting coterie for
+the first two weeks. But Sylvia was expected to last through and hold
+over with a brief interlude for a week's end at Lenox. So was Quarrier;
+and Grace, always animated by a lively but harmless malice, hoped to
+Heaven that Plank might arrive before Quarrier left, because she adored
+the tension of situations and was delightedly persuaded that Plank was
+more than able to hold his own with her irritating cousin.
+
+"Oh, to see them together in a small room," she sighed ecstatically in
+Sylvia's ear; "I'd certainly poke them up if they only turned around
+sulkily in the corners of the cage and evinced a desire to lie down."
+
+"What a mischief-maker you are," said Sylvia listlessly; and though
+Grace became very vivacious in describing her plans to extract amusement
+out of Plank's hoped-for presence Sylvia remained uninterested.
+
+There seemed, in fact, little to interest her that summer at Shotover
+House; and, though she never refused any plans made for her, and her
+attitude was one of quiet acquiescence always--she never expressed a
+preference for anything, a desire to do anything; and, if let alone, was
+prone to pace the cliffs or stretch her slim, rounded body on the sand
+of some little, sheltered, crescent beach, apparently content with the
+thunderous calm of sea and sky.
+
+Her interest, too, in people had seemingly been extinguished. Once or
+twice she did inquire as to Marion's whereabouts, and learned that Miss
+Page was fishing in Minnesota somewhere but would return to Shotover
+when the shooting opened. Somebody, Captain Voucher, perhaps, mentioned
+to somebody in her hearing that Siward was still in New York. If she
+heard she made no sign, no inquiry. The next morning she remained abed
+with a headache, and Grace motored to Wendover without her; but Sylvia
+spent the balance of the day on the cliffs, and played Bridge with
+the devil's own luck till dawn, piling up a score that staggered Mr.
+Fleetwood, who had been instructing her in adversary play a day or two
+before.
+
+The hot month dragged on; Quarrier came; Agatha Caithness arrived a few
+days later--scheme of the Ferralls involving Alderdene!--but the Siwanoa
+did not come, and Plank remained invisible. Leila Mortimer arrived from
+Swan's Harbour toward the middle of the month, offering no information
+as to the whereabouts of what Major Belwether delicately designated as
+her "legitimate." But everybody knew he was at last to be crossed
+off and struck clean out, and the ugly history of the winter, now so
+impudently corroborated at Saratoga, gave many a hostess the opportunity
+long desired. Mortimer, as far as his own particular circle was
+concerned, was down and out; Leila, accepted as a matter of course
+without him, remained quietly uncommunicative. If the outward physical
+change in her was due to her marital rupture people thought it was well
+that it had come in time, for she bloomed like a lovely exotic; and her
+silences and enthusiasms, and the fragrant freshness of her developing
+attitude toward the world first disconcerted, then amused, then touched
+those who had supposed themselves to be so long a buckler for her
+foibles and a shield for her caprice.
+
+"Gad," said Alderdene, "she's well rid of him if he's been choking her
+this long--the rank, rotten weed that he is, sapping the life from her
+so when she hung over toward another fellow's bush we thought she
+was frail in the stem--God bless us all for a simpering lot of
+blatherskites!"
+
+And if, in the corner of the gun-room, there was a man among them who
+had ever ventured to hold Leila's smooth little hand, unrebuked, in days
+gone by, none the less he knew that Alderdene spoke truth; and none the
+less he knew that what witness he might be called to bear at the end of
+the end of all must only incriminate himself and not that young matron
+who now, before their very eyes, was budding again, reverting to the
+esoteric charm of youth reincarnated.
+
+"A suit before a referee would settle him," mused Voucher; "he hasn't a
+leg to stand on. Lord! The same cat that tripped up Stephen Siward!"
+
+Fleetwood's quick eyes glimmered for an instant in Quarrier's direction.
+Quarrier was in the billiard-room, out of earshot, practising balk-line
+problems with Major Belwether; and Fleetwood said: "The same cat that
+tripped up Stephen Siward. Yes. But who let her loose?"
+
+"It was your dinner; you ought to know," said Voucher bluntly.
+
+"I do know. He brought her"--nodding toward the billiard-room.
+
+"Belwether?"
+
+"No," yawned Fleetwood.
+
+Somebody said presently: "Isn't he one of the Governors? Oh, I say, that
+was rather rough on Siward though."
+
+"Yes, rough. The law of trespass ought to have operated; a man's liable
+for the damage done by his own live-stock."
+
+"That's a brutal way of talking," said somebody. And the subject was
+closed with the entrance of Agatha in white flannels on her way to the
+squash court where she had an appointment with Quarrier.
+
+"A strange girl," said somebody after she had disappeared with Quarrier.
+
+"That pallor is stunning," said a big, ruddy youth, with sunburn on his
+neck and forehead.
+
+"It isn't healthy," said Fleetwood.
+
+"It attracts me," persisted the ruddy young man, voicing naively that
+curious truth concerning the attraction that disease so often exerts on
+health--the strange curiosity the normal has for the sub-normal--that
+fascination of the wholesome for the unhealthy. It is, perhaps, more
+curiosity than anything, unless, deep hidden under the normal, there lie
+one single, perverted nerve.
+
+Sylvia, passing the hall, glanced in through the gun-room door with an
+absentminded smile at the men and their laughing greeting, as they rose
+with uplifted glasses to salute her.
+
+"The sweetest of all," observed a man, disconsolately emptying his
+glass. "Oh irony! What a marriage!"
+
+"Do you know any girl who would not change places with her?" asked
+another.
+
+Every man there insisted that he knew one girl at least who would not
+exchange Sylvia's future for her own. That was very nice of them; it is
+to be hoped they believed it. Some of them did--for the moment, anyhow.
+Then Alderdene, blinking furiously, emitted one of his ear-racking
+laughs; and everybody, as usual, laughed too.
+
+"You damned cynic," observed Voucher affectionately.
+
+"Somebody," said Fleetwood, "insists that she doubled up poor Siward."
+
+"She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard," remarked
+Voucher.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, don't you consider that enough to squelch the story?"
+
+"Engaged girls," mused Alderdene, "never double up except at Bridge."
+
+"Everybody has been or is in love with Sylvia Landis," said Voucher,
+"and it's a man's own fault if he's hit. Once she did it, innocently
+enough, and enjoyed it, never realising that it hurt a man to be doubled
+up."
+
+Fleetwood yawned again and said: "She can have me to-morrow. But she
+won't. She's tired of the sport. Any girl would get enough with the
+pack at her heels day in and day out. Besides she's done for--unless she
+looses Quarrier and starts on a duke-hunt over in Blinky's country! ...
+Is anybody on for a sail? Is anybody on for anything? No? Oh, very well.
+Shove that decanter north by west, Billy."
+
+This was characteristic of the dog-days at Shotover. The dog-days in
+town were very different; the city threw open the parks to the poor at
+night; horses fell dead in the streets; pallid urchins, stripped naked,
+splashed and rolled and screeched in the basin of the City Hall fountain
+under the indifferent eyes of the police.
+
+As for Plank he was too busy to know what the thermometer was about; he
+had no time for anything outside of his own particular business except
+to go every day to the big, darkened house in lower Fifth Avenue where
+the days had been hard on Siward and the nights harder.
+
+Siward, however, could walk now, using his crutches still, but often
+stopping to gently test his left foot and see how much weight he was
+able to bear on it--even taking a tentative step or two without crutch
+support. He drove when he thought it prudent to use the horses in the
+heat, usually very early in the morning, though sometimes at night with
+Plank when the latter had time to run his touring-car through the park
+and out into the Bronx or Westchester for a breath of air.
+
+But Plank wanted him to go away, get out of the city for his
+convalescence, and Siward flatly declined, demanding that Plank permit
+him to do his share in the fight against the Inter-County people.
+
+And Plank, utterly unable to persuade him, and the more hampered because
+of his anxiety about Siward--though that young man did not know it--wore
+himself out providing Siward with such employment in the matter as would
+lightly occupy him without doing any good to the enemy.
+
+So Siward, stripped to his pajamas, pored over reams of typewritten
+matter and took his brief walking exercise in the comparative cool of
+the evening and drove when he dared use his horses; or, sitting beside
+Plank, whizzed northward through the starry darkness of the suburbs.
+
+When it was that he first began to like Plank very much he could not
+exactly remember. He was not, perhaps, aware of how much he liked him.
+Plank's unexpected fits of shyness, of formality, often and often amused
+him. But there was a subtler feeling under the unexpressed amusement,
+and, beneath all, a constantly increasing sub-stratum of respect. Too,
+he found himself curiously at ease with Plank, as with one born to his
+own caste. And this feeling, unconscious, but more and more apparent,
+meant more to Plank than anything that had ever happened to him. It
+was a tonic in hours of doubt, a pleasure in his brief leisure, a pride
+never to be hinted at, never to be guessed, never to be dreamed of by
+any living soul save Plank alone.
+
+Then, one sultry day toward the last week in August, a certain judge of
+a certain court, known among some as "Harrington's judge," sent
+secretly for Plank. And Plank knew that the crisis was over. But neither
+Harrington nor Quarrier dreamed of such a thing.
+
+Fear sat heavy on that judge's soul--the godless, selfish fear that
+sends the first coward slinking from the councils of conspiracy to seek
+immunity from those slowly grinding millstones that grind exceeding
+fine.
+
+Quarrier at Shotover, with his private car and his locomotive within an
+hour's drive, strolled with Sylvia on the eve of her departure for Lenox
+with Leila Mortimer; then, when their conference was ended, he returned
+to Agatha, calmly unconscious of impending events.
+
+Harrington, at Seabright, paced his veranda, awaiting this same judge,
+annoyed as two boats came in without the expected guest. And never for
+one instant did he dream that his creature sat closeted with Plank,
+tremulous, sallow, nearing the edge of cringing avowal--only held back
+from utter collapse by the agonising necessity of completing a bargain
+that might save himself from the degradation of the punishment that had
+seemed inevitable. All day long he sat with Plank. Nobody except those
+two knew he was there. And after a very long time Plank consented that
+nobody else except Siward and Harrington and Quarrier should ever know.
+So he called up Harrington on the telephone, saying that there was, in
+the office, somebody who desired to speak to him. And when Harrington
+caught the judge's first faint, stammered word he reeled where he stood,
+ashen, unbelieving, speechless. The shaking but remorseless voice went
+on, dinning horribly in his ear, then ceased, and Plank's heavy voice
+sounded the curt coup de grace.
+
+Harrington was an old man, a very old man, mortally hurt; but he
+steadied himself along the wall of his study to the desk and sank into
+the chair.
+
+There he sat, feeling the scars of old wounds throbbing, feeling his age
+and the tragedy of it, and the new sensation of fear--fear of the wraith
+of his own youth, wearing the mask of Plank, and menacing him with the
+menace he had used on others so long ago--so very long ago.
+
+After a little while he passed a thin hand over his eyes, over his gray
+head, over the mouth that all men watched with fear, over the shaven
+jaw now grimly set, but trembling. His hand, too, shook with palsy as
+he wrote, painfully picking out the words and figures of the cipher from
+his code-book; but he closed his thin lips and squared his unsteady jaw
+and wrote his message to Quarrier:
+
+"It is all up. Plank will take over Inter-County. Come at once."
+
+And that was all there was to be done until he could come into Plank's
+camp with arms and banners, a conquered man, cynical of the mercy he
+dared not expect and which, in all his life, he had never, never shown
+to man, to woman, or to child.
+
+Plank slept the sleep of utter exhaustion that night; the morning found
+him haggard but strong, cool in his triumph, serious, stern faced,
+almost sad that his work was done, the battle won.
+
+From his own house he telegraphed a curt summons to Harrington and to
+Quarrier for a conference in his own office; then, finishing whatever
+business his morning mail required, put on his hat and went to see the
+one man in the world he was most glad for.
+
+He found him at breakfast, sipping coffee and wrinkling his brows over
+the eternal typewritten pages. And Plank's face cleared at the sight and
+he sat down, laughing aloud.
+
+"It's all over, Siward," he said. "Harrington knows it; Quarrier knows
+it by this time. Their judge crawled in yesterday and threw himself
+on our mercy; and the men whose whip he obeyed will be on their way to
+surrender by this time. ... Well! Haven't you a word?"
+
+"Many," said Siward slowly; "too many to utter, but not enough to
+express what I feel. If you will take two on account, here they are in
+one phrase: thank you."
+
+"Debt's cancelled," said Plank, laughing. "Do you want to hear the
+details?"
+
+They talked for an hour, and, in the telling, even Plank's stolidity
+gave way sufficient to make his heavy voice ring at moments, and the
+glimmer of excitement edge his eyes. Yet, in the telling, he scarcely
+mentioned himself, never hinted of the personal part--the inspiration
+which was his alone; the brunt of the battle which centred in him; the
+tireless vigilance; the loneliness of the nights when he lay awake,
+perplexed with doubt and nobody to counsel him--because men who wage
+such wars are lonely men and must work out their own salvation. No,
+nobody but his peers could advise him; and he had thought that his enemy
+was his peer, until that enemy surrendered.
+
+The narrative exchanged by Plank in return for Siward's intensely
+interested questions was a simple, limpid review of a short but terrific
+campaign that only yesterday had threatened to rage through court
+after court, year after year. In the sudden shock of the cessation from
+battle, Plank himself was a little dazed. Yet he himself had expected
+the treason that ended all; he himself had foreseen it. He had counted
+on it as a good general counts on such things, confidently, but with
+a dozen plans as substitutes in case that plan failed--each plan as
+elaborately worked out to the last detail as though it alone existed as
+the only hope of victory. But if Siward suspected something of this it
+was not from Plank that he learned it.
