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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
+
+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: Sanctuary
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2005  [EBook #7517]
+This file was first posted on May 13, 2003
+[Last updated: October 1, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANCTUARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William
+Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SANCTUARY
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the
+sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within
+reach of the awakening clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had yielded
+herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rain
+soaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this
+sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which made it
+so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last two
+months--since her engagement to Denis Peyton--no distinct addition to
+the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed,
+of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly and
+outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before,
+the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause over
+her and she could trust herself to their shelter.
+
+Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in
+which she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations,
+and at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it a
+certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found
+herself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able
+to be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first stranger
+in the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easily
+than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each
+other, opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter into
+possession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belonging
+to her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; and
+this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it
+the hallowing sense of permanence.
+
+She rose from the writing-table where, list in hand, she had been going
+over the wedding-invitations, and walked toward the drawing-room window.
+Everything about her seemed to contribute to that rare harmony of feeling
+which levied a tax on every sense. The large coolness of the room, its fine
+traditional air of spacious living, its outlook over field and woodland
+toward the lake lying under the silver bloom of September; the very scent
+of the late violets in a glass on the writing-table; the rosy-mauve masses
+of hydrangea in tubs along the terrace; the fall, now and then, of a leaf
+through the still air--all, somehow, were mingled in the suffusion of
+well-being that yet made them seem but so much dross upon its current.
+
+The girl’s smile prolonged itself at the sight of a figure approaching from
+the lower slopes above the lake. The path was a short cut from the Peyton
+place, and she had known that Denis would appear in it at about that hour.
+Her smile, however, was prolonged not so much by his approach as by her
+sense of the impossibility of communicating her mood to him. The feeling
+did not disturb her. She could not imagine sharing her deepest moods with
+any one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too bright and
+spacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in truth a
+tribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a refuge
+from her own complexities.
+
+Denis Peyton was used to being met with a smile. He might have been
+pardoned for thinking smiles the habitual wear of the human countenance;
+and his estimate of life and of himself was necessarily tinged by the
+cordial terms on which they had always met each other. He had in fact found
+life, from the start, an uncommonly agreeable business, culminating fitly
+enough in his engagement to the only girl he had ever wished to marry,
+and the inheritance, from his unhappy step-brother, of a fortune which
+agreeably widened his horizon. Such a combination of circumstances might
+well justify a young man in thinking himself of some account in the
+universe; and it seemed the final touch of fitness that the mourning which
+Denis still wore for poor Arthur should lend a new distinction to his
+somewhat florid good looks.
+
+Kate Orme was not without an amused perception of her future husband’s
+point of view; but she could enter into it with the tolerance which
+allows for the inconscient element in all our judgments. There was, for
+instance, no one more sentimentally humane than Denis’s mother, the
+second Mrs. Peyton, a scented silvery person whose lavender silks and
+neutral-tinted manner expressed a mind with its blinds drawn down toward
+all the unpleasantness of life; yet it was clear that Mrs. Peyton saw a
+“dispensation” in the fact that her step-son had never married, and that
+his death had enabled Denis, at the right moment, to step gracefully into
+affluence. Was it not, after all, a sign of healthy-mindedness to take the
+gifts of the gods in this religious spirit, discovering fresh evidence of
+“design” in what had once seemed the sad fact of Arthur’s inaccessibility
+to correction? Mrs. Peyton, beautifully conscious of having done her “best”
+ for Arthur, would have thought it unchristian to repine at the providential
+failure of her efforts. Denis’s deductions were, of course, a little less
+direct than his mother’s. He had, besides, been fond of Arthur, and his
+efforts to keep the poor fellow straight had been less didactic and more
+spontaneous. Their result read itself, if not in any change in Arthur’s
+character, at least in the revised wording of his will; and Denis’s moral
+sense was pleasantly fortified by the discovery that it very substantially
+paid to be a good fellow.
+
+The sense of general providentialness on which Mrs. Peyton reposed had in
+fact been confirmed by events which reduced Denis’s mourning to a mere
+tribute of respect--since it would have been a mockery to deplore the
+disappearance of any one who had left behind him such an unsavory wake as
+poor Arthur. Kate did not quite know what had happened: her father was as
+firmly convinced as Mrs. Peyton that young girls should not be admitted to
+any open discussion of life. She could only gather, from the silences and
+evasions amid which she moved, that a woman had turned up--a woman who was
+of course “dreadful,” and whose dreadfulness appeared to include a sort
+of shadowy claim upon Arthur. But the claim, whatever it was, had been
+promptly discredited. The whole question had vanished and the woman with
+it. The blinds were drawn again on the ugly side of things, and life was
+resumed on the usual assumption that no such side existed. Kate knew only
+that a darkness had crossed her sky and left it as unclouded as before.
+
+Was it, perhaps, she now asked herself, the very lifting of the
+cloud--remote, unthreatening as it had been--which gave such new serenity
+to her heaven? It was horrible to think that one’s deepest security was
+a mere sense of escape--that happiness was no more than a reprieve. The
+perversity of such ideas was emphasized by Peyton’s approach. He had the
+gift of restoring things to their normal relations, of carrying one over
+the chasms of life through the closed tunnel of an incurious cheerfulness.
+All that was restless and questioning in the girl subsided in his presence,
+and she was content to take her love as a gift of grace, which began just
+where the office of reason ended. She was more than ever, to-day, in this
+mood of charmed surrender. More than ever he seemed the keynote of the
+accord between herself and life, the centre of a delightful complicity in
+every surrounding circumstance. One could not look at him without seeing
+that there was always a fair wind in his sails.
+
+It was carrying him toward her, as usual, at a quick confident pace,
+which nevertheless lagged a little, she noticed, as he emerged from the
+beech-grove and struck across the lawn. He walked as though he were tired.
+She had meant to wait for him on the terrace, held in check by her usual
+inclination to linger on the threshold of her pleasures; but now something
+drew her toward him, and she went quickly down the steps and across the
+lawn.
+
+“Denis, you look tired. I was afraid something had happened.”
+
+She had slipped her hand through his arm, and as they moved forward she
+glanced up at him, struck not so much by any new look in his face as by the
+fact that her approach had made no change in it.
+
+“I am rather tired.--Is your father in?”
+
+“Papa?” She looked up in surprise. “He went to town yesterday. Don’t you
+remember?”
+
+“Of course--I’d forgotten. You’re alone, then?” She dropped his arm and
+stood before him. He was very pale now, with the furrowed look of extreme
+physical weariness.
+
+“Denis--are you ill? _Has_ anything happened?”
+
+He forced a smile. “Yes--but you needn’t look so frightened.”
+
+She drew a deep breath of reassurance. _He_ was safe, after all! And
+all else, for a moment, seemed to swing below the rim of her world.
+
+“Your mother--?” she then said, with a fresh start of fear.
+
+“It’s not my mother.” They had reached the terrace, and he moved toward the
+house. “Let us go indoors. There’s such a beastly glare out here.”
+
+He seemed to find relief in the cool obscurity of the drawing-room, where,
+after the brightness of the afternoon light, their faces were almost
+indistinguishable to each other. She sat down, and he moved a few paces
+away. Before the writing-table he paused to look at the neatly sorted heaps
+of wedding-cards.
+
+“They are to be sent out to-morrow?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He turned back and stood before her.
+
+“It’s about the woman,” he began abruptly--“the woman who pretended to be
+Arthur’s wife.”
+
+Kate started as at the clutch of an unacknowledged fear.
+
+“She _was_ his wife, then?”
+
+Peyton made an impatient movement of negation. “If she was, why didn’t she
+prove it? She hadn’t a shred of evidence. The courts rejected her appeal.”
+
+“Well, then--?”
+
+“Well, she’s dead.” He paused, and the next words came with difficulty.
+“She and the child.”
+
+“The child? There was a child?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Kate started up and then sank down. These were not things about which young
+girls were told. The confused sense of horror had been nothing to this
+first sharp edge of fact.
+
+“And both are dead?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How do you know? My father said she had gone away--gone back to the
+West--”
+
+“So we thought. But this morning we found her.”
+
+“Found her?”
+
+He motioned toward the window. “Out there--in the lake.”
+
+“Both?”
+
+“Both.”
+
+She drooped before him shudderingly, her eyes hidden, as though to exclude
+the vision. “She had drowned herself?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, poor thing--poor thing!”
+
+They paused awhile, the minutes delving an abyss between them till he threw
+a few irrelevant words across the silence.
+
+“One of the gardeners found them.”
+
+“Poor thing!”
+
+“It was sufficiently horrible.”
+
+“Horrible--oh!” She had swung round again to her pole. “Poor Denis!
+_You_ were not there--_you_ didn’t have to--?”
+
+“I had to see her.” She felt the instant relief in his voice. He could talk
+now, could distend his nerves in the warm air of her sympathy. “I had to
+identify her.” He rose nervously and began to pace the room. “It’s knocked
+the wind out of me. I--my God! I couldn’t foresee it, could I?” He halted
+before her with outstretched hands of argument. “I did all I could--it’s
+not _my_ fault, is it?”
+
+“Your fault? Denis!”
+
+“She wouldn’t take the money--” He broke off, checked by her awakened
+glance.
+
+“The money? What money?” Her face changed, hardening as his relaxed. “Had
+you offered her _money_ to give up the case?”
+
+He stared a moment, and then dismissed the implication with a laugh.
+
+“No--no; after the case was decided against her. She seemed hard up, and I
+sent Hinton to her with a cheque.”
+
+“And she refused it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What did she say?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know--the usual thing. That she’d only wanted to prove she was
+his wife--on the child’s account. That she’d never wanted his money. Hinton
+said she was very quiet--not in the least excited--but she sent back the
+cheque.”
+
+Kate sat motionless, her head bent, her hands clasped about her knees. She
+no longer looked at Peyton.
+
+“Could there have been a mistake?” she asked slowly.
+
+“A mistake?”
+
+She raised her head now, and fixed her eyes on his, with a strange
+insistence of observation. “Could they have been married?”
+
+“The courts didn’t think so.”
+
+“Could the courts have been mistaken?”
+
+He started up again, and threw himself into another chair. “Good God, Kate!
+We gave her every chance to prove her case--why didn’t she do it? You don’t
+know what you’re talking about--such things are kept from girls. Why,
+whenever a man of Arthur’s kind dies, such--such women turn up. There are
+lawyers who live on such jobs--ask your father about it. Of course, this
+woman expected to be bought off--”
+
+“But if she wouldn’t take your money?”
+
+“She expected a big sum, I mean, to drop the case. When she found we meant
+to fight it, she saw the game was up. I suppose it was her last throw, and
+she was desperate; we don’t know how many times she may have been through
+the same thing before. That kind of woman is always trying to make money
+out of the heirs of any man who--who has been about with them.”
+
+Kate received this in silence. She had a sense of walking along a narrow
+ledge of consciousness above a sheer hallucinating depth into which she
+dared not look. But the depth drew her, and she plunged one terrified
+glance into it.
+
+“But the child--the child was Arthur’s?”
+
+Peyton shrugged his shoulders. “There again--how can we tell? Why, I don’t
+suppose the woman herself--I wish to heaven your father were here to
+explain!”
+
+She rose and crossed over to him, laying her hands on his shoulders with a
+gesture almost maternal.
+
+“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said. “You did all you could. Think what a
+comfort you were to poor Arthur.”
+
+He let her hands lie where she had placed them, without response or
+resistance.
+
+“I tried--I tried hard to keep him straight!”
+
+“We all know that--every one knows it. And we know how grateful he
+was--what a difference it made to him in the end. It would have been
+dreadful to think of his dying out there alone.”
+
+She drew him down on a sofa and seated herself by his side. A deep
+lassitude was upon him, and the hand she had possessed herself of lay in
+her hold inert.
+
+“It was splendid of you to travel day and night as you did. And then that
+dreadful week before he died! But for you he would have died alone among
+strangers.”
+
+He sat silent, his head dropping forward, his eyes fixed. “Among
+strangers,” he repeated absently.
+
+She looked up, as if struck by a sudden thought. “That poor woman--did you
+ever see her while you were out there?”
+
+He drew his hand away and gathered his brows together as if in an effort of
+remembrance.
+
+“I saw her--oh, yes, I saw her.” He pushed the tumbled hair from his
+forehead and stood up. “Let us go out,” he said. “My head is in a fog. I
+want to get away from it all.”
+
+A wave of compunction drew her to her feet.
+
+“It was my fault! I ought not to have asked so many questions.” She turned
+and rang the bell. “I’ll order the ponies--we shall have time for a drive
+before sunset.”
+
+
+II
+
+With the sunset in their faces they swept through the keen-scented autumn
+air at the swiftest pace of Kate’s ponies. She had given the reins to
+Peyton, and he had turned the horses’ heads away from the lake, rising by
+woody upland lanes to the high pastures which still held the sunlight. The
+horses were fresh enough to claim his undivided attention, and he drove in
+silence, his smooth fair profile turned to his companion, who sat silent
+also.
+
+Kate Orme was engaged in one of those rapid mental excursions which were
+forever sweeping her from the straight path of the actual into uncharted
+regions of conjecture. Her survey of life had always been marked by the
+tendency to seek out ultimate relations, to extend her researches to the
+limit of her imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some
+young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she
+takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and
+through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment
+all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes
+and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men
+like Denis, girls like herself--for under the unlikeness she felt the
+strange affinity--all struggling in that awful coil of moral darkness, with
+agonized hands reaching up for rescue. Her heart shrank from the horror of
+it, and then, in a passion of pity, drew back to the edge of the abyss.
+Suddenly her eyes turned toward Denis. His face was grave, but less
+disturbed. And men knew about these things! They carried this abyss in
+their bosoms, and went about smiling, and sat at the feet of innocence.
+Could it be that Denis--Denis even--Ah, no! She remembered what he had been
+to poor Arthur; she understood, now, the vague allusions to what he had
+tried to do for his brother. He had seen Arthur down there, in that coiling
+blackness, and had leaned over and tried to drag him out. But Arthur was
+too deep down, and his arms were interlocked with other arms--they had
+dragged each other deeper, poor souls, like drowning people who fight
+together in the waves! Kate’s visualizing habit gave a hateful precision
+and persistency to the image she had evoked--she could not rid herself of
+the vision of anguished shapes striving together in the darkness. The
+horror of it took her by the throat--she drew a choking breath, and felt
+the tears on her face.
+
+Peyton turned to her. The horses were climbing a hill, and his attention
+had strayed from them.
+
+“This has done me good,” he began; but as he looked his voice changed.
+“Kate! What is it? Why are you crying? Oh, for God’s sake, _don’t_!”
+ he ended, his hand closing on her wrist.
+
+She steadied herself and raised her eyes to his.
+
+“I--I couldn’t help it,” she stammered, struggling in the sudden release of
+her pent compassion. “It seems so awful that we should stand so close to
+this horror--that it might have been you who--”
+
+“I who--what on earth do you mean?” he broke in stridently.
+
+“Oh, don’t you see? I found myself exulting that you and I were so far from
+it--above it--safe in ourselves and each other--and then the other feeling
+came--the sense of selfishness, of going by on the other side; and I tried
+to realize that it might have been you and I who--who were down there in
+the night and the flood--”
+
+Peyton let the whip fall on the ponies’ flanks. “Upon my soul,” he said
+with a laugh, “you must have a nice opinion of both of us.”
+
+The words fell chillingly on the blaze of her self-immolation. Would
+she never learn to remember that Denis was incapable of mounting such
+hypothetical pyres? He might be as alive as herself to the direct demands
+of duty, but of its imaginative claims he was robustly unconscious. The
+thought brought a wholesome reaction of thankfulness.
+
+“Ah, well,” she said, the sunset dilating through her tears, “don’t you see
+that I can bear to think such things only because they’re impossibilities?
+It’s easy to look over into the depths if one has a rampart to lean on.
+What I most pity poor Arthur for is that, instead of that woman lying
+there, so dreadfully dead, there might have been a girl like me, so
+exquisitely alive because of him; but it seems cruel, doesn’t it, to let
+what he was not add ever so little to the value of what you are? To let him
+contribute ever so little to my happiness by the difference there is
+between you?”
+
+She was conscious, as she spoke, of straying again beyond his
+reach, through intricacies of sensation new even to her exploring
+susceptibilities. A happy literalness usually enabled him to strike a short
+cut through such labyrinths, and rejoin her smiling on the other side; but
+now she became wonderingly aware that he had been caught in the thick of
+her hypothesis.
+
+“It’s the difference that makes you care for me, then?” he broke out, with
+a kind of violence which seemed to renew his clutch on her wrist.
+
+“The difference?”
+
+He lashed the ponies again, so sharply that a murmur escaped her, and he
+drew them up, quivering, with an inconsequent “Steady, boys,” at which
+their back-laid ears protested.
+
+“It’s because I’m moral and respectable, and all that, that you’re fond of
+me,” he went on; “you’re--you’re simply in love with my virtues. You
+couldn’t imagine caring if I were down there in the ditch, as you say, with
+Arthur?”
+
+The question fell on a silence which seemed to deepen suddenly within
+herself. Every thought hung bated on the sense that something was coming:
+her whole consciousness became a void to receive it.
+
+“Denis!” she cried.
+
+He turned on her almost savagely. “I don’t want your pity, you know,” he
+burst out. “You can keep that for Arthur. I had an idea women loved men for
+themselves--through everything, I mean. But I wouldn’t steal your love--I
+don’t want it on false pretenses, you understand. Go and look into other
+men’s lives, that’s all I ask of you. I slipped into it--it was just a case
+of holding my tongue when I ought to have spoken--but I--I--for God’s sake,
+don’t sit there staring! I suppose you’ve seen all along that I knew he was
+married to the woman.”
+
+
+III
+
+The housekeeper’s reminding her that Mr. Orme would be at home the next day
+for dinner, and did she think he would like the venison with claret sauce
+or jelly, roused Kate to the first consciousness of her surroundings.
+Her father would return on the morrow: he would give to the dressing of
+the venison such minute consideration as, in his opinion, every detail
+affecting his comfort or convenience quite obviously merited. And if
+it were not the venison it would be something else; if it were not the
+housekeeper it would be Mr. Orme, charged with the results of a conference
+with his agent, a committee-meeting at his club, or any of the other
+incidents which, by happening to himself, became events. Kate found herself
+caught in the inexorable continuity of life, found herself gazing over a
+scene of ruin lit up by the punctual recurrence of habit as nature’s calm
+stare lights the morrow of a whirlwind.
+
+Life was going on, then, and dragging her at its wheels. She could
+neither check its rush nor wrench loose from it and drop out--oh, how
+blessedly--into darkness and cessation. She must go bounding on, racked,
+broken, but alive in every fibre. The most she could hope was a few hours’
+respite, not from her own terrors, but from the pressure of outward claims:
+the midday halt, during which the victim is unbound while his torturers
+rest from their efforts. Till her father’s return she would have the house
+to herself, and, the question of the venison despatched, could give herself
+to long lonely pacings of the empty rooms, and shuddering subsidences upon
+her pillow.
+
+Her first impulse, as the mist cleared from her brain, was the habitual one
+of reaching out for ultimate relations. She wanted to know the worst; and
+for her, as she saw in a flash, the worst of it was the core of fatality
+in what had happened. She shrank from her own way of putting it--nor was
+it even figuratively true that she had ever felt, under faith in Denis,
+any such doubt as the perception implied. But that was merely because her
+imagination had never put him to the test. She was fond of exposing herself
+to hypothetical ordeals, but somehow she had never carried Denis with her
+on these adventures. What she saw now was that, in a world of strangeness,
+he remained the object least strange to her. She was not in the tragic case
+of the girl who suddenly sees her lover unmasked. No mask had dropped from
+Denis’s face: the pink shades had simply been lifted from the lamps, and
+she saw him for the first time in an unmitigated glare.
+
+Such exposure does not alter the features, but it lays an ugly emphasis
+on the most charming lines, pushing the smile to a grin, the curve of
+good-nature to the droop of slackness. And it was precisely into the
+flagging lines of extreme weakness that Denis’s graceful contour flowed.
+In the terrible talk which had followed his avowal, and wherein every word
+flashed a light on his moral processes, she had been less startled by what
+he had done than by the way in which his conscience had already become a
+passive surface for the channelling of consequences. He was like a child
+who had put a match to the curtains, and stands agape at the blaze.
+It was horribly naughty to put the match--but beyond that the child’s
+responsibility did not extend. In this business of Arthur’s, where all had
+been wrong from the beginning--where self-defence might well find a plea
+for its casuistries in the absence of a definite right to be measured
+by--it had been easy, after the first slip, to drop a little lower with
+each struggle. The woman--oh, the woman was--well, of the kind who prey on
+such men. Arthur, out there, at his lowest ebb, had drifted into living
+with her as a man drifts into drink or opium. He knew what she was--he
+knew where she had come from. But he had fallen ill, and she had nursed
+him--nursed him devotedly, of course. That was her chance, and she knew it.
+Before he was out of the fever she had the noose around him--he came to and
+found himself married. Such cases were common enough--if the man recovered
+he bought off the woman and got a divorce. It was all a part of the
+business--the marriage, the bribe, the divorce. Some of those women made a
+big income out of it--they were married and divorced once a year. If Arthur
+had only got well--but, instead, he had a relapse and died. And there was
+the woman, made his widow by mischance as it were, with her child on her
+arm--whose child?--and a scoundrelly black-mailing lawyer to work up her
+case for her. Her claim was clear enough--the right of dower, a third of
+his estate. But if he had never meant to marry her? If he had been trapped
+as patently as a rustic fleeced in a gambling-hell? Arthur, in his last
+hours, had confessed to the marriage, but had also acknowledged its folly.
+And after his death, when Denis came to look about him and make inquiries,
+he found that the witnesses, if there had been any, were dispersed and
+undiscoverable. The whole question hinged on Arthur’s statement to his
+brother. Suppress that statement, and the claim vanished, and with it the
+scandal, the humiliation, the life-long burden of the woman and child
+dragging the name of Peyton through heaven knew what depths. He had thought
+of that first, Denis swore, rather than of the money. The money, of course,
+had made a difference,--he was too honest not to own it--but not till
+afterward, he declared--would have declared on his honour, but that the
+word tripped him up, and sent a flush to his forehead.
+
+Thus, in broken phrases, he flung his defence at her: a defence improvised,
+pieced together as he went along, to mask the crude instinctiveness of his
+act. For with increasing clearness Kate saw, as she listened, that there
+had been no real struggle in his mind; that, but for the grim logic of
+chance, he might never have felt the need of any justification. If the
+woman, after the manner of such baffled huntresses, had wandered off in
+search of fresh prey, he might, quite sincerely, have congratulated himself
+on having saved a decent name and an honest fortune from her talons. It was
+the price she had paid to establish her claim that for the first time
+brought him to a startled sense of its justice. His conscience responded
+only to the concrete pressure of facts.
+
+It was with the anguish of this discovery that Kate Orme locked herself in
+at the end of their talk. How the talk had ended, how at length she had got
+him from the room and the house, she recalled but confusedly. The tragedy
+of the woman’s death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing in the
+disaster of his bright irreclaimableness. Once, when she had cried out,
+“You would have married me and said nothing,” and he groaned back, “But
+I _have_ told you,” she felt like a trainer with a lash above some
+bewildered animal.
+
+But she persisted savagely. “You told me because you had to; because your
+nerves gave way; because you knew it couldn’t hurt you to tell.” The
+perplexed appeal of his gaze had almost checked her. “You told me because
+it was a relief; but nothing will really relieve you--nothing will really
+help you--till you have told some one who--who _will_ hurt you.”
+
+“Who will hurt me--?”
+
+“Till you have told the truth as--as openly as you lied.”
+
+He started up, ghastly with fear. “I don’t understand you.”
+
+“You must confess, then--publicly--openly--you must go to the judge. I
+don’t know how it’s done.”
+
+“To the judge? When they’re both dead? When everything is at an end? What
+good could that do?” he groaned.
+
+“Everything is not at an end for you--everything is just beginning. You
+must clear yourself of this guilt; and there is only one way--to confess
+it. And you must give back the money.”
+
+This seemed to strike him as conclusive proof of her irrelevance. “I wish I
+had never heard of the money! But to whom would you have me give it back? I
+tell you she was a waif out of the gutter. I don’t believe any one knew her
+real name--I don’t believe she had one.”
+
+“She must have had a mother and father.”
+
+“Am I to devote my life to hunting for them through the slums of
+California? And how shall I know when I have found them? It’s impossible to
+make you understand. I did wrong--I did horribly wrong--but that is not the
+way to repair it.”
+
+“What is, then?”
+
+He paused, a little askance at the question. “To do better--to do my best,”
+ he said, with a sudden flourish of firmness. “To take warning by this
+dreadful--”
+
+“Oh, be silent,” she cried out, and hid her face. He looked at her
+hopelessly.
+
+At last he said: “I don’t know what good it can do to go on talking. I have
+only one more thing to say. Of course you know that you are free.”
+
+He spoke simply, with a sudden return to his old voice and accent, at which
+she weakened as under a caress. She lifted her head and gazed at him. “Am
+I?” she said musingly.
+
+“Kate!” burst from him; but she raised a silencing hand.
+
+“It seems to me,” she said, “that I am imprisoned--imprisoned with you in
+this dreadful thing. First I must help you to get out--then it will be time
+enough to think of myself.”
+
+His face fell and he stammered: “I don’t understand you.”
+
+“I can’t say what I shall do--or how I shall feel--till I know what you are
+going to do and feel.”
+
+“You must see how I feel--that I’m half dead with it.”
+
+“Yes--but that is only half.”
+
+He turned this over for a perceptible space of time before asking slowly:
+“You mean that you’ll give me up, if I don’t do this crazy thing you
+propose?”
+
+She paused in turn. “No,” she said; “I don’t want to bribe you. You must
+feel the need of it yourself.”
+
+“The need of proclaiming this thing publicly?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He sat staring before him. “Of course you realize what it would mean?” he
+began at length.
+
+“To you?” she returned.
+
+“I put that aside. To others--to you. I should go to prison.”
+
+“I suppose so,” she said simply.
+
+“You seem to take it very easily--I’m afraid my mother wouldn’t.”
+
+“Your mother?” This produced the effect he had expected.
+
+“You hadn’t thought of her, I suppose? It would probably kill her.”
+
+“It would have killed her to think that you could do what you have done!”
+
+“It would have made her very unhappy; but there’s a difference.”
+
+Yes: there was a difference; a difference which no rhetoric could disguise.
+The secret sin would have made Mrs. Peyton wretched, but it would not
+have killed her. And she would have taken precisely Denis’s view of the
+elasticity of atonement: she would have accepted private regrets as
+the genteel equivalent of open expiation. Kate could even imagine her
+extracting a “lesson” from the providential fact that her son had not
+been found out.
+
+“You see it’s not so simple,” he broke out, with a tinge of doleful
+triumph.
+
+“No: it’s not simple,” she assented.
+
+“One must think of others,” he continued, gathering faith in his argument
+as he saw her reduced to acquiescence.
+
+She made no answer, and after a moment he rose to go. So far, in
+retrospect, she could follow the course of their talk; but when, in the
+act of parting, argument lapsed into entreaty, and renunciation into the
+passionate appeal to give him at least one more hearing, her memory lost
+itself in a tumult of pain, and she recalled only that, when the door
+closed on him, he took with him her promise to see him once again.
+
+
+IV
+
+She had promised to see him again; but the promise did not imply that she
+had rejected his offer of freedom. In the first rush of misery she had not
+fully repossessed herself, had felt herself entangled in his fate by a
+hundred meshes of association and habit; but after a sleepless night spent
+with the thought of him--that dreadful bridal of their souls--she woke to a
+morrow in which he had no part. She had not sought her freedom, nor had he
+given it; but a chasm had opened at their feet, and they found themselves
+on different sides.
+
+Now she was able to scan the disaster from the melancholy vantage of her
+independence. She could even draw a solace from the fact that she had
+ceased to love Denis. It was inconceivable that an emotion so interwoven
+with every fibre of consciousness should cease as suddenly as the flow of
+sap in an uprooted plant; but she had never allowed herself to be tricked
+by the current phraseology of sentiment, and there were no stock axioms to
+protect her from the truth.
+
+It was probably because she had ceased to love him that she could look
+forward with a kind of ghastly composure to seeing him again. She had
+stipulated, of course, that the wedding should be put off, but she had
+named no other condition beyond asking for two days to herself--two days
+during which he was not even to write. She wished to shut herself in with
+her misery, to accustom herself to it as she had accustomed herself to
+happiness. But actual seclusion was impossible: the subtle reactions of
+life almost at once began to break down her defences. She could no more
+have her wretchedness to herself than any other emotion: all the lives
+about her were so many unconscious factors in her sensations. She tried
+to concentrate herself on the thought as to how she could best help poor
+Denis; for love, in ebbing, had laid bare an unsuspected depth of pity.
+But she found it more and more difficult to consider his situation in the
+abstract light of right and wrong. Open expiation still seemed to her the
+only possible way of healing; but she tried vainly to think of Mrs. Peyton
+as taking such a view. Yet Mrs. Peyton ought at least to know what had
+happened: was it not, in the last resort, she who should pronounce on
+her son’s course? For a moment Kate was fascinated by this evasion of
+responsibility; she had nearly decided to tell Denis that he must begin by
+confessing everything to his mother. But almost at once she began to shrink
+from the consequences. There was nothing she so dreaded for him as that any
+one should take a light view of his act: should turn its irremediableness
+into an excuse. And this, she foresaw, was what Mrs. Peyton would do. The
+first burst of misery over, she would envelop the whole situation in a mist
+of expediency. Brought to the bar of Kate’s judgment, she at once revealed
+herself incapable of higher action.
+
+Kate’s conception of her was still under arraignment when the actual Mrs.
+Peyton fluttered in. It was the afternoon of the second day, as the girl
+phrased it in the dismal re-creation of her universe. She had been thinking
+so hard of Mrs. Peyton that the lady’s silvery insubstantial presence
+seemed hardly more than a projection of the thought; but as Kate collected
+herself, and regained contact with the outer world, her preoccupation
+yielded to surprise. It was unusual for Mrs. Peyton to pay visits. For
+years she had remained enthroned in a semi-invalidism which prohibited
+effort while it did not preclude diversion; and the girl at once divined a
+special purpose in her coming.
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s traditions would not have permitted any direct method of
+attack; and Kate had to sit through the usual prelude of ejaculation and
+anecdote. Presently, however, the elder lady’s voice gathered significance,
+and laying her hand on Kate’s she murmured: “I have come to talk to you of
+this sad affair.”
+
+Kate began to tremble. Was it possible that Denis had after all spoken? A
+rising hope checked her utterance, and she saw in a flash that it still lay
+with him to regain his hold on her. But Mrs. Peyton went on delicately:
+“It has been a great shock to my poor boy. To be brought in contact with
+Arthur’s past was in itself inexpressibly painful; but this last dreadful
+business--that woman’s wicked act--”
+
+“Wicked?” Kate exclaimed.
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s gentle stare reproved her. “Surely religion teaches us that
+suicide is a sin? And to murder her child! I ought not to speak to you of
+such things, my dear. No one has ever mentioned anything so dreadful in my
+presence: my dear husband used to screen me so carefully from the painful
+side of life. Where there is so much that is beautiful to dwell upon, we
+should try to ignore the existence of such horrors. But nowadays everything
+is in the papers; and Denis told me he thought it better that you should
+hear the news first from him.”
+
+Kate nodded without speaking.
+
+“He felt how _dreadful_ it was to have to tell you. But I tell him he
+takes a morbid view of the case. Of course one is shocked at the woman’s
+crime--but, if one looks a little deeper, how can one help seeing that it
+may have been designed as the means of rescuing that poor child from a life
+of vice and misery? That is the view I want Denis to take: I want him to
+see how all the difficulties of life disappear when one has learned to look
+for a divine purpose in human sufferings.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton rested a moment on this period, as an experienced climber
+pauses to be overtaken by a less agile companion; but presently she became
+aware that Kate was still far below her, and perhaps needed a stronger
+incentive to the ascent.
+
+“My dear child,” she said adroitly, “I said just now that I was sorry you
+had been obliged to hear of this sad affair; but after all it is only you
+who can avert its consequences.”
+
+Kate drew an eager breath. “Its consequences?” she faltered.
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s voice dropped solemnly. “Denis has told me everything,” she
+said.
+
+“Everything?”
+
+“That you insist on putting off the marriage. Oh, my dear, I do implore you
+to reconsider that!”
+
+Kate sank back with the sense of having passed again into a region of
+leaden shadow. “Is that all he told you?”
+
+Mrs. Peyton gazed at her with arch raillery. “All? Isn’t it everything--to
+him?”
+
+“Did he give you my reason, I mean?”
+
+“He said you felt that, after this shocking tragedy, there ought, in
+decency, to be a delay; and I quite understand the feeling. It does seem
+too unfortunate that the woman should have chosen this particular time! But
+you will find as you grow older that life is full of such sad contrasts.”
+
+Kate felt herself slowly petrifying under the warm drip of Mrs. Peyton’s
+platitudes.
+
+“It seems to me,” the elder lady continued, “that there is only one point
+from which we ought to consider the question--and that is, its effect on
+Denis. But for that we ought to refuse to know anything about it. But it
+has made my boy so unhappy. The law-suit was a cruel ordeal to him--the
+dreadful notoriety, the revelation of poor Arthur’s infirmities. Denis is
+as sensitive as a woman; it is his unusual refinement of feeling that makes
+him so worthy of being loved by you. But such sensitiveness may be carried
+to excess. He ought not to let this unhappy incident prey on him: it shows
+a lack of trust in the divine ordering of things. That is what troubles
+me: his faith in life has been shaken. And--you must forgive me, dear
+child--you _will_ forgive me, I know--but I can’t help blaming you a
+little--”
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s accent converted the accusation into a caress, which
+prolonged itself in a tremulous pressure of Kate’s hand.
+
+The girl gazed at her blankly. “You blame _me_--?”
+
+“Don’t be offended, my child. I only fear that your excessive sympathy with
+Denis, your own delicacy of feeling, may have led you to encourage his
+morbid ideas. He tells me you were very much shocked--as you naturally
+would be--as any girl must be--I would not have you otherwise, dear Kate!
+It is _beautiful_ that you should both feel so; most beautiful; but
+you know religion teaches us not to yield too much to our grief. Let the
+dead bury their dead; the living owe themselves to each other. And what had
+this wretched woman to do with either of you? It is a misfortune for Denis
+to have been connected in any way with a man of Arthur Peyton’s character;
+but after all, poor Arthur did all he could to atone for the disgrace he
+brought on us, by making Denis his heir--and I am sure I have no wish to
+question the decrees of Providence.” Mrs. Peyton paused again, and then
+softly absorbed both of Kate’s hands. “For my part,” she continued, “I see
+in it another instance of the beautiful ordering of events. Just after dear
+Denis’s inheritance has removed the last obstacle to your marriage, this
+sad incident comes to show how desperately he needs you, how cruel it would
+be to ask him to defer his happiness.”
+
+She broke off, shaken out of her habitual placidity by the abrupt
+withdrawal of the girl’s hands. Kate sat inertly staring, but no answer
+rose to her lips.
+
+At length Mrs. Peyton resumed, gathering her draperies about her with a
+tentative hint of leave-taking: “I may go home and tell him that you will
+not put off the wedding?”
+
+Kate was still silent, and her visitor looked at her with the mild surprise
+of an advocate unaccustomed to plead in vain.
+
+“If your silence means refusal, my dear, I think you ought to realize the
+responsibility you assume.” Mrs. Peyton’s voice had acquired an edge of
+righteous asperity. “If Denis has a fault it is that he is too gentle, too
+yielding, too readily influenced by those he cares for. Your influence is
+paramount with him now--but if you turn from him just when he needs your
+help, who can say what the result will be?”
+
+The argument, though impressively delivered, was hardly of a nature to
+carry conviction to its hearer; but it was perhaps for that very reason
+that she suddenly and unexpectedly replied to it by sinking back into her
+seat with a burst of tears. To Mrs. Peyton, however, tears were the signal
+of surrender, and, at Kate’s side in an instant she hastened to temper her
+triumph with magnanimity.
+
+“Don’t think I don’t feel with you; but we must both forget ourselves for
+our boy’s sake. I told him I should come back with your promise.”
+
+The arm she had slipped about Kate’s shoulder fell back with the girl’s
+start. Kate had seen in a flash what capital would be made of her emotion.
+
+“No, no, you misunderstand me. I can make no promise,” she declared.
+
+The older lady sat a moment irresolute; then she restored her arm to the
+shoulder from which it had been so abruptly displaced.
+
+“My dear child,” she said, in a tone of tender confidence, “if I have
+misunderstood you, ought you not to enlighten me? You asked me just now
+if Denis had given me your reason for this strange postponement. He gave
+me one reason, but it seems hardly sufficient to explain your conduct.
+If there is any other,--and I know you well enough to feel sure there
+is,--will you not trust me with it? If my boy has been unhappy enough to
+displease you, will you not give his mother the chance to plead his cause?
+Remember, no one should be condemned unheard. As Denis’s mother, I have the
+right to ask for your reason.”
+
+“My reason? My reason?” Kate stammered, panting with the exhaustion of the
+struggle. Oh, if only Mrs. Peyton would release her! “If you have the right
+to know it, why doesn’t he tell you?” she cried.
+
+Mrs. Peyton stood up, quivering. “I will go home and ask him,” she said. “I
+will tell him he had your permission to speak.”
+
+She moved toward the door, with the nervous haste of a person unaccustomed
+to decisive action. But Kate sprang before her.
+
+“No, no; don’t ask him! I implore you not to ask him,” she cried.
+
+Mrs. Peyton turned on her with sudden authority of voice and gesture. “Do
+I understand you?” she said. “You admit that you have a reason for putting
+off your marriage, and yet you forbid me--me, Denis’s mother--to ask him
+what it is? My poor child, I needn’t ask, for I know already. If he has
+offended you, and you refuse him the chance to defend himself, I needn’t
+look farther for your reason: it is simply that you have ceased to love
+him.”
+
+Kate fell back from the door which she had instinctively barricaded.
+
+“Perhaps that is it,” she murmured, letting Mrs. Peyton pass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Orme’s returning carriage-wheels crossed Mrs. Peyton’s indignant
+flight; and an hour later Kate, in the bland candle-light of the
+dinner-hour, sat listening with practised fortitude to her father’s
+comments on the venison.
+
+She had wondered, as she awaited him in the drawing-room, if he would
+notice any change in her appearance. It seemed to her that the flagellation
+of her thoughts must have left visible traces. But Mr. Orme was not a man
+of subtle perceptions, save where his personal comfort was affected: though
+his egoism was clothed in the finest feelers, he did not suspect a similar
+surface in others. His daughter, as part of himself, came within the normal
+range of his solicitude; but she was an outlying region, a subject
+province; and Mr. Orme’s was a highly centralized polity.
+
+News of the painful incident--he often used Mrs. Peyton’s vocabulary--had
+reached him at his club, and to some extent disturbed the assimilation of a
+carefully ordered breakfast; but since then two days had passed, and it did
+not take Mr. Orme forty-eight hours to resign himself to the misfortunes of
+others. It was all very nasty, of course, and he wished to heaven it hadn’t
+happened to any one about to be connected with him; but he viewed it with
+the transient annoyance of a gentleman who has been splashed by the mud of
+a fatal runaway.
+
+Mr. Orme affected, under such circumstances, a bluff and hearty stoicism
+as remote as possible from Mrs. Peyton’s deprecating evasion of facts. It
+was a bad business; he was sorry Kate should have been mixed up with it;
+but she would be married soon now, and then she would see that life wasn’t
+exactly a Sunday-school story. Everybody was exposed to such disagreeable
+accidents: he remembered a case in their own family--oh, a distant cousin
+whom Kate wouldn’t have heard of--a poor fellow who had got entangled with
+just such a woman, and having (most properly) been sent packing by his
+father, had justified the latter’s course by promptly forging his name--a
+very nasty affair altogether; but luckily the scandal had been hushed up,
+the woman bought off, and the prodigal, after a season of probation, safely
+married to a nice girl with a good income, who was told by the family that
+the doctors recommended his settling in California.
+
+_Luckily the scandal was hushed up_: the phrase blazed out against
+the dark background of Kate’s misery. That was doubtless what most people
+felt--the words represented the consensus of respectable opinion. The best
+way of repairing a fault was to hide it: to tear up the floor and bury the
+victim at night. Above all, no coroner and no autopsy!
+
+She began to feel a strange interest in her distant cousin. “And his
+wife--did she know what he had done?”
+
+Mr. Orme stared. His moral pointed, he had returned to the contemplation of
+his own affairs.
+
+“His wife? Oh, of course not. The secret has been most admirably kept; but
+her property was put in trust, so she’s quite safe with him.”
+
+Her property! Kate wondered if her faith in her husband had also been
+put in trust, if her sensibilities had been protected from his possible
+inroads.
+
+“Do you think it quite fair to have deceived her in that way?”
+
+Mr. Orme gave her a puzzled glance: he had no taste for the by-paths of
+ethical conjecture.
+
+“His people wanted to give the poor fellow another chance; they did the
+best they could for him.”
+
+“And--he has done nothing dishonourable since?”
+
+“Not that I know of: the last I heard was that they had a little boy,
+and that he was quite happy. At that distance he’s not likely to bother
+_us_, at all events.”
+
+Long after Mr. Orme had left the topic, Kate remained lost in its
+contemplation. She had begun to perceive that the fair surface of life was
+honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage. Every respectable household
+had its special arrangements for the private disposal of family scandals;
+it was only among the reckless and improvident that such hygienic
+precautions were neglected. Who was she to pass judgment on the merits
+of such a system? The social health must be preserved: the means devised
+were the result of long experience and the collective instinct of
+self-preservation. She had meant to tell her father that evening that her
+marriage had been put off; but she now abstained from doing so, not from
+any doubt of Mr. Orme’s acquiescence--he could always be made to feel the
+force of conventional scruples--but because the whole question sank into
+insignificance beside the larger issue which his words had raised.
+
+In her own room, that night, she passed through that travail of the soul
+of which the deeper life is born. Her first sense was of a great moral
+loneliness--an isolation more complete, more impenetrable, than that in
+which the discovery of Denis’s act had plunged her. For she had vaguely
+leaned, then, on a collective sense of justice that should respond to
+her own ideas of right and wrong: she still believed in the logical
+correspondence of theory and practice. Now she saw that, among those
+nearest her, there was no one who recognized the moral need of expiation.
+She saw that to take her father or Mrs. Peyton into her confidence would
+be but to widen the circle of sterile misery in which she and Denis moved.
+At first the aspect of life thus revealed to her seemed simply mean
+and base--a world where honour was a pact of silence between adroit
+accomplices. The network of circumstance had tightened round her, and every
+effort to escape drew its meshes closer. But as her struggles subsided she
+felt the spiritual release which comes with acceptance: not connivance in
+dishonour, but recognition of evil. Out of that dark vision light was to
+come, the shaft of cloud turning to the pillar of fire. For here, at last,
+life lay before her as it was: not brave, garlanded and victorious, but
+naked, grovelling and diseased, dragging its maimed limbs through the mud,
+yet lifting piteous hands to the stars. Love itself, once throned aloft
+on an altar of dreams, how it stole to her now, storm-beaten and scarred,
+pleading for the shelter of her breast! Love, indeed, not in the old sense
+in which she had conceived it, but a graver, austerer presence--the charity
+of the mystic three. She thought she had ceased to love Denis--but what had
+she loved in him but her happiness and his? Their affection had been the
+_garden enclosed_ of the Canticles, where they were to walk forever in
+a delicate isolation of bliss. But now love appeared to her as something
+more than this--something wider, deeper, more enduring than the selfish
+passion of a man and a woman. She saw it in all its far-reaching issues,
+till the first meeting of two pairs of young eyes kindled a light which
+might be a high-lifted beacon across dark waters of humanity.
+
+All this did not come to her clearly, consecutively, but in a series of
+blurred and shifting images. Marriage had meant to her, as it means to
+girls brought up in ignorance of life, simply the exquisite prolongation of
+wooing. If she had looked beyond, to the vision of wider ties, it was as
+a traveller gazes over a land veiled in golden haze, and so far distant
+that the imagination delays to explore it. But now through the blur of
+sensations one image strangely persisted--the image of Denis’s child. Had
+she ever before thought of their having a child? She could not remember.
+She was like one who wakens from a long fever: she recalled nothing of
+her former self or of her former feelings. She knew only that the vision
+persisted--the vision of the child whose mother she was not to be. It was
+impossible that she should marry Denis--her inmost soul rejected him ...
+but it was just because she was not to be the child’s mother that its
+image followed her so pleadingly. For she saw with perfect clearness the
+inevitable course of events. Denis would marry some one else--he was one of
+the men who are fated to marry, and she needed not his mother’s reminder
+that her abandonment of him at an emotional crisis would fling him upon the
+first sympathy within reach. He would marry a girl who knew nothing of his
+secret--for Kate was intensely aware that he would never again willingly
+confess himself--he would marry a girl who trusted him and leaned on him,
+as she, Kate Orme--the earlier Kate Orme--had done but two days since! And
+with this deception between them their child would be born: born to an
+inheritance of secret weakness, a vice of the moral fibre, as it might be
+born with some hidden physical taint which would destroy it before the
+cause should be detected.... Well, and what of it? Was she to hold herself
+responsible? Were not thousands of children born with some such unsuspected
+taint?... Ah, but if here was one that she could save? What if she, who had
+had so exquisite a vision of wifehood, should reconstruct from its ruins
+this vision of protecting maternity--if her love for her lover should be,
+not lost, but transformed, enlarged, into this passion of charity for his
+race? If she might expiate and redeem his fault by becoming a refuge from
+its consequences? Before this strange extension of her love all the old
+limitations seemed to fall. Something had cleft the surface of self, and
+there welled up the mysterious primal influences, the sacrificial instinct
+of her sex, a passion of spiritual motherhood that made her long to fling
+herself between the unborn child and its fate....
+
+She never knew, then or after, how she reached this mystic climax of
+effacement; she was only conscious, through her anguish, of that lift of
+the heart which made one of the saints declare that joy was the inmost core
+of sorrow. For it was indeed a kind of joy she felt, if old names must
+serve for such new meanings; a surge of liberating faith in life, the old
+_credo quia absurdum_ which is the secret cry of all supreme
+endeavour.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+I
+
+“Does it look nice, mother?”
+
+Dick Peyton met her with the question on the threshold, drawing her gaily
+into the little square room, and adding, with a laugh with a blush in it:
+“You know she’s an uncommonly noticing person, and little things tell with
+her.”
+
+He swung round on his heel to follow his mother’s smiling inspection of the
+apartment.
+
+“She seems to have _all_ the qualities,” Mrs. Denis Peyton remarked,
+as her circuit finally brought her to the prettily appointed tea-table.
+
+“_All_,” he declared, taking the sting from her emphasis by his prompt
+adoption of it. Dick had always had a wholesome way of thus appropriating
+to his own use such small shafts of maternal irony as were now and then
+aimed at him.
+
+Kate Peyton laughed and loosened her furs. “It looks charmingly,” she
+pronounced, ending her survey by an approach to the window, which gave,
+far below, the oblique perspective of a long side-street leading to Fifth
+Avenue.
+
+The high-perched room was Dick Peyton’s private office, a retreat
+partitioned off from the larger enclosure in which, under a north light
+and on a range of deal tables, three or four young draughtsmen were busily
+engaged in elaborating his architectural projects. The outer door of the
+office bore the sign: _Peyton and Gill, Architects_; but Gill was
+an utilitarian person, as unobtrusive as his name, who contented himself
+with a desk in the workroom, and left Dick to lord it alone in the small
+apartment to which clients were introduced, and where the social part of
+the business was carried on.
+
+It was to serve, on this occasion, as the scene of a tea designed, as Kate
+Peyton was vividly aware, to introduce a certain young lady to the scene of
+her son’s labours. Mrs. Peyton had been hearing a great deal lately about
+Clemence Verney. Dick was naturally expansive, and his close intimacy with
+his mother--an intimacy fostered by his father’s early death--if it had
+suffered some natural impairment in his school and college days, had of
+late been revived by four years of comradeship in Paris, where Mrs. Peyton,
+in a tiny apartment of the Rue de Varennes, had kept house for him during
+his course of studies at the Beaux Arts. There were indeed not lacking
+critics of her own sex who accused Kate Peyton of having figured too
+largely in her son’s life; of having failed to efface herself at a period
+when it is agreed that young men are best left free to try conclusions with
+the world. Mrs. Peyton, had she cared to defend herself, might have said
+that Dick, if communicative, was not impressionable, and that the closeness
+of texture which enabled him to throw off her sarcasms preserved him also
+from the infiltration of her prejudices. He was certainly no knight of the
+apron-string, but a seemingly resolute and self-sufficient young man, whose
+romantic friendship with his mother had merely served to throw a veil of
+suavity over the hard angles of youth.
+
+But Mrs. Peyton’s real excuse was after all one which she would never have
+given. It was because her intimacy with her son was the one need of her
+life that she had, with infinite tact and discretion, but with equal
+persistency, clung to every step of his growth, dissembling herself,
+adapting herself, rejuvenating herself in the passionate effort to be
+always within reach, but never in the way.
