initial commit of ebook 7989HEADmain

1 files changed, 8028 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/7989.txt b/7989.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ace7502
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7989.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8028 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great God Success, by
+John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great God Success
+
+Author: John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
+
+
+Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7989]
+This file was first posted on June 10, 2003
+Last Updated: May 21, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT GOD SUCCESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, William Craig, Charles Franks and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT GOD SUCCESS
+
+A NOVEL
+
+By John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
+
+
+
+The Gregg Press / Ridgewood, N.J.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I. THE CANDIDATE FROM YALE
+
+II. THE CITY EDITOR RECONSIDERS
+
+III. A PARK ROW CELEBRITY
+
+IV. IN THE EDGE OF BOHEMIA
+
+V. ALICE
+
+VI. IN A BOHEMIAN QUICKSAND
+
+VII. A LITTLE CANDLE GOES OUT
+
+VIII. A STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL
+
+IX. AMBITION AWAKENS
+
+X. THE ETERNAL MASCULINE
+
+XI. TRESPASSING
+
+XII. MAKING THE MOST OF A MONTH
+
+XIII. RECKONING WITH DANVERS
+
+XIV. THE NEWS-RECORD GETS A NEW EDITOR
+
+XV. YELLOW JOURNALISM
+
+XVI. MR. STOKELY IS TACTLESS
+
+XVII. A WOMAN AND A WARNING
+
+XVIII. HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE
+
+XIX. "I MUST BE RICH."
+
+XX. ILLUSION
+
+XXI. WAVERING
+
+XXII. THE SHENSTONE EPISODE
+
+XXIII. EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING
+
+XXIV. "MR. VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH."
+
+XXV. THE PROMISED LAND
+
+XXVI. IN POSSESSION
+
+XXVII. THE HARVEST
+
+XXVIII. SUCCESS
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT GOD SUCCESS
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THE CANDIDATE FROM YALE.
+
+
+"O your college paper, I suppose?"
+
+"No, I never wrote even a letter to the editor."
+
+"Took prizes for essays?"
+
+"No, I never wrote if I could help it."
+
+"But you like to write?"
+
+"I'd like to learn to write."
+
+"You say you are two months out of college--what college?"
+
+"Yale."
+
+"Hum--I thought Yale men went into something commercial; law or banking
+or railroads. 'Leave hope of fortune behind, ye who enter here' is over
+the door of this profession."
+
+"I haven't the money-making instinct."
+
+"We pay fifteen dollars a week at the start."
+
+"Couldn't you make it twenty?"
+
+The Managing Editor of the _News-Record_ turned slowly in his chair
+until his broad chest was full-front toward the young candidate for the
+staff. He lowered his florid face slowly until his double chin swelled
+out over his low "stick-up" collar. Then he gradually raised his eyelids
+until his amused blue eyes were looking over the tops of his glasses,
+straight into Howard's eyes.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "Why should we?"
+
+Howard's grey eyes showed embarrassment and he flushed to the line of
+his black hair which was so smoothly parted in the middle. "Well--you
+see--the fact is--I need twenty a week. My expenses are arranged on that
+scale. I'm not clever at money matters. I'm afraid I'd get in a mess
+with only fifteen."
+
+"My dear young man," said Mr. King, "I started here at fifteen dollars a
+week. And I had a wife; and the first baby was coming."
+
+"Yes, but your wife was an energetic woman. She stood right beside you
+and worked too. Now I have only myself."
+
+Mr. King raised his eyebrows and became a rosier red. He was evidently
+preparing to rebuke this audacious intrusion into his private affairs by
+a stranger whose card had been handed to him not ten minutes before. But
+Howard's tone and manner were simple and sincere. And they happened to
+bring into Mr. King's mind a rush of memories of his youth and his wife.
+She had married him on faith. They had come to New York fifteen years
+before, he to get a place as reporter on the _News-Record_, she to
+start a boarding-house; he doubting and trembling, she with courage and
+confidence for two. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and
+opened the book of memory at the place where the leaves most easily fell
+apart:
+
+He is coming home at one in the morning, worn out, sick at heart from
+the day's buffetings. As he puts his key into the latch, the door opens.
+There stands a handsome girl; her face is flushed; her eyes are bright;
+her lips are held up for him to kiss; she shows no trace of a day that
+began hours before his and has been a succession of exasperations and
+humiliations against which her sensitive nature, trained in the home of
+her father, a distinguished up-the-state Judge, gives her no protection,
+"Victory," she whispers, her arms about his neck and her head upon his
+coat collar. "Victory! We are seventy-two cents ahead on the week, and
+everything paid up!"
+
+Mr. King opened his eyes--they had been closed less than five seconds.
+"Well, let it be twenty--though just why I'm sure I don't know. And
+we'll give you a four weeks' trial. When will you begin?"
+
+"Now," answered the young man, glancing about the room. "And I shall try
+to show that I appreciate your consideration, whether I deserve it or
+not."
+
+It was a large bare room, low of ceiling. Across one end were five
+windows overlooking from a great height the tempest that rages about
+the City Hall day and night with few lulls and no pauses. Mr. King's
+roll-top desk was at the first window. Under each of the other windows
+was a broad flat table desk--for copy-readers. At the farthest of these
+sat the City Editor--thin, precise-looking, with yellow skin, hollow
+cheeks, ragged grey-brown moustache, ragged scant grey-brown hair and
+dark brown eyes. He looked nervously tired and, because brown was his
+prevailing shade, dusty. He rose as Mr. King came with young Howard.
+
+"Here, Mr. Bowring, is a young man from Yale. He wishes you to teach him
+how to write. Mr. Howard, Mr. Bowring. I hope you gentlemen will get on
+comfortably together."
+
+Mr. King went back to his desk. Mr. Bowring and Howard looked each at
+the other. Mr. Bowring smiled, with good-humour, without cordiality.
+"Let me see, where shall we put you?" And his glance wandered along
+the rows of sloping table-desks--those nearer the windows lighted by
+daylight; those farther away, by electric lamps. Even on that cool,
+breezy August afternoon the sunlight and fresh air did not penetrate far
+into the room.
+
+"Do you see the young man with the beautiful fair moustache," said Mr.
+Bowring, "toiling away in his shirt-sleeves--there?"
+
+"Near the railing at the entrance?"
+
+"Precisely. I think I will put you next him." Mr. Bowring touched a
+button on his desk and presently an office boy--a mop of auburn curls,
+a pert face and gangling legs in knickerbockers--hurried up with a "Yes,
+Sir?"
+
+"Please tell Mr. Kittredge that I would like to speak to him and--please
+scrape your feet along the floor as little as possible."
+
+The boy smiled, walking away less as if he were trying to terrorize park
+pedestrians by a rush on roller skates. Kittredge and Howard were made
+acquainted and went toward their desks together. "A few moments--if you
+will excuse me--and I'm done," said Kittredge motioning Howard into the
+adjoining chair as he sat and at once bent over his work.
+
+Howard watched him with interest, admiration and envy. The reporter was
+perhaps twenty-five years old--fair of hair, fair of skin, goodlooking
+in a pretty way. His expression was keen and experienced yet too
+self-complacent to be highly intelligent. He was rapidly covering sheet
+after sheet of soft white paper with bold, loose hand-writing. Howard
+noticed that at the end of each sentence he made a little cross with a
+circle about it, and that he began each paragraph with a paragraph sign.
+Presently he scrawled a big double cross in the centre of the sheet
+under the last line of writing and gathered up his sheets in the
+numbered order. "Done, thank God," he said. "And I hope they won't
+butcher it."
+
+"Do you send it to be put in type?" asked Howard.
+
+"No," Kittredge answered with a faint smile. "I hand it in to Mr.
+Bowring--the City Editor, you know. And when the copyreaders come at
+six, it will be turned over to one of them. He reads it, cuts it down
+if necessary, and writes headlines for it. Then it goes upstairs to the
+composing room--see the box, the little dumb-waiter, over there in the
+wall?--well, it goes up by that to the floor above where they set the
+type and make up the forms."
+
+"I'm a complete ignoramus," said Howard, "I hope you'll not mind my
+trying to find out things. I hope I shall not bore you."
+
+"Glad to help you, I'm sure. I had to go through this two years ago when
+I came here from Princeton."
+
+Kittredge "turned in" his copy and returned to his seat beside Howard.
+
+"What were you writing about, if I may ask?" inquired Howard.
+
+"About some snakes that came this morning in a 'tramp' from South
+America. One of them, a boa constrictor, got loose and coiled around a
+windlass. The cook was passing and it caught him. He fainted with fright
+and the beast squeezed him to death. It's a fine story--lots of amusing
+and dramatic details. I wrote it for a column and I think they won't cut
+it. I hope not, anyhow. I need the money."
+
+"You are paid by the column?"
+
+"Yes. I'm on space--what they call a space writer. If a man is of any
+account here they gradually raise him to twenty-five dollars a week and
+then put him on space. That means that he will make anywhere from forty
+to a hundred a week, or perhaps more at times. The average for the best
+is about eighty."
+
+"Eighty dollars a week," thought Howard. "Fifty-two times eighty is
+forty-one hundred and sixty. Four thousand a year, counting out
+two weeks for vacation." To Howard it seemed wealth at the limit of
+imagination. If he could make so much as that!--he who had grave doubts
+whether, no matter how hard he worked, he would ever wrench a living
+from the world.
+
+Just then a seedy young man with red hair and a red beard came through
+the gate in the railing, nodded to Kittredge and went to a desk well up
+toward the daylight end of the room.
+
+"That's the best of 'em all," said Kittredge in a low tone. "His name is
+Sewell. He's a Harvard man--Harvard and Heidelberg. But drink! Ye gods,
+how he does drink! His wife died last Christmas--practically starvation.
+Sewell disappeared--frightful bust. A month afterward they found him
+under an assumed name over on Blackwell's Island, doing three months for
+disorderly conduct. He wrote a Christmas carol while his wife was dying.
+It began "Merrily over the Snow" and went on about light hearts and
+youth and joy and all that--you know, the usual thing. When he got the
+money, she didn't need it or anything else in her nice quiet grave over
+in Long Island City. So he 'blew in' the money on a wake."
+
+Sewell was coming toward them. Kittredge called out: "Was it a good
+story, Sam?"
+
+"Simply great! You ought to have seen the room. Only the bed and the
+cook-stove and a few dishes on a shelf--everything else gone to the
+pawnshop. The man must have killed the children first. They lay side by
+side on the bed, each with its hands folded on its chest--suppose the
+mother did that; and each little throat was cut from ear to ear--suppose
+the father did that. Then he dipped his paint brush in the blood and
+daubed on the wall in big scrawling letters: 'There is no God!' Then
+he took his wife in his arms, stabbed her to the heart and cut his own
+throat. And there they lay, his arms about her, his cheek against hers,
+dead. It was murder as a fine art. Gad, I wish I could write."
+
+Kittredge introduced Howard--"a Yale man--just came on the paper."
+
+"Entering the profession? Well, they say of the other professions that
+there is always room at the top. Journalism is just the reverse. The
+room is all at the bottom--easy to enter, hard to achieve, impossible to
+leave. It is all bottom, no top." Sewell nodded, smiled attractively in
+spite of his swollen face and his unsightly teeth, and went back to his
+work.
+
+"He's sober," said Kittredge when he was out of hearing, "so his story
+is pretty sure to be the talk of Park Row tomorrow."
+
+Howard was astonished at the cheerful, businesslike point of view
+of these two educated and apparently civilised young men as to the
+tragedies of life. He had shuddered at Kittredge's story of the man
+squeezed to death by the snake. Sewell's story, so graphically outlined,
+filled him with horror, made it a struggle for him to conceal his
+feelings.
+
+"I suppose you must see a lot of frightful things," he suggested.
+
+"That's our business. You soon get used to it, just as a doctor does.
+You learn to look at life from the purely professional standpoint. Of
+course you must feel in order to write. But you must not feel so keenly
+that you can't write. You have to remember always that you're not there
+to cheer or sympathise or have emotions, but only to report, to record.
+You tell what your eyes see. You'll soon get so that you can and will
+make good stories out of your own calamaties."
+
+"Is that a portrait of the editor?" asked Howard, pointing to a grimed
+oil-painting, the only relief to the stretch of cracked and streaked
+white wall except a few ragged maps.
+
+"That--oh, that is old man Stone--the 'great condenser.' He's there for
+a double purpose, as an example of what a journalist should be and as a
+warning of what a journalist comes to. After twenty years of fine work
+at crowding more news in good English into one column than any other
+editor could get in bad English into four columns, he was discharged for
+drunkenness. Soon afterwards he walked off the end of a dock one night
+in a fog. At least it was said that there was a fog and that he was
+drunk. I have my doubts."
+
+"Cheerful! I have not been in the profession an hour but I have already
+learned something very valuable."
+
+"What's that?" asked Kittredge, "that it's a good profession to get out
+of?"
+
+"No. But that bad habits will not help a man to a career in journalism
+any more than in any other profession."
+
+"Career?" smiled Kittredge, resenting Howard's good-humoured irony
+and putting on a supercilious look that brought out more strongly the
+insignificance of his face. "Journalism is not a career. It is either a
+school or a cemetery. A man may use it as a stepping-stone to something
+else. But if he sticks to it, he finds himself an old man, dead and done
+for to all intents and purposes years before he's buried."
+
+"I wonder if it doesn't attract a great many men who have a little
+talent and fancy that they have much. I wonder if it does not disappoint
+their vanity rather than their merit."
+
+"That sounds well," replied Kittredge, "and there's some truth in
+it. But, believe me, journalism is the dragon that demands the annual
+sacrifice of youth. It will have only youth. Why am I here? Why are you
+here? Because we are young, have a fresh, a new point of view. As soon
+as we get a little older, we shall be stale and, though still young in
+years, we must step aside for young fellows with new ideas and a new
+point of view."
+
+"But why should not one have always new ideas, always a new point of
+view? Why should one expect to escape the penalties of stagnation in
+journalism when one can't escape them in any other profession?"
+
+"But who has new ideas all the time? The average successful man has at
+most one idea and makes a whole career out of it. Then there are the
+temptations."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+Kittredge flushed slightly and answered in a more serious tone:
+
+"We must work while others amuse themselves or sleep. We must sleep
+while others are at work. That throws us out of touch with the whole
+world of respectability and regularity. When we get done at night,
+wrought up by the afternoon and evening of this gambling with our brains
+and nerves as the stake, what is open to us?"
+
+"That is true," said Howard. "There are the all-night saloons and--the
+like."
+
+"And if we wish society, what society is open to us? What sort of young
+women are waiting to entertain us at one, two, three o'clock in the
+morning? Why, I have not made a call in a year. And I have not seen a
+respectable girl of my acquaintance in at least that time, except once
+or twice when I happened to have assignments that took me near Fifth
+Avenue in the afternoon."
+
+"Mr. Kittredge, Mr. Bowring wishes to speak to you," an office boy said
+and Kittredge rose. As he went, he put his hand on Howard's shoulder
+and said: "No, I am getting out of it as fast as ever I can. I'm writing
+books."
+
+"Kittredge," thought Howard, "I wonder, is this Henry Jennings
+Kittredge, whose stories are on all the news stands?" He saw an envelope
+on the floor at his feet. The address was "Henry Jennings Kittredge,
+Esq."
+
+When Kittredge came back for his coat, Howard said in a tone of frank
+admiration: "Why, I didn't know you were the Kittredge that everybody is
+talking about. You certainly have no cause for complaint."
+
+Kittredge shrugged his shoulders. "At fifteen cents a copy, I have to
+sell ten thousand copies before I get enough to live on for four months.
+And you'd be surprised how much reputation and how little money a man
+can make out of a book. Don't be distressed because they keep you here
+with nothing to do but wonder how you'll have the courage to face the
+cashier on pay day. It's the system. Your chance will come."
+
+It was three days before Howard had a chance. On a Sunday afternoon the
+Assistant City Editor who was in charge of the City Desk for the day
+sent him up to the Park to write a descriptive story of the crowds. "Try
+to get a new point of view," he said, "and let yourself loose. There's
+usually plenty of room in Monday's paper."
+
+Howard wandered through the Central Park for two hours, struggling for
+the "new point of view" of the crowds he saw there--these monotonous
+millions, he thought, lazily drinking at a vast trough of country air in
+the heart of the city. He planned an article carefully as he dined
+alone at the Casino. He went down to the office early and wrote
+diligently--about two thousand words. When he had finished, the Night
+City Editor told him that he might go as there would be nothing more
+that night.
+
+He was in the street at seven the next morning. As he walked along with
+a News-Record, bought at the first news-stand, he searched every page:
+first, the larger "heads"--such a long story would call for a "big
+head;" then the smaller "heads"--they may have been crowded and have
+had to cut it down; then the single-line "heads"--surely they found a
+"stickful" or so worth printing.
+
+At last he found it. A dozen items in the smallest type, agate, were
+grouped under the general heading "City Jottings" at the end of an
+inside column of an inside page. The first of these City Jottings was
+two lines in length:
+
+"The millions were in the Central Park yesterday, lazily drinking at
+that vast trough of country air in the heart of the city."
+
+As he entered the office Howard looked appealingly and apologetically
+at the boy on guard at the railing and braced himself to receive the
+sneering frown of the City Editor and to bear the covert smiles of his
+fellow reporters. But he soon saw that no one had observed his mighty
+spring for a foothold and his ludicrous miss and fall.
+
+"Had anything in yet?" Kittredge inquired casually, late in the
+afternoon.
+
+"I wrote a column and a half yesterday and I found two lines among the
+City Jottings," replied Howard, reddening but laughing.
+
+"The first story I wrote was cut to three lines but they got a libel
+suit on it."
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE CITY EDITOR RECONSIDERS.
+
+
+At the end of six weeks, the City Editor called Howard up to the desk
+and asked him to seat himself. He talked in a low tone so that the
+Assistant City Editor, reading the newspapers at a nearby desk, could
+not hear.
+
+"We like you, Mr. Howard." Mr. Bowring spoke slowly and with a
+carefulness in selecting words that indicated embarrassment. "And we
+have been impressed by your earnestness. But we greatly fear that you
+are not fitted for this profession. You write well enough, but you
+do not seem to get the newspaper--the news--idea. So we feel that in
+justice to you and to ourselves we ought to let you know where you
+stand. If you wish, we shall be glad to have you remain with us two
+weeks longer. Meanwhile you can be looking about you. I am certain that
+you will succeed somewhere, in some line, sooner or later. But I think
+that the newspaper profession is a waste of your time."
+
+Howard had expected this. Failure after failure, his articles thrown
+away or rewritten by the copyreaders, had prepared him for the blow. Yet
+it crushed him for the moment. His voice was not steady as he replied:
+
+"No doubt you are right. Thank you for taking the trouble to study my
+case and tell me so soon."
+
+"Don't hesitate to stay on for the two weeks," Mr. Bowring continued.
+"We can make you useful to us. And you can look about to much better
+advantage than if you were out of a place."
+
+"I'll stay the two weeks," Howard said, "unless I find something
+sooner."
+
+"Don't be more discouraged than you can help," said Mr. Bowring. "You
+may be very grateful before long for finding out so early what many of
+us--I myself, I fear--find out after years and--when it is too late."
+
+Always that note of despair; always that pointing to the motto over the
+door of the profession: "Abandon hope, ye who enter here." What was
+the explanation? Were these men right? Was he wrong in thinking that
+journalism offered the most splendid of careers--the development of the
+mind and the character; the sharpening of all the faculties; the service
+of truth and right and human betterment, in daily combat with injustice
+and error and falsehood; the arousing and stimulating of the drowsy
+minds of the masses of mankind?
+
+Howard looked about at the men who held on where he was slipping. "Can
+it be," he thought, "that I cannot survive in a profession where the
+poorest are so poor in intellect and equipment? Why am I so dull that I
+cannot catch the trick?"
+
+He set himself to study newspapers, reading them line by line, noting
+the modes of presenting facts, the arrangement of headlines, the order
+in which the editors put the several hundred items before the eyes
+of the reader--what they displayed on each page and why; how they
+apportioned the space. With the energy of unconquerable resolution he
+applied himself to solving for himself the puzzle of the press--the
+science and art of catching the eye and holding the attention of the
+hurrying, impatient public.
+
+He learned much. He began to develop the news-instinct, that subtle
+instant realisation of what is interesting and what is not interesting
+to the public mind. But the time was short; a sense of impending
+calamity and the lack of self-confidence natural to inexperience made it
+impossible for him effectively to use his new knowledge in the few small
+opportunities which Mr. Bowring gave him. With only six days of his two
+weeks left, he had succeeded in getting into the paper not a single item
+of a length greater than two sticks. He slept little; he despaired not
+at all; but he was heart-sick and, as he lay in his bed in the little
+hall-room of the furnished-room house, he often envied women the relief
+of tears. What he endured will be appreciated only by those who have
+been bred in sheltered homes; who have abruptly and alone struck out
+for themselves in the ocean of a great city without a single lesson
+in swimming; who have felt themselves seized from below and dragged
+downward toward the deep-lying feeding-grounds of Poverty and Failure.
+
+"Buck up, old man," said Kittredge to whom he told his bad news after
+several days of hesitation and after Kittredge had shown him that he
+strongly suspected it. "Don't mind old Bowring. You're sure to get on,
+and, if you insist upon the folly, in this profession. I'll give you a
+note to Montgomery--he's City Editor over at the _World_-shop--and he'll
+take you on. In some ways you will do better there. You'll rise faster,
+get a wider experience, make more money. In fact, this shop has only one
+advantage. It does give a man peace of mind. It's more like a club
+than an office. But in a sense that is a drawback. I'll give you a note
+to-night. You will be at work over there to-morrow."
+
+"I think I'll wait a few days," said Howard, his tone corresponding to
+the look in his eyes and the compression of his resolute mouth.
+
+The next day but one Mr. Bowring called him up to the City Desk and gave
+him a newspaper-clipping which read:
+
+  "Bald Peak, September 29--Willie Dent, the three-year-old baby
+  of John Dent, a farmer living two miles from here, strayed away
+  into the mountains yesterday and has not been seen since. His
+  dog, a cur, went with him. Several hundred men are out searching.
+  It has been storming, and the mountains are full of bears
+  and wild cats."
+
+"Yes, I saw this in the _Herald_," said Howard.
+
+"Will you take the train that leaves at eleven tonight and get us the
+story--if it is not a 'fake,' as I strongly suspect. Telegraph your
+story if there is not time for you to get back here by nine to-morrow
+night."
+
+"Of course it's a fake, or at least a wild exaggeration," thought Howard
+as he turned away. "If Bowring had not been all but sure there was
+nothing in it, he would never have given it to me."
+
+He was not well, his sleepless nights having begun to tell even upon
+his powerful constitution. The rest of that afternoon and all of a night
+without sleep in the Pullman he was in a depth of despond. He had been
+in the habit of getting much comfort out of an observation his father
+had made to him just before he died: "Remember that ninety per cent
+of these fourteen hundred million human beings are uncertain where
+to-morrow's food is to come from. Be prudent but never be afraid." But
+just then he could get no consolation out of this maxim of grim cheer.
+He seemed to himself incompetent and useless, a predestined failure.
+"What is to become of me?" he kept repeating, his heart like lead and
+his mind fumbling about in a confused darkness.
+
+At Bald Peak he was somewhat revived by the cold mountain air of the
+early morning. As he alighted upon the station platform he spoke to the
+baggage-master standing in front of the steps.
+
+"Was the little boy of a man named Dent lost in the mountains near
+here?"
+
+"Yes--three days ago," replied the baggage-man.
+
+"Have they found him yet?"
+
+"No--nor never will alive--that's my opinion."
+
+Howard asked for the nearest livery-stable and within twenty minutes was
+on his way to Dent's farm. His driver knew all about the lost child. Two
+hundred men were still searching. "And Mrs. Dent, she's been sittin'
+by the window, list'nin' day and night. She won't speak nor eat and
+she ain't shed a tear. It was her only child. The men come in sayin' it
+ain't no use to hunt any more, an' they look at her an' out they goes
+ag'in."
+
+Soon the driver pointed to a cottage near the road. The gate was open;
+the grass and the flower-beds were trampled into a morass. The door was
+thrown wide and several women were standing about the threshold. At the
+window within view of the road and the mountains sat the mother--a
+young woman with large brown eyes, and clear-cut features, refined,
+beautified, exalted by suffering. Her look was that of one listening for
+a faint, far away sound upon which hangs the turn of the balances to joy
+or to despair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That morning two of the searchers went to the northeast into the dense
+and tangled swamp woods between Bald Peak and Cloudy Peak--the wildest
+wilderness in the mountains. The light barely penetrates the foliage on
+the brightest days. The ground is rough, sometimes precipitous, closely
+covered with bushes and tangled creepers.
+
+The two explorers, almost lost themselves, came at last to the edge of a
+swamp surrounded by cedars. They half-crawled, half-climbed through the
+low trees and festooning creepers to the edge of a clear bit of open,
+firm ground.
+
+In the middle was a cedar tree. Under it, seated upon the ground, was
+the lost boy. His bare, brown legs, torn and bleeding, were stretched
+straight in front of him. His bare feet were bruised and cut. His
+gingham dress was torn and wet and stained. His small hands were smears
+of dirt and blood. He was playing with a tin can. He had put a stone
+into it and was making a great rattling. The dog was running to and fro,
+apparently enjoying the noise. The little boy's face was tear-stained
+and his eyes were swollen. But he was not crying just then and laughter
+lurked in his thin, fever-flushed face.
+
+As the men came into view, the dog began to bark angrily, but the boy
+looked a solemn welcome.
+
+"Want mamma," he said. "I'se hungry."
+
+One of the men picked him up--the gingham dress was saturated.
+
+"You're hungry?" asked the man, his voice choking.
+
+"Yes. An' I'se so wet. It wained and wained." Then the child began to
+sob. "It was dark," he whispered, "an' cold. I want my mamma."
+
+It was an hour's tedious journey back to Dent's by the shortest route.
+At the top of the hill those near the cottage saw the boy in the arms of
+the man who had found him. They shouted and the mother sprang out of the
+house and came running, stumbling down the path to the gate. She caught
+at the gate-post and stood there, laughing, screaming, sobbing.
+
+"Baby! Baby!" she called.
+
+The little boy turned his head and stretched out his thin, blood-stained
+arms. She ran toward him and snatched him from the young farmer.
+
+"Hungry, mamma," he sobbed, hiding his face on her shoulder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Howard wrote his story on the train, going down to New York. It was a
+straightforward chronicle of just what he had seen and heard. He began
+at the beginning--the little mountain home, the family of three, the
+disappearance of the child. He described the perils of the mountains,
+the storm, the search, the wait, the listening mother, scene by scene,
+ending with mother and child together again and the dog racing around
+them, with wagging tail and hanging tongue. He wrote swiftly, making no
+changes, without a trace of his usual self-consciousness in composition.
+When he had done he went into the restaurant car and dined almost gaily.
+He felt that he had failed again. How could he hope to tell such a
+story? But he was not despondent. He was still under the spell of that
+intense human drama with its climax of joy. His own concerns seemed
+secondary, of no consequence.
+
+He reached the office at half-past nine, handed in his "copy" and went
+away. He was in bed at half-past ten and was at once asleep. At eleven
+the next morning a knocking awakened him from a sound sleep that had
+restored and refreshed him. "A messenger from the office," was called
+through the door in answer to his inquiry. He took the note from the boy
+and tore it open:
+
+"My dear Mr. Howard: Thank you for the splendid story you gave us last
+night. It is one of the best, if not the best, we have had the pleasure
+of publishing in years. Your salary has been raised to twenty-five
+dollars a week.
+
+"Congratulations. You have 'caught on' at last. I'm glad to take back
+what I said the other day.
+
+"HENRY C. BOWRING."
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A PARK ROW CELEBRITY.
+
+
+Kittredge was the first to congratulate him when he reached the office.
+"Everybody is talking about your story," he said. "I must say I was
+surprised when I read it. I had begun to fear that you would never catch
+the trick--for, with most of us writing is only a trick. But now I see
+that you are a born writer. Your future is in your own hands."
+
+"You think I can learn to write?"
+
+"That is the sane way to put it. Yes, I know that you can. If you'll
+only not be satisfied with the results that come easy, you will make a
+reputation. Not a mere Park Row reputation, but the real thing."
+
+Howard got flattery enough in the next few days to turn a stronger
+head than was his at twenty-two. But a few partial failures within a
+fortnight sobered him and steadied him. His natural good sense made him
+take himself in hand. He saw that his success had been to a great extent
+a happy accident; that to repeat it, to improve upon it he must study
+life, study the art of expression. He must keep his senses open to
+impression. He must work at style, enlarge his vocabulary, learn the use
+of words, the effect of varying combinations of words both as to sound
+and as to meaning. "I must learn to write for the people," he thought,
+"and that means to write the most difficult of all styles."
+
+He was, then and always, one of those who like others and are liked by
+them, yet never seek company and so are left to themselves. As he had
+no money to spare and a deep aversion to debt, he was not tempted into
+joining in the time-wasting dissipations that were now open to him. He
+worked hard at his profession and, when he left the office, usually went
+direct to his rooms to read until far into the morning. He was often
+busy sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. His day at reporting was
+long--from noon until midnight, and frequently until three in the
+morning. But the work was far different from the grind which is the lot
+of the young men striving in other professions or in business. It
+was the most fascinating work imaginable for an intelligent, thirsty
+mind--the study of human nature under stress of the great emotions.
+
+His mode of thought and his style made Mr. Bowring and Mr. King give him
+much of this particular kind of reporting. So he was always observing
+love, hate, jealousy, revenge, greed. He saw these passions in action in
+the lives of people of all kinds and conditions. And he saw little else.
+The reporter is a historian. And history is, as Gibbon says, for the
+most part "a record of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."
+
+For many a man this has been a ruinous, one-sided development. Howard
+was saved by his extremely intelligent, sympathetic point of view.
+He saw the whole of each character, each conflict that he was sent to
+study. If the point of the story was the good side of human nature--some
+act of generosity or self-sacrifice--he did not exaggerate it into
+godlike heroism but adjusted it in its proper prospective by bringing
+out its human quality and its human surroundings. If the main point was
+violence or sordidness or baseness, he saw the characteristics which
+relieved and partially redeemed it. His news-reports were accounts of
+the doings not of angels or devils but of human beings, accounts written
+from a thoroughly human standpoint.
+
+Here lay the cause of his success. In all his better stories--for
+he often wrote poor ones--there was the atmosphere of sincerity, of
+realism, the marks of an acute observer, without prejudice and with
+a justifiable leaning toward a belief in the fundamental worth of
+humanity. Where others were cynical he was just. Where others were
+sentimental, he had sincere, healthful sentiment. Where others were
+hysterical, he calmly and accurately described, permitting the tragedy
+to reveal itself instead of burying it beneath high-heaped adjectives.
+Simplicity of style was his aim and he was never more delighted by any
+compliment than by one from the chief political reporter.
+
+"That story of yours this morning," said this reporter whose lack as
+a writer was more than compensated by his ability to get intimately
+acquainted with public men, "reads as if a child might have written it.