+
+"Plank," he said at last, "there is nothing in the world that men admire
+more than a man. It is a good deal of a privilege for me to tell you
+so."
+
+Plank turned red with surprise and embarrassment, stammering out
+something incoherent.
+
+That was all that was said about the victory. Siward, unusually gay for
+awhile, presently turned sombre; and it was Plank's turn to lift him out
+of it by careless remarks about his rapid convalescence, and the chance
+for vacation he so much needed.
+
+Once Siward looked up vacantly: "Where am I to go?" he asked. "I'd as
+soon stay here."
+
+"But I'm going," insisted Plank. "The Fells is all ready for us."
+
+"The Fells! I can't go there!"
+
+"W-what?" faltered Plank, looking at Siward with hurt eyes.
+
+"Can't you--don't you understand?" said Siward in a low voice.
+
+"No. You once promised--"
+
+"Plank, I'll go anywhere except there with you. I'd rather be with you
+than with anybody. Can I say more than that?"
+
+"I think you ought to, Siward. A--a fellow feels the refusal of his
+offered roof-tree."
+
+"Man! man! it isn't your roof I am refusing. I want to go; I'd give
+anything to go. If it were anywhere except where it is, I'd go fast
+enough. Now do you understand? If--if Shotover House and Shotover people
+were not next door to the Fells, I'd go. Now do you understand?"
+
+Plank said: "I don't know whether I understand. If you mean Quarrier,
+he's on his way here, and he'll have business to keep him here for the
+next few months, I assure you. But"--he looked very gravely across at
+Siward--"if you don't mean Quarrier--" He hesitated, ill at ease under
+the expressionless scrutiny of the other.
+
+"Do you know what's the matter with me, Plank?" he asked at length.
+
+"I think so."
+
+"I have wondered. I wonder now how much you know."
+
+"Very little, Siward."
+
+"How much?"
+
+Plank looked up, hesitated, and shook his head: "One infers from what
+one hears."
+
+"Infers what?"
+
+"The truth, I suppose," replied Plank simply.
+
+"And what," insisted Siward, "have you inferred that you believe to
+be the truth? Don't parry, Plank; it isn't easy for me, and I--I never
+before spoke this way to any man. ... It is likely I should have spoken
+to my mother about it. ... I had expected to. It may be weakness--I don't
+know; but I'd like to talk a little about it to somebody. And there's
+nobody fit to listen, except you."
+
+"If you feel that way," said Plank slowly, "I will be very glad to
+listen."
+
+"I feel that way. I've been through--some things; I've been pretty sick,
+Plank. It tires a man out; a man's head and shoulders get tired. Oh, I
+don't mean the usual reaction from self-contempt, disgust--the dreadful,
+aching sadness of it all which lasts even while desire, stunned for the
+moment, wakens into craving. I don't mean that. It is something else--a
+deathly, mental solitude that terrifies. I tell you, no man except a man
+smitten by my malady knows what solitude can be! ... There! I didn't mean
+to be theatrical; I had no intention of--"
+
+"Go on," cut in Plank heavily.
+
+"Go on! ... Yes, I want to. You know what a pillow is to a tired man's
+shoulders. I want to use your sane intelligence to rest on a moment.
+It's my brain that's tired, Plank."
+
+Although everybody had cynically used Plank, nobody had ever before
+found him a necessity.
+
+"Go on," he said unsteadily. "If I can be of use to you, Siward, in
+God's name let me be, for I have never been necessary to anybody in all
+my life."
+
+Siward rested his head on one clinched hand: "How much chance do you
+think I have?" he asked wearily.
+
+"Chance to get well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Plank considered for a moment, then: "You are not trying, Siward."
+
+"I have been trying since--since March."
+
+"Since March?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Plank looked at him curiously: "What happened in March?"
+
+"Had I better tell you?"
+
+"You know better than I."
+
+Siward, cheek crushed against his fist, his elbow on the desk, gazed at
+him steadily:
+
+"In March," he said, "Miss Landis spoke to me. I've made a better fight
+since."
+
+Plank's serious face darkened. "Is she the only anchor you have?"
+
+"Plank, I am not even sure of her. I have made a better fight since
+then; that is all I dare say. I know what men think about a man like
+me; I knew they demand character, pride, self-denial. But, Plank, I am
+driving faster and faster toward the breakers, and these anchors are
+dragging. For it is not, in my case, the physical failure to obey the
+will; it is the will itself that has been attacked from the first.
+That is the horror of it. And what is there behind the will-power to
+strengthen it? Only the source of will-power--the mind. It is the mind
+that cannot help me. What am I to do?"
+
+"There is a spiritual strength," said Plank timidly.
+
+"I have never dreamed of denying it," said Siward. "I have tried to find
+it through the accepted sources--accepted by me, too. God has not helped
+me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has
+not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort," he added
+hastily. "I don't for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant
+of the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I
+desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one
+have failed to hold me."
+
+"You mean--Miss Landis?"
+
+"Yes. It may be weakness; it may be to my shame that the cables of pride
+and self-respect, even the spiritual respect for the Highest, cannot
+hold me when this one anchor holds. All I know is that it holds--so far.
+It held me at Shotover; it holds me again, now. And the rocks were close
+abeam, Plank--very close--when she spoke to me over the wires, through
+the rain, that dark day in March."
+
+He moistened his lips feverishly.
+
+"She said that I might see her. I have waited a long time. I have taken
+my fighting chance again and I've won out, so far."
+
+He looked up at Plank, curiously embarrassed:
+
+"Your body is normal; your intelligence wholesome, balanced, sane; and I
+want to ask you if you think that perhaps, without understanding how,
+I have found in her, or through her, in some way, the spiritual source
+that I think might help me to help myself?"
+
+And, as Plank made no reply:
+
+"Or am I talking sentimental cant? Don't answer, if you think that.
+I can't trust my own mind any more, anyway; and," with an ugly laugh,
+"I'll know it all some day--the sooner the better!"
+
+"Don't say that!" growled Plank. "You were sane a moment ago."
+
+Siward looked up sharply, but the other silenced him with a gesture.
+
+"Wait! You asked me a perfectly sane question--so wholesome, so normal,
+that I'm trying to frame an answer worthy of it! I intimated that after
+the physical, the mental, the ethical phenomena, there remained always
+the spiritual instinct. Like a wireless current, if a man can establish
+communication it is well for him, whatever the method. You assented, I
+think."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you ask me if I believe it possible that she can be the medium?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Plank said deliberately: "Yes, I do think so."
+
+The silence was again broken by Plank: "Siward, you have asked me what
+I think. Now you must listen to the end. If you believed that through
+her--her love, marrying her--you stood the best chance in the world to
+win out, it would be cowardly to ask her to take the risk. As much as I
+care for you I had rather see you lose the fight than accept such a risk
+from her. Now you know what I think--but you don't know all. Siward, I
+say to you that if you are man enough to take her, take her! And I say
+that of the two risks she is running to-day, the chance she might take
+with you is infinitely the lesser risk. For with you, if you continue
+slowly losing your fight, the mental suffering only will be hers. But
+if she closes this bargain with Quarrier, selling to him her body, the
+light will go out of her soul for ever."
+
+He leaned heavily toward Siward, stretching out his powerful arm:
+
+"You marry her; and keep open your spiritual communication through her,
+if that is the way it has been established, and hang on to your God that
+way until your body is dead! I tell you, Siward, to marry her. I don't
+care how you do it; I don't care how you get her. Take her! Yours, of
+the two, is the stronger character, or she would not be where she is.
+Does she want what you cannot give her? Cure that desire--it is more
+contemptible than the craving that shatters you! I say, let the one-eyed
+lead the blind. Miracles are worked out by mathematics--if you have
+faith enough."
+
+He rose, striding the length of the room once or twice, turned, holding
+out his broad hand:
+
+"Good-bye," he said. "Harrington is about due at my office; Quarrier
+will probably turn up to-night. I am not vindictive; I shall be just
+with them--as just as I know how, which is to be as merciful as I dare
+be. Good-bye, Siward. I--I believe you and she are going to get well."
+
+When he had gone, Siward lay back in his chair, very still, eyes closed.
+A faint colour had mounted to his face and remained there.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he went down-stairs, using his
+crutches lightly. Gumble handed him a straw hat and opened the door, and
+Siward cautiously descended the stoop, stood for a few moments on the
+sidewalk, looking up at the blue sky, then wheeled and slowly made his
+way toward Washington Square. The avenue was deserted; his own
+house appeared to be the only remaining house still open in all that
+old-fashioned but respectable quarter.
+
+He swung leisurely southward, a slim, well-built young fellow, strangely
+out of place on crutches. The poor always looked at him; beggars never
+importuned him, yet found him agreeable to watch. Children, who seldom
+look up into the air far enough to notice grown people, always became
+conscious of him when he passed; often smiled, sometimes spoke. As for
+stray curs and tramp cats, they were for ever making advances. As
+long as he could remember, there was scarcely a week in town but some
+homeless dog attached himself to Siward's heels, sometimes trotting
+several blocks, sometimes following him home--where the outcast was
+always cared for, washed, fed, and ultimately shipped out to the farm,
+where scores of these "fresh-air" dogs resided on his bounty and rolled
+in luxury on his lawns.
+
+Cats, too, were prone to notice him, rising as he passed to hoist an
+interrogative tail and make tentative observations.
+
+In Washington Square, these, and the ragged children, knew him best of
+all. The children came from Minetta Lane and the purlieus south and
+west of it; the cats from the Mews, which Siward always thought most
+appropriate.
+
+And now, as he passed the marble arch and entered the square, glancing
+behind him he saw the inevitable cat trotting, and, at his left, a
+very dirty little girl pretending to trundle a hoop, but plainly enough
+keeping sociable pace with him.
+
+"Hello!" said Siward. The cat stopped; the child tossed her clustering
+curls, gave him a rapid but fearless sidelong glance, laughed, and ran
+on in the wake of her hoop. When she caught it she sat down on a bench
+opposite the fountain and looked around at Siward.
+
+"It's pretty warm, isn't it?" said Siward, coming up and seating himself
+on the same bench.
+
+"Are you lame?" asked the child.
+
+"Oh, a little."
+
+"Is your leg broken?"
+
+"Oh, no, not now."
+
+"Is that your cat?"
+
+Siward looked around; the cat was seated on the bench beside him. But he
+was accustomed to that sort of thing, and he caressed the creature with
+his gloved hand.
+
+"Are you rich?" asked the child, shaking her blond curls from her eyes
+and staring up solemnly at him.
+
+"Not very," he answered, smiling. "Why do you ask?"
+
+"You look rich, somehow," said the child shyly.
+
+"What! With these old and very faded clothes?"
+
+She shook her head, swinging her plump legs: "You look it, somehow. It
+isn't the clothes that matter."
+
+"I'll tell you one thing," said Siward, laughing "I'm rich enough to buy
+all the hokey-pokey you can eat!" and he glanced meaningly at the pedlar
+of that staple who had taken station between a vender of peaches and a
+Greek flower-seller.
+
+The child looked, too, but made no comment.
+
+"How about it?" asked Siward.
+
+"I'd rather have something to remember you by," said the girl
+innocently.
+
+"What?" he said, perplexed.
+
+"A rose. They are five cents, and hokey-pokey costs that much--I mean,
+for as much as you can eat."
+
+"Do you really want a rose?" he said amused.
+
+But the child fell shy, and he beckoned the Greek and selected a dozen
+big, perfumed jacks.
+
+Then, as the child sat silent, her ragged arms piled with roses, he
+asked her jestingly what else she desired.
+
+"Nothing. I like to look at you," she answered simply.
+
+"And I like to look at you. Will you tell me your name?"
+
+"Molly."
+
+But that is all the information he could extract. Presently she said she
+was going, hesitated, looked a very earnest good-bye, and darted away
+across the park, her hoop over one arm, the crimson roses bobbing above
+her shoulders. Something in her flight attracted the errant cat, for
+she, too, jumped down and bounded after the little flying feet, but,
+catlike, halted half-way to scratch, and then forgetting what she was
+about, wandered off toward the Mews again, whence she had been lured by
+instinctive fascination.
+
+Siward, intensely amused, sat there in the late sunlight which streamed
+through the park, casting long shadows from the elms and sycamores. It
+was that time of the day, just before sunset, when the old square looked
+to him as he remembered it as a child. Even the marble arch, pink in
+the evening sun, did not disturb the harmony of his memories. He saw his
+father once more, walking home from down town, tall, slim, laughingly
+stopping to watch him as he played there with the other children--the
+nurses, seated in a row, crocheting under the sycamores; he saw the
+old-fashioned carriage pass, Mockett on the box, Wands beside him,
+and his pretty mother leaning forward to wave her hand to him as
+the long-tailed, long-maned horses wheeled into Fifth Avenue. Little
+unimportant scenes, trivial episodes, grew in the spectral garden of
+memory: the first time he ever saw Marion Page, when, aged five, she was
+attempting to get into the fountain, pursued by a shrieking nurse; and a
+certain flight across the grass he had indulged in with Leila Mortimer,
+then Leila Egerton, aged six, in hot pursuit, because she found that it
+bored him horribly to be kissed, and she was bound to do it. He had a
+fight once, over by that gnarled, old, silver poplar-tree, with Kemp
+Ferrall--he could not remember what about, only that they ended by
+unanimously assaulting their nurses and were dragged howling homeward.