+
+Denis Peyton had died after seven years of marriage, when his boy was
+barely six. During those seven years he had managed to squander the best
+part of the fortune he had inherited from his step-brother; so that, at his
+death, his widow and son were left with a scant competence. Mrs. Peyton,
+during her husband’s life, had apparently made no effort to restrain his
+expenditure. She had even been accused by those judicious persons who are
+always ready with an estimate of their neighbours’ motives, of having
+encouraged poor Denis’s improvidence for the gratification of her own
+ambition. She had in fact, in the early days of their marriage, tried to
+launch him in politics, and had perhaps drawn somewhat heavily on his funds
+in the first heat of the contest; but the experiment ending in failure, as
+Denis Peyton’s experiments were apt to end, she had made no farther demands
+on his exchequer. Her personal tastes were in fact unusually simple, but
+her outspoken indifference to money was not, in the opinion of her critics,
+designed to act as a check upon her husband; and it resulted in leaving
+her, at his death, in straits from which it was impossible not to deduce a
+moral.
+
+Her small means, and the care of the boy’s education, served the widow as
+a pretext for secluding herself in a socially remote suburb, where it was
+inferred that she was expiating, on queer food and in ready-made boots, her
+rash defiance of fortune. Whether or not Mrs. Peyton’s penance took this
+form, she hoarded her substance to such good purpose that she was not only
+able to give Dick the best of schooling, but to propose, on his leaving
+Harvard, that he should prolong his studies by another four years at the
+Beaux Arts. It had been the joy of her life that her boy had early shown
+a marked bent for a special line of work. She could not have borne to see
+him reduced to a mere money-getter, yet she was not sorry that their small
+means forbade the cultivation of an ornamental leisure. In his college days
+Dick had troubled her by a superabundance of tastes, a restless flitting
+from one form of artistic expression to another. Whatever art he enjoyed
+he wished to practise, and he passed from music to painting, from painting
+to architecture, with an ease which seemed to his mother to indicate lack
+of purpose rather than excess of talent. She had observed that these
+changes were usually due, not to self-criticism, but to some external
+discouragement. Any depreciation of his work was enough to convince him
+of the uselessness of pursuing that special form of art, and the reaction
+produced the immediate conviction that he was really destined to shine in
+some other line of work. He had thus swung from one calling to another
+till, at the end of his college career, his mother took the decisive step
+of transplanting him to the Beaux Arts, in the hope that a definite course
+of study, combined with the stimulus of competition, might fix his wavering
+aptitudes. The result justified her expectation, and their four years in
+the Rue de Varennes yielded the happiest confirmation of her belief in
+him. Dick’s ability was recognized not only by his mother, but by his
+professors. He was engrossed in his work, and his first successes developed
+his capacity for application. His mother’s only fear was that praise was
+still too necessary to him. She was uncertain how long his ambition would
+sustain him in the face of failure. He gave lavishly where he was sure
+of a return; but it remained to be seen if he were capable of production
+without recognition. She had brought him up in a wholesome scorn of
+material rewards, and nature seemed, in this direction, to have seconded
+her training. He was genuinely indifferent to money, and his enjoyment
+of beauty was of that happy sort which does not generate the wish for
+possession. As long as the inner eye had food for contemplation, he cared
+very little for the deficiencies in his surroundings; or, it might rather
+be said, he felt, in the sum-total of beauty about him, an ownership of
+appreciation that left him free from the fret of personal desire. Mrs.
+Peyton had cultivated to excess this disregard of material conditions; but
+she now began to ask herself whether, in so doing, she had not laid too
+great a strain on a temperament naturally exalted. In guarding against
+other tendencies she had perhaps fostered in him too exclusively those
+qualities which circumstances had brought to an unusual development in
+herself. His enthusiasms and his disdains were alike too unqualified
+for that happy mean of character which is the best defence against the
+surprises of fortune. If she had taught him to set an exaggerated value on
+ideal rewards, was not that but a shifting of the danger-point on which her
+fears had always hung? She trembled sometimes to think how little love and
+a lifelong vigilance had availed in the deflecting of inherited tendencies.
+
+Her fears were in a measure confirmed by the first two years of their life
+in New York, and the opening of his career as a professional architect.
+Close on the easy triumphs of his studentships there came the chilling
+reaction of public indifference. Dick, on his return from Paris, had formed
+a partnership with an architect who had had several years of practical
+training in a New York office; but the quiet and industrious Gill, though
+he attracted to the new firm a few small jobs which overflowed from the
+business of his former employer, was not able to infect the public with
+his own faith in Peyton’s talents, and it was trying to a genius who felt
+himself capable of creating palaces to have to restrict his efforts to
+the building of suburban cottages or the planning of cheap alterations in
+private houses.
+
+Mrs. Peyton expended all the ingenuities of tenderness in keeping up
+her son’s courage; and she was seconded in the task by a friend whose
+acquaintance Dick had made at the Beaux Arts, and who, two years before
+the Peytons, had returned to New York to start on his own career as an
+architect. Paul Darrow was a young man full of crude seriousness, who,
+after a youth of struggling work and study in his native northwestern
+state, had won a scholarship which sent him abroad for a course at the
+Beaux Arts. His two years there coincided with the first part of Dick’s
+residence, and Darrow’s gifts had at once attracted the younger student.
+Dick was unstinted in his admiration of rival talent, and Mrs. Peyton,
+who was romantically given to the cultivation of such generosities, had
+seconded his enthusiasm by the kindest offers of hospitality to the young
+student. Darrow thus became the grateful frequenter of their little
+_salon_; and after their return to New York the intimacy between
+the young men was renewed, though Mrs. Peyton found it more difficult
+to coax Dick’s friend to her New York drawing-room than to the informal
+surroundings of the Rue de Varennes. There, no doubt, secluded and absorbed
+in her son’s work, she had seemed to Darrow almost a fellow-student; but
+seen among her own associates she became once more the woman of fashion,
+divided from him by the whole breadth of her ease and his awkwardness.
+Mrs. Peyton, whose tact had divined the cause of his estrangement, would
+not for an instant let it affect the friendship of the two young men. She
+encouraged Dick to frequent Darrow, in whom she divined a persistency of
+effort, an artistic self-confidence, in curious contrast to his social
+hesitancies. The example of his obstinate capacity for work was just the
+influence her son needed, and if Darrow would not come to them she insisted
+that Dick must seek him out, must never let him think that any social
+discrepancy could affect a friendship based on deeper things. Dick, who had
+all the loyalties, and who took an honest pride in his friend’s growing
+success, needed no urging to maintain the intimacy; and his copious reports
+of midnight colloquies in Darrow’s lodgings showed Mrs. Peyton that she had
+a strong ally in her invisible friend.
+
+It had been, therefore, somewhat of a shock to learn in the course of time
+that Darrow’s influence was being shared, if not counteracted, by that of a
+young lady in whose honour Dick was now giving his first professional tea.
+Mrs. Peyton had heard a great deal about Miss Clemence Verney, first from
+the usual purveyors of such information, and more recently from her son,
+who, probably divining that rumour had been before him, adopted his usual
+method of disarming his mother by taking her into his confidence. But,
+ample as her information was, it remained perplexing and contradictory, and
+even her own few meetings with the girl had not helped her to a definite
+opinion. Miss Verney, in conduct and ideas, was patently of the “new
+school”: a young woman of feverish activities and broad-cast judgments,
+whose very versatility made her hard to define. Mrs. Peyton was shrewd
+enough to allow for the accidents of environment; what she wished to get
+at was the residuum of character beneath Miss Verney’s shifting surface.
+
+“It looks charmingly,” Mrs. Peyton repeated, giving a loosening touch to
+the chrysanthemums in a tall vase on her son’s desk.
+
+Dick laughed, and glanced at his watch.
+
+“They won’t be here for another quarter of an hour. I think I’ll tell Gill
+to clean out the work-room before they come.”
+
+“Are we to see the drawings for the competition?” his mother asked.
+
+He shook his head smilingly. “Can’t--I’ve asked one or two of the Beaux
+Arts fellows, you know; and besides, old Darrow’s actually coming.”
+
+“Impossible!” Mrs. Peyton exclaimed.
+
+“He swore he would last night.” Dick laughed again, with a tinge of
+self-satisfaction. “I’ve an idea he wants to see Miss Verney.”
+
+“Ah,” his mother murmured. There was a pause before she added: “Has Darrow
+really gone in for this competition?”
+
+“Rather! I should say so! He’s simply working himself to the bone.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat revolving her muff on a meditative hand; at length she
+said: “I’m not sure I think it quite nice of him.”
+
+Her son halted before her with an incredulous stare. “_Mother_!” he
+exclaimed.
+
+The rebuke sent a blush to her forehead. “Well--considering your
+friendship--and everything.”
+
+“Everything? What do you mean by everything? The fact that he had more
+ability than I have and is therefore more likely to succeed? The fact that
+he needs the money and the success a deuced sight more than any of us? Is
+that the reason you think he oughtn’t to have entered? Mother! I never
+heard you say an ungenerous thing before.”
+
+The blush deepened to crimson, and she rose with a nervous laugh. “It
+_was_ ungenerous,” she conceded. “I suppose I’m jealous for you. I
+hate these competitions!”
+
+Her son smiled reassuringly. “You needn’t. I’m not afraid: I think I shall
+pull it off this time. In fact, Paul’s the only man I’m afraid of--I’m
+always afraid of Paul--but the mere fact that he’s in the thing is a
+tremendous stimulus.”
+
+His mother continued to study him with an anxious tenderness. “Have you
+worked out the whole scheme? Do you _see_ it yet?”
+
+“Oh, broadly, yes. There’s a gap here and there--a hazy bit, rather--it’s
+the hardest problem I’ve ever had to tackle; but then it’s my biggest
+opportunity, and I’ve simply _got_ to pull it off!”
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat silent, considering his flushed face and illumined eye,
+which were rather those of the victor nearing the goal than of the runner
+just beginning the race. She remembered something that Darrow had once said
+of him: “Dick always sees the end too soon.”
+
+“You haven’t too much time left,” she murmured.
+
+“Just a week. But I shan’t go anywhere after this. I shall renounce the
+world.” He glanced smilingly at the festal tea-table and the embowered
+desk. “When I next appear, it will either be with my heel on Paul’s
+neck--poor old Paul--or else--or else--being dragged lifeless from the
+arena!”
+
+His mother nervously took up the laugh with which he ended. “Oh, not
+lifeless,” she said.
+
+His face clouded. “Well, maimed for life, then,” he muttered.
+
+Mrs. Peyton made no answer. She knew how much hung on the possibility of
+his winning the competition which for weeks past had engrossed him. It was
+a design for the new museum of sculpture, for which the city had recently
+voted half a million. Dick’s taste ran naturally to the grandiose, and the
+erection of public buildings had always been the object of his ambition.
+Here was an unmatched opportunity, and he knew that, in a competition of
+the kind, the newest man had as much chance of success as the firm of most
+established reputation, since every competitor entered on his own merits,
+the designs being submitted to a jury of architects who voted on them
+without knowing the names of the contestants. Dick, characteristically,
+was not afraid of the older firms; indeed, as he had told his mother, Paul
+Darrow was the only rival he feared. Mrs. Peyton knew that, to a certain
+point, self-confidence was a good sign; but somehow her son’s did not
+strike her as being of the right substance--it seemed to have no dimension
+but extent. Her fears were complicated by a suspicion that, under his
+professional eagerness for success, lay the knowledge that Miss Verney’s
+favour hung on the victory. It was that, perhaps, which gave a feverish
+touch to his ambition; and Mrs. Peyton, surveying the future from the
+height of her material apprehensions, divined that the situation depended
+mainly on the girl’s view of it. She would have given a great deal to know
+Clemence Verney’s conception of success.
+
+
+II
+
+Miss Verney, when she presently appeared, in the wake of the impersonal
+and exclamatory young married woman who served as a background to her
+vivid outline, seemed competent to impart at short notice any information
+required of her. She had never struck Mrs. Peyton as more alert and
+efficient. A melting grace of line and colour tempered her edges with the
+charming haze of youth; but it occurred to her critic that she might emerge
+from this morning mist as a dry and metallic old woman.
+
+If Miss Verney suspected a personal application in Dick’s hospitality, it
+did not call forth in her the usual tokens of self-consciousness. Her
+manner may have been a shade more vivid than usual, but she preserved all
+her bright composure of glance and speech, so that one guessed, under the
+rapid dispersal of words, an undisturbed steadiness of perception. She
+was lavishly but not indiscriminately interested in the evidences of her
+host’s industry, and as the other guests assembled, straying with vague
+ejaculations through the labyrinth of scale drawings and blue prints, Mrs.
+Peyton noted that Miss Verney alone knew what these symbols stood for.
+
+To his visitors’ requests to be shown his plans for the competition,
+Peyton had opposed a laughing refusal, enforced by the presence of two
+fellow-architects, young men with lingering traces of the Beaux Arts in
+their costume and vocabulary, who stood about in Gavarni attitudes and
+dazzled the ladies by allusions to fenestration and entasis. The party had
+already drifted back to the tea-table when a hesitating knock announced
+Darrow’s approach. He entered with his usual air of having blundered in
+by mistake, embarrassed by his hat and great-coat, and thrown into deeper
+confusion by the necessity of being introduced to the ladies grouped about
+the urn. To the men he threw a gruff nod of fellowship, and Dick having
+relieved him of his encumbrances, he retreated behind the shelter of Mrs.
+Peyton’s welcome. The latter judiciously gave him time to recover, and when
+she turned to him he was engaged in a surreptitious inspection of Miss
+Verney, whose dusky slenderness, relieved against the bare walls of the
+office, made her look like a young St. John of Donatello’s. The girl
+returned his look with one of her clear glances, and the group having
+presently broken up again, Mrs. Peyton saw that she had drifted to Darrow’s
+side. The visitors at length wandered back to the work-room to see a
+portfolio of Dick’s water-colours; but Mrs. Peyton remained seated behind
+the urn, listening to the interchange of talk through the open door while
+she tried to coordinate her impressions.
+
+She saw that Miss Verney was sincerely interested in Dick’s work: it
+was the nature of her interest that remained in doubt. As if to solve
+this doubt, the girl presently reappeared alone on the threshold, and
+discovering Mrs. Peyton, advanced toward her with a smile.
+
+“Are you tired of hearing us praise Mr. Peyton’s things?” she asked,
+dropping into a low chair beside her hostess. “Unintelligent admiration
+must be a bore to people who know, and Mr. Darrow tells me you are almost
+as learned as your son.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton returned the smile, but evaded the question. “I should be sorry
+to think your admiration unintelligent,” she said. “I like to feel that my
+boy’s work is appreciated by people who understand it.”
+
+“Oh, I have the usual smattering,” said Miss Verney carelessly. “I
+_think_ I know why I admire his work; but then I am sure I see more in
+it when some one like Mr. Darrow tells me how remarkable it is.”
+
+“Does Mr. Darrow say that?” the mother exclaimed, losing sight of her
+object in the rush of maternal pleasure.
+
+“He has said nothing else: it seems to be the only subject which loosens
+his tongue. I believe he is more anxious to have your son win the
+competition than to win it himself.”
+
+“He is a very good friend,” Mrs. Peyton assented. She was struck by the way
+in which the girl led the topic back to the special application of it which
+interested her. She had none of the artifices of prudery.
+
+“He feels sure that Mr. Peyton _will_ win,” Miss Verney continued.
+“It was very interesting to hear his reasons. He is an extraordinarily
+interesting man. It must be a tremendous incentive to have such a friend.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton hesitated. “The friendship is delightful; but I don’t know that
+my son needs the incentive. He is almost too ambitious.”
+
+Miss Verney looked up brightly. “Can one be?” she said. “Ambition is so
+splendid! It must be so glorious to be a man and go crashing through
+obstacles, straight up to the thing one is after. I’m afraid I don’t care
+for people who are superior to success. I like marriage by capture!” She
+rose with her wandering laugh, and stood flushed and sparkling above Mrs.
+Peyton, who continued to gaze at her gravely.
+
+“What do you call success?” the latter asked. “It means so many different
+things.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I know--the inward approval, and all that. Well, I’m afraid I
+like the other kind: the drums and wreaths and acclamations. If I were Mr.
+Peyton, for instance, I’d much rather win the competition than--than be as
+disinterested as Mr. Darrow.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton smiled. “I hope you won’t tell him so,” she said half
+seriously. “He is over-stimulated already; and he is so easily influenced
+by any one who--whose opinion he values.”
+
+She stopped abruptly, hearing herself, with a strange inward shock, re-echo
+the words which another man’s mother had once spoken to her. Miss Verney
+did not seem to take the allusion to herself, for she continued to fix on
+Mrs. Peyton a gaze of impartial sympathy.
+
+“But we can’t help being interested!” she declared.
+
+“It’s very kind of you; but I wish you would all help him to feel that his
+competition is after all of very little account compared with other
+things--his health and his peace of mind, for instance. He is looking
+horribly used up.”
+
+The girl glanced over her shoulder at Dick, who was just reentering the
+room at Darrow’s side.
+
+“Oh, do you think so?” she said. “I should have thought it was his friend
+who was used up.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton followed the glance with surprise. She had been too preoccupied
+to notice Darrow, whose crudely modelled face was always of a dull pallour,
+to which his slow-moving grey eye lent no relief except in rare moments of
+expansion. Now the face had the fallen lines of a death-mask, in which only
+the smile he turned on Dick remained alive; and the sight smote her with
+compunction. Poor Darrow! He did look horribly fagged out: as if he needed
+care and petting and good food. No one knew exactly how he lived. His
+rooms, according to Dick’s report, were fireless and ill kept, but he stuck
+to them because his landlady, whom he had fished out of some financial
+plight, had difficulty in obtaining other lodgers. He belonged to no clubs,
+and wandered out alone for his meals, mysteriously refusing the hospitality
+which his friends pressed on him. It was plain that he was very poor, and
+Dick conjectured that he sent what he earned to an aunt in his native
+village; but he was so silent about such matters that, outside of his
+profession, he seemed to have no personal life.
+
+Miss Verney’s companion having presently advised her of the lapse of time,
+there ensued a general leave-taking, at the close of which Dick accompanied
+the ladies to their carriage. Darrow was meanwhile blundering into his
+greatcoat, a process which always threw him into a state of perspiring
+embarrassment; but Mrs. Peyton, surprising him in the act, suggested that
+he should defer it and give her a few moments’ talk.
+
+“Let me make you some fresh tea,” she said, as Darrow blushingly shed the
+garment, “and when Dick comes back we’ll all walk home together. I’ve not
+had a chance to say two words to you this winter.”
+
+Darrow sank into a chair at her side and nervously contemplated his boots.
+“I’ve been tremendously hard at work,” he said.
+
+“I know: _too_ hard at work, I’m afraid. Dick tells me you have been
+wearing yourself out over your competition plans.”
+
+“Oh, well, I shall have time to rest now,” he returned. “I put the last
+stroke to them this morning.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton gave him a quick look. “You’re ahead of Dick, then.”
+
+“In point of time only,” he said smiling.
+
+“That is in itself an advantage,” she answered with a tinge of asperity. In
+spite of an honest effort for impartiality she could not, at the moment,
+help regarding Darrow as an obstacle in her son’s path.
+
+“I wish the competition were over!” she exclaimed, conscious that her voice
+had betrayed her. “I hate to see you both looking so fagged.”
+
+Darrow smiled again, perhaps at her studied inclusion of himself.
+
+“Oh, _Dick_’s all right,” he said. “He’ll pull himself together in no
+time.”
+
+He spoke with an emphasis which might have struck her, if her sympathies
+had not again been deflected by the allusion to her son.
+
+“Not if he doesn’t win,” she exclaimed.
+
+Darrow took the tea she had poured for him, knocking the spoon to the floor
+in his eagerness to perform the feat gracefully. In bending to recover the
+spoon he struck the tea-table with his shoulder, and set the cups dancing.
+Having regained a measure of composure, he took a swallow of the hot tea
+and set it down with a gasp, precariously near the edge of the tea-table.
+Mrs. Peyton rescued the cup, and Darrow, apparently forgetting its
+existence, rose and began to pace the room. It was always hard for him to
+sit still when he talked.
+
+“You mean he’s so tremendously set on it?” he broke out.
+
+Mrs. Peyton hesitated. “You know him almost as well as I do,” she said.
+“He’s capable of anything where there is a possibility of success; but I’m
+always afraid of the reaction.”
+
+“Oh, well, Dick’s a man,” said Darrow bluntly. “Besides, he’s going to
+succeed.”
+
+“I wish he didn’t feel so sure of it. You mustn’t think I’m afraid for him.
+He’s a man, and I want him to take his chances with other men; but I wish
+he didn’t care so much about what people think.”
+
+“People?”
+
+“Miss Verney, then: I suppose you know.”
+
+Darrow paused in front of her. “Yes: he’s talked a good deal about her. You
+think she wants him to succeed?”
+
+“At any price!”
+
+He drew his brows together. “What do you call any price?”
+
+“Well--herself, in this case, I believe.”
+
+Darrow bent a puzzled stare on her. “You mean she attached that amount of
+importance to this competition?”
+
+“She seems to regard it as symbolical: that’s what I gather. And I’m afraid
+she’s given him the same impression.”
+
+Darrow’s sunken face was suffused by his rare smile. “Oh, well, he’ll pull
+it off then!” he said.
+
+Mrs. Peyton rose with a distracted sigh. “I half hope he won’t, for such a
+motive,” she exclaimed.
+
+“The motive won’t show in his work,” said Darrow. He added, after a pause
+probably devoted to the search for the right word: “He seems to think a
+great deal of her.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton fixed him thoughtfully. “I wish I knew what _you_ think of
+her.”
+
+“Why, I never saw her before.”
+
+“No; but you talked with her to-day. You’ve formed an opinion: I think you
+came here on purpose.”
+
+He chuckled joyously at her discernment: she had always seemed to him
+gifted with supernatural insight. “Well, I did want to see her,” he owned.
+
+“And what do you think?”
+
+He took a few vague steps and then halted before Mrs. Peyton. “I think,” he
+said, smiling, “that she likes to be helped first, and to have everything
+on her plate at once.”
+
+
+III
+
+At dinner, with a rush of contrition, Mrs. Peyton remembered that she had
+after all not spoken to Darrow about his health. He had distracted her
+by beginning to talk of Dick; and besides, much as Darrow’s opinions
+interested her, his personality had never fixed her attention. He always
+seemed to her simply a vehicle for the transmission of ideas.
+
+It was Dick who recalled her to a sense of her omission by asking if she
+hadn’t thought that old Paul looked rather more ragged than usual.
+
+“He did look tired,” Mrs. Peyton conceded. “I meant to tell him to take
+care of himself.”
+
+Dick laughed at the futility of the measure. “Old Paul is never tired: he
+can work twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. The trouble with him is
+that he’s ill. Something wrong with the machinery, I’m afraid.”
+
+“Oh, I’m sorry. Has he seen a doctor?”
+
+“He wouldn’t listen to me when I suggested it the other day; but he’s so
+deuced mysterious that I don’t know what he may have done since.” Dick
+rose, putting down his coffee-cup and half-smoked cigarette. “I’ve half a
+mind to pop in on him to-night and see how he’s getting on.”
+
+“But he lives at the other end of the earth; and you’re tired yourself.”
+
+“I’m not tired; only a little strung-up,” he returned, smiling. “And
+besides, I’m going to meet Gill at the office by and by and put in a
+night’s work. It won’t hurt me to take a look at Paul first.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton was silent. She knew it was useless to contend with her son
+about his work, and she tried to fortify herself with the remembrance of
+her own words to Darrow: Dick was a man and must take his chance with other
+men.
+
+But Dick, glancing at his watch, uttered an exclamation of annoyance. “Oh,
+by Jove, I shan’t have time after all. Gill is waiting for me now; we must
+have dawdled over dinner.” He went to give his mother a caressing tap on
+the cheek. “Now don’t worry,” he adjured her; and as she smiled back at him
+he added with a sudden happy blush: “She doesn’t, you know: she’s so sure
+of me.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s smile faded, and laying a detaining hand on his, she said
+with sudden directness: “Sure of you, or of your success?”
+
+He hesitated. “Oh, she regards them as synonymous. She thinks I’m bound to
+get on.”
+
+“But if you don’t?”
+
+He shrugged laughingly, but with a slight contraction of his confident
+brows. “Why, I shall have to make way for some one else, I suppose. That’s
+the law of life.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat upright, gazing at him with a kind of solemnity. “Is it the
+law of love?” she asked.
+
+He looked down on her with a smile that trembled a little. “My dear
+romantic mother, I don’t want her pity, you know!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dick, coming home the next morning shortly before daylight, left the house
+again after a hurried breakfast, and Mrs. Peyton heard nothing of him till
+nightfall. He had promised to be back for dinner, but a few moments before
+eight, as she was coming down to the drawing-room, the parlour-maid handed
+her a hastily pencilled note.
+
+“Don’t wait for me,” it ran. “Darrow is ill and I can’t leave him. I’ll
+send a line when the doctor has seen him.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton, who was a woman of rapid reactions, read the words with a
+pang. She was ashamed of the jealous thoughts she had harboured of Darrow,
+and of the selfishness which had made her lose sight of his troubles in the
+consideration of Dick’s welfare. Even Clemence Verney, whom she secretly
+accused of a want of heart, had been struck by Darrow’s ill looks, while
+she had had eyes only for her son. Poor Darrow! How cold and self-engrossed
+he must have thought her! In the first rush of penitence her impulse was
+to drive at once to his lodgings; but the infection of his own shyness
+restrained her. Dick’s note gave no details; the illness was evidently
+grave, but might not Darrow regard her coming as an intrusion? To repair
+her negligence of yesterday by a sudden invasion of his privacy might be
+only a greater failure in tact; and after a moment of deliberation she
+resolved on sending to ask Dick if he wished her to go to him.
+
+The reply, which came late, was what she had expected. “No, we have all the
+help we need. The doctor has sent a good nurse, and is coming again later.
+It’s pneumonia, but of course he doesn’t say much yet. Let me have some
+beef-juice as soon as the cook can make it.”
+
+The beef-juice ordered and dispatched, she was left to a vigil in
+melancholy contrast to that of the previous evening. Then she had been
+enclosed in the narrow limits of her maternal interests; now the barriers
+of self were broken down, and her personal preoccupations swept away on the
+current of a wider sympathy. As she sat there in the radius of lamp-light
+which, for so many evenings, had held Dick and herself in a charmed circle
+of tenderness, she saw that her love for her boy had come to be merely a
+kind of extended egotism. Love had narrowed instead of widening her, had
+rebuilt between herself and life the very walls which, years and years
+before, she had laid low with bleeding fingers. It was horrible, how she
+had come to sacrifice everything to the one passion of ambition for her
+boy....
+
+At daylight she sent another messenger, one of her own servants, who
+returned without having seen Dick. Mr. Peyton had sent word that there
+was no change. He would write later; he wanted nothing. The day wore on
+drearily. Once Kate found herself computing the precious hours lost to
+Dick’s unfinished task. She blushed at her ineradicable selfishness,
+and tried to turn her mind to poor Darrow. But she could not master her
+impulses; and now she caught herself indulging the thought that his illness
+would at least exclude him from the competition. But no--she remembered
+that he had said his work was finished. Come what might, he stood in the
+path of her boy’s success. She hated herself for the thought, but it would
+not down.
+
+Evening drew on, but there was no note from Dick. At length, in the shamed
+reaction from her fears, she rang for a carriage and went upstairs to
+dress. She could stand aloof no longer: she must go to Darrow, if only to
+escape from her wicked thoughts of him. As she came down again she heard
+Dick’s key in the door. She hastened her steps, and as she reached the hall
+he stood before her without speaking.
+
+She looked at him and the question died on her lips. He nodded, and walked
+slowly past her.
+
+“There was no hope from the first,” he said.
+
+The next day Dick was taken up with the preparations for the funeral. The
+distant aunt, who appeared to be Darrow’s only relation, had been duly
+notified of his death; but no answer having been received from her, it was
+left to his friend to fulfil the customary duties. He was again absent for
+the best part of the day; and when he returned at dusk Mrs. Peyton, looking
+up from the tea-table behind which she awaited him, was startled by the
+deep-lined misery of his face.
+
+Her own thoughts were too painful for ready expression, and they sat for a
+while in a mute community of wretchedness.
+
+“Is everything arranged?” she asked at length.
+
+“Yes. Everything.”
+
+“And you have not heard from the aunt?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“Can you find no trace of any other relations?”
+
+“None. I went over all his papers. There were very few, and I found no
+address but the aunt’s.” He sat thrown back in his chair, disregarding the
+cup of tea she had mechanically poured for him. “I found this, though,” he
+added, after a pause, drawing a letter from his pocket and holding it out
+to her.
+
+She took it doubtfully. “Ought I to read it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She saw then that the envelope, in Darrow’s hand, was addressed to her son.
+Within were a few pencilled words, dated on the first day of his illness,
+the morrow of the day on which she had last seen him.
+
+“Dear Dick,” she read, “I want you to use my plans for the museum if you
+can get any good out of them. Even if I pull out of this I want you to. I
+shall have other chances, and I have an idea this one means a lot to you.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat speechless, gazing at the date of the letter, which she had
+instantly connected with her last talk with Darrow. She saw that he had
+understood her, and the thought scorched her to the soul.
+
+“Wasn’t it glorious of him?” Dick said.
+
+She dropped the letter, and hid her face in her hands.
+
+
+IV
+
+The funeral took place the next morning, and on the return from the
+cemetery Dick told his mother that he must go and look over things at
+Darrow’s office. He had heard the day before from his friend’s aunt, a
+helpless person to whom telegraphy was difficult and travel inconceivable,
+and who, in eight pages of unpunctuated eloquence, made over to Dick what
+she called the melancholy privilege of winding up her nephew’s affairs.
+
+Mrs. Peyton looked anxiously at her son. “Is there no one who can do this
+for you? He must have had a clerk or some one who knows about his work.”
+
+Dick shook his head. “Not lately. He hasn’t had much to do this winter, and
+these last months he had chucked everything to work alone over his plans.”
+
+The word brought a faint colour to Mrs. Peyton’s cheek. It was the first
+allusion that either of them had made to Darrow’s bequest.
+
+“Oh, of course you must do all you can,” she murmured, turning alone into
+the house.
+
+The emotions of the morning had stirred her deeply, and she sat at home
+during the day, letting her mind dwell, in a kind of retrospective piety,
+on the thought of poor Darrow’s devotion. She had given him too little
+time while he lived, had acquiesced too easily in his growing habits of
+seclusion; and she felt it as a proof of insensibility that she had not
+been more closely drawn to the one person who had loved Dick as she loved
+him. The evidence of that love, as shown in Darrow’s letter, filled her
+with a vain compunction. The very extravagance of his offer lent it a
+deeper pathos. It was wonderful that, even in the urgency of affection, a
+man of his almost morbid rectitude should have overlooked the restrictions
+of professional honour, should have implied the possibility of his friend’s
+overlooking them. It seemed to make his sacrifice the more complete that it
+had, unconsciously, taken the form of a subtle temptation.
+
+The last word arrested Mrs. Peyton’s thoughts. A temptation? To whom? Not,
+surely, to one capable, as her son was capable, of rising to the height
+of his friend’s devotion. The offer, to Dick, would mean simply, as it
+meant to her, the last touching expression of an inarticulate fidelity:
+the utterance of a love which at last had found its formula. Mrs. Peyton
+dismissed as morbid any other view of the case. She was annoyed with
+herself for supposing that Dick could be ever so remotely affected by the
+possibility at which poor Darrow’s renunciation hinted. The nature of
+the offer removed it from practical issues to the idealizing region of
+sentiment.
+
+Mrs. Peyton had been sitting alone with these thoughts for the greater part
+of the afternoon, and dusk was falling when Dick entered the drawing-room.
+In the dim light, with his pallour heightened by the sombre effect of
+his mourning, he came upon her almost startlingly, with a revival of
+some long-effaced impression which, for a moment, gave her the sense of
+struggling among shadows. She did not, at first, know what had produced the
+effect; then she saw that it was his likeness to his father.
+
+“Well--is it over?” she asked, as he threw himself into a chair without
+speaking.
+
+“Yes: I’ve looked through everything.” He leaned back, crossing his hands
+behind his head, and gazing past her with a look of utter lassitude.
+
+She paused a moment, and then said tentatively: “to-morrow you will be able
+to go back to your work.”
+
+“Oh--my work,” he exclaimed, as if to brush aside an ill-timed pleasantry.
+
+“Are you too tired?”
+
+“No.” He rose and began to wander up and down the room. “I’m not
+tired.--Give me some tea, will you?” He paused before her while she poured
+the cup, and then, without taking it, turned away to light a cigarette.
+
+“Surely there is still time?” she suggested, with her eyes on him.
+
+“Time? To finish my plans? Oh, yes--there’s time. But they’re not worth
+it.”
+
+“Not worth it?” She started up, and then dropped back into her seat,
+ashamed of having betrayed her anxiety. “They are worth as much as they
+were last week,” she said with an attempt at cheerfulness.
+
+“Not to me,” he returned. “I hadn’t seen Darrow’s then.”
+
+There was a long silence. Mrs. Peyton sat with her eyes fixed on her
+clasped hands, and her son paced the room restlessly.
+
+“Are they so wonderful?” she asked at length.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She paused again, and then said, lifting a tremulous glance to his face:
+“That makes his offer all the more beautiful.”
+
+Dick was lighting another cigarette, and his face was turned from her.
+“Yes--I suppose so,” he said in a low tone.
+
+“They were quite finished, he told me,” she continued, unconsciously
+dropping her voice to the pitch of his.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then they will be entered, I suppose?”
+
+“Of course--why not?” he answered almost sharply.
+
+“Shall you have time to attend to all that and to finish yours too?”
+
+“Oh, I suppose so. I’ve told you it isn’t a question of time. I see now
+that mine are not worth bothering with.”
+
+She rose and approached him, laying her hands on his shoulders. “You are
+tired and unstrung; how can you judge? Why not let me look at both designs
+to-morrow?”
+
+Under her gaze he flushed abruptly and drew back with a half-impatient
+gesture.
+
+“Oh, I’m afraid that wouldn’t help me; you’d be sure to think mine best,”
+ he said with a laugh.
+
+“But if I could give you good reasons?” she pressed him.
+
+He took her hand, as if ashamed of his impatience. “Dear mother, if you had
+any reasons their mere existence would prove that they were bad.”
+
+His mother did not return his smile. “You won’t let me see the two designs
+then?” she said with a faint tinge of insistence.
+
+“Oh, of course--if you want to--if you only won’t talk about it now! Can’t
+you see that I’m pretty nearly dead-beat?” he burst out uncontrollably; and
+as she stood silent, he added with a weary fall in his voice, “I think I’ll
+go upstairs and see if I can’t get a nap before dinner.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though they had separated upon the assurance that she should see the two
+designs if she wished it, Mrs. Peyton knew they would not be shown to her.
+Dick, indeed, would not again deny her request; but had he not reckoned on
+the improbability of her renewing it? All night she lay confronted by that
+question. The situation shaped itself before her with that hallucinating
+distinctness which belongs to the midnight vision. She knew now why Dick
+had suddenly reminded her of his father: had she not once before seen the
+same thought moving behind the same eyes? She was sure it had occurred to
+Dick to use Darrow’s drawings. As she lay awake in the darkness she could
+hear him, long after midnight, pacing the floor overhead: she held her
+breath, listening to the recurring beat of his foot, which seemed that of
+an imprisoned spirit revolving wearily in the cage of the same thought. She
+felt in every fibre that a crisis in her son’s life had been reached, that
+the act now before him would have a determining effect on his whole future.
+The circumstances of her past had raised to clairvoyance her natural
+insight into human motive, had made of her a moral barometer responding to
+the faintest fluctuations of atmosphere, and years of anxious meditation
+had familiarized her with the form which her son’s temptations were likely
+to take. The peculiar misery of her situation was that she could not,
+except indirectly, put this intuition, this foresight, at his service.
+It was a part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real
+counsellor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not
+become a part of the moral tissues. Love such as hers had a great office,
+the office of preparation and direction; but it must know how to hold its
+hand and keep its counsel, how to attend upon its object as an invisible
+influence rather than as an active interference.
+
+All this Kate Peyton had told herself again and again, during those hours
+of anxious calculation in which she had tried to cast Dick’s horoscope; but
+not in her moments of most fantastic foreboding had she figured so cruel a
+test of her courage. If her prayers for him had taken precise shape, she
+might have asked that he should be spared the spectacular, the dramatic
+appeal to his will-power: that his temptations should slip by him in a dull
+disguise. She had secured him against all ordinary forms of baseness; the
+vulnerable point lay higher, in that region of idealizing egotism which is
+the seat of life in such natures.
+
+Years of solitary foresight gave her mind a singular alertness in dealing
+with such possibilities. She saw at once that the peril of the situation
+lay in the minimum of risk it involved. Darrow had employed no assistant in
+working out his plans for the competition, and his secluded life made it
+almost certain that he had not shown them to any one, and that she and Dick
+alone knew them to have been completed. Moreover, it was a part of Dick’s
+duty to examine the contents of his friend’s office, and in doing this
+nothing would be easier than to possess himself of the drawings and make
+use of any part of them that might serve his purpose. He had Darrow’s
+authority for doing so; and though the act involved a slight breach of
+professional probity, might not his friend’s wishes be invoked as a secret
+justification? Mrs. Peyton found herself almost hating poor Darrow for
+having been the unconscious instrument of her son’s temptation. But what
+right had she, after all, to suspect Dick of considering, even for a
+moment, the act of which she was so ready to accuse him? His unwillingness
+to let her see the drawings might have been the accidental result of
+lassitude and discouragement. He was tired and troubled, and she had chosen
+the wrong moment to make the request. His want of readiness might even be
+due to the wish to conceal from her how far his friend had surpassed him.
+She knew his sensitiveness on this point, and reproached herself for not
+having foreseen it. But her own arguments failed to convince her. Deep
+beneath her love for her boy and her faith in him there lurked a nameless
+doubt. She could hardly now, in looking back, define the impulse upon which
+she had married Denis Peyton: she knew only that the deeps of her nature
+had been loosened, and that she had been borne forward on their current
+to the very fate from which her heart recoiled. But if in one sense her
+marriage remained a problem, there was another in which her motherhood
+seemed to solve it. She had never lost the sense of having snatched her
+child from some dim peril which still lurked and hovered; and he became
+more closely hers with every effort of her vigilant love. For the act
+of rescue had not been accomplished once and for all in the moment
+of immolation: it had not been by a sudden stroke of heroism, but by
+ever-renewed and indefatigable effort, that she had built up for him the
+miraculous shelter of her love. And now that it stood there, a hallowed
+refuge against failure, she could not even set a light in the pane, but
+must let him grope his way to it unaided.
+
+
+V
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s midnight musings summed themselves up in the conclusion that
+the next few hours would end her uncertainty. She felt the day to be
+decisive. If Dick offered to show her the drawings, her fears would be
+proved groundless; if he avoided the subject, they were justified.
+
+She dressed early in order not to miss him at breakfast; but as she entered
+the dining-room the parlour-maid told her that Mr. Peyton had overslept
+himself, and had rung to have his breakfast sent upstairs. Was it a pretext
+to avoid her? She was vexed at her own readiness to see a portent in the
+simplest incident; but while she blushed at her doubts she let them govern
+her. She left the dining-room door open, determined not to miss him if
+he came downstairs while she was at breakfast; then she went back to the
+drawing-room and sat down at her writing-table, trying to busy herself with
+some accounts while she listened for his step. Here too she had left the
+door open; but presently even this slight departure from her daily usage
+seemed a deviation from the passive attitude she had adopted, and she rose
+and shut the door. She knew that she could still hear his step on the
+stairs--he had his father’s quick swinging gait--but as she sat listening,
+and vainly trying to write, the closed door seemed to symbolize a refusal
+to share in his trial, a hardening of herself against his need of her. What
+if he should come down intending to speak, and should be turned from his
+purpose? Slighter obstacles have deflected the course of events in those
+indeterminate moments when the soul floats between two tides. She sprang
+up quickly, and as her hand touched the latch she heard his step on the
+stairs.
+
+When he entered the drawing-room she had regained the writing-table and
+could lift a composed face to his. He came in hurriedly, yet with a kind of
+reluctance beneath his haste: again it was his father’s step. She smiled,
+but looked away from him as he approached her; she seemed to be re-living
+her own past as one re-lives things in the distortion of fever.
+
+“Are you off already?” she asked, glancing at the hat in his hand.
+
+“Yes; I’m late as it is. I overslept myself.” He paused and looked vaguely
+about the room. “Don’t expect me till late--don’t wait dinner for me.”
+
+She stirred impulsively. “Dick, you’re overworking--you’ll make yourself
+ill.”
+
+“Nonsense. I’m as fit as ever this morning. Don’t be imagining things.”
+
+He dropped his habitual kiss on her forehead, and turned to go. On the
+threshold he paused, and she felt that something in him sought her and then
+drew back. “Good-bye,” he called to her as the door closed on him.
+
+She sat down and tried to survey the situation divested of her midnight
+fears. He had not referred to her wish to see the drawings: but what did
+the omission signify? Might he not have forgotten her request? Was she
+not forcing the most trivial details to fit in with her apprehensions?
+Unfortunately for her own reassurance, she knew that her familiarity with
+Dick’s processes was based on such minute observation, and that, to such
+intimacy as theirs, no indications were trivial. She was as certain as if
+he had spoken, that when he had left the house that morning he was weighing
+the possibility of using Darrow’s drawings, of supplementing his own
+incomplete design from the fulness of his friend’s invention. And with a
+bitter pang she divined that he was sorry he had shown her Darrow’s letter.
+
+It was impossible to remain face to face with such conjectures, and though
+she had given up all her engagements during the few days since Darrow’s
+death, she now took refuge in the thought of a concert which was to take
+place at a friend’s house that morning. The music-room, when she entered,
+was thronged with acquaintances, and she found transient relief in that
+dispersal of attention which makes society an anesthetic for some forms
+of wretchedness. Contact with the pressure of busy indifferent life often
+gives remoteness to questions which have clung as close as the flesh to the
+bone; and if Mrs. Peyton did not find such complete release, she at least
+interposed between herself and her anxiety the obligation to dissemble it.
+But the relief was only momentary, and when the first bars of the overture
+turned from her the smiles of recognition among which she had tried to lose
+herself, she felt a deeper sense of isolation. The music, which at another
+time would have swept her away on some rich current of emotion, now seemed
+to island her in her own thoughts, to create an artificial solitude in
+which she found herself more immitigably face to face with her fears. The
+silence, the _recueillement_, about her gave resonance to the inner
+voices, lucidity to the inner vision, till she seemed enclosed in a
+luminous empty horizon against which every possibility took the sharp edge
+of accomplished fact. With relentless precision the course of events was
+unrolled before her: she saw Dick yielding to his opportunity, snatching
+victory from dishonour, winning love, happiness and success in the act by
+which he lost himself. It was all so simple, so easy, so inevitable, that
+she felt the futility of struggling or hoping against it. He would win the
+competition, would marry Miss Verney, would press on to achievement through
+the opening which the first success had made for him.
+
+As Mrs. Peyton reached this point in her forecast, she found her outward
+gaze arrested by the face of the young lady who so dominated her inner
+vision. Miss Verney, a few rows distant, sat intent upon the music, in that
+attitude of poised motion which was her nearest approach to repose. Her
+slender brown profile with its breezy hair, her quick eye, and the lips
+which seemed to listen as well as speak, all betokened to Mrs. Peyton a
+nature through which the obvious energies blew free, a bare open stretch
+of consciousness without shelter for tenderer growths. She shivered to
+think of Dick’s frail scruples exposed to those rustling airs. And then,
+suddenly, a new thought struck her. What if she might turn this force to
+her own use, make it serve, unconsciously to Dick, as the means of his
+deliverance? Hitherto she had assumed that her son’s worst danger lay in
+the chance of his confiding his difficulty to Clemence Verney; and she
+had, in her own past, a precedent which made her think such a confidence
+not unlikely. If he did carry his scruples to the girl, she argued, the
+latter’s imperviousness, her frank inability to understand them, would have
+the effect of dispelling them like mist; and he was acute enough to know
+this and profit by it. So she had hitherto reasoned; but now the girl’s
+presence seemed to clarify her perceptions, and she told herself that
+something in Dick’s nature, something which she herself had put there,
+would resist this short cut to safety, would make him take the more
+tortuous way to his goal rather than gain it through the privacies of the
+heart he loved. For she had lifted him thus far above his father, that it
+would be a disenchantment to him to find that Clemence Verney did not share
+his scruples. On this much, his mother now exultingly felt, she could count
+in her passive struggle for supremacy. No, he would never, never tell
+Clemence Verney--and his one hope, his sure salvation, therefore lay in
+some one else’s telling her.
+
+The excitement of this discovery had nearly, in mid-concert, swept Mrs.
+Peyton from her seat to the girl’s side. Fearing to miss the latter in
+the throng at the entrance, she slipped out during the last number and,
+lingering in the farther drawing-room, let the dispersing audience drift
+her in Miss Verney’s direction. The girl shone sympathetically on her
+approach, and in a moment they had detached themselves from the crowd and
+taken refuge in the perfumed emptiness of the conservatory.
+
+The girl, whose sensations were always easily set in motion, had at first a
+good deal to say of the music, for which she claimed, on her hearer’s part,
+an active show of approval or dissent; but this dismissed, she turned a
+melting face on Mrs. Peyton and said with one of her rapid modulations of
+tone: “I was so sorry about poor Mr. Darrow.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton uttered an assenting sigh. “It was a great grief to us--a great
+loss to my son.”
+
+“Yes--I know. I can imagine what you must have felt. And then it was so
+unlucky that it should have happened just now.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton shot a reconnoitring glance at her profile. “His dying, you
+mean, on the eve of success?”
+
+Miss Verney turned a frank smile upon her. “One ought to feel that, of
+course--but I’m afraid I am very selfish where my friends are concerned,
+and I was thinking of Mr. Peyton’s having to give up his work at such a
+critical moment.” She spoke without a note of deprecation: there was a
+pagan freshness in her opportunism.
+
+Mrs. Peyton was silent, and the girl continued after a pause: “I suppose
+now it will be almost impossible for him to finish his drawings in time.
+It’s a pity he hadn’t worked out the whole scheme a little sooner. Then the
+details would have come of themselves.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton felt a contempt strangely mingled with exultation. If only the
+girl would talk in that way to Dick!
+
+“He has hardly had time to think of himself lately,” she said, trying to
+keep the coldness out of her voice.
+
+“No, of course not,” Miss Verney assented; “but isn’t that all the more
+reason for his friends to think of him? It was very dear of him to give up
+everything to nurse Mr. Darrow--but, after all, if a man is going to get on
+in his career there are times when he must think first of himself.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton paused, trying to choose her words with deliberation. It was
+quite clear now that Dick had not spoken, and she felt the responsibility
+that devolved upon her.
+
+“Getting on in a career--is that always the first thing to be considered?”
+ she asked, letting her eyes rest musingly on the girl’s.
+
+The glance did not disconcert Miss Verney, who returned it with one of
+equal comprehensiveness. “Yes,” she said quickly, and with a slight blush.
+“With a temperament like Mr. Peyton’s I believe it is. Some people can pick
+themselves up after any number of bad falls: I am not sure that he could. I
+think discouragement would weaken instead of strengthening him.”
+
+Both women had forgotten external conditions in the quick reach for each
+other’s meanings. Mrs. Peyton flushed, her maternal pride in revolt; but
+the answer was checked on her lips by the sense of the girl’s unexpected
+insight. Here was some one who knew Dick as well as she did--should she say
+a partisan or an accomplice? A dim jealousy stirred beneath Mrs. Peyton’s
+other emotions: she was undergoing the agony which the mother feels at the
+first intrusion on her privilege of judging her child; and her voice had a
+flutter of resentment.
+
+“You must have a poor opinion of his character,” she said.
+
+Miss Verney did not remove her eyes, but her blush deepened beautifully. “I
+have, at any rate,” she Said, “a high one of his talent. I don’t suppose
+many men have an equal amount of moral and intellectual energy.”
+
+“And you would cultivate the one at the expense of the other?”
+
+“In certain cases--and up to a certain point.” She shook out the long fur
+of her muff, one of those silvery flexible furs which clothe a woman with a
+delicate sumptuousness. Everything about her, at the moment, seemed rich
+and cold--everything, as Mrs. Peyton quickly noted, but the blush lingering
+under her dark skin; and so complete was the girl’s self-command that the
+blush seemed to be there only because it had been forgotten.
+
+“I dare say you think me strange,” she continued. “Most people do, because
+I speak the truth. It’s the easiest way of concealing one’s feelings. I
+can, for instance, talk quite openly about Mr. Peyton under shelter of your
+inference that I shouldn’t do so if I were what is called ‘interested’ in
+him. And as I _am_ interested in him, my method has its advantages!”
+ She ended with one of the fluttering laughs which seemed to flit from point
+to point of her expressive person.
+
+Mrs. Peyton leaned toward her. “I believe you are interested,” she said
+quietly; “and since I suppose you allow others the privilege you claim for
+yourself, I am going to confess that I followed you here in the hope of
+finding out the nature of your interest.”
+
+Miss Verney shot a glance at her, and drew away in a soft subsidence of
+undulating furs.