+I don't see how you get such effects without any style at all. You just
+let your story tell itself."
+
+"Well, you see," replied Howard, "I am writing for the masses, and fine
+writing would be wasted upon them."
+
+"You're right," said Jackman, "we don't need literature on this
+paper--long words, high-sounding phrases and all that sort of thing.
+What we want is just plain, simple English that goes straight to the
+point."
+
+"Like Shakespeare's and Bunyan's," suggested Kittredge with a grin.
+
+"Shakespeare? Fudge!" scoffed Jackman. "Why he couldn't have made a
+living as a space-writer on a New York newspaper."
+
+"No, I don't think he would have staid long in Park Row," replied
+Kittredge with a subtlety of meaning that escaped Jackman.
+
+A few days before New Year's the Managing Editor looked up and smiled as
+Howard was passing his desk.
+
+"How goes it?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, not so badly," Howard answered, "but I am a good deal depressed at
+times."
+
+"Depressed? Nonsense! You've got everything--youth, health and freedom.
+And by the way, you are going on space the first of the year. Our rule
+is a year on salary before space. But we felt that it was about time to
+strengthen the rule by making an exception."
+
+Howard stammered thanks and went away. This piece of news, dropped
+apparently so carelessly by Mr. King, meant a revolution in fortune for
+him. It was the transition from close calculation on twenty-five dollars
+a week to wealth beyond his most fanciful dreams of six months ago. Not
+having the money-getting instinct and being one of those who compare
+their work with the best instead of with the inferior, Howard never felt
+that he was "entitled to a living." He had a lively sense of gratitude
+for the money return for his services which prudence presently taught
+him to conceal.
+
+"Space" meant to him eighty dollars a week at least--circumstances of
+ease. So vast a sum did it seem that he began to consider the problem of
+investment. "I have been not badly off on twenty-five dollars a week,"
+he thought. "With, well, say forty dollars a week I shall be able to
+satisfy all my wants. I can save at least forty a week and that will
+mean an independence with a small income by the time I am thirty-four."
+
+But--a year after he was put "on space" he was still just about even
+with his debts. He seemed to himself to be living no better and it
+was only by careful counting-up that he could see how that dream of
+independence had eluded him. A more extensive wardrobe, a little better
+food, a more comfortable suite of rooms, an occasional dinner to some
+friends, loans to broken-down reporters, and the mysteriously vanished
+two thousand dollars was accounted for.
+
+Howard tried to retrench, devised small ingenious schemes for saving
+money, lectured himself severely and frequently for thus trifling away
+his chance to be a free man. But all in vain. He remained poor; and,
+whenever he gave the matter thought, which was not often, gloomy
+forebodings as to the future oppressed him. "I shall find myself old,"
+he thought, "with nothing accomplished, with nothing laid by. I shall
+be an old drudge." He understood the pessimistic tone of his profession.
+All about him were men like himself--leading this gambler's life of
+feverish excitement and evanescent achievement, earning comfortable
+incomes and saving nothing, looking forward to the inevitable time of
+failing freshness and shattered nerves and declining income.
+
+He spasmodically tried to write stories for the magazines, contrived
+plots for novels and plays, wrote first chapters, first scenes of
+first acts. But the exactions of newspaper life, the impossibility of
+continuous effort at any one piece of work and his natural inertia--he
+was inert but neither idle nor lazy--combined to make futile his efforts
+to emancipate himself from hand-to-mouth journalism.
+
+He had been four years a reporter and was almost twenty-six years old.
+He was known throughout his profession in New York, although he had
+never signed an article. One remarkable "human interest" story after
+another had forced the knowledge of his abilities upon the reporters and
+editors of other newspapers. And he was spoken of as one of the best and
+in some respects the best "all round reporter" in the city. This meant
+that he was capable to any emergency--that, whatever the subject, he
+could write an accurate, graphic, consecutive and sustained story and
+could get it into the editor's hands quickly.
+
+Indeed he possessed facility to the perilous degree. What others
+achieved only after long toil, he achieved without effort. This was
+due chiefly to the fact that he never relaxed but was at all times
+the journalist, reading voraciously newspapers, magazines and the best
+books, and using what he read; observing constantly and ever trying to
+see something that would make "good copy"; turning over phrases in his
+mind to test the value of words both as to sound and as to meaning.
+He was an incessantly active man. His great weakness was the common
+weakness--failure to concentrate. In Park Row they regarded him as a
+brilliant success. Brilliant he was. But a success he was not. He knew
+that he was a brilliant failure--and not very brilliant.
+
+"Why is it?" he asked himself again and again in periods of reaction
+from the nervous strain of some exciting experience. "Shall I never
+seize any of these chances that are always thrusting themselves at
+me? Shall I always act like a Neapolitan beggar? Will the stimulus to
+ambition never come?"
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+IN THE EDGE OF BOHEMIA.
+
+
+Howard lived in Washington Square, South. He had gone to a
+"furnished-room house" there because it was cheap. He staid because he
+was comfortable and was without a motive for moving.
+
+It was the centre of the most varied life in New York. To the north lay
+fashion and wealth, to the east and west, respectability and moderate
+means; to the south, poverty and squalor, vice and crime. All could be
+seen and heard from the windows of his sitting room. In the evenings
+toward spring he looked out upon a panorama of the human race such as
+is presented by no other city in the world and by no other part of
+that city. Within view were Americans of all kinds, French and Germans,
+Italians and Austrians, Spaniards and Moors, Scandinavians and
+negroes, born New Yorkers and born citizens of most of the capitals of
+civilisation and semi-barbarism. There were actresses, dancers, shop
+girls, cocottes; touts, thieves, confidence-men, mission workers;
+artists and students from the musty University building, tramps and
+drunkards from the "barrel-houses" and "stale-beer shops;" and, across
+the square to the north, representatives of New York's oldest and most
+noted families. To the west were apartment houses whence stiff, prim
+bookkeepers, floor-walkers, clerks and small shop-keepers issued with
+their families on Sundays, bound for church. There were other apartment
+houses--the most of them to the south--whence in the midnight hours
+came slattern servants and reckless looking girls in loose wrappers and
+high-heeled slippers, pitcher in hand, bound for the nearest saloon.
+
+After dusk from early spring until late fall a multitude of interesting
+sounds mingled with the roar of the elevated trains to the west and
+south and the rumble of carriages in "the Avenue" to the north. Howard,
+reading or writing at his window on his leisure days, heard the young
+men and young women laughing and shouting and making love under the
+trees where the Washington Arch glistened in the twilight. Later came
+the songs--"I want you, my honey, yes I do," or "Lu, Lu, how I love my
+Lu!", or some other of the current concert-hall jingles. Many figures
+could be seen flitting about in the shadows. Usually these figures were
+in pairs; usually one was in white; usually at her waist-line there was
+a black belt that continued on until it was lost in the other and darker
+figure.
+
+Scraps of a score of languages--curses, jests, terms of
+endearment--would float up to him. Then came the hours of comparative
+silence, with the city breathing softly and regularly, with the moon
+hanging low and the pale arch rising above the dark trees like a giant
+ghost. There would be an occasional drunken shout or shriek; a riotous
+roar of song from some staggering reveller making company for himself on
+the journey home; the heavy step of the policeman. Or perhaps the only
+sound to disturb the city's sleep would be that soft tread, timid as
+a mouse's, stealthy as a jackal's--the tread of a lonely woman with
+draggled silk skirt and painted cheeks and eyes burning into the
+darkness, and a heart as bitter and as sad as no money, no home, no
+friends, no hope can make it.
+
+Once he threw a silver dollar from his window to the sidewalk well in
+front of her. She did not see it flash downward but she heard it ring
+upon the walk. She rushed forward and twice kicked it away from her in
+her frenzy to get it. When her bare hand--or was it a claw?--at last
+closed upon it, she gave a low scream, looked slyly and fearfully about,
+then ran as if death were at her heels.
+
+Soon after Howard was put "on space" he took the best suite of rooms in
+the house. It was a strange company which Mrs. Sands had gathered under
+her roof. Except Howard there was no one, not even Mrs. Sands herself,
+who did not have so much past that there was little left for future.
+Indeed, perhaps none of these storm-tossed or wrecked human craft
+had had more of a past than Mrs. Sands. There was no mistaking the
+significance of those deep furrows filled with powder and plastered with
+paint, those few hairs tinted and frizzed. But like all persons with
+real pasts Mrs. Sands and her lodgers kept the veil tightly drawn. They
+confessed to no yesterdays and they did not dare think of to-morrow.
+They were incuriously awaiting the impulse which was sure to come, sure
+to thrust them on downward.
+
+A new lodger at Mrs. Sand's usually took the best rooms that were to be
+had. Then, sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly, came the retreat upward
+until a cubby-hole under the eaves was reached. Finally came precipitate
+and baggageless departure, often with a week or two of lodging unpaid.
+The next pause, if pause there was, would be still nearer the river-bed
+or the Morgue.
+
+One morning when he had been living in Washington Square, South,
+about--three years, Howard was dressing hurriedly, the door of his
+sitting-room accidentally ajar. Through the crack he saw some one
+stooping over the serving tray which he had himself put outside his
+door when he had finished breakfast. He looked more closely. It was
+"the clergyman" from up under the eaves--an unfrocked priest, thin to
+emaciation, misery written upon his face even more deeply than weakness.
+He hastily bundled the bones of two chops and a bit of bread into a
+stained and torn handkerchief, and sprang away up the stairs toward his
+little hole at the roof.
+
+Howard was in a hurry and so put off for the time action upon the
+natural impulse. When he came back at midnight, there was soon a knock
+at his door. He opened it and invited in the man at the threshold--a
+tall, strongly built, erect German, with a dissipated handsome face,
+heavily scarred from university duels.
+
+"Pardon me for disturbing you," said the German. His speech, his tone,
+his manner, left no doubt as to his breeding though they raised the
+gravest doubts as to his being willing to give a true account of why he
+had become a tenant in that lodging house.
+
+"Will you have a cigarette and some whiskey?" inquired Howard.
+
+The German's glance lit and lingered upon the bottle of Scotch on the
+table. "Concentrated, double-distilled friendship," said he as he poured
+out his drink.
+
+"But a friend that drives all others away," smiled Howard.
+
+"I have found it of a very jealous disposition," replied the German with
+a careless shrug of the shoulders and a lifting of the eyebrows. "But at
+least this friend has the grace to stay after it has driven the others
+away."
+
+"To stay until the last piece of silver is gone."
+
+"But what more does one expect of a friend? Besides, we are overlooking
+one friend--the one who helped our clerical fellow-lodger of the attic
+out of his troubles to-day."
+
+"His luck has turned?"
+
+"Permanently. He shot himself this afternoon."
+
+"And only this morning I made up my mind to try to help him," said
+Howard regretfully.
+
+"You could not have hoped to succeed so well. His case needed something
+more than temporary expedient. But, to come to the point, I had a slight
+acquaintance with him. He left a note for me--mailed it just before he
+shot himself. In it he asked that I insert a personal in the Herald.
+Unfortunately I have not the money. I thought that you as a journalist
+might be able to suggest something."
+
+The German held out a slip of cheap writing paper on which was written:
+"Helen--when you see this it will be over--L."
+
+"A good story," was Howard's first thought, his news-instinct alert. And
+then he remembered that it was not for him to tell. "I will attend to
+this for you to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you," said the German, helping himself to the whiskey. "Have you
+seen the new lodgers?"
+
+"Those in the room behind me? Yes. I saw them at the front door as I
+came in."
+
+"They're a queer pair--the youngest I've seen in this house. I've been
+wondering what tempest wrecked them on this forlorn coast so early in
+the voyage."
+
+"Why wrecked?"
+
+"My dear sir, we are all--except you--wrecks here, all unseaworthy at
+least."
+
+"One of them was quite pretty, I thought," said Howard, "the slender one
+with the black hair."
+
+"They are not mates. The other girl is of a different sort. She's more
+used to this kind of life, at least to poverty. I fancy Miss Black-Hair
+looks on it as a lark. But she'll find out the truth by the time she has
+mounted another story."
+
+"Here, to go up means to go down," Howard said, weary of the
+conversation and wishing that the German would leave.
+
+"They say that they're sisters," the German went on, again helping
+himself to the whiskey; "They say they have run away from home because
+of a stepmother and that they are going to earn their own living. But
+they won't. They spend the nights racing about with a gang of the young
+wretches of this neighbourhood. They won't be able to stand getting up
+early for work. And then----"
+
+The German blew out a huge cloud of cigarette smoke, shrugged his
+shoulders and added: "Miss Black-Hair may get on up town presently. But
+I doubt it. The Tenderloin rarely recruits from down here."
+
+The bottle was empty and the German bowed himself out. As the night was
+hot, Howard opened the door a few moments afterward. At the other end of
+the short hall light was streaming through the open door of the room the
+two girls had taken. Before he could turn, there was a shadow and "Miss
+Black-Hair" was standing in her doorway:
+
+"Oh," she began, "I thought----"
+
+Howard paused, looking at her. She was above the medium height--tall
+for a woman--and slender. Her loose wrapper, a little open at her round
+throat, clung to her, attracting attention to all the lines of her form.
+Her hair was indeed black, jet black, waving back from her forehead in a
+line of curving and beautiful irregularity. Her skin was clear and dark.
+There were deep circles under her eyes, making them look unnaturally
+large, pathetically weary. In repose her face was childish and sadly
+serious. When she smiled she looked older and pert, but no happier.
+
+"I thought," she continued with the pert, self-confident smile, "that
+you were my sister Nellie. I'm waiting for her."
+
+"You're in early tonight," said Howard, the circles under her eyes
+reminding him of what the German had told him.
+
+"I haven't slept much for a week," the girl replied, "I'm nearly dead.
+But I won't go to bed till Nellie comes."
+
+Howard was about to turn when she went on: "We agreed always to stay
+together. She broke it tonight. My fellow got too fresh, so I came home.
+She said she'd come too. That was an hour ago and she isn't here yet."
+
+"Isn't she rather young to be out alone at this time?"
+
+Howard could hardly have told why he continued the conversation. He
+certainly would not, had she been less beautiful or less lonely and
+childish. At his remark about her sister's youth she laughed with an
+expression of cunning at once amusing and pitiful.
+
+"She's a year older than me," she said, "and I guess I can take care of
+myself. Still she hasn't much sense. She'll get into trouble yet. She
+doesn't understand how to manage the boys when they're too fresh."
+
+"But you do, I suppose?" suggested Howard.
+
+"Indeed I do," with a quick nod of her small graceful head, "I know what
+I'm about. _My_ mother taught _me_ a few things."
+
+"Didn't she teach your sister also?"
+
+"Miss Black-Hair" dropped her eyes and flushed a little, looking like a
+child caught in a lie. "Of course," she said after a pause.
+
+"How long have you been without your mother?"
+
+"I've been away from home four months. But I saw her in the street
+yesterday. She didn't see me though."
+
+"Then you've got a step-father?"
+
+"No, I haven't. Nellie told that to Mrs. Sands. But it's not so. You
+know Nellie's not my sister?"
+
+"I fancied not from what you said a moment ago."
+
+"No, she used to be nurse girl in our family. We just say we're sisters.
+I wish she'd come. I'm tired of standing. Won't you come in?"
+
+She went into her room, her manner a frank and simple invitation. Howard
+hesitated, then went just inside the door and half sat, half leaned upon
+the high roll of the lounge. The room was cheaply furnished, the lounge
+and a closed folding bed almost filling it. Upon the mantel, the bureau
+and the little table were a few odds and ends that stamped it a woman's
+room. A street gown of thin pale-blue cloth was thrown over a rocking
+chair. As the girl leaned back in this chair with her face framed in the
+pale-blue of the gown, she looked tired and sad and beautiful and very
+young.
+
+"If Nellie doesn't look out, I'll go away and live alone," she said, and
+the accompanying unconscious look of loneliness touched Howard.
+
+"You might go back home."
+
+"You don't know my home or you wouldn't say that. You don't know my
+father." She had got upon the subject of herself, and, once in that road
+she kept it with no thought of turning out. "He can't treat me as he
+treats mother. Why, he goes away and stays for days. Then he comes home
+and quarrels with her all the time. They never both sit through a meal.
+One or the other flares up and leaves. He generally whipped me when he
+got very mad--just for spite."
+
+"But there's your mother."
+
+"Yes. She doesn't like my going away. But I can't stand it. Papa
+wouldn't let me go anywhere or let anybody come to see me. He says
+everybody's bad. I guess he's about right. Only he doesn't include
+himself."
+
+"You seem to have a poor opinion of people."
+
+"Well, you can't blame me." She put on her wise look of experience and
+craft. "I've been away, living with Nellie for four months and I've seen
+no good to speak of. A girl doesn't get a fair chance."
+
+"But you've got work?"
+
+"Oh, yes. We both stayed down in a restaurant, Nellie's got a place as
+waiter. That's the best she could do. The man said I was good-looking
+and would catch trade. So he made me cashier. I get six dollars a week
+to Nellie's three. But it's a bad place. The men are always slipping
+notes in my hand when they give me their checks. Then the boss, he's
+always bothering around."
+
+"But you don't have to work hard?"
+
+"From nine till four. We get our lunch free. I pay three dollars on the
+room and Nellie pays one."
+
+If Howard had not seen many such problems in economics before, he would
+have been astonished at any one even hoping to be able to get two meals
+a day, clothing and carfare out of two or three dollars a week. As it
+was, he only wondered how long a girl who had been used at least to
+comfort would endure this. "It's easy for the other girl," he thought,
+"because she's used to it. But this one--" and he decided that the
+"trouble" would begin as soon as her clothing was worn out.
+
+He noticed that she was pulling at the third finger of her right hand
+where she would have worn rings if she had had any. "You've had to pawn
+your rings?" he ventured.
+
+She looked at him startled. "Did Nellie tell you?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied, "I saw that you were missing your rings and suspected
+the rest."
+
+"Yes; that's so. I've pawned all my jewelry except a bracelet. Nellie
+can't get along on her three dollars. She eats too much."
+
+"I should think you'd rather be at home."
+
+"As I told you before," she said impatiently, "anything's better than
+home. Besides, I'm pretty well off. I go where I please, stay out as
+late as I please and have all the company I want. At home I'd have to be
+in bed at ten o'clock."
+
+There was a sound at the front door down in the darkness. The girl
+started from the chair, listened, then exclaimed: "There she comes now.
+And it's two o'clock!"
+
+Howard took the hint, smiled and said: "Well, good-night. I'll see you
+again."
+
+"Good-night," the girl answered absently.
+
+From his room Howard heard Nellie coming up the stairs. "You're a nice
+one!" came in "Miss Black-Hair's" indignant voice, "Where have you been?
+Where did you and Jack go?"
+
+The answer came in a sob--"Oh, Alice, you'll never forgive me!"
+
+Their door closed upon the two girls but Howard could still hear
+Nellie's voice tearful, pleading. There was the sound of some one
+falling heavily upon the lounge, then sobs and cries of "Oh! Oh!"
+As Howard went into his bedroom, he could hear the voices still more
+plainly through the thin wall. He caught the words only once. "Miss
+Black-Hair," her voice shaking with anger, exclaimed: "Nellie Baker, you
+are a wicked girl, I shall go away."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ALICE.
+
+Several nights later Howard came upon Alice at the front door, where a
+young man was detaining her in a lingering good-bye. Another night as
+he was passing her room he saw her stretched upon the floor, her head
+supported by her elbows and an open book in front of her. She looked so
+childlike that Howard paused and said: "What is it--a fairy story?"
+
+"No, it's a love story," she replied, just glancing at him with a faint
+smile and showing that she did not wish to be interrupted. The same
+night as he was going to bed he heard the angry voices of the two girls.
+A week later, toward the end of July, he found Alice sitting on the
+front stoop, when he came from dinner. She was obviously in the depths
+of the "blues." Her eyes, the droop of the corners of her mouth, even
+the colour of her skin indicated anxiety and depression. She looked so
+forlorn that he said gently: "Wouldn't you like to walk in the Square?"
+
+She rose at once. "Yes, I guess so." They crossed to the green. She was
+wearing the pale-blue gown and it fitted her well. Neither in the gown
+nor in the big hat with its coquettish flowers nodding over the brim was
+there much of fashion. But there was a certain distinction in her
+walk and her manner of wearing her clothes; and to a pretty face and a
+graceful form was added the charm of youth, magnetic youth.
+
+"Do you want to walk?" she asked, lassitude in her voice.
+
+"No, let us sit," he said, and they went to a bench near the arch. It
+was twilight. The children were still romping and shouting. Many fat
+elderly women--mothers and grandmothers--were solemnly marching about,
+talking in fat, elderly voices.
+
+"You have the blues?" asked Howard, thinking it might make her feel
+better to talk of her troubles. "If I were your doctor, I should
+prescribe a series of good cries."
+
+"I don't cry," said the girl. "Sometimes I wish I could. Nellie cries
+and gets over things. I feel awful inside and sick and my eyes burn. But
+I can't cry."
+
+"You're too young for that."
+
+"Oh, in some ways I'm young; again, I'm not. I hate everybody this
+evening."
+
+"What's the matter? Has Nellie deserted you?"
+
+"She? Not much. I had to tell her to go"--this with a joyless little
+laugh--"she quit work and wouldn't behave herself. So now I'm going on
+alone."
+
+"And you won't go home?"
+
+"Never in the world," she said with almost fierce energy; then some
+thought made her laugh in the same way as before. Howard decided that
+she had not told him everything about her home life, even though she had
+rattled on as if there were nothing to conceal. He sat watching her, she
+looking straight before her, her small bare hands clasped in her lap.
+He was pitying her keenly--this child, at once stunted and abnormally
+developed, this stray from one of the classes that keeps their women
+sheltered; and here she was adrift, without any of those resources of
+experience which assist the girls of the tenements.
+
+Her features were small, sensitive, regular. Her eyes were brown with
+lines of reddish gold raying from the pupils. Her chin and mouth were
+firm enough, yet suggested weakness through the passions. Her clear
+skin had the glow of youth and health upon its smooth surface. She was
+certainly beautiful and she certainly had magnetism.
+
+"What do you think is going to become of you?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know," she said, after a deep sigh. "A girl doesn't have a fair
+chance. I don't seem to be able to have any fun without getting into
+trouble. I don't know what to think. It's all so black. I wish I was
+dead."
+
+Her dreary tone put the deepest pathos into her words. Howard had seen
+despondency in youth before--had felt it himself. But there had always
+been a certain lightness in it. Here was a mere child who evidently
+thought, and thought with reason, that there was no hope for her; and
+her despair was not a passing cloud or storm, but a settled conviction.
+
+"There doesn't seem to be any chance for a young girl," she repeated
+as if that phrase summed up all that was weighing upon her. And Howard
+feared that she, was right. Even the readiest of all commodities,
+advice, failed him. "What can she do?" he thought. "If she has no home,
+worth speaking of"--then he went on aloud:
+
+"Haven't you friends?"
+
+She laughed again with that slight moving of the lips and with eyes
+mirthless. "Who wants me for a friend? Nobody'd think I was respectable.
+And I guess I'm not so very. There's Nellie and her--friends. Oh, the
+girls join in with the men to drag other girls down. But I won't do
+that. I don't care what becomes of me--except that."
+
+"Why?" he asked, curious for her explanation of this aversion.
+
+"I don't know why," she replied. "There doesn't seem to be any good
+reason. I've thought I would several times. And then--well, I just
+couldn't."
+
+Howard turned the subject and tried to draw her out of this mood. They
+sat there for several hours and became well acquainted. He found that
+she had an intelligent way of looking at things, that she observed
+closely, and that she appreciated and understood far more than he had
+expected.
+
+It was the beginning of a series of evenings spent together. He took her
+with him on many of his assignments and they often dined together at
+"Le Chat Noir" or the "Restaurant de Paris," or "The Manhattan" over
+in Second Avenue. Late in June she bought a new gown--a pale-grey with
+ribbons and hat to match. Howard was amused at the anxious expression
+in her gold-brown eyes as she waited for his opinion. And when he said:
+"Well, well, I never saw you look so pretty," she looked much prettier
+with a slight colour rising to tint the usual pallor of her cheeks.
+
+One Sunday he came home in the afternoon and found her helping the maid
+at straightening his rooms. As he lay on the lounge smoking he watched
+her lazily. She handled his books with a great deal of awe. She opened
+one of them and sat on the floor in the childlike way she often had. She
+read several sentences aloud. It was a tangle of technical words on the
+subject of political economy.
+
+"What do you have such stupid things around for?" she said, smiling and
+rising. She began to arrange the books and papers on the table. He was
+looking at her but thinking of something else when he became conscious
+that she had got suddenly white to the lips. He jumped to his feet.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, "are you going to faint?"
+
+Her eyes were shining as with fever out of a ghostly face. Her lips
+trembled as she answered: "Oh it's nothing. I do this often." She went
+slowly into the back room where the maid was. In a few minutes she
+returned, apparently as usual. She flitted about uneasily, taking up now
+one thing, now another in a purposeless, nervous way.
+
+"I never was in here before," she said. "You've got lots of pretty
+things. Whose picture is this?"
+
+"That? Oh, my sister-in-law out in Chicago."
+
+Howard did not then understand why she became so gay, why her eyes
+danced with happiness, why as soon as she went into the hall she began
+to sing and kept it up in her own room, quieting down only to burst
+forth again. He did not even especially note the swift change, the, for
+her, extraordinary mood of high spirits. It was about this time that
+their relations began to change.
+
+Howard had thought of her, or had thought that he thought of her, only
+as a lonely and desolate child, to be taught so far as he was capable of
+teaching and she of learning. He was conscious of her extreme youth and
+of the impassable gulf of thought and taste between them. He did not
+take her feelings into account at all. It never occurred to him that
+this part of friend and patron which he was playing was not safe for
+him, not just and right toward her.
+
+One night he took her to a ball at the Terrace Garden--a
+respectable, amusing affair "under the auspices of the
+Young-German-American-Shooting-Society." The next day a reporter for the
+_Sun_ whom he knew slightly said to him with a grin he did not like:
+"Mighty pretty little girl you're taking about with you, Howard. Where'd
+you pick her up?"
+
+Howard reddened, angry with himself for reddening, angry with the _Sun_
+man for his impudence, ashamed that he had put himself and Alice in such
+a position. But the incident brought the matter of his relation with her
+sharply and clearly before his mind and conscience.
+
+"This must stop," he said to himself; "it must stop at once. It is
+unjust to her. And it is dragging me into an entanglement."
+
+But the mischief had been done. She loved him. And with the confidence
+of youth and inexperience, she was disregarding all the obstacles,
+was giving herself up to the dream that he would presently love her in
+return, with the end as in the story books. Indeed love stories became
+her constant companions. Where she once read them for amusement, she now
+read them as a Christian reads his Bible--for instruction, inspiration,
+faith, hope and courage.
+
+One evening in July--it was in the week of Independence Day--Howard's
+windows and door were thrown wide to get the full benefit of whatever
+stir there might be in the air. He was sprawled upon the lounge, the
+table drawn close and upon it a lamp shedding a dim light through the
+room but enough near by to let him read. He had dropped his book and was
+thinking whether a stroll in the Square in the moonlight would repay the
+trouble of moving. There were steps in the hall and then, peeping round
+the door-frame was the face of his young neighbour.
+
+"Hello," he said, "I thought you were out somewhere. Come in."
+
+"No, I'm going to bed," she answered, nevertheless gradually edging into
+the room. She was wearing a loose wrapper of flowered silk, somewhat
+worn and never very fine. Her black hair hung in a long thick braid to
+her waist and she looked even younger than usual.
+
+"Where have you been all evening?" asked Howard.
+
+
+"Oh, I've been up to see a friend. She lives in Harlem, and she wants me
+to come and live with her."
+
+"Are you going?" Howard inquired, noting that he was interested and not
+pleased. "The house wouldn't seem natural without you."
+
+She gave him a quick, gratified glance and, advancing further into the
+room, sat upon the arm of the big rocking-chair. "She gave me a good
+talking to," she went on with a smile. "She told me I ought not to live
+alone at my age. She said I ought to live with her and meet some friends
+of hers. She said maybe I'd find a nice fellow to marry."
+
+Howard thought over this as he smoked and at last said in an
+ostentatiously judicial tone: "Well, I think she's right. I don't see
+what else there is to do. You can't live on down here alone always.
+What's become of Nellie?"
+
+"Nellie's got to be a bad girl," said Alice with a blush and a dropping
+of the eyes. "She's in Fourteenth Street every night. She says she
+doesn't care what happens to her. I saw her last night and she wanted
+me to come with her. She says it's of no use for me to put on airs. She
+says I've got no friends and I might as well join her sooner as later."
+
+"Well?" Howard was keeping his eyes carefully away from hers.
+
+"Oh, I sha'n't go with her. As long as a girl has got anything at all
+to live for, she doesn't want that. Besides I'd rather go to the East
+River."
+
+"Drowning's a serious matter," said Howard with a smile and with banter
+in his tone.
+
+"Yes, it is," said the girl seriously, "I've thought of it. And I don't
+believe I could."
+
+"Then you'd better go with your friend and get married."
+
+"I don't want to get married," she replied, shaking her head slowly from
+side to side.
+
+"That's what all the girls say," laughed Howard. "But of course you
+will. It's the only thing to do."
+
+"Then why don't you get married?" asked Alice, tracing one of the
+flowers in her wrapper with her slim, brown forefinger.
+
+"I couldn't if I would and I wouldn't if I could."
+
+"Oh, you could get a nice girl to marry you, I'm sure," she said, the
+colour rising faintly toward her long, downcast lashes.
+
+"But who would get the money? It takes money to keep a nice girl."
+
+"Oh, not much," said Alice earnestly, yet with a queer hesitation in her
+voice. "You oughtn't to marry those extravagant girls. I've read about
+them and I think they don't make very good wives, real wives to save
+money and--and care."
+
+"You seem to know a good deal about these things for your age," said
+Howard, much amused and showing it.
+
+"I don't care," she persisted, "you ought to get married."
+
+Howard felt that this was the time to clear the girl's mind of any
+"notions" she might have got. He would be very clever, very adroit. He
+would not let her suspect that he had any idea of her thoughts. Indeed
+he was not perfectly certain that he had. But he would gently and
+frankly tell her the truth.
+
+"I shall never get married," he said, sitting up and talking as one who
+is discussing a case which he understands thoroughly yet has no personal
+interest in. "I haven't the money and I haven't the desire. I am what
+they would call a confirmed bachelor. I wouldn't marry any girl who
+had not been brought up as I have been. We should be unhappy together
+unsuited each to the other. She would soon hate me. Besides, I wish to
+be free. I care more for freedom than I ever shall for any human being.
+As I am now, so I shall always be, a wandering fellow without ties. It
+is not a pleasant prospect for old age. But I have made up my mind to it
+and I shall never marry."
+
+The girl's hands had dropped limp into her lap; her face was down so
+that he could barely see the burning blush which overspread it.
+
+"You don't mean that," she said in a voice that was queer and choked.