+
+He turned, looking across to where the gray towers of the University
+once stood. There had been an old stone church there, too; and, south
+of that, old, old houses with hip-roofs and dormers where now the high
+white cliffs of modern architecture rose, riddled with tiny windows,
+every vane glittering in the sun. South, the old houses still remained,
+now degraded to sordid uses. North, the square, red-brick mansions,
+with their white pillars and steps, still faced the sunset--the last
+practically unbroken rank of the old regime, the last of the old guard,
+standing fast and still confronting, still resisting the Inevitable
+looming in limestone and granite, story piled on story, aloft in the
+kindling, southern sky.
+
+A cab, driven smartly, passed through the park, the horses' feet
+slapping the asphalt till the echoes rattled back from the marble arch.
+He followed it idly with his eyes up Fifth Avenue; saw it suddenly halt
+in the middle of the street; saw a woman spring out, stand for a moment
+talking to her companion, then turn and look toward the square.
+
+She stood so long, and she was so far away, that he presently grew
+tired of watching her. A dozen ragged urchins were prowling around the
+fountain, casting sidelong glances at a distant policeman. But it was
+not hot enough that evening to permit the children to splash in the
+water, and the policeman drove them off.
+
+"Poor little devils!" said Siward to himself; and he rose, adjusted his
+crutches, and started through the park with a vague idea of seeing what
+could be done.
+
+As he limped onward, the sun level in his eyes, he heard somebody speak
+behind him, but did not catch the words or apply the hail to himself.
+Then, "Mr. Siward!" came the low, breathless voice at his elbow.
+
+His heart stopped as he did. The sun had dazzled his eyes, and when he
+turned on his crutches he could not see clearly for a second. That
+past, he looked at Sylvia, looked at her outstretched hand, took it
+mechanically, still staring at her with only a dazed unbelief in his
+eyes.
+
+"I am in town for a day," she said. "Leila Mortimer and I were driving
+up town from the bank when we saw you; and the next thing that happened
+was me, on Fifth Avenue, running after you--no, the next thing was my
+flying leap from the hansom, and my standing there looking down the
+street and across the square where you sat. Then Leila told me I was
+probably crazy, and I immediately confirmed her diagnosis by running
+after you!"
+
+She stood laughing, flushed, sunburned, and breathless, her left hand
+still in his, her right hand laid over it.
+
+"Oh," she said, with a sudden change to anxiety, "does it tire you to
+stand?"
+
+"No. I was going to saunter along."
+
+"May I saunter with you for a moment? I mean--I only mean, I am glad to
+see you."
+
+"Do you think I am going to let you go now?" he asked, astonished.
+
+She looked at him, then her eyes evaded his: "Let us walk a little," she
+said, withdrawing her hand, "if you think you are strong enough."
+
+"Strong! Look, Sylvia!" and he stood unsupported by his crutches, then
+walked a little way, slowly, but quite firmly. "I am rather a coward
+about my foot, that is all. I shall not lug these things about after
+to-day."
+
+"Did the doctor say you might?"
+
+"Yes, after to-day. I could walk home now without them. I could do a
+good many things I couldn't do a few minutes ago. Isn't that curious?"
+
+"Very," she said, avoiding his eyes.
+
+He laughed. She dared not look at him. The excitement and impetus of
+sheer impulse had carried her this far; now all the sadness of it was
+clutching hard at her throat and for awhile she could not speak--walking
+there in her dainty, summer gown beside him, the very incarnation of
+youth and health, with the sea-tan on wrist and throat, and he, white,
+hollow-eyed, crippled, limping, at her elbow!
+
+Yet at that very moment his whole frame seemed to glow and his heart
+clamour with the courage in it, for he was thinking of Plank's words
+and he knew Plank had spoken the truth. She could not give herself to
+Quarrier, if he stood firm. His was the stronger will after all; his was
+the right to interfere, to stop her, to check her, to take her, draw her
+back--as he had once drawn her from the fascination of destruction when
+she had swayed out too far over the cliffs at Shotover.
+
+"Do you remember that?" he asked, and spoke of the incident.
+
+"Yes, I remember," she replied, smiling.
+
+"Doctors say" he continued, "that there is a weak streak in people who
+are affected by great heights, or who find a dizzy fascination drawing
+them toward the brink of precipices."
+
+"Do you mean me?" she asked, amused.
+
+But he continued serenely: "You have seen those pigeons called 'tumbler
+pigeons' suddenly turn a cart-wheel in mid-air? Scientists say it's not
+for pleasure they do it; it's because they get dizzy. In other words,
+they are not perfectly normal."
+
+She said, laughing: "Well, you never saw me turn a cart-wheel!"
+
+"Only a moral one," he replied airily.
+
+"Stephen, what on earth do you mean? You're not going to be
+disagreeable, are you?"
+
+"I am going to be so agreeable," he said, laughing, "that you will find
+it very difficult to tear yourself away."
+
+"I have no doubt of it, but I must, and very soon."
+
+"I'm not going to let you."
+
+"It can't be helped," she said, looking up at him. "I came in with
+Leila. We're asked to Lenox for the week's end. We go to Stockbridge on
+the early train to-morrow morning.
+
+"I don't care," he said doggedly; "I'm not going to let you go yet."
+
+"If I took to my heels here in the park would you chase me, Stephen?"
+she asked with mock anxiety.
+
+"Yes; and if I couldn't run fast enough I'd call that policeman. Now do
+you begin to understand?"
+
+"Oh, I've always understood that you were spoiled. I'm partly guilty of
+the spoiling process, too. Listen: I'll walk with you a little way"--she
+looked at him--"a little way," she continued gently; "then I must go.
+There is only a caretaker in our house and Leila will be furious if I
+leave her all alone. Besides, we're going to dine there and it won't be
+very gay if I don't give a few orders first."
+
+"But you brought your maid?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Then telephone her that you and Leila are dining out."
+
+"Where, silly? Do you want us to dine somewhere with you?"
+
+"Want you! You've got to!"
+
+"Stephen, it isn't best."
+
+"It is best."
+
+She turned to him impulsively: "Oh, I do want to so much! Do you think
+I might? It is perfectly delicious to see you again. I--you have no
+idea--"
+
+"Yes, I have," he said sternly.
+
+They turned, walking past the fountain toward Fifth Avenue again.
+Furtively she glanced at his hands with the city pallor on them as they
+grasped the cross-bars of the crutches, then looked up at his worn face.
+He was much thinner, but now in the softly fading light the shadows
+under the eyes and cheek-bones seemed less sharp, his face fuller and
+more boyish; the contour of head and shoulders, the short, crisp hair
+were as she remembered--and the old charm held her, the old fascination
+grew, tightening her throat, stealing through every vein, stirring her
+pulses, awakening imperceptibly once more the best in her. The twilight
+of a thousand years seemed to slip from the world as she looked out at
+it through eyes opening from a long, long sleep; the marble arch burned
+rosy in the evening glow; a fairy haze hung over the enchanted avenue,
+stretching away, away into the blue magic of the city of dreams.
+
+"There is no use," she said under her breath; "I can't go back to Leila.
+Stephen, the dreadful part of it is that I--I wish she were in Jericho!
+I wish the whole world were in Ballyhoo, and you and I alone once more!"
+
+Under their gay laughter quivered the undertone of excitement. Sylvia
+said:
+
+"I'd like to talk to you all alone. It won't do, of course; but I may
+say what I'd like--mayn't I? What time is it? If I'm dining with you
+we've got to have Leila for convention's sake, if not from motives of
+sheer decency, which you and I seem to lack, Stephen."
+
+"We lack decency," said Siward, "and we're proud of it. As for Leila, I
+am going to arrange for her very simply but very beautifully. Plank will
+take care of her. Sylvia! There's not a soul in town and we can be as
+imprudent as we please."
+
+"No, we can't. Agatha's at the Santa Regina. She came down with us."
+
+"But we are not going to dine at the Santa Regina. We're going
+where Agatha wouldn't intrude her colourless nose--to a thoroughly
+unfashionable and selectly common resort overlooking the classic Harlem;
+and we're going to whiz thither in Plank's car, and remain thither until
+you yawn for mercy, whence we will return thence--"
+
+"Stephen, you silly! I'm perfectly mad to go with you!"
+
+"You'll be madder when you get there, if the table has not improved."
+
+"Table! As though tables mattered on a night like this!" Then with
+sudden self-reproach and quick solicitude: "Am I making you walk too
+far? Wouldn't you like to go in now?"
+
+"No, I'm not tired; I'm millions of years younger, and I'm as strong
+as the nine gods of your friend Porsena. Besides, haven't I waited for
+this?" and under his breath, fiercely, "Haven't I waited!" he repeated,
+turning on her.
+
+"Do--do you mean that as a reproach?" she asked, lowering her eyes.
+
+"No. I knew you would not come on 'the first sunny day.'"
+
+"Why did you think I would not come? Did you know me for the coward I
+am?"
+
+"I did not think you would come," he repeated, halting to rest on his
+crutches. He stood, balanced, staring dreamily into the dim perspective;
+and again her fascinated eyes ventured to rest on the worn, white face,
+listless, sombre in its fixedness.
+
+The tears were very near her eyes; the spasm in her throat checked
+speech. At length she stammered: "I did not come b-because I simply
+couldn't stand it!"
+
+His face cleared as he turned quietly: "Child, you must not confuse
+matters. You must not think of being sorry for me. The old order is
+passing--ticking away on every clock in the world. All that inverted
+order of things is being reversed. You don't know what I mean, do you?
+Ah, well; you will know when I grow into something of what you think you
+remember in me, and when I grow out of what I really was."
+
+"Truly I don't understand, Stephen. But then--I am out of training since
+you went--went out of things. Have I changed? Do I seem more dull? I--it
+has not been very gay with me. I don't see--looking back across all the
+noise, all the chaos of the winter--I do not see how I stood it alone."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"N-not seeing you--sometimes."
+
+He looked at her with smiling, sceptical eyes. "Didn't you enjoy the
+winter?"
+
+"Do you enjoy being drugged with champagne?"
+
+His face altered so quickly that, confused, she only stared at him, the
+fixed smile stamped on her lips; then, overwhelmed in the revelation:
+
+"Stephen, surely, surely you know what I meant! I did not mean that!
+Dear, do you dream for one moment that--that I could--"
+
+"No. You have not hurt me. Besides, I know what you mean."
+
+After a moment he swung forward on his crutches, biting his lip, the
+frown gathering between his temples.
+
+They were passing the big, old-fashioned hotel with its white facade and
+green blinds, a lingering landmark of the older city.
+
+"We'll telephone here," he said.
+
+Side by side they went up the great, broad stoop and entered the lobby.
+
+"If you'll speak to Leila, I'll get Plank on the wire. Say that we'll
+stop for you at seven."
+
+She gave her number; then, at the nod of the operator, entered a small
+booth. Siward was given another booth in a few moments.
+
+Plank answered from his office; his voice sounded grave and tired but it
+quickened, tinged with surprise, when Siward made known his plan for the
+evening.
+
+"Is Mrs. Mortimer in town?" he demanded. "I had a wire from her that she
+expected to be here and I hoped to see her at the station to-morrow on
+her way to Lenox."
+
+"She's stopping with Miss Landis. Can't you manage to come?" asked
+Siward anxiously.
+
+"I don't know. Do you wish it particularly? I have just seen Quarrier
+and Harrington. I can't quite understand Quarrier's attitude. There's
+a certain hint of defiance about it. Harrington is all caved in. He is
+ready to thank us for any mercies. But Quarrier--there's something I
+don't fancy, don't exactly understand about his attitude. He's like a
+dangerous man whom you've searched for concealed weapons, and who knows
+you've overlooked the knife up his sleeve. That's why I've expected
+to spend a quiet evening, studying up the matter and examining every
+loophole."
+
+"You've got to dine somewhere," said Siward. "If you could fix it to
+dine with us--But I won't urge you."
+
+"All right. I don't know why I shouldn't. I don't know why I feel this
+way about things. I--I rather felt--you'll laugh, Siward!--that somehow
+I'd better not go out of my own house to-night; that I was safer, better
+off in my own house, studying this Quarrier matter out. I'm tired, I
+suppose; and this man Quarrier has come close to worrying me. But it's
+all right, of course, if you wish it. You know I haven't any nerves."
+
+"If you are tired--" began Siward.
+
+"No, no, I'm not. I'll go. Will you say that we'll stop for them at
+seven? Really, it's all right, Siward."
+
+"I don't want to urge you," repeated Siward.
+
+"You're not. I'll go. But--wait one moment tell me, did Quarrier know
+that Mrs. Mortimer was to stop with Miss Landis?"
+
+"Wait a moment. Hold the wire."
+
+He opened the door of the booth and saw Sylvia waiting for him, seated
+by the operator's desk. She rose at once when she saw he wished to speak
+with her.
+
+"Tell me something," he said in a low voice; "did Mr. Quarrier know that
+Leila was to stay overnight with you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered quietly, surprised. "Why?"
+
+Siward nodded vaguely, closed the door again, and said to Plank:
+
+"Yes, Quarrier knows it. Do you think he'll be there to-night? I don't
+suppose Miss Landis and Mrs. Mortimer know he is in town."
+
+Plank's troubled voice came back over the wire: "I don't know. I don't
+know what to think. I suppose I'm a little, just a trifle, overworked.
+Somebody once said that I had one nerve in me somewhere, and Quarrier's
+probably found it; that's all."