+
+“Is this an embassy?” she asked smiling.
+
+“No: not in any sense.”
+
+The girl leaned back with an air of relief. “I’m glad; I should have
+disliked--” She looked again at Mrs. Peyton. “You want to know what I mean
+to do?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then I can only answer that I mean to wait and see what he does.”
+
+“You mean that everything is contingent on his success?”
+
+“_I_ am--if I’m everything,” she admitted gaily.
+
+The mother’s heart was beating in her throat, and her words seemed to force
+themselves out through the throbs.
+
+“I--I don’t quite see why you attach such importance to this special
+success.”
+
+“Because he does,” the girl returned instantly. “Because to him it is the
+final answer to his self-questioning--the questioning whether he is ever to
+amount to anything or not. He says if he has anything in him it ought to
+come out now. All the conditions are favourable--it is the chance he has
+always prayed for. You see,” she continued, almost confidentially, but
+without the least loss of composure--“you see he has told me a great deal
+about himself and his various experiments--his phrases of indecision and
+disgust. There are lots of tentative talents in the world, and the sooner
+they are crushed out by circumstances the better. But it seems as though
+he really had it in him to do something distinguished--as though the
+uncertainty lay in his character and not in his talent. That is what
+interests, what attracts me. One can’t teach a man to have genius, but if
+he has it one may show him how to use it. That is what I should be good
+for, you see--to keep him up to his opportunities.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton had listened with an intensity of attention that left her reply
+unprepared. There was something startling and yet half attractive in the
+girl’s avowal of principles which are oftener lived by than professed.
+
+“And you think,” she began at length, “that in this case he has fallen
+below his opportunity?”
+
+“No one can tell, of course; but his discouragement, his _abattement_,
+is a bad sign. I don’t think he has any hope of succeeding.”
+
+The mother again wavered a moment. “Since you are so frank,” she then said,
+“will you let me be equally so, and ask how lately you have seen him?”
+
+The girl smiled at the circumlocution. “Yesterday afternoon,” she said
+simply.
+
+“And you thought him--”
+
+“Horribly down on his luck. He said himself that his brain was empty.”
+
+Again Mrs. Peyton felt the throb in her throat, and a slow blush rose to
+her cheek. “Was that all he said?”
+
+“About himself--was there anything else?” said the girl quickly.
+
+“He didn’t tell you of--of an opportunity to make up for the time he has
+lost?”
+
+“An opportunity? I don’t understand.”
+
+“He didn’t speak to you, then, of Mr. Darrow’s letter?”
+
+“He said nothing of any letter.”
+
+“There _was_ one, which was found after poor Darrow’s death. In it he
+gave Dick leave to use his design for the competition. Dick says the design
+is wonderful--it would give him just what he needs.”
+
+Miss Verney sat listening raptly, with a rush of colour that suffused her
+like light.
+
+“But when was this? Where was the letter found? He never said a word of
+it!” she exclaimed.
+
+“The letter was found on the day of Darrow’s death.”
+
+“But I don’t understand! Why has he never told me? Why should he seem so
+hopeless?” She turned an ignorant appealing face on Mrs. Peyton. It was
+prodigious, but it was true--she felt nothing, saw nothing, but the crude
+fact of the opportunity.
+
+Mrs. Peyton’s voice trembled with the completeness of her triumph. “I
+suppose his reason for not speaking is that he has scruples.”
+
+“Scruples?”
+
+“He feels that to use the design would be dishonest.”
+
+Miss Verney’s eyes fixed themselves on her in a commiserating stare.
+“Dishonest? When the poor man wished it himself? When it was his last
+request? When the letter is there to prove it? Why, the design belongs to
+your son! No one else had any right to it.”
+
+“But Dick’s right does not extend to passing it off as his own--at least
+that is his feeling, I believe. If he won the competition he would be
+winning it on false pretenses.”
+
+“Why should you call them false pretenses? His design might have been
+better than Darrow’s if he had had time to carry it out. It seems to me
+that Mr. Darrow must have felt this--must have felt that he owed his friend
+some compensation for the time he took from him. I can imagine nothing more
+natural than his wishing to make this return for your son’s sacrifice.”
+
+She positively glowed with the force of her conviction, and Mrs. Peyton,
+for a strange instant, felt her own resistance wavering. She herself had
+never considered the question in that light--the light of Darrow’s viewing
+his gift as a justifiable compensation. But the glimpse she caught of it
+drove her shuddering behind her retrenchments.
+
+“That argument,” she said coldly, “would naturally be more convincing to
+Darrow than to my son.”
+
+Miss Verney glanced up, struck by the change in Mrs. Peyton’s voice.
+
+“Ah, then you agree with him? You think it _would_ be dishonest?”
+
+Mrs. Peyton saw that she had slipped into self-betrayal. “My son and I have
+not spoken of the matter,” she said evasively. She caught the flash of
+relief in Miss Verney’s face.
+
+“You haven’t spoken? Then how do you know how he feels about it?”
+
+“I only judge from--well, perhaps from his not speaking.”
+
+The girl drew a deep breath. “I see,” she murmured. “That is the very
+reason that prevents his speaking.”
+
+“The reason?”
+
+“Your knowing what he thinks--and his knowing that you know.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton was startled at her subtlety. “I assure you,” she said, rising,
+“that I have done nothing to influence him.”
+
+The girl gazed at her musingly. “No,” she said with a faint smile, “nothing
+except to read his thoughts.”
+
+
+VI
+
+Mrs. Peyton reached home in the state of exhaustion which follows on a
+physical struggle. It seemed to her as though her talk with Clemence Verney
+had been an actual combat, a measuring of wrist and eye. For a moment she
+was frightened at what she had done--she felt as though she had betrayed
+her son to the enemy. But before long she regained her moral balance,
+and saw that she had merely shifted the conflict to the ground on which
+it could best be fought out--since the prize fought for was the natural
+battlefield. The reaction brought with it a sense of helplessness, a
+realization that she had let the issue pass out of her hold; but since, in
+the last analysis, it had never lain there, since it was above all needful
+that the determining touch should be given by any hand but hers, she
+presently found courage to subside into inaction. She had done all she
+could--even more, perhaps, than prudence warranted--and now she could but
+await passively the working of the forces she had set in motion.
+
+For two days after her talk with Miss Verney she saw little of Dick. He
+went early to his office and came back late. He seemed less tired, more
+self-possessed, than during the first days after Darrow’s death; but there
+was a new inscrutableness in his manner, a note of reserve, of resistance
+almost, as though he had barricaded himself against her conjectures. She
+had been struck by Miss Verney’s reply to the anxious asseveration that
+she had done nothing to influence Dick--“Nothing,” the girl had answered,
+“except to read his thoughts.” Mrs. Peyton shrank from this detection of
+a tacit interference with her son’s liberty of action. She longed--how
+passionately he would never know--to stand apart from him in this struggle
+between his two destinies, and it was almost a relief that he on his side
+should hold aloof, should, for the first time in their relation, seem to
+feel her tenderness as an intrusion.
+
+Only four days remained before the date fixed for the sending in of the
+designs, and still Dick had not referred to his work. Of Darrow, also, he
+had made no mention. His mother longed to know if he had spoken to Clemence
+Verney--or rather if the girl had forced his confidence. Mrs. Peyton was
+almost certain that Miss Verney would not remain silent--there were times
+when Dick’s renewed application to his work seemed an earnest of her having
+spoken, and spoken convincingly. At the thought Kate’s heart grew chill.
+What if her experiment should succeed in a sense she had not intended? If
+the girl should reconcile Dick to his weakness, should pluck the sting from
+his temptation? In this round of uncertainties the mother revolved for two
+interminable days; but the second evening brought an answer to her
+question.
+
+Dick, returning earlier than usual from the office, had found, on the
+hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother’s
+observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed
+in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney’s
+utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl’s writing; but such notes had
+of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution easy.
+This communication Dick, as his mother poured his tea, looked over with a
+face of shifting lights; then he folded it into his note-case, and said,
+with a glance at his watch: “If you haven’t asked any one for this evening
+I think I’ll dine out.”
+
+“Do, dear; the change will be good for you,” his mother assented.
+
+He made no answer, but sat leaning back, his hands clasped behind his head,
+his eyes fixed on the fire. Every line of his body expressed a profound
+physical lassitude, but the face remained alert and guarded. Mrs. Peyton,
+in silence, was busying herself with the details of the tea-making, when
+suddenly, inexplicably, a question forced itself to her lips.
+
+“And your work--?” she said, strangely hearing herself speak.
+
+“My work--?” He sat up, on the defensive almost, but without a tremor of
+the guarded face.
+
+“You’re getting on well? You’ve made up for lost time?”
+
+“Oh, yes: things are going better.” He rose, with another glance at his
+watch. “Time to dress,” he said, nodding to her as he turned to the door.
+
+It was an hour later, during her own solitary dinner, that a ring at the
+door was followed by the parlour-maid’s announcement that Mr. Gill was
+there from the office. In the hall, in fact, Kate found her son’s partner,
+who explained apologetically that he had understood Peyton was dining at
+home, and had come to consult him about a difficulty which had arisen since
+he had left the office. On hearing that Dick was out, and that his mother
+did not know where he had gone, Mr. Gill’s perplexity became so manifest
+that Mrs. Peyton, after a moment, said hesitatingly: “He may be at a
+friend’s house; I could give you the address.”
+
+The architect caught up his hat. “Thank you; I’ll have a try for him.”
+
+Mrs. Peyton hesitated again. “Perhaps,” she suggested, “it would be better
+to telephone.”
+
+She led the way into the little study behind the drawing-room, where
+a telephone stood on the writing-table. The folding doors between the
+two rooms were open: should she close them as she passed back into the
+drawing-room? On the threshold she wavered an instant; then she walked on
+and took her usual seat by the fire.
+
+Gill, meanwhile, at the telephone, had “rung up” the Verney house, and
+inquired if his partner were dining there. The reply was evidently
+affirmative; and a moment later Kate knew that he was in communication with
+her son. She sat motionless, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
+her head erect, in an attitude of avowed attention. If she listened she
+would listen openly: there should be no suspicion of eavesdropping. Gill,
+engrossed in his message, was probably hardly conscious of her presence;
+but if he turned his head he should at least have no difficulty in seeing
+her, and in being aware that she could hear what he said. Gill, however, as
+she was quick to remember, was doubtless ignorant of any need for secrecy
+in his communication to Dick. He had often heard the affairs of the office
+discussed openly before Mrs. Peyton, had been led to regard her as familiar
+with all the details of her son’s work. He talked on unconcernedly, and she
+listened.
+
+Ten minutes later, when he rose to go, she knew all that she had wanted to
+find out. Long familiarity with the technicalities of her son’s profession
+made it easy for her to translate the stenographic jargon of the office.
+She could lengthen out all Gill’s abbreviations, interpret all his
+allusions, and reconstruct Dick’s answers from the questions addressed to
+him. And when the door closed on the architect she was left face to face
+with the fact that her son, unknown to any one but herself, was using
+Darrow’s drawings to complete his work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Peyton, left alone, found it easier to continue her vigil by the
+drawing-room fire than to carry up to the darkness and silence of her own
+room the truth she had been at such pains to acquire. She had no thought of
+sitting up for Dick. Doubtless, his dinner over, he would rejoin Gill at
+the office, and prolong through, the night the task in which she now knew
+him to be engaged. But it was less lonely by the fire than in the wide-eyed
+darkness which awaited her upstairs. A mortal loneliness enveloped her. She
+felt as though she had fallen by the way, spent and broken in a struggle of
+which even its object had been unconscious. She had tried to deflect the
+natural course of events, she had sacrificed her personal happiness to a
+fantastic ideal of duty, and it was her punishment to be left alone with
+her failure, outside the normal current of human strivings and regrets.
+
+She had no wish to see her son just then: she would have preferred to let
+the inner tumult subside, to repossess herself in this new adjustment to
+life, before meeting his eyes again. But as she sat there, far adrift on
+her misery, she was aroused by the turning of his key in the latch. She
+started up, her heart sounding a retreat, but her faculties too dispersed
+to obey it; and while she stood wavering, the door opened and he was in the
+room.
+
+In the room, and with face illumined: a Dick she had not seen since the
+strain of the contest had cast its shade on him. Now he shone as in a
+sunrise of victory, holding out exultant hands from which she hung back
+instinctively.
+
+“Mother! I knew you’d be waiting for me!” He had her on his breast now, and
+his kisses were in her hair. “I’ve always said you knew everything that was
+happening to me, and now you’ve guessed that I wanted you to-night.”
+
+She was struggling faintly against the dear endearments. “What _has_
+happened?” she murmured, drawing back for a dazzled look at him.
+
+He had drawn her to the sofa, had dropped beside her, regaining his hold of
+her in the boyish need that his happiness should be touched and handled.
+
+“My engagement has happened!” he cried out to her. “You stupid dear, do you
+need to be told?”
+
+
+VII
+
+She had indeed needed to be told: the surprise was complete and
+overwhelming. She sat silent under it, her hands trembling in his, till the
+blood mounted to his face and she felt his confident grasp relax.
+
+“You didn’t guess it, then?” he exclaimed, starting up and moving away from
+her.
+
+“No; I didn’t guess it,” she confessed in a dead-level voice.
+
+He stood above her, half challenging, half defensive. “And you haven’t a
+word to say to me? Mother!” he adjured her.
+
+She rose too, putting her arms about him with a kiss. “Dick! Dear Dick!”
+ she murmured.
+
+“She imagines you don’t like her; she says she’s always felt it. And yet
+she owns you’ve been delightful, that you’ve tried to make friends with
+her. And I thought you knew how much it would mean to me, just now, to have
+this uncertainty over, and that you’d actually been trying to help me, to
+put in a good word for me. I thought it was you who had made her decide.”
+
+“I?”
+
+“By your talk with her the other day. She told me of your talk with her.”
+
+His mother’s hands slipped from his shoulders and she sank back into her
+seat. She felt the cruelty of her silence, but only an inarticulate murmur
+found a way to her lips. Before speaking she must clear a space in the
+suffocating rush of her sensations. For the moment she could only repeat
+inwardly that Clemence Verney had yielded before the final test, and that
+she herself was somehow responsible for this fresh entanglement of fate.
+For she saw in a flash how the coils of circumstance had tightened; and as
+her mind cleared it was filled with the perception that this, precisely,
+was what the girl intended, that this was why she had conferred the crown
+before the victory. By pledging herself to Dick she had secured his pledge
+in return: had put him on his honour in a cynical inversion of the term.
+Kate saw the succession of events spread out before her like a map, and the
+astuteness of the girl’s policy frightened her. Miss Verney had conducted
+the campaign like a strategist. She had frankly owned that her interest in
+Dick’s future depended on his capacity for success, and in order to key him
+up to his first achievement she had given him a foretaste of its results.
+
+So much was almost immediately clear to Mrs. Peyton; but in a moment her
+inferences had carried her a point farther. For it was now plain to her
+that Miss Verney had not risked so much without first trying to gain her
+point at less cost: that if she had had to give herself as a prize, it was
+because no other bribe had been sufficient. This then, as the mother saw
+with a throb of hope, meant that Dick, who since Darrow’s death had held
+to his purpose unwaveringly, had been deflected from it by the first hint
+of Clemence Verney’s connivance. Kate had not miscalculated: things had
+happened as she had foreseen. In the light of the girl’s approval his act
+had taken an odious look. He had recoiled from it, and it was to revive his
+flagging courage that she had had to promise herself, to take him in the
+meshes of her surrender.
+
+Kate, looking up, saw above her the young perplexity of her boy’s face, the
+suspended happiness waiting to brim over. With a fresh touch of misery she
+said to herself that this was his hour, his one irrecoverable moment, and
+that she was darkening it by her silence. Her memory went back to the same
+hour in her own life: she could feel its heat in her pulses still. What
+right had she to stand in Dick’s light? Who was she to decide between his
+code and hers? She put out her hand and drew him down to her.
+
+“She’ll be the making of me, you know, mother,” he said, as they leaned
+together. “She’ll put new life in me--she’ll help me get my second wind.
+Her talk is like a fresh breeze blowing away the fog in my head. I never
+knew any one who saw so straight to the heart of things, who had such a
+grip on values. She goes straight up to life and catches hold of it, and
+you simply can’t make her let go.”
+
+He got up and walked the length of the room; then he came back and stood
+smiling above his mother.
+
+“You know you and I are rather complicated people,” he said. “We’re always
+walking around things to get new views of them--we’re always rearranging
+the furniture. And somehow she simplifies life so tremendously.” He dropped
+down beside her with a deprecating laugh. “Not that I mean, dear, that it
+hasn’t been good for me to argue things out with myself, as you’ve taught
+me to--only the man who stops to talk is apt to get shoved aside nowadays,
+and I don’t believe Milton’s archangels would have had much success in
+active business.”
+
+He had begun in a strain of easy confidence, but as he went on she detected
+an effort to hold the note, she felt that his words were being poured out
+in a vain attempt to fill the silence which was deepening between them. She
+longed, in her turn, to pour something into that menacing void, to bridge
+it with a reconciling word or look; but her soul hung back, and she had to
+take refuge in a vague murmur of tenderness.
+
+“My boy! My boy!” she repeated; and he sat beside her without speaking,
+their hand-clasp alone spanning the distance which had widened between
+their thoughts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The engagement, as Kate subsequently learned, was not to be made known till
+later. Miss Verney had even stipulated that for the present there should
+be no recognition of it in her own family or in Dick’s. She did not wish
+to interfere with his final work for the competition, and had made him
+promise, as he laughingly owned, that he would not see her again till the
+drawings were sent in. His mother noticed that he made no other allusion to
+his work; but when he bade her good-night he added that he might not see
+her the next morning, as he had to go to the office early. She took this as
+a hint that he wished to be left alone, and kept her room the next day till
+the closing door told her that he was out of the house.
+
+She herself had waked early, and it seemed to her that the day was already
+old when she came downstairs. Never had the house appeared so empty. Even
+in Dick’s longest absences something of his presence had always hung about
+the rooms: a fine dust of memories and associations, which wanted only the
+evocation of her thought to float into a palpable semblance of him. But now
+he seemed to have taken himself quite away, to have broken every fibre by
+which their lives had hung together. Where the sense of him had been there
+was only a deeper emptiness: she felt as if a strange man had gone out of
+her house.
+
+She wandered from room to room, aimlessly, trying to adjust herself to
+their solitude. She had known such loneliness before, in the years when
+most women’s hearts are fullest; but that was long ago, and the solitude
+had after all been less complete, because of the sense that it might
+still be filled. Her son had come: her life had brimmed over; but now the
+tide ebbed again, and she was left gazing over a bare stretch of wasted
+years. Wasted! There was the mortal pang, the stroke from which there was
+no healing. Her faith and hope had been marsh-lights luring her to the
+wilderness, her love a vain edifice reared on shifting ground.
+
+In her round of the rooms she came at last to Dick’s study upstairs. It was
+full of his boyhood: she could trace the history of his past in its quaint
+relics and survivals, in the school-books lingering on his crowded shelves,
+the school-photographs and college-trophies hung among his later treasures.
+All his successes and failures, his exaltations and inconsistencies, were
+recorded in the warm huddled heterogeneous room. Everywhere she saw the
+touch of her own hand, the vestiges of her own steps. It was she alone
+who held the clue to the labyrinth, who could thread a way through the
+confusions and contradictions of his past; and her soul rejected the
+thought that his future could ever escape from her. She dropped down into
+his shabby college armchair and hid her face in the papers on his desk.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The day dwelt in her memory as a long stretch of aimless hours: blind
+alleys of time that led up to a dead wall of inaction.
+
+Toward afternoon she remembered that she had promised to dine out and go to
+the opera. At first she felt that the contact of life would be unendurable;
+then she shrank from shutting herself up with her misery. In the end she
+let herself drift passively on the current of events, going through the
+mechanical routine of the day without much consciousness of what was
+happening.
+
+At twilight, as she sat in the drawing-room, the evening paper was brought
+in, and in glancing over it her eye fell on a paragraph which seemed
+printed in more vivid type than the rest. It was headed, _The New Museum
+of Sculpture_, and underneath she read: “The artists and architects
+selected to pass on the competitive designs for the new Museum will begin
+their sittings on Monday, and to-morrow is the last day on which designs may
+be sent in to the committee. Great interest is felt in the competition, as
+the conspicuous site chosen for the new building, and the exceptionally
+large sum voted by the city for its erection, offer an unusual field for
+the display of architectural ability.”
+
+She leaned back, closing her eyes. It was as though a clock had struck,
+loud and inexorably, marking off some irrecoverable hour. She was seized
+by a sudden longing to seek Dick out, to fall on her knees and plead with
+him: it was one of those physical obsessions against which the body has to
+stiffen its muscles as well as the mind its thoughts. Once she even sprang
+up to ring for a cab; but she sank back again, breathing as if after a
+struggle, and gripping the arms of her chair to keep herself down.
+
+“I can only wait for him--only wait for him--” she heard herself say; and
+the words loosened the sobs in her throat.
+
+At length she went upstairs to dress for dinner. A ghostlike self looked
+back at her from her toilet-glass: she watched it performing the mechanical
+gestures of the toilet, dressing her, as it appeared, without help from
+her actual self. Each little act stood out sharply against the blurred
+background of her brain: when she spoke to her maid her voice sounded
+extraordinarily loud. Never had the house been so silent; or, stay--yes,
+once she had felt the same silence, once when Dick, in his school-days, had
+been ill of a fever, and she had sat up with him on the decisive night.
+The silence had been as deep and as terrible then; and as she dressed she
+had before her the vision of his room, of the cot in which he lay, of his
+restless head working a hole in the pillow, his face so pinched and alien
+under the familiar freckles. It might be his death-watch she was keeping:
+the doctors had warned her to be ready. And in the silence her soul had
+fought for her boy, her love had hung over him like wings, her abundant
+useless hateful life had struggled to force itself into his empty veins.
+And she had succeeded, she had saved him, she had poured her life into him;
+and in place of the strange child she had watched all night, at daylight
+she held her own boy to her breast.
+
+That night had once seemed to her the most dreadful of her life; but she
+knew now that it was one of the agonies which enrich, that the passion thus
+spent grows fourfold from its ashes. She could not have borne to keep this
+new vigil alone. She must escape from its sterile misery, must take refuge
+in other lives till she regained courage to face her own. At the opera,
+in the illumination of the first _entr’acte_, as she gazed about the
+house, wondering through the numb ache of her wretchedness how others could
+talk and smile and be indifferent, it seemed to her that all the jarring
+animation about her was suddenly focussed in the face of Clemence Verney.
+Miss Verney sat opposite, in the front of a crowded box, a box in which,
+continually, the black-coated background shifted and renewed itself.
+Mrs. Peyton felt a throb of anger at the girl’s bright air of unconcern.
+She forgot that she too was talking, smiling, holding out her hand to
+newcomers, in a studied mimicry of life, while her real self played out
+its tragedy behind the scenes. Then it occurred to her that, to Clemence
+Verney, there was no tragedy in the situation. According to the girl’s
+calculations, Dick was virtually certain of success; and unsuccess was to
+her the only conceivable disaster.
+
+All through the opera the sense of that opposing force, that negation of
+her own beliefs, burned itself into Mrs. Peyton’s consciousness. The space
+between herself and the girl seemed to vanish, the throng about them to
+disperse, till they were face to face and alone, enclosed in their mortal
+enmity. At length the feeling of humiliation and defeat grew unbearable to
+Mrs. Peyton. The girl seemed to flout her in the insolence of victory, to
+sit there as the visible symbol of her failure. It was better after all to
+be at home alone with her thoughts.
+
+As she drove away from the opera she thought of that other vigil which,
+only a few streets away, Dick was perhaps still keeping. She wondered if
+his work were over, if the final stroke had been drawn. And as she pictured
+him there, signing his pact with evil in the loneliness of the conniving
+night, an uncontrollable impulse possessed her. She must drive by his
+windows and see if they were still alight. She would not go up to him,--she
+dared not,--but at least she would pass near to him, would invisibly share
+his watch and hover on the edge of his thoughts. She lowered the window and
+called out the address to the coachman.
+
+The tall office-building loomed silent and dark as she approached it; but
+presently, high up, she caught a light in the familiar windows. Her heart
+gave a leap, and the light swam on her through tears. The carriage drew up,
+and for a moment she sat motionless. Then the coachman bent down toward
+her, and she saw that he was asking if he should drive on. She tried to
+shape a yes, but her lips refused it, and she shook her head. He continued
+to lean down perplexedly, and at length, under the interrogation of his
+attitude, it became impossible to sit still, and she opened the door and
+stepped out. It was equally impossible to stand on the sidewalk, and her
+next steps carried her to the door of the building. She groped for the
+bell and rang it, feeling still dimly accountable to the coachman for some
+consecutiveness of action, and after a moment the night watchman opened the
+door, drawing back amazed at the shining apparition which confronted him.
+Recognizing Mrs. Peyton, whom he had seen about the building by day, he
+tried to adapt himself to the situation by a vague stammer of apology.
+
+“I came to see if my son is still here,” she faltered.
+
+“Yes, ma’am, he’s here. He’s been here most nights lately till after
+twelve.”
+
+“And is Mr. Gill with him?”
+
+“No: Mr. Gill he went away just after I come on this evening.”
+
+She glanced up into the cavernous darkness of the stairs.
+
+“Is he alone up there, do you think?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am, I know he’s alone, because I seen his men leaving soon after
+Mr. Gill.”
+
+Kate lifted her head quickly. “Then I will go up to him,” she said.
+
+The watchman apparently did not think it proper to offer any comment on
+this unusual proceeding, and a moment later she was fluttering and rustling
+up through the darkness, like a night-bird hovering among rafters. There
+were ten flights to climb: at every one her breath failed her, and she had
+to stand still and press her hands against her heart. Then the weight on
+her breast lifted, and she went on again, upward and upward, the great
+dark building dropping away from her, in tier after tier of mute doors and
+mysterious corridors. At last she reached Dick’s floor, and saw the light
+shining down the passage from his door. She leaned against the wall, her
+breath coming short, the silence throbbing in her ears. Even now it was not
+too late to turn back. She bent over the stairs, letting her eyes plunge
+into the nether blackness, with the single glimmer of the watchman’s lights
+in its depths; then she turned and stole toward her son’s door.
+
+There again she paused and listened, trying to catch, through the hum of
+her pulses, any noise that might come to her from within. But the silence
+was unbroken--it seemed as though the office must be empty. She pressed her
+ear to the door, straining for a sound. She knew he never sat long at his
+work, and it seemed unaccountable that she should not hear him moving about
+the drawing-board. For a moment she fancied he might be sleeping; but sleep
+did not come to him readily after prolonged mental effort--she recalled the
+restless straying of his feet above her head for hours after he returned
+from his night work in the office.
+
+She began to fear that he might be ill. A nervous trembling seized her, and
+she laid her hand on the latch, whispering “Dick!”
+
+Her whisper sounded loudly through the silence, but there was no answer,
+and after a pause she called again. With each call the hush seemed to
+deepen: it closed in on her, mysterious and impenetrable. Her heart was
+beating in short frightened leaps: a moment more and she would have cried
+out. She drew a quick breath and turned the door-handle.
+
+The outer room, Dick’s private office, with its red carpet and easy-chairs,
+stood in pleasant lamp-lit emptiness. The last time she had entered it,
+Darrow and Clemence Verney had been there, and she had sat behind the
+urn observing them. She paused a moment, struck now by a fault sound
+from beyond; then she slipped noiselessly across the carpet, pushed open
+the swinging door, and stood on the threshold of the work-room. Here
+the gas-lights hung a green-shaded circle of brightness over the great
+draughting-table in the middle of the floor. Table and floor were strewn
+with a confusion of papers--torn blue-prints and tracings, crumpled sheets
+of tracing-paper wrenched from the draughting-boards in a sudden fury of
+destruction; and in the centre of the havoc, his arms stretched across the
+table and his face hidden in them, sat Dick Peyton.
+
+He did not seem to hear his mother’s approach, and she stood looking at
+him, her breast tightening with a new fear.
+
+“Dick!” she said, “Dick!--” and he sprang up, staring with dazed eyes. But
+gradually, as his gaze cleared, a light spread in it, a mounting brightness
+of recognition.
+
+“You’ve come--you’ve come--” he said, stretching his hands to her; and all
+at once she had him in her breast as in a shelter.
+
+“You wanted me?” she whispered as she held him.
+
+He looked up at her, tired, breathless, with the white radiance of the
+runner near the goal.
+
+“I _had_ you, dear!” he said, smiling strangely on her; and her heart
+gave a great leap of understanding.
+
+Her arms had slipped from his neck, and she stood leaning on him,
+deep-suffused in the shyness of her discovery. For it might still be that
+he did not wish her to know what she had done for him.
+
+But he put his arm about her, boyishly, and drew her toward one of the hard
+seats between the tables; and there, on the bare floor, he knelt before
+her, and hid his face in her lap. She sat motionless, feeling the dear
+warmth of his head against her knees, letting her hands stray in faint
+caresses through his hair.
+
+Neither spoke for awhile; then he raised his head and looked at her. “I
+suppose you know what has been happening to me,” he said.
+
+She shrank from seeming to press into his life a hair’s-breadth farther
+than he was prepared to have her go. Her eyes turned from him toward the
+scattered drawings on the table.
+
+“You have given up the competition?” she said.
+
+“Yes--and a lot more.” He stood up, the wave of emotion ebbing, yet leaving
+him nearer, in his recovered calmness, than in the shock of their first
+moment.
+
+“I didn’t know, at first, how much you guessed,” he went on quietly. “I was
+sorry I’d shown you Darrow’s letter; but it didn’t worry me much because I
+didn’t suppose you’d think it possible that I should--take advantage of it.
+It’s only lately that I’ve understood that you knew everything.” He looked
+at her with a smile. “I don’t know yet how I found it out, for you’re
+wonderful about keeping things to yourself, and you never made a sign.
+I simply felt it in a kind of nearness--as if I couldn’t get away from
+you.--Oh, there were times when I should have preferred not having
+you about--when I tried to turn my back on you, to see things from
+other people’s standpoint. But you were always there--you wouldn’t be
+discouraged. And I got tired of trying to explain things to you, of trying
+to bring you round to my way of thinking. You wouldn’t go away and you
+wouldn’t come any nearer--you just stood there and watched everything that
+I was doing.”
+
+He broke off, taking one of his restless turns down the long room. Then he
+drew up a chair beside her, and dropped into it with a great sigh.
+
+“At first, you know, I hated it most awfully. I wanted to be let alone and
+to work out my own theory of things. If you’d said a word--if you’d tried
+to influence me--the spell would have been broken. But just because the
+actual _you_ kept apart and didn’t meddle or pry, the other, the you
+in my heart, seemed to get a tighter hold on me. I don’t know how to tell
+you,--it’s all mixed up in my head--but old things you’d said and done kept
+coming back to me, crowding between me and what I was trying for, looking
+at me without speaking, like old friends I’d gone back on, till I simply
+couldn’t stand it any longer. I fought it off till to-night, but when I
+came back to finish the work there you were again--and suddenly, I don’t
+know how, you weren’t an obstacle any longer, but a refuge--and I crawled
+into your arms as I used to when things went against me at school.”
+
+His hands stole back into hers, and he leaned his head against her shoulder
+like a boy.
+
+“I’m an abysmally weak fool, you know,” he ended; “I’m not worth the fight
+you’ve put up for me. But I want you to know that it’s your doing--that if
+you had let go an instant I should have gone under--and that if I’d gone
+under I should never have come up again alive.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
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+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: right; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; margin-left: 0.8em; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
+
+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: Sanctuary
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2005  [EBook #7517]
+This file was first posted on May 13, 2003
+[Last updated: October 1, 2017]
+
+Language: English
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANCTUARY ***
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+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      SANCTUARY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Edith Wharton
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART"> PART I </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PART2"> PART II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the
+      sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within
+      reach of the awakening clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had
+      yielded herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a
+      spring rain soaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account
+      for this sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which
+      made it so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last
+      two months&mdash;since her engagement to Denis Peyton&mdash;no distinct
+      addition to the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have
+      affirmed, of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly
+      and outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas,
+      before, the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause
+      over her and she could trust herself to their shelter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in
+      which she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations, and
+      at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it a
+      certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found
+      herself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able
+      to be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first stranger
+      in the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easily
+      than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each
+      other, opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter into
+      possession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belonging
+      to her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; and
+      this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it
+      the hallowing sense of permanence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose from the writing-table where, list in hand, she had been going
+      over the wedding-invitations, and walked toward the drawing-room window.
+      Everything about her seemed to contribute to that rare harmony of feeling
+      which levied a tax on every sense. The large coolness of the room, its
+      fine traditional air of spacious living, its outlook over field and
+      woodland toward the lake lying under the silver bloom of September; the
+      very scent of the late violets in a glass on the writing-table; the
+      rosy-mauve masses of hydrangea in tubs along the terrace; the fall, now
+      and then, of a leaf through the still air&mdash;all, somehow, were mingled
+      in the suffusion of well-being that yet made them seem but so much dross
+      upon its current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s smile prolonged itself at the sight of a figure approaching
+      from the lower slopes above the lake. The path was a short cut from the
+      Peyton place, and she had known that Denis would appear in it at about
+      that hour. Her smile, however, was prolonged not so much by his approach
+      as by her sense of the impossibility of communicating her mood to him. The
+      feeling did not disturb her. She could not imagine sharing her deepest
+      moods with any one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too
+      bright and spacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in
+      truth a tribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a
+      refuge from her own complexities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Denis Peyton was used to being met with a smile. He might have been
+      pardoned for thinking smiles the habitual wear of the human countenance;
+      and his estimate of life and of himself was necessarily tinged by the
+      cordial terms on which they had always met each other. He had in fact
+      found life, from the start, an uncommonly agreeable business, culminating
+      fitly enough in his engagement to the only girl he had ever wished to
+      marry, and the inheritance, from his unhappy step-brother, of a fortune
+      which agreeably widened his horizon. Such a combination of circumstances
+      might well justify a young man in thinking himself of some account in the
+      universe; and it seemed the final touch of fitness that the mourning which
+      Denis still wore for poor Arthur should lend a new distinction to his
+      somewhat florid good looks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate Orme was not without an amused perception of her future husband&rsquo;s
+      point of view; but she could enter into it with the tolerance which allows
+      for the inconscient element in all our judgments. There was, for instance,
+      no one more sentimentally humane than Denis&rsquo;s mother, the second Mrs.
+      Peyton, a scented silvery person whose lavender silks and neutral-tinted
+      manner expressed a mind with its blinds drawn down toward all the
+      unpleasantness of life; yet it was clear that Mrs. Peyton saw a
+      &ldquo;dispensation&rdquo; in the fact that her step-son had never married, and that
+      his death had enabled Denis, at the right moment, to step gracefully into
+      affluence. Was it not, after all, a sign of healthy-mindedness to take the
+      gifts of the gods in this religious spirit, discovering fresh evidence of
+      &ldquo;design&rdquo; in what had once seemed the sad fact of Arthur&rsquo;s inaccessibility
+      to correction? Mrs. Peyton, beautifully conscious of having done her
+      &ldquo;best&rdquo; for Arthur, would have thought it unchristian to repine at the
+      providential failure of her efforts. Denis&rsquo;s deductions were, of course, a
+      little less direct than his mother&rsquo;s. He had, besides, been fond of
+      Arthur, and his efforts to keep the poor fellow straight had been less
+      didactic and more spontaneous. Their result read itself, if not in any
+      change in Arthur&rsquo;s character, at least in the revised wording of his will;
+      and Denis&rsquo;s moral sense was pleasantly fortified by the discovery that it
+      very substantially paid to be a good fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sense of general providentialness on which Mrs. Peyton reposed had in
+      fact been confirmed by events which reduced Denis&rsquo;s mourning to a mere
+      tribute of respect&mdash;since it would have been a mockery to deplore the
+      disappearance of any one who had left behind him such an unsavory wake as
+      poor Arthur. Kate did not quite know what had happened: her father was as
+      firmly convinced as Mrs. Peyton that young girls should not be admitted to
+      any open discussion of life. She could only gather, from the silences and
+      evasions amid which she moved, that a woman had turned up&mdash;a woman
+      who was of course &ldquo;dreadful,&rdquo; and whose dreadfulness appeared to include a
+      sort of shadowy claim upon Arthur. But the claim, whatever it was, had
+      been promptly discredited. The whole question had vanished and the woman
+      with it. The blinds were drawn again on the ugly side of things, and life
+      was resumed on the usual assumption that no such side existed. Kate knew
+      only that a darkness had crossed her sky and left it as unclouded as
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it, perhaps, she now asked herself, the very lifting of the cloud&mdash;remote,
+      unthreatening as it had been&mdash;which gave such new serenity to her
+      heaven? It was horrible to think that one&rsquo;s deepest security was a mere
+      sense of escape&mdash;that happiness was no more than a reprieve. The
+      perversity of such ideas was emphasized by Peyton&rsquo;s approach. He had the
+      gift of restoring things to their normal relations, of carrying one over
+      the chasms of life through the closed tunnel of an incurious cheerfulness.
+      All that was restless and questioning in the girl subsided in his
+      presence, and she was content to take her love as a gift of grace, which
+      began just where the office of reason ended. She was more than ever,
+      to-day, in this mood of charmed surrender. More than ever he seemed the
+      keynote of the accord between herself and life, the centre of a delightful
+      complicity in every surrounding circumstance. One could not look at him
+      without seeing that there was always a fair wind in his sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was carrying him toward her, as usual, at a quick confident pace, which
+      nevertheless lagged a little, she noticed, as he emerged from the
+      beech-grove and struck across the lawn. He walked as though he were tired.
+      She had meant to wait for him on the terrace, held in check by her usual
+      inclination to linger on the threshold of her pleasures; but now something
+      drew her toward him, and she went quickly down the steps and across the
+      lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Denis, you look tired. I was afraid something had happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had slipped her hand through his arm, and as they moved forward she
+      glanced up at him, struck not so much by any new look in his face as by
+      the fact that her approach had made no change in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am rather tired.&mdash;Is your father in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa?&rdquo; She looked up in surprise. &ldquo;He went to town yesterday. Don&rsquo;t you
+      remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;I&rsquo;d forgotten. You&rsquo;re alone, then?&rdquo; She dropped his arm
+      and stood before him. He was very pale now, with the furrowed look of
+      extreme physical weariness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Denis&mdash;are you ill? <i>Has</i> anything happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He forced a smile. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but you needn&rsquo;t look so frightened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew a deep breath of reassurance. <i>He</i> was safe, after all! And
+      all else, for a moment, seemed to swing below the rim of her world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother&mdash;?&rdquo; she then said, with a fresh start of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my mother.&rdquo; They had reached the terrace, and he moved toward
+      the house. &ldquo;Let us go indoors. There&rsquo;s such a beastly glare out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to find relief in the cool obscurity of the drawing-room, where,
+      after the brightness of the afternoon light, their faces were almost
+      indistinguishable to each other. She sat down, and he moved a few paces
+      away. Before the writing-table he paused to look at the neatly sorted
+      heaps of wedding-cards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are to be sent out to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned back and stood before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about the woman,&rdquo; he began abruptly&mdash;&ldquo;the woman who pretended
+      to be Arthur&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate started as at the clutch of an unacknowledged fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She <i>was</i> his wife, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peyton made an impatient movement of negation. &ldquo;If she was, why didn&rsquo;t she
+      prove it? She hadn&rsquo;t a shred of evidence. The courts rejected her appeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s dead.&rdquo; He paused, and the next words came with difficulty.
+      &ldquo;She and the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child? There was a child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate started up and then sank down. These were not things about which
+      young girls were told. The confused sense of horror had been nothing to
+      this first sharp edge of fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And both are dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know? My father said she had gone away&mdash;gone back to the
+      West&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we thought. But this morning we found her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Found her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He motioned toward the window. &ldquo;Out there&mdash;in the lake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drooped before him shudderingly, her eyes hidden, as though to exclude
+      the vision. &ldquo;She had drowned herself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, poor thing&mdash;poor thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They paused awhile, the minutes delving an abyss between them till he
+      threw a few irrelevant words across the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the gardeners found them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was sufficiently horrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horrible&mdash;oh!&rdquo; She had swung round again to her pole. &ldquo;Poor Denis!
+      <i>You</i> were not there&mdash;<i>you</i> didn&rsquo;t have to&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to see her.&rdquo; She felt the instant relief in his voice. He could
+      talk now, could distend his nerves in the warm air of her sympathy. &ldquo;I had
+      to identify her.&rdquo; He rose nervously and began to pace the room. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      knocked the wind out of me. I&mdash;my God! I couldn&rsquo;t foresee it, could
+      I?&rdquo; He halted before her with outstretched hands of argument. &ldquo;I did all I
+      could&mdash;it&rsquo;s not <i>my</i> fault, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your fault? Denis!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t take the money&mdash;&rdquo; He broke off, checked by her awakened
+      glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money? What money?&rdquo; Her face changed, hardening as his relaxed. &ldquo;Had
+      you offered her <i>money</i> to give up the case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared a moment, and then dismissed the implication with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no; after the case was decided against her. She seemed hard up,
+      and I sent Hinton to her with a cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she refused it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did she say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;the usual thing. That she&rsquo;d only wanted to prove
+      she was his wife&mdash;on the child&rsquo;s account. That she&rsquo;d never wanted his
+      money. Hinton said she was very quiet&mdash;not in the least excited&mdash;but
+      she sent back the cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate sat motionless, her head bent, her hands clasped about her knees. She
+      no longer looked at Peyton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could there have been a mistake?&rdquo; she asked slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A mistake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head now, and fixed her eyes on his, with a strange
+      insistence of observation. &ldquo;Could they have been married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The courts didn&rsquo;t think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could the courts have been mistaken?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He started up again, and threw himself into another chair. &ldquo;Good God,
+      Kate! We gave her every chance to prove her case&mdash;why didn&rsquo;t she do
+      it? You don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re talking about&mdash;such things are kept
+      from girls. Why, whenever a man of Arthur&rsquo;s kind dies, such&mdash;such
+      women turn up. There are lawyers who live on such jobs&mdash;ask your
+      father about it. Of course, this woman expected to be bought off&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if she wouldn&rsquo;t take your money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She expected a big sum, I mean, to drop the case. When she found we meant
+      to fight it, she saw the game was up. I suppose it was her last throw, and
+      she was desperate; we don&rsquo;t know how many times she may have been through
+      the same thing before. That kind of woman is always trying to make money
+      out of the heirs of any man who&mdash;who has been about with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate received this in silence. She had a sense of walking along a narrow
+      ledge of consciousness above a sheer hallucinating depth into which she
+      dared not look. But the depth drew her, and she plunged one terrified
+      glance into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the child&mdash;the child was Arthur&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peyton shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;There again&mdash;how can we tell? Why, I
+      don&rsquo;t suppose the woman herself&mdash;I wish to heaven your father were
+      here to explain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose and crossed over to him, laying her hands on his shoulders with a
+      gesture almost maternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let us talk of it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You did all you could. Think what a
+      comfort you were to poor Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her hands lie where she had placed them, without response or
+      resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried&mdash;I tried hard to keep him straight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We all know that&mdash;every one knows it. And we know how grateful he
+      was&mdash;what a difference it made to him in the end. It would have been
+      dreadful to think of his dying out there alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew him down on a sofa and seated herself by his side. A deep
+      lassitude was upon him, and the hand she had possessed herself of lay in
+      her hold inert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was splendid of you to travel day and night as you did. And then that
+      dreadful week before he died! But for you he would have died alone among
+      strangers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat silent, his head dropping forward, his eyes fixed. &ldquo;Among
+      strangers,&rdquo; he repeated absently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up, as if struck by a sudden thought. &ldquo;That poor woman&mdash;did
+      you ever see her while you were out there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew his hand away and gathered his brows together as if in an effort
+      of remembrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her&mdash;oh, yes, I saw her.&rdquo; He pushed the tumbled hair from his
+      forehead and stood up. &ldquo;Let us go out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My head is in a fog. I
+      want to get away from it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A wave of compunction drew her to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my fault! I ought not to have asked so many questions.&rdquo; She turned
+      and rang the bell. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll order the ponies&mdash;we shall have time for a
+      drive before sunset.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      With the sunset in their faces they swept through the keen-scented autumn
+      air at the swiftest pace of Kate&rsquo;s ponies. She had given the reins to
+      Peyton, and he had turned the horses&rsquo; heads away from the lake, rising by
+      woody upland lanes to the high pastures which still held the sunlight. The
+      horses were fresh enough to claim his undivided attention, and he drove in
+      silence, his smooth fair profile turned to his companion, who sat silent
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate Orme was engaged in one of those rapid mental excursions which were
+      forever sweeping her from the straight path of the actual into uncharted
+      regions of conjecture. Her survey of life had always been marked by the
+      tendency to seek out ultimate relations, to extend her researches to the
+      limit of her imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some
+      young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she
+      takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base,
+      and through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first
+      moment all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague
+      shapes and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there,
+      men like Denis, girls like herself&mdash;for under the unlikeness she felt
+      the strange affinity&mdash;all struggling in that awful coil of moral
+      darkness, with agonized hands reaching up for rescue. Her heart shrank
+      from the horror of it, and then, in a passion of pity, drew back to the
+      edge of the abyss. Suddenly her eyes turned toward Denis. His face was
+      grave, but less disturbed. And men knew about these things! They carried
+      this abyss in their bosoms, and went about smiling, and sat at the feet of
+      innocence. Could it be that Denis&mdash;Denis even&mdash;Ah, no! She
+      remembered what he had been to poor Arthur; she understood, now, the vague
+      allusions to what he had tried to do for his brother. He had seen Arthur
+      down there, in that coiling blackness, and had leaned over and tried to
+      drag him out. But Arthur was too deep down, and his arms were interlocked
+      with other arms&mdash;they had dragged each other deeper, poor souls, like
+      drowning people who fight together in the waves! Kate&rsquo;s visualizing habit
+      gave a hateful precision and persistency to the image she had evoked&mdash;she
+      could not rid herself of the vision of anguished shapes striving together
+      in the darkness. The horror of it took her by the throat&mdash;she drew a
+      choking breath, and felt the tears on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peyton turned to her. The horses were climbing a hill, and his attention
+      had strayed from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This has done me good,&rdquo; he began; but as he looked his voice changed.
+      &ldquo;Kate! What is it? Why are you crying? Oh, for God&rsquo;s sake, <i>don&rsquo;t</i>!&rdquo;
+       he ended, his hand closing on her wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She steadied herself and raised her eyes to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t help it,&rdquo; she stammered, struggling in the sudden
+      release of her pent compassion. &ldquo;It seems so awful that we should stand so
+      close to this horror&mdash;that it might have been you who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I who&mdash;what on earth do you mean?&rdquo; he broke in stridently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t you see? I found myself exulting that you and I were so far
+      from it&mdash;above it&mdash;safe in ourselves and each other&mdash;and
+      then the other feeling came&mdash;the sense of selfishness, of going by on
+      the other side; and I tried to realize that it might have been you and I
+      who&mdash;who were down there in the night and the flood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peyton let the whip fall on the ponies&rsquo; flanks. &ldquo;Upon my soul,&rdquo; he said
+      with a laugh, &ldquo;you must have a nice opinion of both of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words fell chillingly on the blaze of her self-immolation. Would she
+      never learn to remember that Denis was incapable of mounting such
+      hypothetical pyres? He might be as alive as herself to the direct demands
+      of duty, but of its imaginative claims he was robustly unconscious. The
+      thought brought a wholesome reaction of thankfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; she said, the sunset dilating through her tears, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you
+      see that I can bear to think such things only because they&rsquo;re
+      impossibilities? It&rsquo;s easy to look over into the depths if one has a
+      rampart to lean on. What I most pity poor Arthur for is that, instead of
+      that woman lying there, so dreadfully dead, there might have been a girl
+      like me, so exquisitely alive because of him; but it seems cruel, doesn&rsquo;t
+      it, to let what he was not add ever so little to the value of what you
+      are? To let him contribute ever so little to my happiness by the
+      difference there is between you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious, as she spoke, of straying again beyond his reach,
+      through intricacies of sensation new even to her exploring
+      susceptibilities. A happy literalness usually enabled him to strike a
+      short cut through such labyrinths, and rejoin her smiling on the other
+      side; but now she became wonderingly aware that he had been caught in the
+      thick of her hypothesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the difference that makes you care for me, then?&rdquo; he broke out, with
+      a kind of violence which seemed to renew his clutch on her wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lashed the ponies again, so sharply that a murmur escaped her, and he
+      drew them up, quivering, with an inconsequent &ldquo;Steady, boys,&rdquo; at which
+      their back-laid ears protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m moral and respectable, and all that, that you&rsquo;re fond of
+      me,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;you&rsquo;re&mdash;you&rsquo;re simply in love with my virtues. You
+      couldn&rsquo;t imagine caring if I were down there in the ditch, as you say,
+      with Arthur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question fell on a silence which seemed to deepen suddenly within
+      herself. Every thought hung bated on the sense that something was coming:
+      her whole consciousness became a void to receive it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Denis!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned on her almost savagely. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want your pity, you know,&rdquo; he
+      burst out. &ldquo;You can keep that for Arthur. I had an idea women loved men
+      for themselves&mdash;through everything, I mean. But I wouldn&rsquo;t steal your
+      love&mdash;I don&rsquo;t want it on false pretenses, you understand. Go and look
+      into other men&rsquo;s lives, that&rsquo;s all I ask of you. I slipped into it&mdash;it
+      was just a case of holding my tongue when I ought to have spoken&mdash;but
+      I&mdash;I&mdash;for God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t sit there staring! I suppose you&rsquo;ve
+      seen all along that I knew he was married to the woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper&rsquo;s reminding her that Mr. Orme would be at home the next
+      day for dinner, and did she think he would like the venison with claret
+      sauce or jelly, roused Kate to the first consciousness of her
+      surroundings. Her father would return on the morrow: he would give to the
+      dressing of the venison such minute consideration as, in his opinion,
+      every detail affecting his comfort or convenience quite obviously merited.