+
+"Oh yes, I do, little girl," he answered, intending to smile when she
+should look up.
+
+When she did lift her eyes, his smile could not come. For her face was
+grey and her lips bloodless and from her eyes looked despair. Howard
+glanced away instantly. With rude hand he had suddenly toppled into
+the dust this child's dream-castle of love and happiness which he had
+himself helped her build. He felt like a criminal. But partly from a
+sense of duty, chiefly from the cowardice of self-preservation, he made
+no effort to lighten her suffering.
+
+"I should only prolong it," he thought, "only make matters worse.
+To-morrow--perhaps."
+
+If she had been worldly wise, even if she had not been so completely
+absorbed in her worship of him that her woman-instincts were dormant,
+she would herself have found hope. But she had not a suspicion that
+these strong words of apparent finality were spoken to give himself
+courage, to keep him from obeying the impulse to respond to the appeal
+of her youth to his, her aloneness to his, her passion to his. She
+believed him literally.
+
+There was a long silence. He heard her move, heard a suppressed cry and
+glanced toward her again. She was darting from the room. A second later
+her door crashed. He started up and after her, hesitated, returned to
+his book--but not to his reading.
+
+Toward noon the next day, he passed her room on his way out. The
+door was wide open; none of her belongings was in sight; the maid was
+sweeping energetically. She paused when she saw him.
+
+"Miss Alice left this morning," she said, "and the room's been let to
+another party."
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+IN A BOHEMIAN QUICKSAND.
+
+
+Howard could have got her new address; and for many weeks habit, at
+first steadily, afterward intermittently, teased him to look her up.
+He was amazed at her hold upon him. At times the longing for her was so
+intense that he almost suspected himself of being in love with her.
+
+"I escaped from that none too soon," he congratulated himself. "It
+wasn't nearly so one-sided as I thought."
+
+He had never been gregarious. Thus far he had not had a single intimate
+friend, man or woman. He knew many people and knew them well. They liked
+him and some of them sought his friendship. These were often puzzled
+because it was easy to get acquainted with him, impossible to know him
+intimately.
+
+The explanation of this combination of openness and reserve,
+friendliness and unapproachableness, was that his boyhood and youth had
+been spent wholly among books. That life had trained him not to look to
+others for amusement, sympathy or counsel, but to depend upon himself.
+As his temperament was open and good-natured and sympathetic, he was as
+free from enemies and enmities as he was from friends and friendships.
+
+Women there had been--several women, a succession of idealizations which
+had dispersed in the strong light of his common sense. He had never
+disturbed himself about morals in what he regarded as the limited sense.
+He always insisted that he was free; and he was careful only of his
+personal pride and of taking no advantage of another. What he had said
+to Alice about marriage was true--as to his intentions, at least. A poor
+woman, he felt, he could not marry; a rich woman, he felt, he would not
+marry. And he cared nothing about marriage because he was never lonely,
+never leaned or wished to lean upon another, abhorred the idea of
+any one leaning upon him; because he regarded freedom as the very
+corner-stone of his scheme of life.
+
+The nearest he had come to companionship was with Alice. With the other
+women whom he had known in various degrees from warmth to white-heat,
+there had been interruptions, no such constant freedom of access, no
+such intermingling of daily life. Her he had seen at all hours and in
+all circumstances. She never disturbed him but was ready to talk when
+he wished to listen, listened eagerly when he talked, and was silent
+and beautiful and restful to look at when he wished to indulge in the
+dissipation of mental laziness.
+
+As she loved him, she showed him only the best that there was in her and
+showed it in the most attractive of all lights.
+
+While he was still wavering or fancying that he was wavering, the
+Managing Editor sent him to "do" a great strike-riot in the coal regions
+of Pennsylvania. He was there for three weeks, active day and night,
+interested in the new phases of life--the mines and the miners, the
+display of fierce passions, the excitement, the peril.
+
+When he returned to New York, Alice had ceased to tempt him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One midnight in the early spring he was in his sitting room, reading
+and a little bored. There came a knock at the door. He hoped that it was
+some one bringing something interesting or coming to propose a search
+for something interesting. "Come in," he said with welcome in his voice.
+The door opened. It was Alice.
+
+She was dressed much as she had been the first time he talked with
+her--a loose, clinging wrapper open at the throat. There was a change
+in her face--a change for the better but also for the worse. She looked
+more intelligent, more of a woman. There was more sparkle in her eyes
+and in her smile. But--Howard saw instantly the price she had paid. As
+the German had suggested, she had "got on up town."
+
+She was pulling at the long broad blue ribbons of her negligee. Her
+hands were whiter and her pink finger nails had had careful attention.
+She smiled, enjoying his astonishment. "I have come back," she said.
+
+Howard came forward and took her hand. "I'm glad, very glad to see you.
+For a minute I thought I was dreaming."
+
+"Yes," she went on, "I'm in my old room. I came this afternoon. I must
+have been asleep, for I didn't hear you come in."
+
+"I hope it isn't bad luck that has flung you back here."
+
+"Oh, no. I've been doing very well. I've been saving up to come. And
+when I had enough to last me through the summer, I--I came."
+
+"You've been at work?"
+
+She dropped her eyes and flushed. And her fingers played more nervously
+with her ribbons.
+
+"You needn't treat me as a child any longer," she said at last in a low
+voice; "I'm eighteen now and--well, I'm not a child."
+
+Again there was a long pause. Howard, watching her downcast face, saw
+her steadying her expression to meet his eyes. When she looked, it was
+straight at him--appeal but also defiance.
+
+"I don't ask anything of you," she said, "we are both free. And I
+wanted to see you. I was sick of all those others--up there. I've
+never had--had--this out of my mind. And I've come. And I can see you
+sometimes. I won't be in the way."
+
+Howard went over to the window and stared out into the lights and
+shadows of the leafy Square. When he turned again she had lighted and
+was smoking one of his cigarettes.
+
+"Well," he said smiling down at her, "Why not? Put on a street gown and
+we'll go out and get supper and talk it over."
+
+She sprang up, her face alight. She was almost running toward the door.
+Midway she stopped, turned and came slowly back. She put one of her arms
+upon his shoulder--a slender, cool, smooth, white arm with the lace of
+the wide sleeve slipping away from it. She turned her face up until her
+mouth, like a rosebud, was very near his lips. There was appeal in her
+eyes.
+
+"I'm very, very glad to see you," Howard said as he kissed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so Howard's life was determined for the next four years.
+
+He worked well at his profession. He read a great deal. He wrote fiction
+and essays in desultory fashion and got a few things printed in the
+magazines. He led a life that was a model of regularity. But he knew the
+truth--that Alice had ended his career.
+
+He was content. Ambition had always been vague with him and now his
+habit of following the line of least resistance had drifted him
+into this mill-pond. Sometimes, he would give himself up to
+bitter self-reproach, disgusted that he should be so satisfied, so
+non-resisting in a lot in every way the reverse of that which he had
+marked out for himself. If he had been chained he might, probably would,
+have broken away. But Alice never attempted to control him. His will
+was her law. She was especially shrewd about money matters, so often the
+source of disputes and estrangements. Two months after she reappeared,
+she proposed that they take an apartment together.
+
+"I saw one to-day in West Twelfth Street at seventy dollars a month,"
+she said, "and I'm sure I could manage it so that you would be much
+better off than you are now."
+
+He viewed this plan with suspicion. It definitely committed him to a
+mode of life which he had always regarded as degrading both to the man
+and the woman and as certain of a calamitous ending. So he made excuses
+for delay, fully intending never to yield. But although Alice did not
+speak of her plan again, he found himself more and more attracted by it,
+caught himself speculating about various apartments he happened to see
+as he went about the streets. She must have been conscious of what was
+going on in his mind; for when, a month after she had spoken, he said
+abruptly: "Where was that apartment you saw?" she went straight on
+discussing the details as if there had been no interval. She was ready
+to act.
+
+The apartment was taken in her name--Mrs. Cammack, the "Mrs." being
+necessary to account for him. They selected the furniture together, he
+as interested as she and very pleased to find that she had the same good
+taste in those matters that she had in dress. She took all the troubles
+and annoyances upon herself. When she invited him to assist in the
+arrangement, it was in matters that amused him and at times when she was
+sure he had nothing else to do. It is not strange that he got a wholly
+false idea of the difficulties of setting up an establishment.
+
+After a month of selecting and discussing, of pleasure in the new
+experience, pleasure in Alice's enthusiasm and excitement and happiness,
+he found himself master of five attractive and comfortable rooms, his
+clothing, his books, all his belongings properly arranged. The door was
+opened for him by a cleanlooking coloured maid, with a tiny white cap on
+her head.
+
+As he looked around and then at the beautiful face with the wistful,
+gold-brown eyes so anxiously following his wandering glance, he was very
+near to loving her. Indeed, he was like a husband who has left out that
+period of passionate love which extends into married life until it gives
+place to boredom, or to dislike, or to some such sympathetic affection
+as he felt for Alice. "It is just this that holds me," he thought, in
+his infrequent moods of dissatisfaction. "If we quarrelled or if there
+were any deep feeling on my side, I should not be in this mess. I should
+be"--Well, where would he be? "Probably worse off," he usually added.
+
+Certainly he could not have been freer, for she never questioned
+him; and, if she was ever uneasy or jealous when he came in late--for
+him--without telling her where he had been, she never showed it. She had
+no friends, and he often wondered how she passed the time when he was
+not with her. Whenever he inquired he got the same answer: She had been
+busying herself with their home; she had been planning to save money or
+to make him more comfortable; she had been reading to improve her mind
+and to enable herself to start him talking on subjects that interested
+him.
+
+No matter how unexpectedly he looked in upon her life or her mind, he
+found--himself.
+
+One day she said to him--it was after two years of this life: "Something
+is worrying you. Is it about me? You look at me so queerly at times."
+
+"Yes," he answered. "It is about you. Tell me, Miss Black-Hair, do you
+never think of getting old?"
+
+"No," she smiled. "I shall wait until I am twenty-five before I begin to
+think of that."
+
+"But don't you see that this sort of thing must stop sometime? It is
+unjust to you. When I think of it, I reproach myself for permitting us
+to get into it."
+
+"I am happy," she said, looking straight at him, terror in her eyes.
+
+"But you have no friends?"
+
+"Who has? And what do I want with friends?"
+
+"But don't you see, I can't introduce you to anybody. I can't talk about
+you to the people I know. I am always having to explain you away, always
+having to act as if I were ashamed of this, my real life. At times I am
+Anglo-Saxon enough to be really ashamed of it. And I ought to be and am
+ashamed of myself."
+
+"Don't let's talk about it. You and I understand. Why should we bother
+about the rest of the world?"
+
+"No, we _must_ talk about it. I have been going over it carefully. We
+must--must be married."
+
+He laid his hand upon hers. She blushed deeply and lowered her head.
+A tear dropped upon the front of her gown and hung glittering in the
+meshes of the white lace. She crept into his arms and buried her face
+upon his shoulder and sobbed. He had never seen her even look like tears
+before.
+
+"We must be married," he repeated, patting her on the shoulder.
+
+She shook her head in negation.
+
+"Yes," he said firmly, mentally noting that this was the very first time
+he had ever caught her in a pretense.
+
+"No." Her tone was as firm as his. She lifted her head and put her
+cheek against his. "It makes me very proud that you ask it. But--I--I do
+not----"
+
+"Do not--what?"
+
+"I do not want--I will not--risk losing you."
+
+"But you won't lose me. You will have me more than ever."
+
+"Some men--yes. But not you."
+
+"And why not I, O Wisdom?"
+
+"Because--because--do you think I have watched you all this time,
+without learning something about you? The way to keep you is to leave
+you free. I do not want your name. I do not want your friends I do not
+want to be respectable. I want--just you."
+
+"But are we not as good as married now?"
+
+"Yes--that's it. And I want it to keep on. I never cared for anybody
+until I saw you. I shall never care for anybody else. I never shall try.
+I want you as long as I can have you. And then----"
+
+"And then," Howard laughed or rather, pretended to laugh, "and then,
+'Oh, dig me a grave both wide and deep, wide and deep.' How like
+twenty-years-old that is."
+
+She seemed not to hear his jest and presently went on: "Do you remember
+the evening before I left, down there at Mrs. Sands's?"
+
+"The night you proposed to me?" Howard said, pulling her ear.
+
+She smiled faintly and continued: "I thought it all out that night. I
+intended to come back just as I did. I went deliberately. I----"
+
+Howard put his hand over her lips.
+
+"O, I am not going to tell anything,", said she, evading his fingers.
+"Only this--that I understood you then, understood just why you
+would never marry. Not so clearly as I understand it now, but still
+I--understood. And you have been teaching me ever since, teaching me
+manners, teaching me how to read and think and talk. And more than all,
+you've taught me your way of looking at life."
+
+Howard held her away from him and studied her face, surprise in his
+eyes. "Isn't it strange?" he said.
+
+"Here I've been seeing you day after day all this time, have had a
+chance to know you better than I ever knew any one in my life, have had
+you very near to me day and night. And just now, as I look at you, I see
+the real you for the first time in two years."
+
+"I have been wondering when you would look at me again," said Alice with
+a small, sly smile.
+
+"Why, you are a woman grown. Where is the little girl I knew, the little
+girl who used to look up to me?"
+
+"Oh, she's gone these two years. She proposed to you and, when you
+refused her, she--died."
+
+"Yes--we must be married," Howard went on. "Why not? It is more
+convenient, let us say."
+
+Alice shook her head and put her cheek against his again and clasped his
+fingers in hers. "No, my instinct is against it. Some day--perhaps.
+But not now, not now. I want you. I want only you. We are together out
+here--out beyond the pale. Inside, others would come in and--and surely
+come between us. I want no others--none."
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+A LITTLE CANDLE GOES OUT.
+
+
+Howard was now thirty years old. Park Row had long ceased talking of him
+as a "coming man." While his style of writing was steadily improving,
+he wrote with no fixed aim, wrote simply for the day, for the newspaper
+which dies with the day of its date. Some of his acquaintances wondered
+why a man of such ability should thus stand still. The less observant
+spoke of him as an impressive example of the "journalistic blight."
+Those who looked deeper saw the truth--a dangerous facility, a perilous
+inertia, a fatal entanglement. Facility enabled him to earn a good
+living with ease, working as he chose. Inertia prevented him from
+seeking opportunities for advancement. Entanglement shut him off from
+the men and women of his own kind who would have thrust opportunities
+upon him and compelled him.
+
+Howard himself saw this clearly in his occasional moods of
+self-criticism. But as he saw no remedy, he raged intermittently and
+briefly, and straightway relapsed. Vanity supplied him with many
+excuses and consolations. Was he not one of the best reporters in the
+profession? Where was there another, where indeed in any profession were
+there many of his age, making five thousand a year? Was he not always
+improving his mind? Was he not more and more careful in his personal
+habits? Was he not respected by all who knew him; looked upon as a
+successful man; regarded by those with whom he came in daily contact as
+a leader in the profession, a model for style, a marvel for facility and
+versatility and for the quantity of good "copy" he could turn out in a
+brief time? But with all the soothings of vanity he never could quite
+hide from himself that his life was a failure up to that moment.
+
+"Why try to lie to myself?" he thought. "It's never a question of what
+one has done but always of what one could have and should have done.
+I am thirty and I have been marking time for at least four years.
+Preparing by study and reading? Yes, but not preparing for anything."
+
+On the whole he was glad that Alice had refused to marry him. Her reason
+was valid. But there was another which he thought she did not see. He
+was deceived as to the depth of her insight because he did not watch her
+closely. He had no suspicion how many, many times, in their moments
+of demonstrativeness, she listened for those words which never came,
+listened and turned away to hide from him the disappointment in her
+eyes.
+
+He did not love her--and she knew it. She did not inspire ambition in
+him--and she knew it. She simply kept him comfortable and contented.
+She simply prevented his amatory instincts from gathering strength
+vigorously to renew that search which men and women keep up incessantly
+until they find what they seek. She knew this also but never permitted
+herself to see it clearly.
+
+He was pleased with her but not proud of her. He was not exactly ashamed
+of his relation with her but--well, he never relaxed his precautions for
+keeping it conventionally concealed. He still had a room at his club
+and occupied it occasionally. He laughed at himself, despised himself
+in a--gentle, soothing way. But he excused himself to himself with
+earnestness despite his sarcasms at his own expense. And for the most
+of the time he was content--so well, so comfortably content that if his
+mind had not been so nervously active he would have taken on the form
+and look of settled middle-life.
+
+There was just the one saving quality--his mental alertness. All his
+life he had had insatiable intellectual curiosity. It had kept him
+from wasting his time at play when he was a boy. It had kept him from
+plunging deeply into dissipation when youth was hot in his veins. It was
+now keeping him from the sluggard's fate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the last day of January--six weeks after his thirtieth birthday--he
+came home earlier than usual, as they were going to the theatre and were
+to dine at seven. He found Alice in bed and the doctor sitting beside
+her.
+
+"You'll have to get some one else to go with you, I'm afraid," she said
+with good-humoured resignation, a trifle over-acted. "My cold is worse
+and the doctor says I must stay in bed."
+
+"Nothing serious?" Howard asked anxiously, for her cheeks were flaming.
+
+"Oh, no. Just the cold. And I am taking care of myself."
+
+He accompanied the doctor to the door of the apartment. At the threshold
+the doctor whispered: "Make some excuse and come to my office. I wish to
+see you particularly."
+
+He grew pale. "Don't let her see," urged the doctor. He went back to
+Alice, sick at heart. "I must go out and arrange for some one else to do
+the play for me," he said. "I shall spend the evening with you."
+
+She protested, but faintly. He went to the doctor's office.
+
+"She must go south at once," he began, after looking at Howard steadily
+and keenly. "Nothing can save her life. That may prolong it."
+
+Howard seemed not to understand.
+
+"She must go to-morrow or she'll be gone forever in ten days."
+
+"Impossible," Howard said in a dull, dazed tone.
+
+"At once, I tell you--at once."
+
+"Impossible," Howard repeated. He was saying to himself, "And only this
+afternoon I wished I were free and wondered how I could free myself." He
+laughed strangely.
+
+"Impossible," he said again. And again he laughed. The room swam around.
+He stood up. "Impossible!" he said a fourth time, almost shouting it.
+And he struck the doctor full in the face, reeled and fell headlong to
+the floor. When he recovered consciousness he was lying on a lounge, the
+doctor's assistant standing beside him.
+
+"I must go to her," he exclaimed and sat up. He saw the doctor a few
+feet away, holding a cloth odorous of arnica to his cheek. Howard
+remembered and began, "I beg your pardon,"--The doctor interrupted with:
+"Not at all. I've had many queer experiences but never one like that."
+But Howard had ceased to hear. He was staring vacantly at the floor,
+repeating to himself, "And I wished to be free. And I am to be free."
+
+"You must go back to her. Take her south tomorrow. Asheville is the best
+place."
+
+Howard was on his way to the door. "We shall go by the first train," he
+said.
+
+"Pardon me for telling you so abruptly," said the doctor, following him.
+"But I saw that you weren't--that is I couldn't help noticing that you
+and she were--And usually the man in such cases--well, my sympathy is
+for the woman."
+
+"Do you think a man voluntarily lives with a woman because he hates
+her?" Howard asked, with an angry sneer. He bowed coldly and was gone.
+
+As he looked at Alice he saw that it was of no use to try to deceive
+her. "We must go South in the morning," he almost whispered, taking her
+hand and kissing it again and again, slowly and gently.
+
+The next day but one they were at Asheville and two weeks later Howard
+could not hide from himself that she would soon be gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her bed was drawn up to the open window and she Was propped with
+pillows. A mild breeze was flooding the room with the odours of the pine
+forests and the gardens. She looked out, dilated her nostrils and her
+eyes.
+
+"Beautiful!" she murmured. "It is so easy to die here."
+
+She put out her hand and laid it in his.
+
+"I want you, my Alice." He was looking into her eyes and she into his.
+"I need you. I can't do without you."
+
+She smiled with an expression of happiness. "Is it wrong," she asked,
+"to take pleasure in another's pain? I see that you are in pain, that
+you suffer. And, oh, it makes me happy, so happy."
+
+"Don't," he begged. "Please don't."
+
+"But listen," she went on. "Don't you see why? Because I--because I love
+you. There," she was smiling again. "I promised myself I never, never
+would say it first. And I've broken my word."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"For nearly four years--all the years I've really lived--I have had only
+one thought--my love for you. But I never would say it, never would say
+'I love you,' because I knew that you did not love me."
+
+He was beginning to speak but she lifted her hand to his lips. Then she
+put it back in his and pushed her fingers up his coat-sleeve until they
+were hidden, resting upon his bare arm.
+
+"No, you did not." Her voice was low and the words came slowly. "But
+since we came here, you have loved me. If I were to get well, were to go
+back, you would not. Ah, if you knew, if you only knew how I have wanted
+your love, how I have lain awake night after night, hour after hour,
+whispering under my breath 'I love you. I love you. Why do you not love
+me?'"
+
+Howard put his head down so that his face was hid from her in her lap.
+
+"After the doctor had talked to me a few minutes, had asked me a few
+questions," she went on, "I knew. And I was not sorry. It was nearly
+over, anyhow, dear. Did you know it? I often wondered if you did. Yes, I
+saw many little signs. I wouldn't admit it to myself until this illness
+came. Then I confessed it to myself. And I was not sorry we were to
+part this way. But I did not expect"--and she drew a long
+breath--"happiness!"
+
+"No, no," he protested, lifting his face and looking at her. She drank
+in the expression of his eyes--the love, the longing, the misery--as if
+it had been a draught of life.
+
+"Ah, you make me so happy, so happy. How much I owe to you. Four long,
+long, beautiful years. How much! How much! And at last--love!"
+
+There was silence for several minutes. Then he spoke: "I loved you
+from the first, I believe. Only I never appreciated you. I was
+so self-absorbed. And you--you fed my vanity, never insisted upon
+yourself."
+
+"But we have had happiness. And no one, no one, no one will ever be to
+you what I have been."
+
+"I love you." Howard's voice had a passionate earnestness in it that
+carried conviction. "The light goes out with you."
+
+"With this little candle? No, no, dear--_my_ dear. You will be a great
+man. You will not forget; but you will go on and do the things that I'm
+afraid I didn't help, maybe hindered, you in trying to do. And you will
+keep a little room in your heart, a very little room. And I shall be in
+there. And you'll open the door every once in a while and come in and
+take me in your arms and kiss me. And I think--yes, I feel that--that I
+shall know and thrill."
+
+Her voice sank lower and lower and then her eyes closed, and presently
+he called the nurse.
+
+The next day he rose from his bed, just at the connecting door between
+his room and hers, and looked in at her. The shades were drawn and only
+a faint light crept into the room. He thought he saw her stir and went
+nearer.
+
+"Why, they've made you very gay this morning," he laughed, "with the red
+ribbons at your neck."
+
+There was no answer. He came still nearer. The red ribbons were long
+streamers of blood. She was dead.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL.
+
+
+He left her at Asheville as she wished--"where I have been happiest and
+where I wish you to think of me." On the train coming north he reviewed
+his past and made his plans for the future.
+
+As to the past he had only one regret--that he had not learned to
+appreciate Alice until too late. He felt that his failure to advance had
+been due entirely to himself--to his inertia, his willingness to seize
+any pretext for refraining from action. As to the future--work, work
+with a purpose. His mind must be fully and actively occupied. There must
+be no leisure, for leisure meant paralysis.
+
+At the Twenty-third Street ferry-house he got into a hansom and gave
+the address of "the flat." He did not note where he was until the hansom
+drew up at the curb. He leaned forward and looked at the house--at their
+windows with the curtains which she had draped so gracefully, which she
+and he had selected at Vantine's one morning. How often he had seen her
+standing between those curtains, looking out for him, her blue-black
+hair waving back from her forehead so beautifully and her face ready to
+smile so soon as ever she should catch sight of him.
+
+He leaned back and closed his eyes. The blood was pounding through his
+temples and his eyeballs seemed to be scalding under the lids.
+
+"Never again," he moaned. "How lonely it is."
+
+The cabman lifted the trap. "Here we are, sir."
+
+"Yes--in a moment." Where should he go? But what did it matter? "To a
+hotel," he said. "The nearest."
+
+"The Imperial?"
+
+"That will do--yes--go there."
+
+He resolved never to return to "the flat." On the following day he sent
+for the maid and arranged the breaking up. He gave her everything except
+his personal belongings and a few of Alice's few possessions--those he
+could keep, and those which he must destroy because he could not endure
+the thought of any one having them.
+
+At the office all understood his mourning; but no one, not even
+Kittredge, knew him well enough to intrude beyond gentler looks and
+tones. Kittredge had written a successful novel and was going abroad for
+two years of travel and writing. Howard took his rooms in the Royalton.
+They dined together a few nights before he sailed.
+
+"And now," said Kittredge, "I'm my own master. Why, I can't begin to
+fill the request for 'stuff.' I can go where I please, do as I
+please. At last I shall work. For I don't call the drudgery done under
+compulsion work."
+
+"Work!" Howard repeated the word several times absently. Then he leaned
+forward and said with what was for him an approach to the confidential:
+"What a mess I have been making of my life! What waste! What folly! I've
+behaved like a child, an impulsive, irresponsible child. And now I must
+get to work, really to work."
+
+"With your talents a year or so of work would free you."
+
+"Oh, I'm free." Howard hesitated and flushed. "Yes, I'm free," he
+repeated bitterly. "We are all free except for the shackles we fasten
+upon ourselves and can unlock for ourselves. I don't agree with you that
+earning one's daily bread is drudgery."
+
+"Well, let's see you work--work for something definite. Why don't you
+try for some higher place on the paper--correspondent at Washington or
+London--no, not London, for that is a lounging job which would ruin even
+an energetic man. Why not try for the editorial staff? They ought
+to have somebody upstairs who takes an interest in something besides
+politics."
+
+"But doesn't a man have to write what he doesn't believe? You know
+how Segur is always laughing at the protection editorials he writes,
+although he is a free-trader."
+
+"Oh, there must be many directions in which the paper is free to express
+honest opinions."
+
+Howard began that very night. As soon as he reached his club where he
+was living for a few days he sat down to the file of the _News-Record_
+and began to study its editorial style and method. He had learned a
+great deal before three o'clock in the morning and had written a short
+editorial on a subject he took from the news. In the morning he read his
+article again and decided that with a few changes--adjectives cut out,
+long sentences cut up, short sentences made shorter and the introduction
+and the conclusion omitted--it would be worth handing in. With the
+corrected article in his hand he knocked at the door of the editor's
+room.
+
+It was a small, plainly furnished office--no carpet, three severe
+chairs, a revolving book case with a battered and dusty bust of Lincoln
+on it, a table strewn with newspaper cuttings. Newspapers from all
+parts of the world were scattered about the floor. At the table sat the
+editor, Mr. Malcolm, whom Howard had never before seen.
+
+He was short and slender, with thin white hair and a smooth, satirical
+face, deeply wrinkled and unhealthily pale. He was dressed in black
+but wore a string tie of a peculiarly lively shade of red. His most
+conspicuous feature was his nose--long, narrow, pointed, sarcastic.
+
+"My name is Howard," began the candidate, all but stammering before Mr.
+Malcolm's politely uninterested glance, "and I come from downstairs."
+
+"Oh--so you are Mr. Howard. I've heard of you often. Will you be
+seated?"
+
+"Thank you--no. I've only brought in a little article I thought I'd
+submit for your page. I'd like to write for it and, if you don't mind,
+I'll bring in an article occasionally."
+
+"Glad to have it. We like new ideas; and a new pen, a new mind, ought to
+produce them. If you don't see your articles in the paper, you'll know
+what has happened to them. If you do, paste them on space slips and
+send them up by the boy on Thursdays." Mr. Malcolm nodded and smiled and
+dipped his pen in the ink-well.
+
+The editorial appeared just as Howard wrote it. He read and reread it,
+admiring the large, handsome editorial type in which it was printed, and
+deciding that it was worthy of the excellent place in the column which
+Mr. Malcolm had given it. He wrote another that very day and sent it
+up by the boy. He found it in his desk the next noon with "Too
+abstract--never forget that you are writing for a newspaper" scrawled
+across the last page in blue pencil.
+
+In the two following months Howard submitted thirty-five articles.
+Three were published in the main as he wrote them, six were "cut" to
+paragraphs, one appeared as a letter to the editor with "H" signed to
+it. The others disappeared. It was not encouraging, but Howard kept on.
+He knew that if he stopped marching steadily, even though hopelessly,
+toward a definite goal, a heavy hand would be laid upon his shoulder to
+drag him away and fling him down upon a grave.
+
+As it was, desperately though he fought to refrain from backward
+glances, he was now and again taken off his guard. A few of her pencil
+marks on the margin of a leaf in one of his books; a gesture, a little
+mannerism of some woman passing him in the street--and he would be ready
+to sink down with weariness and loneliness, like a tired traveller in a
+vast desert.
+
+He completely lost self-control only once. It was a cold, wet May night
+and everything had gone against him that day. He looked drearily round
+his rooms as he came in. How stiff, how forbidding, how desert they
+seemed! He threw himself into a big chair.
+
+"No friends," he thought, "no one that cares a rap whether I live or
+die, suffer or am happy. Nothing to care for. Why do I go on? What's the
+use if one has not an object--a human object?"
+
+And their life together came flooding back--her eyes, her kisses,
+her attentions, her passionate love for him, so pervasive yet so
+unobtrusive; the feeling of her smooth, round arm about his neck; her
+way of pressing close up to him and locking her fingers in his; the
+music of her voice, singing her heartsong to him yet never putting it
+into words----
+
+He stumbled over to the divan and stretched himself out and buried his
+face in the cushions. "Come back!" he sobbed. "Come back to me, dear."
+And then he cried, as a man cries--without tears, with sobs choking up
+into his throat and issuing in moans.
+
+"Curious," he said aloud when the storm was over and he was sitting up,
+ashamed before himself for his weakness, "who would have suspected me of
+this?"
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+AMBITION AWAKENS.
+
+
+Howard was now thirty-two. He was still trying for the editorial staff;
+but in the last month only five of his articles had been printed to
+twenty-three thrown away. A national campaign was coming on and the
+_News-Record_ was taking a political stand that seemed to him sound and
+right. For the first time he tried political editorials.
+
+The cause aroused his passion for justice, for democratic equality and
+the abolition of privilege. He had something to say and he succeeded
+in saying it vigorously, effectively, with clearness and moderation of
+statement. How to avoid hysteria; how to set others on fire instead of
+only making of himself a fiery spectacle; how to be earnest, yet
+calm; how to be satirical yet sincere; how to be interesting, yet
+direct--these were his objects, pursued with incessant toiling,
+rewriting again and again, recasting of sentences, careful balancing of
+words for exact shades of meaning.
+
+"I shall never learn to write," had been his complaint of himself
+to himself for years. And in these days it seemed to him that he was
+farther from a good style than ever. His standards had risen, were
+rising; he feared that his power of accomplishment was failing.
+Therefore his heart sank and his face paled when an office boy told him
+that Mr. Malcolm wished to see him.