+
+"If you think it better not to come--"
+
+"I'll come. I'll stop for you in the motor. Don't worry, old fellow!
+And--take your fighting chance! Good-bye!"
+
+Siward, absorbed in his own thoughts, rose and walked slowly out of the
+booth, utterly unconscious that he had left his crutches leaning upright
+in the corner. It was only the surprise dawning into tremulous delight
+on Sylvia's face that at last arrested him.
+
+"See what you have done!" he said, laughing through his own surprise.
+"I've a mind to leave them there now, and trust to your new cure."
+
+But she was instantly concerned and anxious, and entering the booth
+brought out the crutches and forced him to take them.
+
+"No risks now!" she said decisively. "We have too much at stake this
+evening. Leila is coming. Isn't it perfectly delightful?"
+
+"Perfectly," he said, his eyes full of the old laughing confidence
+again; "and the most delightful part of it all is that you don't know
+how delightful it is going to be."
+
+"Don't I? Very well. Only I inform you that I mean to be perfectly
+happy! And that means that I'm going to do as I please! And that
+means--oh, it may mean anything! What are you laughing at, Stephen? I
+know I'm excited. I don't care! What girl wouldn't be? And I don't know
+what's ahead of me at all; and I don't want to know--I don't care!"
+
+Her reckless, little laugh rang sweetly in the old-fashioned, deserted
+hall; her lovely, daring eyes met his undaunted.
+
+"You won't make love to me, will you, Stephen?"
+
+"Will you promise me the same?"
+
+"I don't know, silly! How do I know what I might say to you, you big,
+blundering boy, who can't take care of himself? I don't know at all; I
+won't promise. I'm likely to do anything to-night--even before Leila
+and Mr. Plank--when you are with me. Shame on you for the shameless
+girl you've educated!" Her voice fell, tremulously, and for an instant
+standing there she remembered her education and his part in it.
+
+The slow colour in his face reflected the pink confusion in hers.
+
+"O tongue! tongue!" she stammered, "I can't hold you in! I can't curb
+you, and I can't make you say what you ought to be saying to that boy.
+There's trouble coming for somebody; there's trouble here already! Call
+me a cab, Stephen, or I'll be dragging you into that big, old-fashioned
+parlour and planting you on a chair and placing myself opposite, to
+moon over you until somebody puts us out! There! Now will you call me a
+hansom? ... And I will be all ready at seven. ... And don't dare to keep me
+waiting one second! ... Come before seven. You don't want to frighten
+me, do you? Very well then, at a quarter to seven--so I shall not be
+frightened. And, Stephen, Stephen, we're doing exactly what we ought
+not to do. You know it, don't you? So do I. Nothing can stop us, can it?
+Good-bye!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV THE BARGAIN
+
+If a man's grief does not awaken his dignity, then he has none. In that
+event, grief is not even respectable. And so it was with Leroy Mortimer
+when Lydia at last turned on him. If you caress an Angora too long and
+too persistently it runs away. And before it goes it scratches.
+
+Under all the physical degeneration of mind and flesh there had still
+remained in Mortimer the capacity for animal affection; and that does
+not mean sensuality alone, but generosity and a sort of routine devotion
+as characteristic components of a character which had now disintegrated
+into the simplest and most primitive elements.
+
+Lydia Vyse left Saratoga when the financial stringency began to make it
+unpleasant for her to remain. She told Mortimer without the slightest
+compunction that she was going.
+
+He did not believe her and he gave her the new car--the big
+yellow-and-black Serin-Chanteur. She sold it the same day to a
+bookmaker--an old friend of hers; withdrew several jewels from
+limbo--gems which Mortimer had given her--and gathered together
+everything for which, if he turned ugly, she might not be criminally
+liable.
+
+She had never liked him--she had long disliked him. Such women have an
+instinct for their own kind, and no matter how low in the scale a man
+of the other kind sinks he can never entirely supply the type of running
+mate that such women require, understand, and usually conceive a passion
+for.
+
+Not liking him she had no hesitation in the matter; disliking him,
+whatever unpleasant had occurred during their companionship remained as
+an irritant to poison memory. She resented a thousand little incidents
+that he scarcely knew had ever existed, but which she treasured without
+wasting emotion until the sum total and the time coincided to retaliate.
+Not that she would have cared to harm him seriously; she was willing
+enough to disoblige him, however--decorate him, before she left him,
+with one extra scratch for the sake of auld lang syne. So she wrote a
+note to the governors of the Patroons Club, saying that both Quarrier
+and Mortimer were aware that the guilt of her escapade could not be
+attached to Siward; that she knew nothing of Siward, had accepted his
+wager without meaning to attempt to win it, had never again seen him,
+and had, on the impulse of the moment, made her entry in the wake of
+several men. She added that when Quarrier, as governor, had concurred
+in Siward's expulsion he knew perfectly well that Siward was not guilty,
+because she herself had so informed Quarrier. Since then she had also
+told Mortimer, but he had taken no steps to do justice to Siward,
+although he, Mortimer, was still a governor of the Patroons Club.
+
+This being about all she could think of to make mischief for two men
+whose recent companionship had nourished and irritated her, she shipped
+her trunks by express, packed her jewel-case and valise, and met Desmond
+at the station.
+
+Desmond had business in Europe; Lydia had as much business there
+as anywhere; and, although she had been faithless to Mortimer for a
+comparatively short time, within that time Desmond already had sworn at
+her and struck her. So she was quite ready to follow Desmond anywhere
+in this world or the next. And that, too, had not made her the more
+considerate toward Mortimer.
+
+When the latter returned from the races to find her gone the last
+riddled props to what passed for his manhood gave way and the rotten
+fabric came crashing into the mud.
+
+He had loved her as far as he had been capable of imitating that passion
+on the transposed plane to which he had fallen; he was stupefied at
+first, then grew violent with the furniture, then hysterically profane,
+then pitiable in the abandoned degradation of his grief. And, suspecting
+Desmond, he started to find him. They put him out of Desmond's
+club-house when he became noisy; they refused him admittance to several
+similar resorts where his noise threatened to continue; his landlord
+lost no time in interviewing him upon the subject of damage to furniture
+from kicks and to the walls and carpets from the contents of smashed
+bottles.
+
+Creditors with sharp noses scented the whirlwind afar off and hemmed him
+in with unsettled accounts, mostly hers. Somebody placed a lien on his
+horses; a deputy sheriff began to follow him about; all credit ceased
+as by magic, and men crossed the street to avoid meeting with an old
+companion in direst need.
+
+Still, alternately stupefied by his own grief and maddened into the
+necessity for action, he packed a suitcase, crawled out of the rear
+door, toiled across country and found a farmer to drive him twenty miles
+over a sandy road to a local railroad crossing, where he managed to
+board a train for Albany.
+
+At Albany, as he stood panting and sweating on the long, concrete
+platform which paralleled track No. 1, he saw a private car, switched
+from a Boston and Albany train, shunted to the rear of the Merchants'
+Express.
+
+The private car was lettered in gold on the central panel, "Algonquin."
+He boarded the Pullman coupled to it forward, pushed through the
+vestibule, shoved aside the Japanese steward and darky cook, forcing his
+way straight into the private car. Quarrier, reading a magazine,
+looked up at him in astonishment. For a full moment neither spoke.
+Then Mortimer dropped his suit-case, sat down in an armchair opposite
+Quarrier, and leisurely mopped his reeking face and neck.
+
+"Scotch and lithia!" he said hoarsely; the Japanese steward looked at
+Quarrier; then, at that gentleman's almost imperceptible nod, went away
+to execute the commission.
+
+He executed a great many similar commissions during the trip to New
+York. When they arrived there at five o'clock, Quarrier offered Mortimer
+his hand, and held the trembling, puffy fingers as he leaned closer,
+saying with cold precision and emotionless emphasis something that
+appeared to require the full concentration of Mortimer's half-drugged
+faculties.
+
+And when at length Mortimer drove away in a hansom, Quarrier's Japanese
+steward went with him--perhaps to carry his suit case--a courtesy that
+did credit to Quarrier's innate thoughtfulness and consideration
+for others. He was very considerate; he even called Agatha up on the
+telephone and talked with her for ten minutes. Then he telephoned to
+Plank's office, learned that Harrington was already there, telephoned
+the garage for a Mercedes which he always kept ready in town, and
+presently went bowling away to a conference on which the last few hours
+had put an entirely new aspect.
+
+It had taken Plank only a few minutes to perceive that something had
+occurred to change a point of view which he had believed it impossible
+for Quarrier to change. Something had gone wrong in his own careful
+calculations; some cog had slipped, some rivet given way, some bed-plate
+cracked. And Harrington evidently had not been aware of it; but Quarrier
+knew it. There was something wrong.
+
+It was too late now to go tinkering in the dark for trouble. Plank
+understood that. Coolly, as though utterly unaware that the machinery
+might not stand the strain, he started it full speed. And when he
+stopped it at last Harrington's grist had been ground to atoms, and
+Quarrier had looked on without comment. There seemed to be little more
+for them to do except to pay the miller.
+
+"To-morrow," said Quarrier, rising to go. It was on the edge of Plank's
+lips to say, "to-day!"--but he was silent, knowing that Harrington would
+speak for him. And the old man did, without words, turning his iron
+visage on Quarrier with the silent dignity of despair. But Quarrier
+coldly demanded a day before they reckoned with Plank. And Plank,
+profoundly disturbed, shrugged his massive shoulders in contemptuous
+assent.
+
+So Quarrier and Harrington went away--the younger partner taking leave
+of the older with a sneer for an outworn prop which no man could ever
+again have use for. Old and beaten--that was all Harrington now stood
+for in Quarrier's eyes. Never a thought of the past undaunted courage,
+never a memory of the old victories which had made the Quarrier fortune
+possible--only contempt for age, a sneer for the mind and body that
+had failed at last. The old robber was done for, his armour rotten, his
+buckler broken, his sword blade rusted to the core. The least of his
+victims might now finish him with a club where he swayed in his loosened
+saddle, or leave him to that horseman on the pale horse watching him
+yonder on the horizon.
+
+For now, whether Harrington lived or died, he must be counted as nothing
+in this new struggle darkly outlining its initial strategy in Quarrier's
+brain. What was coming was coming between himself and Plank alone; and
+whatever the result--whether an armed truce leaving affairs indefinitely
+in statu quo, or the other alternative, an alliance with Plank, leaving
+Harrington like a king in his mail, propped upon his throne, dead eyes
+doubly darkened under the closed helmet--the result must be attained
+swiftly, with secrecy, and with the aid of no man. For he did not count
+Mortimer a man.
+
+So Quarrier's thin lips twitched and the glimmer of teeth showed
+under the silky beard as he listened without comment to the old
+man's hesitating words--a tremulous suggestion for a conference that
+evening--and he said again, "to-morrow," and left him there alone,
+groping with uncertain hands toward the door of the hired coupe which
+had brought him to the place of his earthly downfall; the place where
+he had met his own weird face to face--the wraith that bore the mask of
+Plank.
+
+Quarrier, brooding sullenly in his Mercedes, was already far up town on
+his way to Major Belwether's house.
+
+At the door, Sylvia's maid received him smilingly, saying that her
+mistress was not at home but that Mrs. Mortimer was--which saved
+Quarrier the necessity of asking for the private conference with Leila
+which was exactly what he had come for. But her first unguarded words on
+receiving him as he rose at her entrance into the darkened drawing-room
+changed that plan, too--changed it all so utterly, and so much for
+the better, that he almost smiled to think of the crudity of human
+combinations and inventions as compared to the masterly machinations of
+Fate. No need for him to complicate matters when here were pawns enough
+to play the game for him. No need for him to do anything except give
+them their initial velocity and let them tumble into one another and
+totter or fall. Leila said, laughingly: "Oh, you are too late, Howard.
+We are dining with Mr. Plank at Riverside Inn. What in the world are you
+doing in town so suddenly?"
+
+"A business telegram. I might have come down with you and Sylvia if I
+had known. ... Is Plank dining with you alone?"
+
+"I haven't seen him," smiled Leila evasively. "He will tell us his plans
+of course when he comes."
+
+"Oh," said Quarrier, dropping his eyes and glancing furtively toward the
+curtained windows through which he could see the street and his Mercedes
+waiting at the curb. At the same instant a hansom drove up; Sylvia
+sprang out, ran lightly up the low steps, and the silent, shrouded house
+rang with the clamour of the bell.
+
+Leila looked curiously at Quarrier, who sat motionless, head partly
+averted, as though listening to something heard by him alone. He
+believed perhaps that he was listening to the voice of Fate again, and
+it may have been so, for already, for the third time, all his plans were
+changing to suit this new ally of his--this miraculous Fate which was
+shaping matters for him as he waited. Sylvia had started up-stairs like
+a fragrant whirlwind, but her flying feet halted at Leila's constrained
+voice from the drawing-room, and she spun around and came into the
+darkened room like an April breeze.
+
+"Leila! They'll be here at a quarter to seven--"
+
+Her breath seemed to leave her body as a shadowy figure rose in the
+uncertain light and confronted her.
+
+"You!"
+
+He said: "Didn't you recognise the Mercedes outside?"
+
+She had not even seen it, so excited, so deeply engaged had she been
+with the riotous tumult of her own thoughts. And still her hurt,
+unbelieving gaze widened to dismay as she stood there halted on
+the threshold; and still his eyes, narrowing, held her under their
+expressionless inspection.
+
+"When did you come? Why?" she asked in an altered voice.