+      And if it were not the venison it would be something else; if it were not
+      the housekeeper it would be Mr. Orme, charged with the results of a
+      conference with his agent, a committee-meeting at his club, or any of the
+      other incidents which, by happening to himself, became events. Kate found
+      herself caught in the inexorable continuity of life, found herself gazing
+      over a scene of ruin lit up by the punctual recurrence of habit as
+      nature&rsquo;s calm stare lights the morrow of a whirlwind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Life was going on, then, and dragging her at its wheels. She could neither
+      check its rush nor wrench loose from it and drop out&mdash;oh, how
+      blessedly&mdash;into darkness and cessation. She must go bounding on,
+      racked, broken, but alive in every fibre. The most she could hope was a
+      few hours&rsquo; respite, not from her own terrors, but from the pressure of
+      outward claims: the midday halt, during which the victim is unbound while
+      his torturers rest from their efforts. Till her father&rsquo;s return she would
+      have the house to herself, and, the question of the venison despatched,
+      could give herself to long lonely pacings of the empty rooms, and
+      shuddering subsidences upon her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first impulse, as the mist cleared from her brain, was the habitual
+      one of reaching out for ultimate relations. She wanted to know the worst;
+      and for her, as she saw in a flash, the worst of it was the core of
+      fatality in what had happened. She shrank from her own way of putting it&mdash;nor
+      was it even figuratively true that she had ever felt, under faith in
+      Denis, any such doubt as the perception implied. But that was merely
+      because her imagination had never put him to the test. She was fond of
+      exposing herself to hypothetical ordeals, but somehow she had never
+      carried Denis with her on these adventures. What she saw now was that, in
+      a world of strangeness, he remained the object least strange to her. She
+      was not in the tragic case of the girl who suddenly sees her lover
+      unmasked. No mask had dropped from Denis&rsquo;s face: the pink shades had
+      simply been lifted from the lamps, and she saw him for the first time in
+      an unmitigated glare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such exposure does not alter the features, but it lays an ugly emphasis on
+      the most charming lines, pushing the smile to a grin, the curve of
+      good-nature to the droop of slackness. And it was precisely into the
+      flagging lines of extreme weakness that Denis&rsquo;s graceful contour flowed.
+      In the terrible talk which had followed his avowal, and wherein every word
+      flashed a light on his moral processes, she had been less startled by what
+      he had done than by the way in which his conscience had already become a
+      passive surface for the channelling of consequences. He was like a child
+      who had put a match to the curtains, and stands agape at the blaze. It was
+      horribly naughty to put the match&mdash;but beyond that the child&rsquo;s
+      responsibility did not extend. In this business of Arthur&rsquo;s, where all had
+      been wrong from the beginning&mdash;where self-defence might well find a
+      plea for its casuistries in the absence of a definite right to be measured
+      by&mdash;it had been easy, after the first slip, to drop a little lower
+      with each struggle. The woman&mdash;oh, the woman was&mdash;well, of the
+      kind who prey on such men. Arthur, out there, at his lowest ebb, had
+      drifted into living with her as a man drifts into drink or opium. He knew
+      what she was&mdash;he knew where she had come from. But he had fallen ill,
+      and she had nursed him&mdash;nursed him devotedly, of course. That was her
+      chance, and she knew it. Before he was out of the fever she had the noose
+      around him&mdash;he came to and found himself married. Such cases were
+      common enough&mdash;if the man recovered he bought off the woman and got a
+      divorce. It was all a part of the business&mdash;the marriage, the bribe,
+      the divorce. Some of those women made a big income out of it&mdash;they
+      were married and divorced once a year. If Arthur had only got well&mdash;but,
+      instead, he had a relapse and died. And there was the woman, made his
+      widow by mischance as it were, with her child on her arm&mdash;whose
+      child?&mdash;and a scoundrelly black-mailing lawyer to work up her case
+      for her. Her claim was clear enough&mdash;the right of dower, a third of
+      his estate. But if he had never meant to marry her? If he had been trapped
+      as patently as a rustic fleeced in a gambling-hell? Arthur, in his last
+      hours, had confessed to the marriage, but had also acknowledged its folly.
+      And after his death, when Denis came to look about him and make inquiries,
+      he found that the witnesses, if there had been any, were dispersed and
+      undiscoverable. The whole question hinged on Arthur&rsquo;s statement to his
+      brother. Suppress that statement, and the claim vanished, and with it the
+      scandal, the humiliation, the life-long burden of the woman and child
+      dragging the name of Peyton through heaven knew what depths. He had
+      thought of that first, Denis swore, rather than of the money. The money,
+      of course, had made a difference,&mdash;he was too honest not to own it&mdash;but
+      not till afterward, he declared&mdash;would have declared on his honour,
+      but that the word tripped him up, and sent a flush to his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in broken phrases, he flung his defence at her: a defence
+      improvised, pieced together as he went along, to mask the crude
+      instinctiveness of his act. For with increasing clearness Kate saw, as she
+      listened, that there had been no real struggle in his mind; that, but for
+      the grim logic of chance, he might never have felt the need of any
+      justification. If the woman, after the manner of such baffled huntresses,
+      had wandered off in search of fresh prey, he might, quite sincerely, have
+      congratulated himself on having saved a decent name and an honest fortune
+      from her talons. It was the price she had paid to establish her claim that
+      for the first time brought him to a startled sense of its justice. His
+      conscience responded only to the concrete pressure of facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with the anguish of this discovery that Kate Orme locked herself in
+      at the end of their talk. How the talk had ended, how at length she had
+      got him from the room and the house, she recalled but confusedly. The
+      tragedy of the woman&rsquo;s death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing
+      in the disaster of his bright irreclaimableness. Once, when she had cried
+      out, &ldquo;You would have married me and said nothing,&rdquo; and he groaned back,
+      &ldquo;But I <i>have</i> told you,&rdquo; she felt like a trainer with a lash above
+      some bewildered animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she persisted savagely. &ldquo;You told me because you had to; because your
+      nerves gave way; because you knew it couldn&rsquo;t hurt you to tell.&rdquo; The
+      perplexed appeal of his gaze had almost checked her. &ldquo;You told me because
+      it was a relief; but nothing will really relieve you&mdash;nothing will
+      really help you&mdash;till you have told some one who&mdash;who <i>will</i>
+      hurt you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will hurt me&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till you have told the truth as&mdash;as openly as you lied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He started up, ghastly with fear. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must confess, then&mdash;publicly&mdash;openly&mdash;you must go to
+      the judge. I don&rsquo;t know how it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the judge? When they&rsquo;re both dead? When everything is at an end? What
+      good could that do?&rdquo; he groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything is not at an end for you&mdash;everything is just beginning.
+      You must clear yourself of this guilt; and there is only one way&mdash;to
+      confess it. And you must give back the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to strike him as conclusive proof of her irrelevance. &ldquo;I wish
+      I had never heard of the money! But to whom would you have me give it
+      back? I tell you she was a waif out of the gutter. I don&rsquo;t believe any one
+      knew her real name&mdash;I don&rsquo;t believe she had one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must have had a mother and father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to devote my life to hunting for them through the slums of
+      California? And how shall I know when I have found them? It&rsquo;s impossible
+      to make you understand. I did wrong&mdash;I did horribly wrong&mdash;but
+      that is not the way to repair it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, a little askance at the question. &ldquo;To do better&mdash;to do my
+      best,&rdquo; he said, with a sudden flourish of firmness. &ldquo;To take warning by
+      this dreadful&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, be silent,&rdquo; she cried out, and hid her face. He looked at her
+      hopelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he said: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what good it can do to go on talking. I
+      have only one more thing to say. Of course you know that you are free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke simply, with a sudden return to his old voice and accent, at
+      which she weakened as under a caress. She lifted her head and gazed at
+      him. &ldquo;Am I?&rdquo; she said musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kate!&rdquo; burst from him; but she raised a silencing hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that I am imprisoned&mdash;imprisoned with
+      you in this dreadful thing. First I must help you to get out&mdash;then it
+      will be time enough to think of myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face fell and he stammered: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say what I shall do&mdash;or how I shall feel&mdash;till I know
+      what you are going to do and feel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must see how I feel&mdash;that I&rsquo;m half dead with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but that is only half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned this over for a perceptible space of time before asking slowly:
+      &ldquo;You mean that you&rsquo;ll give me up, if I don&rsquo;t do this crazy thing you
+      propose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused in turn. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to bribe you. You must
+      feel the need of it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The need of proclaiming this thing publicly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat staring before him. &ldquo;Of course you realize what it would mean?&rdquo; he
+      began at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To you?&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put that aside. To others&mdash;to you. I should go to prison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; she said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to take it very easily&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid my mother wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother?&rdquo; This produced the effect he had expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hadn&rsquo;t thought of her, I suppose? It would probably kill her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have killed her to think that you could do what you have done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have made her very unhappy; but there&rsquo;s a difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes: there was a difference; a difference which no rhetoric could
+      disguise. The secret sin would have made Mrs. Peyton wretched, but it
+      would not have killed her. And she would have taken precisely Denis&rsquo;s view
+      of the elasticity of atonement: she would have accepted private regrets as
+      the genteel equivalent of open expiation. Kate could even imagine her
+      extracting a &ldquo;lesson&rdquo; from the providential fact that her son had not been
+      found out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see it&rsquo;s not so simple,&rdquo; he broke out, with a tinge of doleful
+      triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: it&rsquo;s not simple,&rdquo; she assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must think of others,&rdquo; he continued, gathering faith in his argument
+      as he saw her reduced to acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no answer, and after a moment he rose to go. So far, in
+      retrospect, she could follow the course of their talk; but when, in the
+      act of parting, argument lapsed into entreaty, and renunciation into the
+      passionate appeal to give him at least one more hearing, her memory lost
+      itself in a tumult of pain, and she recalled only that, when the door
+      closed on him, he took with him her promise to see him once again.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      She had promised to see him again; but the promise did not imply that she
+      had rejected his offer of freedom. In the first rush of misery she had not
+      fully repossessed herself, had felt herself entangled in his fate by a
+      hundred meshes of association and habit; but after a sleepless night spent
+      with the thought of him&mdash;that dreadful bridal of their souls&mdash;she
+      woke to a morrow in which he had no part. She had not sought her freedom,
+      nor had he given it; but a chasm had opened at their feet, and they found
+      themselves on different sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now she was able to scan the disaster from the melancholy vantage of her
+      independence. She could even draw a solace from the fact that she had
+      ceased to love Denis. It was inconceivable that an emotion so interwoven
+      with every fibre of consciousness should cease as suddenly as the flow of
+      sap in an uprooted plant; but she had never allowed herself to be tricked
+      by the current phraseology of sentiment, and there were no stock axioms to
+      protect her from the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was probably because she had ceased to love him that she could look
+      forward with a kind of ghastly composure to seeing him again. She had
+      stipulated, of course, that the wedding should be put off, but she had
+      named no other condition beyond asking for two days to herself&mdash;two
+      days during which he was not even to write. She wished to shut herself in
+      with her misery, to accustom herself to it as she had accustomed herself
+      to happiness. But actual seclusion was impossible: the subtle reactions of
+      life almost at once began to break down her defences. She could no more
+      have her wretchedness to herself than any other emotion: all the lives
+      about her were so many unconscious factors in her sensations. She tried to
+      concentrate herself on the thought as to how she could best help poor
+      Denis; for love, in ebbing, had laid bare an unsuspected depth of pity.
+      But she found it more and more difficult to consider his situation in the
+      abstract light of right and wrong. Open expiation still seemed to her the
+      only possible way of healing; but she tried vainly to think of Mrs. Peyton
+      as taking such a view. Yet Mrs. Peyton ought at least to know what had
+      happened: was it not, in the last resort, she who should pronounce on her
+      son&rsquo;s course? For a moment Kate was fascinated by this evasion of
+      responsibility; she had nearly decided to tell Denis that he must begin by
+      confessing everything to his mother. But almost at once she began to
+      shrink from the consequences. There was nothing she so dreaded for him as
+      that any one should take a light view of his act: should turn its
+      irremediableness into an excuse. And this, she foresaw, was what Mrs.
+      Peyton would do. The first burst of misery over, she would envelop the
+      whole situation in a mist of expediency. Brought to the bar of Kate&rsquo;s
+      judgment, she at once revealed herself incapable of higher action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate&rsquo;s conception of her was still under arraignment when the actual Mrs.
+      Peyton fluttered in. It was the afternoon of the second day, as the girl
+      phrased it in the dismal re-creation of her universe. She had been
+      thinking so hard of Mrs. Peyton that the lady&rsquo;s silvery insubstantial
+      presence seemed hardly more than a projection of the thought; but as Kate
+      collected herself, and regained contact with the outer world, her
+      preoccupation yielded to surprise. It was unusual for Mrs. Peyton to pay
+      visits. For years she had remained enthroned in a semi-invalidism which
+      prohibited effort while it did not preclude diversion; and the girl at
+      once divined a special purpose in her coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s traditions would not have permitted any direct method of
+      attack; and Kate had to sit through the usual prelude of ejaculation and
+      anecdote. Presently, however, the elder lady&rsquo;s voice gathered
+      significance, and laying her hand on Kate&rsquo;s she murmured: &ldquo;I have come to
+      talk to you of this sad affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate began to tremble. Was it possible that Denis had after all spoken? A
+      rising hope checked her utterance, and she saw in a flash that it still
+      lay with him to regain his hold on her. But Mrs. Peyton went on
+      delicately: &ldquo;It has been a great shock to my poor boy. To be brought in
+      contact with Arthur&rsquo;s past was in itself inexpressibly painful; but this
+      last dreadful business&mdash;that woman&rsquo;s wicked act&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wicked?&rdquo; Kate exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s gentle stare reproved her. &ldquo;Surely religion teaches us that
+      suicide is a sin? And to murder her child! I ought not to speak to you of
+      such things, my dear. No one has ever mentioned anything so dreadful in my
+      presence: my dear husband used to screen me so carefully from the painful
+      side of life. Where there is so much that is beautiful to dwell upon, we
+      should try to ignore the existence of such horrors. But nowadays
+      everything is in the papers; and Denis told me he thought it better that
+      you should hear the news first from him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate nodded without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He felt how <i>dreadful</i> it was to have to tell you. But I tell him he
+      takes a morbid view of the case. Of course one is shocked at the woman&rsquo;s
+      crime&mdash;but, if one looks a little deeper, how can one help seeing
+      that it may have been designed as the means of rescuing that poor child
+      from a life of vice and misery? That is the view I want Denis to take: I
+      want him to see how all the difficulties of life disappear when one has
+      learned to look for a divine purpose in human sufferings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton rested a moment on this period, as an experienced climber
+      pauses to be overtaken by a less agile companion; but presently she became
+      aware that Kate was still far below her, and perhaps needed a stronger
+      incentive to the ascent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child,&rdquo; she said adroitly, &ldquo;I said just now that I was sorry you
+      had been obliged to hear of this sad affair; but after all it is only you
+      who can avert its consequences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate drew an eager breath. &ldquo;Its consequences?&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s voice dropped solemnly. &ldquo;Denis has told me everything,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you insist on putting off the marriage. Oh, my dear, I do implore
+      you to reconsider that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate sank back with the sense of having passed again into a region of
+      leaden shadow. &ldquo;Is that all he told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton gazed at her with arch raillery. &ldquo;All? Isn&rsquo;t it everything&mdash;to
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he give you my reason, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said you felt that, after this shocking tragedy, there ought, in
+      decency, to be a delay; and I quite understand the feeling. It does seem
+      too unfortunate that the woman should have chosen this particular time!
+      But you will find as you grow older that life is full of such sad
+      contrasts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate felt herself slowly petrifying under the warm drip of Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s
+      platitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; the elder lady continued, &ldquo;that there is only one point
+      from which we ought to consider the question&mdash;and that is, its effect
+      on Denis. But for that we ought to refuse to know anything about it. But
+      it has made my boy so unhappy. The law-suit was a cruel ordeal to him&mdash;the
+      dreadful notoriety, the revelation of poor Arthur&rsquo;s infirmities. Denis is
+      as sensitive as a woman; it is his unusual refinement of feeling that
+      makes him so worthy of being loved by you. But such sensitiveness may be
+      carried to excess. He ought not to let this unhappy incident prey on him:
+      it shows a lack of trust in the divine ordering of things. That is what
+      troubles me: his faith in life has been shaken. And&mdash;you must forgive
+      me, dear child&mdash;you <i>will</i> forgive me, I know&mdash;but I can&rsquo;t
+      help blaming you a little&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s accent converted the accusation into a caress, which
+      prolonged itself in a tremulous pressure of Kate&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl gazed at her blankly. &ldquo;You blame <i>me</i>&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be offended, my child. I only fear that your excessive sympathy
+      with Denis, your own delicacy of feeling, may have led you to encourage
+      his morbid ideas. He tells me you were very much shocked&mdash;as you
+      naturally would be&mdash;as any girl must be&mdash;I would not have you
+      otherwise, dear Kate! It is <i>beautiful</i> that you should both feel so;
+      most beautiful; but you know religion teaches us not to yield too much to
+      our grief. Let the dead bury their dead; the living owe themselves to each
+      other. And what had this wretched woman to do with either of you? It is a
+      misfortune for Denis to have been connected in any way with a man of
+      Arthur Peyton&rsquo;s character; but after all, poor Arthur did all he could to
+      atone for the disgrace he brought on us, by making Denis his heir&mdash;and
+      I am sure I have no wish to question the decrees of Providence.&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Peyton paused again, and then softly absorbed both of Kate&rsquo;s hands. &ldquo;For
+      my part,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;I see in it another instance of the beautiful
+      ordering of events. Just after dear Denis&rsquo;s inheritance has removed the
+      last obstacle to your marriage, this sad incident comes to show how
+      desperately he needs you, how cruel it would be to ask him to defer his
+      happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke off, shaken out of her habitual placidity by the abrupt
+      withdrawal of the girl&rsquo;s hands. Kate sat inertly staring, but no answer
+      rose to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Mrs. Peyton resumed, gathering her draperies about her with a
+      tentative hint of leave-taking: &ldquo;I may go home and tell him that you will
+      not put off the wedding?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate was still silent, and her visitor looked at her with the mild
+      surprise of an advocate unaccustomed to plead in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your silence means refusal, my dear, I think you ought to realize the
+      responsibility you assume.&rdquo; Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s voice had acquired an edge of
+      righteous asperity. &ldquo;If Denis has a fault it is that he is too gentle, too
+      yielding, too readily influenced by those he cares for. Your influence is
+      paramount with him now&mdash;but if you turn from him just when he needs
+      your help, who can say what the result will be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The argument, though impressively delivered, was hardly of a nature to
+      carry conviction to its hearer; but it was perhaps for that very reason
+      that she suddenly and unexpectedly replied to it by sinking back into her
+      seat with a burst of tears. To Mrs. Peyton, however, tears were the signal
+      of surrender, and, at Kate&rsquo;s side in an instant she hastened to temper her
+      triumph with magnanimity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think I don&rsquo;t feel with you; but we must both forget ourselves for
+      our boy&rsquo;s sake. I told him I should come back with your promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The arm she had slipped about Kate&rsquo;s shoulder fell back with the girl&rsquo;s
+      start. Kate had seen in a flash what capital would be made of her emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, you misunderstand me. I can make no promise,&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The older lady sat a moment irresolute; then she restored her arm to the
+      shoulder from which it had been so abruptly displaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child,&rdquo; she said, in a tone of tender confidence, &ldquo;if I have
+      misunderstood you, ought you not to enlighten me? You asked me just now if
+      Denis had given me your reason for this strange postponement. He gave me
+      one reason, but it seems hardly sufficient to explain your conduct. If
+      there is any other,&mdash;and I know you well enough to feel sure there
+      is,&mdash;will you not trust me with it? If my boy has been unhappy enough
+      to displease you, will you not give his mother the chance to plead his
+      cause? Remember, no one should be condemned unheard. As Denis&rsquo;s mother, I
+      have the right to ask for your reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My reason? My reason?&rdquo; Kate stammered, panting with the exhaustion of the
+      struggle. Oh, if only Mrs. Peyton would release her! &ldquo;If you have the
+      right to know it, why doesn&rsquo;t he tell you?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton stood up, quivering. &ldquo;I will go home and ask him,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;I will tell him he had your permission to speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She moved toward the door, with the nervous haste of a person unaccustomed
+      to decisive action. But Kate sprang before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; don&rsquo;t ask him! I implore you not to ask him,&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton turned on her with sudden authority of voice and gesture. &ldquo;Do
+      I understand you?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You admit that you have a reason for putting
+      off your marriage, and yet you forbid me&mdash;me, Denis&rsquo;s mother&mdash;to
+      ask him what it is? My poor child, I needn&rsquo;t ask, for I know already. If
+      he has offended you, and you refuse him the chance to defend himself, I
+      needn&rsquo;t look farther for your reason: it is simply that you have ceased to
+      love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate fell back from the door which she had instinctively barricaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that is it,&rdquo; she murmured, letting Mrs. Peyton pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Orme&rsquo;s returning carriage-wheels crossed Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s indignant
+      flight; and an hour later Kate, in the bland candle-light of the
+      dinner-hour, sat listening with practised fortitude to her father&rsquo;s
+      comments on the venison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had wondered, as she awaited him in the drawing-room, if he would
+      notice any change in her appearance. It seemed to her that the
+      flagellation of her thoughts must have left visible traces. But Mr. Orme
+      was not a man of subtle perceptions, save where his personal comfort was
+      affected: though his egoism was clothed in the finest feelers, he did not
+      suspect a similar surface in others. His daughter, as part of himself,
+      came within the normal range of his solicitude; but she was an outlying
+      region, a subject province; and Mr. Orme&rsquo;s was a highly centralized
+      polity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      News of the painful incident&mdash;he often used Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s vocabulary&mdash;had
+      reached him at his club, and to some extent disturbed the assimilation of
+      a carefully ordered breakfast; but since then two days had passed, and it
+      did not take Mr. Orme forty-eight hours to resign himself to the
+      misfortunes of others. It was all very nasty, of course, and he wished to
+      heaven it hadn&rsquo;t happened to any one about to be connected with him; but
+      he viewed it with the transient annoyance of a gentleman who has been
+      splashed by the mud of a fatal runaway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Orme affected, under such circumstances, a bluff and hearty stoicism
+      as remote as possible from Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s deprecating evasion of facts. It
+      was a bad business; he was sorry Kate should have been mixed up with it;
+      but she would be married soon now, and then she would see that life wasn&rsquo;t
+      exactly a Sunday-school story. Everybody was exposed to such disagreeable
+      accidents: he remembered a case in their own family&mdash;oh, a distant
+      cousin whom Kate wouldn&rsquo;t have heard of&mdash;a poor fellow who had got
+      entangled with just such a woman, and having (most properly) been sent
+      packing by his father, had justified the latter&rsquo;s course by promptly
+      forging his name&mdash;a very nasty affair altogether; but luckily the
+      scandal had been hushed up, the woman bought off, and the prodigal, after
+      a season of probation, safely married to a nice girl with a good income,
+      who was told by the family that the doctors recommended his settling in
+      California.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Luckily the scandal was hushed up</i>: the phrase blazed out against
+      the dark background of Kate&rsquo;s misery. That was doubtless what most people
+      felt&mdash;the words represented the consensus of respectable opinion. The
+      best way of repairing a fault was to hide it: to tear up the floor and
+      bury the victim at night. Above all, no coroner and no autopsy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to feel a strange interest in her distant cousin. &ldquo;And his wife&mdash;did
+      she know what he had done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Orme stared. His moral pointed, he had returned to the contemplation
+      of his own affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife? Oh, of course not. The secret has been most admirably kept; but
+      her property was put in trust, so she&rsquo;s quite safe with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her property! Kate wondered if her faith in her husband had also been put
+      in trust, if her sensibilities had been protected from his possible
+      inroads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think it quite fair to have deceived her in that way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Orme gave her a puzzled glance: he had no taste for the by-paths of
+      ethical conjecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His people wanted to give the poor fellow another chance; they did the
+      best they could for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;he has done nothing dishonourable since?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I know of: the last I heard was that they had a little boy, and
+      that he was quite happy. At that distance he&rsquo;s not likely to bother <i>us</i>,
+      at all events.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Long after Mr. Orme had left the topic, Kate remained lost in its
+      contemplation. She had begun to perceive that the fair surface of life was
+      honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage. Every respectable household
+      had its special arrangements for the private disposal of family scandals;
+      it was only among the reckless and improvident that such hygienic
+      precautions were neglected. Who was she to pass judgment on the merits of
+      such a system? The social health must be preserved: the means devised were
+      the result of long experience and the collective instinct of
+      self-preservation. She had meant to tell her father that evening that her
+      marriage had been put off; but she now abstained from doing so, not from
+      any doubt of Mr. Orme&rsquo;s acquiescence&mdash;he could always be made to feel
+      the force of conventional scruples&mdash;but because the whole question
+      sank into insignificance beside the larger issue which his words had
+      raised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her own room, that night, she passed through that travail of the soul
+      of which the deeper life is born. Her first sense was of a great moral
+      loneliness&mdash;an isolation more complete, more impenetrable, than that
+      in which the discovery of Denis&rsquo;s act had plunged her. For she had vaguely
+      leaned, then, on a collective sense of justice that should respond to her
+      own ideas of right and wrong: she still believed in the logical
+      correspondence of theory and practice. Now she saw that, among those
+      nearest her, there was no one who recognized the moral need of expiation.
+      She saw that to take her father or Mrs. Peyton into her confidence would
+      be but to widen the circle of sterile misery in which she and Denis moved.
+      At first the aspect of life thus revealed to her seemed simply mean and
+      base&mdash;a world where honour was a pact of silence between adroit
+      accomplices. The network of circumstance had tightened round her, and
+      every effort to escape drew its meshes closer. But as her struggles
+      subsided she felt the spiritual release which comes with acceptance: not
+      connivance in dishonour, but recognition of evil. Out of that dark vision
+      light was to come, the shaft of cloud turning to the pillar of fire. For
+      here, at last, life lay before her as it was: not brave, garlanded and
+      victorious, but naked, grovelling and diseased, dragging its maimed limbs
+      through the mud, yet lifting piteous hands to the stars. Love itself, once
+      throned aloft on an altar of dreams, how it stole to her now, storm-beaten
+      and scarred, pleading for the shelter of her breast! Love, indeed, not in
+      the old sense in which she had conceived it, but a graver, austerer
+      presence&mdash;the charity of the mystic three. She thought she had ceased
+      to love Denis&mdash;but what had she loved in him but her happiness and
+      his? Their affection had been the <i>garden enclosed</i> of the Canticles,
+      where they were to walk forever in a delicate isolation of bliss. But now
+      love appeared to her as something more than this&mdash;something wider,
+      deeper, more enduring than the selfish passion of a man and a woman. She
+      saw it in all its far-reaching issues, till the first meeting of two pairs
+      of young eyes kindled a light which might be a high-lifted beacon across
+      dark waters of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this did not come to her clearly, consecutively, but in a series of
+      blurred and shifting images. Marriage had meant to her, as it means to
+      girls brought up in ignorance of life, simply the exquisite prolongation
+      of wooing. If she had looked beyond, to the vision of wider ties, it was
+      as a traveller gazes over a land veiled in golden haze, and so far distant
+      that the imagination delays to explore it. But now through the blur of
+      sensations one image strangely persisted&mdash;the image of Denis&rsquo;s child.
+      Had she ever before thought of their having a child? She could not
+      remember. She was like one who wakens from a long fever: she recalled
+      nothing of her former self or of her former feelings. She knew only that
+      the vision persisted&mdash;the vision of the child whose mother she was
+      not to be. It was impossible that she should marry Denis&mdash;her inmost
+      soul rejected him ... but it was just because she was not to be the
+      child&rsquo;s mother that its image followed her so pleadingly. For she saw with
+      perfect clearness the inevitable course of events. Denis would marry some
+      one else&mdash;he was one of the men who are fated to marry, and she
+      needed not his mother&rsquo;s reminder that her abandonment of him at an
+      emotional crisis would fling him upon the first sympathy within reach. He
+      would marry a girl who knew nothing of his secret&mdash;for Kate was
+      intensely aware that he would never again willingly confess himself&mdash;he
+      would marry a girl who trusted him and leaned on him, as she, Kate Orme&mdash;the
+      earlier Kate Orme&mdash;had done but two days since! And with this
+      deception between them their child would be born: born to an inheritance
+      of secret weakness, a vice of the moral fibre, as it might be born with
+      some hidden physical taint which would destroy it before the cause should
+      be detected.... Well, and what of it? Was she to hold herself responsible?
+      Were not thousands of children born with some such unsuspected taint?...
+      Ah, but if here was one that she could save? What if she, who had had so
+      exquisite a vision of wifehood, should reconstruct from its ruins this
+      vision of protecting maternity&mdash;if her love for her lover should be,
+      not lost, but transformed, enlarged, into this passion of charity for his
+      race? If she might expiate and redeem his fault by becoming a refuge from
+      its consequences? Before this strange extension of her love all the old
+      limitations seemed to fall. Something had cleft the surface of self, and
+      there welled up the mysterious primal influences, the sacrificial instinct
+      of her sex, a passion of spiritual motherhood that made her long to fling
+      herself between the unborn child and its fate....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She never knew, then or after, how she reached this mystic climax of
+      effacement; she was only conscious, through her anguish, of that lift of
+      the heart which made one of the saints declare that joy was the inmost
+      core of sorrow. For it was indeed a kind of joy she felt, if old names
+      must serve for such new meanings; a surge of liberating faith in life, the
+      old <i>credo quia absurdum</i> which is the secret cry of all supreme
+      endeavour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it look nice, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick Peyton met her with the question on the threshold, drawing her gaily
+      into the little square room, and adding, with a laugh with a blush in it:
+      &ldquo;You know she&rsquo;s an uncommonly noticing person, and little things tell with
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung round on his heel to follow his mother&rsquo;s smiling inspection of
+      the apartment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems to have <i>all</i> the qualities,&rdquo; Mrs. Denis Peyton remarked,
+      as her circuit finally brought her to the prettily appointed tea-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>All</i>,&rdquo; he declared, taking the sting from her emphasis by his
+      prompt adoption of it. Dick had always had a wholesome way of thus
+      appropriating to his own use such small shafts of maternal irony as were
+      now and then aimed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate Peyton laughed and loosened her furs. &ldquo;It looks charmingly,&rdquo; she
+      pronounced, ending her survey by an approach to the window, which gave,
+      far below, the oblique perspective of a long side-street leading to Fifth
+      Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The high-perched room was Dick Peyton&rsquo;s private office, a retreat
+      partitioned off from the larger enclosure in which, under a north light
+      and on a range of deal tables, three or four young draughtsmen were busily
+      engaged in elaborating his architectural projects. The outer door of the
+      office bore the sign: <i>Peyton and Gill, Architects</i>; but Gill was an
+      utilitarian person, as unobtrusive as his name, who contented himself with
+      a desk in the workroom, and left Dick to lord it alone in the small
+      apartment to which clients were introduced, and where the social part of
+      the business was carried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to serve, on this occasion, as the scene of a tea designed, as Kate
+      Peyton was vividly aware, to introduce a certain young lady to the scene
+      of her son&rsquo;s labours. Mrs. Peyton had been hearing a great deal lately
+      about Clemence Verney. Dick was naturally expansive, and his close
+      intimacy with his mother&mdash;an intimacy fostered by his father&rsquo;s early
+      death&mdash;if it had suffered some natural impairment in his school and
+      college days, had of late been revived by four years of comradeship in
+      Paris, where Mrs. Peyton, in a tiny apartment of the Rue de Varennes, had
+      kept house for him during his course of studies at the Beaux Arts. There
+      were indeed not lacking critics of her own sex who accused Kate Peyton of
+      having figured too largely in her son&rsquo;s life; of having failed to efface
+      herself at a period when it is agreed that young men are best left free to
+      try conclusions with the world. Mrs. Peyton, had she cared to defend
+      herself, might have said that Dick, if communicative, was not
+      impressionable, and that the closeness of texture which enabled him to
+      throw off her sarcasms preserved him also from the infiltration of her
+      prejudices. He was certainly no knight of the apron-string, but a
+      seemingly resolute and self-sufficient young man, whose romantic
+      friendship with his mother had merely served to throw a veil of suavity
+      over the hard angles of youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s real excuse was after all one which she would never have
+      given. It was because her intimacy with her son was the one need of her
+      life that she had, with infinite tact and discretion, but with equal
+      persistency, clung to every step of his growth, dissembling herself,
+      adapting herself, rejuvenating herself in the passionate effort to be
+      always within reach, but never in the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Denis Peyton had died after seven years of marriage, when his boy was
+      barely six. During those seven years he had managed to squander the best
+      part of the fortune he had inherited from his step-brother; so that, at
+      his death, his widow and son were left with a scant competence. Mrs.
+      Peyton, during her husband&rsquo;s life, had apparently made no effort to
+      restrain his expenditure. She had even been accused by those judicious
+      persons who are always ready with an estimate of their neighbours&rsquo;
+      motives, of having encouraged poor Denis&rsquo;s improvidence for the
+      gratification of her own ambition. She had in fact, in the early days of
+      their marriage, tried to launch him in politics, and had perhaps drawn
+      somewhat heavily on his funds in the first heat of the contest; but the
+      experiment ending in failure, as Denis Peyton&rsquo;s experiments were apt to
+      end, she had made no farther demands on his exchequer. Her personal tastes
+      were in fact unusually simple, but her outspoken indifference to money was
+      not, in the opinion of her critics, designed to act as a check upon her
+      husband; and it resulted in leaving her, at his death, in straits from
+      which it was impossible not to deduce a moral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her small means, and the care of the boy&rsquo;s education, served the widow as
+      a pretext for secluding herself in a socially remote suburb, where it was
+      inferred that she was expiating, on queer food and in ready-made boots,
+      her rash defiance of fortune. Whether or not Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s penance took
+      this form, she hoarded her substance to such good purpose that she was not
+      only able to give Dick the best of schooling, but to propose, on his
+      leaving Harvard, that he should prolong his studies by another four years
+      at the Beaux Arts. It had been the joy of her life that her boy had early
+      shown a marked bent for a special line of work. She could not have borne
+      to see him reduced to a mere money-getter, yet she was not sorry that
+      their small means forbade the cultivation of an ornamental leisure. In his
+      college days Dick had troubled her by a superabundance of tastes, a
+      restless flitting from one form of artistic expression to another.
+      Whatever art he enjoyed he wished to practise, and he passed from music to
+      painting, from painting to architecture, with an ease which seemed to his
+      mother to indicate lack of purpose rather than excess of talent. She had
+      observed that these changes were usually due, not to self-criticism, but
+      to some external discouragement. Any depreciation of his work was enough
+      to convince him of the uselessness of pursuing that special form of art,
+      and the reaction produced the immediate conviction that he was really
+      destined to shine in some other line of work. He had thus swung from one
+      calling to another till, at the end of his college career, his mother took
+      the decisive step of transplanting him to the Beaux Arts, in the hope that
+      a definite course of study, combined with the stimulus of competition,
+      might fix his wavering aptitudes. The result justified her expectation,
+      and their four years in the Rue de Varennes yielded the happiest
+      confirmation of her belief in him. Dick&rsquo;s ability was recognized not only
+      by his mother, but by his professors. He was engrossed in his work, and
+      his first successes developed his capacity for application. His mother&rsquo;s
+      only fear was that praise was still too necessary to him. She was
+      uncertain how long his ambition would sustain him in the face of failure.
+      He gave lavishly where he was sure of a return; but it remained to be seen
+      if he were capable of production without recognition. She had brought him
+      up in a wholesome scorn of material rewards, and nature seemed, in this
+      direction, to have seconded her training. He was genuinely indifferent to
+      money, and his enjoyment of beauty was of that happy sort which does not
+      generate the wish for possession. As long as the inner eye had food for
+      contemplation, he cared very little for the deficiencies in his
+      surroundings; or, it might rather be said, he felt, in the sum-total of
+      beauty about him, an ownership of appreciation that left him free from the
+      fret of personal desire. Mrs. Peyton had cultivated to excess this
+      disregard of material conditions; but she now began to ask herself
+      whether, in so doing, she had not laid too great a strain on a temperament
+      naturally exalted. In guarding against other tendencies she had perhaps
+      fostered in him too exclusively those qualities which circumstances had
+      brought to an unusual development in herself. His enthusiasms and his
+      disdains were alike too unqualified for that happy mean of character which
+      is the best defence against the surprises of fortune. If she had taught
+      him to set an exaggerated value on ideal rewards, was not that but a
+      shifting of the danger-point on which her fears had always hung? She
+      trembled sometimes to think how little love and a lifelong vigilance had
+      availed in the deflecting of inherited tendencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her fears were in a measure confirmed by the first two years of their life
+      in New York, and the opening of his career as a professional architect.
+      Close on the easy triumphs of his studentships there came the chilling
+      reaction of public indifference. Dick, on his return from Paris, had
+      formed a partnership with an architect who had had several years of
+      practical training in a New York office; but the quiet and industrious
+      Gill, though he attracted to the new firm a few small jobs which
+      overflowed from the business of his former employer, was not able to
+      infect the public with his own faith in Peyton&rsquo;s talents, and it was
+      trying to a genius who felt himself capable of creating palaces to have to
+      restrict his efforts to the building of suburban cottages or the planning
+      of cheap alterations in private houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton expended all the ingenuities of tenderness in keeping up her
+      son&rsquo;s courage; and she was seconded in the task by a friend whose
+      acquaintance Dick had made at the Beaux Arts, and who, two years before
+      the Peytons, had returned to New York to start on his own career as an
+      architect. Paul Darrow was a young man full of crude seriousness, who,
+      after a youth of struggling work and study in his native northwestern
+      state, had won a scholarship which sent him abroad for a course at the
+      Beaux Arts. His two years there coincided with the first part of Dick&rsquo;s
+      residence, and Darrow&rsquo;s gifts had at once attracted the younger student.
+      Dick was unstinted in his admiration of rival talent, and Mrs. Peyton, who
+      was romantically given to the cultivation of such generosities, had
+      seconded his enthusiasm by the kindest offers of hospitality to the young
+      student. Darrow thus became the grateful frequenter of their little <i>salon</i>;
+      and after their return to New York the intimacy between the young men was
+      renewed, though Mrs. Peyton found it more difficult to coax Dick&rsquo;s friend
+      to her New York drawing-room than to the informal surroundings of the Rue
+      de Varennes. There, no doubt, secluded and absorbed in her son&rsquo;s work, she
+      had seemed to Darrow almost a fellow-student; but seen among her own
+      associates she became once more the woman of fashion, divided from him by
+      the whole breadth of her ease and his awkwardness. Mrs. Peyton, whose tact
+      had divined the cause of his estrangement, would not for an instant let it
+      affect the friendship of the two young men. She encouraged Dick to
+      frequent Darrow, in whom she divined a persistency of effort, an artistic
+      self-confidence, in curious contrast to his social hesitancies. The
+      example of his obstinate capacity for work was just the influence her son
+      needed, and if Darrow would not come to them she insisted that Dick must
+      seek him out, must never let him think that any social discrepancy could
+      affect a friendship based on deeper things. Dick, who had all the
+      loyalties, and who took an honest pride in his friend&rsquo;s growing success,
+      needed no urging to maintain the intimacy; and his copious reports of
+      midnight colloquies in Darrow&rsquo;s lodgings showed Mrs. Peyton that she had a
+      strong ally in her invisible friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been, therefore, somewhat of a shock to learn in the course of time
+      that Darrow&rsquo;s influence was being shared, if not counteracted, by that of
+      a young lady in whose honour Dick was now giving his first professional
+      tea. Mrs. Peyton had heard a great deal about Miss Clemence Verney, first
+      from the usual purveyors of such information, and more recently from her
+      son, who, probably divining that rumour had been before him, adopted his
+      usual method of disarming his mother by taking her into his confidence.
+      But, ample as her information was, it remained perplexing and
+      contradictory, and even her own few meetings with the girl had not helped
+      her to a definite opinion. Miss Verney, in conduct and ideas, was patently
+      of the &ldquo;new school&rdquo;: a young woman of feverish activities and broad-cast
+      judgments, whose very versatility made her hard to define. Mrs. Peyton was
+      shrewd enough to allow for the accidents of environment; what she wished
+      to get at was the residuum of character beneath Miss Verney&rsquo;s shifting
+      surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks charmingly,&rdquo; Mrs. Peyton repeated, giving a loosening touch to
+      the chrysanthemums in a tall vase on her son&rsquo;s desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick laughed, and glanced at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t be here for another quarter of an hour. I think I&rsquo;ll tell Gill
+      to clean out the work-room before they come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are we to see the drawings for the competition?&rdquo; his mother asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head smilingly. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t&mdash;I&rsquo;ve asked one or two of the
+      Beaux Arts fellows, you know; and besides, old Darrow&rsquo;s actually coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; Mrs. Peyton exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He swore he would last night.&rdquo; Dick laughed again, with a tinge of
+      self-satisfaction. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve an idea he wants to see Miss Verney.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; his mother murmured. There was a pause before she added: &ldquo;Has Darrow
+      really gone in for this competition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather! I should say so! He&rsquo;s simply working himself to the bone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton sat revolving her muff on a meditative hand; at length she
+      said: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure I think it quite nice of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her son halted before her with an incredulous stare. &ldquo;<i>Mother</i>!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rebuke sent a blush to her forehead. &ldquo;Well&mdash;considering your
+      friendship&mdash;and everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything? What do you mean by everything? The fact that he had more
+      ability than I have and is therefore more likely to succeed? The fact that
+      he needs the money and the success a deuced sight more than any of us? Is
+      that the reason you think he oughtn&rsquo;t to have entered? Mother! I never
+      heard you say an ungenerous thing before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blush deepened to crimson, and she rose with a nervous laugh. &ldquo;It <i>was</i>
+      ungenerous,&rdquo; she conceded. &ldquo;I suppose I&rsquo;m jealous for you. I hate these
+      competitions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her son smiled reassuringly. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m not afraid: I think I shall
+      pull it off this time. In fact, Paul&rsquo;s the only man I&rsquo;m afraid of&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      always afraid of Paul&mdash;but the mere fact that he&rsquo;s in the thing is a
+      tremendous stimulus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother continued to study him with an anxious tenderness. &ldquo;Have you
+      worked out the whole scheme? Do you <i>see</i> it yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, broadly, yes. There&rsquo;s a gap here and there&mdash;a hazy bit, rather&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      the hardest problem I&rsquo;ve ever had to tackle; but then it&rsquo;s my biggest
+      opportunity, and I&rsquo;ve simply <i>got</i> to pull it off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton sat silent, considering his flushed face and illumined eye,
+      which were rather those of the victor nearing the goal than of the runner
+      just beginning the race. She remembered something that Darrow had once
+      said of him: &ldquo;Dick always sees the end too soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t too much time left,&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a week. But I shan&rsquo;t go anywhere after this. I shall renounce the
+      world.&rdquo; He glanced smilingly at the festal tea-table and the embowered
+      desk. &ldquo;When I next appear, it will either be with my heel on Paul&rsquo;s neck&mdash;poor
+      old Paul&mdash;or else&mdash;or else&mdash;being dragged lifeless from the
+      arena!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother nervously took up the laugh with which he ended. &ldquo;Oh, not
+      lifeless,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face clouded. &ldquo;Well, maimed for life, then,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton made no answer. She knew how much hung on the possibility of
+      his winning the competition which for weeks past had engrossed him. It was
+      a design for the new museum of sculpture, for which the city had recently
+      voted half a million. Dick&rsquo;s taste ran naturally to the grandiose, and the
+      erection of public buildings had always been the object of his ambition.
+      Here was an unmatched opportunity, and he knew that, in a competition of
+      the kind, the newest man had as much chance of success as the firm of most
+      established reputation, since every competitor entered on his own merits,
+      the designs being submitted to a jury of architects who voted on them
+      without knowing the names of the contestants. Dick, characteristically,
+      was not afraid of the older firms; indeed, as he had told his mother, Paul
+      Darrow was the only rival he feared. Mrs. Peyton knew that, to a certain
+      point, self-confidence was a good sign; but somehow her son&rsquo;s did not
+      strike her as being of the right substance&mdash;it seemed to have no
+      dimension but extent. Her fears were complicated by a suspicion that,
+      under his professional eagerness for success, lay the knowledge that Miss
+      Verney&rsquo;s favour hung on the victory. It was that, perhaps, which gave a
+      feverish touch to his ambition; and Mrs. Peyton, surveying the future from
+      the height of her material apprehensions, divined that the situation
+      depended mainly on the girl&rsquo;s view of it. She would have given a great
+      deal to know Clemence Verney&rsquo;s conception of success.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney, when she presently appeared, in the wake of the impersonal
+      and exclamatory young married woman who served as a background to her
+      vivid outline, seemed competent to impart at short notice any information
+      required of her. She had never struck Mrs. Peyton as more alert and
+      efficient. A melting grace of line and colour tempered her edges with the
+      charming haze of youth; but it occurred to her critic that she might
+      emerge from this morning mist as a dry and metallic old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Miss Verney suspected a personal application in Dick&rsquo;s hospitality, it
+      did not call forth in her the usual tokens of self-consciousness. Her
+      manner may have been a shade more vivid than usual, but she preserved all
+      her bright composure of glance and speech, so that one guessed, under the
+      rapid dispersal of words, an undisturbed steadiness of perception. She was
+      lavishly but not indiscriminately interested in the evidences of her
+      host&rsquo;s industry, and as the other guests assembled, straying with vague
+      ejaculations through the labyrinth of scale drawings and blue prints, Mrs.
+      Peyton noted that Miss Verney alone knew what these symbols stood for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To his visitors&rsquo; requests to be shown his plans for the competition,
+      Peyton had opposed a laughing refusal, enforced by the presence of two
+      fellow-architects, young men with lingering traces of the Beaux Arts in
+      their costume and vocabulary, who stood about in Gavarni attitudes and
+      dazzled the ladies by allusions to fenestration and entasis. The party had
+      already drifted back to the tea-table when a hesitating knock announced
+      Darrow&rsquo;s approach. He entered with his usual air of having blundered in by
+      mistake, embarrassed by his hat and great-coat, and thrown into deeper
+      confusion by the necessity of being introduced to the ladies grouped about
+      the urn. To the men he threw a gruff nod of fellowship, and Dick having
+      relieved him of his encumbrances, he retreated behind the shelter of Mrs.
+      Peyton&rsquo;s welcome. The latter judiciously gave him time to recover, and
+      when she turned to him he was engaged in a surreptitious inspection of
+      Miss Verney, whose dusky slenderness, relieved against the bare walls of
+      the office, made her look like a young St. John of Donatello&rsquo;s. The girl
+      returned his look with one of her clear glances, and the group having
+      presently broken up again, Mrs. Peyton saw that she had drifted to
+      Darrow&rsquo;s side. The visitors at length wandered back to the work-room to
+      see a portfolio of Dick&rsquo;s water-colours; but Mrs. Peyton remained seated
+      behind the urn, listening to the interchange of talk through the open door
+      while she tried to coordinate her impressions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw that Miss Verney was sincerely interested in Dick&rsquo;s work: it was
+      the nature of her interest that remained in doubt. As if to solve this
+      doubt, the girl presently reappeared alone on the threshold, and
+      discovering Mrs. Peyton, advanced toward her with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you tired of hearing us praise Mr. Peyton&rsquo;s things?&rdquo; she asked,
+      dropping into a low chair beside her hostess. &ldquo;Unintelligent admiration
+      must be a bore to people who know, and Mr. Darrow tells me you are almost
+      as learned as your son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton returned the smile, but evaded the question. &ldquo;I should be
+      sorry to think your admiration unintelligent,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I like to feel
+      that my boy&rsquo;s work is appreciated by people who understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have the usual smattering,&rdquo; said Miss Verney carelessly. &ldquo;I <i>think</i>
+      I know why I admire his work; but then I am sure I see more in it when
+      some one like Mr. Darrow tells me how remarkable it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Mr. Darrow say that?&rdquo; the mother exclaimed, losing sight of her
+      object in the rush of maternal pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has said nothing else: it seems to be the only subject which loosens
+      his tongue. I believe he is more anxious to have your son win the
+      competition than to win it himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a very good friend,&rdquo; Mrs. Peyton assented. She was struck by the
+      way in which the girl led the topic back to the special application of it
+      which interested her. She had none of the artifices of prudery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He feels sure that Mr. Peyton <i>will</i> win,&rdquo; Miss Verney continued.