+
+"I suppose it's to tell me not to annoy him with any more of my
+attempts," he thought. "Well, anyway, I've had the benefit of the work.
+I'll try a novel next."
+
+"Take a seat," said Mr. Malcolm with an absent nod. "Just a moment, if
+you please."
+
+On a chair beside him was the remnant of what had been a huge
+up-piling of newspapers--the exchanges that had come in during the past
+twenty-four hours. The Exchange Editor had been through them and Mr.
+Malcolm was reading "to feel the pulse of the country" and also to make
+sure that nothing of importance had been overlooked.
+
+On the floor were newspapers by the score, thrown about tumultuously.
+Mr. Malcolm would seize a paper from the unread heap, whirl it open and
+send his glance and his long pointed nose tearing down one column and up
+another, and so from page to page. It took less than a minute for him
+to finish and filing away great sixteen page dailies. A few seconds
+sufficed for the smaller papers. Occasionally he took his long shears
+and with a skilful twist cut out a piece from the middle of a page and
+laid it and the shears upon the table with a single motion.
+
+"Now, Mr. Howard." Malcolm sent the last paper to increase the chaos on
+the floor and faced about in his revolving chair. "How would you like to
+come up here?"
+
+Howard looked at him in amazement. "You mean----"
+
+"We want you to join the editorial staff. Mr. Walker has married him a
+rich wife and is going abroad to do literary work, which means that he
+is going to do nothing. Will you come?"
+
+"It is what I have been working for."
+
+"And very hard you have worked." Mr. Malcolm's cold face relaxed into
+a half-friendly, half-satirical smile. "After you'd been sending up
+articles for a fortnight, I knew you'd make it. You went about it
+systematically. An intelligent plan, persisted in, is hard to beat in
+this world of laggards and hap-hazard strugglers."
+
+"And I was on the point of giving up--that is, giving up this particular
+ambition," Howard confessed.
+
+"Yes, I saw it in your articles--a certain pessimism and despondency.
+You show your feelings plainly, young man. It is an excellent
+quality--but dangerous. A man ought to make his mind a machine working
+evenly without regard to his feelings or physical condition. The night
+my oldest child died--I was editor of a country newspaper--I wrote my
+leaders as usual. I never had written better. You can be absolute master
+inside, if you will. You can learn to use your feelings when they're
+helpful and to shut them off when they hinder."
+
+"But don't you think that temperament----"
+
+"Temperament--that's one of the subtlest forms of self-excuse. However,
+the place is yours. The salary is a hundred and twenty-five a week--an
+advance of about twelve hundred a year, I believe, on your average
+downstairs. Can you begin soon?"
+
+"Immediately," said Howard, "if the City Editor is satisfied."
+
+An office boy showed him to his room--a mere hole-in-the-wall with just
+space for a table-desk, a small table, a case of shelves for books of
+reference, and two chairs. The one window overlooked the lower end
+of Manhattan Island--the forest of business buildings peaked with the
+Titan-tenements of financial New York. Their big, white plumes of
+smoke and steam were waving in the wind and reflecting in pale pink the
+crimson of the setting sun.
+
+Howard had his first taste of the intoxication of triumph, his first
+deep inspiration of ambition. He recalled his arrival in New York, his
+timidity, his dread lest he should be unable to make a living--"Poor
+boy," they used to say at home, "he will have to be supported. He is too
+much of a dreamer." He remembered his explorations of those now familiar
+streets--how acutely conscious he had been that they were paved with
+stone, walled with stone, roofed with a stony sky, peopled with faces
+and hearts of stone. How miserably insignificant he had felt!
+
+And all these years he had been almost content to be one of the crowd,
+like them exerting himself barely enough to provide himself with the
+essentials of existence. Like them, he had given no real thought to the
+morrow. And now, with comparatively little labour, he had put himself
+in the way to become a master, a director of the enormous concentrated
+energies summed up in the magic word New York.
+
+The key to the situation was--work, incessant, self-improving,
+self-developing. "And it is the key to happiness also," he thought.
+"Work and sleep--the two periods of unconsciousness of self--are the two
+periods of happiness."
+
+His aloofness freed him from the temptations of distraction. He knew no
+women. He did not put himself in the way of meeting them. He kept away
+from theatres. He sunk himself in a routine of labour which, viewed from
+the outside, seemed dull and monotonous. Viewed from his stand-point of
+acquisition, of achievement, it was just the reverse.
+
+The mind soon adapts itself to and enjoys any mental routine which
+exercises it. The only difficulty is in forming the habit of the
+routine.
+
+Howard was greatly helped by his natural bent toward editorial writing.
+The idea of discussing important questions each day with a vast
+multitude as an audience stirred his imagination and aroused his
+instincts for helping on the great world-task of elevating the race.
+This enthusiasm pleased and also amused his cynical chief.
+
+"You believe in things?" Malcolm said to him after they had become well
+acquainted. "Well, it is an admirable quality--but dangerous. You will
+need careful editing. Your best plan is to give yourself up to your
+belief while you are writing--then to edit yourself in cold blood.
+That is the secret of success, of great success in any line, business,
+politics, a profession--enthusiasm, carefully revised and edited."
+
+"It is difficult to be cold blooded when one is in earnest."
+
+"True," Malcolm answered, "and there is the danger. My own enthusiasms
+are confined to the important things--food, clothing and shelter. It
+seems to me that the rest is largely a matter of taste, training and
+time of life. But don't let me discourage you. I only suggest that you
+may have to guard against believing so intensely that you produce the
+impression of being an impracticable, a fanatic. Be cautious always; be
+especially cautious when you are cocksure you're right. Unadulterated
+truth always arouses suspicion in the unaccustomed public. It has the
+alarming tastelessness of distilled water."
+
+Howard was acute enough to separate the wisdom from the cynicism of his
+chief. He saw the lesson of moderation. "You have failed, my very able
+chief," he said to himself, "because you have never believed intensely
+enough to move you to act. You have attached too much importance to the
+adulteration--the folly and the humbug. And here you are, still only a
+critic, destructive but never constructive."
+
+At first his associates were much amused by his intensity. But as he
+learned to temper and train his enthusiasm they grew to respect both his
+ability and his character. Before a year had passed they were feeling
+the influence of his force--his trained, informed mind, made vigorous by
+principles and ideals.
+
+Malcolm had the keen appreciation of a broad mind for this honest,
+intelligent energy. He used the editorial "blue-pencil" for alteration
+and condensation with the hand of a master. He cut away Howard's
+crudities, toned down and so increased his intensity, and pointed it
+with the irony and satire necessary to make it carry far and penetrate
+easily.
+
+Malcolm was at once giving Howard a reputation greater than he deserved
+and training him to deserve it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the office next to Howard's sat Segur, a bachelor of forty-five who
+took life as a good-humoured jest and amused his leisure with the New
+Yorkers who devote a life of idleness to a nervous flight from boredom.
+Howard interested Segur who resolved to try to draw him out of his
+seclusion.
+
+"I'm having some people to dinner at the Waldorf on Thursday," he said,
+looking in at the door. "Won't you join us?"
+
+"I'd be glad to," replied Howard, casting about for an excuse for
+declining. "But I'm afraid I'd ruin your dinner. I haven't been out for
+years. I've been too busy to make friends or, rather, acquaintances."
+
+"A great mistake. You ought to see more of people."
+
+"Why? Can they tell me anything that I can't learn from newspapers or
+books more accurately and without wasting so much time? I'd like to know
+the interesting people and to see them in their interesting moments. But
+I can't afford to hunt for them through the wilderness of nonentities
+and wait for them to become interesting."
+
+"But you get amusement, relaxation. Then too, it's first-hand study of
+life."
+
+"I'm not sure of that. Yawning is not a very attractive kind of
+relaxation, is it? And as for study of life, eight years of reporting
+gave me more of that than I could assimilate. And it was study of
+realities, not of pretenses. As I remember them, 'respectable' people
+are all about the same, whether in their vices or in their virtues. They
+are cut from a few familiar, 'old reliable' patterns. No, I don't think
+there is much to be learned from respectability on dress parade."
+
+"You'll be amused on Thursday. You must come. I'm counting on you."
+
+Howard accepted--cordially as he could not refuse decently. Yet he had
+a presentiment or a shyness or an impatience at the interruption of
+his routine which reproached him for accepting with insistence and
+persistence.
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE ETERNAL MASCULINE.
+
+
+It was the first week in November, and in those days "everybody" did not
+stay in the country so late as now. There were many New Yorkers in
+the crowd of out-of-town people at the Waldorf. Howard was attracted,
+fascinated by the scene--carefully-groomed men and women, the air of
+gaiety and ease, the flowers, the music, the lights, the perfumes. At a
+glance it seemed a dream of life with evil and sorrow and pain banished.
+
+"No place for a working man," thought he, "at least not for my kind of
+a working man. It appeals too sharply to the instincts for laziness and
+luxury."
+
+He was late and stood in the entrance to the palm-garden, looking about
+for Segur. Soon he saw him waving from a table near the wall under the
+music-alcove.
+
+"The oysters are just coming," said Segur. "Sit over there between Mrs.
+Carnarvon and Miss Trevor. They are cousins, Howard, so be cautious what
+you say to one about the other. Oh, here is Mr. Berersford."
+
+The others knew each other well; Howard knew them only as he had seen
+their names in the "fashionable intelligence" columns of the newspapers.
+Mrs. Carnarvon was a small thin woman in a black velvet gown which made
+her thinness obtrusive and attractive or the reverse according as one's
+taste is toward or away from attenuation. Her eyes were a dull, greenish
+grey, her skin brown and smooth and tough from much exposure in the
+hunting field. Her cheeks were beginning to hang slightly, so that one
+said: "She is pretty, but she will soon not be." Her mouth proclaimed
+strong appetites--not unpleasantly since she was good-looking.
+
+Miss Trevor was perhaps ten years younger than her cousin, not far from
+twenty-four. She had a critical, almost amused yet not unpleasant way
+of looking out of unusually clear blue-green eyes. Her hair was of an
+ordinary shade of dark brown, but fine and thick and admirably arranged
+to set off her long, sensitive, high bred features. Her chin and mouth
+expressed decision and strong emotions.
+
+There was a vacant chair between Segur and Berersford and it was
+presently filled by a fat, middle-aged woman, neither blonde nor
+brunette, with a large, serene face. Upon it was written a frank
+confession that she had never in her life had an original thought
+capable of creating a ripple of interest. She was Mrs. Sidney, rich,
+of an "old" family--in the New York meaning of the word "old"--both by
+marriage and by birth, much courted because of her position and because
+she entertained a great deal both in town and at a large and hospitable
+country house.
+
+The conversation was lively and amused, or seemed to amuse, all. It was
+purely personal--about Kittie and Nellie and Jim and Peggie and Amy and
+Bob; about the sayings and doings of a few dozen people who constituted
+the intimates of these five persons.
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon turned to the silent Howard at last and began about the
+weather.
+
+"Horrible in the city, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, perhaps it is," replied Howard. "But I fancied it delightful. You
+see I have not lived anywhere but New York for so long that I am hardly
+capable to judge."
+
+"Why everybody says we have the worst climate in the world."
+
+"Far be it from me to contradict everybody. But for me New York has the
+ideal climate. Isn't it the best of any great city in the world? You
+see, we have the air of the sea in our streets. And when the sun shines,
+which it does more days in the year than in any other great city, the
+effect is like champagne--or rather, like the effect champagne looks as
+if it ought to have."
+
+"I hate champagne," said Mrs. Carnarvon. "Marian, you must not drink it;
+you know you mustn't." This to Miss Trevor who was lifting the glass to
+her lips. She drank a little of the champagne, then set the glass down
+slowly.
+
+"What you said made me want to drink it," she said to Howard. "I was
+glad to hear your lecture on the weather. I had never thought of it
+before, but New York really has a fine climate. And only this afternoon
+I let that stupid Englishman--Plymouth--you've met him? No?--Well, at
+any rate, he was denouncing our climate and for the moment I forgot
+about London."
+
+"Frightful there, isn't it, after October and until May?"
+
+"Yes, and the air is usually stale even in the late spring. When it's
+warm, it's sticky. And when it's cold, it's raw."
+
+"You are a New Yorker?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Trevor faintly, and for an instant showing surprise at
+his ignorance. "That is, I spend part of the winter here--like all New
+Yorkers."
+
+"All?"
+
+"Oh, all except those who don't count, or rather, who merely count."
+
+"How do you mean?" Howard was taking advantage of her looking into her
+plate to smile with a suggestion of irony. She happened to glance up and
+so caught him.
+
+"Oh," she said, smiling with frank irony at him, "I mean all those
+people--the masses, I think they're called--the people who have to be
+fussed over and reformed and who keep shops and--and all that."
+
+"The people who work, you mean?"
+
+"No, I mean the people you never meet about anywhere, the people who
+read the newspapers and come to the basement door."
+
+"Oh, yes, I understand." Howard was laughing. "Well, that's one way of
+looking at life. Of course it's not my way."
+
+"What is your way?"
+
+"Why, being one of those who count only in the census, I naturally take
+a view rather different from yours. Now I should say that _your_ people
+don't count. You see, I am most deeply interested in people who read
+newspapers."
+
+"Oh, you write for the papers, like Jim Segur? What do you write?"
+
+"What they call editorials."
+
+"You are an editor?"
+
+"Yes and no. I am one of the editors who does not edit but is edited."
+
+"It must be interesting," said Miss Trevor, vaguely.
+
+"More interesting than you imagine. But then all work is that. In
+fact work is the only permanently interesting thing in life. The rest
+produces dissatisfaction and regret."
+
+"Oh, I'm not so very dissatisfied. Yet I don't work."
+
+"Are you quite sure? Think how hard you work at being fitted for gowns,
+at going about to dinners and balls and the like, at chasing foxes and
+anise seed bags and golf balls."
+
+"But that is not work. It is amusing myself."
+
+"Yes, you think so. But you forget that you are doing it in order that
+all these people who don't count may read about it in the papers and so
+get a little harmless relaxation."
+
+"But we don't do it to get into the papers."
+
+"Probably not. Neither did this--what is it here in my plate, a lamb
+chop?--this lamb gambol about and keep itself in condition to form a
+course at Segur's dinner. But after all, wasn't that what it was really
+for? Then think how many people you support by your work."
+
+"You make me feel like a day-labourer."
+
+"Oh, you're a much harder worker than any day labourer. And the saddest
+part of it to me is that you work altogether for others. You give, give
+and get in return nothing but a few flattering glances, a few careless
+pats on the back of your vanity. I should hate to work so hard for so
+little."
+
+"But what would you do?" Miss Trevor was looking at him, interested and
+amused.
+
+"Well, I'd work for myself. I'd insist on a return, on getting back
+something equivalent or near it. I'd insist on having my mind improved,
+or having my power or my reputation advanced."
+
+"I was only jesting when I said that about people not counting."
+
+"Altogether?"
+
+"No, not altogether. I don't care much about the masses. They seem to
+me to be underbred, of a different sort. I hate doing things that are
+useful and I hate people that do useful things--in a general way, I
+mean."
+
+"That is doubtless due to defective education," said Howard, with a
+smile that carried off the thrust as a jest.
+
+"Is that the way you'd describe a horror of contact with--well, with
+unpleasant things?" Miss Trevor was serious.
+
+"But is it that? Isn't it just an unconscious affectation, taken up
+simply because all the people about you think that way--if one can call
+the process thinking? You don't think, do you, that it is a sign of
+superiority to be narrow, to be ignorant, to be out of touch with the
+great masses of one's fellow-beings, to play the part of a harlequin or
+a ballet-girl on the stage of life? I understand how a stupid ass can
+fritter away his one chance to live in saying and hearing and doing
+silly things. But ought not an intelligent person try to enjoy life, try
+to get something substantial out of it, try to possess himself of its
+ideas and emotions? Why should one play the fool simply because those
+about one are incapable of playing any other part?"
+
+"I'm surprised that you are here to-night. Still, I suppose you'll give
+yourself absolution on the plea that one must dine somewhere."
+
+"But I'm not wasting my time. I'm learning. I'm observing a phase of
+life. And I'm seeing the latest styles in women's gowns and--"
+
+"Is that important--styles, I mean?"
+
+"Do you suppose that my kind of people, the working classes, would spend
+so much time and thought in making anything that was not important?
+There is nothing more important."
+
+"Then you don't think we women are wasting time when we talk about dress
+so much?"
+
+"On the contrary, it is an evidence of your superior sagacity. Women
+talk trade, 'shop,' as soon as they get away from the men. They talk men
+and dress--fish and nets."
+
+Berersford heard the word fish and interrupted.
+
+"Do you go South next month, Marian?"
+
+"Yes--about the fifteenth." Miss Trevor explained to Howard: "Bobby--Mr.
+Berersford here--always fishes in Florida in January."
+
+The conversation again became general and personal. Howard knew none of
+the people of whom they were talking and all that they said was of
+the nature of gossip. But they talked in a sparkling way, using good
+English, speaking in agreeable voices with a correct accent, and
+indulging in a great deal of malicious humour.
+
+As they separated Mrs. Sidney, to whom Howard had not spoken during the
+evening, said to Segur: "You must bring Mr. Howard on Sunday afternoon."
+
+"Will you drop Marian at the house for me?" Mrs. Carnarvon asked her. "I
+want to go on to Edith's."
+
+Segur went with Mrs. Sidney and Marian to their carriage. "Who is Mr.
+Howard?" Mrs. Sidney said, and Miss Trevor drew nearer to hear the
+answer.
+
+"One of the editorial writers down on the paper and a very clever
+one--none better. He works hard and is desperately serious and a regular
+hermit."
+
+"I think he's very handsome--don't you, Marian?"
+
+"I found him interesting," said Miss Trevor.
+
+Howard thought a great deal about Miss Trevor that night, and she was
+still in his head the next day. "This comes of never seeing women," he
+said to himself. "The first girl I meet seems the most beautiful I ever
+saw, and the most intellectual. And, when I think it over, what did she
+say that was startling?"
+
+Nevertheless he went with Segur the next Sunday to Mrs. Sidney's great
+house in the upper Avenue overlooking the Park.
+
+"Why do I come here?" he asked himself. "It is a sheer waste of time.
+Mrs. Sidney can do me no good, or I her. It must be the hope of seeing
+Miss Trevor."
+
+When the gaudy and be-powdered flunkey held back the heavy curtains of
+the salon to announce him and Segur, he saw Miss Trevor on a low chair
+absently staring into the fire. Yet when he had spoken to Mrs. Sidney
+and turned toward her she at once stretched out her hand with a slight
+smile. Some others came in and Howard was free to talk to her. He sat
+looking at her steadily, admiring her almost perfect profile, delicate
+yet strong.
+
+"And what have you been doing since I saw you?" Miss Trevor asked.
+
+"Writing little pieces about politics for the paper," replied Howard.
+
+"Politics? I detest it. It is all stealing and calling names, isn't it?
+And something dreadful is always going to happen if somebody or other
+isn't elected, or is elected, to something or other. And then, whether
+he is or not, nothing happens. I should think the men who have been so
+excited and angry and alarmed would feel very cheap. But they don't. And
+the next time they carry on in just the same ridiculous way."
+
+"Politics is like everything else--interesting if you understand what it
+is all about. But like everything else, you can't understand it without
+a little study at first. It's a pity women don't take an interest. If
+they did the men might become more reasonable and sane about it than
+they are now. But you--what have you been doing?"
+
+"I--oh, industriously superintending the making of my new nets." Marian
+laughed and Howard was flattered. "And also, well, riding in the Park
+every morning. But I never do anything interesting. I simply drift."
+
+"That's so much simpler and more satisfactory than threshing and
+splashing about as I do. It seems so fussy and foolish and futile. I
+wish--that is, sometimes I wish--that I had learned to amuse myself in
+some less violent and exhausting way."
+
+"Marian--I say, Marian," called Mrs. Sidney. "Has Teddy come down?"
+
+Miss Trevor coloured slightly as she answered: "No, he comes a week
+Wednesday. He's still hunting."
+
+"Hunting," Howard repeated when Mrs. Sidney was again busy with the
+others. "Now there is a kind of work that never bothers a man's brains
+or sets him to worrying. I wish I knew how to amuse myself in some such
+way."
+
+"You should go about more."
+
+"Go--where?"
+
+"To see people."
+
+"But I do see a great many people. I'm always seeing them--all day
+long."
+
+"Yes--but that is in a serious way. I mean go where you will be
+amused--to dinners for instance."
+
+"I don't dare. I can't work at work and also work at play. I must work
+at one or the other all the time. I can do nothing without a definite
+object. I can't be just a little interested in anything or anybody.
+With me it is no interest at all or else absorption until interest is
+exhausted."
+
+"Then if you were interested in a woman, let us say, you'd be absorbed
+until you found out all there was, and then you'd--take to your heels."
+
+"But she might always be new. She might interest me more and more.
+Anyhow I fancy that she would weary of me long before I wearied of her.
+I think women usually weary first. Men are very monotonous. We are as
+vain as women, if not vainer, without their capacity for concealing it.
+And vanity makes one think he does not need to exert himself to please."
+
+"But why do people usually say that it is the men that are difficult to
+hold?"
+
+"Because the men hold the women, not through the kind of interest we are
+talking about, but through another kind--quite different. Women are
+so lazy and so dependent--dependent upon men for homes, for money, for
+escort even."
+
+Miss Trevor was flushing, as if the fire were too hot--at least she
+moved a little farther away from it. "Your ideal woman would be a
+shop-girl, I should say from what you've told me."
+
+"Perhaps--in the abstract. I really do think that if I were going to
+marry, I should look about for a working-girl, a girl that supported
+herself. How can a man be certain of the love of a woman who is
+dependent upon him? I should be afraid she was only tolerating me as a
+labour-saving device."
+
+Miss Trevor laughed. "There certainly is no vanity in that remark," she
+said. "Now I can't imagine most of the men I know thinking that."
+
+"It's only theory with me. In practice doubtless I should be as
+self-complacent as any other man."
+
+They left Mrs. Sidney's together and Howard walked down the Avenue with
+her. It seemed a wonderful afternoon--the air dazzling, intoxicating.
+He was filled with the joy of living and was glad this particular tall,
+slender, distinguished-looking girl was there to make his enjoyment
+perfect. They were gay with the delight of being young and in health and
+attractive physically and mentally each to the other. They looked each
+at the other a great deal, and more and more frankly.
+
+"Am I never to see you again?" he asked as he rang the bell for her.
+
+"I believe Mrs. Carnarvon is going to invite you to dine here Thursday
+night."
+
+"Thank you," said Howard.
+
+Miss Trevor coloured. But she met his glance boldly and laughed. Howard
+wondered why her laugh was defiant, almost reckless.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He saw Segur at the club after dinner that same night. "And how do you
+like Miss Trevor?" Segur began as the whiskey and carbonic were set
+before them.
+
+"A very attractive girl," said Howard.
+
+"Yes--so a good many men have thought in the last five years. She's
+marrying Teddy Danvers in the spring, I believe. At any rate it's
+generally looked on as settled. Teddy's a good deal of a 'chump.'
+But he's a decent fellow--good-looking, good-natured, domestic in his
+tastes, and nothing but money."
+
+Howard was smiling to himself. He understood Miss Trevor's sudden
+consciousness of the nearness of the fire, her flush when Mrs. Sidney
+asked about "Teddy," and the recklessness in her parting laugh.
+
+"Well, Teddy's in luck," he said aloud.
+
+"Not so sure of that. She's quite capable of leading him a dance if he
+bores her. And bore her he will. But that is nothing new. This town is
+full of it."
+
+"Full of what?"
+
+"Of weary women--weary wives. The men are hobby-riders. They have just
+one interest and that usually small and dull--stocks or iron or real
+estate or hunting or automobiles. Our women are not like the English
+women--stupid, sodden. They are alive, acute. They wish to be
+interested. Their husbands bore them. So--well, what is the natural
+temptation to a lazy woman in search of an interest?"
+
+"It's like Paris--like France?"
+
+"Yes, something. Except that perhaps our women are more sentimental, not
+fond of intrigue for its own sake--at least, not as a rule."
+
+"Doesn't interest them deeply enough, I suppose. It's the American blood
+coming out--the passion for achievement. They want a man of whom they
+can be proud, a man who is doing something interesting and doing it
+well."
+
+"I doubt that," replied Segur shrugging his shoulders. "When a woman
+loves a man, she wants to absorb him."
+
+Howard soon went away to his rooms for a long evening of undisturbed
+thought about Teddy Danvers's fiancee--the first temptation that had
+entered his loneliness since Alice died.
+
+In the few weeks of her illness and the few months immediately following
+her death, he had been at his very best. He was able to see her as she
+was and to appreciate her. He was living in the clear pure air of
+the Valley of the Great Shadow where all things appear in their true
+relations and true proportions. But only there was it possible for
+the gap between him and Alice to close--that gap of which she was more
+acutely conscious than he, and which she made wider far than it really
+was by being too humble with him, too obviously on her knees before him.
+Such superiority as she thought he possessed is not in human nature; but
+neither is it in human nature to refuse worship, to refuse to pose upon
+a pedestal if the opportunity presses.
+
+In the three years between her death and his meeting Marian, the eternal
+masculine had been secretly gaining strength to resume its pursuit
+of the eternal feminine. And the eternal feminine was certainly most
+alluringly personified in this beautiful, graceful girl, at once
+appreciative and worthy of appreciation.
+
+Perhaps she appealed most strongly to Howard in her vivid suggestion of
+the open air--of health and strength and nature. He had been leading a
+cloistered existence and his blood had grown sluggish. She gave him the
+sensation that a prisoner gets when he catches a glimpse from his barred
+window of the fields and the streams radiating the joy of life and
+freedom. And Marian was of his own kind--like the women among whom he
+had been brought up. She satisfied his idea of what a "lady" should be,
+but at the same time she was none the less a woman to him--a woman to
+love and to be loved; to give him sympathy, companionship; to inspire
+him to overcome his weaknesses by striving to be worthy of her; to bring
+into his life that feminine charm without which a man's life must be
+cold and cheerless.
+
+He knew that he could not marry her, that he had no right to make love
+to her, that it was unwise to go near her again. But he had no power to
+resist the temptation. And even in those days he had small regard for
+the means when the end was one upon which he had fixed his mind. "Why
+not take what I can get?" he thought, as he dreamed of her. "She's
+engaged--her future practically settled. Yes, I'll be as happy as she'll
+let me." And he resumed his idealising.
+
+At his time of life idealisation is still not a difficult or a long
+process. And in this case there was an ample physical basis for it--and
+far more of a mental basis than young imagination demands. He took the
+draught she so frankly offered him; he added a love potion of his own
+concocting, and drank it off.
+
+He was in love.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+TRESPASSING.
+
+
+For the first time since he had been in newspaper work, Howard came to
+the office the next day in a long coat and a top hat. He left early and
+went for a walk in the Avenue. But Miss Trevor was neither driving
+nor walking. He repeated this excursion the next afternoon with better
+success. At Fortieth Street he saw her and her cousin half a block ahead
+of him. He walked slowly and examined her. She was satisfactory from
+the aigrette in her hat to her heels--a long, narrow, graceful figure,
+dressed with the expensive simplicity characteristic of the most
+intelligent class of the women of New York and Paris. She walked as
+if she were accustomed to walking. Mrs. Carnarvon had that slight
+hesitation, almost stumble, which indicates the woman who usually drives
+and never walks if she can avoid it. As they paused at the crowded
+crossing of Forty-second Street he joined them. When Mrs. Carnarvon
+found that he was "just out for the air" she left them, to go home--in
+Forty-seventh Street, a few doors east of the Avenue.
+
+"Come back to tea with her," she said as she nodded to Howard.
+
+"We have at least an hour." Howard was looking at Miss Trevor with his
+happiness dancing in his eyes. "Why shouldn't we go to the Park?"
+
+"I believe it's not customary," objected Miss Trevor in a tone that made
+the walk in the Park a certainty.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that. I don't care to do customary things as a rule."
+
+"I see that you don't."
+
+"Do you say so because I show what I am thinking so plainly that you
+can't help seeing it--and don't in the least mind?"
+
+"Why shouldn't you be glad to be alive and to be seeing me this fine
+winter day?"
+
+"Why indeed!" Howard looked at her from head to foot and then into her
+eyes.
+
+"We are not in the Park yet." Miss Trevor accompanied her hint with a
+laugh and added: "I feel reckless to-day."
+
+"You mean you forget that there is any to-morrow. _I_ have shut out
+to-morrow ever since I saw you."
+
+"And yesterday?" She noted that he coloured slightly, but continued to
+look at her, his eyes sad. "But there is a to-morrow," she went on.
+
+"Yes--my work, my career is my to-morrow and yours is----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Your engagement, of course."
+
+Miss Trevor flushed, but Howard was smiling and she did not long resist
+the contagion.
+
+"My to-morrow," he continued, "is far more menacing than yours. Yours
+is just an ordinary, every-day, cut-and-dried affair. Mine is full
+of doubts and uncertainties with the chances for failure and
+disappointment. If I can turn my back on my to-morrow, surely you can
+waive yours for the moment?"
+
+"But why are you so certain that I wish to?"
+
+"Instinct. I could not be so happy as I am with you if you were not
+content to have me here."
+
+They spoke little until they were well within the Park. There they
+turned down a by-path and took the walk skirting the lower lake. Miss
+Trevor looked at Howard with a puzzled expression.
+
+"I never met any one like you," she said. "I have always felt so sure of
+myself. You take me off my feet. I feel as if I did not know where I was
+going and--didn't much care. And that's the worst of it."
+
+"No, the best of it. You are a star going comfortably through your
+universe in a fixed orbit. You maintain your exact relations with your
+brother and sister stars. You keep all your engagements, you never
+wobble in your path--everything exact, mathematical. And up darts a
+wild-haired, impetuous comet, a hurrying, bustling, irregular wanderer
+coming from you don't know where, going you don't know whither. We pass
+very near each to the other. The social astronomers may or may not note
+a little variation in your movement--a very little, and soon over. They
+probably will not note the insignificant meteor that darted close up to
+you--close enough to get his poor face sadly scorched and his long hair
+cruelly singed--and then hurried sadly away. And----"
+
+"And--what? Isn't there any more to the story?" Marian's eyes were
+shining with a light which she was conscious had never been there
+before.
+
+"And--and----" Howard stopped and faced her. His hands were thrust deep
+in the pockets of his overcoat. He looked at her in a way that made the
+colour fly from her face and then leap back again. "And--I love you."
+
+"Oh"--Marian said, hiding her face in her white muff. "Oh."
+
+"I don't wish to touch you," he went on, "I just wish to look at you--so
+tall, so straight, so--so alive, and to love you and be happy." Then he
+laughed and turned. "But you'll catch cold. Let us walk on."
+
+"So you are trying to make a career?" she asked after a few minutes'
+silence.
+
+"Yes--trying--or, rather, I was. And shall again when you have gone your
+way and I mine."