+
+"I came on business. Naturally, being here, I came to see you. I
+understand you are dining out?"
+
+"Yes, we are dining out."
+
+"I'm sorry I didn't wire you because we might have dined together. I saw
+Plank this afternoon. He did not say you were to dine with him. Shall I
+see you later in the evening, Sylvia?"
+
+"I--it will be too late--"
+
+"Oh! To-morrow then. What train do you take?"
+
+Sylvia did not answer; he picked up his hat, repeating the question
+carelessly, and still she made no reply.
+
+"Shall I see you to-morrow?" he asked, swinging on her rather suddenly.
+
+"I think--not. I--there will be no time--"
+
+He bowed quietly to Leila, offering his hand. "Who did you say was to
+dine with you--besides Plank?"
+
+Leila stood silent, then, withdrawing her fingers, walked to the window.
+
+Quarrier, his hat in his gloved hands, looked from one to the other, his
+inquiring eyes returning and focused on Sylvia.
+
+"Who are you dining with?" he asked with authority.
+
+"Mr. Plank and Mr. Siward."
+
+"Mr. Siward!" he repeated in surprised displeasure, as though he had not
+already divined it.
+
+"Yes. A man I like."
+
+"A man I dislike," he rejoined with the slightest emphasis.
+
+"I am sorry," she said simply.
+
+"So am I, Sylvia. And I am going to ask you to make him an excuse. Any
+excuse will do."
+
+"Excuse? What do you mean, Howard?"
+
+"I mean that I do not care to have you seen with Mr. Siward. Have I ever
+demanded very much of you, Sylvia? Very well; I demand this of you now."
+
+And still she stood there, her eyes wide, her colour gone, repeating:
+"Excuse? What excuse? What do you mean by 'excuse,' Howard?"
+
+"I have told you. You know my wishes. If he has a telephone you can
+communicate with him--"
+
+"And say that I--that you forbid me--"
+
+"If you choose. Yes; say that I object to him. Is there anything
+extraordinary in a man objecting to his future wife dining in the
+country at a common inn with a notorious outcast from every decent club
+and circle in New York?"
+
+"What!" she whispered, white as death. "What did you say?"
+
+"Shall I repeat what everybody except you seems to be aware of? Do you
+care to have me explain to you exactly why decent people have ostracised
+this man with whom you are proposing to figure in a public resort?"
+
+He turned to Leila, who stood at the window, her back turned toward
+them: "Mrs. Mortimer, when Mr. Plank arrives, you will be kind enough to
+explain why Sylvia is unable to accompany you."
+
+If Leila heard she neither turned nor made sign of comprehension.
+
+"We will dine at the Santa Regina," he said to Sylvia. "Agatha is there
+and I'll find somebody at the club to--"
+
+"Why bother to find anybody?" said Leila, wheeling on him, exasperated.
+"Why not dine there with Agatha alone? It will not be the first time I
+fancy!"
+
+"What do you mean?" he said fiercely, under his breath. The colour had
+left his face, too, and in his eyes Leila saw for the first time an
+expression that she had never before surprised in any eyes except her
+husband's. It was the expression of fright; she recognised it. But
+Sylvia stared, unenlightened, at an altered visage she scarcely knew for
+Quarrier's.
+
+"What do I mean?" repeated Leila; "I mean what I say; and if you don't
+understand it you can find the key to it, I fancy. Nor shall I answer to
+you for my guests. I invite whom I choose. Mr. Siward is one, Mr. Plank
+is another. Sylvia, if you care to come I shall be delighted."
+
+"I do care to come," said Sylvia. Her heart was beating violently, her
+eyes were on Quarrier.
+
+"If you go," said Quarrier, showing the glimmering edge of teeth under
+his beard, "you will answer to me for it."
+
+"I will answer you now, Howard; I am going with Mrs. Mortimer. What have
+you to say?"
+
+"I'll say it to-morrow," he replied, contemplating her in a dull,
+impassive manner as though absorbed in other things.
+
+"Say what there is to be said now!" she insisted, the hot colour
+staining her cheeks again. "Do you desire me to free you? Is that all? I
+will if you wish."
+
+"No. And I shall not free you, Sylvia. This--all this can be adjusted in
+time."
+
+"As you please," she said slowly.
+
+"In time," he repeated, his passionless voice now under perfect control.
+He turned and looked at Leila; all the wickedness of his anger was
+concentrated in his gaze. Then he took his leave of them as formally, as
+precisely as though he had forgotten the whole scene; and a minute later
+the big Mercedes ran out into a half-circle, backed, wheeled, and rolled
+away through the thickening dusk, the glare of the acetylenes sweeping
+the deserted street.
+
+Into the twilight sped Quarrier, head bent, but his soft, dark-lashed
+eyes of a woman fixed steadily ahead. Every energy, every thought was
+now bent to this newest phase of the same question which he and Fate
+were finding simpler to solve every minute. Of all the luxuries he
+permitted himself openly or furtively, one--the rarest of them all--his
+self-denial had practically eliminated from the list: the luxury
+of punishing where no end was served save that of mere personal
+satisfaction. The temptation of this luxury now presented itself;
+and the means of gratification were so simple, so secret, so easy to
+command, that the temptation became almost a duty.
+
+Siward he had not turned out of his way to injure; Siward had been in
+the way, that was all, and his ruin was to have been merely an agreeable
+coincidence with the purposed ruin of Amalgamated Electric before
+Inter-County absorbed the fragments. But here was a new phase; Mrs.
+Mortimer, whom he had expected to use, and if necessary sacrifice, had
+suddenly turned vicious. And he now hated her as coldly as he hated
+Major Belwether for betraying suspicions of a similar nature. As for
+Plank, fear and hatred of him was becoming hatred and contempt. He
+had the means of checking Plank if Mortimer did not drop dead before
+midnight. There remained Sylvia, whom he had selected as the fittest
+object attainable to transmit his name. Long ago, whatever of liking,
+of affection, of passion he had ever entertained for her had quieted to
+indifference and the unemotional contemplation of a future methodically
+arranged for. Now of a sudden, this young girl he had bought--he knowing
+what she sold and what he was paying for--had become exposed to the
+infection of a suspicion concerning himself and another woman; a woman
+unmarried, and of his own caste, and numbered among her own friends.
+
+And he knew enough of Sylvia to know that if anybody could once arouse
+her suspicion nothing on earth could induce her to look into his face
+again. Suppose Leila should do so this evening?
+
+Certainly Quarrier had several matters to ponder over and provide for;
+and first and foremost of all to provide for his own security and the
+vital necessity of preserving his name and his character untainted. In
+this he had to deal with that miserable judge who had betrayed him; with
+Mortimer, who had once black-mailed him and who now was temporarily in
+his service; with Mrs. Mortimer, who--God knew how, when, or where--had
+become suspicious of Agatha and himself; with Major Belwether, who had
+deserted him before he could sacrifice the major, and whom he now
+hated and feared for having stumbled over suspicions similar to Mrs.
+Mortimer's. He had to deal with Sylvia herself, and with Siward--reckon
+with Siward's knowledge of matters which it were best that Sylvia should
+not know.
+
+But first of all, and most important of all, he had to deal with Beverly
+Plank. And he was going to do it in a manner that Plank could not have
+foreseen; he was going to stop Plank where he stood, and to do this he
+was deliberately using his knowledge of the man and paying Plank the
+compliment of counting on his sense of honour to defeat him.
+
+For he had suddenly found the opportunity to defend himself; he had
+discovered the joint in Plank's old-fashioned armour--the armour of the
+old paladins--who placed a woman's honour before all else in the world.
+Now, through his creature, Mortimer, he could menace Plank with a threat
+to involve him and Leila in a vile publicity; now he was in a position
+to demand a hearing and a compromise through his new ambassador,
+Mortimer, knowing that he could at last halt Plank by threatening Leila
+with this shameful danger. Plank must sign the truce or face with Leila
+an action for damages and divorce.
+
+First of all he went to the Lenox Club and dressed. Then he dined
+sparingly and alone. The Mercedes was waiting when he came out ready
+to run down to the great Hotel Corona, whither the Japanese steward had
+conducted Mortimer. Mortimer had dined heavily, but his disorganised
+physical condition was such that it had scarcely affected him at all.
+
+Again Quarrier went over patiently and carefully the very simple part he
+had reserved for Mortimer that evening, explaining exactly what to say
+to Leila and what to say to Plank in case of insolent interruption. Then
+he told Mortimer to be ready at nine o'clock, turned on his heel with
+a curt word to the Japanese, descended to the street, entered his
+motor-car again, and sped away to the Hotel Santa Regina.
+
+Miss Caithness was at home, came the message in exchange for his cards
+for Agatha and Mrs. Vendenning. He entered the gilded elevator, stepped
+out on the sixth floor into a tiny, rococo, public reception-room.
+Nobody was there besides himself; Agatha's maid came presently, and
+he turned and followed her into the large and very handsome parlour
+belonging to the suite which Agatha was occupying with Mrs. Vendenning
+for the few days that they were to stop in town.
+
+"Hello," she said serenely, sauntering in, her long, pale hands
+bracketed on her narrow hips, her lips disclosing her teeth in a smile
+so like that nervous muscular recession which passed for a smile on
+Quarrier's visage that for one moment he recognised it and thought she
+was mocking him. But she strolled up to him, meeting his eye calmly, and
+lifted her slim neck, lips passive under his impetuous kiss.
+
+"Is Mrs. Vendenning out?" he asked, laying his hands on the bare
+shoulders of the tall, pallid girl--tall as he, and as pallid.
+
+"No, Mrs. Ven. is in, Howard."
+
+"Now? You mean she is coming in to interrupt--"
+
+"Oh no; she isn't fond of you, Howard."
+
+"You said--" he began almost angrily, but she laid her fingers across
+his lips.
+
+"I said a very foolish thing, Howard. I said that I'd manage to dispense
+with Mrs. Ven. this evening."
+
+"You mean that you couldn't manage it?"
+
+"Not at all; I could easily have managed it. But--I didn't care to."
+
+She looked at him calmly at close range as he held her embraced, lifted
+her arms and, with slender, white fingers patted her hair into place
+where his arm around her head had disarranged it, watching him all the
+while out of her pale, haunted eyes.
+
+"You promised me," he said, "that you--"
+
+"Oh Howard! Do men still believe in promises?"
+
+Quarrier's face had colour enough now; his voice, too, had lost its
+passionless, monotonous precision. Whatever was in the man of emotion
+was astir; his impatient voice, his lack of poise, the almost human lack
+of caution in his speech betrayed him in a new and interesting light.
+
+"Look here, Agatha, how long is this going to last? Are you trying to
+make a fool of me? What is the matter? Is there anything wrong?"
+
+"Wrong? Oh dear no! How could there be anything wrong between you and
+me--"
+
+"Agatha, what is the matter! Look here; let's settle this thing now and
+settle it one way or the other! I won't stand it; I--I can't!"
+
+"Very well," she said, releasing herself from his tightening arms and
+stepping back with another glance at the mirror and another light touch
+of her finger-tips on her burnished hair. "Very well," she repeated,
+gazing again into the mirror; "what am I to understand, Howard?"
+
+"You know what to understand," he said in a low voice; "you know what we
+both understood when--when--"
+
+"When what?"
+
+"When I--when you--"
+
+"Oh what, Howard?" she prompted indolently; and he answered in brutal
+exasperation, and for the first time so plainly that a hint of rose
+tinted her strange, pale beauty and between her lips the breath came
+less regularly as she stood there looking at the dull, silvery rug under
+her feet.
+
+"Did you ever misunderstand me?" he demanded hotly. "Did I give you any
+chance to? Were you ignorant of what that meant," with a gesture toward
+the splendid crescent of flashing gems, scintillating where the low,
+lace bodice met the silky lustre of her skin. "Did you misinterpret the
+collar? Or the sudden change of fortune in your own family's concerns?
+Answer me, Agatha, once for all. But you need not answer after all: I
+know you have never misunderstood me!"
+
+"I misunderstood nothing," she said; "you are quite right."
+
+"Then what are you going to do?"
+
+"Do?" she asked in slow surprise. "What am I to do, Howard?"
+
+"You have said that you loved me."
+
+"I said the truth, I think."
+
+"Then--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"How long are you going to keep me at arm's length?" he asked violently.
+
+"That lies with you," she said, smiling. She looked at him for a moment,
+then, resting her hands on her hips, she began to pace the floor, to and
+fro, to and fro, and at every turn she raised her head to look at him.
+All the strange grace of her became insolent provocation--her pale eyes,
+clear, limpid, harbouring no delusions, haunted with the mockery of
+wisdom, challenged and checked him. "Howard," she said, "why should I be
+the fool you want me to be because I love you? Why should I be even if
+I wished to be? You desire an understanding? Voila! You have it. I love
+you; I never misunderstood you from the first; I could not afford to.
+You know what I am; you know what you arouse in me?"
+
+Slim, pale, depraved in all but body she stood, eyeing him a moment, the
+very incarnation of vicious perversity.
+
+"You know what you arouse in me," she repeated. "But don't count on it!"
+
+"You have encouraged--permitted me to count--" His anger choked him--or
+was it the haunting wisdom of her eyes that committed him to silence.
+
+"I don't know," she said, musingly, "what it is in you that I am so mad
+about--whether it is your brutality, or the utter corruption of you that
+holds me, or your wicked eyes of a woman, or the fascination of the mask
+you turn on the world, and the secret visage, naked in its vice, that
+you reserve for me. But I love you--in my own fashion. Count on that,
+Howard; for that is all you can surely count on. And now, at last, you
+know."