+      &ldquo;It was very interesting to hear his reasons. He is an extraordinarily
+      interesting man. It must be a tremendous incentive to have such a friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton hesitated. &ldquo;The friendship is delightful; but I don&rsquo;t know
+      that my son needs the incentive. He is almost too ambitious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney looked up brightly. &ldquo;Can one be?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Ambition is so
+      splendid! It must be so glorious to be a man and go crashing through
+      obstacles, straight up to the thing one is after. I&rsquo;m afraid I don&rsquo;t care
+      for people who are superior to success. I like marriage by capture!&rdquo; She
+      rose with her wandering laugh, and stood flushed and sparkling above Mrs.
+      Peyton, who continued to gaze at her gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you call success?&rdquo; the latter asked. &ldquo;It means so many different
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I know&mdash;the inward approval, and all that. Well, I&rsquo;m afraid
+      I like the other kind: the drums and wreaths and acclamations. If I were
+      Mr. Peyton, for instance, I&rsquo;d much rather win the competition than&mdash;than
+      be as disinterested as Mr. Darrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton smiled. &ldquo;I hope you won&rsquo;t tell him so,&rdquo; she said half
+      seriously. &ldquo;He is over-stimulated already; and he is so easily influenced
+      by any one who&mdash;whose opinion he values.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped abruptly, hearing herself, with a strange inward shock,
+      re-echo the words which another man&rsquo;s mother had once spoken to her. Miss
+      Verney did not seem to take the allusion to herself, for she continued to
+      fix on Mrs. Peyton a gaze of impartial sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t help being interested!&rdquo; she declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you; but I wish you would all help him to feel that his
+      competition is after all of very little account compared with other things&mdash;his
+      health and his peace of mind, for instance. He is looking horribly used
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl glanced over her shoulder at Dick, who was just reentering the
+      room at Darrow&rsquo;s side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do you think so?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I should have thought it was his friend
+      who was used up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton followed the glance with surprise. She had been too
+      preoccupied to notice Darrow, whose crudely modelled face was always of a
+      dull pallour, to which his slow-moving grey eye lent no relief except in
+      rare moments of expansion. Now the face had the fallen lines of a
+      death-mask, in which only the smile he turned on Dick remained alive; and
+      the sight smote her with compunction. Poor Darrow! He did look horribly
+      fagged out: as if he needed care and petting and good food. No one knew
+      exactly how he lived. His rooms, according to Dick&rsquo;s report, were fireless
+      and ill kept, but he stuck to them because his landlady, whom he had
+      fished out of some financial plight, had difficulty in obtaining other
+      lodgers. He belonged to no clubs, and wandered out alone for his meals,
+      mysteriously refusing the hospitality which his friends pressed on him. It
+      was plain that he was very poor, and Dick conjectured that he sent what he
+      earned to an aunt in his native village; but he was so silent about such
+      matters that, outside of his profession, he seemed to have no personal
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney&rsquo;s companion having presently advised her of the lapse of time,
+      there ensued a general leave-taking, at the close of which Dick
+      accompanied the ladies to their carriage. Darrow was meanwhile blundering
+      into his greatcoat, a process which always threw him into a state of
+      perspiring embarrassment; but Mrs. Peyton, surprising him in the act,
+      suggested that he should defer it and give her a few moments&rsquo; talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me make you some fresh tea,&rdquo; she said, as Darrow blushingly shed the
+      garment, &ldquo;and when Dick comes back we&rsquo;ll all walk home together. I&rsquo;ve not
+      had a chance to say two words to you this winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Darrow sank into a chair at her side and nervously contemplated his boots.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been tremendously hard at work,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know: <i>too</i> hard at work, I&rsquo;m afraid. Dick tells me you have been
+      wearing yourself out over your competition plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, I shall have time to rest now,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I put the last
+      stroke to them this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton gave him a quick look. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re ahead of Dick, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In point of time only,&rdquo; he said smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is in itself an advantage,&rdquo; she answered with a tinge of asperity.
+      In spite of an honest effort for impartiality she could not, at the
+      moment, help regarding Darrow as an obstacle in her son&rsquo;s path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish the competition were over!&rdquo; she exclaimed, conscious that her
+      voice had betrayed her. &ldquo;I hate to see you both looking so fagged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Darrow smiled again, perhaps at her studied inclusion of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>Dick</i>&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll pull himself together in no
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with an emphasis which might have struck her, if her sympathies
+      had not again been deflected by the allusion to her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if he doesn&rsquo;t win,&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Darrow took the tea she had poured for him, knocking the spoon to the
+      floor in his eagerness to perform the feat gracefully. In bending to
+      recover the spoon he struck the tea-table with his shoulder, and set the
+      cups dancing. Having regained a measure of composure, he took a swallow of
+      the hot tea and set it down with a gasp, precariously near the edge of the
+      tea-table. Mrs. Peyton rescued the cup, and Darrow, apparently forgetting
+      its existence, rose and began to pace the room. It was always hard for him
+      to sit still when he talked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean he&rsquo;s so tremendously set on it?&rdquo; he broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton hesitated. &ldquo;You know him almost as well as I do,&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s capable of anything where there is a possibility of success; but I&rsquo;m
+      always afraid of the reaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, Dick&rsquo;s a man,&rdquo; said Darrow bluntly. &ldquo;Besides, he&rsquo;s going to
+      succeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish he didn&rsquo;t feel so sure of it. You mustn&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m afraid for
+      him. He&rsquo;s a man, and I want him to take his chances with other men; but I
+      wish he didn&rsquo;t care so much about what people think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Verney, then: I suppose you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Darrow paused in front of her. &ldquo;Yes: he&rsquo;s talked a good deal about her.
+      You think she wants him to succeed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any price!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew his brows together. &ldquo;What do you call any price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;herself, in this case, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Darrow bent a puzzled stare on her. &ldquo;You mean she attached that amount of
+      importance to this competition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems to regard it as symbolical: that&rsquo;s what I gather. And I&rsquo;m
+      afraid she&rsquo;s given him the same impression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Darrow&rsquo;s sunken face was suffused by his rare smile. &ldquo;Oh, well, he&rsquo;ll pull
+      it off then!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton rose with a distracted sigh. &ldquo;I half hope he won&rsquo;t, for such a
+      motive,&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The motive won&rsquo;t show in his work,&rdquo; said Darrow. He added, after a pause
+      probably devoted to the search for the right word: &ldquo;He seems to think a
+      great deal of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton fixed him thoughtfully. &ldquo;I wish I knew what <i>you</i> think
+      of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I never saw her before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but you talked with her to-day. You&rsquo;ve formed an opinion: I think you
+      came here on purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled joyously at her discernment: she had always seemed to him
+      gifted with supernatural insight. &ldquo;Well, I did want to see her,&rdquo; he owned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a few vague steps and then halted before Mrs. Peyton. &ldquo;I think,&rdquo;
+       he said, smiling, &ldquo;that she likes to be helped first, and to have
+      everything on her plate at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At dinner, with a rush of contrition, Mrs. Peyton remembered that she had
+      after all not spoken to Darrow about his health. He had distracted her by
+      beginning to talk of Dick; and besides, much as Darrow&rsquo;s opinions
+      interested her, his personality had never fixed her attention. He always
+      seemed to her simply a vehicle for the transmission of ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Dick who recalled her to a sense of her omission by asking if she
+      hadn&rsquo;t thought that old Paul looked rather more ragged than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did look tired,&rdquo; Mrs. Peyton conceded. &ldquo;I meant to tell him to take
+      care of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick laughed at the futility of the measure. &ldquo;Old Paul is never tired: he
+      can work twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. The trouble with him is
+      that he&rsquo;s ill. Something wrong with the machinery, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m sorry. Has he seen a doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t listen to me when I suggested it the other day; but he&rsquo;s so
+      deuced mysterious that I don&rsquo;t know what he may have done since.&rdquo; Dick
+      rose, putting down his coffee-cup and half-smoked cigarette. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve half a
+      mind to pop in on him to-night and see how he&rsquo;s getting on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he lives at the other end of the earth; and you&rsquo;re tired yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not tired; only a little strung-up,&rdquo; he returned, smiling. &ldquo;And
+      besides, I&rsquo;m going to meet Gill at the office by and by and put in a
+      night&rsquo;s work. It won&rsquo;t hurt me to take a look at Paul first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton was silent. She knew it was useless to contend with her son
+      about his work, and she tried to fortify herself with the remembrance of
+      her own words to Darrow: Dick was a man and must take his chance with
+      other men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dick, glancing at his watch, uttered an exclamation of annoyance. &ldquo;Oh,
+      by Jove, I shan&rsquo;t have time after all. Gill is waiting for me now; we must
+      have dawdled over dinner.&rdquo; He went to give his mother a caressing tap on
+      the cheek. &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t worry,&rdquo; he adjured her; and as she smiled back at
+      him he added with a sudden happy blush: &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t, you know: she&rsquo;s so
+      sure of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s smile faded, and laying a detaining hand on his, she said
+      with sudden directness: &ldquo;Sure of you, or of your success?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated. &ldquo;Oh, she regards them as synonymous. She thinks I&rsquo;m bound to
+      get on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you don&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged laughingly, but with a slight contraction of his confident
+      brows. &ldquo;Why, I shall have to make way for some one else, I suppose. That&rsquo;s
+      the law of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton sat upright, gazing at him with a kind of solemnity. &ldquo;Is it
+      the law of love?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked down on her with a smile that trembled a little. &ldquo;My dear
+      romantic mother, I don&rsquo;t want her pity, you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick, coming home the next morning shortly before daylight, left the house
+      again after a hurried breakfast, and Mrs. Peyton heard nothing of him till
+      nightfall. He had promised to be back for dinner, but a few moments before
+      eight, as she was coming down to the drawing-room, the parlour-maid handed
+      her a hastily pencilled note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t wait for me,&rdquo; it ran. &ldquo;Darrow is ill and I can&rsquo;t leave him. I&rsquo;ll
+      send a line when the doctor has seen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton, who was a woman of rapid reactions, read the words with a
+      pang. She was ashamed of the jealous thoughts she had harboured of Darrow,
+      and of the selfishness which had made her lose sight of his troubles in
+      the consideration of Dick&rsquo;s welfare. Even Clemence Verney, whom she
+      secretly accused of a want of heart, had been struck by Darrow&rsquo;s ill
+      looks, while she had had eyes only for her son. Poor Darrow! How cold and
+      self-engrossed he must have thought her! In the first rush of penitence
+      her impulse was to drive at once to his lodgings; but the infection of his
+      own shyness restrained her. Dick&rsquo;s note gave no details; the illness was
+      evidently grave, but might not Darrow regard her coming as an intrusion?
+      To repair her negligence of yesterday by a sudden invasion of his privacy
+      might be only a greater failure in tact; and after a moment of
+      deliberation she resolved on sending to ask Dick if he wished her to go to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply, which came late, was what she had expected. &ldquo;No, we have all
+      the help we need. The doctor has sent a good nurse, and is coming again
+      later. It&rsquo;s pneumonia, but of course he doesn&rsquo;t say much yet. Let me have
+      some beef-juice as soon as the cook can make it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The beef-juice ordered and dispatched, she was left to a vigil in
+      melancholy contrast to that of the previous evening. Then she had been
+      enclosed in the narrow limits of her maternal interests; now the barriers
+      of self were broken down, and her personal preoccupations swept away on
+      the current of a wider sympathy. As she sat there in the radius of
+      lamp-light which, for so many evenings, had held Dick and herself in a
+      charmed circle of tenderness, she saw that her love for her boy had come
+      to be merely a kind of extended egotism. Love had narrowed instead of
+      widening her, had rebuilt between herself and life the very walls which,
+      years and years before, she had laid low with bleeding fingers. It was
+      horrible, how she had come to sacrifice everything to the one passion of
+      ambition for her boy....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At daylight she sent another messenger, one of her own servants, who
+      returned without having seen Dick. Mr. Peyton had sent word that there was
+      no change. He would write later; he wanted nothing. The day wore on
+      drearily. Once Kate found herself computing the precious hours lost to
+      Dick&rsquo;s unfinished task. She blushed at her ineradicable selfishness, and
+      tried to turn her mind to poor Darrow. But she could not master her
+      impulses; and now she caught herself indulging the thought that his
+      illness would at least exclude him from the competition. But no&mdash;she
+      remembered that he had said his work was finished. Come what might, he
+      stood in the path of her boy&rsquo;s success. She hated herself for the thought,
+      but it would not down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening drew on, but there was no note from Dick. At length, in the shamed
+      reaction from her fears, she rang for a carriage and went upstairs to
+      dress. She could stand aloof no longer: she must go to Darrow, if only to
+      escape from her wicked thoughts of him. As she came down again she heard
+      Dick&rsquo;s key in the door. She hastened her steps, and as she reached the
+      hall he stood before her without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him and the question died on her lips. He nodded, and walked
+      slowly past her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no hope from the first,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Dick was taken up with the preparations for the funeral. The
+      distant aunt, who appeared to be Darrow&rsquo;s only relation, had been duly
+      notified of his death; but no answer having been received from her, it was
+      left to his friend to fulfil the customary duties. He was again absent for
+      the best part of the day; and when he returned at dusk Mrs. Peyton,
+      looking up from the tea-table behind which she awaited him, was startled
+      by the deep-lined misery of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her own thoughts were too painful for ready expression, and they sat for a
+      while in a mute community of wretchedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is everything arranged?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have not heard from the aunt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you find no trace of any other relations?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None. I went over all his papers. There were very few, and I found no
+      address but the aunt&rsquo;s.&rdquo; He sat thrown back in his chair, disregarding the
+      cup of tea she had mechanically poured for him. &ldquo;I found this, though,&rdquo; he
+      added, after a pause, drawing a letter from his pocket and holding it out
+      to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took it doubtfully. &ldquo;Ought I to read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw then that the envelope, in Darrow&rsquo;s hand, was addressed to her
+      son. Within were a few pencilled words, dated on the first day of his
+      illness, the morrow of the day on which she had last seen him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Dick,&rdquo; she read, &ldquo;I want you to use my plans for the museum if you
+      can get any good out of them. Even if I pull out of this I want you to. I
+      shall have other chances, and I have an idea this one means a lot to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton sat speechless, gazing at the date of the letter, which she
+      had instantly connected with her last talk with Darrow. She saw that he
+      had understood her, and the thought scorched her to the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t it glorious of him?&rdquo; Dick said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped the letter, and hid her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The funeral took place the next morning, and on the return from the
+      cemetery Dick told his mother that he must go and look over things at
+      Darrow&rsquo;s office. He had heard the day before from his friend&rsquo;s aunt, a
+      helpless person to whom telegraphy was difficult and travel inconceivable,
+      and who, in eight pages of unpunctuated eloquence, made over to Dick what
+      she called the melancholy privilege of winding up her nephew&rsquo;s affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton looked anxiously at her son. &ldquo;Is there no one who can do this
+      for you? He must have had a clerk or some one who knows about his work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick shook his head. &ldquo;Not lately. He hasn&rsquo;t had much to do this winter,
+      and these last months he had chucked everything to work alone over his
+      plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word brought a faint colour to Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s cheek. It was the first
+      allusion that either of them had made to Darrow&rsquo;s bequest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course you must do all you can,&rdquo; she murmured, turning alone into
+      the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The emotions of the morning had stirred her deeply, and she sat at home
+      during the day, letting her mind dwell, in a kind of retrospective piety,
+      on the thought of poor Darrow&rsquo;s devotion. She had given him too little
+      time while he lived, had acquiesced too easily in his growing habits of
+      seclusion; and she felt it as a proof of insensibility that she had not
+      been more closely drawn to the one person who had loved Dick as she loved
+      him. The evidence of that love, as shown in Darrow&rsquo;s letter, filled her
+      with a vain compunction. The very extravagance of his offer lent it a
+      deeper pathos. It was wonderful that, even in the urgency of affection, a
+      man of his almost morbid rectitude should have overlooked the restrictions
+      of professional honour, should have implied the possibility of his
+      friend&rsquo;s overlooking them. It seemed to make his sacrifice the more
+      complete that it had, unconsciously, taken the form of a subtle
+      temptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last word arrested Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s thoughts. A temptation? To whom? Not,
+      surely, to one capable, as her son was capable, of rising to the height of
+      his friend&rsquo;s devotion. The offer, to Dick, would mean simply, as it meant
+      to her, the last touching expression of an inarticulate fidelity: the
+      utterance of a love which at last had found its formula. Mrs. Peyton
+      dismissed as morbid any other view of the case. She was annoyed with
+      herself for supposing that Dick could be ever so remotely affected by the
+      possibility at which poor Darrow&rsquo;s renunciation hinted. The nature of the
+      offer removed it from practical issues to the idealizing region of
+      sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton had been sitting alone with these thoughts for the greater
+      part of the afternoon, and dusk was falling when Dick entered the
+      drawing-room. In the dim light, with his pallour heightened by the sombre
+      effect of his mourning, he came upon her almost startlingly, with a
+      revival of some long-effaced impression which, for a moment, gave her the
+      sense of struggling among shadows. She did not, at first, know what had
+      produced the effect; then she saw that it was his likeness to his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;is it over?&rdquo; she asked, as he threw himself into a chair
+      without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes: I&rsquo;ve looked through everything.&rdquo; He leaned back, crossing his hands
+      behind his head, and gazing past her with a look of utter lassitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment, and then said tentatively: &ldquo;to-morrow you will be able
+      to go back to your work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;my work,&rdquo; he exclaimed, as if to brush aside an ill-timed
+      pleasantry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you too tired?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; He rose and began to wander up and down the room. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not tired.&mdash;Give
+      me some tea, will you?&rdquo; He paused before her while she poured the cup, and
+      then, without taking it, turned away to light a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely there is still time?&rdquo; she suggested, with her eyes on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time? To finish my plans? Oh, yes&mdash;there&rsquo;s time. But they&rsquo;re not
+      worth it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not worth it?&rdquo; She started up, and then dropped back into her seat,
+      ashamed of having betrayed her anxiety. &ldquo;They are worth as much as they
+      were last week,&rdquo; she said with an attempt at cheerfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to me,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t seen Darrow&rsquo;s then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long silence. Mrs. Peyton sat with her eyes fixed on her
+      clasped hands, and her son paced the room restlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they so wonderful?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused again, and then said, lifting a tremulous glance to his face:
+      &ldquo;That makes his offer all the more beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick was lighting another cigarette, and his face was turned from her.
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I suppose so,&rdquo; he said in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were quite finished, he told me,&rdquo; she continued, unconsciously
+      dropping her voice to the pitch of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they will be entered, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course&mdash;why not?&rdquo; he answered almost sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall you have time to attend to all that and to finish yours too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I suppose so. I&rsquo;ve told you it isn&rsquo;t a question of time. I see now
+      that mine are not worth bothering with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose and approached him, laying her hands on his shoulders. &ldquo;You are
+      tired and unstrung; how can you judge? Why not let me look at both designs
+      to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under her gaze he flushed abruptly and drew back with a half-impatient
+      gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m afraid that wouldn&rsquo;t help me; you&rsquo;d be sure to think mine best,&rdquo;
+       he said with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I could give you good reasons?&rdquo; she pressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand, as if ashamed of his impatience. &ldquo;Dear mother, if you
+      had any reasons their mere existence would prove that they were bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother did not return his smile. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t let me see the two designs
+      then?&rdquo; she said with a faint tinge of insistence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course&mdash;if you want to&mdash;if you only won&rsquo;t talk about it
+      now! Can&rsquo;t you see that I&rsquo;m pretty nearly dead-beat?&rdquo; he burst out
+      uncontrollably; and as she stood silent, he added with a weary fall in his
+      voice, &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ll go upstairs and see if I can&rsquo;t get a nap before
+      dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though they had separated upon the assurance that she should see the two
+      designs if she wished it, Mrs. Peyton knew they would not be shown to her.
+      Dick, indeed, would not again deny her request; but had he not reckoned on
+      the improbability of her renewing it? All night she lay confronted by that
+      question. The situation shaped itself before her with that hallucinating
+      distinctness which belongs to the midnight vision. She knew now why Dick
+      had suddenly reminded her of his father: had she not once before seen the
+      same thought moving behind the same eyes? She was sure it had occurred to
+      Dick to use Darrow&rsquo;s drawings. As she lay awake in the darkness she could
+      hear him, long after midnight, pacing the floor overhead: she held her
+      breath, listening to the recurring beat of his foot, which seemed that of
+      an imprisoned spirit revolving wearily in the cage of the same thought.
+      She felt in every fibre that a crisis in her son&rsquo;s life had been reached,
+      that the act now before him would have a determining effect on his whole
+      future. The circumstances of her past had raised to clairvoyance her
+      natural insight into human motive, had made of her a moral barometer
+      responding to the faintest fluctuations of atmosphere, and years of
+      anxious meditation had familiarized her with the form which her son&rsquo;s
+      temptations were likely to take. The peculiar misery of her situation was
+      that she could not, except indirectly, put this intuition, this foresight,
+      at his service. It was a part of her discernment to be aware that life is
+      the only real counsellor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal
+      experience does not become a part of the moral tissues. Love such as hers
+      had a great office, the office of preparation and direction; but it must
+      know how to hold its hand and keep its counsel, how to attend upon its
+      object as an invisible influence rather than as an active interference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this Kate Peyton had told herself again and again, during those hours
+      of anxious calculation in which she had tried to cast Dick&rsquo;s horoscope;
+      but not in her moments of most fantastic foreboding had she figured so
+      cruel a test of her courage. If her prayers for him had taken precise
+      shape, she might have asked that he should be spared the spectacular, the
+      dramatic appeal to his will-power: that his temptations should slip by him
+      in a dull disguise. She had secured him against all ordinary forms of
+      baseness; the vulnerable point lay higher, in that region of idealizing
+      egotism which is the seat of life in such natures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Years of solitary foresight gave her mind a singular alertness in dealing
+      with such possibilities. She saw at once that the peril of the situation
+      lay in the minimum of risk it involved. Darrow had employed no assistant
+      in working out his plans for the competition, and his secluded life made
+      it almost certain that he had not shown them to any one, and that she and
+      Dick alone knew them to have been completed. Moreover, it was a part of
+      Dick&rsquo;s duty to examine the contents of his friend&rsquo;s office, and in doing
+      this nothing would be easier than to possess himself of the drawings and
+      make use of any part of them that might serve his purpose. He had Darrow&rsquo;s
+      authority for doing so; and though the act involved a slight breach of
+      professional probity, might not his friend&rsquo;s wishes be invoked as a secret
+      justification? Mrs. Peyton found herself almost hating poor Darrow for
+      having been the unconscious instrument of her son&rsquo;s temptation. But what
+      right had she, after all, to suspect Dick of considering, even for a
+      moment, the act of which she was so ready to accuse him? His unwillingness
+      to let her see the drawings might have been the accidental result of
+      lassitude and discouragement. He was tired and troubled, and she had
+      chosen the wrong moment to make the request. His want of readiness might
+      even be due to the wish to conceal from her how far his friend had
+      surpassed him. She knew his sensitiveness on this point, and reproached
+      herself for not having foreseen it. But her own arguments failed to
+      convince her. Deep beneath her love for her boy and her faith in him there
+      lurked a nameless doubt. She could hardly now, in looking back, define the
+      impulse upon which she had married Denis Peyton: she knew only that the
+      deeps of her nature had been loosened, and that she had been borne forward
+      on their current to the very fate from which her heart recoiled. But if in
+      one sense her marriage remained a problem, there was another in which her
+      motherhood seemed to solve it. She had never lost the sense of having
+      snatched her child from some dim peril which still lurked and hovered; and
+      he became more closely hers with every effort of her vigilant love. For
+      the act of rescue had not been accomplished once and for all in the moment
+      of immolation: it had not been by a sudden stroke of heroism, but by
+      ever-renewed and indefatigable effort, that she had built up for him the
+      miraculous shelter of her love. And now that it stood there, a hallowed
+      refuge against failure, she could not even set a light in the pane, but
+      must let him grope his way to it unaided.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s midnight musings summed themselves up in the conclusion that
+      the next few hours would end her uncertainty. She felt the day to be
+      decisive. If Dick offered to show her the drawings, her fears would be
+      proved groundless; if he avoided the subject, they were justified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dressed early in order not to miss him at breakfast; but as she
+      entered the dining-room the parlour-maid told her that Mr. Peyton had
+      overslept himself, and had rung to have his breakfast sent upstairs. Was
+      it a pretext to avoid her? She was vexed at her own readiness to see a
+      portent in the simplest incident; but while she blushed at her doubts she
+      let them govern her. She left the dining-room door open, determined not to
+      miss him if he came downstairs while she was at breakfast; then she went
+      back to the drawing-room and sat down at her writing-table, trying to busy
+      herself with some accounts while she listened for his step. Here too she
+      had left the door open; but presently even this slight departure from her
+      daily usage seemed a deviation from the passive attitude she had adopted,
+      and she rose and shut the door. She knew that she could still hear his
+      step on the stairs&mdash;he had his father&rsquo;s quick swinging gait&mdash;but
+      as she sat listening, and vainly trying to write, the closed door seemed
+      to symbolize a refusal to share in his trial, a hardening of herself
+      against his need of her. What if he should come down intending to speak,
+      and should be turned from his purpose? Slighter obstacles have deflected
+      the course of events in those indeterminate moments when the soul floats
+      between two tides. She sprang up quickly, and as her hand touched the
+      latch she heard his step on the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he entered the drawing-room she had regained the writing-table and
+      could lift a composed face to his. He came in hurriedly, yet with a kind
+      of reluctance beneath his haste: again it was his father&rsquo;s step. She
+      smiled, but looked away from him as he approached her; she seemed to be
+      re-living her own past as one re-lives things in the distortion of fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you off already?&rdquo; she asked, glancing at the hat in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I&rsquo;m late as it is. I overslept myself.&rdquo; He paused and looked vaguely
+      about the room. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t expect me till late&mdash;don&rsquo;t wait dinner for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stirred impulsively. &ldquo;Dick, you&rsquo;re overworking&mdash;you&rsquo;ll make
+      yourself ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense. I&rsquo;m as fit as ever this morning. Don&rsquo;t be imagining things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his habitual kiss on her forehead, and turned to go. On the
+      threshold he paused, and she felt that something in him sought her and
+      then drew back. &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he called to her as the door closed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down and tried to survey the situation divested of her midnight
+      fears. He had not referred to her wish to see the drawings: but what did
+      the omission signify? Might he not have forgotten her request? Was she not
+      forcing the most trivial details to fit in with her apprehensions?
+      Unfortunately for her own reassurance, she knew that her familiarity with
+      Dick&rsquo;s processes was based on such minute observation, and that, to such
+      intimacy as theirs, no indications were trivial. She was as certain as if
+      he had spoken, that when he had left the house that morning he was
+      weighing the possibility of using Darrow&rsquo;s drawings, of supplementing his
+      own incomplete design from the fulness of his friend&rsquo;s invention. And with
+      a bitter pang she divined that he was sorry he had shown her Darrow&rsquo;s
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was impossible to remain face to face with such conjectures, and though
+      she had given up all her engagements during the few days since Darrow&rsquo;s
+      death, she now took refuge in the thought of a concert which was to take
+      place at a friend&rsquo;s house that morning. The music-room, when she entered,
+      was thronged with acquaintances, and she found transient relief in that
+      dispersal of attention which makes society an anesthetic for some forms of
+      wretchedness. Contact with the pressure of busy indifferent life often
+      gives remoteness to questions which have clung as close as the flesh to
+      the bone; and if Mrs. Peyton did not find such complete release, she at
+      least interposed between herself and her anxiety the obligation to
+      dissemble it. But the relief was only momentary, and when the first bars
+      of the overture turned from her the smiles of recognition among which she
+      had tried to lose herself, she felt a deeper sense of isolation. The
+      music, which at another time would have swept her away on some rich
+      current of emotion, now seemed to island her in her own thoughts, to
+      create an artificial solitude in which she found herself more immitigably
+      face to face with her fears. The silence, the <i>recueillement</i>, about
+      her gave resonance to the inner voices, lucidity to the inner vision, till
+      she seemed enclosed in a luminous empty horizon against which every
+      possibility took the sharp edge of accomplished fact. With relentless
+      precision the course of events was unrolled before her: she saw Dick
+      yielding to his opportunity, snatching victory from dishonour, winning
+      love, happiness and success in the act by which he lost himself. It was
+      all so simple, so easy, so inevitable, that she felt the futility of
+      struggling or hoping against it. He would win the competition, would marry
+      Miss Verney, would press on to achievement through the opening which the
+      first success had made for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Mrs. Peyton reached this point in her forecast, she found her outward
+      gaze arrested by the face of the young lady who so dominated her inner
+      vision. Miss Verney, a few rows distant, sat intent upon the music, in
+      that attitude of poised motion which was her nearest approach to repose.
+      Her slender brown profile with its breezy hair, her quick eye, and the
+      lips which seemed to listen as well as speak, all betokened to Mrs. Peyton
+      a nature through which the obvious energies blew free, a bare open stretch
+      of consciousness without shelter for tenderer growths. She shivered to
+      think of Dick&rsquo;s frail scruples exposed to those rustling airs. And then,
+      suddenly, a new thought struck her. What if she might turn this force to
+      her own use, make it serve, unconsciously to Dick, as the means of his
+      deliverance? Hitherto she had assumed that her son&rsquo;s worst danger lay in
+      the chance of his confiding his difficulty to Clemence Verney; and she
+      had, in her own past, a precedent which made her think such a confidence
+      not unlikely. If he did carry his scruples to the girl, she argued, the
+      latter&rsquo;s imperviousness, her frank inability to understand them, would
+      have the effect of dispelling them like mist; and he was acute enough to
+      know this and profit by it. So she had hitherto reasoned; but now the
+      girl&rsquo;s presence seemed to clarify her perceptions, and she told herself
+      that something in Dick&rsquo;s nature, something which she herself had put
+      there, would resist this short cut to safety, would make him take the more
+      tortuous way to his goal rather than gain it through the privacies of the
+      heart he loved. For she had lifted him thus far above his father, that it
+      would be a disenchantment to him to find that Clemence Verney did not
+      share his scruples. On this much, his mother now exultingly felt, she
+      could count in her passive struggle for supremacy. No, he would never,
+      never tell Clemence Verney&mdash;and his one hope, his sure salvation,
+      therefore lay in some one else&rsquo;s telling her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The excitement of this discovery had nearly, in mid-concert, swept Mrs.
+      Peyton from her seat to the girl&rsquo;s side. Fearing to miss the latter in the
+      throng at the entrance, she slipped out during the last number and,
+      lingering in the farther drawing-room, let the dispersing audience drift
+      her in Miss Verney&rsquo;s direction. The girl shone sympathetically on her
+      approach, and in a moment they had detached themselves from the crowd and
+      taken refuge in the perfumed emptiness of the conservatory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl, whose sensations were always easily set in motion, had at first
+      a good deal to say of the music, for which she claimed, on her hearer&rsquo;s
+      part, an active show of approval or dissent; but this dismissed, she
+      turned a melting face on Mrs. Peyton and said with one of her rapid
+      modulations of tone: &ldquo;I was so sorry about poor Mr. Darrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton uttered an assenting sigh. &ldquo;It was a great grief to us&mdash;a
+      great loss to my son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I know. I can imagine what you must have felt. And then it was
+      so unlucky that it should have happened just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton shot a reconnoitring glance at her profile. &ldquo;His dying, you
+      mean, on the eve of success?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney turned a frank smile upon her. &ldquo;One ought to feel that, of
+      course&mdash;but I&rsquo;m afraid I am very selfish where my friends are
+      concerned, and I was thinking of Mr. Peyton&rsquo;s having to give up his work
+      at such a critical moment.&rdquo; She spoke without a note of deprecation: there
+      was a pagan freshness in her opportunism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton was silent, and the girl continued after a pause: &ldquo;I suppose
+      now it will be almost impossible for him to finish his drawings in time.
+      It&rsquo;s a pity he hadn&rsquo;t worked out the whole scheme a little sooner. Then
+      the details would have come of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton felt a contempt strangely mingled with exultation. If only the
+      girl would talk in that way to Dick!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has hardly had time to think of himself lately,&rdquo; she said, trying to
+      keep the coldness out of her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course not,&rdquo; Miss Verney assented; &ldquo;but isn&rsquo;t that all the more
+      reason for his friends to think of him? It was very dear of him to give up
+      everything to nurse Mr. Darrow&mdash;but, after all, if a man is going to
+      get on in his career there are times when he must think first of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton paused, trying to choose her words with deliberation. It was
+      quite clear now that Dick had not spoken, and she felt the responsibility
+      that devolved upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Getting on in a career&mdash;is that always the first thing to be
+      considered?&rdquo; she asked, letting her eyes rest musingly on the girl&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glance did not disconcert Miss Verney, who returned it with one of
+      equal comprehensiveness. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said quickly, and with a slight blush.
+      &ldquo;With a temperament like Mr. Peyton&rsquo;s I believe it is. Some people can
+      pick themselves up after any number of bad falls: I am not sure that he
+      could. I think discouragement would weaken instead of strengthening him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Both women had forgotten external conditions in the quick reach for each
+      other&rsquo;s meanings. Mrs. Peyton flushed, her maternal pride in revolt; but
+      the answer was checked on her lips by the sense of the girl&rsquo;s unexpected
+      insight. Here was some one who knew Dick as well as she did&mdash;should
+      she say a partisan or an accomplice? A dim jealousy stirred beneath Mrs.
+      Peyton&rsquo;s other emotions: she was undergoing the agony which the mother
+      feels at the first intrusion on her privilege of judging her child; and
+      her voice had a flutter of resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have a poor opinion of his character,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney did not remove her eyes, but her blush deepened beautifully.
+      &ldquo;I have, at any rate,&rdquo; she Said, &ldquo;a high one of his talent. I don&rsquo;t
+      suppose many men have an equal amount of moral and intellectual energy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you would cultivate the one at the expense of the other?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In certain cases&mdash;and up to a certain point.&rdquo; She shook out the long
+      fur of her muff, one of those silvery flexible furs which clothe a woman
+      with a delicate sumptuousness. Everything about her, at the moment, seemed
+      rich and cold&mdash;everything, as Mrs. Peyton quickly noted, but the
+      blush lingering under her dark skin; and so complete was the girl&rsquo;s
+      self-command that the blush seemed to be there only because it had been
+      forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you think me strange,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;Most people do, because
+      I speak the truth. It&rsquo;s the easiest way of concealing one&rsquo;s feelings. I
+      can, for instance, talk quite openly about Mr. Peyton under shelter of
+      your inference that I shouldn&rsquo;t do so if I were what is called
+      &lsquo;interested&rsquo; in him. And as I <i>am</i> interested in him, my method has
+      its advantages!&rdquo; She ended with one of the fluttering laughs which seemed
+      to flit from point to point of her expressive person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton leaned toward her. &ldquo;I believe you are interested,&rdquo; she said
+      quietly; &ldquo;and since I suppose you allow others the privilege you claim for
+      yourself, I am going to confess that I followed you here in the hope of
+      finding out the nature of your interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney shot a glance at her, and drew away in a soft subsidence of
+      undulating furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this an embassy?&rdquo; she asked smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: not in any sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl leaned back with an air of relief. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad; I should have
+      disliked&mdash;&rdquo; She looked again at Mrs. Peyton. &ldquo;You want to know what I
+      mean to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I can only answer that I mean to wait and see what he does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that everything is contingent on his success?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> am&mdash;if I&rsquo;m everything,&rdquo; she admitted gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother&rsquo;s heart was beating in her throat, and her words seemed to
+      force themselves out through the throbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t quite see why you attach such importance to this special
+      success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he does,&rdquo; the girl returned instantly. &ldquo;Because to him it is the
+      final answer to his self-questioning&mdash;the questioning whether he is
+      ever to amount to anything or not. He says if he has anything in him it
+      ought to come out now. All the conditions are favourable&mdash;it is the
+      chance he has always prayed for. You see,&rdquo; she continued, almost
+      confidentially, but without the least loss of composure&mdash;&ldquo;you see he
+      has told me a great deal about himself and his various experiments&mdash;his
+      phrases of indecision and disgust. There are lots of tentative talents in
+      the world, and the sooner they are crushed out by circumstances the
+      better. But it seems as though he really had it in him to do something
+      distinguished&mdash;as though the uncertainty lay in his character and not
+      in his talent. That is what interests, what attracts me. One can&rsquo;t teach a
+      man to have genius, but if he has it one may show him how to use it. That
+      is what I should be good for, you see&mdash;to keep him up to his
+      opportunities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton had listened with an intensity of attention that left her
+      reply unprepared. There was something startling and yet half attractive in
+      the girl&rsquo;s avowal of principles which are oftener lived by than professed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think,&rdquo; she began at length, &ldquo;that in this case he has fallen
+      below his opportunity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one can tell, of course; but his discouragement, his <i>abattement</i>,
+      is a bad sign. I don&rsquo;t think he has any hope of succeeding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother again wavered a moment. &ldquo;Since you are so frank,&rdquo; she then
+      said, &ldquo;will you let me be equally so, and ask how lately you have seen
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl smiled at the circumlocution. &ldquo;Yesterday afternoon,&rdquo; she said
+      simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you thought him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horribly down on his luck. He said himself that his brain was empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mrs. Peyton felt the throb in her throat, and a slow blush rose to
+      her cheek. &ldquo;Was that all he said?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About himself&mdash;was there anything else?&rdquo; said the girl quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t tell you of&mdash;of an opportunity to make up for the time he
+      has lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An opportunity? I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t speak to you, then, of Mr. Darrow&rsquo;s letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said nothing of any letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There <i>was</i> one, which was found after poor Darrow&rsquo;s death. In it he
+      gave Dick leave to use his design for the competition. Dick says the
+      design is wonderful&mdash;it would give him just what he needs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney sat listening raptly, with a rush of colour that suffused her
+      like light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But when was this? Where was the letter found? He never said a word of
+      it!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The letter was found on the day of Darrow&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand! Why has he never told me? Why should he seem so
+      hopeless?&rdquo; She turned an ignorant appealing face on Mrs. Peyton. It was
+      prodigious, but it was true&mdash;she felt nothing, saw nothing, but the
+      crude fact of the opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s voice trembled with the completeness of her triumph. &ldquo;I
+      suppose his reason for not speaking is that he has scruples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scruples?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He feels that to use the design would be dishonest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney&rsquo;s eyes fixed themselves on her in a commiserating stare.
+      &ldquo;Dishonest? When the poor man wished it himself? When it was his last
+      request? When the letter is there to prove it? Why, the design belongs to
+      your son! No one else had any right to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Dick&rsquo;s right does not extend to passing it off as his own&mdash;at
+      least that is his feeling, I believe. If he won the competition he would
+      be winning it on false pretenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you call them false pretenses? His design might have been
+      better than Darrow&rsquo;s if he had had time to carry it out. It seems to me
+      that Mr. Darrow must have felt this&mdash;must have felt that he owed his
+      friend some compensation for the time he took from him. I can imagine
+      nothing more natural than his wishing to make this return for your son&rsquo;s
+      sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She positively glowed with the force of her conviction, and Mrs. Peyton,
+      for a strange instant, felt her own resistance wavering. She herself had
+      never considered the question in that light&mdash;the light of Darrow&rsquo;s
+      viewing his gift as a justifiable compensation. But the glimpse she caught
+      of it drove her shuddering behind her retrenchments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That argument,&rdquo; she said coldly, &ldquo;would naturally be more convincing to
+      Darrow than to my son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Verney glanced up, struck by the change in Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, then you agree with him? You think it <i>would</i> be dishonest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton saw that she had slipped into self-betrayal. &ldquo;My son and I
+      have not spoken of the matter,&rdquo; she said evasively. She caught the flash
+      of relief in Miss Verney&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t spoken? Then how do you know how he feels about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only judge from&mdash;well, perhaps from his not speaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl drew a deep breath. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;That is the very
+      reason that prevents his speaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your knowing what he thinks&mdash;and his knowing that you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton was startled at her subtlety. &ldquo;I assure you,&rdquo; she said,
+      rising, &ldquo;that I have done nothing to influence him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl gazed at her musingly. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said with a faint smile,
+      &ldquo;nothing except to read his thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton reached home in the state of exhaustion which follows on a
+      physical struggle. It seemed to her as though her talk with Clemence
+      Verney had been an actual combat, a measuring of wrist and eye. For a
+      moment she was frightened at what she had done&mdash;she felt as though
+      she had betrayed her son to the enemy. But before long she regained her
+      moral balance, and saw that she had merely shifted the conflict to the
+      ground on which it could best be fought out&mdash;since the prize fought
+      for was the natural battlefield. The reaction brought with it a sense of
+      helplessness, a realization that she had let the issue pass out of her
+      hold; but since, in the last analysis, it had never lain there, since it
+      was above all needful that the determining touch should be given by any
+      hand but hers, she presently found courage to subside into inaction. She
+      had done all she could&mdash;even more, perhaps, than prudence warranted&mdash;and
+      now she could but await passively the working of the forces she had set in
+      motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two days after her talk with Miss Verney she saw little of Dick. He
+      went early to his office and came back late. He seemed less tired, more
+      self-possessed, than during the first days after Darrow&rsquo;s death; but there
+      was a new inscrutableness in his manner, a note of reserve, of resistance
+      almost, as though he had barricaded himself against her conjectures. She
+      had been struck by Miss Verney&rsquo;s reply to the anxious asseveration that
+      she had done nothing to influence Dick&mdash;&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; the girl had
+      answered, &ldquo;except to read his thoughts.&rdquo; Mrs. Peyton shrank from this
+      detection of a tacit interference with her son&rsquo;s liberty of action. She
+      longed&mdash;how passionately he would never know&mdash;to stand apart
+      from him in this struggle between his two destinies, and it was almost a
+      relief that he on his side should hold aloof, should, for the first time
+      in their relation, seem to feel her tenderness as an intrusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only four days remained before the date fixed for the sending in of the
+      designs, and still Dick had not referred to his work. Of Darrow, also, he
+      had made no mention. His mother longed to know if he had spoken to
+      Clemence Verney&mdash;or rather if the girl had forced his confidence.
+      Mrs. Peyton was almost certain that Miss Verney would not remain silent&mdash;there
+      were times when Dick&rsquo;s renewed application to his work seemed an earnest
+      of her having spoken, and spoken convincingly. At the thought Kate&rsquo;s heart
+      grew chill. What if her experiment should succeed in a sense she had not
+      intended? If the girl should reconcile Dick to his weakness, should pluck
+      the sting from his temptation? In this round of uncertainties the mother
+      revolved for two interminable days; but the second evening brought an
+      answer to her question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dick, returning earlier than usual from the office, had found, on the
+      hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother&rsquo;s
+      observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed
+      in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney&rsquo;s
+      utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl&rsquo;s writing; but such notes had
+      of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution
+      easy. This communication Dick, as his mother poured his tea, looked over
+      with a face of shifting lights; then he folded it into his note-case, and
+      said, with a glance at his watch: &ldquo;If you haven&rsquo;t asked any one for this
+      evening I think I&rsquo;ll dine out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, dear; the change will be good for you,&rdquo; his mother assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer, but sat leaning back, his hands clasped behind his
+      head, his eyes fixed on the fire. Every line of his body expressed a
+      profound physical lassitude, but the face remained alert and guarded. Mrs.
+      Peyton, in silence, was busying herself with the details of the
+      tea-making, when suddenly, inexplicably, a question forced itself to her
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your work&mdash;?&rdquo; she said, strangely hearing herself speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My work&mdash;?&rdquo; He sat up, on the defensive almost, but without a tremor
+      of the guarded face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re getting on well? You&rsquo;ve made up for lost time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes: things are going better.&rdquo; He rose, with another glance at his
+      watch. &ldquo;Time to dress,&rdquo; he said, nodding to her as he turned to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an hour later, during her own solitary dinner, that a ring at the
+      door was followed by the parlour-maid&rsquo;s announcement that Mr. Gill was
+      there from the office. In the hall, in fact, Kate found her son&rsquo;s partner,
+      who explained apologetically that he had understood Peyton was dining at
+      home, and had come to consult him about a difficulty which had arisen
+      since he had left the office. On hearing that Dick was out, and that his
+      mother did not know where he had gone, Mr. Gill&rsquo;s perplexity became so
+      manifest that Mrs. Peyton, after a moment, said hesitatingly: &ldquo;He may be
+      at a friend&rsquo;s house; I could give you the address.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The architect caught up his hat. &ldquo;Thank you; I&rsquo;ll have a try for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton hesitated again. &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;it would be better
+      to telephone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She led the way into the little study behind the drawing-room, where a
+      telephone stood on the writing-table. The folding doors between the two
+      rooms were open: should she close them as she passed back into the
+      drawing-room? On the threshold she wavered an instant; then she walked on
+      and took her usual seat by the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gill, meanwhile, at the telephone, had &ldquo;rung up&rdquo; the Verney house, and
+      inquired if his partner were dining there. The reply was evidently
+      affirmative; and a moment later Kate knew that he was in communication
+      with her son. She sat motionless, her hands clasped on the arms of her
+      chair, her head erect, in an attitude of avowed attention. If she listened
+      she would listen openly: there should be no suspicion of eavesdropping.
+      Gill, engrossed in his message, was probably hardly conscious of her
+      presence; but if he turned his head he should at least have no difficulty
+      in seeing her, and in being aware that she could hear what he said. Gill,
+      however, as she was quick to remember, was doubtless ignorant of any need
+      for secrecy in his communication to Dick. He had often heard the affairs
+      of the office discussed openly before Mrs. Peyton, had been led to regard
+      her as familiar with all the details of her son&rsquo;s work. He talked on
+      unconcernedly, and she listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes later, when he rose to go, she knew all that she had wanted to
+      find out. Long familiarity with the technicalities of her son&rsquo;s profession
+      made it easy for her to translate the stenographic jargon of the office.
+      She could lengthen out all Gill&rsquo;s abbreviations, interpret all his
+      allusions, and reconstruct Dick&rsquo;s answers from the questions addressed to
+      him. And when the door closed on the architect she was left face to face
+      with the fact that her son, unknown to any one but herself, was using
+      Darrow&rsquo;s drawings to complete his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peyton, left alone, found it easier to continue her vigil by the
+      drawing-room fire than to carry up to the darkness and silence of her own
+      room the truth she had been at such pains to acquire. She had no thought
+      of sitting up for Dick. Doubtless, his dinner over, he would rejoin Gill
+      at the office, and prolong through, the night the task in which she now
+      knew him to be engaged. But it was less lonely by the fire than in the
+      wide-eyed darkness which awaited her upstairs. A mortal loneliness
+      enveloped her. She felt as though she had fallen by the way, spent and
+      broken in a struggle of which even its object had been unconscious. She
+      had tried to deflect the natural course of events, she had sacrificed her
+      personal happiness to a fantastic ideal of duty, and it was her punishment
+      to be left alone with her failure, outside the normal current of human
+      strivings and regrets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no wish to see her son just then: she would have preferred to let
+      the inner tumult subside, to repossess herself in this new adjustment to
+      life, before meeting his eyes again. But as she sat there, far adrift on
+      her misery, she was aroused by the turning of his key in the latch. She
+      started up, her heart sounding a retreat, but her faculties too dispersed
+      to obey it; and while she stood wavering, the door opened and he was in
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the room, and with face illumined: a Dick she had not seen since the
+      strain of the contest had cast its shade on him. Now he shone as in a
+      sunrise of victory, holding out exultant hands from which she hung back
+      instinctively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother! I knew you&rsquo;d be waiting for me!&rdquo; He had her on his breast now,
+      and his kisses were in her hair. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always said you knew everything
+      that was happening to me, and now you&rsquo;ve guessed that I wanted you
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was struggling faintly against the dear endearments. &ldquo;What <i>has</i>
+      happened?&rdquo; she murmured, drawing back for a dazzled look at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had drawn her to the sofa, had dropped beside her, regaining his hold
+      of her in the boyish need that his happiness should be touched and
+      handled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My engagement has happened!&rdquo; he cried out to her. &ldquo;You stupid dear, do
+      you need to be told?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      She had indeed needed to be told: the surprise was complete and
+      overwhelming. She sat silent under it, her hands trembling in his, till
+      the blood mounted to his face and she felt his confident grasp relax.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t guess it, then?&rdquo; he exclaimed, starting up and moving away
+      from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I didn&rsquo;t guess it,&rdquo; she confessed in a dead-level voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood above her, half challenging, half defensive. &ldquo;And you haven&rsquo;t a
+      word to say to me? Mother!&rdquo; he adjured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose too, putting her arms about him with a kiss. &ldquo;Dick! Dear Dick!&rdquo;
+       she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She imagines you don&rsquo;t like her; she says she&rsquo;s always felt it. And yet
+      she owns you&rsquo;ve been delightful, that you&rsquo;ve tried to make friends with
+      her. And I thought you knew how much it would mean to me, just now, to
+      have this uncertainty over, and that you&rsquo;d actually been trying to help
+      me, to put in a good word for me. I thought it was you who had made her
+      decide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By your talk with her the other day. She told me of your talk with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother&rsquo;s hands slipped from his shoulders and she sank back into her
+      seat. She felt the cruelty of her silence, but only an inarticulate murmur
+      found a way to her lips. Before speaking she must clear a space in the
+      suffocating rush of her sensations. For the moment she could only repeat
+      inwardly that Clemence Verney had yielded before the final test, and that
+      she herself was somehow responsible for this fresh entanglement of fate.