+
+Marian was amazed at herself. Every tradition, every instinct of her
+life was being trampled by this unknown whom she had just met. And she
+was assisting in the trampling. In fact it was difficult for her to
+restrain herself from leading in the iconoclasm. She looked at him in
+wonder and delighted terror.
+
+"Why do you look at me in that way?" he said, turning his head suddenly.
+
+"Because you are stronger than I--and I am afraid--yet I--well--I like
+it."
+
+"It is not I that is stronger than you, nor you that are stronger than
+I. It is a third that is stronger than both of us. I need not mention
+the gentleman's name?"
+
+"It is not necessary. But I'd like to hear you pronounce it. At least I
+did a moment ago."
+
+"I'll not risk repetition. I've been thinking of what might have been."
+
+"What?" Marian laughed a little, rather satirically. "A commonplace
+engagement and a commonplace wedding and a commonplace honeymoon leading
+into a land of commonplace disillusion and yawning--or worse?"
+
+"Not unlikely. But since we're only dreaming why not dream more to our
+taste? Now as I look at your strong, clear, ambitious profile, I can
+dream of a career made by two working as one, working cheerfully day
+in and day out, fair and foul weather, working with the certainty of
+success as the crown."
+
+"But failure might come."
+
+"It couldn't. We wouldn't work for fame or for riches or for any outside
+thing. We would work to make ourselves wiser and better and more worthy
+each of the other and both of our great love."
+
+Again they were walking in silence.
+
+"I am so sad," Marian said at last. "But I am so happy too. What has
+come over me? But--you will work on, won't you? And you will accomplish
+everything. Yes, I am sure you will."
+
+"Oh, I'll work--in my own way. And I'll get a good deal of what I want.
+But not everything. You say you can't understand yourself. No more can I
+understand myself. I thought my purpose fixed. I knew that I had nothing
+to do with marrying and giving in marriage, so I kept away from danger.
+And here, as miraculously as if a thunderbolt had dropped from this open
+winter sky, here is--you."
+
+They were in the Avenue again--"the awakening," Howard said as the flood
+of carriages rolled about them.
+
+"You will win," she repeated, when they were almost at Forty-seventh
+Street. "You will be famous."
+
+"Probably not. The price for fame may be too big."
+
+"The price? But you are willing to work?"
+
+"Work--yes. But not to lie, not to cheat, not to exchange self-respect
+for self-contempt--at least, I think, I hope not."
+
+"But why should that be necessary?"
+
+"It may not be if I am free--free to meet every situation as it arises,
+with no responsibility for others resting upon me in the decision. If I
+had a wife, how could I be free? I might be forced to sell myself--not
+for fame but for a bare living. Suppose choice between freedom with
+poverty and comfort with self-contempt were put squarely at me, and I a
+married man. She would decide, wouldn't she?"
+
+"Yes, and if she were the right sort of a woman, decide instantly for
+self-respect."
+
+"Of course--if I asked her. But do you imagine that when a man loves a
+woman he lets her know?"
+
+"It would be a crime not to let her know."
+
+"It would be a greater crime to put her to the test--if she were a woman
+brought up, say, as you have been."
+
+"How can you say that? How can you so overestimate the value of mere
+incidentals?"
+
+"How can I? Because I have known poverty--have known what it was to
+look want in the face. Because I have seen women, brought up as you have
+been, crawling miserably about in the sloughs of poverty. Because I have
+seen the weaknesses of human nature and know that they exist in me--yes,
+and in you, for all your standing there so strong and arrogant and
+self-reliant. It is easy to talk of misery when one does not understand
+it. It is easy to be the martyr of an hour or a day. But to drag into a
+sordid and squalid martyrdom the woman one loves--well, the man does not
+live who would do it, if he knew what I know, had seen what I have seen.
+No, love is a luxury of the rich and the poor and the steady-going. It
+is not for my kind, not for me."
+
+They were pausing at Mrs. Carnarvon's door.
+
+"I shall not come in this afternoon," he said. "But to-morrow--if I
+don't come in to-day, don't you think it will be all right for me to
+come then?"
+
+"I shall expect you," she said.
+
+The talk of those who had come in for tea seemed artificial and flat.
+She soon went up-stairs, eager to be alone. Mechanically she went to her
+desk to write her customary daily letter to Danvers. She looked vacantly
+at the pen and paper, and then she remembered why she was sitting there.
+
+"You are a traitor," she said to her reflection in the mirror over the
+desk. "But you will pay for your treason. Has not one a right to that
+for which she is willing to pay?"
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+MAKING THE MOST OF A MONTH.
+
+
+To be sure of a woman a man must be confident either of his own powers
+or of her absolute frankness and honesty. It was self-assurance that
+made Edward Danvers blindly confident of Marian.
+
+His father, a man with none but selfish uses for his fellow men, had
+given him a pains-taking training as a vigilant guard for a great
+fortune. His favourite maxim was, "Always look for motives." And he once
+summed up his own character and idea of life by saying: "I often wake at
+night and laugh as I think how many men are lying awake in their beds,
+scheming to get something out of me for nothing."
+
+There could be but one result of such an education by such an educator.
+Danvers was acutely suspicious, saved from cynicism and misanthropy
+by his vanity only. He was the familiar combination of credulity and
+incredulity, now trusting not at all and again trusting with an utter
+incapacity to judge. Had he been far more attractive personally, he
+might still have failed to find genuine affection. To be liked for one's
+self alone or even chiefly is rarely the lot of any human being who has
+a possession that is all but universally coveted--wealth or position or
+power or beauty.
+
+Danvers and Marian had known each the other from childhood. And she
+perhaps came nearer to liking him for himself than did any one else
+of his acquaintance. She was used to his conceit, his selfishness,
+his meanness and smallness in suspicion, his arrogance, his
+narrow-mindedness. She knew his good qualities--his kindness of heart,
+his shamed-face generosity, his honesty, the strong if limited sense
+of justice which made him a good employer and a good landlord. They had
+much in common--the same companions, the same idea of the agreeable and
+the proper, the same passion for out-door life, especially for hunting.
+He fell in love with her when she came back from two years in England
+and France, and she thought that she was in love with him. She
+undoubtedly was fond of him, proud of his handsome, athletic look and
+bearing, proud of his skill and daring in the hunting field.
+
+One day--it was in the autumn a year before Howard met her--they were
+"in at the death" together after a run across a stiff country that
+included several dangerous jumps. "You're the only one that can keep
+up with me," he said, admiring her glowing face and star-like eyes,
+her graceful, assured seat on a hunter that no one else either cared or
+dared to ride.
+
+"You mean you are the only one who can keep up with _me,_" she laughed,
+preparing for what his face warned her was coming.
+
+"No I don't, Marian dear. I mean that we ought to go right on keeping up
+with each other. You won't say no, will you?"
+
+Marian was liking him that day--he was looking his best. She
+particularly liked his expression as he proposed to her. She had
+intended to pretend to refuse him; instead her colour rose and she said:
+"No--which means yes. Everybody expects it of us, Teddy. So I suppose we
+mustn't disappoint them."
+
+The fact that "everybody" did expect it, the fact that he was the great
+"catch" in their set, with his two hundred and fifty thousand a year,
+his good looks and his good character--these were her real reasons,
+with the first dominant. But she did not admit it to herself then. At
+twenty-four even the mercenary instinct tricks itself out in a most
+deceptive romantic disguise if there is the ghost of an opportunity.
+Besides, there was no reason, and no sign of an approaching reason, for
+the shadow of a suspicion that life with Teddy Danvers would not be full
+of all that she and her friends regarded as happiness.
+
+But she would not marry immediately. She was tenacious of her freedom.
+She was restless, dissatisfied with herself and not elated by her
+prospects. She had an excellent mind, reasonable, appreciative,
+ambitious. Until she "came out" she had spent much time among books; but
+as she had had no capable director of her reading, she got from it
+only a vague sense, that there was somewhere something in the way of
+achievement which she might possibly like to attain if she knew what it
+was or where to look for it. As she became settled in her place in the
+routine of social life, as her horizon narrowed to the conventional
+ideas of her set, this sense of possible and attractive achievement
+became vaguer. But her restlessness did not diminish.
+
+"I never saw such an ungrateful girl," was Mrs. Carnarvon's comment
+upon one of Marian's outbursts of almost peevish fretting. "What do you
+want?"
+
+"That's just it," exclaimed Marian, half-laughing. "What _do_ I want?
+I look all about me and I can't see it. Yet I know that there must be
+something. I think I ought to have been a man. Sometimes I feel
+like running away--away off somewhere. I feel as if I were getting
+second-bests, paste substitutes for the real jewels. I feel as I did
+when I was a child and demanded the moon. They gave me a little gilt
+crescent and said: 'Here is a nice little moon for baby;' and it made me
+furious."
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon looked irritated. "I don't understand it. You are getting
+the best of everything. Of course you can't expect to be happy. I don't
+suppose that any one is happy. But all the solid things of life are
+yours, and you can and should be comfortable and contented."
+
+"That's just it," answered Marian indignantly. "I have always been
+swaddled in cotton wool. I have never been allowed really to feel. I
+think it is the spirit of revolt in me. Yes, I ought to have been a man.
+I'm sure that then I could have made life a little less tiresome."
+
+It was this dissatisfaction that postponed the announcement of the
+engagement from month to month until a year had slipped away.
+
+Instead of coming to New York, Danvers went off to Montana for a
+mountain-lion hunt with two Englishmen who had been staying with him in
+"The Valley." He would join Marian for the trip South, the engagement
+would be announced, and the wedding would be in May--such was the
+arrangement which Marian succeeded in making. It settled everything and
+at the same time it gave her a month of freedom in New York. She hinted
+enough of this programme to Howard to enable him to grasp its essential
+points.
+
+"A month's holiday," was his comment. They were alone on the second seat
+of George Browning's coach, driving through the Park. "If we were like
+those people"--he was looking at a young man and young woman, side by
+side upon a Park bench, blue with cold but absorbed in themselves and
+obviously ecstatic. Marian glanced at them with slightly supercilious
+amusement and became so interested that she turned her head to follow
+them with her eyes after the coach had passed.
+
+"Is he kissing her?" asked Howard.
+
+"No--not yet. But I'm sure he will as soon as we have turned the
+corner." She said nothing for a moment or two, her glance straight ahead
+and upon vacancy, he admiring the curve of her cheek at the edge of its
+effective framing of fur.
+
+"But we are not----" She spoke in a low tone, regretful, pensive, almost
+sad. "We are not like them."
+
+"Oh, yes we are. But--we fancy we are not. We've sold our birthright,
+our freedom, our independence for--for----"
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"Baubles--childish toys--vanities--shadows. Doesn't it show what
+ridiculous little creatures we human beings are that we regard the most
+valueless things as of the highest value, and think least of the true
+valuables. For, tell me, Lady-Whom-I-Love, what is most valuable in
+the few minutes of this little journey among the stars on the good ship
+Mother Earth?"
+
+"But you would not care always as you care now? It would not, could not,
+last. If we--if we were like those people on the bench back there, we'd
+go on and--and spoil it all."
+
+"Perhaps--who can say? But in some circumstances couldn't I make you
+just as happy as--as some one else could?"
+
+"Not if you had made me infinitely happier at one time than even you
+could hope to make me all the time. At least I think not. It would
+always be--be racing against a record; we both would be, wouldn't we?"
+
+Howard looked at her with an expression which transfigured his face and
+sent the colour flaming to her cheeks. "That being the case," he said,
+"let us--let us make the record one that will not be forgotten--soon."
+
+During the month he saw her almost every day. She was most ingenious in
+arranging these meetings. They were together afternoons and evenings.
+They were often alone. Yet she was careful not to violate any
+convention, always to keep, or seem to be keeping, one foot "on the
+line." Howard threw himself into his infatuation with all his power of
+concentration He practically took a month's holiday from the office.
+He thought about her incessantly. He used all his skill with words in
+making love to her. And she abandoned herself to an equal infatuation
+with equal absorption. Neither of them spoke of the past or the future.
+They lived in the present, talked of the present.
+
+One day she spoke of herself as an orphan.
+
+"I did not know that," he said. "But then what do I know about you in
+relation to the rest of the world? To me you are an isolated act of
+creation."
+
+"You must tell me about yourself." She was looking at him, surprised.
+"Why, I know nothing at all about you."
+
+"Oh, yes, you do. You know all that there is to know--all that is
+important."
+
+"What?" She was asking for the pleasure of hearing him say it.
+
+"That I love you--you--all of you--all of you, with all of me."
+
+Her eyes answered for her lips, which only said smilingly: "No, we
+haven't time to get acquainted--at least not to-day."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was to start for Florida at ten the next morning. Mrs. Carnarvon was
+going away to the opera, giving them the last evening alone. Marian had
+asked this of her point-blank.
+
+"You are an extraordinarily sensible as well as strong-willed girl,
+Marian," Mrs. Carnarvon replied.
+
+"I can't find it in my heart to blame you for what you're doing. The
+fact that I haven't even hinted a protest, but have lent myself to your
+little plots, shows that that young man has hypnotized me also."
+
+"You needn't disturb yourself, as you know," Marian said gaily. "I'm not
+hypnotized. I shall not see Mr. Howard again until--after it's all over.
+Perhaps not then."
+
+He came to dinner and they were not alone until almost nine. She sat
+near the open fire among the cushions heaped high upon the little sofa.
+She had never been more beautiful, and apparently never in a happier
+mood. They both laughed and talked as if it were the first instead of
+the last day of their month. Neither spoke of the parting; each avoided
+all subjects that pointed in direction of the one subject of which both
+thought whenever their minds left the immediate present. As the little
+clock on the mantle began to intimate in a faint, polite voice the
+quarter before eleven, he said abruptly, almost brusquely:
+
+"I feel like a coward, giving you up in this way. Yes--giving you up;
+for you have a traitor in your fortress who has offered me the keys, who
+offers them to me now. But I do not trust you; and I can't trust myself.
+The curse of luxury is on you, the curse of ambition on me. If we had
+found each the other younger; if I had lived less alone, more in the
+ordinary habit of dependence upon others; if you had been brought up
+to live instead of to have all the machinery of living provided and
+conducted for you--well, it might have been different."
+
+"You are wrong as to me, right as to yourself. But yours is not the
+curse of ambition. It is the passion for freedom. It would be madness
+for you, thinking as you do, even if you could--and you can't."
+
+He stood up and held out his hand. She did not rise or look at him.
+
+"Good night," she said at last, putting her hand in his. "Of course I
+am thinking I shall see you tomorrow. One does not come out of such a
+dream,"--she looked up at him smiling--"all in a moment."
+
+"Good night," he smiled back at her. "I shall not open 'the fiddler's
+bill' until--until I have to." At the door he turned. She had risen and
+was kneeling on the sofa, her elbow on its low arm, her chin upon her
+hand, her eyes staring into the fire. He came toward her.
+
+"May I kiss you?" he said.
+
+"Yes." Her voice was expressionless.
+
+He bent over and just touched his lips to the back of her neck at the
+edge of her hair. He thought that she trembled slightly, but her face
+was set and she did not look toward him. He turned and left her. Half an
+hour later she heard the bell ring--it was Mrs. Carnarvon. She wished to
+see no one, so she fled through the rear door of the reception room and
+up the great stairway to lock herself in her boudoir. She sank slowly
+upon the lounge in front of the fire and closed her eyes. The fire died
+out and the room grew cold. A warning chilliness made her rise to get
+ready for bed.
+
+"No," she said aloud. "It isn't ambition and it isn't lack of love.
+It's a queer sort of cowardice; but it's cowardice for all that. He's
+a coward or he wouldn't have given up. But--I wonder--how am I going to
+live without him? I need him--more than he needs me, I'm afraid."
+
+She was standing before her dressing table. On it was a picture of
+Danvers--handsome, self-satisfied, healthy, unintellectual. She looked
+at it, gave a little shiver, and with the end of her comb toppled it
+over upon its face.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+RECKONING WITH DANVERS.
+
+
+On that journey south Marian for the first time studied Danvers as a
+husband in prospect.
+
+The morning after they left New York, their private car arrived at
+Savannah. At dark the night before they were rushing through a snow
+storm raging in a wintry landscape. Now they were looking out upon
+spring from the open windows. As soon as the train stopped, all except
+Marian and Danvers left the car to walk up and down the platform.
+Danvers, standing behind Marian, looked around to make sure that none of
+the servants was about, then rubbed his hand caressingly and familiarly
+upon her cheek.
+
+"Did you miss me?" he asked.
+
+Marian could not prevent her head from shrinking from his touch.
+
+"There's nobody about," Danvers said, reassuringly. But he acted upon
+the hint and, taking his hand away, came around and sat beside her.
+
+"Did you miss me?" he repeated, looking at her with an expression in his
+frank, manly blue eyes that made her flush at the thought of "treason"
+past and to come.
+
+"Did _you_ miss _me_?" she evaded.
+
+"I would have returned long ago if I had not been ashamed," he answered,
+smiling. "I never thought that I should come not to care for as good
+shooting as that. You almost cost me my life."
+
+"Yes?" Marian spoke absently. She was absorbed in her mental comparison
+of the two men.
+
+"I got away from the others and was looking at your picture. They
+started up a lion and he came straight at me from behind. If he hadn't
+made a misstep in his hurry and loosened a stone, I guess he would have
+got me. As it was, I got him."
+
+"You mean your gun got him."
+
+"Of course. You don't suppose I tackled him bare-handed."
+
+"It might have been fairer. I don't see how you can boast of having
+killed a creature that never bothered you, that you had to go thousands
+of miles out of your way to find, and that you attacked with a gun,
+giving him no chance to escape."
+
+"What nonsense!" laughed Danvers. "I never expected to hear you say
+anything like that. Who's been putting such stuff into your head?"
+
+Marian coloured. She did not like his tone. She resented the suggestion
+of the truth that her speech was borrowed. It made her uncomfortable to
+find herself thus unexpectedly on the dangerous ground.
+
+"I suppose it must have been that newspaper fellow Mrs. Carnarvon has
+taken up. She talked about him for an hour after you left us to go to
+bed last night."
+
+"Yes, it was--was Mr. Howard." Marian had recovered herself. "I want you
+to meet him some time. You'll like him, I'm sure."
+
+"I doubt it. Mrs. Carnarvon seemed not to know much about him. I suppose
+he's more or less of an adventurer."
+
+Marian wondered if this obvious dislike was the result of one of those
+strange instincts that sometimes enable men to scent danger before any
+sign of it appears.
+
+"Perhaps he is an adventurer," she replied. "I'm sure I don't know. Why
+should one bother to find out about a passing acquaintance? It is enough
+to know that he is amusing."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that. He might make off with the jewels when you had
+your back turned."
+
+As soon as she had made her jesting denial of her real lover Marian was
+ashamed of herself. And Danvers' remark, though a jest, cut her. "What
+I said about a passing acquaintance was not just or true," she said
+impulsively and too warmly. "Mr. Howard is not an adventurer. I admire
+and like him very much indeed. I'm proud of his friendship."
+
+Danvers shrugged his shoulders and looked at her suspiciously.
+
+"You saw a good deal of this--this friend of yours?" he demanded, his
+mouth straightening into a dictatorial line.
+
+At this Marian grew haughty and her eyes flashed: "Why do you ask?" she
+inquired, her tone dangerously calm.
+
+"Because I have the right to know." He pointed to the diamond on her
+third finger.
+
+"Oh--that is soon settled." Marian drew off the ring and held it out to
+him. "Really, Teddy, I think you ought to have waited a little longer
+before insisting so fiercely on your rights."
+
+"Don't be absurd, Marian." Danvers did not take the ring but fixed his
+eyes upon her face and changed his tone to friendly remonstrance. "You
+know the ring doesn't mean anything. It's your promise that counts. And
+honestly don't you think your promise does give me the right to ask you
+about your new friends when you speak of them, of one of them, in--in
+such a way?"
+
+"I don't intend to deceive you," she said, turning the ring around
+slowly on her finger. "I didn't know how to tell you. I suppose the only
+way to speak is just to speak."
+
+"Do you think you are in love with this man, Marian?"
+
+She nodded, then after a long pause, said, "Yes, Teddy, I love him."
+
+"But I thought----"
+
+"And so did I, Teddy. But he came, and I--well I couldn't help it."
+
+As he did not speak, she looked at him. His face was haggard and white
+and in his eyes which met hers frankly there was suffering.
+
+"It wasn't my fault, Teddy," Marian laid her hand on his arm, "at least,
+not altogether. I might have kept away and I didn't."
+
+"Oh, I don't blame you. I blame him."
+
+"But it wasn't his fault. I--I--encouraged him."
+
+"Did he know that we were engaged?"
+
+"Yes," reluctantly.
+
+"The scoundrel! I suspected that he was rotten somewhere."
+
+"You are unjust to him. I have not told you properly."
+
+"Did he tell you that he cared for you?"
+
+"Yes--but he didn't try to get me to break my engagement."
+
+"So much the more a scoundrel, he. Tell me, Marian--come to your senses
+and tell me--what in the devil did he hang about you for and make love
+to you, if he didn't want to marry you? Would an honest man, a decent
+man, do that?"
+
+Marian's face confessed assent.
+
+"I should think you would have seen what sort of a fellow he is. I
+should think you would despise him."
+
+"Sometimes it seems to me that I ought to. But I always end by despising
+myself--and--and--it makes no difference in the way I feel toward him."
+
+"I think I would do well to look him up and give him a horse-whipping.
+But you'll get over him, Marian. I am astonished at your cousin. How
+could she let this go on? But then, she's crazy about him too."
+
+Marian smiled miserably. "I've owned up and you ought to congratulate
+yourself on so luckily getting rid of such an untrustworthy person as
+I."
+
+"Getting rid of you?" Danvers looked at her defiantly. "Do you think I'm
+going to let you go on and ruin yourself on an impulse? Not much! I hold
+you to your promise. You'll come round all right after you've been away
+from this fellow for a few days. You'll be amazed at yourself a week
+from now."
+
+"You don't understand, Teddy." Marian wished him to see once for all
+that, whatever might be the future for her and Howard, there was no
+future for her and him. "Don't make it so hard for me to tell you."
+
+"I don't want to hear any more about it now, Marian. I can't stand it--I
+hardly know what I'm saying--wait a few days--let's go on as we have
+been--here they come."
+
+The others of the party came bustling into the car and the train
+started. For the rest of the journey Danvers avoided her, keeping to the
+smoking room and the game of poker there. Marian could neither read nor
+watch the landscape. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry that
+she had told him. She hated to think that she had inflicted pain and she
+could not believe, in spite of what she had seen in his eyes, that his
+feeling in the matter was more than jealousy and wounded vanity.
+
+"He doesn't really care for me," she thought. "It's his pride that is
+hurt. He will flare out at me and break it off. I do hope he'll get
+angry. It will make it so much easier for me."
+
+Late in the afternoon she took Mrs. Carnarvon into her confidence. "I've
+told Teddy," she said.
+
+"I might have known!" exclaimed her cousin. "What on earth made you do
+that?"
+
+"I don't know--perhaps shame."
+
+"Shame--trash! Your life is going to be a fine turmoil if you run to
+Teddy with an account of every little mild flirtation you happen
+to have. Of all the imbeciles, the most imbecile is the woman who
+confesses."
+
+
+"But how could I marry him when----"
+
+"When you don't love him?"
+
+"No--I might have done that. I like him. But, when I love another man."
+
+"It does make a difference. But you ought to be able to foresee that
+you'll get over Howard in a few weeks----"
+
+"Precisely what Teddy said."
+
+"Did he? I'm surprised at his having so much sense. For, if you'll
+forgive me, I don't think Teddy will ever set New York on fire--at
+least, he's--well, he has the makings of an ideal husband. And has he
+broken it off?"
+
+"No. He wouldn't have it."
+
+"Really? Well he _is_ in love. Most men in his position--able to get any
+girl he wants--would have thrown up the whole business. Yes, he must be
+awfully in love."
+
+"Do you think that?" Marian's voice spoke distress but she felt only
+satisfaction. "Oh, I hope not--that is, I'd like to think he cared a
+great deal and at the same time I don't want to hurt him."
+
+"Don't fret yourself about these two men. Just go on thinking as you
+please. You'll be surprised how soon Howard will fade." Mrs. Carnarvon
+smiled satirically at some thought--perhaps a memory. "You're a good
+deal of a goose, my dear, but you are a great deal more of a woman.
+That's why I feel sure that Teddy will win."
+
+With such an opportunity--with the field clear and the woman
+half-remorseful over her treachery, half-indignant at the man who had
+shown himself so weak and spiritless--a cleverer or a less vain man than
+Danvers would have triumphed easily. And for the first week he did make
+progress. He acted upon the theory that Marian had been hypnotized and
+that the proper treatment was to ignore her delusion and to treat her
+with assiduous but not annoying consideration. He did not pose as an
+injured or jealous lover. He was the friend, always at her service,
+always thinking out plans for her amusement. He made no reference to
+their engagement or to Howard.
+
+Several people of their set were at the hotel and Marian was soon
+drifting back into her accustomed modes of thought. The wider horizon
+which she fancied Howard had shown her was growing dim and hazy. The
+horizon which he had made her think narrow was beginning again to
+seem the only one. This meant Danvers; but he was not acute enough to
+understand her and to follow up his advantage.
+
+One morning as he was walking up and down under the palms, waiting for
+Mrs. Carnarvon and Marian, Mrs. Fortescue called him. She was a cold,
+rather handsome woman. In her eyes was the expression that always
+betrays the wife or the mistress who loathes the man she lives with,
+enduring him only because he gives her that which she most wants--money.
+She had one fixed idea--to marry her daughter "well," that is, to money.
+
+"Can you join us to-day, Teddy?" she asked. "We need one more man."
+
+"I'm waiting for Mrs. Carnarvon and Marian," he explained.
+
+"Oh, of course." Mrs. Fortescue smiled. "What a nice girl she is--so
+clever, so--so independent. I admired her immensely for deciding to
+marry that poor, obscure young fellow. I like to see the young people
+romantic."
+
+Danvers flushed angrily and pulled at his mustache. He tried to smile.
+"We've teased her about it a good deal," he said, "but she denies it."
+
+"I suppose they aren't ready to announce the engagement yet," Mrs.
+Fortescue suggested. "I suppose they are waiting until he betters
+his position a little. It's never a good idea to have too long a time
+between the announcement and the marriage."
+
+"Perhaps that is it." Danvers tried to look indifferent but his eyes
+were sullen with jealousy.
+
+"I always rather thought that you and Marian were going to make a match
+of it," continued Mrs. Fortescue. Just then her daughter came down the
+walk. She was fashionably dressed in white and blue that brought out all
+the loveliness of her golden hair and violet eyes and faintly-coloured,
+smooth fair skin. Danvers had not seen her since she "came out," and was
+dazzled by her radiance.
+
+They say that every man must be a little in love with every pretty
+woman he sees. And Danvers at once gave Ellen Fortescue her due. She
+sat silent beside her mother, looking the personification of innocence,
+purity and poetry. Her mother continued subtly to poison Danvers against
+Marian, to make him feel that she had not appreciated him, that she
+had trifled with him, that she had not treated him as his dignity and
+importance merited. When she and Mrs. Carnarvon appeared, he joined them
+tardily, after having made an arrangement with the Fortescues for the
+next day.
+
+That evening he danced several times with Ellen Fortescue and adopted
+the familiar lover's tactics--he set about making Marian jealous. He
+scored the customary success. When she went to bed she lay for several
+hours looking out into the moonlight, raging against the Fortescues and
+against Danvers. The mere fact that a man whom she regarded as hers was
+permitting himself to show marked attention to another woman would have
+been sufficient. But in addition, Marian was perfectly aware of the
+material advantages of this particular man. She did not want to marry
+him; at least she was of that mind at the moment. But she might change
+her mind. Certainly, if there was to be any breaking off, she wished
+it to be of her doing. She did not fancy the idea of him departing
+joyfully.
+
+She was far too wise to show that she saw what was going on. She praised
+Miss Fortescue to Danvers with apparent frankness and insisted on him
+devoting more time to her. Danvers persisted in his scheme boldly for a
+week and then, just as Marian was despairing and was casting about for
+another plan of campaign, he gave in. They were sitting apart in the
+shadow near one of the windows of the ball-room. He had been sullen all
+the evening, almost rude.
+
+"How much longer are you going to keep me in suspense?" he burst out
+angrily.
+
+"In suspense?"
+
+"You know what I mean. I think I've been very patient."
+
+"You mean our engagement?" Marian was looking at him, repelled by his
+expression, his manner, the tone of his voice, his whole mood.
+
+"Yes--I want your decision."
+
+"I have not changed."
+
+"You still love that--that newspaper fellow?"
+
+"No, I don't mean that." Marian felt her irritation against Danvers
+suddenly vanish and in its place a Sense of relief and of calmness. "I
+mean toward you. It won't do, Teddy. We shall get on well as friends.
+But I can't think of you in--in that way."
+
+Mrs. Fortescue had so swollen his vanity that he was astounded at
+Marian's decision. He rapidly went over in his mind all the advantages
+he offered as a husband, and then looked at her as if he thought her
+beside herself.
+
+"Look here, Marian," he protested. "You can't mean it. Why, it's all
+settled that we are to marry. It would be madness for you to break
+it off. I can give you everything--everything. And he can't give you
+anything." Then with fatal tactlessness: "He won't even give you the
+little that he can, according to your own story."
+
+"Yes, it's madness, isn't it, Teddy, to refuse you--fascinating you,
+who can give everything. But that's just it. You have too much. You
+overwhelm me. I should feel like a cheat, taking so much and giving so
+little."
+
+"Don't," he begged, his self-complacence and superiority all gone.
+"Don't mind my blundering, please, dear. I want you. I can't say it. I
+haven't any gift of words. But you've known me all my life and you know
+that I love you. I've set my heart on it, Mary Ann,"--it was the name
+he used to tease her with when they were children playing together--"You
+won't go back on me now, will you?"
+
+"I wish I could do as you wish, Teddy." Marian was forgetful of
+everything but the unhappiness she was causing this friend of so many,
+many years and of so many, many memories. "But I can't--I can't."
+
+"Marry me, dear, anyhow. You will care afterward." Marian was silent and
+Danvers hoped. "You know all about me. I'll not give you any surprises.
+I shan't bother you. And I'll make you happy."
+
+"No," she said firmly. "You mustn't ask it. I'll tell you why. I have
+thought of marrying you regardless of this. Only last night I thought of
+it--finally, went over the whole thing. Listen, Teddy--if I were married
+to you--and if he should come--and he would come sooner or later--if
+he should come and say 'Come with me,'--I'd go--yes, I'm sure I'd go.
+I can't explain why. But I know that nothing would stand in the
+way--nothing."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself." Marian shrank from him. She was
+horrified by the malignant fury that sparkled in his eyes and raged in
+his voice. "That damned scoundrel is worthy of you and you of him. But
+I'll get you yet. I never was crossed in anything in my life and I'll
+not be beaten here."
+
+"And I thought you were my friend!" Marian was looking at him, pale, her
+eyes wide with amazement. "Is it really you?"
+
+He laughed insolently. "Yes--you'll see. And he'll see. I'll crush him
+as if he were an egg shell. And as for you--you perjurer--you liar!"