+
+As he stood there, it came to him slowly that, deep within him he had
+always known this; that he had never really counted on anything else
+though he had throttled his doubts by covering her throat with diamonds.
+Her strangeness, her pallor, her acquiescence, the delicate hint of
+depravity in her, the subtle response to all that was worst in him
+had attracted him, only to learn, little by little, that the taint of
+corruption was only a taint infecting others, not her; that the promise
+of evil was only a promise; that he had to deal with a young body but
+an old intelligence, and a mind so old that at moments her faded gaze
+almost appalled him with its indolent clairvoyance.
+
+Long since he knew, too, that in all the world he could never again
+find such a mate for him. This had, unadmitted even to himself, always
+remained a hidden secret within this secret man--an unacknowledged,
+undrawn-on reserve in case of the failure which he, even in sanguine
+moods, knew in his inmost corrupted soul that his quest was doomed to.
+
+And now he had no more need of secrets from himself; now, turning his
+gaze inward, he looked upon all with which he had chosen to deceive
+himself. And there was nothing left for self-deception.
+
+"If I marry you!" he said calmly "at least I know what I am getting."
+
+"I will marry you, Howard. I've got to marry somebody pretty soon. You
+or Captain Voucher."
+
+For an instant a vicious light flashed in his narrowing eyes. She saw it
+and shook her head with weary cynicism:
+
+"No, not that. It could not attract me even with you. It is really
+vulgar--that arrangement. Noblesse oblige, mon ami. There is a depravity
+in marrying you that makes all lesser vices stale as virtues."
+
+He said nothing; she looked at him, lazily amused; then, inattentive,
+turned and paced the floor again.
+
+"Shall I see you to-morrow?" he demanded.
+
+"If you wish. Captain Voucher came down on the same train with me. I'll
+set him adrift if you like."
+
+"Is he preparing for a declaration?" sneered Quarrier.
+
+"I think so," she said simply.
+
+"Well if he comes to-night after I'm gone, you wait a final word from
+me. Do you understand?" he repeated with repressed violence.
+
+"No, Howard. Are you going to propose to me to-morrow?"
+
+"You'll know to-morrow," he retorted angrily. "I tell you to wait. I've
+a right to that much consideration anyway."
+
+"Very well, Howard," she said, recognising in him the cowardice which
+she had always suspected to be there.
+
+She bade him good night; he touched her hand but made no offer to kiss
+her. She laughed a little to herself, watching him striding toward the
+elevator, then, closing the door, she stood still in the centre of
+the room, staring at her own reflection, full length, in the gilded
+pier-glass, her lips edged with a sneer so like Quarrier's that, the
+next moment she laughed aloud, imitating Quarrier's rare laugh from
+sheer perversity.
+
+"I think," she said to her reflected figure in the glass, "I think that
+you are either mentally ill or inherently a kind of devil. And I don't
+much care which."
+
+And she turned leisurely, her slim hands balanced lightly on her narrow
+hips, and strolled into the second dressing-room, where Mrs. Vendenning
+sat sullenly indulging in that particular species of solitaire known as
+"The Idiot's Delight."
+
+"Well?" inquired Mrs. Vendenning, looking up at the tall, pale girl she
+was chaperoning so carefully during their sojourn in town.
+
+"Oh, you know the rhyme to that," yawned Agatha; "let's ring up
+somebody. I'm bored stiff."
+
+"What did Howard Quarrier want?"
+
+"He knows, I think, but he hasn't yet informed me."
+
+"I'll tell you one thing, Agatha," said Mrs. Vendenning, gathering
+up the packs for a new shuffle: "Grace Ferrall doesn't fancy Howard's
+attention to you and she's beginning to say so. When you go back to
+Shotover you'd better let him alone."
+
+"I'm not going back to Shotover," said Agatha.
+
+"What?"
+
+"No; I don't think so. However, I'll let you know to-morrow. It all
+depends--but I don't expect to." She turned as her maid tapped on
+the door. "Oh, Captain Voucher. Are you at home to him?" flipping the
+pasteboard onto the table among the scattered cards.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Vendenning aggressively, "unless you expect him to flop
+down on his knees to-night. Do you?"
+
+"I don't--to-night. Perhaps to-morrow. I don't know; I can't tell yet."
+And to her maid she nodded that they were at home to Captain Voucher.
+
+Quarrier had met him, too, just as he was leaving the hotel lobby. They
+exchanged the careful salutations of men who had no use for one another.
+On the Englishman's clean-cut face a deeper hue settled as he passed; on
+Quarrier's, not a trace of emotion; but when he entered his motor he
+sat bolt upright, stiff-backed and stiff-necked, his long gray-gloved
+fingers moving restlessly over his pointed heard.
+
+
+The night was magnificent; myriads of summer stars spangled the heavens.
+Even in the reeking city itself a slight freshness grew in the air,
+although there was no wind to stir the parched leaves of the park trees,
+among which fire-flies floated--their intermittent phosphorescence
+breaking out with a silvery, star-like brilliancy.
+
+Plank, driving his big motor northward through the night, Leila Mortimer
+beside him, twice mistook the low glimmer of a fire-fly for the distant
+lamp of a motor, which amused Leila, and her clear, young laughter
+floated back to the ears of Sylvia and Siward, curled up in their
+corners of the huge tonneau. But they were too profoundly occupied with
+each other to heed the sudden care-free laughter of the young matron,
+though in these days her laughter was infrequent enough to set the more
+merciless tongues wagging when it did sound.
+
+Plank had never seen fit to speak to her of her husband's scarcely
+veiled menace that day he had encountered him in the rotunda of the
+Algonquin Trust Company. His first thought was to do so--to talk it over
+with her, consider the threat and the possibility of its seriousness,
+and then come to some logical and definite decision as to what their
+future relations should be. Again and again he had been on the point
+of doing this when alone with Leila--uncomfortable, even apprehensive,
+because of their frank intimacy; but he had never had the opportunity
+to do so without deliberately dragging in the subject by the ears in all
+its ugliness and implied reproach for her imprudence, and seeing that
+dreadful, vacant change in Leila's face, which the mere mention of her
+husband's name was sure to bring, turn into horror unspeakable.
+
+A man not prone to fear his fellows, he now feared Mortimer, but that
+fear struck him only through Leila--or had so reached him until the
+days of his closing struggle with Quarrier. Whether the long strain had
+unnerved him, whether minutely providing against every possible danger
+he had been over-scrupulous, over-anxious, morbidly exact--or whether a
+foresight almost abnormal had evoked a sinister possibility--he did not
+know; but that threat of Mortimer's to involve Plank with Leila in one
+common ruin, that boast that he was able to do so could not be ignored
+as a possible weapon if Quarrier should by any chance learn of it.
+
+In all his life he had taken Leila into his arms but once; had kissed
+her but once--but that once had been enough to arm Mortimer with
+danger from head to foot. Some prying servant had either listened or
+seen--perhaps a glimmer of a mirror had betrayed them. At all events,
+whoever had seen or heard had informed Mortimer, and now the man was
+equipped; the one and only man in all the world who could with truth
+accuse Plank; the only man of whom he stood in honest fear.
+
+And it was characteristic of Plank that never for one moment had it
+occurred to him that the sheer fault of it all lay with Leila; that it
+was her imprudence alone that now threatened herself and the man she
+loved--that threatened his very success in life as long as Mortimer
+should live.
+
+All this, Plank, in his thorough, painstaking review of the subject, had
+taken into account; and he could not see how it could possibly bear upon
+the matters now finally to be adjusted between Quarrier and himself,
+because Quarrier was in New York and Mortimer in Saratoga, and unless
+the latter had already sold his information the former could not strike
+at him through knowledge of it.
+
+And yet a curious reluctancy, a hesitation inexplicable--unless overwork
+explained it--had come over him when Siward had proposed their dining
+together on the very eve of his completed victory over Quarrier.
+
+It seemed absurd, and Plank was too stolid to entertain superstitions,
+but he could not, even with Leila laughing there beside him, shake off
+the dull instinct that all was not well--that Quarrier's attitude was
+still the attitude of a dangerous man; that he, Plank, should have
+had this evening in his room alone to study out the matters he had so
+patiently plodded through in the long hours while Siward slept.
+
+Yet not for one instant did he dream of shifting the responsibility--if
+responsibility entailed blame--on Siward, who, against Plank's judgment
+and desire, had on the very eve of consummation drawn him away from that
+sleepless vigilance which must for ever be the price of a business man's
+safety.
+
+Leila, gay and excited as a schoolgirl, chattered on ceaselessly to
+Plank; all the silence, all the secrecy of the arid years turning to
+laughter on her red lips, pouring out, in broken phrases of delight,
+words strung together for the sheer pleasure of speech and the happiness
+of her lot to be with him unrestrained.
+
+He remembered once listening to the song of a wild bird on the edge of a
+clearing at night, and how, standing entranced, the low, distant jar
+of thunder sounded at moments, scarcely audible--like his heart now, at
+intervals, dully persistent amid the gaiety of her voice.
+
+"And would you believe it, Beverly," she said, "I formed the habit
+at Shotover of walking across the boundary and strolling into your
+greenhouses and deliberately helping myself. And every time I did it I
+was certain one of your men would march me out!"
+
+He laughed, but did not tell her that his men had reported the first
+episode and that he had instructed them that Mrs. Mortimer and her
+friends were to do exactly as they pleased at the Fells. However she
+knew it, because a garrulous gardener, proud of his service with Plank,
+had informed her.
+
+"Beverly," she said, "you are a dear. If people only knew what I know!"
+
+He began to turn red; she could see it even in the flickering, lamp-shot
+darkness. And she teased him for a while, very gently, even tenderly;
+and their voices grew lower in a half-serious badinage that ended with a
+quiet, indrawn breath, a sigh, and silence.
+
+And now the river swept into view, a darkly luminous sheet set with
+reflected stars. Mirrored lights gleamed in it; sudden bright, yellow
+flashes zigzagged into its sombre depths; the foliage edged it with
+a deeper gloom over which, on the heights, twinkled the multicoloured
+lights of Riverside Inn.
+
+Up the broad, gentle grade they sped, curving in and out among the
+clumps of trees and shrubbery, then on a level, sweeping in a great
+circle up to the steps of the inn.
+
+Now all about them from the brilliantly lighted verandas the gay tumult
+broke out like an uproarious welcome after the swift silence of their
+journey; the stir of jolly people keen for pleasure; the clatter of
+crockery; the coming and going of waiters, of guests, of hansoms,
+coupes, victorias, and scores of motor-cars wheeling and turning through
+the blinding glare of their own headlights.
+
+Somewhere a gipsy orchestra, full of fitful crescendoes and throbbing
+suspensions of caprice, furnished resonant accompaniment to the joyous
+clamour; the scent of fountain spray and flowers was in the air.
+
+"I didn't know you had telephoned for a table," said Siward, as a
+head-waiter came up smiling and bowing to Plank. "I confess, in the new
+excitement of things, I clean forgot it! What a man you are to think of
+other people!"
+
+Plank reddened again, muttering something evasive, and went forward with
+Leila.
+
+Sylvia, moving leisurely beside Siward who was walking slowly but
+confidently without crutches, whispered to him: "I never really liked
+Mr. Plank before I understood his attitude toward you."
+
+"He is a man, every inch," said Siward simply.
+
+"I think that generally includes what men of your sort demand, doesn't
+it?" she asked.
+
+"Men of my sort sometimes demand in others what they themselves are
+lacking in," said Siward, laughing. "Sylvia, look at this jolly crowd!
+Look at all those tables! It seems an age since I have done anything
+of this sort. I feel like a boy of eighteen--the same funny, quickening
+fascination in me toward everything gay and bright and alive!" He
+looked around at her, laughingly. "As for you," he said, "you look about
+sixteen. You certainly are the most beautiful thing this beautiful world
+ever saw!"
+
+"Schoolboy courtship!" she mocked him, lingering as he made his slow way
+through the crowded place. The tint of excitement was in her eyes and
+cheeks; the echo of it in her low, happy voice. "Where on earth is Mr.
+Plank? Oh, I see them! They have a table by the balcony rail, in the
+corner; and it seems to be rather secluded, Stephen, so I shall, of
+course, expect you to say nothing further about beauty of any species.
+... Are you a trifle tired? No? ... Well, you need not be indignant. I
+don't care whether you tumble. Indeed, I don't believe there is really
+anything the matter with you--you are walking with the same old careless
+saunter. Mr. Plank," as they arrived and seated themselves, "Mr.
+Siward has just admitted that he uses crutches only because they are
+ornamental. Leila, isn't this air delicious? All sorts of people, too,
+aren't there, Mr. Plank? Such curious-looking women, some of them--quite
+pretty, too, in a certain way. Are you hungry, St--Mr. Siward?"
+
+"Are you, St--Mr. Siward?" mimicked Leila promptly.
+
+"I am," said Siward, laughing at Sylvia's significant colour and noting
+Plank's direct gaze as the waiter filled Leila's slender-stemmed glass.
+And "nothing but Apollinaris," he said coolly, as the waiter approached
+him; but though his voice was easy enough, a dull patch of colour came
+out under the cheek-bones.
+
+"That is all I care for, either," said Sylvia with elaborate
+carelessness.
+
+Plank and Leila immediately began to make conversation. Siward, his eyes
+bent on the glass of mineral water at his elbow, looked up in silence at
+Sylvia questioningly.