+      For she saw in a flash how the coils of circumstance had tightened; and as
+      her mind cleared it was filled with the perception that this, precisely,
+      was what the girl intended, that this was why she had conferred the crown
+      before the victory. By pledging herself to Dick she had secured his pledge
+      in return: had put him on his honour in a cynical inversion of the term.
+      Kate saw the succession of events spread out before her like a map, and
+      the astuteness of the girl&rsquo;s policy frightened her. Miss Verney had
+      conducted the campaign like a strategist. She had frankly owned that her
+      interest in Dick&rsquo;s future depended on his capacity for success, and in
+      order to key him up to his first achievement she had given him a foretaste
+      of its results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much was almost immediately clear to Mrs. Peyton; but in a moment her
+      inferences had carried her a point farther. For it was now plain to her
+      that Miss Verney had not risked so much without first trying to gain her
+      point at less cost: that if she had had to give herself as a prize, it was
+      because no other bribe had been sufficient. This then, as the mother saw
+      with a throb of hope, meant that Dick, who since Darrow&rsquo;s death had held
+      to his purpose unwaveringly, had been deflected from it by the first hint
+      of Clemence Verney&rsquo;s connivance. Kate had not miscalculated: things had
+      happened as she had foreseen. In the light of the girl&rsquo;s approval his act
+      had taken an odious look. He had recoiled from it, and it was to revive
+      his flagging courage that she had had to promise herself, to take him in
+      the meshes of her surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate, looking up, saw above her the young perplexity of her boy&rsquo;s face,
+      the suspended happiness waiting to brim over. With a fresh touch of misery
+      she said to herself that this was his hour, his one irrecoverable moment,
+      and that she was darkening it by her silence. Her memory went back to the
+      same hour in her own life: she could feel its heat in her pulses still.
+      What right had she to stand in Dick&rsquo;s light? Who was she to decide between
+      his code and hers? She put out her hand and drew him down to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll be the making of me, you know, mother,&rdquo; he said, as they leaned
+      together. &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll put new life in me&mdash;she&rsquo;ll help me get my second
+      wind. Her talk is like a fresh breeze blowing away the fog in my head. I
+      never knew any one who saw so straight to the heart of things, who had
+      such a grip on values. She goes straight up to life and catches hold of
+      it, and you simply can&rsquo;t make her let go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and walked the length of the room; then he came back and stood
+      smiling above his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you and I are rather complicated people,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re always
+      walking around things to get new views of them&mdash;we&rsquo;re always
+      rearranging the furniture. And somehow she simplifies life so
+      tremendously.&rdquo; He dropped down beside her with a deprecating laugh. &ldquo;Not
+      that I mean, dear, that it hasn&rsquo;t been good for me to argue things out
+      with myself, as you&rsquo;ve taught me to&mdash;only the man who stops to talk
+      is apt to get shoved aside nowadays, and I don&rsquo;t believe Milton&rsquo;s
+      archangels would have had much success in active business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had begun in a strain of easy confidence, but as he went on she
+      detected an effort to hold the note, she felt that his words were being
+      poured out in a vain attempt to fill the silence which was deepening
+      between them. She longed, in her turn, to pour something into that
+      menacing void, to bridge it with a reconciling word or look; but her soul
+      hung back, and she had to take refuge in a vague murmur of tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy! My boy!&rdquo; she repeated; and he sat beside her without speaking,
+      their hand-clasp alone spanning the distance which had widened between
+      their thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The engagement, as Kate subsequently learned, was not to be made known
+      till later. Miss Verney had even stipulated that for the present there
+      should be no recognition of it in her own family or in Dick&rsquo;s. She did not
+      wish to interfere with his final work for the competition, and had made
+      him promise, as he laughingly owned, that he would not see her again till
+      the drawings were sent in. His mother noticed that he made no other
+      allusion to his work; but when he bade her good-night he added that he
+      might not see her the next morning, as he had to go to the office early.
+      She took this as a hint that he wished to be left alone, and kept her room
+      the next day till the closing door told her that he was out of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She herself had waked early, and it seemed to her that the day was already
+      old when she came downstairs. Never had the house appeared so empty. Even
+      in Dick&rsquo;s longest absences something of his presence had always hung about
+      the rooms: a fine dust of memories and associations, which wanted only the
+      evocation of her thought to float into a palpable semblance of him. But
+      now he seemed to have taken himself quite away, to have broken every fibre
+      by which their lives had hung together. Where the sense of him had been
+      there was only a deeper emptiness: she felt as if a strange man had gone
+      out of her house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wandered from room to room, aimlessly, trying to adjust herself to
+      their solitude. She had known such loneliness before, in the years when
+      most women&rsquo;s hearts are fullest; but that was long ago, and the solitude
+      had after all been less complete, because of the sense that it might still
+      be filled. Her son had come: her life had brimmed over; but now the tide
+      ebbed again, and she was left gazing over a bare stretch of wasted years.
+      Wasted! There was the mortal pang, the stroke from which there was no
+      healing. Her faith and hope had been marsh-lights luring her to the
+      wilderness, her love a vain edifice reared on shifting ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her round of the rooms she came at last to Dick&rsquo;s study upstairs. It
+      was full of his boyhood: she could trace the history of his past in its
+      quaint relics and survivals, in the school-books lingering on his crowded
+      shelves, the school-photographs and college-trophies hung among his later
+      treasures. All his successes and failures, his exaltations and
+      inconsistencies, were recorded in the warm huddled heterogeneous room.
+      Everywhere she saw the touch of her own hand, the vestiges of her own
+      steps. It was she alone who held the clue to the labyrinth, who could
+      thread a way through the confusions and contradictions of his past; and
+      her soul rejected the thought that his future could ever escape from her.
+      She dropped down into his shabby college armchair and hid her face in the
+      papers on his desk.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The day dwelt in her memory as a long stretch of aimless hours: blind
+      alleys of time that led up to a dead wall of inaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward afternoon she remembered that she had promised to dine out and go
+      to the opera. At first she felt that the contact of life would be
+      unendurable; then she shrank from shutting herself up with her misery. In
+      the end she let herself drift passively on the current of events, going
+      through the mechanical routine of the day without much consciousness of
+      what was happening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twilight, as she sat in the drawing-room, the evening paper was brought
+      in, and in glancing over it her eye fell on a paragraph which seemed
+      printed in more vivid type than the rest. It was headed, <i>The New Museum
+      of Sculpture</i>, and underneath she read: &ldquo;The artists and architects
+      selected to pass on the competitive designs for the new Museum will begin
+      their sittings on Monday, and to-morrow is the last day on which designs
+      may be sent in to the committee. Great interest is felt in the
+      competition, as the conspicuous site chosen for the new building, and the
+      exceptionally large sum voted by the city for its erection, offer an
+      unusual field for the display of architectural ability.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned back, closing her eyes. It was as though a clock had struck,
+      loud and inexorably, marking off some irrecoverable hour. She was seized
+      by a sudden longing to seek Dick out, to fall on her knees and plead with
+      him: it was one of those physical obsessions against which the body has to
+      stiffen its muscles as well as the mind its thoughts. Once she even sprang
+      up to ring for a cab; but she sank back again, breathing as if after a
+      struggle, and gripping the arms of her chair to keep herself down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can only wait for him&mdash;only wait for him&mdash;&rdquo; she heard herself
+      say; and the words loosened the sobs in her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length she went upstairs to dress for dinner. A ghostlike self looked
+      back at her from her toilet-glass: she watched it performing the
+      mechanical gestures of the toilet, dressing her, as it appeared, without
+      help from her actual self. Each little act stood out sharply against the
+      blurred background of her brain: when she spoke to her maid her voice
+      sounded extraordinarily loud. Never had the house been so silent; or, stay&mdash;yes,
+      once she had felt the same silence, once when Dick, in his school-days,
+      had been ill of a fever, and she had sat up with him on the decisive
+      night. The silence had been as deep and as terrible then; and as she
+      dressed she had before her the vision of his room, of the cot in which he
+      lay, of his restless head working a hole in the pillow, his face so
+      pinched and alien under the familiar freckles. It might be his death-watch
+      she was keeping: the doctors had warned her to be ready. And in the
+      silence her soul had fought for her boy, her love had hung over him like
+      wings, her abundant useless hateful life had struggled to force itself
+      into his empty veins. And she had succeeded, she had saved him, she had
+      poured her life into him; and in place of the strange child she had
+      watched all night, at daylight she held her own boy to her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night had once seemed to her the most dreadful of her life; but she
+      knew now that it was one of the agonies which enrich, that the passion
+      thus spent grows fourfold from its ashes. She could not have borne to keep
+      this new vigil alone. She must escape from its sterile misery, must take
+      refuge in other lives till she regained courage to face her own. At the
+      opera, in the illumination of the first <i>entr&rsquo;acte</i>, as she gazed
+      about the house, wondering through the numb ache of her wretchedness how
+      others could talk and smile and be indifferent, it seemed to her that all
+      the jarring animation about her was suddenly focussed in the face of
+      Clemence Verney. Miss Verney sat opposite, in the front of a crowded box,
+      a box in which, continually, the black-coated background shifted and
+      renewed itself. Mrs. Peyton felt a throb of anger at the girl&rsquo;s bright air
+      of unconcern. She forgot that she too was talking, smiling, holding out
+      her hand to newcomers, in a studied mimicry of life, while her real self
+      played out its tragedy behind the scenes. Then it occurred to her that, to
+      Clemence Verney, there was no tragedy in the situation. According to the
+      girl&rsquo;s calculations, Dick was virtually certain of success; and unsuccess
+      was to her the only conceivable disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All through the opera the sense of that opposing force, that negation of
+      her own beliefs, burned itself into Mrs. Peyton&rsquo;s consciousness. The space
+      between herself and the girl seemed to vanish, the throng about them to
+      disperse, till they were face to face and alone, enclosed in their mortal
+      enmity. At length the feeling of humiliation and defeat grew unbearable to
+      Mrs. Peyton. The girl seemed to flout her in the insolence of victory, to
+      sit there as the visible symbol of her failure. It was better after all to
+      be at home alone with her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she drove away from the opera she thought of that other vigil which,
+      only a few streets away, Dick was perhaps still keeping. She wondered if
+      his work were over, if the final stroke had been drawn. And as she
+      pictured him there, signing his pact with evil in the loneliness of the
+      conniving night, an uncontrollable impulse possessed her. She must drive
+      by his windows and see if they were still alight. She would not go up to
+      him,&mdash;she dared not,&mdash;but at least she would pass near to him,
+      would invisibly share his watch and hover on the edge of his thoughts. She
+      lowered the window and called out the address to the coachman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall office-building loomed silent and dark as she approached it; but
+      presently, high up, she caught a light in the familiar windows. Her heart
+      gave a leap, and the light swam on her through tears. The carriage drew
+      up, and for a moment she sat motionless. Then the coachman bent down
+      toward her, and she saw that he was asking if he should drive on. She
+      tried to shape a yes, but her lips refused it, and she shook her head. He
+      continued to lean down perplexedly, and at length, under the interrogation
+      of his attitude, it became impossible to sit still, and she opened the
+      door and stepped out. It was equally impossible to stand on the sidewalk,
+      and her next steps carried her to the door of the building. She groped for
+      the bell and rang it, feeling still dimly accountable to the coachman for
+      some consecutiveness of action, and after a moment the night watchman
+      opened the door, drawing back amazed at the shining apparition which
+      confronted him. Recognizing Mrs. Peyton, whom he had seen about the
+      building by day, he tried to adapt himself to the situation by a vague
+      stammer of apology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see if my son is still here,&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, ma&rsquo;am, he&rsquo;s here. He&rsquo;s been here most nights lately till after
+      twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is Mr. Gill with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: Mr. Gill he went away just after I come on this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced up into the cavernous darkness of the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he alone up there, do you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, ma&rsquo;am, I know he&rsquo;s alone, because I seen his men leaving soon after
+      Mr. Gill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kate lifted her head quickly. &ldquo;Then I will go up to him,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The watchman apparently did not think it proper to offer any comment on
+      this unusual proceeding, and a moment later she was fluttering and
+      rustling up through the darkness, like a night-bird hovering among
+      rafters. There were ten flights to climb: at every one her breath failed
+      her, and she had to stand still and press her hands against her heart.
+      Then the weight on her breast lifted, and she went on again, upward and
+      upward, the great dark building dropping away from her, in tier after tier
+      of mute doors and mysterious corridors. At last she reached Dick&rsquo;s floor,
+      and saw the light shining down the passage from his door. She leaned
+      against the wall, her breath coming short, the silence throbbing in her
+      ears. Even now it was not too late to turn back. She bent over the stairs,
+      letting her eyes plunge into the nether blackness, with the single glimmer
+      of the watchman&rsquo;s lights in its depths; then she turned and stole toward
+      her son&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There again she paused and listened, trying to catch, through the hum of
+      her pulses, any noise that might come to her from within. But the silence
+      was unbroken&mdash;it seemed as though the office must be empty. She
+      pressed her ear to the door, straining for a sound. She knew he never sat
+      long at his work, and it seemed unaccountable that she should not hear him
+      moving about the drawing-board. For a moment she fancied he might be
+      sleeping; but sleep did not come to him readily after prolonged mental
+      effort&mdash;she recalled the restless straying of his feet above her head
+      for hours after he returned from his night work in the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to fear that he might be ill. A nervous trembling seized her,
+      and she laid her hand on the latch, whispering &ldquo;Dick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her whisper sounded loudly through the silence, but there was no answer,
+      and after a pause she called again. With each call the hush seemed to
+      deepen: it closed in on her, mysterious and impenetrable. Her heart was
+      beating in short frightened leaps: a moment more and she would have cried
+      out. She drew a quick breath and turned the door-handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The outer room, Dick&rsquo;s private office, with its red carpet and
+      easy-chairs, stood in pleasant lamp-lit emptiness. The last time she had
+      entered it, Darrow and Clemence Verney had been there, and she had sat
+      behind the urn observing them. She paused a moment, struck now by a fault
+      sound from beyond; then she slipped noiselessly across the carpet, pushed
+      open the swinging door, and stood on the threshold of the work-room. Here
+      the gas-lights hung a green-shaded circle of brightness over the great
+      draughting-table in the middle of the floor. Table and floor were strewn
+      with a confusion of papers&mdash;torn blue-prints and tracings, crumpled
+      sheets of tracing-paper wrenched from the draughting-boards in a sudden
+      fury of destruction; and in the centre of the havoc, his arms stretched
+      across the table and his face hidden in them, sat Dick Peyton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not seem to hear his mother&rsquo;s approach, and she stood looking at
+      him, her breast tightening with a new fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Dick!&mdash;&rdquo; and he sprang up, staring with dazed
+      eyes. But gradually, as his gaze cleared, a light spread in it, a mounting
+      brightness of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve come&mdash;you&rsquo;ve come&mdash;&rdquo; he said, stretching his hands to
+      her; and all at once she had him in her breast as in a shelter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wanted me?&rdquo; she whispered as she held him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up at her, tired, breathless, with the white radiance of the
+      runner near the goal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>had</i> you, dear!&rdquo; he said, smiling strangely on her; and her heart
+      gave a great leap of understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her arms had slipped from his neck, and she stood leaning on him,
+      deep-suffused in the shyness of her discovery. For it might still be that
+      he did not wish her to know what she had done for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he put his arm about her, boyishly, and drew her toward one of the
+      hard seats between the tables; and there, on the bare floor, he knelt
+      before her, and hid his face in her lap. She sat motionless, feeling the
+      dear warmth of his head against her knees, letting her hands stray in
+      faint caresses through his hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither spoke for awhile; then he raised his head and looked at her. &ldquo;I
+      suppose you know what has been happening to me,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrank from seeming to press into his life a hair&rsquo;s-breadth farther
+      than he was prepared to have her go. Her eyes turned from him toward the
+      scattered drawings on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have given up the competition?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and a lot more.&rdquo; He stood up, the wave of emotion ebbing, yet
+      leaving him nearer, in his recovered calmness, than in the shock of their
+      first moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know, at first, how much you guessed,&rdquo; he went on quietly. &ldquo;I
+      was sorry I&rsquo;d shown you Darrow&rsquo;s letter; but it didn&rsquo;t worry me much
+      because I didn&rsquo;t suppose you&rsquo;d think it possible that I should&mdash;take
+      advantage of it. It&rsquo;s only lately that I&rsquo;ve understood that you knew
+      everything.&rdquo; He looked at her with a smile. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know yet how I found
+      it out, for you&rsquo;re wonderful about keeping things to yourself, and you
+      never made a sign. I simply felt it in a kind of nearness&mdash;as if I
+      couldn&rsquo;t get away from you.&mdash;Oh, there were times when I should have
+      preferred not having you about&mdash;when I tried to turn my back on you,
+      to see things from other people&rsquo;s standpoint. But you were always there&mdash;you
+      wouldn&rsquo;t be discouraged. And I got tired of trying to explain things to
+      you, of trying to bring you round to my way of thinking. You wouldn&rsquo;t go
+      away and you wouldn&rsquo;t come any nearer&mdash;you just stood there and
+      watched everything that I was doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off, taking one of his restless turns down the long room. Then he
+      drew up a chair beside her, and dropped into it with a great sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At first, you know, I hated it most awfully. I wanted to be let alone and
+      to work out my own theory of things. If you&rsquo;d said a word&mdash;if you&rsquo;d
+      tried to influence me&mdash;the spell would have been broken. But just
+      because the actual <i>you</i> kept apart and didn&rsquo;t meddle or pry, the
+      other, the you in my heart, seemed to get a tighter hold on me. I don&rsquo;t
+      know how to tell you,&mdash;it&rsquo;s all mixed up in my head&mdash;but old
+      things you&rsquo;d said and done kept coming back to me, crowding between me and
+      what I was trying for, looking at me without speaking, like old friends
+      I&rsquo;d gone back on, till I simply couldn&rsquo;t stand it any longer. I fought it
+      off till to-night, but when I came back to finish the work there you were
+      again&mdash;and suddenly, I don&rsquo;t know how, you weren&rsquo;t an obstacle any
+      longer, but a refuge&mdash;and I crawled into your arms as I used to when
+      things went against me at school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hands stole back into hers, and he leaned his head against her
+      shoulder like a boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m an abysmally weak fool, you know,&rdquo; he ended; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not worth the fight
+      you&rsquo;ve put up for me. But I want you to know that it&rsquo;s your doing&mdash;that
+      if you had let go an instant I should have gone under&mdash;and that if
+      I&rsquo;d gone under I should never have come up again alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
+
+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: Sanctuary
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2005  [EBook #7517]
+This file was first posted on May 13, 2003
+[Last updated: October 1, 2017]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANCTUARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, William
+Flis, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SANCTUARY
+
+By Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the
+sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within
+reach of the awakening clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had yielded
+herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rain
+soaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this
+sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which made it
+so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last two
+months--since her engagement to Denis Peyton--no distinct addition to
+the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed,
+of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly and
+outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before,
+the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause over
+her and she could trust herself to their shelter.
+
+Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in
+which she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations,
+and at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it a
+certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found
+herself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able
+to be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first stranger
+in the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easily
+than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each
+other, opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter into
+possession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belonging
+to her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; and
+this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it
+the hallowing sense of permanence.
+
+She rose from the writing-table where, list in hand, she had been going
+over the wedding-invitations, and walked toward the drawing-room window.
+Everything about her seemed to contribute to that rare harmony of feeling
+which levied a tax on every sense. The large coolness of the room, its fine
+traditional air of spacious living, its outlook over field and woodland
+toward the lake lying under the silver bloom of September; the very scent
+of the late violets in a glass on the writing-table; the rosy-mauve masses
+of hydrangea in tubs along the terrace; the fall, now and then, of a leaf
+through the still air--all, somehow, were mingled in the suffusion of
+well-being that yet made them seem but so much dross upon its current.
+
+The girl's smile prolonged itself at the sight of a figure approaching from
+the lower slopes above the lake. The path was a short cut from the Peyton
+place, and she had known that Denis would appear in it at about that hour.
+Her smile, however, was prolonged not so much by his approach as by her
+sense of the impossibility of communicating her mood to him. The feeling
+did not disturb her. She could not imagine sharing her deepest moods with
+any one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too bright and
+spacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in truth a
+tribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a refuge
+from her own complexities.
+
+Denis Peyton was used to being met with a smile. He might have been
+pardoned for thinking smiles the habitual wear of the human countenance;
+and his estimate of life and of himself was necessarily tinged by the
+cordial terms on which they had always met each other. He had in fact found
+life, from the start, an uncommonly agreeable business, culminating fitly
+enough in his engagement to the only girl he had ever wished to marry,
+and the inheritance, from his unhappy step-brother, of a fortune which
+agreeably widened his horizon. Such a combination of circumstances might
+well justify a young man in thinking himself of some account in the
+universe; and it seemed the final touch of fitness that the mourning which
+Denis still wore for poor Arthur should lend a new distinction to his
+somewhat florid good looks.
+
+Kate Orme was not without an amused perception of her future husband's
+point of view; but she could enter into it with the tolerance which
+allows for the inconscient element in all our judgments. There was, for
+instance, no one more sentimentally humane than Denis's mother, the
+second Mrs. Peyton, a scented silvery person whose lavender silks and
+neutral-tinted manner expressed a mind with its blinds drawn down toward
+all the unpleasantness of life; yet it was clear that Mrs. Peyton saw a
+"dispensation" in the fact that her step-son had never married, and that
+his death had enabled Denis, at the right moment, to step gracefully into
+affluence. Was it not, after all, a sign of healthy-mindedness to take the
+gifts of the gods in this religious spirit, discovering fresh evidence of
+"design" in what had once seemed the sad fact of Arthur's inaccessibility
+to correction? Mrs. Peyton, beautifully conscious of having done her "best"
+for Arthur, would have thought it unchristian to repine at the providential
+failure of her efforts. Denis's deductions were, of course, a little less
+direct than his mother's. He had, besides, been fond of Arthur, and his
+efforts to keep the poor fellow straight had been less didactic and more
+spontaneous. Their result read itself, if not in any change in Arthur's
+character, at least in the revised wording of his will; and Denis's moral
+sense was pleasantly fortified by the discovery that it very substantially
+paid to be a good fellow.
+
+The sense of general providentialness on which Mrs. Peyton reposed had in
+fact been confirmed by events which reduced Denis's mourning to a mere
+tribute of respect--since it would have been a mockery to deplore the
+disappearance of any one who had left behind him such an unsavory wake as
+poor Arthur. Kate did not quite know what had happened: her father was as
+firmly convinced as Mrs. Peyton that young girls should not be admitted to
+any open discussion of life. She could only gather, from the silences and
+evasions amid which she moved, that a woman had turned up--a woman who was
+of course "dreadful," and whose dreadfulness appeared to include a sort
+of shadowy claim upon Arthur. But the claim, whatever it was, had been
+promptly discredited. The whole question had vanished and the woman with
+it. The blinds were drawn again on the ugly side of things, and life was
+resumed on the usual assumption that no such side existed. Kate knew only
+that a darkness had crossed her sky and left it as unclouded as before.
+
+Was it, perhaps, she now asked herself, the very lifting of the
+cloud--remote, unthreatening as it had been--which gave such new serenity
+to her heaven? It was horrible to think that one's deepest security was
+a mere sense of escape--that happiness was no more than a reprieve. The
+perversity of such ideas was emphasized by Peyton's approach. He had the
+gift of restoring things to their normal relations, of carrying one over
+the chasms of life through the closed tunnel of an incurious cheerfulness.
+All that was restless and questioning in the girl subsided in his presence,
+and she was content to take her love as a gift of grace, which began just
+where the office of reason ended. She was more than ever, to-day, in this
+mood of charmed surrender. More than ever he seemed the keynote of the
+accord between herself and life, the centre of a delightful complicity in
+every surrounding circumstance. One could not look at him without seeing
+that there was always a fair wind in his sails.
+
+It was carrying him toward her, as usual, at a quick confident pace,
+which nevertheless lagged a little, she noticed, as he emerged from the
+beech-grove and struck across the lawn. He walked as though he were tired.
+She had meant to wait for him on the terrace, held in check by her usual
+inclination to linger on the threshold of her pleasures; but now something
+drew her toward him, and she went quickly down the steps and across the
+lawn.
+
+"Denis, you look tired. I was afraid something had happened."
+
+She had slipped her hand through his arm, and as they moved forward she
+glanced up at him, struck not so much by any new look in his face as by the
+fact that her approach had made no change in it.
+
+"I am rather tired.--Is your father in?"
+
+"Papa?" She looked up in surprise. "He went to town yesterday. Don't you
+remember?"
+
+"Of course--I'd forgotten. You're alone, then?" She dropped his arm and
+stood before him. He was very pale now, with the furrowed look of extreme
+physical weariness.
+
+"Denis--are you ill? _Has_ anything happened?"
+
+He forced a smile. "Yes--but you needn't look so frightened."
+
+She drew a deep breath of reassurance. _He_ was safe, after all! And
+all else, for a moment, seemed to swing below the rim of her world.
+
+"Your mother--?" she then said, with a fresh start of fear.
+
+"It's not my mother." They had reached the terrace, and he moved toward the
+house. "Let us go indoors. There's such a beastly glare out here."
+
+He seemed to find relief in the cool obscurity of the drawing-room, where,
+after the brightness of the afternoon light, their faces were almost
+indistinguishable to each other. She sat down, and he moved a few paces
+away. Before the writing-table he paused to look at the neatly sorted heaps
+of wedding-cards.
+
+"They are to be sent out to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He turned back and stood before her.
+
+"It's about the woman," he began abruptly--"the woman who pretended to be
+Arthur's wife."
+
+Kate started as at the clutch of an unacknowledged fear.
+
+"She _was_ his wife, then?"
+
+Peyton made an impatient movement of negation. "If she was, why didn't she
+prove it? She hadn't a shred of evidence. The courts rejected her appeal."
+
+"Well, then--?"
+
+"Well, she's dead." He paused, and the next words came with difficulty.
+"She and the child."
+
+"The child? There was a child?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Kate started up and then sank down. These were not things about which young
+girls were told. The confused sense of horror had been nothing to this
+first sharp edge of fact.
+
+"And both are dead?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How do you know? My father said she had gone away--gone back to the
+West--"
+
+"So we thought. But this morning we found her."
+
+"Found her?"
+
+He motioned toward the window. "Out there--in the lake."
+
+"Both?"
+
+"Both."
+
+She drooped before him shudderingly, her eyes hidden, as though to exclude
+the vision. "She had drowned herself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, poor thing--poor thing!"
+
+They paused awhile, the minutes delving an abyss between them till he threw
+a few irrelevant words across the silence.
+
+"One of the gardeners found them."
+
+"Poor thing!"
+
+"It was sufficiently horrible."
+
+"Horrible--oh!" She had swung round again to her pole. "Poor Denis!
+_You_ were not there--_you_ didn't have to--?"
+
+"I had to see her." She felt the instant relief in his voice. He could talk
+now, could distend his nerves in the warm air of her sympathy. "I had to
+identify her." He rose nervously and began to pace the room. "It's knocked
+the wind out of me. I--my God! I couldn't foresee it, could I?" He halted
+before her with outstretched hands of argument. "I did all I could--it's
+not _my_ fault, is it?"
+
+"Your fault? Denis!"
+
+"She wouldn't take the money--" He broke off, checked by her awakened
+glance.
+
+"The money? What money?" Her face changed, hardening as his relaxed. "Had
+you offered her _money_ to give up the case?"
+
+He stared a moment, and then dismissed the implication with a laugh.
+
+"No--no; after the case was decided against her. She seemed hard up, and I
+sent Hinton to her with a cheque."
+
+"And she refused it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know--the usual thing. That she'd only wanted to prove she was
+his wife--on the child's account. That she'd never wanted his money. Hinton
+said she was very quiet--not in the least excited--but she sent back the
+cheque."
+
+Kate sat motionless, her head bent, her hands clasped about her knees. She
+no longer looked at Peyton.
+
+"Could there have been a mistake?" she asked slowly.
+
+"A mistake?"
+
+She raised her head now, and fixed her eyes on his, with a strange
+insistence of observation. "Could they have been married?"
+
+"The courts didn't think so."
+
+"Could the courts have been mistaken?"
+
+He started up again, and threw himself into another chair. "Good God, Kate!
+We gave her every chance to prove her case--why didn't she do it? You don't
+know what you're talking about--such things are kept from girls. Why,
+whenever a man of Arthur's kind dies, such--such women turn up. There are
+lawyers who live on such jobs--ask your father about it. Of course, this
+woman expected to be bought off--"
+
+"But if she wouldn't take your money?"
+
+"She expected a big sum, I mean, to drop the case. When she found we meant
+to fight it, she saw the game was up. I suppose it was her last throw, and
+she was desperate; we don't know how many times she may have been through
+the same thing before. That kind of woman is always trying to make money
+out of the heirs of any man who--who has been about with them."
+
+Kate received this in silence. She had a sense of walking along a narrow
+ledge of consciousness above a sheer hallucinating depth into which she
+dared not look. But the depth drew her, and she plunged one terrified
+glance into it.
+
+"But the child--the child was Arthur's?"
+
+Peyton shrugged his shoulders. "There again--how can we tell? Why, I don't
+suppose the woman herself--I wish to heaven your father were here to
+explain!"
+
+She rose and crossed over to him, laying her hands on his shoulders with a
+gesture almost maternal.
+
+"Don't let us talk of it," she said. "You did all you could. Think what a
+comfort you were to poor Arthur."
+
+He let her hands lie where she had placed them, without response or
+resistance.
+
+"I tried--I tried hard to keep him straight!"
+
+"We all know that--every one knows it. And we know how grateful he
+was--what a difference it made to him in the end. It would have been
+dreadful to think of his dying out there alone."
+
+She drew him down on a sofa and seated herself by his side. A deep
+lassitude was upon him, and the hand she had possessed herself of lay in
+her hold inert.
+
+"It was splendid of you to travel day and night as you did. And then that
+dreadful week before he died! But for you he would have died alone among
+strangers."
+
+He sat silent, his head dropping forward, his eyes fixed. "Among
+strangers," he repeated absently.
+
+She looked up, as if struck by a sudden thought. "That poor woman--did you
+ever see her while you were out there?"
+
+He drew his hand away and gathered his brows together as if in an effort of
+remembrance.
+
+"I saw her--oh, yes, I saw her." He pushed the tumbled hair from his
+forehead and stood up. "Let us go out," he said. "My head is in a fog. I
+want to get away from it all."
+
+A wave of compunction drew her to her feet.
+
+"It was my fault! I ought not to have asked so many questions." She turned
+and rang the bell. "I'll order the ponies--we shall have time for a drive
+before sunset."
+
+
+II
+
+With the sunset in their faces they swept through the keen-scented autumn
+air at the swiftest pace of Kate's ponies. She had given the reins to
+Peyton, and he had turned the horses' heads away from the lake, rising by
+woody upland lanes to the high pastures which still held the sunlight. The
+horses were fresh enough to claim his undivided attention, and he drove in
+silence, his smooth fair profile turned to his companion, who sat silent
+also.
+
+Kate Orme was engaged in one of those rapid mental excursions which were
+forever sweeping her from the straight path of the actual into uncharted
+regions of conjecture. Her survey of life had always been marked by the
+tendency to seek out ultimate relations, to extend her researches to the
+limit of her imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some
+young captive brought up in a windowless palace whose painted walls she
+takes for the actual world. Now the palace had been shaken to its base, and
+through a cleft in the walls she looked out upon life. For the first moment
+all was indistinguishable blackness; then she began to detect vague shapes
+and confused gestures in the depths. There were people below there, men
+like Denis, girls like herself--for under the unlikeness she felt the
+strange affinity--all struggling in that awful coil of moral darkness, with
+agonized hands reaching up for rescue. Her heart shrank from the horror of
+it, and then, in a passion of pity, drew back to the edge of the abyss.
+Suddenly her eyes turned toward Denis. His face was grave, but less
+disturbed. And men knew about these things! They carried this abyss in
+their bosoms, and went about smiling, and sat at the feet of innocence.
+Could it be that Denis--Denis even--Ah, no! She remembered what he had been
+to poor Arthur; she understood, now, the vague allusions to what he had
+tried to do for his brother. He had seen Arthur down there, in that coiling
+blackness, and had leaned over and tried to drag him out. But Arthur was
+too deep down, and his arms were interlocked with other arms--they had
+dragged each other deeper, poor souls, like drowning people who fight
+together in the waves! Kate's visualizing habit gave a hateful precision
+and persistency to the image she had evoked--she could not rid herself of
+the vision of anguished shapes striving together in the darkness. The
+horror of it took her by the throat--she drew a choking breath, and felt
+the tears on her face.
+
+Peyton turned to her. The horses were climbing a hill, and his attention
+had strayed from them.
+
+"This has done me good," he began; but as he looked his voice changed.
+"Kate! What is it? Why are you crying? Oh, for God's sake, _don't_!"
+he ended, his hand closing on her wrist.
+
+She steadied herself and raised her eyes to his.
+
+"I--I couldn't help it," she stammered, struggling in the sudden release of
+her pent compassion. "It seems so awful that we should stand so close to
+this horror--that it might have been you who--"
+
+"I who--what on earth do you mean?" he broke in stridently.
+
+"Oh, don't you see? I found myself exulting that you and I were so far from
+it--above it--safe in ourselves and each other--and then the other feeling
+came--the sense of selfishness, of going by on the other side; and I tried
+to realize that it might have been you and I who--who were down there in
+the night and the flood--"
+
+Peyton let the whip fall on the ponies' flanks. "Upon my soul," he said
+with a laugh, "you must have a nice opinion of both of us."
+
+The words fell chillingly on the blaze of her self-immolation. Would
+she never learn to remember that Denis was incapable of mounting such
+hypothetical pyres? He might be as alive as herself to the direct demands
+of duty, but of its imaginative claims he was robustly unconscious. The
+thought brought a wholesome reaction of thankfulness.
+
+"Ah, well," she said, the sunset dilating through her tears, "don't you see
+that I can bear to think such things only because they're impossibilities?
+It's easy to look over into the depths if one has a rampart to lean on.
+What I most pity poor Arthur for is that, instead of that woman lying
+there, so dreadfully dead, there might have been a girl like me, so
+exquisitely alive because of him; but it seems cruel, doesn't it, to let
+what he was not add ever so little to the value of what you are? To let him
+contribute ever so little to my happiness by the difference there is
+between you?"
+
+She was conscious, as she spoke, of straying again beyond his
+reach, through intricacies of sensation new even to her exploring
+susceptibilities. A happy literalness usually enabled him to strike a short
+cut through such labyrinths, and rejoin her smiling on the other side; but
+now she became wonderingly aware that he had been caught in the thick of
+her hypothesis.
+
+"It's the difference that makes you care for me, then?" he broke out, with
+a kind of violence which seemed to renew his clutch on her wrist.
+
+"The difference?"
+
+He lashed the ponies again, so sharply that a murmur escaped her, and he
+drew them up, quivering, with an inconsequent "Steady, boys," at which
+their back-laid ears protested.
+
+"It's because I'm moral and respectable, and all that, that you're fond of
+me," he went on; "you're--you're simply in love with my virtues. You
+couldn't imagine caring if I were down there in the ditch, as you say, with
+Arthur?"
+
+The question fell on a silence which seemed to deepen suddenly within
+herself. Every thought hung bated on the sense that something was coming:
+her whole consciousness became a void to receive it.
+
+"Denis!" she cried.
+
+He turned on her almost savagely. "I don't want your pity, you know," he
+burst out. "You can keep that for Arthur. I had an idea women loved men for
+themselves--through everything, I mean. But I wouldn't steal your love--I
+don't want it on false pretenses, you understand. Go and look into other
+men's lives, that's all I ask of you. I slipped into it--it was just a case
+of holding my tongue when I ought to have spoken--but I--I--for God's sake,
+don't sit there staring! I suppose you've seen all along that I knew he was
+married to the woman."
+
+
+III
+
+The housekeeper's reminding her that Mr. Orme would be at home the next day
+for dinner, and did she think he would like the venison with claret sauce
+or jelly, roused Kate to the first consciousness of her surroundings.
+Her father would return on the morrow: he would give to the dressing of
+the venison such minute consideration as, in his opinion, every detail
+affecting his comfort or convenience quite obviously merited. And if
+it were not the venison it would be something else; if it were not the
+housekeeper it would be Mr. Orme, charged with the results of a conference
+with his agent, a committee-meeting at his club, or any of the other
+incidents which, by happening to himself, became events. Kate found herself
+caught in the inexorable continuity of life, found herself gazing over a
+scene of ruin lit up by the punctual recurrence of habit as nature's calm
+stare lights the morrow of a whirlwind.
+
+Life was going on, then, and dragging her at its wheels. She could
+neither check its rush nor wrench loose from it and drop out--oh, how
+blessedly--into darkness and cessation. She must go bounding on, racked,
+broken, but alive in every fibre. The most she could hope was a few hours'
+respite, not from her own terrors, but from the pressure of outward claims:
+the midday halt, during which the victim is unbound while his torturers
+rest from their efforts. Till her father's return she would have the house
+to herself, and, the question of the venison despatched, could give herself
+to long lonely pacings of the empty rooms, and shuddering subsidences upon
+her pillow.
+
+Her first impulse, as the mist cleared from her brain, was the habitual one
+of reaching out for ultimate relations. She wanted to know the worst; and
+for her, as she saw in a flash, the worst of it was the core of fatality
+in what had happened. She shrank from her own way of putting it--nor was
+it even figuratively true that she had ever felt, under faith in Denis,
+any such doubt as the perception implied. But that was merely because her
+imagination had never put him to the test. She was fond of exposing herself
+to hypothetical ordeals, but somehow she had never carried Denis with her
+on these adventures. What she saw now was that, in a world of strangeness,
+he remained the object least strange to her. She was not in the tragic case
+of the girl who suddenly sees her lover unmasked. No mask had dropped from
+Denis's face: the pink shades had simply been lifted from the lamps, and
+she saw him for the first time in an unmitigated glare.
+
+Such exposure does not alter the features, but it lays an ugly emphasis
+on the most charming lines, pushing the smile to a grin, the curve of
+good-nature to the droop of slackness. And it was precisely into the
+flagging lines of extreme weakness that Denis's graceful contour flowed.
+In the terrible talk which had followed his avowal, and wherein every word
+flashed a light on his moral processes, she had been less startled by what
+he had done than by the way in which his conscience had already become a
+passive surface for the channelling of consequences. He was like a child
+who had put a match to the curtains, and stands agape at the blaze.
+It was horribly naughty to put the match--but beyond that the child's
+responsibility did not extend. In this business of Arthur's, where all had
+been wrong from the beginning--where self-defence might well find a plea
+for its casuistries in the absence of a definite right to be measured
+by--it had been easy, after the first slip, to drop a little lower with
+each struggle. The woman--oh, the woman was--well, of the kind who prey on
+such men. Arthur, out there, at his lowest ebb, had drifted into living
+with her as a man drifts into drink or opium. He knew what she was--he
+knew where she had come from. But he had fallen ill, and she had nursed
+him--nursed him devotedly, of course. That was her chance, and she knew it.
+Before he was out of the fever she had the noose around him--he came to and
+found himself married. Such cases were common enough--if the man recovered
+he bought off the woman and got a divorce. It was all a part of the
+business--the marriage, the bribe, the divorce. Some of those women made a
+big income out of it--they were married and divorced once a year. If Arthur
+had only got well--but, instead, he had a relapse and died. And there was
+the woman, made his widow by mischance as it were, with her child on her
+arm--whose child?--and a scoundrelly black-mailing lawyer to work up her
+case for her. Her claim was clear enough--the right of dower, a third of
+his estate. But if he had never meant to marry her? If he had been trapped
+as patently as a rustic fleeced in a gambling-hell? Arthur, in his last
+hours, had confessed to the marriage, but had also acknowledged its folly.
+And after his death, when Denis came to look about him and make inquiries,
+he found that the witnesses, if there had been any, were dispersed and
+undiscoverable. The whole question hinged on Arthur's statement to his
+brother. Suppress that statement, and the claim vanished, and with it the
+scandal, the humiliation, the life-long burden of the woman and child
+dragging the name of Peyton through heaven knew what depths. He had thought
+of that first, Denis swore, rather than of the money. The money, of course,
+had made a difference,--he was too honest not to own it--but not till
+afterward, he declared--would have declared on his honour, but that the
+word tripped him up, and sent a flush to his forehead.
+
+Thus, in broken phrases, he flung his defence at her: a defence improvised,
+pieced together as he went along, to mask the crude instinctiveness of his
+act. For with increasing clearness Kate saw, as she listened, that there
+had been no real struggle in his mind; that, but for the grim logic of
+chance, he might never have felt the need of any justification. If the
+woman, after the manner of such baffled huntresses, had wandered off in
+search of fresh prey, he might, quite sincerely, have congratulated himself
+on having saved a decent name and an honest fortune from her talons. It was
+the price she had paid to establish her claim that for the first time
+brought him to a startled sense of its justice. His conscience responded
+only to the concrete pressure of facts.
+
+It was with the anguish of this discovery that Kate Orme locked herself in
+at the end of their talk. How the talk had ended, how at length she had got
+him from the room and the house, she recalled but confusedly. The tragedy
+of the woman's death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing in the
+disaster of his bright irreclaimableness. Once, when she had cried out,
+"You would have married me and said nothing," and he groaned back, "But
+I _have_ told you," she felt like a trainer with a lash above some
+bewildered animal.
+
+But she persisted savagely. "You told me because you had to; because your
+nerves gave way; because you knew it couldn't hurt you to tell." The
+perplexed appeal of his gaze had almost checked her. "You told me because
+it was a relief; but nothing will really relieve you--nothing will really
+help you--till you have told some one who--who _will_ hurt you."
+
+"Who will hurt me--?"
+
+"Till you have told the truth as--as openly as you lied."
+
+He started up, ghastly with fear. "I don't understand you."
+
+"You must confess, then--publicly--openly--you must go to the judge. I
+don't know how it's done."
+
+"To the judge? When they're both dead? When everything is at an end? What
+good could that do?" he groaned.
+
+"Everything is not at an end for you--everything is just beginning. You
+must clear yourself of this guilt; and there is only one way--to confess
+it. And you must give back the money."
+
+This seemed to strike him as conclusive proof of her irrelevance. "I wish I
+had never heard of the money! But to whom would you have me give it back? I
+tell you she was a waif out of the gutter. I don't believe any one knew her
+real name--I don't believe she had one."
+
+"She must have had a mother and father."
+
+"Am I to devote my life to hunting for them through the slums of
+California? And how shall I know when I have found them? It's impossible to
+make you understand. I did wrong--I did horribly wrong--but that is not the
+way to repair it."
+
+"What is, then?"
+
+He paused, a little askance at the question. "To do better--to do my best,"
+he said, with a sudden flourish of firmness. "To take warning by this
+dreadful--"
+
+"Oh, be silent," she cried out, and hid her face. He looked at her
+hopelessly.
+
+At last he said: "I don't know what good it can do to go on talking. I have
+only one more thing to say. Of course you know that you are free."
+
+He spoke simply, with a sudden return to his old voice and accent, at which
+she weakened as under a caress. She lifted her head and gazed at him. "Am
+I?" she said musingly.
+
+"Kate!" burst from him; but she raised a silencing hand.
+
+"It seems to me," she said, "that I am imprisoned--imprisoned with you in
+this dreadful thing. First I must help you to get out--then it will be time
+enough to think of myself."
+
+His face fell and he stammered: "I don't understand you."
+
+"I can't say what I shall do--or how I shall feel--till I know what you are
+going to do and feel."
+
+"You must see how I feel--that I'm half dead with it."
+
+"Yes--but that is only half."
+
+He turned this over for a perceptible space of time before asking slowly:
+"You mean that you'll give me up, if I don't do this crazy thing you
+propose?"
+
+She paused in turn. "No," she said; "I don't want to bribe you. You must
+feel the need of it yourself."
+
+"The need of proclaiming this thing publicly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He sat staring before him. "Of course you realize what it would mean?" he
+began at length.
+
+"To you?" she returned.
+
+"I put that aside. To others--to you. I should go to prison."
+
+"I suppose so," she said simply.
+
+"You seem to take it very easily--I'm afraid my mother wouldn't."
+
+"Your mother?" This produced the effect he had expected.
+
+"You hadn't thought of her, I suppose? It would probably kill her."
+
+"It would have killed her to think that you could do what you have done!"
+
+"It would have made her very unhappy; but there's a difference."
+
+Yes: there was a difference; a difference which no rhetoric could disguise.
+The secret sin would have made Mrs. Peyton wretched, but it would not
+have killed her. And she would have taken precisely Denis's view of the
+elasticity of atonement: she would have accepted private regrets as
+the genteel equivalent of open expiation. Kate could even imagine her
+extracting a "lesson" from the providential fact that her son had not
+been found out.
+
+"You see it's not so simple," he broke out, with a tinge of doleful
+triumph.
+
+"No: it's not simple," she assented.
+
+"One must think of others," he continued, gathering faith in his argument
+as he saw her reduced to acquiescence.
+
+She made no answer, and after a moment he rose to go. So far, in
+retrospect, she could follow the course of their talk; but when, in the
+act of parting, argument lapsed into entreaty, and renunciation into the
+passionate appeal to give him at least one more hearing, her memory lost
+itself in a tumult of pain, and she recalled only that, when the door
+closed on him, he took with him her promise to see him once again.
+
+
+IV
+
+She had promised to see him again; but the promise did not imply that she
+had rejected his offer of freedom. In the first rush of misery she had not
+fully repossessed herself, had felt herself entangled in his fate by a
+hundred meshes of association and habit; but after a sleepless night spent
+with the thought of him--that dreadful bridal of their souls--she woke to a
+morrow in which he had no part. She had not sought her freedom, nor had he
+given it; but a chasm had opened at their feet, and they found themselves
+on different sides.
+
+Now she was able to scan the disaster from the melancholy vantage of her
+independence. She could even draw a solace from the fact that she had
+ceased to love Denis. It was inconceivable that an emotion so interwoven
+with every fibre of consciousness should cease as suddenly as the flow of
+sap in an uprooted plant; but she had never allowed herself to be tricked
+by the current phraseology of sentiment, and there were no stock axioms to
+protect her from the truth.
+
+It was probably because she had ceased to love him that she could look
+forward with a kind of ghastly composure to seeing him again. She had
+stipulated, of course, that the wedding should be put off, but she had
+named no other condition beyond asking for two days to herself--two days
+during which he was not even to write. She wished to shut herself in with
+her misery, to accustom herself to it as she had accustomed herself to
+happiness. But actual seclusion was impossible: the subtle reactions of
+life almost at once began to break down her defences. She could no more
+have her wretchedness to herself than any other emotion: all the lives
+about her were so many unconscious factors in her sensations. She tried
+to concentrate herself on the thought as to how she could best help poor
+Denis; for love, in ebbing, had laid bare an unsuspected depth of pity.
+But she found it more and more difficult to consider his situation in the
+abstract light of right and wrong. Open expiation still seemed to her the
+only possible way of healing; but she tried vainly to think of Mrs. Peyton
+as taking such a view. Yet Mrs. Peyton ought at least to know what had
+happened: was it not, in the last resort, she who should pronounce on
+her son's course? For a moment Kate was fascinated by this evasion of
+responsibility; she had nearly decided to tell Denis that he must begin by
+confessing everything to his mother. But almost at once she began to shrink
+from the consequences. There was nothing she so dreaded for him as that any
+one should take a light view of his act: should turn its irremediableness
+into an excuse. And this, she foresaw, was what Mrs. Peyton would do. The
+first burst of misery over, she would envelop the whole situation in a mist
+of expediency. Brought to the bar of Kate's judgment, she at once revealed
+herself incapable of higher action.
+
+Kate's conception of her was still under arraignment when the actual Mrs.
+Peyton fluttered in. It was the afternoon of the second day, as the girl
+phrased it in the dismal re-creation of her universe. She had been thinking
+so hard of Mrs. Peyton that the lady's silvery insubstantial presence
+seemed hardly more than a projection of the thought; but as Kate collected
+herself, and regained contact with the outer world, her preoccupation
+yielded to surprise. It was unusual for Mrs. Peyton to pay visits. For
+years she had remained enthroned in a semi-invalidism which prohibited
+effort while it did not preclude diversion; and the girl at once divined a
+special purpose in her coming.
+
+Mrs. Peyton's traditions would not have permitted any direct method of
+attack; and Kate had to sit through the usual prelude of ejaculation and
+anecdote. Presently, however, the elder lady's voice gathered significance,
+and laying her hand on Kate's she murmured: "I have come to talk to you of
+this sad affair."