+
+He looked at her with coarse contempt, rose and stalked away. Marian sat
+rigid. She was conscious of the insult. But even that humiliation was
+not so strong in her mind as the astounding revelation of Danvers. She
+remembered that even as his eyes blazed hatred at her, he looked at her,
+at her neck, her bare arms, with the baffled desire of brute passion.
+She did not fully understand the look, but she felt that it was a
+degradation far greater than his insulting words.
+
+She slipped, almost skulked to her room, her eyes down, her face in
+a burning flush, her scarf drawn tightly about her neck. As her door
+closed behind her, she fell upon her bed and began to sob hysterically.
+She started up with a scream to find her cousin standing beside her.
+
+"I'm so sorry. Forgive me." Mrs. Carnarvon's voice had lost its wonted
+levity. "I saw that you were in trouble and followed. I knocked and
+I thought I heard you answer. What is it, Marie? May I ask? Can I do
+anything?"
+
+Marian drew her down to the bed and buried her face in her lap. "Oh,
+I feel so unclean," she said. "It was--Teddy. Would you believe it,
+Jessie, Teddy! I looked on him as a brother. And he showed me that he
+was not my friend--that he didn't even love me--that he--oh, I shall
+never forget the look in his eyes. He made me feel like a--like a
+_thing_."
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon smothered a smile. "Of course Teddy's a brute," she said.
+"I thought you knew. He's a domesticated brute, like most of the men and
+some of the women. You'll have to get used to that."
+
+By refusing to fall in with her mood, Mrs. Carnarvon had gone far toward
+curing it. Marian stopped sobbing and presently said:
+
+"Oh, I know all that. But I didn't expect it from Teddy--and toward me.
+And--" she shuddered--"I was thinking, actually thinking of marrying
+him. I wish never to see him again. And he pretended to be my friend!"
+
+"And he was, no doubt, until he got you on the brain in another way, in
+the way he calls love. There isn't any love that has friendship in it."
+
+"We must go away at once."
+
+"Unless Teddy saves us the trouble by going first, as I suspect he
+will."
+
+"Jessie, he hates me and--and--Mr. Howard."
+
+"So you talked to him about Howard again, did you?" Mrs. Carnarvon
+was indignant. "You are old enough to know better, Marian. You carry
+frankness entirely too far. There is such a thing as truth running
+amuck."
+
+"He said he would crush Howard. And I believe he really meant it."
+
+"Teddy is a man who believes in revenges--or thinks he does. His father
+taught him to keep accounts in grievances, and no doubt he has opened an
+account with Howard. But don't be disturbed about it. His father would
+have insisted on balancing the account. Teddy will just keep on hating,
+but won't do anything. He's not underhanded."
+
+"He's everything that is vile and low."
+
+"You're quite mistaken, my dear. He's what they call a manly fellow--a
+little too masculine perhaps, but----"
+
+A knock interrupted and Mrs. Carnarvon, answering it, took from the
+bell-boy a note for Marian who read it, then handed it to her. Mrs.
+Carnarvon read: "I apologise for the way I said what I did this evening,
+not for what I said. Because you had forgotten yourself, had played the
+traitor and the cheat was, perhaps, no excuse for my rudeness. You have
+fallen under an evil influence. I hope no harm will come to you, for I
+can't get over my feeling for you. But I have done my best and have not
+been able to save you. I am going away early in the morning.
+
+"E. D."
+
+"Melodramatic, isn't it?" laughed Mrs. Carnarvon. "So he's off. How
+furious Martha Fortescue and Ellen will be. But they'll go in pursuit,
+and they'll get him. A man is never so susceptible as when he's
+broken-hearted. Well, I must go. Good-night, dear. Don't mope and whine.
+Take your punishment sensibly. You've learned something--if it's only
+not to tell one man how much you love another."
+
+"I think I'll go abroad with Aunt Retta next month."
+
+"A good idea--you'll forget both these men. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," answered Marian dolefully, expecting to resume her
+thoughts of Danvers. But, instead, he straightway disappeared from
+her mind and she could think only of Howard. She was free now. The one
+barrier between him and her of which she had been really conscious was
+gone. And her heart began to ache with longing for him. Why had he not
+written? What was he doing? Did he really love her or was his passion
+for her only a flash of a strong and swift imagination?
+
+No, he loved her--she could not doubt that. But she could not understand
+his conduct. She felt that she ought to be very unhappy, yet she was
+not. The longer she thought of him and the more she weighed his words
+and looks, the stronger became her trust in him. "He loves me," she
+said. "He will come when he can. It may be even harder for him than for
+me."
+
+And so, explanation failing--for she rejected every explanation that
+reflected upon him--she hid and excused him behind that familiar refuge
+of the doubting, mystery.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE NEWS-RECORD GETS A NEW EDITOR.
+
+
+A few minutes after leaving Marian that last night at Mrs. Carnarvon's,
+Howard was deep in a mood of self-contempt. He felt that he had faced
+the crisis like a coward. He despised the weakness which enfeebled him
+for effort to win her and at the same time made it impossible for him to
+thrust her from his mind.
+
+In the working hours his will conquered with the aid of fixed habit and
+he was able to concentrate upon his editorials. But in his rooms, and
+especially after the lights were out, his imagination became master,
+deprived him of sleep and occasionally lifted him to a height of hope
+in order that it might dash him down the more cruelly upon the rocks of
+fact.
+
+At last he was forced to face the situation--in his own evasive fashion.
+It was impossible to go back. That loneliness which often threatened him
+after Alice's death had become the permanent condition of his life. "I
+will work for her," he said. "Until I have made a place for her I dare
+not claim her. So much I will concede to my weakness. But when I have
+won a position which reasonably assures the future, I shall claim
+her--no matter what has happened in the meanwhile."
+
+He would have smiled at this wild resolution had he been in a less
+distracted state of mind or had he been dealing with any other than a
+matter of love. But in the circumstances it gave him heart and set him
+to work with an energy and effectiveness which still further increased
+Mr. Malcolm's esteem for him.
+
+"Will you dine with me at the Union Club on Wednesday?" Mr. Malcolm
+asked one morning in mid-February. "Mr. Coulter and Mr. Stokely are
+coming. I want you to know them better."
+
+Howard accepted and wondered that he took so little interest.
+For Stokely and Coulter were the principal stockholders of the
+_News-Record_, and with Malcolm formed the triumvirate which directed it
+in all its departments. Mr. Malcolm held only a few shares of stock,
+but received what was in the newspaper-world an immense salary--thirty
+thousand a year. He was at once an able editor and an able diplomatist.
+He knew how to make the plans of his two associates conform to
+conditions of news and policy--when to let them use the paper, or,
+rather, when to use the paper himself for their personal interests; when
+and how to induce them to let the paper alone. Through a quarter of a
+century of changing ownerships Malcolm had persisted, chiefly because
+he had but one conviction--that the post of editor of the _News-Record_
+exactly suited him and must remain his at any sacrifice of personal
+character.
+
+Howard had met Stokely and Coulter. He liked Stokely who was owner of a
+few shares more than one-third; he disliked Coulter who owned just under
+one-half.
+
+Stokely was a frank, coarse, dollar-hunter, cheerfully unscrupulous in a
+large way, acute, caring not at all for principles of any kind, letting
+the paper alone most of the time because he was astute enough to know
+that in his ignorance of journalism he would surely injure it as a
+property.
+
+Coulter was a hypocrite and a snob. Also he fancied he knew how to
+conduct a newspaper. He was as unscrupulous as Stokely but tried to mask
+it.
+
+When Stokely wished the _News-Record_ to advocate a "job," or steal, or
+the election of some disreputable who would work in his interest,
+he told Malcolm precisely what he wanted and left the details of the
+stultification to his experienced adroitness. When Coulter wished
+to "poison the fountain of publicity," as Malcolm called the paper's
+departures from honesty and right, he approached the subject by stealth,
+trying to convince Malcolm that the wrong was not really wrong, but was
+right unfortunately disguised.
+
+He would take Malcolm into his confidence by slow and roundabout
+steps, thus multiplying his difficulties in discharging his "duty." If
+Coulter's son had not been married to Malcolm's daughter, it is probable
+that not even his complete subserviency would have enabled him to keep
+his place.
+
+"If you had told me frankly what you wanted in the first place, Mr.
+Coulter," he said after an exasperating episode in which Coulter's
+Pharisaic sensitiveness had resulted in Malcolm's having to "flop" the
+paper both editorially and in its news columns twice in three days, "we
+would not have made ourselves ridiculous and contemptible. The public
+is an ass, but it is an ass with a memory at least three days long. Your
+stealthiness has made the ass bray at us instead of with and for us.
+And that is dangerous when you consider that running a newspaper is like
+running a restaurant--you must please your customers every day afresh."
+
+Coulter was further difficult because of his anxieties about social
+position for himself and his family. He was disturbed whenever the
+_News-Record_ published an item that might offend any of the people
+whose acquaintance he had gained with so much difficulty, and for
+whose good will he was willing to sacrifice even considerable
+money. Personally, but very privately, he edited the _News-Record's_
+"fashionable intelligence" columns on Sunday and made them an exhibit of
+his own sycophancy and snobbishness which excited the amused disgust of
+all who were in the secret.
+
+Malcolm liked Howard, admired him, in a way envied his fearlessness, his
+earnestness for principles. For years he had had it in mind to retire
+and write a history of the Civil War period which had been his own
+period of greatest activity and most intimate acquaintance with the
+behind-the-scenes of statecraft. Howard's energy, steady application,
+enthusiasm for journalism and intelligence both as to editorials and as
+to news made Malcolm look upon him as his natural successor.
+
+"I think Howard is the man we want," he said to his two associates when
+he was arranging the dinner. "He has new ideas--just what the paper
+needs. He is in touch with these recent developments. And above all he
+has judgment. He knows what not to print, where and how to print what
+ought to be printed. He is still young and is over-enthusiastic. He has
+limitations, but he knows them and he is eager and capable to learn."
+
+It was a "shop" dinner, Howard doing most of the talking, led on by
+Malcolm. The main point was the "new journalism," as it was called, and
+how to adapt it to the _News-Record_ and the _News-Record_ to it.
+
+Malcolm kept the conversation closely to news and news-ideas, fearing
+that, if editorial policies were brought in, Howard would make "breaks."
+He soon saw that his associates were much impressed with Howard, with
+his judgment, with his knowledge of the details of every important
+newspaper in the city, with his analysis of the good and bad points in
+each.
+
+"I'll drop you at your corner," said he to Howard at the end of the
+dinner. As they drove up the Avenue he began: "How would you like to be
+the editor of the _News-Record_? My place, I mean."
+
+"I don't understand," Howard answered, bewildered.
+
+"I am going to retire at once," Malcolm went on. "I've been at it nearly
+fifty years--ever since I was a boy of eighteen and I've been in charge
+there almost a quarter of a century. I think I've earned a few years of
+leisure to work for my own amusement. I'm pretty sure they'll want you
+to take my place. Would you like it?"
+
+"I'm not fit for it," Howard said, and he meant it. "I'm only an
+apprentice. I'm always making blunders--but I needn't tell you about
+that."
+
+"You can't say that you are not fit until you have tried. Besides, the
+question is not, are _you_ fit? but, is there any one more fit than you?
+I confess I don't see any one so well equipped, so certain to give the
+paper all of the best that there is in him."
+
+"Of course I'd like to try. I can only fail."
+
+"Oh, you won't fail. But you may quarrel with Stokely and
+Coulter--especially Coulter. In fact, I'm sure you'll quarrel with
+them. But if you make yourself valuable enough, you'll probably win out.
+Only----"
+
+Malcolm hesitated, then went on:
+
+"I stopped giving advice years ago. But I'll venture a suggestion.
+Whenever your principles run counter to the policy of the paper, it
+would be wise to think the matter over carefully before making an issue.
+Usually there is truth on both sides, much that can be said fairly
+and honestly for either side. Often devotion to principle is a mere
+prejudice. Often the crowd, the mob, can be better controlled to right
+ends by conceding or seeming to concede a principle for the time. Don't
+strike a mortal blow at your own usefulness to good causes by making
+yourself a hasty martyr to some fancied vital principle that will seem
+of no consequence the next morning but one after the election."
+
+"I know, Mr. Malcolm, judgment is all but impossible. And I have been
+trying to learn what you have been teaching me with your blue pencil,
+what you now put into words. But there is something in me--an instinct,
+perhaps--that forces me on in spite of myself. I've learned to curb and
+guide it to a certain extent, but as long as I am I, I shall never learn
+to control it. Every man must work out his own salvation along his own
+lines. And with my limitations of judgment, it would be fatal to me, I
+feel, to study the art of compromise. Where another, broader, stronger,
+more master of himself and of others, would succeed by compromising, I
+should fail miserably. I should be lost, compassless, rudderless. I have
+often envied you your calmness, your ability to see not only to-morrow
+but the day after. But, if I ever try to imitate you, I shall make a sad
+mess of my career."
+
+As he ended Howard looked uneasily at the old editor, expecting to see
+that caustic smile with which he preceded and accompanied his sarcasms
+at "sentimental bosh." But instead, Malcolm's face was melancholy; and
+his voice was sad and weary as he answered the young man who was just
+starting where he had started so many years ago:
+
+"No doubt you are right. I'm not intending to try to dissuade you
+from--from the best there is in you. All I mean is that caution,
+self-examination, self-doubt, calm consideration of the other
+side--these are as necessary to success as energy and resolute action.
+All I suggest is that its splendour does not redeem a splendid folly.
+Its folly remains its essential characteristic."
+
+Three weeks later Howard became editor-in-chief of the _News-Record_.
+His salary was fifteen thousand a year; and Stokely and Coulter, acting
+upon Malcolm's advice, gave him a "free hand" for one year. They agreed
+not to interfere during that time unless the circulation or the profits
+showed a decrease at the end of a quarter.
+
+The next morning Howard, in the Madison Avenue car on his way to the
+office, read among the "Incidents in Society:"
+
+Mrs. George Alexander Provost and her niece, Miss Marion Trevor, sailed
+in the _Campania_ yesterday. They will return in July for the Newport
+season.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+YELLOW JOURNALISM.
+
+
+While several of the New York dailies were circulating from two to three
+hundred thousand copies, the _News-Record_--the best-written, the most
+complete, and, where the interests of the owners did not interfere, the
+most accurate--circulated less than one hundred thousand. The Sunday
+edition had a circulation of one hundred and fifty thousand where two
+other newspapers had almost half a million.
+
+The theory of the _News-Record_ staff was that their journal was too
+"respectable," too intelligent, to be widely read; that the "yellow
+journals" grovelled, "appealed to the mob," drew their vast crowds by
+the methods of the fakir and the freak. They professed pride in the
+_News-Record's_ smaller circulation as proof of its freedom from
+vulgarity and debasement. They looked down upon the journalists of the
+popular newspapers and posed as the aristocracy of the profession.
+
+Howard did not assent to these self-complacent excuses. He was
+democratic and modern, and the aristocratic pose appealed only to his
+sense of humour and his suspicions. He believed that the success of
+the "yellow journals" with the most intelligent, alert and progressive
+public in the world must be based upon solid reasons of desert, must be
+in spite of, not because of, their follies and exhibitions of bad taste.
+He resolved upon a radical departure, a revolution from the policy of
+satisfying petty vanity and tradition within the office to a policy of
+satisfying the demands of the public.
+
+He gave Segur temporary charge of the editorial page, and, taking a desk
+in the news-room, centred his attention upon news and the news-staff.
+But he was careful not to agitate and antagonise those whose cooeperation
+was necessary to success. He made only one change in the management; he
+retired old Bowring on a pension and appointed to the city editorship
+one of the young reporters--Frank Cumnock.
+
+He chose Cumnock for this position, in many respects the most important
+on the staff of a New York daily, because he wrote well, was a judge of
+good writing, had a minute knowledge of New York and its neighbourhood
+and, finally and chiefly, because he had a "news-sense," keener than
+that of any other man on the paper.
+
+For instance, there was the murder of old Thayer, the rich miser in East
+Sixteenth Street. It was the sensation in all the newspapers for two
+weeks. Then they dropped it as an unsolvable mystery. Cumnock persuaded
+Mr. Bowring to let him keep on. After five days' work he heard of a
+deaf and dumb woman who sat every afternoon at a back window of her flat
+overlooking the back windows of Thayer's house. He had a trying struggle
+with her infirmity and stupidity, but finally was rewarded. On the
+afternoon of the murder, in its very hour (which the police had been
+able to discover), she had seen a man and woman in the bathroom of the
+Thayer house. Both were agitated and the man washed his hands again
+and again, carefully rinsing the bowl afterward. From her description
+Cumnock got upon the track of Thayer's niece and her husband, found the
+proof of their guilt, had them watched until the _News-Record_ came out
+with the "beat," then turned them over to the police.
+
+Also, Cumnock was keen at taking hints of good news-items concealed in
+obscure paragraphs. The Morris Prison scandal was an example of this. He
+found in the New England edition of _The World_ a six-line item giving
+an astonishing death rate for the Morris Prison. He asked the City
+Editor to assign him to go there; and within a week the press of the
+entire country was discussing the _News-Record's_ exposure of the
+barbarities of torture and starvation practised by Warden Johnson and
+his keepers.
+
+"We are going to print the news, all the news and nothing but the news,"
+Howard said to Cumnock. "They've put you here because, so they tell me,
+you know news no matter how thoroughly it is concealed or disguised.
+And I assure you that no one shall interfere with you. No favours to
+anybody; no use of the news-columns for revenge or exploitation. The
+only questions a news-item need raise in your mind are: Is it true?
+Is it interesting? Is it printable in a newspaper that will publish
+anything which a healthy-minded grown-person wishes to read?"
+
+"Is that 'straight'?" asked Cumnock. "No favourites? No suppressions? No
+exploitations?"
+
+"'Straight'--'dead straight'! And if I were you I'd make this
+particularly clear to the Wall Street and political men. If
+anybody"--with stress upon the anybody--"comes to you about this, send
+him to me."
+
+Howard was uneasy about the managing editor, Mr. King. But he soon found
+that his fears were groundless. Mr. King was without petty vanity, and
+cordially and sincerely welcomed his control.
+
+"We look too dull," King began when Howard asked him if he had any
+changes to suggest. "We need more and bigger headlines, and we need
+pictures."
+
+"That is it!" Howard was delighted to find that King and he were in
+perfect accord. "But we must not have pictures unless we can have the
+best. Just at present we can't increase expenses by any great amount.
+What do you say to trying what we can do with all the news, larger
+headlines and plenty of leads?"
+
+"I'm sure we can do better with our class of readers by livening up the
+appearance of our headlines than we could with second-rate pictures."
+
+"I hope," Howard said earnestly, "that we won't have to use that
+phrase--'our class of readers'--much longer. Our paper should interest
+every man and woman able to read. It seems to me that a newspaper's
+audience should be like that of a good play--the orchestra chairs full
+and the last seat in the gallery taken. I suppose you know we're not an
+'organ' any longer?"
+
+"No, I didn't." Mr. King looked surprised. "Do you mean to say that
+we're free to print the news?"
+
+"Free as freedom. In our news columns we're neither Democrat nor
+Republican nor Mugwump nor Reform. We have no Wall Street or social
+connections. We are going to print a newspaper--all the news and nothing
+but the news."
+
+Mr. King drummed on his desk softly with the tips of his outstretched
+fingers. "Hum--hum," he said. "This _is_ news. Well--the circulation'll
+go up. And that's all I'm interested in."
+
+Howard went about his plans quietly. He avoided every appearance of
+exerting authority, disturbed not a wheel in the great machine. He made
+his changes so subtly that those who received the suggestions often came
+to him a few days afterward, proposing as their own the very plans he
+had hinted. He was thus cautious partly because of his experience of
+the vanity of men, their sensitiveness to criticism, their instinctive
+opposition to improvement from without; partly from his knowledge of the
+hysteria which raged in the offices of the "yellow journals." He wished
+to avoid an epidemic of that hysteria--the mad rush for sensation
+and novelty; the strife of opposing ambitions; the plotting and
+counter-plotting of rival heads of departments; the chaos out of which
+the craziest ideas often emerged triumphant, making the pages of the
+paper look like a series of disordered dreams.
+
+He was indifferent to the semblance of authority, to the shadows for
+which small men are forever struggling. What he wanted, all he wanted,
+was--results.
+
+The first opposition came from the night editor, who for twenty-six
+years, his weekly "night off" and his two weeks' vacation in summer
+excepted, had "made up" the paper--that is to say, had defined, with the
+advice and consent of the managing editor, the position and order of
+the various news items. This night editor, Mr. Vroom, was a strenuous
+conservative. He believed that an editor's duty was done when he had
+intelligently arranged his paper so that the news was placed before the
+reader in the order of its importance. Big headlines, attempts at effect
+with varying sizes of large type and varying column-widths he held to
+be crowd-catching devices, vulgar and debasing. He had no sympathy with
+Howard's theory that the first object of a newspaper published in a
+democratic republic is to catch the crowd, to interest it, to compel it
+to read, and so to lead it to think.
+
+"We're on the way to scuffling in the gutter with the 'yellow journals'
+for the pennies of the mob," he was saying sarcastically to Mr. King,
+one afternoon just as Howard joined them.
+
+Howard laughed. "Not on the way to the gutter, Mr. Vroom. Actually in
+the gutter, actually scuffling."
+
+"Well, I'm frank to say that I don't like it. A newspaper ought to
+appeal to the intelligent."
+
+"To intelligence, yes; to the intelligent, no. At least in my opinion,
+that is the right theory. We want people to read us because we're
+intelligent enough to know how to please them, not because they're
+intelligent enough to overcome the difficulties we put in their way. But
+let's go out to dinner this evening and talk it over."
+
+They dined together at Mouquin's every night for a week. At the end of
+that time Vroom, still sarcastic and grumbling, was a convert. And a
+great accession Howard found him. He had sound judgment as to the value
+of news-items--what demanded first page, the "show-window," because
+it would interest everybody; what was worth a line on an inside page
+because it would interest only a few thousands. He was the most skillful
+of the _News-Record's_ many good writers of headlines, a master of that,
+for the newspaper, art of arts--condensed and interesting statement,
+alluring the glancing reader to read on. Also he had an eye for effects
+with type. "You make every page a picture," Howard said to him. "It is
+wonderful how you balance your headlines, emphasising the important
+news yet saving the minor items from obscurity. I should like to see the
+paper you would make if you had the right sort of illustrations to put
+in."
+
+Vroom was amazed at himself. He who had opposed any "head" which broke
+the column rule was now so far degenerated into a "yellow journalist"
+that, when Howard spoke of illustrations, he actually longed to test his
+skill at distributing them effectively.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two months of hard work, tedious, because necessarily so indirect,
+produced a newspaper which was "on the right lines," as Howard
+understood right lines. And he felt that the time had come to make the
+necessary radical changes in the editorial page.
+
+The _News-Record_ had long posed as independent because it supported now
+one political party and now the other, or divided its support. But this
+superficial independence was in reality subservience to the financial
+interests of the two principal owners. They made their newspaper assail
+Republican or Democratic corruption and misgovernment in city, state
+or nation, according as their personal interests lay. They used the
+editorial page and, to even better advantage, the news-columns, in
+revenging themselves for too heavy levies of blackmail upon their
+corrupt interests or in securing unjust legislation and privileges.
+
+Obedient and cynical Mr. Malcolm had made the editorial page corrupt and
+brilliant--never so effective as when assailing a good cause. The
+great misfortune of good causes is that they attract so many fatal
+friends--the superciliously conscientious; the well-meaning but
+feeble-minded and blundering; the most offensive because least deceptive
+kinds of hypocrites. Mr. Malcolm, as acute as he was intellectually
+unscrupulous, well understood how to weaken or to ruin a just cause
+through these supporters. Sometimes he stood afar off, showering the
+poisoned arrows of raillery and satire. Again he was the plain-spoken
+friend of the cause and warned its honest supporters against these "fool
+friends" whom he pretended to regard as its leaders. Again he played the
+part of a blind enthusiast and praised folly as wisdom and urged it on
+to more damaging activities.
+
+"We abhor humbug here," he used to say; and perhaps he did in a measure
+excuse himself to his conscience with the phrase. But in fact his
+editorial page was usually a succession of humbugs, of brilliant
+hypocrisies and cheats perpetrated under the guise of exposing humbug.
+
+Just as Howard was ready to reverse Malcolm's editorial programme, New
+York was seized with one of its "periodic spasms of virtue." The city
+government was, as usual, in the hands of the two bosses who owned the
+two political machines. One was taking the responsibility and the larger
+share of the spoils; the other was maintaining him in power and getting
+the smaller but a satisfactory share. The alliance between the police
+and criminal vice had become so open and aggressive under this bi-boss
+patronage that the people were aroused and indignant. But as they had
+no capable leaders and no way of selecting leaders, there arose a
+self-constituted leadership of uptown Phariseeism and sentimentality,
+planning the "purification" of the city.
+
+Every man of sense knowing human nature and the conditions of city life
+knew that this plan was foredoomed to ridiculous failure, and that the
+event would be a popular revulsion against "reform."
+
+"Why not speak the truth about these vice-hunters?" Howard was
+discussing the situation with three of his editorial writers--Segur,
+Huntington and Montgomery.
+
+"It's mighty dangerous," Montgomery objected. "You will be sticking
+knives into a sacred Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy."
+
+"Yes, we'll have all the good people about our ears," said Segur.
+"We'll be denounced as a defender of depravity, a foe of purity. They'll
+thunder away at us from every pulpit. The other newspapers will take it
+up, especially those that expect to sell millions of papers containing
+accounts of the 'exposure' of the dives and dens."
+
+"That's good. I hope we shall," said Howard cheerfully. "It will
+advertise us tremendously."
+
+The three were better pleased than they would have admitted to
+themselves by the seeming certainty of Howard's impending undoing.
+
+"No, gentlemen," Howard said, as they were about to go to their rooms
+for the day's work. "There's no danger in attacking any hypocrisy. Don't
+attack beliefs that are universal or nearly universal--at least not
+openly. But don't be afraid of a hypocrisy because it is universal.
+People know that they are hypocrites in respect of it. They may not have
+the courage publicly to applaud you. But they'll be privately delighted
+and will admire your courage. We'll try to be discreet and we'll be
+careful to be truthful. And we'll begin by making these gentlemen show
+themselves up."
+
+The next morning the _News-Record_ published a double-leaded editorial.
+It described the importance of improving political and social conditions
+in New York; it went on to note the distinguished names on the committee
+for the destruction of vice; it closed with the announcement that on the
+following day the _News-Record_ would publish the views of these eminent
+reformers upon conditions and remedies.
+
+The next day he printed the interviews--a collection of curiosities in
+utopianism, cant, ignorant fanaticism, provincialism, hypocrisy. These
+appeared strictly as news; for the cardinal principle of Howard's theory
+of a newspaper was that it had no right to intrude its own views into
+its news-columns. On the editorial page he riddled the interviews. By
+adroit quotations, by contrasting one with another, he showed, or rather
+made the so-called reformers themselves show, that where they were
+sincere they were in the main silly, and where they were plausible
+they were in the main insincere; that every man of them had his own pet
+scheme for the salvation of wicked New York; and that they could not
+possibly accomplish anything more valuable than leading the people on
+the familiar, aimless, demoralizing excursion through the slums.
+
+On the following day he frankly laughed at them as a lot of
+impracticables who either did not know the patent facts of city life or
+refused to admit those facts. And he turned his attention to the real
+problem, a respectable administration for the city--a practical end
+which could easily be accomplished by practical action. From day to day
+he kept this up, publishing a splendid series of articles, humorous,
+witty, satirical, eloquent, bold, with a dominant strain of sincerity
+and plain common sense. As his associates had predicted, a storm
+gathered and burst in fury about the _News-Record_. It was denounced
+by "leading citizens," including many of the clergy. Its "esteemed"
+contemporaries published and endorsed and amplified the abuse. And its
+circulation went up at the rate of five thousand a day.
+
+When the storm was at its height, when the whole town seemed to be
+agreeing with the angry reformers but was quietly laughing at their
+folly and hypocrisy, Howard threw his bomb. On a Saturday morning he
+gave half of his first page with big but severely impartial headlines to
+an analysis of the members of the vice committee--a broadside of facts
+often hinted but never before verified and published. First came those
+who owned property and sub-let it for vicious purposes, the property
+and purpose specified in detail; then those who were directors in
+corporations which had got corrupt privileges from the local boss, the
+privileges being carefully specified, and also the amounts of which they
+had robbed the city. Last came those who were directors in corporations
+which had bought from the State-boss injustices and licenses to rob, the
+specifications given in damning detail.
+
+His leading editorial was entitled "Why We Don't Have Decent
+Government." It was powerful in its simplicity, its merciless raillery
+and irony; and only at the very end did it contain passion. There, in a
+few eloquent sentences he arraigned these professed reformers who were
+growing rich through the boss-system, who were trafficking with the
+bosses and were now engaged in wrecking the hopes of honesty and
+decency. On that day the _News-Record's_ circulation went up thirty
+thousand. The town rang with its "exposure" and the attention of the
+whole country was arrested. It was one of the historic "beats" of New
+York journalism. The reputation of the _News-Record_ for fearlessness
+and truth-telling and news-enterprise was established. At abound it had
+become the most conspicuous and one of the most powerful journals in New
+York.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+MR. STOKELY IS TACTLESS.
+
+
+Howard, riding in the Park one morning late in the spring, came upon
+Mrs. Carnarvon. She gave him no chance to evade her, but joined him and
+accommodated her horse's pace to his.
+
+"And are you still on the _News-Record?_" she said. "I hope not."
+
+"Why?" Howard was smiling, glad to get an outside view of what he had
+been doing.
+
+"Because it's become so sensational. It used to be such a nice paper.
+And now--gracious, what headlines! What attacks on the very best people
+in the town!"
+
+"Dreadful, isn't it?" laughed Howard. "We've become so depraved that we
+are actually telling the truth about somebodies instead of only about
+nobodies."
+
+"I might have known that you would sympathise with that sort of thing."
+Mrs. Carnarvon was teasing, yet reproachful. "You always were an
+anarchist."
+
+"Is it anarchistic to be no respecter of persons and to put big
+headlines over big items and little headlines over little items?"
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean. You are encouraging the unruly classes."
+
+"Dear me! And we thought we were fighting the unruly class. We thought
+that it was our friends--or rather, your friends--the franchise grabbers
+and legislature-buyers who won't obey the laws unless the laws happen
+to suit their convenience. They're the only unruly class I know anything
+about. I've heard of another kind but I've never been able to find it.
+And I never hear much about it except when a lot of big rascals are
+making off weighted down with plunder. They always shout back over
+their shoulders: 'Don't raise a disturbance or you'll arouse the unruly
+classes.'"
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon was laughing. "You put it well," she said, "and I'm not
+clever enough to answer you. But they all tell me the _News-Record_
+has become a dangerous paper, that it's attacking everybody who has
+anything."
+
+"Anything he has stolen, yes. But that's all."