+
+There was something in her face he did not quite comprehend. She made
+as though to speak, looked at him, hesitated, her lovely face eloquent
+under the impulse. Then, leaning toward him, she said:
+
+"'And thy ways shall be my ways.'"
+
+"Sylvia, you must not deny yourself, just because I--"
+
+"Let me. It is the happiest thing I have ever done for myself."
+
+"But I don't wish it."
+
+"Ah, but I do," she said, the low excited laughter scarcely fluttering
+her lips. "Listen: I never before, in all my life, gave up anything for
+your sake, only this one little pitiful thing."
+
+"I won't let you!" he breathed; "it is nonsense to--"
+
+"You must let me! Am I to be on friendly terms with--with your mortal
+enemy?" She was still smiling, but now her sensitive mouth quivered
+suddenly.
+
+He sat silent, considering her, his restless fingers playing with his
+glass in which the harmless bubbles were breaking.
+
+"I drink to your health, Stephen," she said under her breath. "I drink
+to your happiness, too; and--and to your fortune, and to all that
+you desire from fortune." And she raised her glass in the star-light,
+looking over it into his eyes.
+
+"All I desire from fortune?" he repeated significantly.
+
+"All--almost all--"
+
+"No, all," he demanded.
+
+But she only raised the glass to her lips, still looking at him as she
+drank.
+
+They became unreasonably gay almost immediately, though the beverage
+scarcely accounted for the delicate intoxication that seemed to creep
+into their veins. Yet it was sufficient for Siward to say an amusing
+thing wittily, for Sylvia to return his lead with all the delightful,
+unconscious brilliancy that he seemed to inspire in her--as though
+awaking into real life once more. All that had slumbered in her through
+the winter and spring, and the long, arid summer now crumbling to the
+edge of autumn, broke out into a delicate riot of exquisite florescence;
+the very sounds of her voice, every intonation, every accent, every
+pause, were charming surprises; her laughter was a miracle, her beauty a
+revelation.
+
+Leila, aware of it, exchanged glance after glance with Plank. Siward,
+alternately the leader in it all, then the enchanted listener,
+bewitched, enthralled, felt care slipping from his shoulders like a
+mantle, and sadness exhaling from a heart that was beating strongly,
+steadily, fearlessly--as a heart should beat in the breast of him who
+has taken at last his fighting chance. He took it now, under her eyes,
+for honour, for manhood, and for the ideal which had made manhood no
+longer an empty term muttered in desperation by a sick body, and a mind
+too sick to control it.
+
+Yes, at last the lifelong battle was on. He knew it. He knew, too,
+whatever his fate with her or without her, he must always go on with the
+battle for the safe-guarding of that manhood the consciousness of which
+she had aroused.
+
+All he knew was that, through the medium of his love for her, whatever
+in him of the spiritual remained, or had been generated, was now awake,
+alive, strong, vital, indestructible--an impalpable current flowing from
+a sane intelligence, through medium of her, back to the eternal truth,
+returning always, always, to the deathless source from whence it came.
+
+Lingering over the fruit, the champagne breaking in the glasses standing
+on the table between them, rim to rim, Leila and Plank had fallen into a
+low, desultory, yet guarded exchange of words and silences.
+
+Sylvia sprang up and pushed her chair into the farther corner against
+the balcony rail, where no light fell except the radiance of the stars.
+Here Siward joined her, dragging his chair around so that it faced her
+as she leaned back, tilted against a shadowy column.
+
+"Is this Bohemianism, Stephen? If it is, I rather like it. Don't
+you? You are going to smoke now, aren't you? Ah, that is delightful!"
+daintily sniffing the aroma from his cigarette. "It always reminds me
+of you--there on the cliffs, that first day. Do you remember?--the smoke
+from your cigarette whirling up in my face? ... You say you remember.
+... Oh, of course there's nothing else to say when a girl asks you ... is
+there? Oh, I won't argue with you, if you insist that you do remember.
+You will not be like any other man if you do, that's all. ... The little
+things that women remember! ... And believe that men remember! It is
+pitiful in a way. There! I am not going to spill over, and I don't care
+a copper penny whether you really do remember or not! ... Yes, I do care!
+... Oh, all women care. It is their first disappointment to learn how
+much a man can forget and still remember to care for them--a little! ...
+Stephen, I said a little; and that is all that you are permitted to care
+for me; isn't it? ... Please, don't. You are deliberately beginning to say
+things! ... Stephen, you silly! you are making love to me!"
+
+In the darkness his hand encountered hers on the wooden rail, and the
+tremor of the contact silenced her. She freed one finger, then let it
+rest with its slender fellow-prisoners. There was no use in trying to
+speak just then--utterly useless her voice in the soft, rounded throat
+imprisoned by the swelling pulses that tightened and hammered and
+tightened.
+
+Years seemed to fall away from her, slipping back, back into girlhood,
+into childhood, drawing not her alone on the gliding tide, but carrying
+him with her. An exquisite languor held her. Through it vague hints of
+those splendid visions of her lonely childhood rose, shaping themselves
+in the starry darkness--the old mystery of dreams, the old, innocent
+desires, the old simplicity of clairvoyance wherein right was right and
+wrong, wrong--in all the conventional significance of right and wrong,
+in all the old-fashioned, undisturbed faith of childhood.
+
+Drifting deliciously, her eyes sometimes meeting his, sometimes lost in
+the magic of her reverie, she lay there in her chair, her unresisting
+fingers locked in his.
+
+Odd little thoughts came hovering into her reverie--thoughts that seemed
+distantly familiar, the direct, unconscious impulses of a child. To feel
+was once more the only motive for expression; to think fearlessly was
+once more inherent; to desire was to demand--unlock her lips, naively,
+and ask for what she wished.
+
+Under the spell, she turned her blue gaze on him, and her lips parted
+without a tremor:
+
+"What do you offer for what you ask? And do you still ask it? Is it me
+you are asking me for? Because you love me? And what do you give--love?"
+
+"Weigh it with the--other," he said.
+
+"I have--often--every moment since I have known you. And what a winter!"
+Her voice was almost inaudible. "What a winter--without you!"
+
+"That hell is ended for me, too. Sylvia, I know what I ask. And I ask. I
+know what I offer. Will you take it?"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+He rose, blindly. She stood up, pale, wide-eyed, confronting him,
+stammering out the bargain:
+
+"I take all--all! every virtue, every vice of you. I give all--all! all
+I have been, all I am, all I shall be! Is that enough? Oh, if there were
+only more to give! Stephen, if there were only more!"
+
+Her hands had fallen into his, and they looked each other in the eyes.
+
+Suddenly, through the hush of the enchanted moment, a sullen sound
+broke--the sound of a voice they knew, threateningly raised, louder and
+louder, growling, profanely menacing.
+
+Aghast, they turned in the darkness, peering toward the lighted space
+beyond. Leroy Mortimer, his face shockingly congested, stood unsteadily
+balancing there, confronting his wife, who sat staring at him in horror.
+At the same instant Plank rose and laid a hand on Mortimer's shoulder,
+but Mortimer shook him off with a warning oath.
+
+"You and I will settle with each other to-morrow!" he said thickly,
+pointing a puffy finger at Plank. "You'll find me at the Algonquin
+Trust. Do you hear? That's where you'll settle this matter--in the
+president's office!" He stood swaying and leering at Plank, repeating
+loudly: "In Quarrier's office! Understand? That's where you'll settle
+up! See?"
+
+Leila, white face quivering, shrank as though he had struck her, and he
+turned on her again, grinning: "As for you, you come home! And that'll
+be about all for yours."
+
+"Are you insane, to make a scene like this?" whispered Plank.
+
+But Mortimer swung on him insultingly: "That's about all from you, too!"
+he said. "Leila, are you coming?"
+
+He stepped heavily toward her; but Plank's sudden crushing grip was on
+his fat arm above the elbow, and he emitted a roar of surprise and pain.
+
+"Don't touch him! Don't, in Heaven's name!" stammered Leila, as Plank,
+releasing him, stepped back beside her chair. "Can't you see that I must
+go with him! I--I must go." She cast one terrified glance around her,
+where scores of strange faces met hers; and at every table people were
+standing up to see better.
+
+Plank, who had dropped Mortimer's arm as the latter emitted his bellow
+of amazement, stepped toward him again, dropping his voice as he spoke:
+
+"You go! Do you hear?" he said quietly. "I'll do what you ask me,
+to-morrow! I will do what you ask, if you'll go now!"
+
+"You come--do you hear!" snarled Mortimer, turning on his wife, who had
+already risen. "If you don't I'll make a row here that you'll never hear
+the end of as long as you live! And there'll be nothing to talk over in
+Quarrier's office, if I do."
+
+Leila looked at Plank, rose, and moved swiftly toward the veranda steps,
+her head resolutely lowered, the burning shame flaming in her face.
+Mortimer cast one triumphant glance at Plank, then waddled unsteadily
+after his wife.
+
+"Hold on," he growled; "I've a Mercedes here! I'll drive you back--wait!
+Here it is! Here we are!" And to Quarrier's machinist he said: "You get
+into the tonneau. I want to show Mrs. Mortimer what night-driving is. Do
+you hear? I tell you I'm going to drive this machine and show you how!"
+
+Leila scarcely heard him. She obeyed the impulse of his hand on her arm,
+and mounted to the seat, staring straight ahead of her with dazed and
+straining eyes that saw nothing.
+
+Then Mortimer clambered to his seat, and, without an instant's warning,
+opened up and seized the wheel.
+
+Unprepared, the machinist attempted to swing aboard, missed his footing
+in the uncertain light, and fell sprawling on the gravel. Plank saw him
+from the veranda and instantly vaulted the rail to the lawn below.
+
+"You damn fool!" yelled Mortimer, looking around, "what in hell do you
+think you'll do?" And he clapped on full speed as Plank made a leap for
+the car and missed.
+
+Mortimer laughed, and turned his head to look back, and the next instant
+something seemed to wrench the steering-wheel from its roots. There was
+a blinding glare of light, a scream, and the great machine bounded
+into the air full length, turned completely over, and lay across a
+flower-bed, partly on one side.
+
+Something was afire, too. Men were rushing from the verandas, women
+screamed, and stood up wringing their hands; a mounted policeman came
+galloping through the darkness; people shouted: "Throw sand on it! Get
+shovels, for God's sake! Lift that tonneau! There's a woman under it."
+
+But they were mistaken, for Leila lay at the foot of the slope, one
+little bloody hand clutching the dead grass; and Plank knelt beside her,
+giving his orders quietly to those who came running down the hill
+from the roadway above, which was now fiercely illuminated by burning
+gasoline. At last they got sand enough to quench the fire and men
+sufficient to lift the weight from the dead man's neck, and drag what
+was left of him onto the grass.
+
+"Don't look," whispered Siward, drawing Sylvia back.
+
+He and she both had put their shoulders to the tonneau along with the
+others; and now they stood there together in the shifting lantern-light,
+sickened, shivering under the summer stars, staring at the gathering
+crowd around that shapeless lump on the grass.
+
+Plank passed them, walking beside an improvised stretcher, calm, almost
+smiling, as Sylvia sprang forward with a little sob of inquiry.
+
+"There's the doctor, over there; that man is a doctor; he knows,"
+repeated Plank with studied deliberation, looking down at Leila's
+deathly face. "He says it's all right; he says he'll get a candle, and
+that he can tell by the flame's effect on the pupils of the eyes what
+exactly is the matter. No," to Siward beside him, pressing forward
+through the crowd which eddied from the dead man to the stretcher; "no,
+there is not a bone broken. She is stunned, that's all; she fell in the
+shrubbery. We'll have an ambulance here pretty quick. Stephen," using
+his first name unconsciously, "won't you look out for Sylvia? I'm going
+back on the ambulance. If you'll find somebody to drive my machine,
+I wish you would take Sylvia back. No, I don't want you to drive,
+Stephen--if you don't mind. Get that machinist, please. I'm rattled, and
+I don't want you to drive."
+
+Leila lay on the stretcher, her bloodless face upturned to the stars.
+Beyond, under a blanket, something else lay very still on the lawn.
+
+Plank beckoned a policeman, and whispered to him.
+
+Then, far away in the darkness, a distant clamour grew on the night air,
+nearer, nearer.
+
+Plank, standing beside the stretcher, raised his head, listening to the
+ambulance arriving at full speed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV THE ENEMY LISTENS
+
+In September, her marriage to Siward excitingly imminent, Sylvia
+had been seized with a passion for wholesale renunciation and rigid
+self-chastisement. All that had been so materially desirable to her in
+life, all that she had heretofore worshipped, in and belonging to her
+own world, she now denied. Down went the miniature golden calf from the
+altar in her private shrine, its tiny crashing fall making considerable
+racket throughout her world, and the planets and satellites adjacent to
+that section of the social system which she had long been expected to
+dominate.
+
+The spectacle of their youthful ruler-elect in sackcloth as the future
+bride of a business man had more than disconcerted them. The amazing
+announcement of Quarrier's engagement to Agatha Caithness stupefied the
+elect, rendering in one harrowing instant null and void the thousand
+petty plans and plots, intrigues and schemes, upon which future social
+constructions on the social structure had been based.