+
+Kate began to tremble. Was it possible that Denis had after all spoken? A
+rising hope checked her utterance, and she saw in a flash that it still lay
+with him to regain his hold on her. But Mrs. Peyton went on delicately:
+"It has been a great shock to my poor boy. To be brought in contact with
+Arthur's past was in itself inexpressibly painful; but this last dreadful
+business--that woman's wicked act--"
+
+"Wicked?" Kate exclaimed.
+
+Mrs. Peyton's gentle stare reproved her. "Surely religion teaches us that
+suicide is a sin? And to murder her child! I ought not to speak to you of
+such things, my dear. No one has ever mentioned anything so dreadful in my
+presence: my dear husband used to screen me so carefully from the painful
+side of life. Where there is so much that is beautiful to dwell upon, we
+should try to ignore the existence of such horrors. But nowadays everything
+is in the papers; and Denis told me he thought it better that you should
+hear the news first from him."
+
+Kate nodded without speaking.
+
+"He felt how _dreadful_ it was to have to tell you. But I tell him he
+takes a morbid view of the case. Of course one is shocked at the woman's
+crime--but, if one looks a little deeper, how can one help seeing that it
+may have been designed as the means of rescuing that poor child from a life
+of vice and misery? That is the view I want Denis to take: I want him to
+see how all the difficulties of life disappear when one has learned to look
+for a divine purpose in human sufferings."
+
+Mrs. Peyton rested a moment on this period, as an experienced climber
+pauses to be overtaken by a less agile companion; but presently she became
+aware that Kate was still far below her, and perhaps needed a stronger
+incentive to the ascent.
+
+"My dear child," she said adroitly, "I said just now that I was sorry you
+had been obliged to hear of this sad affair; but after all it is only you
+who can avert its consequences."
+
+Kate drew an eager breath. "Its consequences?" she faltered.
+
+Mrs. Peyton's voice dropped solemnly. "Denis has told me everything," she
+said.
+
+"Everything?"
+
+"That you insist on putting off the marriage. Oh, my dear, I do implore you
+to reconsider that!"
+
+Kate sank back with the sense of having passed again into a region of
+leaden shadow. "Is that all he told you?"
+
+Mrs. Peyton gazed at her with arch raillery. "All? Isn't it everything--to
+him?"
+
+"Did he give you my reason, I mean?"
+
+"He said you felt that, after this shocking tragedy, there ought, in
+decency, to be a delay; and I quite understand the feeling. It does seem
+too unfortunate that the woman should have chosen this particular time! But
+you will find as you grow older that life is full of such sad contrasts."
+
+Kate felt herself slowly petrifying under the warm drip of Mrs. Peyton's
+platitudes.
+
+"It seems to me," the elder lady continued, "that there is only one point
+from which we ought to consider the question--and that is, its effect on
+Denis. But for that we ought to refuse to know anything about it. But it
+has made my boy so unhappy. The law-suit was a cruel ordeal to him--the
+dreadful notoriety, the revelation of poor Arthur's infirmities. Denis is
+as sensitive as a woman; it is his unusual refinement of feeling that makes
+him so worthy of being loved by you. But such sensitiveness may be carried
+to excess. He ought not to let this unhappy incident prey on him: it shows
+a lack of trust in the divine ordering of things. That is what troubles
+me: his faith in life has been shaken. And--you must forgive me, dear
+child--you _will_ forgive me, I know--but I can't help blaming you a
+little--"
+
+Mrs. Peyton's accent converted the accusation into a caress, which
+prolonged itself in a tremulous pressure of Kate's hand.
+
+The girl gazed at her blankly. "You blame _me_--?"
+
+"Don't be offended, my child. I only fear that your excessive sympathy with
+Denis, your own delicacy of feeling, may have led you to encourage his
+morbid ideas. He tells me you were very much shocked--as you naturally
+would be--as any girl must be--I would not have you otherwise, dear Kate!
+It is _beautiful_ that you should both feel so; most beautiful; but
+you know religion teaches us not to yield too much to our grief. Let the
+dead bury their dead; the living owe themselves to each other. And what had
+this wretched woman to do with either of you? It is a misfortune for Denis
+to have been connected in any way with a man of Arthur Peyton's character;
+but after all, poor Arthur did all he could to atone for the disgrace he
+brought on us, by making Denis his heir--and I am sure I have no wish to
+question the decrees of Providence." Mrs. Peyton paused again, and then
+softly absorbed both of Kate's hands. "For my part," she continued, "I see
+in it another instance of the beautiful ordering of events. Just after dear
+Denis's inheritance has removed the last obstacle to your marriage, this
+sad incident comes to show how desperately he needs you, how cruel it would
+be to ask him to defer his happiness."
+
+She broke off, shaken out of her habitual placidity by the abrupt
+withdrawal of the girl's hands. Kate sat inertly staring, but no answer
+rose to her lips.
+
+At length Mrs. Peyton resumed, gathering her draperies about her with a
+tentative hint of leave-taking: "I may go home and tell him that you will
+not put off the wedding?"
+
+Kate was still silent, and her visitor looked at her with the mild surprise
+of an advocate unaccustomed to plead in vain.
+
+"If your silence means refusal, my dear, I think you ought to realize the
+responsibility you assume." Mrs. Peyton's voice had acquired an edge of
+righteous asperity. "If Denis has a fault it is that he is too gentle, too
+yielding, too readily influenced by those he cares for. Your influence is
+paramount with him now--but if you turn from him just when he needs your
+help, who can say what the result will be?"
+
+The argument, though impressively delivered, was hardly of a nature to
+carry conviction to its hearer; but it was perhaps for that very reason
+that she suddenly and unexpectedly replied to it by sinking back into her
+seat with a burst of tears. To Mrs. Peyton, however, tears were the signal
+of surrender, and, at Kate's side in an instant she hastened to temper her
+triumph with magnanimity.
+
+"Don't think I don't feel with you; but we must both forget ourselves for
+our boy's sake. I told him I should come back with your promise."
+
+The arm she had slipped about Kate's shoulder fell back with the girl's
+start. Kate had seen in a flash what capital would be made of her emotion.
+
+"No, no, you misunderstand me. I can make no promise," she declared.
+
+The older lady sat a moment irresolute; then she restored her arm to the
+shoulder from which it had been so abruptly displaced.
+
+"My dear child," she said, in a tone of tender confidence, "if I have
+misunderstood you, ought you not to enlighten me? You asked me just now
+if Denis had given me your reason for this strange postponement. He gave
+me one reason, but it seems hardly sufficient to explain your conduct.
+If there is any other,--and I know you well enough to feel sure there
+is,--will you not trust me with it? If my boy has been unhappy enough to
+displease you, will you not give his mother the chance to plead his cause?
+Remember, no one should be condemned unheard. As Denis's mother, I have the
+right to ask for your reason."
+
+"My reason? My reason?" Kate stammered, panting with the exhaustion of the
+struggle. Oh, if only Mrs. Peyton would release her! "If you have the right
+to know it, why doesn't he tell you?" she cried.
+
+Mrs. Peyton stood up, quivering. "I will go home and ask him," she said. "I
+will tell him he had your permission to speak."
+
+She moved toward the door, with the nervous haste of a person unaccustomed
+to decisive action. But Kate sprang before her.
+
+"No, no; don't ask him! I implore you not to ask him," she cried.
+
+Mrs. Peyton turned on her with sudden authority of voice and gesture. "Do
+I understand you?" she said. "You admit that you have a reason for putting
+off your marriage, and yet you forbid me--me, Denis's mother--to ask him
+what it is? My poor child, I needn't ask, for I know already. If he has
+offended you, and you refuse him the chance to defend himself, I needn't
+look farther for your reason: it is simply that you have ceased to love
+him."
+
+Kate fell back from the door which she had instinctively barricaded.
+
+"Perhaps that is it," she murmured, letting Mrs. Peyton pass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Orme's returning carriage-wheels crossed Mrs. Peyton's indignant
+flight; and an hour later Kate, in the bland candle-light of the
+dinner-hour, sat listening with practised fortitude to her father's
+comments on the venison.
+
+She had wondered, as she awaited him in the drawing-room, if he would
+notice any change in her appearance. It seemed to her that the flagellation
+of her thoughts must have left visible traces. But Mr. Orme was not a man
+of subtle perceptions, save where his personal comfort was affected: though
+his egoism was clothed in the finest feelers, he did not suspect a similar
+surface in others. His daughter, as part of himself, came within the normal
+range of his solicitude; but she was an outlying region, a subject
+province; and Mr. Orme's was a highly centralized polity.
+
+News of the painful incident--he often used Mrs. Peyton's vocabulary--had
+reached him at his club, and to some extent disturbed the assimilation of a
+carefully ordered breakfast; but since then two days had passed, and it did
+not take Mr. Orme forty-eight hours to resign himself to the misfortunes of
+others. It was all very nasty, of course, and he wished to heaven it hadn't
+happened to any one about to be connected with him; but he viewed it with
+the transient annoyance of a gentleman who has been splashed by the mud of
+a fatal runaway.
+
+Mr. Orme affected, under such circumstances, a bluff and hearty stoicism
+as remote as possible from Mrs. Peyton's deprecating evasion of facts. It
+was a bad business; he was sorry Kate should have been mixed up with it;
+but she would be married soon now, and then she would see that life wasn't
+exactly a Sunday-school story. Everybody was exposed to such disagreeable
+accidents: he remembered a case in their own family--oh, a distant cousin
+whom Kate wouldn't have heard of--a poor fellow who had got entangled with
+just such a woman, and having (most properly) been sent packing by his
+father, had justified the latter's course by promptly forging his name--a
+very nasty affair altogether; but luckily the scandal had been hushed up,
+the woman bought off, and the prodigal, after a season of probation, safely
+married to a nice girl with a good income, who was told by the family that
+the doctors recommended his settling in California.
+
+_Luckily the scandal was hushed up_: the phrase blazed out against
+the dark background of Kate's misery. That was doubtless what most people
+felt--the words represented the consensus of respectable opinion. The best
+way of repairing a fault was to hide it: to tear up the floor and bury the
+victim at night. Above all, no coroner and no autopsy!
+
+She began to feel a strange interest in her distant cousin. "And his
+wife--did she know what he had done?"
+
+Mr. Orme stared. His moral pointed, he had returned to the contemplation of
+his own affairs.
+
+"His wife? Oh, of course not. The secret has been most admirably kept; but
+her property was put in trust, so she's quite safe with him."
+
+Her property! Kate wondered if her faith in her husband had also been
+put in trust, if her sensibilities had been protected from his possible
+inroads.
+
+"Do you think it quite fair to have deceived her in that way?"
+
+Mr. Orme gave her a puzzled glance: he had no taste for the by-paths of
+ethical conjecture.
+
+"His people wanted to give the poor fellow another chance; they did the
+best they could for him."
+
+"And--he has done nothing dishonourable since?"
+
+"Not that I know of: the last I heard was that they had a little boy,
+and that he was quite happy. At that distance he's not likely to bother
+_us_, at all events."
+
+Long after Mr. Orme had left the topic, Kate remained lost in its
+contemplation. She had begun to perceive that the fair surface of life was
+honeycombed by a vast system of moral sewage. Every respectable household
+had its special arrangements for the private disposal of family scandals;
+it was only among the reckless and improvident that such hygienic
+precautions were neglected. Who was she to pass judgment on the merits
+of such a system? The social health must be preserved: the means devised
+were the result of long experience and the collective instinct of
+self-preservation. She had meant to tell her father that evening that her
+marriage had been put off; but she now abstained from doing so, not from
+any doubt of Mr. Orme's acquiescence--he could always be made to feel the
+force of conventional scruples--but because the whole question sank into
+insignificance beside the larger issue which his words had raised.
+
+In her own room, that night, she passed through that travail of the soul
+of which the deeper life is born. Her first sense was of a great moral
+loneliness--an isolation more complete, more impenetrable, than that in
+which the discovery of Denis's act had plunged her. For she had vaguely
+leaned, then, on a collective sense of justice that should respond to
+her own ideas of right and wrong: she still believed in the logical
+correspondence of theory and practice. Now she saw that, among those
+nearest her, there was no one who recognized the moral need of expiation.
+She saw that to take her father or Mrs. Peyton into her confidence would
+be but to widen the circle of sterile misery in which she and Denis moved.
+At first the aspect of life thus revealed to her seemed simply mean
+and base--a world where honour was a pact of silence between adroit
+accomplices. The network of circumstance had tightened round her, and every
+effort to escape drew its meshes closer. But as her struggles subsided she
+felt the spiritual release which comes with acceptance: not connivance in
+dishonour, but recognition of evil. Out of that dark vision light was to
+come, the shaft of cloud turning to the pillar of fire. For here, at last,
+life lay before her as it was: not brave, garlanded and victorious, but
+naked, grovelling and diseased, dragging its maimed limbs through the mud,
+yet lifting piteous hands to the stars. Love itself, once throned aloft
+on an altar of dreams, how it stole to her now, storm-beaten and scarred,
+pleading for the shelter of her breast! Love, indeed, not in the old sense
+in which she had conceived it, but a graver, austerer presence--the charity
+of the mystic three. She thought she had ceased to love Denis--but what had
+she loved in him but her happiness and his? Their affection had been the
+_garden enclosed_ of the Canticles, where they were to walk forever in
+a delicate isolation of bliss. But now love appeared to her as something
+more than this--something wider, deeper, more enduring than the selfish
+passion of a man and a woman. She saw it in all its far-reaching issues,
+till the first meeting of two pairs of young eyes kindled a light which
+might be a high-lifted beacon across dark waters of humanity.
+
+All this did not come to her clearly, consecutively, but in a series of
+blurred and shifting images. Marriage had meant to her, as it means to
+girls brought up in ignorance of life, simply the exquisite prolongation of
+wooing. If she had looked beyond, to the vision of wider ties, it was as
+a traveller gazes over a land veiled in golden haze, and so far distant
+that the imagination delays to explore it. But now through the blur of
+sensations one image strangely persisted--the image of Denis's child. Had
+she ever before thought of their having a child? She could not remember.
+She was like one who wakens from a long fever: she recalled nothing of
+her former self or of her former feelings. She knew only that the vision
+persisted--the vision of the child whose mother she was not to be. It was
+impossible that she should marry Denis--her inmost soul rejected him ...
+but it was just because she was not to be the child's mother that its
+image followed her so pleadingly. For she saw with perfect clearness the
+inevitable course of events. Denis would marry some one else--he was one of
+the men who are fated to marry, and she needed not his mother's reminder
+that her abandonment of him at an emotional crisis would fling him upon the
+first sympathy within reach. He would marry a girl who knew nothing of his
+secret--for Kate was intensely aware that he would never again willingly
+confess himself--he would marry a girl who trusted him and leaned on him,
+as she, Kate Orme--the earlier Kate Orme--had done but two days since! And
+with this deception between them their child would be born: born to an
+inheritance of secret weakness, a vice of the moral fibre, as it might be
+born with some hidden physical taint which would destroy it before the
+cause should be detected.... Well, and what of it? Was she to hold herself
+responsible? Were not thousands of children born with some such unsuspected
+taint?... Ah, but if here was one that she could save? What if she, who had
+had so exquisite a vision of wifehood, should reconstruct from its ruins
+this vision of protecting maternity--if her love for her lover should be,
+not lost, but transformed, enlarged, into this passion of charity for his
+race? If she might expiate and redeem his fault by becoming a refuge from
+its consequences? Before this strange extension of her love all the old
+limitations seemed to fall. Something had cleft the surface of self, and
+there welled up the mysterious primal influences, the sacrificial instinct
+of her sex, a passion of spiritual motherhood that made her long to fling
+herself between the unborn child and its fate....
+
+She never knew, then or after, how she reached this mystic climax of
+effacement; she was only conscious, through her anguish, of that lift of
+the heart which made one of the saints declare that joy was the inmost core
+of sorrow. For it was indeed a kind of joy she felt, if old names must
+serve for such new meanings; a surge of liberating faith in life, the old
+_credo quia absurdum_ which is the secret cry of all supreme
+endeavour.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+I
+
+"Does it look nice, mother?"
+
+Dick Peyton met her with the question on the threshold, drawing her gaily
+into the little square room, and adding, with a laugh with a blush in it:
+"You know she's an uncommonly noticing person, and little things tell with
+her."
+
+He swung round on his heel to follow his mother's smiling inspection of the
+apartment.
+
+"She seems to have _all_ the qualities," Mrs. Denis Peyton remarked,
+as her circuit finally brought her to the prettily appointed tea-table.
+
+"_All_," he declared, taking the sting from her emphasis by his prompt
+adoption of it. Dick had always had a wholesome way of thus appropriating
+to his own use such small shafts of maternal irony as were now and then
+aimed at him.
+
+Kate Peyton laughed and loosened her furs. "It looks charmingly," she
+pronounced, ending her survey by an approach to the window, which gave,
+far below, the oblique perspective of a long side-street leading to Fifth
+Avenue.
+
+The high-perched room was Dick Peyton's private office, a retreat
+partitioned off from the larger enclosure in which, under a north light
+and on a range of deal tables, three or four young draughtsmen were busily
+engaged in elaborating his architectural projects. The outer door of the
+office bore the sign: _Peyton and Gill, Architects_; but Gill was
+an utilitarian person, as unobtrusive as his name, who contented himself
+with a desk in the workroom, and left Dick to lord it alone in the small
+apartment to which clients were introduced, and where the social part of
+the business was carried on.
+
+It was to serve, on this occasion, as the scene of a tea designed, as Kate
+Peyton was vividly aware, to introduce a certain young lady to the scene of
+her son's labours. Mrs. Peyton had been hearing a great deal lately about
+Clemence Verney. Dick was naturally expansive, and his close intimacy with
+his mother--an intimacy fostered by his father's early death--if it had
+suffered some natural impairment in his school and college days, had of
+late been revived by four years of comradeship in Paris, where Mrs. Peyton,
+in a tiny apartment of the Rue de Varennes, had kept house for him during
+his course of studies at the Beaux Arts. There were indeed not lacking
+critics of her own sex who accused Kate Peyton of having figured too
+largely in her son's life; of having failed to efface herself at a period
+when it is agreed that young men are best left free to try conclusions with
+the world. Mrs. Peyton, had she cared to defend herself, might have said
+that Dick, if communicative, was not impressionable, and that the closeness
+of texture which enabled him to throw off her sarcasms preserved him also
+from the infiltration of her prejudices. He was certainly no knight of the
+apron-string, but a seemingly resolute and self-sufficient young man, whose
+romantic friendship with his mother had merely served to throw a veil of
+suavity over the hard angles of youth.
+
+But Mrs. Peyton's real excuse was after all one which she would never have
+given. It was because her intimacy with her son was the one need of her
+life that she had, with infinite tact and discretion, but with equal
+persistency, clung to every step of his growth, dissembling herself,
+adapting herself, rejuvenating herself in the passionate effort to be
+always within reach, but never in the way.
+
+Denis Peyton had died after seven years of marriage, when his boy was
+barely six. During those seven years he had managed to squander the best
+part of the fortune he had inherited from his step-brother; so that, at his
+death, his widow and son were left with a scant competence. Mrs. Peyton,
+during her husband's life, had apparently made no effort to restrain his
+expenditure. She had even been accused by those judicious persons who are
+always ready with an estimate of their neighbours' motives, of having
+encouraged poor Denis's improvidence for the gratification of her own
+ambition. She had in fact, in the early days of their marriage, tried to
+launch him in politics, and had perhaps drawn somewhat heavily on his funds
+in the first heat of the contest; but the experiment ending in failure, as
+Denis Peyton's experiments were apt to end, she had made no farther demands
+on his exchequer. Her personal tastes were in fact unusually simple, but
+her outspoken indifference to money was not, in the opinion of her critics,
+designed to act as a check upon her husband; and it resulted in leaving
+her, at his death, in straits from which it was impossible not to deduce a
+moral.
+
+Her small means, and the care of the boy's education, served the widow as
+a pretext for secluding herself in a socially remote suburb, where it was
+inferred that she was expiating, on queer food and in ready-made boots, her
+rash defiance of fortune. Whether or not Mrs. Peyton's penance took this
+form, she hoarded her substance to such good purpose that she was not only
+able to give Dick the best of schooling, but to propose, on his leaving
+Harvard, that he should prolong his studies by another four years at the
+Beaux Arts. It had been the joy of her life that her boy had early shown
+a marked bent for a special line of work. She could not have borne to see
+him reduced to a mere money-getter, yet she was not sorry that their small
+means forbade the cultivation of an ornamental leisure. In his college days
+Dick had troubled her by a superabundance of tastes, a restless flitting
+from one form of artistic expression to another. Whatever art he enjoyed
+he wished to practise, and he passed from music to painting, from painting
+to architecture, with an ease which seemed to his mother to indicate lack
+of purpose rather than excess of talent. She had observed that these
+changes were usually due, not to self-criticism, but to some external
+discouragement. Any depreciation of his work was enough to convince him
+of the uselessness of pursuing that special form of art, and the reaction
+produced the immediate conviction that he was really destined to shine in
+some other line of work. He had thus swung from one calling to another
+till, at the end of his college career, his mother took the decisive step
+of transplanting him to the Beaux Arts, in the hope that a definite course
+of study, combined with the stimulus of competition, might fix his wavering
+aptitudes. The result justified her expectation, and their four years in
+the Rue de Varennes yielded the happiest confirmation of her belief in
+him. Dick's ability was recognized not only by his mother, but by his
+professors. He was engrossed in his work, and his first successes developed
+his capacity for application. His mother's only fear was that praise was
+still too necessary to him. She was uncertain how long his ambition would
+sustain him in the face of failure. He gave lavishly where he was sure
+of a return; but it remained to be seen if he were capable of production
+without recognition. She had brought him up in a wholesome scorn of
+material rewards, and nature seemed, in this direction, to have seconded
+her training. He was genuinely indifferent to money, and his enjoyment
+of beauty was of that happy sort which does not generate the wish for
+possession. As long as the inner eye had food for contemplation, he cared
+very little for the deficiencies in his surroundings; or, it might rather
+be said, he felt, in the sum-total of beauty about him, an ownership of
+appreciation that left him free from the fret of personal desire. Mrs.
+Peyton had cultivated to excess this disregard of material conditions; but
+she now began to ask herself whether, in so doing, she had not laid too
+great a strain on a temperament naturally exalted. In guarding against
+other tendencies she had perhaps fostered in him too exclusively those
+qualities which circumstances had brought to an unusual development in
+herself. His enthusiasms and his disdains were alike too unqualified
+for that happy mean of character which is the best defence against the
+surprises of fortune. If she had taught him to set an exaggerated value on
+ideal rewards, was not that but a shifting of the danger-point on which her
+fears had always hung? She trembled sometimes to think how little love and
+a lifelong vigilance had availed in the deflecting of inherited tendencies.
+
+Her fears were in a measure confirmed by the first two years of their life
+in New York, and the opening of his career as a professional architect.
+Close on the easy triumphs of his studentships there came the chilling
+reaction of public indifference. Dick, on his return from Paris, had formed
+a partnership with an architect who had had several years of practical
+training in a New York office; but the quiet and industrious Gill, though
+he attracted to the new firm a few small jobs which overflowed from the
+business of his former employer, was not able to infect the public with
+his own faith in Peyton's talents, and it was trying to a genius who felt
+himself capable of creating palaces to have to restrict his efforts to
+the building of suburban cottages or the planning of cheap alterations in
+private houses.
+
+Mrs. Peyton expended all the ingenuities of tenderness in keeping up
+her son's courage; and she was seconded in the task by a friend whose
+acquaintance Dick had made at the Beaux Arts, and who, two years before
+the Peytons, had returned to New York to start on his own career as an
+architect. Paul Darrow was a young man full of crude seriousness, who,
+after a youth of struggling work and study in his native northwestern
+state, had won a scholarship which sent him abroad for a course at the
+Beaux Arts. His two years there coincided with the first part of Dick's
+residence, and Darrow's gifts had at once attracted the younger student.
+Dick was unstinted in his admiration of rival talent, and Mrs. Peyton,
+who was romantically given to the cultivation of such generosities, had
+seconded his enthusiasm by the kindest offers of hospitality to the young
+student. Darrow thus became the grateful frequenter of their little
+_salon_; and after their return to New York the intimacy between
+the young men was renewed, though Mrs. Peyton found it more difficult
+to coax Dick's friend to her New York drawing-room than to the informal
+surroundings of the Rue de Varennes. There, no doubt, secluded and absorbed
+in her son's work, she had seemed to Darrow almost a fellow-student; but
+seen among her own associates she became once more the woman of fashion,
+divided from him by the whole breadth of her ease and his awkwardness.
+Mrs. Peyton, whose tact had divined the cause of his estrangement, would
+not for an instant let it affect the friendship of the two young men. She
+encouraged Dick to frequent Darrow, in whom she divined a persistency of
+effort, an artistic self-confidence, in curious contrast to his social
+hesitancies. The example of his obstinate capacity for work was just the
+influence her son needed, and if Darrow would not come to them she insisted
+that Dick must seek him out, must never let him think that any social
+discrepancy could affect a friendship based on deeper things. Dick, who had
+all the loyalties, and who took an honest pride in his friend's growing
+success, needed no urging to maintain the intimacy; and his copious reports
+of midnight colloquies in Darrow's lodgings showed Mrs. Peyton that she had
+a strong ally in her invisible friend.
+
+It had been, therefore, somewhat of a shock to learn in the course of time
+that Darrow's influence was being shared, if not counteracted, by that of a
+young lady in whose honour Dick was now giving his first professional tea.
+Mrs. Peyton had heard a great deal about Miss Clemence Verney, first from
+the usual purveyors of such information, and more recently from her son,
+who, probably divining that rumour had been before him, adopted his usual
+method of disarming his mother by taking her into his confidence. But,
+ample as her information was, it remained perplexing and contradictory, and
+even her own few meetings with the girl had not helped her to a definite
+opinion. Miss Verney, in conduct and ideas, was patently of the "new
+school": a young woman of feverish activities and broad-cast judgments,
+whose very versatility made her hard to define. Mrs. Peyton was shrewd
+enough to allow for the accidents of environment; what she wished to get
+at was the residuum of character beneath Miss Verney's shifting surface.
+
+"It looks charmingly," Mrs. Peyton repeated, giving a loosening touch to
+the chrysanthemums in a tall vase on her son's desk.
+
+Dick laughed, and glanced at his watch.
+
+"They won't be here for another quarter of an hour. I think I'll tell Gill
+to clean out the work-room before they come."
+
+"Are we to see the drawings for the competition?" his mother asked.
+
+He shook his head smilingly. "Can't--I've asked one or two of the Beaux
+Arts fellows, you know; and besides, old Darrow's actually coming."
+
+"Impossible!" Mrs. Peyton exclaimed.
+
+"He swore he would last night." Dick laughed again, with a tinge of
+self-satisfaction. "I've an idea he wants to see Miss Verney."
+
+"Ah," his mother murmured. There was a pause before she added: "Has Darrow
+really gone in for this competition?"
+
+"Rather! I should say so! He's simply working himself to the bone."
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat revolving her muff on a meditative hand; at length she
+said: "I'm not sure I think it quite nice of him."
+
+Her son halted before her with an incredulous stare. "_Mother_!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+The rebuke sent a blush to her forehead. "Well--considering your
+friendship--and everything."
+
+"Everything? What do you mean by everything? The fact that he had more
+ability than I have and is therefore more likely to succeed? The fact that
+he needs the money and the success a deuced sight more than any of us? Is
+that the reason you think he oughtn't to have entered? Mother! I never
+heard you say an ungenerous thing before."
+
+The blush deepened to crimson, and she rose with a nervous laugh. "It
+_was_ ungenerous," she conceded. "I suppose I'm jealous for you. I
+hate these competitions!"
+
+Her son smiled reassuringly. "You needn't. I'm not afraid: I think I shall
+pull it off this time. In fact, Paul's the only man I'm afraid of--I'm
+always afraid of Paul--but the mere fact that he's in the thing is a
+tremendous stimulus."
+
+His mother continued to study him with an anxious tenderness. "Have you
+worked out the whole scheme? Do you _see_ it yet?"
+
+"Oh, broadly, yes. There's a gap here and there--a hazy bit, rather--it's
+the hardest problem I've ever had to tackle; but then it's my biggest
+opportunity, and I've simply _got_ to pull it off!"
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat silent, considering his flushed face and illumined eye,
+which were rather those of the victor nearing the goal than of the runner
+just beginning the race. She remembered something that Darrow had once said
+of him: "Dick always sees the end too soon."
+
+"You haven't too much time left," she murmured.
+
+"Just a week. But I shan't go anywhere after this. I shall renounce the
+world." He glanced smilingly at the festal tea-table and the embowered
+desk. "When I next appear, it will either be with my heel on Paul's
+neck--poor old Paul--or else--or else--being dragged lifeless from the
+arena!"
+
+His mother nervously took up the laugh with which he ended. "Oh, not
+lifeless," she said.
+
+His face clouded. "Well, maimed for life, then," he muttered.
+
+Mrs. Peyton made no answer. She knew how much hung on the possibility of
+his winning the competition which for weeks past had engrossed him. It was
+a design for the new museum of sculpture, for which the city had recently
+voted half a million. Dick's taste ran naturally to the grandiose, and the
+erection of public buildings had always been the object of his ambition.
+Here was an unmatched opportunity, and he knew that, in a competition of
+the kind, the newest man had as much chance of success as the firm of most
+established reputation, since every competitor entered on his own merits,
+the designs being submitted to a jury of architects who voted on them
+without knowing the names of the contestants. Dick, characteristically,
+was not afraid of the older firms; indeed, as he had told his mother, Paul
+Darrow was the only rival he feared. Mrs. Peyton knew that, to a certain
+point, self-confidence was a good sign; but somehow her son's did not
+strike her as being of the right substance--it seemed to have no dimension
+but extent. Her fears were complicated by a suspicion that, under his
+professional eagerness for success, lay the knowledge that Miss Verney's
+favour hung on the victory. It was that, perhaps, which gave a feverish
+touch to his ambition; and Mrs. Peyton, surveying the future from the
+height of her material apprehensions, divined that the situation depended
+mainly on the girl's view of it. She would have given a great deal to know
+Clemence Verney's conception of success.
+
+
+II
+
+Miss Verney, when she presently appeared, in the wake of the impersonal
+and exclamatory young married woman who served as a background to her
+vivid outline, seemed competent to impart at short notice any information
+required of her. She had never struck Mrs. Peyton as more alert and
+efficient. A melting grace of line and colour tempered her edges with the
+charming haze of youth; but it occurred to her critic that she might emerge
+from this morning mist as a dry and metallic old woman.
+
+If Miss Verney suspected a personal application in Dick's hospitality, it
+did not call forth in her the usual tokens of self-consciousness. Her
+manner may have been a shade more vivid than usual, but she preserved all
+her bright composure of glance and speech, so that one guessed, under the
+rapid dispersal of words, an undisturbed steadiness of perception. She
+was lavishly but not indiscriminately interested in the evidences of her
+host's industry, and as the other guests assembled, straying with vague
+ejaculations through the labyrinth of scale drawings and blue prints, Mrs.
+Peyton noted that Miss Verney alone knew what these symbols stood for.
+
+To his visitors' requests to be shown his plans for the competition,
+Peyton had opposed a laughing refusal, enforced by the presence of two
+fellow-architects, young men with lingering traces of the Beaux Arts in
+their costume and vocabulary, who stood about in Gavarni attitudes and
+dazzled the ladies by allusions to fenestration and entasis. The party had
+already drifted back to the tea-table when a hesitating knock announced
+Darrow's approach. He entered with his usual air of having blundered in
+by mistake, embarrassed by his hat and great-coat, and thrown into deeper
+confusion by the necessity of being introduced to the ladies grouped about
+the urn. To the men he threw a gruff nod of fellowship, and Dick having
+relieved him of his encumbrances, he retreated behind the shelter of Mrs.
+Peyton's welcome. The latter judiciously gave him time to recover, and when
+she turned to him he was engaged in a surreptitious inspection of Miss
+Verney, whose dusky slenderness, relieved against the bare walls of the
+office, made her look like a young St. John of Donatello's. The girl
+returned his look with one of her clear glances, and the group having
+presently broken up again, Mrs. Peyton saw that she had drifted to Darrow's
+side. The visitors at length wandered back to the work-room to see a
+portfolio of Dick's water-colours; but Mrs. Peyton remained seated behind
+the urn, listening to the interchange of talk through the open door while
+she tried to coordinate her impressions.
+
+She saw that Miss Verney was sincerely interested in Dick's work: it
+was the nature of her interest that remained in doubt. As if to solve
+this doubt, the girl presently reappeared alone on the threshold, and
+discovering Mrs. Peyton, advanced toward her with a smile.
+
+"Are you tired of hearing us praise Mr. Peyton's things?" she asked,
+dropping into a low chair beside her hostess. "Unintelligent admiration
+must be a bore to people who know, and Mr. Darrow tells me you are almost
+as learned as your son."
+
+Mrs. Peyton returned the smile, but evaded the question. "I should be sorry
+to think your admiration unintelligent," she said. "I like to feel that my
+boy's work is appreciated by people who understand it."
+
+"Oh, I have the usual smattering," said Miss Verney carelessly. "I
+_think_ I know why I admire his work; but then I am sure I see more in
+it when some one like Mr. Darrow tells me how remarkable it is."
+
+"Does Mr. Darrow say that?" the mother exclaimed, losing sight of her
+object in the rush of maternal pleasure.
+
+"He has said nothing else: it seems to be the only subject which loosens
+his tongue. I believe he is more anxious to have your son win the
+competition than to win it himself."
+
+"He is a very good friend," Mrs. Peyton assented. She was struck by the way
+in which the girl led the topic back to the special application of it which
+interested her. She had none of the artifices of prudery.
+
+"He feels sure that Mr. Peyton _will_ win," Miss Verney continued.
+"It was very interesting to hear his reasons. He is an extraordinarily
+interesting man. It must be a tremendous incentive to have such a friend."
+
+Mrs. Peyton hesitated. "The friendship is delightful; but I don't know that
+my son needs the incentive. He is almost too ambitious."
+
+Miss Verney looked up brightly. "Can one be?" she said. "Ambition is so
+splendid! It must be so glorious to be a man and go crashing through
+obstacles, straight up to the thing one is after. I'm afraid I don't care
+for people who are superior to success. I like marriage by capture!" She
+rose with her wandering laugh, and stood flushed and sparkling above Mrs.
+Peyton, who continued to gaze at her gravely.
+
+"What do you call success?" the latter asked. "It means so many different
+things."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know--the inward approval, and all that. Well, I'm afraid I
+like the other kind: the drums and wreaths and acclamations. If I were Mr.
+Peyton, for instance, I'd much rather win the competition than--than be as
+disinterested as Mr. Darrow."
+
+Mrs. Peyton smiled. "I hope you won't tell him so," she said half
+seriously. "He is over-stimulated already; and he is so easily influenced
+by any one who--whose opinion he values."
+
+She stopped abruptly, hearing herself, with a strange inward shock, re-echo
+the words which another man's mother had once spoken to her. Miss Verney
+did not seem to take the allusion to herself, for she continued to fix on
+Mrs. Peyton a gaze of impartial sympathy.
+
+"But we can't help being interested!" she declared.
+
+"It's very kind of you; but I wish you would all help him to feel that his
+competition is after all of very little account compared with other
+things--his health and his peace of mind, for instance. He is looking
+horribly used up."
+
+The girl glanced over her shoulder at Dick, who was just reentering the
+room at Darrow's side.
+
+"Oh, do you think so?" she said. "I should have thought it was his friend
+who was used up."
+
+Mrs. Peyton followed the glance with surprise. She had been too preoccupied
+to notice Darrow, whose crudely modelled face was always of a dull pallour,
+to which his slow-moving grey eye lent no relief except in rare moments of
+expansion. Now the face had the fallen lines of a death-mask, in which only
+the smile he turned on Dick remained alive; and the sight smote her with
+compunction. Poor Darrow! He did look horribly fagged out: as if he needed
+care and petting and good food. No one knew exactly how he lived. His
+rooms, according to Dick's report, were fireless and ill kept, but he stuck
+to them because his landlady, whom he had fished out of some financial
+plight, had difficulty in obtaining other lodgers. He belonged to no clubs,
+and wandered out alone for his meals, mysteriously refusing the hospitality
+which his friends pressed on him. It was plain that he was very poor, and
+Dick conjectured that he sent what he earned to an aunt in his native
+village; but he was so silent about such matters that, outside of his
+profession, he seemed to have no personal life.
+
+Miss Verney's companion having presently advised her of the lapse of time,
+there ensued a general leave-taking, at the close of which Dick accompanied
+the ladies to their carriage. Darrow was meanwhile blundering into his
+greatcoat, a process which always threw him into a state of perspiring
+embarrassment; but Mrs. Peyton, surprising him in the act, suggested that
+he should defer it and give her a few moments' talk.
+
+"Let me make you some fresh tea," she said, as Darrow blushingly shed the
+garment, "and when Dick comes back we'll all walk home together. I've not
+had a chance to say two words to you this winter."
+
+Darrow sank into a chair at her side and nervously contemplated his boots.
+"I've been tremendously hard at work," he said.
+
+"I know: _too_ hard at work, I'm afraid. Dick tells me you have been
+wearing yourself out over your competition plans."
+
+"Oh, well, I shall have time to rest now," he returned. "I put the last
+stroke to them this morning."
+
+Mrs. Peyton gave him a quick look. "You're ahead of Dick, then."
+
+"In point of time only," he said smiling.
+
+"That is in itself an advantage," she answered with a tinge of asperity. In
+spite of an honest effort for impartiality she could not, at the moment,
+help regarding Darrow as an obstacle in her son's path.
+
+"I wish the competition were over!" she exclaimed, conscious that her voice
+had betrayed her. "I hate to see you both looking so fagged."
+
+Darrow smiled again, perhaps at her studied inclusion of himself.
+
+"Oh, _Dick_'s all right," he said. "He'll pull himself together in no
+time."
+
+He spoke with an emphasis which might have struck her, if her sympathies
+had not again been deflected by the allusion to her son.
+
+"Not if he doesn't win," she exclaimed.
+
+Darrow took the tea she had poured for him, knocking the spoon to the floor
+in his eagerness to perform the feat gracefully. In bending to recover the
+spoon he struck the tea-table with his shoulder, and set the cups dancing.
+Having regained a measure of composure, he took a swallow of the hot tea
+and set it down with a gasp, precariously near the edge of the tea-table.
+Mrs. Peyton rescued the cup, and Darrow, apparently forgetting its
+existence, rose and began to pace the room. It was always hard for him to
+sit still when he talked.
+
+"You mean he's so tremendously set on it?" he broke out.
+
+Mrs. Peyton hesitated. "You know him almost as well as I do," she said.
+"He's capable of anything where there is a possibility of success; but I'm
+always afraid of the reaction."
+
+"Oh, well, Dick's a man," said Darrow bluntly. "Besides, he's going to
+succeed."
+
+"I wish he didn't feel so sure of it. You mustn't think I'm afraid for him.
+He's a man, and I want him to take his chances with other men; but I wish
+he didn't care so much about what people think."
+
+"People?"
+
+"Miss Verney, then: I suppose you know."
+
+Darrow paused in front of her. "Yes: he's talked a good deal about her. You
+think she wants him to succeed?"
+
+"At any price!"
+
+He drew his brows together. "What do you call any price?"
+
+"Well--herself, in this case, I believe."
+
+Darrow bent a puzzled stare on her. "You mean she attached that amount of
+importance to this competition?"
+
+"She seems to regard it as symbolical: that's what I gather. And I'm afraid
+she's given him the same impression."
+
+Darrow's sunken face was suffused by his rare smile. "Oh, well, he'll pull
+it off then!" he said.
+
+Mrs. Peyton rose with a distracted sigh. "I half hope he won't, for such a
+motive," she exclaimed.
+
+"The motive won't show in his work," said Darrow. He added, after a pause
+probably devoted to the search for the right word: "He seems to think a
+great deal of her."
+
+Mrs. Peyton fixed him thoughtfully. "I wish I knew what _you_ think of
+her."
+
+"Why, I never saw her before."
+
+"No; but you talked with her to-day. You've formed an opinion: I think you
+came here on purpose."
+
+He chuckled joyously at her discernment: she had always seemed to him
+gifted with supernatural insight. "Well, I did want to see her," he owned.
+
+"And what do you think?"
+
+He took a few vague steps and then halted before Mrs. Peyton. "I think," he
+said, smiling, "that she likes to be helped first, and to have everything
+on her plate at once."
+
+
+III
+
+At dinner, with a rush of contrition, Mrs. Peyton remembered that she had
+after all not spoken to Darrow about his health. He had distracted her
+by beginning to talk of Dick; and besides, much as Darrow's opinions
+interested her, his personality had never fixed her attention. He always
+seemed to her simply a vehicle for the transmission of ideas.
+
+It was Dick who recalled her to a sense of her omission by asking if she
+hadn't thought that old Paul looked rather more ragged than usual.
+
+"He did look tired," Mrs. Peyton conceded. "I meant to tell him to take
+care of himself."
+
+Dick laughed at the futility of the measure. "Old Paul is never tired: he
+can work twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. The trouble with him is
+that he's ill. Something wrong with the machinery, I'm afraid."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry. Has he seen a doctor?"
+
+"He wouldn't listen to me when I suggested it the other day; but he's so
+deuced mysterious that I don't know what he may have done since." Dick
+rose, putting down his coffee-cup and half-smoked cigarette. "I've half a
+mind to pop in on him to-night and see how he's getting on."
+
+"But he lives at the other end of the earth; and you're tired yourself."
+
+"I'm not tired; only a little strung-up," he returned, smiling. "And
+besides, I'm going to meet Gill at the office by and by and put in a
+night's work. It won't hurt me to take a look at Paul first."
+
+Mrs. Peyton was silent. She knew it was useless to contend with her son
+about his work, and she tried to fortify herself with the remembrance of
+her own words to Darrow: Dick was a man and must take his chance with other
+men.
+
+But Dick, glancing at his watch, uttered an exclamation of annoyance. "Oh,
+by Jove, I shan't have time after all. Gill is waiting for me now; we must
+have dawdled over dinner." He went to give his mother a caressing tap on
+the cheek. "Now don't worry," he adjured her; and as she smiled back at him
+he added with a sudden happy blush: "She doesn't, you know: she's so sure
+of me."
+
+Mrs. Peyton's smile faded, and laying a detaining hand on his, she said
+with sudden directness: "Sure of you, or of your success?"
+
+He hesitated. "Oh, she regards them as synonymous. She thinks I'm bound to
+get on."
+
+"But if you don't?"
+
+He shrugged laughingly, but with a slight contraction of his confident
+brows. "Why, I shall have to make way for some one else, I suppose. That's
+the law of life."
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat upright, gazing at him with a kind of solemnity. "Is it the
+law of love?" she asked.
+
+He looked down on her with a smile that trembled a little. "My dear
+romantic mother, I don't want her pity, you know!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dick, coming home the next morning shortly before daylight, left the house
+again after a hurried breakfast, and Mrs. Peyton heard nothing of him till
+nightfall. He had promised to be back for dinner, but a few moments before
+eight, as she was coming down to the drawing-room, the parlour-maid handed
+her a hastily pencilled note.
+
+"Don't wait for me," it ran. "Darrow is ill and I can't leave him. I'll
+send a line when the doctor has seen him."
+
+Mrs. Peyton, who was a woman of rapid reactions, read the words with a
+pang. She was ashamed of the jealous thoughts she had harboured of Darrow,
+and of the selfishness which had made her lose sight of his troubles in the
+consideration of Dick's welfare. Even Clemence Verney, whom she secretly
+accused of a want of heart, had been struck by Darrow's ill looks, while
+she had had eyes only for her son. Poor Darrow! How cold and self-engrossed
+he must have thought her! In the first rush of penitence her impulse was
+to drive at once to his lodgings; but the infection of his own shyness
+restrained her. Dick's note gave no details; the illness was evidently
+grave, but might not Darrow regard her coming as an intrusion? To repair
+her negligence of yesterday by a sudden invasion of his privacy might be
+only a greater failure in tact; and after a moment of deliberation she
+resolved on sending to ask Dick if he wished her to go to him.
+
+The reply, which came late, was what she had expected. "No, we have all the
+help we need. The doctor has sent a good nurse, and is coming again later.
+It's pneumonia, but of course he doesn't say much yet. Let me have some
+beef-juice as soon as the cook can make it."
+
+The beef-juice ordered and dispatched, she was left to a vigil in
+melancholy contrast to that of the previous evening. Then she had been
+enclosed in the narrow limits of her maternal interests; now the barriers
+of self were broken down, and her personal preoccupations swept away on the
+current of a wider sympathy. As she sat there in the radius of lamp-light
+which, for so many evenings, had held Dick and herself in a charmed circle
+of tenderness, she saw that her love for her boy had come to be merely a
+kind of extended egotism. Love had narrowed instead of widening her, had
+rebuilt between herself and life the very walls which, years and years
+before, she had laid low with bleeding fingers. It was horrible, how she
+had come to sacrifice everything to the one passion of ambition for her
+boy....
+
+At daylight she sent another messenger, one of her own servants, who
+returned without having seen Dick. Mr. Peyton had sent word that there
+was no change. He would write later; he wanted nothing. The day wore on
+drearily. Once Kate found herself computing the precious hours lost to
+Dick's unfinished task. She blushed at her ineradicable selfishness,
+and tried to turn her mind to poor Darrow. But she could not master her
+impulses; and now she caught herself indulging the thought that his illness
+would at least exclude him from the competition. But no--she remembered
+that he had said his work was finished. Come what might, he stood in the
+path of her boy's success. She hated herself for the thought, but it would
+not down.
+
+Evening drew on, but there was no note from Dick. At length, in the shamed
+reaction from her fears, she rang for a carriage and went upstairs to
+dress. She could stand aloof no longer: she must go to Darrow, if only to
+escape from her wicked thoughts of him. As she came down again she heard
+Dick's key in the door. She hastened her steps, and as she reached the hall
+he stood before her without speaking.
+
+She looked at him and the question died on her lips. He nodded, and walked
+slowly past her.
+
+"There was no hope from the first," he said.
+
+The next day Dick was taken up with the preparations for the funeral. The
+distant aunt, who appeared to be Darrow's only relation, had been duly
+notified of his death; but no answer having been received from her, it was
+left to his friend to fulfil the customary duties. He was again absent for
+the best part of the day; and when he returned at dusk Mrs. Peyton, looking
+up from the tea-table behind which she awaited him, was startled by the
+deep-lined misery of his face.
+
+Her own thoughts were too painful for ready expression, and they sat for a
+while in a mute community of wretchedness.
+
+"Is everything arranged?" she asked at length.
+
+"Yes. Everything."
+
+"And you have not heard from the aunt?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Can you find no trace of any other relations?"
+
+"None. I went over all his papers. There were very few, and I found no
+address but the aunt's." He sat thrown back in his chair, disregarding the
+cup of tea she had mechanically poured for him. "I found this, though," he
+added, after a pause, drawing a letter from his pocket and holding it out
+to her.
+
+She took it doubtfully. "Ought I to read it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She saw then that the envelope, in Darrow's hand, was addressed to her son.
+Within were a few pencilled words, dated on the first day of his illness,
+the morrow of the day on which she had last seen him.
+
+"Dear Dick," she read, "I want you to use my plans for the museum if you
+can get any good out of them. Even if I pull out of this I want you to. I
+shall have other chances, and I have an idea this one means a lot to you."
+
+Mrs. Peyton sat speechless, gazing at the date of the letter, which she had
+instantly connected with her last talk with Darrow. She saw that he had
+understood her, and the thought scorched her to the soul.
+
+"Wasn't it glorious of him?" Dick said.
+
+She dropped the letter, and hid her face in her hands.
+
+
+IV
+
+The funeral took place the next morning, and on the return from the
+cemetery Dick told his mother that he must go and look over things at
+Darrow's office. He had heard the day before from his friend's aunt, a
+helpless person to whom telegraphy was difficult and travel inconceivable,
+and who, in eight pages of unpunctuated eloquence, made over to Dick what
+she called the melancholy privilege of winding up her nephew's affairs.
+
+Mrs. Peyton looked anxiously at her son. "Is there no one who can do this
+for you? He must have had a clerk or some one who knows about his work."
+
+Dick shook his head. "Not lately. He hasn't had much to do this winter, and
+these last months he had chucked everything to work alone over his plans."
+
+The word brought a faint colour to Mrs. Peyton's cheek. It was the first
+allusion that either of them had made to Darrow's bequest.
+
+"Oh, of course you must do all you can," she murmured, turning alone into
+the house.
+
+The emotions of the morning had stirred her deeply, and she sat at home
+during the day, letting her mind dwell, in a kind of retrospective piety,
+on the thought of poor Darrow's devotion. She had given him too little
+time while he lived, had acquiesced too easily in his growing habits of
+seclusion; and she felt it as a proof of insensibility that she had not
+been more closely drawn to the one person who had loved Dick as she loved
+him. The evidence of that love, as shown in Darrow's letter, filled her
+with a vain compunction. The very extravagance of his offer lent it a
+deeper pathos. It was wonderful that, even in the urgency of affection, a
+man of his almost morbid rectitude should have overlooked the restrictions
+of professional honour, should have implied the possibility of his friend's
+overlooking them. It seemed to make his sacrifice the more complete that it
+had, unconsciously, taken the form of a subtle temptation.