+
+"You can't get me to sympathise with you. I like well-dressed,
+well-mannered people who speak good English."
+
+"So do I. That's why I'm doing all in my power to improve the conditions
+for making more and more people of the sort one likes to talk to and
+dine with."
+
+"Why, I thought you sympathised with the lower classes."
+
+"Not a bit of it. Who has been maligning me to you? I abhor the lower
+classes--so much so that I wish to see them abolished."
+
+"Well, you'll have to blame Marian for misleading me."
+
+"Miss Trevor? How is she?" Mrs. Carnarvon was looking closely at him,
+and he was not sure that he succeeded in showing nothing more than
+friendly interest.
+
+"Haven't you heard from her? She's in England, visiting in Lancashire.
+You know her cousin married Lord Cranmore."
+
+"I saw in the papers several months ago that she was going abroad. I
+haven't heard a word since."
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon started to say something, but changed her mind.
+
+"When is she coming home?"
+
+"Not until July. You must come to see us at Newport."
+
+"Nothing could please me better--if I can get away."
+
+"I'll send you an invitation, although you have treated me very badly of
+late. But I suppose you are busy."
+
+"Busy? Isn't a galley slave always busy?"
+
+"Are you still writing editorials?"
+
+"Yes--and on the fallen _News-Record_. In fact----"
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+Howard laughed. "Don't faint," he said. "I'll leave you at once if you
+wish me to, and I'll never give it away that you once knew me. I'm the
+editor--the responsible devil for the depravity."
+
+"How interesting!" Mrs. Carnarvon was evidently not disturbed. Then the
+American adoration of success came out. "I'm so glad you're getting on.
+I always knew you would. Really, you must come to dinner. I'll invite
+some of the people you've been attacking. They'll like to look at you,
+and you will be amused by them. And I don't in the least mind your
+giving it to them if they bait you, as I did this morning. Will you
+come?"
+
+"If I may leave by ten o'clock. I go down town every night."
+
+"Why, when do you sleep?"
+
+"Not much, these days. Life's too interesting to permit of much sleep.
+I'll make up when it slackens a bit."
+
+As he was turning his horse, she said: "Marian's address is Claridge's,
+Brooke Street, Mayfair. If she isn't there, they forward her mail."
+
+Howard was puzzled. "What made her give me that address?" he thought.
+"I know she didn't like my seeing so much of Marian. And here she is
+practically inviting me to write to her." He could not understand it.
+"If I were not a 'yellow' editor and if Marian were not engaged to one
+of the richest men in New York, I'd say that this lady was encouraging
+me." He smiled. "Not yet--not just yet." And he cheerfully urged his
+horse into a canter.
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon's opinion of the _News-Record_ and its recent
+performances fairly represented that of the fashionable and the very
+rich. They read it, as they never did before, because it interested
+them. They could not deny that what it said was true; that is, they
+could not deny it to their own minds, although they did vigorously deny
+it publicly. Those who were attacked directly or indirectly, or expected
+to be attacked, denounced the paper as an "outrage," a "disgrace to the
+city," a "specimen of the journalism of the gutter." Many who were not
+in sympathy with the men or the methods assailed thought that its
+course was "inexpedient," "tended to increase discontent among the lower
+classes," "weakened the influence of the better classes." Only a few
+of the "triumphant classes" saw the real value and benefit of the
+_News-Record's_ frank attacks upon greed and hypocrisy, saw that these
+attacks were not dangerous or demagogical because they were just and
+were combined with a careful avoidance of encouragement to the lazy, the
+envious, the incompetent and the ignorant.
+
+Fortunately for Howard's peace, that eminent New York "multi," Samuel
+Jocelyn, for whom Coulter had the highest respect, was of this last
+class. When Howard began, Coulter was at Aiken where Jocelyn had a
+cottage. He had never been able to make headway with Jocelyn, and Mrs.
+Jocelyn deigned to give him and Mrs. Coulter only the coldest of cold
+nods. Just as Coulter had become so agitated by Howard's radical course
+that he was preparing to go to New York to remonstrate with him, Jocelyn
+called.
+
+"I came to thank you for what you are doing with your paper," he said
+cordially. "It seems to me that all intelligent men who are not blind to
+their own ultimate interests ought to stand by you. I can't tell you
+how much I admire your frankness and honesty. And you draw the line just
+right. You attack plunder, you defend property. Will your wife and you
+dine with us this evening?"
+
+Coulter postponed his trip to New York.
+
+On the last day of the first three months the circulation of the
+_News-Record_ was 147,253--an increase of 42,150 over what it was on the
+day Howard took charge; its advertising had increased twelve per cent;
+its net profits for the quarter were seventy-five thousand dollars as
+against fifty-seven thousand for the preceding quarter.
+
+"Very good indeed," was Stokely's comment.
+
+"Another quarter like this," said Howard, "and I'm going to ask you to
+let me increase expenses a thousand dollars a week to illustrate the
+paper."
+
+"We'll talk that over with Coulter. Personally I like this
+'yellow-journalism'--when it's done intelligently. I always told Coulter
+we'd have to come to it. It's only common sense to make a paper easy
+reading. Then, too, we can have a great deal more influence--in fact,
+we have already. I'm getting what I want up at Albany this winter much
+cheaper."
+
+Howard winced. "He made me feel like a blackmailer," he said to himself
+when Stokely had gone. "And I suppose these fellows do look on me as a
+new Malcolm with up-to-date tricks. Well, they will see, they will see."
+
+He tried to go on with his work, but Stokely's cynical words
+persistently interrupted him. Why had he not squarely challenged Stokely
+then and there? Why had he only winced where a year ago he would have
+demanded an explanation?
+
+He hated to confess it to himself, he made every effort to smother it,
+but the thought still stared him in the face--"I am not so strong in my
+ideals of personal character as I was a year ago."
+
+The fact that his present course was profitable gave him, he felt, more
+pleasure than the fact that it was right. If the alternative of wealth
+and power with self-abasement or poverty, obscurity with self-respect
+were put to him now, what would he decide? Would he give up his
+prospects, his hopes of Marian and of an easy career? He was afraid to
+answer. He contented himself with one of his habitual evasions--"I will
+settle that when the time comes. No, Stokely's remark did not make a
+crisis. If the crisis ever does come, surely I will act like a man. I'll
+be securer then, more necessary to this pair of plunderers, able to make
+better terms for myself. In practical life, it is necessary to sacrifice
+something in order to succeed."
+
+But Stokely's words and his own silence and the real reasons for his
+changing ideals and for his cowardice continued to annoy him.
+
+Every day he came down town planning for a better newspaper the next
+morning than they had ever made before. And his vigour, his enthusiasm
+permeated the entire office. He went from one news department to
+another, suggesting, asking for suggestions, praising, criticising
+judiciously and with the greatest consideration for vanity. He talked
+with the reporters, urging them on by showing keen interest in them
+and their work, and intimate knowledge of what they were doing. And he
+dictated every day telegrams to correspondents, thanking them for any
+conspicuously good stories they had telegraphed in, adding something to
+the compensation of those who were paid by space and made little.
+
+If his work had not been his amusement the long hours, the constant
+application, would have broken him down. But he had no interests outside
+the office and he got his mental recreation by shifting his mind from
+one department to another.
+
+In June his salary was increased to twenty-five thousand a year and
+his last lingering feeling of financial insecurity disappeared. For
+the first time in his life he felt strong enough to undertake a serious
+responsibility, to give hostages to fortune without fear of being unable
+to keep faith. He learned from Mrs. Carnarvon that Marian was
+returning on the _Oceanic_ on the ninth of July, and he accepted a
+Saturday-to-Monday invitation to Newport for the twelfth of July. It was
+from Segur that he got the news that Danvers was in Japan and was not
+returning until the autumn.
+
+On the ninth of July, from the window of his office, he saw the
+_Oceanic_ steam up the bay and up the river to her pier. He sent down a
+request that the ship-news reporter be sent up as soon as he returned.
+"Is it a good story?" he asked when the reporter, Blackwell, entered.
+"Was there anybody on board?"
+
+"A lot of swell people," the young man answered; "all the women got up
+in the latest Paris gowns."
+
+"Did you notice whether Mrs. Provost came?"
+
+"Came? Well, rather, with two French maids chattering and chasing after
+her. And there was a tall girl with her, a stunner, a girl she called
+'Marian, my dear.'"
+
+Howard stopped him with "Thank you. Don't write anything about them."
+
+"It was the best thing I saw--the funniest."
+
+"Well--don't use the names."
+
+Young Blackwell turned to go. "Oh, I see--friends of yours," he smiled.
+"Very well. I'll keep 'em out."
+
+Howard flushed and called him back. "Go ahead," he said. "Write just
+what you were going to. Of course you wouldn't write anything that was
+not fair and truthful. We don't 'play favourites' here. Forget what I
+said."
+
+And so it came to pass that Mrs. Provost, half pleased, half indignant,
+said to Miss Trevor as they sat in the drawing room of the Pullman on
+the way to Newport the next day: "Just look at this, Marian dear, in
+the horrid _News-Record_. And it used to be such a nice paper with that
+slimy Coulter bowing and scraping to everybody."
+
+"This" was Mrs. Provost and her dogs and her maids and her asides
+to "Marian dear," described with accuracy and a keen sense of the
+ludicrous.
+
+"It's too dreadful," she continued. "There is no such thing as privacy
+in this country. The newspapers are making us," with a slight accent on
+the pronoun, "as common and public as tenement-house people."
+
+"Yes," Miss Trevor answered absently. "But why read the newspapers? I
+never could get interested in them, though I've tried."
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+A WOMAN AND A WARNING.
+
+
+On the evening of Howard's arrival at Newport, Mrs. Carnarvon was having
+a few people in to dine. He had just time to dress and so saw no one
+until he descended to the reception room.
+
+"You are to take in Marian," said his hostess, going with him to
+where Miss Trevor was sitting, her back to the door and her attention
+apparently absorbed by the man facing her.
+
+"Here's Mr. Howard, Marian," Mrs. Carnarvon interrupted. "Come with me,
+Willie. Your lady is over here and we're going in directly."
+
+Marian saw that Howard was looking at her in the straight, frank fashion
+she remembered and liked so well. "I've come for you," he said.
+
+"Yes, you are to take me in," she evaded, her look even lamer than her
+words.
+
+"You know what I mean." He was smiling, his heart in his eyes, as if the
+dozen people were not about them.
+
+"I see you have not changed," she laughed, answering his look in kind.
+
+"Changed? I'm revolutionized. I was blind and now I see. I was paralyzed
+and behold, I walk. I was weak and lo, I am strong--strong enough for
+two, if necessary."
+
+"Now, hasn't it occurred to you that I might possibly have something to
+say about my own fate?"
+
+"You? Why, you had everything to say. I reasoned it all out with you.
+You simply can't add anything to the case I made you make out for
+yourself when I talked it over with you. I made you protest very
+vigorously."
+
+"Well, what did I say--that is, what did you make me say?"
+
+"You said you were engaged--pledged to another--that you could not draw
+back without dishonour. And I answered that no engagement could bind you
+to become the wife of a man you did not love; that no moral code could
+hold you to such a sin; that no code of honour could command you to
+permit a man to degrade himself and you. Then you pleaded that you were
+not sure you liked my kind of a life, that you feared you wanted wealth
+and a great establishment and social leadership and--and all that."
+
+"Did I?" Marian said with exaggerated astonishment.
+
+"You did indeed. You were perfectly open with me. You let me see
+all that part of you which we try to keep concealed and fancy we
+are concealing--all that one really feels and wishes and thinks as
+distinguished from what one fancies he ought to feel and wish and
+think."
+
+"I wonder that you cared, after a glance behind that curtain."
+
+"Oh, but I like what is behind that curtain best of all. The very human
+things are there. They make me feel so at home."
+
+Dinner was announced and it was not until the second course that he had
+a chance to resume. Then he began as if there had been no interval:
+
+"You said--"
+
+Marian laughed and looked at him--a flash of her luminous blue-green
+eyes--and was looking away again with her usual expression. "You needn't
+tell me the rest. It doesn't matter what I said. I've had you with me
+wherever I went. You never doubted my--my caring, did you?"
+
+"No. I couldn't doubt you. If you were the sort of woman a man could
+doubt, you wouldn't be the sort of woman I could love. And you know it
+isn't vanity that makes me sure. I often wonder how you happened to care
+for such a--but I must not attack any one whom you like so well. No, I
+knew you cared by the same instinct that makes you know that I care for
+you."
+
+"But why did you come?"
+
+"Because I have won a position for myself, have enough to enable us to
+live without eternally fretting over money-matters. I feel that I
+have the right to come. And then I could not be interested to live on,
+without you; and I'm willing to face, willing to have you face, whatever
+may come to us through me. I know that you and I together----"
+
+"Not now--don't--please." Marian was pale and she was obviously under a
+great strain. "You see, you knew all about this. But I didn't until you
+looked at me when Jessie brought you. It makes me--happy--I am so happy.
+But I must--I can't control myself here." She leaned over as if her
+napkin had slipped to the floor. "I love you," she murmured.
+
+It was Howard's turn to struggle for self-control. "I understand," he
+said, "why you wished me not to go on. You never said those words to me
+before--and----"
+
+"Oh, yes I have--many and many a time."
+
+"With your eyes, but not with your voice--at least not so that I could
+hear. And--well, it is not easy to look calm and only friendly when
+every nerve in one's body is vibrating like a violin string under
+the bow. Yes, let us talk of something else. I've never been acutely
+conscious of the presence of others when I've been with you. To-night
+I'm in great danger of forgetting them altogether."
+
+"That would be so like you." Marian laughed, then raised her voice a
+little and went on. "Yes, your little restaurant in the Rue Louis le
+Grand was gone. There was a dressmaker in its place--Raudinitz. She made
+this. How do you like it?"
+
+"It has the air of--of belonging to you."
+
+Marian looked amused. Howard shrugged his shoulders. "All roads lead to
+Rome," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Carnarvon hung about until the women went to bed, so Howard and Marian
+had no opportunity to be alone. As soon as he saw his last chance
+vanish, he went to his own room, to the solitude of its balcony in the
+shadow of the projecting facade with the moonlight flooding the rocks
+and the sea.
+
+As he sat smoking, the recession came, the reaction from weeks of
+nervous tension. And with the ebb of the tide entered that Visitor who
+alone has the privilege of the innermost chamber where lives the man
+himself, unmasked of all vanity and show and pretense. The visit was not
+unexpected; for at every such crisis every one is certain of a call from
+this Visitor, this merciless critic, plain and rude of speech, rare and
+reluctant in praise, so mocking in our moments of elation, so cruelly
+frank about our follies and self-excuses when he comes in our moments of
+depression.
+
+"So you are going to marry?" the Visitor said abruptly. "I thought you
+had made up your mind on that subject long ago."
+
+"Love changes a man's point of view," Howard replied, timid and
+apologetic before this quiet, relentless other-self.
+
+"But it doesn't change the facts of life, does it? It doesn't change
+character, does it?"
+
+"I think so. For instance, it has changed me. It has made a man of me.
+It has been the inspiration of the past year, strengthening me, making
+me ambitious, energetic. Have I not thought of her all the time, worked
+for her?"
+
+"You have been uncommonly persistent--as you always are when you
+are thwarted." The Visitor wore a satirical smile. "But a spurt of
+inspiration is one thing. A wife--responsibility--fetters----"
+
+"Not when one loves."
+
+"That depends upon the kind of love--and the kind of woman--and the kind
+of man."
+
+"Could there be any higher kind of love than ours?"
+
+"Most romantic, most high-minded--quite idyllic." The Visitor's tone
+was gently mocking. "And I don't deny that you may go on loving each the
+other. But--how does she fit in with your scheme of life? What does
+she really know of or care about your ambitions? Why, you had so little
+confidence in her that you didn't dare to think of marrying her until
+you had an income which you once would have thought wealth--an income
+which, by the way, already begins to seem small to you."
+
+"No, it wasn't lack of confidence in her," protested Howard. "It was
+lack of confidence in myself."
+
+"True, that did have something to do with it, I grant you. And that
+reminds me--what has become of all your cowardice about responsibility?"
+
+"Oh, I'm changed there."
+
+"Are you sure? Are you not deceived by this sudden and maybe momentary
+streak of good luck in your affairs? You have fixed your ambition
+high--very high. You wish to make an honest and a useful and a
+distinguished career. You know you have weaknesses. I needn't remind
+you--need I--that you have had to fight those weaknesses? How could
+you have won thus far if you had been responsible for others instead of
+being alone, and certain that the consequences would fall upon yourself
+only? I want to see you continue to win. I don't want to see you dragged
+down by extravagance, by love for this woman, by ambition of the kind
+her friends approve. I don't want to see you--You were silent when
+Stokely insulted you!"
+
+"Love--such love as mine--and for such a woman--and with such love in
+return--drag down? Impossible!"
+
+"Not so--not exactly so, though I must say you are plausible. But don't
+forget that you and she are not starting out to make a career. Don't
+forget that she is already fixed--her tastes, habits, friendships,
+associations, ideals already formed. Don't forget that your love is the
+only bond between you--and that it may drag you toward her mode of
+life instead of drawing her towards yours. Don't forget that your own
+associations and temptations are becoming more and more difficult. I
+repeat, you cringed--yes, cringed--when Stokely insulted you. Why?"
+
+Howard was silent.
+
+"And," the Visitor went on relentlessly, "let me remind you that not
+only did you give her up without a struggle a few months ago but also
+she gave you up without a word."
+
+"But what could she have said?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm not familiar with ways feminine. But I
+know--we know--that, if there had not been some reservation in her love,
+some hesitation about you--unconscious, perhaps, but powerful enough to
+make her yield--she would not have let you go as she did."
+
+"But she did not realise, as I did not, how much our love meant to us."
+
+"Perhaps--that sounds well. All I ask is, will she help you? Are you
+really so much stronger than you were only four months ago? Or are you
+stimulated by success? Suppose that days of disaster, of peril, come?
+What then?"
+
+"But they will not. I have won a position. I can always command a large
+salary--perhaps not quite so much but still a large salary."
+
+"Perhaps--if you don't trouble yourself about principles. But how would
+it be if you would do nothing, write nothing, except what you think is
+honest? Would you ask her to face it? Tell me, tell yourself honestly,
+have you the right to assume a responsibility you may not be able to
+bear, to invite temptations you may not be able to resist?"
+
+There was a long silence. At last Howard stood up and flung his cigar
+into the sea. His face was drawn and his eyes burned.
+
+"God in heaven!" he cried, "am I not human? May I not have companionship
+and sympathy and love? Must I be alone and friendless and loveless
+always? That is not life; that is not just. I will not; I will not. I
+love her--love her--love her. With the best that there is in me, I love
+her. Am I such a coward that I cannot face even my own weaknesses?"
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE.
+
+
+In August Marian and Mrs. Carnarvon came to the Waldorf for two days.
+Howard had offered to show them how a newspaper is made; and Mrs.
+Carnarvon, finding herself bored by too many days of the same few people
+every day, herself proposed the trip. The three dined in the open air on
+Sherry's piazza and at eleven o'clock drove down the Avenue, to the east
+at Washington Square, and through the Bowery.
+
+"I never saw it before," said Marian, "and I must say I shall not care
+if I never see it again. Why do people make so much fuss about slums, I
+wonder?"
+
+"Oh, they're so queer, so like another world," suggested Mrs. Carnarvon.
+"It gives you such a delightful sensation of sadness. It's just like a
+not-too-melancholy play, only better because it's real. Then, too, it
+makes one feel so much more comfortable and clean and contented in one's
+own surroundings."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jessie." Marian spoke in mock
+indignation. "The next thing we know you'll sink to being a patron of
+the poor and go about enjoying yourself at making them self-conscious
+and envious."
+
+"They're not at all sad down this way," said Howard, "except in the
+usual inescapable human ways. When they're not hit too hard, they bear
+up wonderfully. You see, living on the verge of ruin and tumbling over
+every few weeks get one used to it. It ceases to give the sensation of
+event."
+
+Their automobile had turned into Park Row and so reached the
+_News-Record_ building in Printing House Square. Howard took the
+two women to the elevator and they shot upward in a car crowded with
+telegraph messengers, each carrying one or more envelopes, some of them
+bearing in bold black type the words: "News!--Rush!"
+
+"I suppose that is the news for the paper?" Mrs. Carnarvon asked.
+
+"A little of it. Our special cable and special news from towns to which
+we have no direct wire and also the _Associated Press_ reports come this
+way. But we don't use much _Associated Press_ matter, as it is the same
+for all the papers."
+
+"What do you do with it?"
+
+"Throw it away. A New York newspaper throws away every night enough to
+fill two papers and often enough to fill five or six."
+
+"Isn't that very wasteful?"
+
+"Yes, but it's necessary. Every editor has his own idea of what to print
+and what not to print and how much space each news event calls for. It
+is there that editors show their judgment or lack of it. To print the
+things the people wish to read in the quantities the people like and in
+the form the most people can most easily understand--that is success as
+an editor."
+
+"No doubt," said Marian, thinking of the low view all her friends
+took of Howard's newspaper, "if you were making a newspaper to please
+yourself, you would make a very different one."
+
+"Oh, no," laughed Howard, "I print what I myself like; that is, what I
+like to find in a newspaper. We print human news made by human beings
+and interesting to human beings. And we don't pretend to be anything
+more than human. We try never to think of our own idea of what the
+people ought to read, but always to get at what the people themselves
+think they ought to read. We are journalists, not news-censors."
+
+"I must say newspapers do not interest me." Marian confessed it a little
+diffidently.
+
+"You are probably not interested," Howard answered, "because you don't
+care for news. It is a queer passion--the passion for news. The public
+has it in a way. But to see it in its delirium you must come here."
+
+"This seems quiet enough." Marian looked about Howard's upstairs office.
+It was silent, and from the windows one could see New York and its
+rivers and harbour, vast, vague, mysterious, animated yet quiet.
+
+"Oh, I rarely come here--a few hours a week," Howard replied. "On this
+floor the editorial writers work." He opened a door leading to a private
+hall. There were five small rooms. In each sat a coatless man, smoking
+and writing. One was Segur, and Howard called to him.
+
+"Are you too busy to look after Mrs. Carnarvon and Miss Trevor for a few
+minutes? I must go downstairs."
+
+Segur gave some "copy" to a boy who handed him a bundle of proofs and
+rushed away down a narrow staircase. Howard descended in the elevator,
+and Segur, who had put on his coat, sat talking to the two women as he
+looked through the proofs, glancing at each narrow strip, then letting
+it drop to the floor.
+
+"You don't mind my working?" he asked. "I have to look at these things
+to see if there is any news that calls for editional attention. If I
+find anything and can think an editorial thought about it, I write it;
+and if Howard is in the humour, perhaps the public is permitted to read
+it."
+
+"Is he severe?" asked Mrs. Carnarvon.
+
+"The 'worst ever,'" laughed Segur. "He is very positive and likes only
+a certain style and won't have anything that doesn't exactly fit his
+ideas. He's easy to get along with but difficult to work for."
+
+"I imagine his positiveness is the secret of his success." Marian knew
+that Segur was half in jest and was fond of Howard. But she couldn't
+endure hearing him criticised.
+
+"No. I think he succeeds because he works, pushes straight on, never
+stops to repair blunders but never makes the same kind of a blunder the
+second time."
+
+Segur's eye caught an item that suggested an editorial paragraph. He
+sat at Howard's desk, thought a moment, scrawled half a dozen lines in
+a large ragged hand on a sheet of ruled yellow paper, and pressed
+an electric button. The boy came, handed him another thick bundle of
+proofs, took the "copy" and withdrew. Just then Howard returned.
+
+"We'll go down to the news-room," he said.
+
+The windows of the great news-room were thrown wide. Scores of electric
+lights made it bright. At the various desks or in the aisles were
+perhaps fifty men, most of them young, none of them beyond middle age.
+They were in every kind of clothing from the most fashionable summer
+attire to an old pair of cheap and stained duck trousers, collarless
+negligee shirt open all the way down the front and suspenders hanging
+about the hips.
+
+Some were writing long-hand; others were pounding away at the
+typewriter; others were talking in undertones to "typists" taking
+dictation to the machine; others were reading "copy" and altering it
+with huge blue pencils which made apparently unreadable smears wherever
+they touched the paper. In and out skurried a dozen office-boys,
+responding to calls from various desks, bringing bundles of proofs,
+thrusting copy into boxes which instantly and noisily shot up through
+the ceiling.
+
+It was a scene of confusion and furious activity. The face of each
+individual was calm and his motions by themselves were not excited. But
+taking all together and adding the tense, strained expression underneath
+the calm--the expression of the professional gambler--there was a total
+of active energy that was oppressive.
+
+"We had a fire below us one night," said Howard. "We are two hundred
+feet from the street and there were no fire escapes. We all thought it
+was good-bye. It was nearly half an hour before we found out that the
+smoke booming up the stairways and into this room had no danger behind
+it."
+
+"Gracious!" Mrs. Carnarvon shuddered and looked uneasily about.
+
+"It's perfectly safe," Howard reassured her. "We've arranged things
+better since then. Besides, that fire demonstrated that the building was
+fireproof."
+
+"And what happened?" asked Miss Trevor.
+
+"Why, just what you see now. The Managing Editor, Mr. King over
+there--I'll introduce him to you presently--went up to a group of men
+standing at one of the windows. They were pretending indifference as
+they looked down at the crowd which was shouting and tossing its arms
+in a way that more than suggested pity for us poor devils up here. Well,
+King said: 'Boys, boys, this isn't getting out a paper.' Every one went
+back to his work and--and that was all."
+
+They went on to the room behind the newsroom. As Howard opened its heavy
+door a sound, almost a roar, of clicking instruments and typewriters
+burst out. Here again were scores of desks with men seated at them,
+every man with a typewriter and a telegraph instrument before him.
+
+"These are our direct wires," Howard explained. "Our correspondents in
+all the big cities, east, west, north and south and in London, are at
+the other end of these wires. Let me show you."
+
+Howard spoke to the operator nearest them. "Whom have you got?"
+
+"I'm taking three thousand words from Kansas City," he replied.
+"Washington is on the next wire."
+
+"Ask Mr. Simpson how the President is to-night," Howard said to the
+Washington operator.
+
+His instrument clicked a few times and was silent. Almost immediately
+the receiver began to click and, as the operator dashed the message off
+on his typewriter the two women read over his shoulder: "Just came from
+White House. He is no better, probably a little worse because weaker.
+Simpson."
+
+"And can you hear just as quickly from London?" Marian asked.
+
+"Almost. I'll try. There is always a little delay in transmission from
+the land systems to the cable system; and messages have to be telephoned
+between our office in Trafalgar Square and the cable office down in the
+city. Let's see, it's five o'clock in the morning in London now. They've
+been having it hot there. I'll ask about the weather."
+
+Howard dictated to the man at the London wire: "Roberts, London. How is
+the weather? Howard."
+
+In less than ten minutes the cable-man handed Howard a typewritten slip
+reading: "_News-Record_, New York, Howard: Thermometer 97 our office
+now. Promises hottest day yet. Roberts."
+
+"I never before realised how we have destroyed distance," said Mrs.
+Carnarvon.
+
+"I don't think any one but a newspaper editor completely realises it,"
+Howard answered. "As one sits here night after night, sending messages
+far and wide and receiving immediate answers, he loses all sense of
+space. The whole world seems to be in his anteroom."
+
+"I begin to see fascination in this life of yours." Marian's face showed
+interest to enthusiasm. "This atmosphere tightens one's nerves. It seems
+to me that in the next moment I shall hear of some thrilling happening."
+
+"It's listening for the first rumour of the 'about to happen' that makes
+newspaper-men so old and yet so young, so worn and yet so eager. Every
+night, every moment of every night, we are expecting it, hoping for
+some astounding news which it will test our resources to the utmost to
+present adequately."
+
+From the news-room they went up to the composing room--a vast hall of
+confusion, filled with strange-looking machines and half-dressed men and
+boys. Some were hurrying about with galleys of type, with large metal
+frames; some were wheeling tables here and there; scores of men and a
+few women were seated at the machines. These responded to touches upon
+their key-boards by going through uncanny internal agitations. Then out
+from a mysterious somewhere would come a small thin strip of almost hot
+metal, the width of a newspaper column and marked along one edge with
+letters printed backwards.
+
+Up through the floor of this room burst boxes filled with "copy." Boys
+snatched the scrawled, ragged-looking sheets and tossed them upon a
+desk. A man seated there cut them into little strips, hanging each strip
+upon a hook. A line of men filed rapidly past these hooks, snatching
+each man a single strip and darting away to a machine.
+
+"It is getting late," said Howard. "The final rush for the first edition
+is on. They are setting the last 'copy.'"
+
+"But," Mrs. Carnarvon asked, "how do they ever get the different parts
+of the different news-items together straight?"
+
+"The man who is cutting copy there--don't you see him make little marks
+on each piece? Those marks tell them just where their 'take,' as they
+call it, belongs."
+
+They went over to the part of the great room where there were many
+tables, on each a metal frame about the size of a page of the newspaper.
+Some of the frames were filled with type, others were partly empty. And
+men were lifting into them the galleys of type under the direction of
+the Night Editor and his staff. As soon as a frame was filled two men
+began to even the ends of the columns and then to screw up an inside
+framework which held the type firmly in place. Then a man laid a great
+sheet of what looked like blotting-paper upon the page of type and
+pounded it down with a mallet and scraped it with a stiff brush.
+
+"That is the matrix," said Howard. "See him putting it on the elevator."
+They looked down the shaft. "It has dropped to the sub-basement," said
+Howard, "two hundred and fifty feet below us. They are already bending
+it into a casting-box of the shape of the cylinders on the presses;
+metal will be poured in and when it is cool, you will have the metal
+form, the metal impression of the page. It will be fastened upon the
+press to print from."
+
+They walked back through the room which was now in almost lunatic
+confusion--forms being locked; galleys being lifted in; editors,
+compositors, boys, rushing to and fro in a fury of activity. Again the
+phenomenon of the news-room, the individual faces calm but their tense
+expressions and their swift motions making an impression of almost
+irrational excitement.
+
+"Why such haste?" asked Marian.
+
+"Because the paper must be put to press. It must contain the very latest
+news and it must also catch the mails; and the mail-trains do not wait."
+
+They descended in the main elevator to the ground floor and then went
+down a dark and winding staircase until they faced an iron door. Howard
+pushed it open and they entered the press-room. Its temperature was
+blood-heat, its air heavy and nauseating with the odours of ink, moist
+paper and oil, its lights dim. They were in a gallery and below them on
+all sides were the huge presses, silent, motionless, waiting.
+
+Suddenly a small army of men leaped upon the mighty machines, scrambled
+over them, then sprang back. With a tremendous roar that shook the
+entire building the presses began to revolve, to hurl out great heaps of
+newspapers.
+
+"Those presses eat six hundred thousand pounds of paper and four tons
+of ink a week," Howard shouted. "They can throw out two hundred thousand
+complete papers an hour--papers that are cut, folded, pasted, and ready
+to send away. Let us go before you are stifled. This air is horrible."