+
+The grief and amazement of Major Belwether, already distracted by his
+non-participation, through his own fault, in Plank's consolidation
+of Amalgamated with Inter-County, was pitiable to the verge of the
+unpleasant. Like panic-stricken rabbits, his thoughts ran in circles,
+and he skipped in their wake, scurrying from Quarrier to Harrington,
+from Harrington to Plank, from Plank to Siward, in distracted hope of
+recovering his equilibrium and squatting safely somewhere in somebody's
+luxuriantly perpetual cabbage-patch. He even squeezed under the fence
+and hopped humbly about old Peter Caithness, who suddenly assumed
+monumental proportions among those who had so long tolerated him.
+
+But Quarrier coldly drove him away and the increasing crowds besieging
+poor, bewildered old Peter Caithness trod upon the major, and there
+was nothing for him to do but to scuttle back to his own brush-heap and
+huddle there, squeaking pitifully.
+
+As for Grace Ferrall, she lost no time in tears, but took Agatha
+publicly to her bosom, turned furiously on Quarrier in private, and for
+the first time in her life permitted herself the luxury of telling him
+exactly what she thought of him.
+
+"You had your chance," she said; "but you are all surface! There's
+nothing to you but soft beard and manicuring, and the reticence of
+stupidity! The one girl for you--and you couldn't hold on to her!
+The one chance of your life--and it's escaped you, leaving a tuft of
+pompadour hair and a pair of woman's eyes protruding from the golden
+dust-heap your father buried you in. Now you'd better sit there and let
+it cover your mouth, and try to breathe through your nose. Agatha is
+looking for a new sensation; she's tried everything, now she's going to
+try you, that's all. She will be an invaluable leader, Howard, and we
+shall not yawn, I assure you. But, oh! the chance you've lost, for lack
+of a drop of red blood, and a barber to give you the beard of a man!"
+
+Which merely deepened the fear and hatred which Quarrier had entertained
+for his pretty cousin from the depths of his silk-wadded cradle. As for
+Kemp Ferrall, now third vice-president of Inter-County, he only laughed
+with the tolerance of a man in safety; and, looking at Quarrier through
+the pickets of the financial fence, not only forgot how close his escape
+had been, but, being a busy and progressive young man, began to consider
+how he might ultimately extract a little profit from the expensive
+tenant of the enclosure.
+
+Grace made the journey to town to express herself freely for Sylvia's
+benefit; but when she saw Sylvia, the girl's radiant beauty checked her,
+and all she could say was: "My dear! my dear, I knew you would do it!
+I knew you would fling him on his head. It's in your blood, you little
+jade! you little jilt! you mix of a baggage! I knew you'd behave like
+all the women of your race!"
+
+Sylvia held Mrs. Ferrall's pretty face impressed between both her hands,
+and looking her mischievously in the eyes, she whispered:
+
+"'Comme vous, maman, faut-il faire?--Eh! mes petits-enfants, pourquoi,
+Quand j'ai fait comme ma grand' mere, Ne feriez-vous pas comme moi?'"
+
+"O Lord!" said Mrs. Ferrall, "I'll never meddle again--and the entire
+world may marry and take the consequences!" Then she drove to the Santa
+Regina, where Marion was to join her in her return to Shotover; and she
+was already trying to make up her disturbed mind as to which might prove
+the more suitable for Marion--Captain Voucher, gloomily recovering from
+his defeat by Quarrier, or Billy Fleetwood, who didn't want to marry
+anybody.
+
+In the meanwhile, Siward's new duties as second vice-president of
+Inter-County had given him scant leisure for open-air convalescence.
+He was busy with Plank; he was also busy with the private investigation
+stirred up at the Patroons' Club and the Lenox, and which was slowly but
+inevitably resulting in clearing him, so that his restoration to good
+standing and full membership remained now only a matter of formal
+procedure.
+
+So Siward was becoming a very busy man among men; and Plank, still
+carrying on his broad shoulders burdens unbearable by any man save such
+a man as he, shook his heavy head, and ordered Siward into the open. And
+Siward, who had learned to obey, obeyed.
+
+But September had nearly ended, when Leila, in Plank's private car,
+attended by Siward and Sylvia and two trained nurses, arrived at the
+Fells. The nurses--Plank's idea--were a surprise to Leila; and the day
+after her arrival at the Fells she dismissed them, got out of bed,
+and dressed and came downstairs all alone, on a pair of sound though
+faltering legs.
+
+Sylvia and Siward were in the music-room, very busily figuring out
+the probable cost of a house in that section of the city east of Park
+Avenue, where the newly married imprudent are forming colonies--a just
+punishment for those reckless brides who marry for love, and are
+obliged to drive over two car-tracks to reach their wealthy friends and
+relatives of the Golden Zone.
+
+And Leila, in her pretty invalid's gown of lace, stood silently at the
+music-room door, watching them. Her thick, dark hair was braided, and
+looped up under a black bow behind; and she looked like a curious and
+impertinent schoolgirl peeping at them there through the crack of the
+door, bending forward, her joined hands flattened between her knees.
+
+"Oh," she said at length, in a frankly disappointed voice, "is that all
+you do when your chaperone is abed?"
+
+"Angel!" cried Sylvia, springing up, "how in the world did you ever
+manage to come downstairs?"
+
+"On the usual number of feet. If you think it's very gay up there--"
+She laid her hands in Sylvia's, and looked at Siward with all the
+old mockery in her eyes--eyes which slanted a little at the corners,
+Japanese-wise: "Stephen, you are growing positively plump. You'd better
+not do that until Sylvia marries you. Look at him, dear! He's getting
+all smooth in the cheeks, like a horrid undergraduate boy!"
+
+She released one hand and greeted Siward. "Thank you," she said
+serenely, replying to his inquiry, "I am perfectly well. You pay me
+no compliment when you ask me, after you have seen me." And to Sylvia,
+looking at her white flannels: "What have you been playing? What do you
+find to do with yourself, Sylvia, with that plump sun-burned boy at your
+heels all day long? Are there no men about?"
+
+"One's coming to-day," said Sylvia, laughing; and slipping her arm
+around Leila's waist, she strolled with her out through the tall glass
+doors to the terrace, with a backward glance of airy dismissal for
+Siward.
+
+Plank had wired from New York, the night before, that he was coming; in
+another hour he would be there. Leila knew it perfectly well, and she
+looked into the wickedly expressive young face of the girl beside her,
+eyes soft but unsmiling.
+
+"Child, child," she murmured, "you do not know how much of a man a man
+can be!"
+
+"Yes, I do!" said Sylvia hotly.
+
+Leila smiled. "Hush, you little silly! I've talked Stephen and praised
+Stephen to you for days and days, and the moment I dare mention another
+man you fly at me, hair on end!"
+
+"Oh, Leila, I know it! I'm perfectly mad about him, that's all. But
+don't you think he is looking like himself again? And, Leila, isn't he
+strangely attractive?--I don't mean just because I happen to be in love
+with him, but give me a perfectly cold and unbiassed opinion, dear,
+because there is simply no use in a girl's blinding herself to facts,
+or in ignoring certain fixed laws of symmetry, which it is perfectly
+obvious that Mr. Siward fulfils in those well-known and established
+proportions which--"
+
+"Sylvia!"
+
+"What?" she asked, startled.
+
+"Nothing. Only for two solid weeks--"
+
+"Of course, if you are not interested--"
+
+"But I am, child--I am! desperately interested! He is handsome! I knew
+him before you did, and I thought so then!"
+
+"Did you?" said Sylvia, troubled.
+
+"Yes, I did. When I wore short skirts I kissed him, too!"
+
+"Did you? W--what did he wear?"
+
+"Knickerbockers, silly! You don't think he was still in the cradle, do
+you? I'm not as aged as that!"
+
+"I missed a great deal in my childhood," said Sylvia naively.
+
+"By not knowing Stephen? Pooh! He used to pinch me, and then we'd put
+out our tongues in mutual derision. Once--"
+
+"Stop!" said Sylvia faintly. "And anyhow, you probably taught him. ...
+Look at him as he saunters across the lawn, Leila--look at him!"
+
+"Well? I see him."
+
+"Isn't he almost an ideal?"
+
+"He is. He certainly is, dear."
+
+"Do you think he walks as though he were perfectly well?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Leila thoughtfully. "Sometimes people whose
+walk is a gracefully languid saunter develop adipose tissue after
+forty."
+
+"Nonsense! Really, Leila, do you think he walks like a perfectly well
+man?"
+
+"He may be coming down with whooping-cough--"
+
+Sylvia rose indignantly, but Leila pulled her back to the sun-warmed
+marble bench:
+
+"A girl in love loses her sense of humour temporarily. Sit down, you
+little vixen!"
+
+"Leila, you laugh at everything when I don't feel like it."
+
+"I'm not in love, and that's why."
+
+"You are in love!"
+
+Leila looked at her, then under her breath: "In love, am I--with the
+whole young world ringing with the laughter I had forgotten the very
+sound of? Do you call that love?--with the sea and sky laughing back at
+me, and the wind in my ears fairly tremulous with laughter? Do you, who
+look out upon the pretty world so seriously through those sea-blue eyes
+of yours, think that I can be in love?"
+
+"Oh, Leila, a girl's happiness is serious enough, isn't it? Dear, it
+frightens me! I was so close to losing it--once."
+
+"I lost mine," said Leila, closing her eyes for a moment. "I shall not
+sigh if I find it again."
+
+They sat there in the sun, Leila's hand lying idly in Sylvia's, the soft
+sea-wind stirring their hair, and in their ears the thunderous undertone
+of the mounting sea.
+
+"Look at Stephen!" murmured Sylvia, her enraptured eyes following him
+as he strolled hatless and coatless along the cliff's edge, the sun
+glimmering on his short hair, a tall, slim, well-coupled, strongly knit
+shape against the sky and sea.
+
+But Leila's quick ear had caught a significant sound from the gravel
+drive behind her, and she stood up, a delicious colour tinting her face.
+
+"Are you going in?" asked Sylvia. Then she, too, heard the subdued
+whirring of a motor from the front of the house, and she looked at Leila
+as she turned and recrossed the terrace, walking slowly but erect, her
+pretty head held high.
+
+Then Sylvia faced the sea again and presently descended the terrace,
+crossing the long lawn toward the headland, where Siward stood looking
+out across the water.
+
+Leila, from the music-room, watched her; then she heard Plank's voice,
+and his step on the stair, and she called out to him gaily:
+
+"I am downstairs, thank you. How dared you send me those foolish
+nurses!"
+
+She was laughing when he came into the room, standing there erect, head
+high, a brilliant colour in her cheeks; and she offered him both hands
+which he took between his own, holding them strongly, and looking into
+her face with steady, questioning eyes.
+
+"Well?" she said, still smiling, but her scarlet under-lip trembled a
+little; then: "Yes, you may say what you wish--what I--I wish you to
+say. ... There can be no harm in talking about it. But--will you be very
+gentle with me? Don't m-make me cry; I h-have--I am t-trying to remember
+how it feels to laugh once more."
+
+
+Sylvia, lying in the hot sand on the tiny crescent beach under the
+cliffs, listened gravely to Siward's figures, as, note-book in hand,
+he went over the real-estate problem, commenting thoughtfully as he
+discussed the houses offered.
+
+"Twenty by a hundred and two; good rear, north side of the street--next
+door to the Tommy Barclays, you know, Sylvia; only they're asking
+forty-two-five."
+
+"That is an outrage!" said Sylvia seriously; "besides, I remember there
+was a wretched cellar, and only a butler's pantry extension. I'd
+much rather have that little house in Sixty-fourth Street, where the
+Fetherbraynes live--next house on the west, you know. Then we can pull
+it down and build--when we want to."
+
+"We won't be able to afford to build for a while, you know," said Siward
+doubtfully.
+
+"What do we care, dear? We'll have millions of things to do, anyway, and
+what is the use of building?"
+
+"As many things to do as that?" he said, looking over his note-book with
+a smile.
+
+"More! Are we not just beginning to live, and open our eyes, silly?
+Listen: Books, books, books, from top to bottom of the house, that is
+what I want first of all--except my piano."
+
+"Do let us have a little plumbing, dear," he said so seriously that for
+a fraction of a second she was on the verge of taking him seriously.
+
+"Why extravagant plumbing when books furnish sufficient circulation for
+the flow of soul, dear?" she retorted gravely.
+
+"Nobody we know will ever come to see us, if they think we read books,"
+said Siward.
+
+"Isn't it delightful!" sighed Sylvia. "We're going to become frumps!
+I mustn't forget the blue stockings for my trousseau, and you mustn't
+forget the California claret for the cellar, dear. We will need it when
+we read Henry James to each other."
+
+Siward, resting his weight on one hand, laughed, and looked out at the
+surf drenching the reefs with silver.
+
+"To think," he said, "that I could ever have been enough afraid of the
+sea to hate it! After all, at low tide the reef is always there in the
+same place and none the worse for the drenching. All that surf only
+shows how strong a rock can be."
+
+He smiled, and turned to look at Sylvia; and she lay there, silent, blue
+eyes looking back into his. Suddenly they glimmered with tears, and she
+stretched out both arms, drawing his head down to hers convulsively, her
+quivering mouth crushed against his lips. Then she rose to her knees, to
+her feet, dazed, brushing the tears from her eyes.
+
+"To think--to think," she stammered, "that I might have let you face the
+world alone! Dearest, dearest, we must fight a good fight. The sea is
+always there--always, always there!"
+
+He looked straight into her eyes, fearlessly, tenderly, and she looked
+back with the divine, untroubled gaze of a child, laying her slender,
+sun-tanned hands in his.
+
+And, deep in his body, as he stood there, he heard the low challenge of
+his soul on guard; and he knew that the Enemy listened.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Fighting Chance, by Robert W. Chambers
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