+
+The last word arrested Mrs. Peyton's thoughts. A temptation? To whom? Not,
+surely, to one capable, as her son was capable, of rising to the height
+of his friend's devotion. The offer, to Dick, would mean simply, as it
+meant to her, the last touching expression of an inarticulate fidelity:
+the utterance of a love which at last had found its formula. Mrs. Peyton
+dismissed as morbid any other view of the case. She was annoyed with
+herself for supposing that Dick could be ever so remotely affected by the
+possibility at which poor Darrow's renunciation hinted. The nature of
+the offer removed it from practical issues to the idealizing region of
+sentiment.
+
+Mrs. Peyton had been sitting alone with these thoughts for the greater part
+of the afternoon, and dusk was falling when Dick entered the drawing-room.
+In the dim light, with his pallour heightened by the sombre effect of
+his mourning, he came upon her almost startlingly, with a revival of
+some long-effaced impression which, for a moment, gave her the sense of
+struggling among shadows. She did not, at first, know what had produced the
+effect; then she saw that it was his likeness to his father.
+
+"Well--is it over?" she asked, as he threw himself into a chair without
+speaking.
+
+"Yes: I've looked through everything." He leaned back, crossing his hands
+behind his head, and gazing past her with a look of utter lassitude.
+
+She paused a moment, and then said tentatively: "to-morrow you will be able
+to go back to your work."
+
+"Oh--my work," he exclaimed, as if to brush aside an ill-timed pleasantry.
+
+"Are you too tired?"
+
+"No." He rose and began to wander up and down the room. "I'm not
+tired.--Give me some tea, will you?" He paused before her while she poured
+the cup, and then, without taking it, turned away to light a cigarette.
+
+"Surely there is still time?" she suggested, with her eyes on him.
+
+"Time? To finish my plans? Oh, yes--there's time. But they're not worth
+it."
+
+"Not worth it?" She started up, and then dropped back into her seat,
+ashamed of having betrayed her anxiety. "They are worth as much as they
+were last week," she said with an attempt at cheerfulness.
+
+"Not to me," he returned. "I hadn't seen Darrow's then."
+
+There was a long silence. Mrs. Peyton sat with her eyes fixed on her
+clasped hands, and her son paced the room restlessly.
+
+"Are they so wonderful?" she asked at length.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She paused again, and then said, lifting a tremulous glance to his face:
+"That makes his offer all the more beautiful."
+
+Dick was lighting another cigarette, and his face was turned from her.
+"Yes--I suppose so," he said in a low tone.
+
+"They were quite finished, he told me," she continued, unconsciously
+dropping her voice to the pitch of his.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then they will be entered, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course--why not?" he answered almost sharply.
+
+"Shall you have time to attend to all that and to finish yours too?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so. I've told you it isn't a question of time. I see now
+that mine are not worth bothering with."
+
+She rose and approached him, laying her hands on his shoulders. "You are
+tired and unstrung; how can you judge? Why not let me look at both designs
+to-morrow?"
+
+Under her gaze he flushed abruptly and drew back with a half-impatient
+gesture.
+
+"Oh, I'm afraid that wouldn't help me; you'd be sure to think mine best,"
+he said with a laugh.
+
+"But if I could give you good reasons?" she pressed him.
+
+He took her hand, as if ashamed of his impatience. "Dear mother, if you had
+any reasons their mere existence would prove that they were bad."
+
+His mother did not return his smile. "You won't let me see the two designs
+then?" she said with a faint tinge of insistence.
+
+"Oh, of course--if you want to--if you only won't talk about it now! Can't
+you see that I'm pretty nearly dead-beat?" he burst out uncontrollably; and
+as she stood silent, he added with a weary fall in his voice, "I think I'll
+go upstairs and see if I can't get a nap before dinner."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though they had separated upon the assurance that she should see the two
+designs if she wished it, Mrs. Peyton knew they would not be shown to her.
+Dick, indeed, would not again deny her request; but had he not reckoned on
+the improbability of her renewing it? All night she lay confronted by that
+question. The situation shaped itself before her with that hallucinating
+distinctness which belongs to the midnight vision. She knew now why Dick
+had suddenly reminded her of his father: had she not once before seen the
+same thought moving behind the same eyes? She was sure it had occurred to
+Dick to use Darrow's drawings. As she lay awake in the darkness she could
+hear him, long after midnight, pacing the floor overhead: she held her
+breath, listening to the recurring beat of his foot, which seemed that of
+an imprisoned spirit revolving wearily in the cage of the same thought. She
+felt in every fibre that a crisis in her son's life had been reached, that
+the act now before him would have a determining effect on his whole future.
+The circumstances of her past had raised to clairvoyance her natural
+insight into human motive, had made of her a moral barometer responding to
+the faintest fluctuations of atmosphere, and years of anxious meditation
+had familiarized her with the form which her son's temptations were likely
+to take. The peculiar misery of her situation was that she could not,
+except indirectly, put this intuition, this foresight, at his service.
+It was a part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real
+counsellor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not
+become a part of the moral tissues. Love such as hers had a great office,
+the office of preparation and direction; but it must know how to hold its
+hand and keep its counsel, how to attend upon its object as an invisible
+influence rather than as an active interference.
+
+All this Kate Peyton had told herself again and again, during those hours
+of anxious calculation in which she had tried to cast Dick's horoscope; but
+not in her moments of most fantastic foreboding had she figured so cruel a
+test of her courage. If her prayers for him had taken precise shape, she
+might have asked that he should be spared the spectacular, the dramatic
+appeal to his will-power: that his temptations should slip by him in a dull
+disguise. She had secured him against all ordinary forms of baseness; the
+vulnerable point lay higher, in that region of idealizing egotism which is
+the seat of life in such natures.
+
+Years of solitary foresight gave her mind a singular alertness in dealing
+with such possibilities. She saw at once that the peril of the situation
+lay in the minimum of risk it involved. Darrow had employed no assistant in
+working out his plans for the competition, and his secluded life made it
+almost certain that he had not shown them to any one, and that she and Dick
+alone knew them to have been completed. Moreover, it was a part of Dick's
+duty to examine the contents of his friend's office, and in doing this
+nothing would be easier than to possess himself of the drawings and make
+use of any part of them that might serve his purpose. He had Darrow's
+authority for doing so; and though the act involved a slight breach of
+professional probity, might not his friend's wishes be invoked as a secret
+justification? Mrs. Peyton found herself almost hating poor Darrow for
+having been the unconscious instrument of her son's temptation. But what
+right had she, after all, to suspect Dick of considering, even for a
+moment, the act of which she was so ready to accuse him? His unwillingness
+to let her see the drawings might have been the accidental result of
+lassitude and discouragement. He was tired and troubled, and she had chosen
+the wrong moment to make the request. His want of readiness might even be
+due to the wish to conceal from her how far his friend had surpassed him.
+She knew his sensitiveness on this point, and reproached herself for not
+having foreseen it. But her own arguments failed to convince her. Deep
+beneath her love for her boy and her faith in him there lurked a nameless
+doubt. She could hardly now, in looking back, define the impulse upon which
+she had married Denis Peyton: she knew only that the deeps of her nature
+had been loosened, and that she had been borne forward on their current
+to the very fate from which her heart recoiled. But if in one sense her
+marriage remained a problem, there was another in which her motherhood
+seemed to solve it. She had never lost the sense of having snatched her
+child from some dim peril which still lurked and hovered; and he became
+more closely hers with every effort of her vigilant love. For the act
+of rescue had not been accomplished once and for all in the moment
+of immolation: it had not been by a sudden stroke of heroism, but by
+ever-renewed and indefatigable effort, that she had built up for him the
+miraculous shelter of her love. And now that it stood there, a hallowed
+refuge against failure, she could not even set a light in the pane, but
+must let him grope his way to it unaided.
+
+
+V
+
+Mrs. Peyton's midnight musings summed themselves up in the conclusion that
+the next few hours would end her uncertainty. She felt the day to be
+decisive. If Dick offered to show her the drawings, her fears would be
+proved groundless; if he avoided the subject, they were justified.
+
+She dressed early in order not to miss him at breakfast; but as she entered
+the dining-room the parlour-maid told her that Mr. Peyton had overslept
+himself, and had rung to have his breakfast sent upstairs. Was it a pretext
+to avoid her? She was vexed at her own readiness to see a portent in the
+simplest incident; but while she blushed at her doubts she let them govern
+her. She left the dining-room door open, determined not to miss him if
+he came downstairs while she was at breakfast; then she went back to the
+drawing-room and sat down at her writing-table, trying to busy herself with
+some accounts while she listened for his step. Here too she had left the
+door open; but presently even this slight departure from her daily usage
+seemed a deviation from the passive attitude she had adopted, and she rose
+and shut the door. She knew that she could still hear his step on the
+stairs--he had his father's quick swinging gait--but as she sat listening,
+and vainly trying to write, the closed door seemed to symbolize a refusal
+to share in his trial, a hardening of herself against his need of her. What
+if he should come down intending to speak, and should be turned from his
+purpose? Slighter obstacles have deflected the course of events in those
+indeterminate moments when the soul floats between two tides. She sprang
+up quickly, and as her hand touched the latch she heard his step on the
+stairs.
+
+When he entered the drawing-room she had regained the writing-table and
+could lift a composed face to his. He came in hurriedly, yet with a kind of
+reluctance beneath his haste: again it was his father's step. She smiled,
+but looked away from him as he approached her; she seemed to be re-living
+her own past as one re-lives things in the distortion of fever.
+
+"Are you off already?" she asked, glancing at the hat in his hand.
+
+"Yes; I'm late as it is. I overslept myself." He paused and looked vaguely
+about the room. "Don't expect me till late--don't wait dinner for me."
+
+She stirred impulsively. "Dick, you're overworking--you'll make yourself
+ill."
+
+"Nonsense. I'm as fit as ever this morning. Don't be imagining things."
+
+He dropped his habitual kiss on her forehead, and turned to go. On the
+threshold he paused, and she felt that something in him sought her and then
+drew back. "Good-bye," he called to her as the door closed on him.
+
+She sat down and tried to survey the situation divested of her midnight
+fears. He had not referred to her wish to see the drawings: but what did
+the omission signify? Might he not have forgotten her request? Was she
+not forcing the most trivial details to fit in with her apprehensions?
+Unfortunately for her own reassurance, she knew that her familiarity with
+Dick's processes was based on such minute observation, and that, to such
+intimacy as theirs, no indications were trivial. She was as certain as if
+he had spoken, that when he had left the house that morning he was weighing
+the possibility of using Darrow's drawings, of supplementing his own
+incomplete design from the fulness of his friend's invention. And with a
+bitter pang she divined that he was sorry he had shown her Darrow's letter.
+
+It was impossible to remain face to face with such conjectures, and though
+she had given up all her engagements during the few days since Darrow's
+death, she now took refuge in the thought of a concert which was to take
+place at a friend's house that morning. The music-room, when she entered,
+was thronged with acquaintances, and she found transient relief in that
+dispersal of attention which makes society an anesthetic for some forms
+of wretchedness. Contact with the pressure of busy indifferent life often
+gives remoteness to questions which have clung as close as the flesh to the
+bone; and if Mrs. Peyton did not find such complete release, she at least
+interposed between herself and her anxiety the obligation to dissemble it.
+But the relief was only momentary, and when the first bars of the overture
+turned from her the smiles of recognition among which she had tried to lose
+herself, she felt a deeper sense of isolation. The music, which at another
+time would have swept her away on some rich current of emotion, now seemed
+to island her in her own thoughts, to create an artificial solitude in
+which she found herself more immitigably face to face with her fears. The
+silence, the _recueillement_, about her gave resonance to the inner
+voices, lucidity to the inner vision, till she seemed enclosed in a
+luminous empty horizon against which every possibility took the sharp edge
+of accomplished fact. With relentless precision the course of events was
+unrolled before her: she saw Dick yielding to his opportunity, snatching
+victory from dishonour, winning love, happiness and success in the act by
+which he lost himself. It was all so simple, so easy, so inevitable, that
+she felt the futility of struggling or hoping against it. He would win the
+competition, would marry Miss Verney, would press on to achievement through
+the opening which the first success had made for him.
+
+As Mrs. Peyton reached this point in her forecast, she found her outward
+gaze arrested by the face of the young lady who so dominated her inner
+vision. Miss Verney, a few rows distant, sat intent upon the music, in that
+attitude of poised motion which was her nearest approach to repose. Her
+slender brown profile with its breezy hair, her quick eye, and the lips
+which seemed to listen as well as speak, all betokened to Mrs. Peyton a
+nature through which the obvious energies blew free, a bare open stretch
+of consciousness without shelter for tenderer growths. She shivered to
+think of Dick's frail scruples exposed to those rustling airs. And then,
+suddenly, a new thought struck her. What if she might turn this force to
+her own use, make it serve, unconsciously to Dick, as the means of his
+deliverance? Hitherto she had assumed that her son's worst danger lay in
+the chance of his confiding his difficulty to Clemence Verney; and she
+had, in her own past, a precedent which made her think such a confidence
+not unlikely. If he did carry his scruples to the girl, she argued, the
+latter's imperviousness, her frank inability to understand them, would have
+the effect of dispelling them like mist; and he was acute enough to know
+this and profit by it. So she had hitherto reasoned; but now the girl's
+presence seemed to clarify her perceptions, and she told herself that
+something in Dick's nature, something which she herself had put there,
+would resist this short cut to safety, would make him take the more
+tortuous way to his goal rather than gain it through the privacies of the
+heart he loved. For she had lifted him thus far above his father, that it
+would be a disenchantment to him to find that Clemence Verney did not share
+his scruples. On this much, his mother now exultingly felt, she could count
+in her passive struggle for supremacy. No, he would never, never tell
+Clemence Verney--and his one hope, his sure salvation, therefore lay in
+some one else's telling her.
+
+The excitement of this discovery had nearly, in mid-concert, swept Mrs.
+Peyton from her seat to the girl's side. Fearing to miss the latter in
+the throng at the entrance, she slipped out during the last number and,
+lingering in the farther drawing-room, let the dispersing audience drift
+her in Miss Verney's direction. The girl shone sympathetically on her
+approach, and in a moment they had detached themselves from the crowd and
+taken refuge in the perfumed emptiness of the conservatory.
+
+The girl, whose sensations were always easily set in motion, had at first a
+good deal to say of the music, for which she claimed, on her hearer's part,
+an active show of approval or dissent; but this dismissed, she turned a
+melting face on Mrs. Peyton and said with one of her rapid modulations of
+tone: "I was so sorry about poor Mr. Darrow."
+
+Mrs. Peyton uttered an assenting sigh. "It was a great grief to us--a great
+loss to my son."
+
+"Yes--I know. I can imagine what you must have felt. And then it was so
+unlucky that it should have happened just now."
+
+Mrs. Peyton shot a reconnoitring glance at her profile. "His dying, you
+mean, on the eve of success?"
+
+Miss Verney turned a frank smile upon her. "One ought to feel that, of
+course--but I'm afraid I am very selfish where my friends are concerned,
+and I was thinking of Mr. Peyton's having to give up his work at such a
+critical moment." She spoke without a note of deprecation: there was a
+pagan freshness in her opportunism.
+
+Mrs. Peyton was silent, and the girl continued after a pause: "I suppose
+now it will be almost impossible for him to finish his drawings in time.
+It's a pity he hadn't worked out the whole scheme a little sooner. Then the
+details would have come of themselves."
+
+Mrs. Peyton felt a contempt strangely mingled with exultation. If only the
+girl would talk in that way to Dick!
+
+"He has hardly had time to think of himself lately," she said, trying to
+keep the coldness out of her voice.
+
+"No, of course not," Miss Verney assented; "but isn't that all the more
+reason for his friends to think of him? It was very dear of him to give up
+everything to nurse Mr. Darrow--but, after all, if a man is going to get on
+in his career there are times when he must think first of himself."
+
+Mrs. Peyton paused, trying to choose her words with deliberation. It was
+quite clear now that Dick had not spoken, and she felt the responsibility
+that devolved upon her.
+
+"Getting on in a career--is that always the first thing to be considered?"
+she asked, letting her eyes rest musingly on the girl's.
+
+The glance did not disconcert Miss Verney, who returned it with one of
+equal comprehensiveness. "Yes," she said quickly, and with a slight blush.
+"With a temperament like Mr. Peyton's I believe it is. Some people can pick
+themselves up after any number of bad falls: I am not sure that he could. I
+think discouragement would weaken instead of strengthening him."
+
+Both women had forgotten external conditions in the quick reach for each
+other's meanings. Mrs. Peyton flushed, her maternal pride in revolt; but
+the answer was checked on her lips by the sense of the girl's unexpected
+insight. Here was some one who knew Dick as well as she did--should she say
+a partisan or an accomplice? A dim jealousy stirred beneath Mrs. Peyton's
+other emotions: she was undergoing the agony which the mother feels at the
+first intrusion on her privilege of judging her child; and her voice had a
+flutter of resentment.
+
+"You must have a poor opinion of his character," she said.
+
+Miss Verney did not remove her eyes, but her blush deepened beautifully. "I
+have, at any rate," she Said, "a high one of his talent. I don't suppose
+many men have an equal amount of moral and intellectual energy."
+
+"And you would cultivate the one at the expense of the other?"
+
+"In certain cases--and up to a certain point." She shook out the long fur
+of her muff, one of those silvery flexible furs which clothe a woman with a
+delicate sumptuousness. Everything about her, at the moment, seemed rich
+and cold--everything, as Mrs. Peyton quickly noted, but the blush lingering
+under her dark skin; and so complete was the girl's self-command that the
+blush seemed to be there only because it had been forgotten.
+
+"I dare say you think me strange," she continued. "Most people do, because
+I speak the truth. It's the easiest way of concealing one's feelings. I
+can, for instance, talk quite openly about Mr. Peyton under shelter of your
+inference that I shouldn't do so if I were what is called 'interested' in
+him. And as I _am_ interested in him, my method has its advantages!"
+She ended with one of the fluttering laughs which seemed to flit from point
+to point of her expressive person.
+
+Mrs. Peyton leaned toward her. "I believe you are interested," she said
+quietly; "and since I suppose you allow others the privilege you claim for
+yourself, I am going to confess that I followed you here in the hope of
+finding out the nature of your interest."
+
+Miss Verney shot a glance at her, and drew away in a soft subsidence of
+undulating furs.
+
+"Is this an embassy?" she asked smiling.
+
+"No: not in any sense."
+
+The girl leaned back with an air of relief. "I'm glad; I should have
+disliked--" She looked again at Mrs. Peyton. "You want to know what I mean
+to do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I can only answer that I mean to wait and see what he does."
+
+"You mean that everything is contingent on his success?"
+
+"_I_ am--if I'm everything," she admitted gaily.
+
+The mother's heart was beating in her throat, and her words seemed to force
+themselves out through the throbs.
+
+"I--I don't quite see why you attach such importance to this special
+success."
+
+"Because he does," the girl returned instantly. "Because to him it is the
+final answer to his self-questioning--the questioning whether he is ever to
+amount to anything or not. He says if he has anything in him it ought to
+come out now. All the conditions are favourable--it is the chance he has
+always prayed for. You see," she continued, almost confidentially, but
+without the least loss of composure--"you see he has told me a great deal
+about himself and his various experiments--his phrases of indecision and
+disgust. There are lots of tentative talents in the world, and the sooner
+they are crushed out by circumstances the better. But it seems as though
+he really had it in him to do something distinguished--as though the
+uncertainty lay in his character and not in his talent. That is what
+interests, what attracts me. One can't teach a man to have genius, but if
+he has it one may show him how to use it. That is what I should be good
+for, you see--to keep him up to his opportunities."
+
+Mrs. Peyton had listened with an intensity of attention that left her reply
+unprepared. There was something startling and yet half attractive in the
+girl's avowal of principles which are oftener lived by than professed.
+
+"And you think," she began at length, "that in this case he has fallen
+below his opportunity?"
+
+"No one can tell, of course; but his discouragement, his _abattement_,
+is a bad sign. I don't think he has any hope of succeeding."
+
+The mother again wavered a moment. "Since you are so frank," she then said,
+"will you let me be equally so, and ask how lately you have seen him?"
+
+The girl smiled at the circumlocution. "Yesterday afternoon," she said
+simply.
+
+"And you thought him--"
+
+"Horribly down on his luck. He said himself that his brain was empty."
+
+Again Mrs. Peyton felt the throb in her throat, and a slow blush rose to
+her cheek. "Was that all he said?"
+
+"About himself--was there anything else?" said the girl quickly.
+
+"He didn't tell you of--of an opportunity to make up for the time he has
+lost?"
+
+"An opportunity? I don't understand."
+
+"He didn't speak to you, then, of Mr. Darrow's letter?"
+
+"He said nothing of any letter."
+
+"There _was_ one, which was found after poor Darrow's death. In it he
+gave Dick leave to use his design for the competition. Dick says the design
+is wonderful--it would give him just what he needs."
+
+Miss Verney sat listening raptly, with a rush of colour that suffused her
+like light.
+
+"But when was this? Where was the letter found? He never said a word of
+it!" she exclaimed.
+
+"The letter was found on the day of Darrow's death."
+
+"But I don't understand! Why has he never told me? Why should he seem so
+hopeless?" She turned an ignorant appealing face on Mrs. Peyton. It was
+prodigious, but it was true--she felt nothing, saw nothing, but the crude
+fact of the opportunity.
+
+Mrs. Peyton's voice trembled with the completeness of her triumph. "I
+suppose his reason for not speaking is that he has scruples."
+
+"Scruples?"
+
+"He feels that to use the design would be dishonest."
+
+Miss Verney's eyes fixed themselves on her in a commiserating stare.
+"Dishonest? When the poor man wished it himself? When it was his last
+request? When the letter is there to prove it? Why, the design belongs to
+your son! No one else had any right to it."
+
+"But Dick's right does not extend to passing it off as his own--at least
+that is his feeling, I believe. If he won the competition he would be
+winning it on false pretenses."
+
+"Why should you call them false pretenses? His design might have been
+better than Darrow's if he had had time to carry it out. It seems to me
+that Mr. Darrow must have felt this--must have felt that he owed his friend
+some compensation for the time he took from him. I can imagine nothing more
+natural than his wishing to make this return for your son's sacrifice."
+
+She positively glowed with the force of her conviction, and Mrs. Peyton,
+for a strange instant, felt her own resistance wavering. She herself had
+never considered the question in that light--the light of Darrow's viewing
+his gift as a justifiable compensation. But the glimpse she caught of it
+drove her shuddering behind her retrenchments.
+
+"That argument," she said coldly, "would naturally be more convincing to
+Darrow than to my son."
+
+Miss Verney glanced up, struck by the change in Mrs. Peyton's voice.
+
+"Ah, then you agree with him? You think it _would_ be dishonest?"
+
+Mrs. Peyton saw that she had slipped into self-betrayal. "My son and I have
+not spoken of the matter," she said evasively. She caught the flash of
+relief in Miss Verney's face.
+
+"You haven't spoken? Then how do you know how he feels about it?"
+
+"I only judge from--well, perhaps from his not speaking."
+
+The girl drew a deep breath. "I see," she murmured. "That is the very
+reason that prevents his speaking."
+
+"The reason?"
+
+"Your knowing what he thinks--and his knowing that you know."
+
+Mrs. Peyton was startled at her subtlety. "I assure you," she said, rising,
+"that I have done nothing to influence him."
+
+The girl gazed at her musingly. "No," she said with a faint smile, "nothing
+except to read his thoughts."
+
+
+VI
+
+Mrs. Peyton reached home in the state of exhaustion which follows on a
+physical struggle. It seemed to her as though her talk with Clemence Verney
+had been an actual combat, a measuring of wrist and eye. For a moment she
+was frightened at what she had done--she felt as though she had betrayed
+her son to the enemy. But before long she regained her moral balance,
+and saw that she had merely shifted the conflict to the ground on which
+it could best be fought out--since the prize fought for was the natural
+battlefield. The reaction brought with it a sense of helplessness, a
+realization that she had let the issue pass out of her hold; but since, in
+the last analysis, it had never lain there, since it was above all needful
+that the determining touch should be given by any hand but hers, she
+presently found courage to subside into inaction. She had done all she
+could--even more, perhaps, than prudence warranted--and now she could but
+await passively the working of the forces she had set in motion.
+
+For two days after her talk with Miss Verney she saw little of Dick. He
+went early to his office and came back late. He seemed less tired, more
+self-possessed, than during the first days after Darrow's death; but there
+was a new inscrutableness in his manner, a note of reserve, of resistance
+almost, as though he had barricaded himself against her conjectures. She
+had been struck by Miss Verney's reply to the anxious asseveration that
+she had done nothing to influence Dick--"Nothing," the girl had answered,
+"except to read his thoughts." Mrs. Peyton shrank from this detection of
+a tacit interference with her son's liberty of action. She longed--how
+passionately he would never know--to stand apart from him in this struggle
+between his two destinies, and it was almost a relief that he on his side
+should hold aloof, should, for the first time in their relation, seem to
+feel her tenderness as an intrusion.
+
+Only four days remained before the date fixed for the sending in of the
+designs, and still Dick had not referred to his work. Of Darrow, also, he
+had made no mention. His mother longed to know if he had spoken to Clemence
+Verney--or rather if the girl had forced his confidence. Mrs. Peyton was
+almost certain that Miss Verney would not remain silent--there were times
+when Dick's renewed application to his work seemed an earnest of her having
+spoken, and spoken convincingly. At the thought Kate's heart grew chill.
+What if her experiment should succeed in a sense she had not intended? If
+the girl should reconcile Dick to his weakness, should pluck the sting from
+his temptation? In this round of uncertainties the mother revolved for two
+interminable days; but the second evening brought an answer to her
+question.
+
+Dick, returning earlier than usual from the office, had found, on the
+hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother's
+observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed
+in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney's
+utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl's writing; but such notes had
+of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution easy.
+This communication Dick, as his mother poured his tea, looked over with a
+face of shifting lights; then he folded it into his note-case, and said,
+with a glance at his watch: "If you haven't asked any one for this evening
+I think I'll dine out."
+
+"Do, dear; the change will be good for you," his mother assented.
+
+He made no answer, but sat leaning back, his hands clasped behind his head,
+his eyes fixed on the fire. Every line of his body expressed a profound
+physical lassitude, but the face remained alert and guarded. Mrs. Peyton,
+in silence, was busying herself with the details of the tea-making, when
+suddenly, inexplicably, a question forced itself to her lips.
+
+"And your work--?" she said, strangely hearing herself speak.
+
+"My work--?" He sat up, on the defensive almost, but without a tremor of
+the guarded face.
+
+"You're getting on well? You've made up for lost time?"
+
+"Oh, yes: things are going better." He rose, with another glance at his
+watch. "Time to dress," he said, nodding to her as he turned to the door.
+
+It was an hour later, during her own solitary dinner, that a ring at the
+door was followed by the parlour-maid's announcement that Mr. Gill was
+there from the office. In the hall, in fact, Kate found her son's partner,
+who explained apologetically that he had understood Peyton was dining at
+home, and had come to consult him about a difficulty which had arisen since
+he had left the office. On hearing that Dick was out, and that his mother
+did not know where he had gone, Mr. Gill's perplexity became so manifest
+that Mrs. Peyton, after a moment, said hesitatingly: "He may be at a
+friend's house; I could give you the address."
+
+The architect caught up his hat. "Thank you; I'll have a try for him."
+
+Mrs. Peyton hesitated again. "Perhaps," she suggested, "it would be better
+to telephone."
+
+She led the way into the little study behind the drawing-room, where
+a telephone stood on the writing-table. The folding doors between the
+two rooms were open: should she close them as she passed back into the
+drawing-room? On the threshold she wavered an instant; then she walked on
+and took her usual seat by the fire.
+
+Gill, meanwhile, at the telephone, had "rung up" the Verney house, and
+inquired if his partner were dining there. The reply was evidently
+affirmative; and a moment later Kate knew that he was in communication with
+her son. She sat motionless, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
+her head erect, in an attitude of avowed attention. If she listened she
+would listen openly: there should be no suspicion of eavesdropping. Gill,
+engrossed in his message, was probably hardly conscious of her presence;
+but if he turned his head he should at least have no difficulty in seeing
+her, and in being aware that she could hear what he said. Gill, however, as
+she was quick to remember, was doubtless ignorant of any need for secrecy
+in his communication to Dick. He had often heard the affairs of the office
+discussed openly before Mrs. Peyton, had been led to regard her as familiar
+with all the details of her son's work. He talked on unconcernedly, and she
+listened.
+
+Ten minutes later, when he rose to go, she knew all that she had wanted to
+find out. Long familiarity with the technicalities of her son's profession
+made it easy for her to translate the stenographic jargon of the office.
+She could lengthen out all Gill's abbreviations, interpret all his
+allusions, and reconstruct Dick's answers from the questions addressed to
+him. And when the door closed on the architect she was left face to face
+with the fact that her son, unknown to any one but herself, was using
+Darrow's drawings to complete his work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Peyton, left alone, found it easier to continue her vigil by the
+drawing-room fire than to carry up to the darkness and silence of her own
+room the truth she had been at such pains to acquire. She had no thought of
+sitting up for Dick. Doubtless, his dinner over, he would rejoin Gill at
+the office, and prolong through, the night the task in which she now knew
+him to be engaged. But it was less lonely by the fire than in the wide-eyed
+darkness which awaited her upstairs. A mortal loneliness enveloped her. She
+felt as though she had fallen by the way, spent and broken in a struggle of
+which even its object had been unconscious. She had tried to deflect the
+natural course of events, she had sacrificed her personal happiness to a
+fantastic ideal of duty, and it was her punishment to be left alone with
+her failure, outside the normal current of human strivings and regrets.
+
+She had no wish to see her son just then: she would have preferred to let
+the inner tumult subside, to repossess herself in this new adjustment to
+life, before meeting his eyes again. But as she sat there, far adrift on
+her misery, she was aroused by the turning of his key in the latch. She
+started up, her heart sounding a retreat, but her faculties too dispersed
+to obey it; and while she stood wavering, the door opened and he was in the
+room.
+
+In the room, and with face illumined: a Dick she had not seen since the
+strain of the contest had cast its shade on him. Now he shone as in a
+sunrise of victory, holding out exultant hands from which she hung back
+instinctively.
+
+"Mother! I knew you'd be waiting for me!" He had her on his breast now, and
+his kisses were in her hair. "I've always said you knew everything that was
+happening to me, and now you've guessed that I wanted you to-night."
+
+She was struggling faintly against the dear endearments. "What _has_
+happened?" she murmured, drawing back for a dazzled look at him.
+
+He had drawn her to the sofa, had dropped beside her, regaining his hold of
+her in the boyish need that his happiness should be touched and handled.
+
+"My engagement has happened!" he cried out to her. "You stupid dear, do you
+need to be told?"
+
+
+VII
+
+She had indeed needed to be told: the surprise was complete and
+overwhelming. She sat silent under it, her hands trembling in his, till the
+blood mounted to his face and she felt his confident grasp relax.
+
+"You didn't guess it, then?" he exclaimed, starting up and moving away from
+her.
+
+"No; I didn't guess it," she confessed in a dead-level voice.
+
+He stood above her, half challenging, half defensive. "And you haven't a
+word to say to me? Mother!" he adjured her.
+
+She rose too, putting her arms about him with a kiss. "Dick! Dear Dick!"
+she murmured.
+
+"She imagines you don't like her; she says she's always felt it. And yet
+she owns you've been delightful, that you've tried to make friends with
+her. And I thought you knew how much it would mean to me, just now, to have
+this uncertainty over, and that you'd actually been trying to help me, to
+put in a good word for me. I thought it was you who had made her decide."
+
+"I?"
+
+"By your talk with her the other day. She told me of your talk with her."
+
+His mother's hands slipped from his shoulders and she sank back into her
+seat. She felt the cruelty of her silence, but only an inarticulate murmur
+found a way to her lips. Before speaking she must clear a space in the
+suffocating rush of her sensations. For the moment she could only repeat
+inwardly that Clemence Verney had yielded before the final test, and that
+she herself was somehow responsible for this fresh entanglement of fate.
+For she saw in a flash how the coils of circumstance had tightened; and as
+her mind cleared it was filled with the perception that this, precisely,
+was what the girl intended, that this was why she had conferred the crown
+before the victory. By pledging herself to Dick she had secured his pledge
+in return: had put him on his honour in a cynical inversion of the term.
+Kate saw the succession of events spread out before her like a map, and the
+astuteness of the girl's policy frightened her. Miss Verney had conducted
+the campaign like a strategist. She had frankly owned that her interest in
+Dick's future depended on his capacity for success, and in order to key him
+up to his first achievement she had given him a foretaste of its results.
+
+So much was almost immediately clear to Mrs. Peyton; but in a moment her
+inferences had carried her a point farther. For it was now plain to her
+that Miss Verney had not risked so much without first trying to gain her
+point at less cost: that if she had had to give herself as a prize, it was
+because no other bribe had been sufficient. This then, as the mother saw
+with a throb of hope, meant that Dick, who since Darrow's death had held
+to his purpose unwaveringly, had been deflected from it by the first hint
+of Clemence Verney's connivance. Kate had not miscalculated: things had
+happened as she had foreseen. In the light of the girl's approval his act
+had taken an odious look. He had recoiled from it, and it was to revive his
+flagging courage that she had had to promise herself, to take him in the
+meshes of her surrender.
+
+Kate, looking up, saw above her the young perplexity of her boy's face, the
+suspended happiness waiting to brim over. With a fresh touch of misery she
+said to herself that this was his hour, his one irrecoverable moment, and
+that she was darkening it by her silence. Her memory went back to the same
+hour in her own life: she could feel its heat in her pulses still. What
+right had she to stand in Dick's light? Who was she to decide between his
+code and hers? She put out her hand and drew him down to her.
+
+"She'll be the making of me, you know, mother," he said, as they leaned
+together. "She'll put new life in me--she'll help me get my second wind.
+Her talk is like a fresh breeze blowing away the fog in my head. I never
+knew any one who saw so straight to the heart of things, who had such a
+grip on values. She goes straight up to life and catches hold of it, and
+you simply can't make her let go."
+
+He got up and walked the length of the room; then he came back and stood
+smiling above his mother.
+
+"You know you and I are rather complicated people," he said. "We're always
+walking around things to get new views of them--we're always rearranging
+the furniture. And somehow she simplifies life so tremendously." He dropped
+down beside her with a deprecating laugh. "Not that I mean, dear, that it
+hasn't been good for me to argue things out with myself, as you've taught
+me to--only the man who stops to talk is apt to get shoved aside nowadays,
+and I don't believe Milton's archangels would have had much success in
+active business."
+
+He had begun in a strain of easy confidence, but as he went on she detected
+an effort to hold the note, she felt that his words were being poured out
+in a vain attempt to fill the silence which was deepening between them. She
+longed, in her turn, to pour something into that menacing void, to bridge
+it with a reconciling word or look; but her soul hung back, and she had to
+take refuge in a vague murmur of tenderness.
+
+"My boy! My boy!" she repeated; and he sat beside her without speaking,
+their hand-clasp alone spanning the distance which had widened between
+their thoughts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The engagement, as Kate subsequently learned, was not to be made known till
+later. Miss Verney had even stipulated that for the present there should
+be no recognition of it in her own family or in Dick's. She did not wish
+to interfere with his final work for the competition, and had made him
+promise, as he laughingly owned, that he would not see her again till the
+drawings were sent in. His mother noticed that he made no other allusion to
+his work; but when he bade her good-night he added that he might not see
+her the next morning, as he had to go to the office early. She took this as
+a hint that he wished to be left alone, and kept her room the next day till
+the closing door told her that he was out of the house.
+
+She herself had waked early, and it seemed to her that the day was already
+old when she came downstairs. Never had the house appeared so empty. Even
+in Dick's longest absences something of his presence had always hung about
+the rooms: a fine dust of memories and associations, which wanted only the
+evocation of her thought to float into a palpable semblance of him. But now
+he seemed to have taken himself quite away, to have broken every fibre by
+which their lives had hung together. Where the sense of him had been there
+was only a deeper emptiness: she felt as if a strange man had gone out of
+her house.
+
+She wandered from room to room, aimlessly, trying to adjust herself to
+their solitude. She had known such loneliness before, in the years when
+most women's hearts are fullest; but that was long ago, and the solitude
+had after all been less complete, because of the sense that it might
+still be filled. Her son had come: her life had brimmed over; but now the
+tide ebbed again, and she was left gazing over a bare stretch of wasted
+years. Wasted! There was the mortal pang, the stroke from which there was
+no healing. Her faith and hope had been marsh-lights luring her to the
+wilderness, her love a vain edifice reared on shifting ground.
+
+In her round of the rooms she came at last to Dick's study upstairs. It was
+full of his boyhood: she could trace the history of his past in its quaint
+relics and survivals, in the school-books lingering on his crowded shelves,
+the school-photographs and college-trophies hung among his later treasures.
+All his successes and failures, his exaltations and inconsistencies, were
+recorded in the warm huddled heterogeneous room. Everywhere she saw the
+touch of her own hand, the vestiges of her own steps. It was she alone
+who held the clue to the labyrinth, who could thread a way through the
+confusions and contradictions of his past; and her soul rejected the
+thought that his future could ever escape from her. She dropped down into
+his shabby college armchair and hid her face in the papers on his desk.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The day dwelt in her memory as a long stretch of aimless hours: blind
+alleys of time that led up to a dead wall of inaction.
+
+Toward afternoon she remembered that she had promised to dine out and go to
+the opera. At first she felt that the contact of life would be unendurable;
+then she shrank from shutting herself up with her misery. In the end she
+let herself drift passively on the current of events, going through the
+mechanical routine of the day without much consciousness of what was
+happening.
+
+At twilight, as she sat in the drawing-room, the evening paper was brought
+in, and in glancing over it her eye fell on a paragraph which seemed
+printed in more vivid type than the rest. It was headed, _The New Museum
+of Sculpture_, and underneath she read: "The artists and architects
+selected to pass on the competitive designs for the new Museum will begin
+their sittings on Monday, and to-morrow is the last day on which designs may
+be sent in to the committee. Great interest is felt in the competition, as
+the conspicuous site chosen for the new building, and the exceptionally
+large sum voted by the city for its erection, offer an unusual field for
+the display of architectural ability."
+
+She leaned back, closing her eyes. It was as though a clock had struck,
+loud and inexorably, marking off some irrecoverable hour. She was seized
+by a sudden longing to seek Dick out, to fall on her knees and plead with
+him: it was one of those physical obsessions against which the body has to
+stiffen its muscles as well as the mind its thoughts. Once she even sprang
+up to ring for a cab; but she sank back again, breathing as if after a
+struggle, and gripping the arms of her chair to keep herself down.
+
+"I can only wait for him--only wait for him--" she heard herself say; and
+the words loosened the sobs in her throat.
+
+At length she went upstairs to dress for dinner. A ghostlike self looked
+back at her from her toilet-glass: she watched it performing the mechanical
+gestures of the toilet, dressing her, as it appeared, without help from
+her actual self. Each little act stood out sharply against the blurred
+background of her brain: when she spoke to her maid her voice sounded
+extraordinarily loud. Never had the house been so silent; or, stay--yes,
+once she had felt the same silence, once when Dick, in his school-days, had
+been ill of a fever, and she had sat up with him on the decisive night.
+The silence had been as deep and as terrible then; and as she dressed she
+had before her the vision of his room, of the cot in which he lay, of his
+restless head working a hole in the pillow, his face so pinched and alien
+under the familiar freckles. It might be his death-watch she was keeping:
+the doctors had warned her to be ready. And in the silence her soul had
+fought for her boy, her love had hung over him like wings, her abundant
+useless hateful life had struggled to force itself into his empty veins.
+And she had succeeded, she had saved him, she had poured her life into him;
+and in place of the strange child she had watched all night, at daylight
+she held her own boy to her breast.
+
+That night had once seemed to her the most dreadful of her life; but she
+knew now that it was one of the agonies which enrich, that the passion thus
+spent grows fourfold from its ashes. She could not have borne to keep this
+new vigil alone. She must escape from its sterile misery, must take refuge
+in other lives till she regained courage to face her own. At the opera,
+in the illumination of the first _entr'acte_, as she gazed about the
+house, wondering through the numb ache of her wretchedness how others could
+talk and smile and be indifferent, it seemed to her that all the jarring
+animation about her was suddenly focussed in the face of Clemence Verney.
+Miss Verney sat opposite, in the front of a crowded box, a box in which,
+continually, the black-coated background shifted and renewed itself.
+Mrs. Peyton felt a throb of anger at the girl's bright air of unconcern.
+She forgot that she too was talking, smiling, holding out her hand to
+newcomers, in a studied mimicry of life, while her real self played out
+its tragedy behind the scenes. Then it occurred to her that, to Clemence
+Verney, there was no tragedy in the situation. According to the girl's
+calculations, Dick was virtually certain of success; and unsuccess was to
+her the only conceivable disaster.
+
+All through the opera the sense of that opposing force, that negation of
+her own beliefs, burned itself into Mrs. Peyton's consciousness. The space
+between herself and the girl seemed to vanish, the throng about them to
+disperse, till they were face to face and alone, enclosed in their mortal
+enmity. At length the feeling of humiliation and defeat grew unbearable to
+Mrs. Peyton. The girl seemed to flout her in the insolence of victory, to
+sit there as the visible symbol of her failure. It was better after all to
+be at home alone with her thoughts.
+
+As she drove away from the opera she thought of that other vigil which,
+only a few streets away, Dick was perhaps still keeping. She wondered if
+his work were over, if the final stroke had been drawn. And as she pictured
+him there, signing his pact with evil in the loneliness of the conniving
+night, an uncontrollable impulse possessed her. She must drive by his
+windows and see if they were still alight. She would not go up to him,--she
+dared not,--but at least she would pass near to him, would invisibly share
+his watch and hover on the edge of his thoughts. She lowered the window and
+called out the address to the coachman.
+
+The tall office-building loomed silent and dark as she approached it; but
+presently, high up, she caught a light in the familiar windows. Her heart
+gave a leap, and the light swam on her through tears. The carriage drew up,
+and for a moment she sat motionless. Then the coachman bent down toward
+her, and she saw that he was asking if he should drive on. She tried to
+shape a yes, but her lips refused it, and she shook her head. He continued
+to lean down perplexedly, and at length, under the interrogation of his
+attitude, it became impossible to sit still, and she opened the door and
+stepped out. It was equally impossible to stand on the sidewalk, and her
+next steps carried her to the door of the building. She groped for the
+bell and rang it, feeling still dimly accountable to the coachman for some
+consecutiveness of action, and after a moment the night watchman opened the
+door, drawing back amazed at the shining apparition which confronted him.
+Recognizing Mrs. Peyton, whom he had seen about the building by day, he
+tried to adapt himself to the situation by a vague stammer of apology.
+
+"I came to see if my son is still here," she faltered.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, he's here. He's been here most nights lately till after
+twelve."
+
+"And is Mr. Gill with him?"
+
+"No: Mr. Gill he went away just after I come on this evening."
+
+She glanced up into the cavernous darkness of the stairs.
+
+"Is he alone up there, do you think?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, I know he's alone, because I seen his men leaving soon after
+Mr. Gill."
+
+Kate lifted her head quickly. "Then I will go up to him," she said.
+
+The watchman apparently did not think it proper to offer any comment on
+this unusual proceeding, and a moment later she was fluttering and rustling
+up through the darkness, like a night-bird hovering among rafters. There
+were ten flights to climb: at every one her breath failed her, and she had
+to stand still and press her hands against her heart. Then the weight on
+her breast lifted, and she went on again, upward and upward, the great
+dark building dropping away from her, in tier after tier of mute doors and
+mysterious corridors. At last she reached Dick's floor, and saw the light
+shining down the passage from his door. She leaned against the wall, her
+breath coming short, the silence throbbing in her ears. Even now it was not
+too late to turn back. She bent over the stairs, letting her eyes plunge
+into the nether blackness, with the single glimmer of the watchman's lights
+in its depths; then she turned and stole toward her son's door.
+
+There again she paused and listened, trying to catch, through the hum of
+her pulses, any noise that might come to her from within. But the silence
+was unbroken--it seemed as though the office must be empty. She pressed her
+ear to the door, straining for a sound. She knew he never sat long at his
+work, and it seemed unaccountable that she should not hear him moving about
+the drawing-board. For a moment she fancied he might be sleeping; but sleep
+did not come to him readily after prolonged mental effort--she recalled the
+restless straying of his feet above her head for hours after he returned
+from his night work in the office.
+
+She began to fear that he might be ill. A nervous trembling seized her, and
+she laid her hand on the latch, whispering "Dick!"
+
+Her whisper sounded loudly through the silence, but there was no answer,
+and after a pause she called again. With each call the hush seemed to
+deepen: it closed in on her, mysterious and impenetrable. Her heart was
+beating in short frightened leaps: a moment more and she would have cried
+out. She drew a quick breath and turned the door-handle.
+
+The outer room, Dick's private office, with its red carpet and easy-chairs,
+stood in pleasant lamp-lit emptiness. The last time she had entered it,
+Darrow and Clemence Verney had been there, and she had sat behind the
+urn observing them. She paused a moment, struck now by a fault sound
+from beyond; then she slipped noiselessly across the carpet, pushed open
+the swinging door, and stood on the threshold of the work-room. Here
+the gas-lights hung a green-shaded circle of brightness over the great
+draughting-table in the middle of the floor. Table and floor were strewn
+with a confusion of papers--torn blue-prints and tracings, crumpled sheets
+of tracing-paper wrenched from the draughting-boards in a sudden fury of
+destruction; and in the centre of the havoc, his arms stretched across the
+table and his face hidden in them, sat Dick Peyton.
+
+He did not seem to hear his mother's approach, and she stood looking at
+him, her breast tightening with a new fear.
+
+"Dick!" she said, "Dick!--" and he sprang up, staring with dazed eyes. But
+gradually, as his gaze cleared, a light spread in it, a mounting brightness
+of recognition.
+
+"You've come--you've come--" he said, stretching his hands to her; and all
+at once she had him in her breast as in a shelter.
+
+"You wanted me?" she whispered as she held him.
+
+He looked up at her, tired, breathless, with the white radiance of the
+runner near the goal.
+
+"I _had_ you, dear!" he said, smiling strangely on her; and her heart
+gave a great leap of understanding.
+
+Her arms had slipped from his neck, and she stood leaning on him,
+deep-suffused in the shyness of her discovery. For it might still be that
+he did not wish her to know what she had done for him.
+
+But he put his arm about her, boyishly, and drew her toward one of the hard
+seats between the tables; and there, on the bare floor, he knelt before
+her, and hid his face in her lap. She sat motionless, feeling the dear
+warmth of his head against her knees, letting her hands stray in faint
+caresses through his hair.
+
+Neither spoke for awhile; then he raised his head and looked at her. "I
+suppose you know what has been happening to me," he said.
+
+She shrank from seeming to press into his life a hair's-breadth farther
+than he was prepared to have her go. Her eyes turned from him toward the
+scattered drawings on the table.
+
+"You have given up the competition?" she said.
+
+"Yes--and a lot more." He stood up, the wave of emotion ebbing, yet leaving
+him nearer, in his recovered calmness, than in the shock of their first
+moment.
+
+"I didn't know, at first, how much you guessed," he went on quietly. "I was
+sorry I'd shown you Darrow's letter; but it didn't worry me much because I
+didn't suppose you'd think it possible that I should--take advantage of it.
+It's only lately that I've understood that you knew everything." He looked
+at her with a smile. "I don't know yet how I found it out, for you're
+wonderful about keeping things to yourself, and you never made a sign.
+I simply felt it in a kind of nearness--as if I couldn't get away from
+you.--Oh, there were times when I should have preferred not having
+you about--when I tried to turn my back on you, to see things from
+other people's standpoint. But you were always there--you wouldn't be
+discouraged. And I got tired of trying to explain things to you, of trying
+to bring you round to my way of thinking. You wouldn't go away and you
+wouldn't come any nearer--you just stood there and watched everything that
+I was doing."
+
+He broke off, taking one of his restless turns down the long room. Then he
+drew up a chair beside her, and dropped into it with a great sigh.
+
+"At first, you know, I hated it most awfully. I wanted to be let alone and
+to work out my own theory of things. If you'd said a word--if you'd tried
+to influence me--the spell would have been broken. But just because the
+actual _you_ kept apart and didn't meddle or pry, the other, the you
+in my heart, seemed to get a tighter hold on me. I don't know how to tell
+you,--it's all mixed up in my head--but old things you'd said and done kept
+coming back to me, crowding between me and what I was trying for, looking
+at me without speaking, like old friends I'd gone back on, till I simply
+couldn't stand it any longer. I fought it off till to-night, but when I
+came back to finish the work there you were again--and suddenly, I don't
+know how, you weren't an obstacle any longer, but a refuge--and I crawled
+into your arms as I used to when things went against me at school."
+
+His hands stole back into hers, and he leaned his head against her shoulder
+like a boy.
+
+"I'm an abysmally weak fool, you know," he ended; "I'm not worth the fight
+you've put up for me. But I want you to know that it's your doing--that if
+you had let go an instant I should have gone under--and that if I'd gone
+under I should never have come up again alive."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sanctuary, by Edith Wharton
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