+
+They returned in the elevator to his lofty office. Even there a slight
+vibration from the press-room could be felt. But it was calm and still,
+a fit place from which to view the panorama of sleeping city and drowsy
+harbour tranquil in the moonlight.
+
+"Look." Howard was leaning over the railing just outside his window.
+
+They looked straight down three hundred feet to the street made bright
+by electric lights. Scores of wagons loaded with newspapers were rushing
+away from the several newspaper buildings. The shouts, the clash of
+hoofs and heavy tires on the granite blocks, the whirr of automobiles,
+were borne faintly upward.
+
+"It is the race to the railway stations to catch the mail-trains,"
+Howard explained. "The first editions go to the country. These wagons
+are hurrying in order that tens of thousands of people hundreds of miles
+away, at Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and scores on scores of
+towns between and beyond, may find the New York newspapers on their
+breakfast-tables."
+
+The office-boy came with a bundle of papers, warm, moist, the ink
+brilliant.
+
+"And now for the inquest," said Howard.
+
+"The inquest?" Marian looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"Yes--viewing the corpse. It was to give birth to this that there
+was all that intensity and fury--that and a thousand times more. For,
+remember, this paper is the work of perhaps twenty thousand brains, in
+every part of the world, throughout civilisation and far into the depths
+of barbarism. Look at these date lines--cities and towns everywhere in
+our own country, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America. You'll
+find most of the capitals of Europe represented; and Africa, north,
+south and central, east and west coast. Here's India and here the heart
+of Siberia.
+
+"There is China and there Japan and there Australia. Think of these
+scores of newspaper correspondents telegraphing news of the doings of
+their fellow beings--not what they did last month or last year, but what
+they did a few hours ago--some of it what they were doing while we were
+dining up at Sherry's. Then think of the thousands on thousands of these
+newspaper-men, eager, watchful agents of publicity, who were on duty but
+had nothing to report to-day. And----"
+
+Howard shrugged his shoulders and tossed the paper from him.
+
+"There it lies," he said, "a corpse. Already a corpse, its life ended
+before it was fairly born. There it is, dead and done for--writ in
+water, and by anonymous hands. Who knows who did it? Who cares?"
+
+He caught Marian's eyes, looking wonder and reproach.
+
+"I don't like to hear you say that," she said, forgetting Mrs.
+Carnarvon. "Other men--yes, the little men who work for the cheap
+rewards. But not you, who work for the sake of work. This night's
+experience has thrilled me. I understand your profession now. I see what
+it means to us all, to civilisation, what a splendid force for good,
+for enlightenment, for uplifting it is. I can see a great flood of light
+radiating from this building, pouring into the dark places, driving
+away ignorance. And the thunder of those presses seems to me to fill
+the world with some mighty command--what is it?--oh, yes--I can hear it
+distinctly. It is, 'Let there be light!'"
+
+Mrs. Carnarvon's back was toward them and she was looking out at the
+harbour. Howard put his hands upon Marian's shoulders and they looked
+each the other straight in the eyes.
+
+"Lovers and comrades," he said, "always. And how strong we
+are--together!"
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+"I MUST BE RICH."
+
+
+"While I don't feel dependent upon the owners of the _News-Record_,
+still I am not exactly independent of them either. And if I left them it
+would only be to become dependent in the same way upon somebody else. A
+man who makes his living by the advocacy of principles should be wholly
+free. If he isn't, the principles are sure sooner or later to become
+incidental to the living, instead of the living being incidental to the
+principles."
+
+"But you see--perhaps I ought to have told you before--that is, there
+may be"--Marian was stammering and blushing.
+
+"What's the matter? Don't frighten me by looking so--so criminal,"
+Howard laughed.
+
+It was late in August. Marian was visiting Mrs. Brandon at
+Irvington-on-the-Hudson and she and Howard were driving.
+
+"I never told you. But the fact is"--she hesitated again.
+
+"Is it about your other engagement? You never told me about that--how
+you broke it off. I don't want you to tell me unless you wish to. You
+know I never meddle in past matters. I'm simply trying to help you out."
+
+"Instead, you're making it worse. I'd rather not tell you that if----"
+
+"We'll never speak of it again. And now, what is it that is troubling
+you?"
+
+"I have been trying to tell you--I wish you wouldn't look at me--I've
+got a small income--it's really very small."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it."
+
+"I was afraid you wouldn't like it. It isn't very big--only about
+eight thousand a year--some years not so much. But then, if anything
+happened--we could be--we could live."
+
+Howard smiled as he looked at her--but not with his eyes.
+
+"I'm glad," he said. "It makes me feel safer in several ways. And I'm
+especially glad that it is not larger than mine. I know it's stupid, as
+so many of our instincts are; but I should not like to marry a woman who
+had a larger income than I could earn. I think it is the only remnant
+I have of the 'lord and master' idea that makes so many men ridiculous.
+But we need not let that bother us. Fate has made us about equal in this
+respect, so unimportant yet so important; and we are each independent of
+the other. Each will always know that love is the only bond that holds
+us together."
+
+They decided that they would live at the rate of about fifteen thousand
+a year and would put by the rest of their income. She was to undertake
+the entire management of their home, he transferring his share by check
+each month.
+
+"And so," she said, "we shall never have to discuss money matters."
+
+"We couldn't," laughed Howard. "I don't know anything about them and
+could not take part in a discussion."
+
+As they were to be married in November, they planned to take an
+apartment when Marian came back to town--in late September. She was to
+attend to the furnishing and all was to be in readiness by the time they
+were married. Howard was to get a six weeks' vacation and, as soon as
+they returned, they were to go to housekeeping.
+
+Her visit to the _News-Record_ office had made a change in her.
+Until she met Howard, she had known only the world-that-idles and
+the world-that-drudges. Howard brought her the first real news of the
+world-that-works. Of course she knew that there was such a world, but
+she had confused it with the world-that-drudges. She liked to hear
+Howard talk about his world, but she thought that his enthusiasm blinded
+him to the truth of its drudgery; and she often caught herself half
+regretting that he had to work.
+
+But that vast machine for the swift collecting and distributing of the
+news of the world had opened her eyes, had made her see her lover and,
+through him, his life, in a different aspect. She had accepted the
+supercilious, thoughtless opinion of those about her that the newspaper
+is a mere purveyor of inaccurate gossip. And while Howard had tried to
+show her his profession as it was, he had only succeeded in convincing
+her that he himself had an exalted view of it; a view which she thought
+creditable to him but wide of the disagreeable truth.
+
+On that trip down-town she had seen "the press" with the flaws reduced
+and the merits looming. She had looked into those all-seeing eyes
+that watch the councils of statesmen and the movements of nations and
+peoples, yet also note the swing of a murderous knife in an alley of the
+slums. She had heard that stentorian voice of Publicity, arousing the
+people of the earth to apprehend, to reflect, to progress.
+
+She had been proud of Howard for his appearance, for what he said and
+the way he said it. Now she was proud of him for the part he was taking
+in this wonderful world-that-works. And she would not have confessed to
+him how insignificant she felt, how weak and worthless.
+
+She thought she was impatient for the time to come when she could learn
+how to help him in his work, could begin to feel that she too had a
+real share in it. With what seemed to her most creditable energy and
+self-sacrifice she tried again to interest herself in newspapers. But
+the trivial parts bored her; the chronicles of crime repelled her; and
+the politics and most of the other serious articles were beyond the
+range of her knowledge or of her interest. "I shall wait until we are
+married," she said, "then he will teach me." And she did not suspect how
+significant, how ominous her postponement was.
+
+She asked him if he would not teach her and he replied: "Why, certainly,
+if you are interested. But I don't intend to trouble you with the
+details of my profession. I want you to lead your own life--to do what
+interests you."
+
+She did not stop to analyse her feeling of relief at this release, and
+went on to protest: "But I want your life to be my life. I want there to
+be only one life--our life."
+
+"And there shall be--each contributing his share, at least I'll try to
+contribute mine. But you have your own individuality, dear; and a very
+strong one it is. And I don't want you to change."
+
+At the time he was deep in his plans for illustrating the _News-Record_.
+Early in that fall's campaign they had secured the best cartoonist
+in America. Cartoons are rarely the work of one man but are got up by
+consultations. Howard spent never less than an hour each day with
+the cartoonist, Wickham, wrestling with the problem of the next day's
+picture. For he insisted upon having a striking cartoon each day, and
+gave it the most conspicuous place in the paper--the top-centre of the
+first page.
+
+"If a cartoon is worth printing at all," he said, "it is worth printing
+large and conspicuous. And to be worth printing it must be like an ideal
+editorial--one point sharply and swiftly made and so clear that the most
+careless glance-of-the-eye is enough."
+
+Wickham had made a series of cartoons on the campaign, humorous and
+satirical, which had the distinction of being reproduced on lantern
+slides for use in all parts of the town. It was an admirable beginning
+of the new policy of illustration. Howard had been making a careful
+study of all the illustrators in the country, not overlooking those
+toiling in obscurity on the big western dailies. He had selected a staff
+of twenty; as soon as Coulter and Stokely assented, he engaged them by
+telegraph. Five were developed artists, the rest beginners with talent.
+He gave all of his attention for two weeks to organising this staff.
+He infected it with his enthusiasm. He impressed upon it his ideas of
+newspaper illustration--the dash and energy of the French illustrators
+adapted to American public taste. He insisted upon the artists studying
+the French illustrated papers and applying what they learned. It was
+not until the first Sunday in December that he felt ready to submit the
+results of these labours to the public.
+
+Again he scored over the "contemporaries" of the _News-Record_.
+They printed many more illustrations than it did. It had only one
+illustration on a page, but there was one on every page and a good one.
+All the subjects were well chosen--either action or character--and as
+many good looking women as possible.
+
+"Never publish a commonplace face," he said. "There is no such thing in
+life as an uninteresting face. Always find the element of interest and
+bring it out."
+
+The result of this policy, interpreted by a carefully trained and
+enthusiastic staff, was what the out-of-town press was soon praising as
+"a revelation in newspaper-illustration." Howard himself was surprised.
+He had mentally insured against a long period of disappointment.
+
+"This shows," he remarked to King and Vroom, "how much more competent
+men are than we usually think--if they get a chance, if they are pointed
+in the right direction and are left free."
+
+"He certainly knows his business." Vroom was looking after Howard
+admiringly. "I never saw anybody who so well understood when to lead and
+when to let alone. What results he does get!"
+
+"A pity to waste such talents on this thankless business," said King.
+"If he'd gone into real business, he would have a salary of a hundred
+thousand a year, would be rich and secure for life. Why, a business
+man could and would make a whole career on the ideas he has in a single
+week. As it is----"
+
+King shrugged his shoulders and Vroom finished the sentence for him:
+"Coulter and Stokely could kick him out to-morrow and the _News-Record_
+would go straight on living upon his ideas for ten years at least."
+
+Howard needed no one to make this truth clear to him to the full. Often,
+as he thought of his expanding tastes, his expanding expenditures and
+his expanding plans both for his private life and for his career, he
+felt an awful sinking at the heart and a sense of fundamental weakness.
+
+"I am building upon sand," he said to himself. "In business, in the law,
+in almost any other career to-day's work would be to-morrow's capital.
+As it is, I am ever more and more a slave. To be free I ought to be poor
+or rich. And I cannot endure the thought of poverty again. I must be
+rich."
+
+The idea allured him to a degree that made him ashamed of himself.
+Sometimes, when he was talking to Marian or writing editorials, all in
+the strain of high principle and contempt for sordidness, he would flush
+at the thought that he was in reality a good deal of a hypocrite. "I'm
+expressing the ideals I ought to have, the ideals I used to have, not
+the ideals I have."
+
+But the clearer this discrepancy became to him and the wider the gap
+between what he ought to think and what he really did think, the more
+strenuously he protested to himself against himself, and the more
+fiercely he denounced in public the very poison he was himself taking.
+
+"I am living in a tainted atmosphere," he said to Marian. "We all are. I
+fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if
+I persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore of my body?"
+
+"I don't understand you." Marian was used to his moods of self-criticism
+and did not attach much importance to them.
+
+He thought a moment. "Oh, nothing," he said. "What's the use of
+discussing what can't be helped?" How could he tell her that the
+greatest factor in his enervating environment was herself; that the
+strongest chains which held him in it were the chains which bound him
+to her? Indeed, was he not indulging in cowardly self-excuse in thinking
+that this was true? Had not his success, rather than his love, made
+ambition unfettered by principle the mainspring of his life?
+
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+ILLUSION.
+
+
+"How shall we be married?" Howard asked her in the late Autumn.
+
+"I know it will not be in a church with ushers and bridesmaids and a
+crowd gaping at us. I suppose there is a public side to marriage since
+the state makes one enter into a formal contract. But that can be done
+privately. I should as soon think of driving down the Avenue with my
+arms about your neck as of a public wedding."
+
+"Thank you," he laughed. "I was afraid--well, women are usually so
+fond of--but you're not usual. Let us see. The minister is absolutely
+necessary, I suppose. Would one feel married if there were not a
+minister?"
+
+"I don't know--I feel--"
+
+She hesitated and blushed but looked straight at him with that
+expression in her eyes which always made him think of their love as
+their religion.
+
+"Feel--go on. I want to hear that very, very much."
+
+"I feel as if I were just as much married to you now as I ever could
+be."
+
+"And that is how I have felt ever since the day, when I hardly knew you,
+when you suddenly came into my life--my real, inner life where no one
+had been before--and sat down and at once made it look as if it were
+your home. And the place that had been lonely was lonely no more, and
+has not been since."
+
+She put her hand in his and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Only that--that I am so happy. It--it frightens me. It seems so like a
+dream."
+
+"It's going to be a long, long dream, isn't it?" He lifted her hand and
+kissed it, then put it down in her lap again gently as if he feared a
+sudden movement might awaken them. "Perhaps it had better be at Mrs.
+Carnarvon's house--some morning just before luncheon and we could go
+quietly away afterward."
+
+"Yes--and--tell me," she said, "wouldn't it be better for us not to
+go far away--and not to stay long? It seems to me that I most want to
+begin--begin our life together just as it will be."
+
+"Are you afraid you wouldn't know what to do with me if I were idling
+about all day long?"
+
+"Not exactly that. But I'd rather not take a vacation until we had
+earned it together."
+
+"What a beautiful idea! I'll see what I can do."
+
+They postponed the wedding until Howard had the "art-department" of the
+_News-Record_ well established. It was on a bright winter day in the
+second week of January that they stood up together and were married by
+the Mayor whom Howard had helped to elect. Only Mr. and Mrs. Carnarvon
+and Marian's brother were there. Then the six sat down to luncheon, and
+at three o'clock Howard and his wife started for Lakewood.
+
+When they arrived a victoria was waiting. As soon as they were seated,
+Howard said "Home." The coachman touched his hat and the horses set
+out at a swift trot. The sun was setting and the dry, still air was
+saturated with the perfume of the snow-draped pines. Within five minutes
+the carriage was at a pretty little cottage with wide, glass-enclosed
+porches. They entered the hall. In the rooms on either side open fires
+were blazing an ecstatic welcome.
+
+"How do you like 'home'?" asked Howard.
+
+"I don't quite understand."
+
+"You remember your plan of beginning at once. Well--this is the
+compromise. Stokely has let me have his house here for a month--we may
+keep it two if we like it. There is a telephone. The office isn't two
+hours away by rail. The newspapers are here early. We can combine work
+and play."
+
+The manservant had left the room, a sort of library-reception room.
+Marian was seated in a big chair drawn near the fire. She had thrown
+back her wraps and was slowly drawing off her gloves. Howard stood at
+the side of the fire, leaning against the mantel and looking down at
+her.
+
+"Before you definitely decide to stay--" he paused.
+
+"Yes," she said, her colour heightening as she slowly lifted her eyes to
+his, "yes--why this solemn tone?"
+
+"If ever--in the days that come--one never knows what may happen--if
+ever you should find that you had changed toward me----"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I ask you--don't promise--I never want you to promise me anything--I
+want you always--at every moment--to be perfectly free. So I just ask
+that you will let me see it. Then we can talk about it frankly, and we
+can decide what is best to do."
+
+"But--suppose--you see I might still not wish to wound you--" she
+suggested, half teasing, half in earnest.
+
+"It seems to me now that it is impossible that we can ever change. It
+seems to me--" he sat on the wide arm of her chair, and leaned over
+until his head touched hers, "that if you were to change it would break
+my heart. But if you were to change and were to hide it from me, I
+should find it out some day and----"
+
+"And what----"
+
+"It would be worse--a broken heart, a horror of myself, a--a contempt
+for you."
+
+"Whatever comes, I'll be myself or try to be. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And if you change?"
+
+"But I shall not!"
+
+"Why do you say that so positively?"
+
+"Because--well, there are some things that we wish to believe and half
+believe, and some things that we believe that we believe, and somethings
+that we _know_. I _know_ about you--about my love for you."
+
+"It is strange in a way, isn't it?" Marian was gently drawing her
+fingers through his. "This is all so different from what I used to think
+love would be. I used to picture to myself a man, something like you in
+appearance, only taller and fair, who would be my master, who would make
+me do what he wished. I think a woman always dreams of a lover who will
+be strong enough to be her ruler. And here----"
+
+"So I am not the strong man that you look up to and tremble before? We
+shall see."
+
+"Don't laugh at me. I mean that instead I have a man who makes me rule
+myself. You make me feel strong, not weak, and proud, not humble. You
+make me respect myself so."
+
+"The democracy of love--freedom, equality, fraternity. Don't you like
+it?"
+
+"Madame is served." It was the servant holding back one of the
+portieres, his face expressionless, his eyes down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Happiness evades description or analysis. We can only say that
+it reaches its highest point when a man and a woman, intelligent,
+appreciative, sympathetic, endowed with youth, health and freedom, are
+devoting their energies solely and determinedly to verifying each a
+preconceived idea of the other.
+
+"And what do you think of it by this time?"
+
+Marian asked the question in the pause after a twenty minutes' canter
+over a straightaway stretch through the pines.
+
+"Of what?" Howard inquired. "I mean of what phase of it. Of you?"
+
+"Well,--yes, of me--after a week."
+
+"As I expected, only more so--more than I could have imagined. And you,
+what do you think?"
+
+"It's very different from what I expected. It seemed to me beforehand
+that you, even you, would 'get on my nerves' just a little at times. I
+didn't expect you to appreciate--to feel my moods and to avoid doing--or
+is it that you simply cannot do--anything jarring. You have amazing
+instincts or else--" Marian looked at him and smiled mischievously, "or
+else you have been well educated. Oh, I don't mind--not in the least.
+No matter what the cause, I'm glad--glad--glad that you have been taught
+how to treat a woman."
+
+"I see you are determined to destroy me," Howard was in jest, yet in
+earnest. "I am not used to being flattered. I have never had but one
+critic, and I have trained him to be severe and uncharitable. Now if you
+set me up on a high altar and wave the censers and cry 'glory, glory,
+glory,' I'll lose my head. You have a terrible responsibility. I trust
+you and I believe everything you say."
+
+"I'll begin my duties as critic as soon as we go back to--to earth. But
+at present I'm going to be selfish. You see it makes me happier to blind
+myself to your faults."
+
+They rode in silence for a few moments and then she said:
+
+"I wish I had your feeling about--about democracy. I see your point of
+view but I can't take it. I know that you are right but I'm afraid my
+education is too strong for me. I don't believe in the people as you do.
+It's beautiful when you say it. I like to hear you. And I would not
+wish you to feel as I do. I'd hate it if you did. It would be stooping,
+grovelling for you to make distinctions among people. But----"
+
+"Oh, but I do make distinctions among people--so much so that I have
+never had a friend in my life until you came. I have been on intimate
+terms with many, but no one except you has been on intimate terms with
+me. Oh, yes, I'm one of the most exclusive persons in the world."
+
+"That sounds like autocracy, doesn't it?" laughed Marian. "But you know
+I don't mean that. You think all the others are just as good as you are,
+only in different ways, whereas I feel that they're not. You don't mind
+vulgarity and underbreeding because you are perfectly indifferent to
+people so long as they don't try to jump the fence about your own little
+private enclosure."
+
+"Oh, I believe in letting other people alone, and I insist upon being
+let alone myself. You see you make the whole world revolve about social
+distinctions. The fact is, isn't it, that social distinctions are mere
+trifles--"
+
+"You oughtn't to waste time arguing with a prejudice. I admit that what
+I believe and feel is unreasonable. But I can't change an instinct.
+To me some people are better than others and are entitled to more, and
+ought to be looked up to and respected."
+
+Howard had an answer on the tip of his tongue. His passion for high
+principle seemed to have been rekindled for the time by his love and in
+this tranquillising environment. He felt strongly tempted to reason with
+her unreasonableness, thus practically boasted as a virtue. It seemed so
+unworthy, this streak of snobbery, so senseless in an American at most
+three generations away from manual labour. But he had made up his mind
+long ago to trust to new surroundings, new interests to create in her a
+spirit more in sympathy with his career.
+
+"She is too intelligent, too high-minded," he often reassured himself,
+"to cling to this stupidity of class-feeling. She has heard nothing but
+class-distinction all her life. Now that she is away from those people,
+with their petty routine of petty ideas, she will begin to see things as
+they are."
+
+So he suppressed the argument and, instead, said in a tone of mock-pity:
+"Poor fallen queen--to marry beneath her. How she must have fought
+against the idea of such a plebeian partner."
+
+"Plebeian--you?" Marian looked at him proudly. "Why, one has only to see
+you to know."
+
+"Yes, plebeian. I shall conceal it no longer. My ancestors were plain,
+ordinary, common, untitled Americans."
+
+"Why, so were mine," she laughed.
+
+"Don't! You distress me. I should never have married you had I known
+that."
+
+"I _am_ absurd, am I not?" Marian said gaily. "But let me have my craze
+for well-mannered people and I'll leave you your craze for the--the
+masses."
+
+They began to canter. Howard was smiling in spite of his irritation;
+for it always irritated him to have her refuse to see his point in this
+matter--his distinction between a person as a friend and a person as a
+sociological unit.
+
+He worked for an hour or two every morning and sometimes in the evening,
+Marian not far from his desk, so seated that when she turned the page
+of her book she could lift her eyes and look at him. She read the papers
+diligently every day for the first week. At the outset she thought she
+was interested. But she knew so little about newspaper details that she
+soon had to confess to herself that she was in fact interested in Howard
+as her husband and lover, and that his career interested her only in a
+broad, general way. What he talked about, that she understood and
+liked and was able to discuss. But the newspapers and the news direct
+suggested nothing to her, bored her.
+
+"Just read that," he would say, pointing to an item. She would read it
+and wonder what he meant.
+
+"It seems to me," she would think, "that it wouldn't in the least matter
+if that had not been printed." Then she would ask evasively but with an
+assumption of interest, "What are you going to do about it?"
+
+And he would explain the meaning between the lines; the hinted facts
+that ought to be brought out; the possibilities of getting a piece of
+news that would attract wide attention. And she would see it, sometimes
+clearly, usually vaguely; and she would admire him, but resume her
+unconquerable indifference to news.
+
+She was soon looking at the paper only to read what he wrote; and she
+often thought how much more interesting he was as a talker than as
+a writer. "I'll start right when we get to town," she was constantly
+promising herself. "It must, must, must be _our_ work."
+
+Howard was, as she had told him, acutely sensitive to her moods. He did
+not formulate it to himself but simply obeyed an instinct which defined
+for him the limits of her interest. Before they had been at Lakewood
+a month, he was working alone without any expectation of sympathy or
+interest from her and without the slightest sense of loss in not getting
+it. Why should he miss that which he had never had, had never counted
+upon getting? He had always been mentally alone, most alone in the
+plans and actions bearing directly upon his own career. He was perfectly
+content to have her as the companion of his leisure.
+
+Possibly, if he had been insistent, or if they had been in real sympathy
+instead of in only surface sympathy in most respects, she might
+have become interested in his work, might have impelled him to right
+development. But her distaste and inertia and his habit of debating and
+deciding questions as to the paper in his own mind, the fear of boring
+her, the dread of intruding upon her rights to her own individual tastes
+and feelings, restrained him without his having a sense of restraint.
+
+When, after two months, they went up to town to stay, their course
+of life was settled, though Marian was protesting that it was not and
+Howard was unconscious of there having been any settlement, or anything
+to settle.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+WAVERING.
+
+Their home was an apartment at Twenty-ninth Street and Madison
+Avenue--just large enough for two with its eleven rooms, all bearing the
+stamp of Marian's individuality. She had a keen sense of the beautiful
+and she had given her thought and most of her time between the early
+autumn and the wedding to making an attractive home. He had not seen her
+work until they came together in the late afternoon of a day in the last
+week of February.
+
+"You--everywhere you," he said, as they inspected room after room. "I
+don't see how I could add anything to that. It is beautiful--the things
+you have brought together, I mean, the furniture, curtains, carpets,
+pictures, all beautiful in themselves, but--"
+
+He was looking at her in that way which made her feel his great love for
+her even more deeply than when he put his arms about her and kissed
+her. "It reminds me of what I so often think about you. Nature gave you
+beauty but you make it wonderful because _you_ shine through it, give it
+the force, the expression of your individuality. Other women have noses,
+eyes, chins, mouths as beautiful as yours. But only you produce such
+effects with the materials. I don't express it very well but--you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes, I understand." She was leaning against him, her head resting upon
+his shoulder. "And you like your home?"
+
+"We shall be happy here. I feel it in the air. This is a temple of the
+three great gods--Freedom, Love and Happiness. And--we'll keep the fires
+on the altars blazing, won't we?"
+
+His hours were most irregular. Sometimes he was off to work early in the
+morning. Again he would not rise until noon. Sometimes he did not go
+to the office after dinner, and again he came hurriedly to dinner, not
+having the time to dress, and left immediately afterward to be gone
+until two, three or even four in the morning. At first Marian tried to
+follow his irregularities; but she was soon compelled to give up. As
+he most often breakfasted about ten o'clock, she arranged to breakfast
+regularly at that hour. If he was not yet up, she waited about the house
+until she had seen him, listened while he talked of those "everlasting
+newspapers," praised his work a great deal, criticised it little and
+that gently. She made few and feeble struggles to interest herself in
+newspapers as newspapers. But he did not encourage her; other interests,
+domestic and social, clamoured for her time; and the idea of being
+directly useful to him in his work faded from her mind.
+
+If she had loved him more sympathetically, if she had not been so
+super-sensitive to his passion for complete freedom, she would have
+resented what in another kind of man would have seemed frank neglect
+of her. But she thought she understood him and was deceived by his
+self-deceiving conviction that his work was her service and that the
+highest proof of his devotion to her was devotion to "our" career. Thus
+there was no bitterness or reproach of him, rarely much intensity, in
+her regret that they were together so little.
+
+"Good morning, stranger!" she said, as he came into the dining room one
+day in early June.
+
+He kissed her hand and then the "topknot" as he called the point into
+which her hair was gathered at the crown of her head. "It has been four
+days since I saw you," he said. And he sat opposite her looking at her
+with an expression of sadness which she had not seen since the first
+days of their acquaintance.
+
+"I have missed you--you know," she was trying to look cheerful, "but I
+understand--"
+
+"Yes," he interrupted. "You understand what I intend, understand that I
+mean my life to be for _us_. But sometimes--this morning--I think I am
+mistaken. It seems to me that I am letting this--" he threw his hand
+contemptuously toward the heap of morning newspapers beside him, "this
+trash comes between us. You are my real career, not these, and under the
+pretense of working for us I am spending my whole life, my one life,
+my one chance to help to make us happy, upon these." And he pushed the
+bundle of papers off the table.
+
+"Something has depressed you." She was leaning her elbow upon the table
+and her chin upon her hand and was looking at him wistfully. "I wouldn't
+have you any different. You must follow the law of your nature. You must
+work at your ideal of being useful and influential in the world. You
+would not be satisfied to take my hand and trudge off with me through
+Arcadia to pick flowers and weave them into crowns for me. Nor should
+I," she laughed, "or I try to think I shouldn't."
+
+"Let us go abroad for two months," he said. "I am tired, so tired. I am
+so weary of all these others, men and things."
+
+"Can you spare the time?"
+
+"I"--he corrected himself--"we have earned a vacation. It will be for
+me the first real vacation since I left Yale--thirteen years ago. I am
+growing narrow and stale. Let us get away and forget. Shall we?"
+
+"The sooner the better--if this is not a passing mood. What has
+depressed you?" she persisted.
+
+"What seems to be a piece of very good luck." He laughed almost
+sneeringly. "They have given me a share in the paper, twenty thousand in
+stock--which means a fixed income of five thousand a year so long as
+the paper pays what it does now--twenty-five per cent. And they offer me
+twenty thousand more at par to be paid for within two years. We are in a
+fair way to be rich."
+
+"They don't want to lose you, evidently," she said. "But why does this
+make you sad? We are independent now--absolutely independent, both of
+us."
+
+"Yes--we are rich. Together we have more than thirty-five thousand a
+year. But it is not what I wanted. I wanted to be free. Can a man be
+free who is rich, and rich in the way we are? Will my mind be open?
+Shall I dare to act and speak the truth? Or will our property, our
+environment, speak for me?"
+
+"I can't imagine you a slave to mere dollars."
+
+"Can't you? Well, I am afraid--I'm really afraid. I have always said
+that if I wished to--enslave a people I would make them prosperous,
+would give them property, make them dependent upon their dollars. Then
+the fear of losing their dollars, their investments, would make them
+endure any oppression. Freedom's battles were never fought by men with
+full stomachs and full purses."
+
+"But rich men have given up everything for freedom--Washington was a
+rich man."
+
+"Ah, but how many Washingtons has the world produced? I see the time
+coming when I shall have to choose. I see it and--I dread it."
+
+She rose and stood behind him leaning over with her arms about his neck
+and her check against his.
+
+"You are brave. You are strong," she whispered. "You will meet that
+crisis if it comes and I have no fear, Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, as to how
+the battle will go."
+
+He was glad that he did not have to face her eyes just then. "We will
+go abroad next Wednesday week," he whispered, "and we'll be happy in
+France--in Switzerland--in Holland--I want to see the park at the Hague
+again; and the tall trees with their straight big trunks green with
+moss; and the boughs meeting over the canals and making the clear water
+so black; and the snow-white swans sailing statelily about."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the Atlantic between him and his work, he was able to suspend the
+habit of so many years. You would have fancied them just married, at
+whatever stage of their wanderings you might have met them. They were
+always laughing and talking--an endless flow of high spirits, absorption
+each in the other. They rose when they pleased, went to bed when it
+suited them. They had a manservant and a maid with them to relieve them
+of all the details. They travelled only in the afternoons, and then not
+far. If they missed one train, they cheerfully waited for another.
+
+"I think we are achieving my ideal of vacation," he said.
+
+"What is that--perfect idleness? We certainly are idle. I shouldn't have
+believed you could be so idle."
+
+"Perfect idleness--yes. But more than that. I aimed far higher. My ideal
+was perfect irresponsibility. We have become like the wind that bloweth
+where it listeth."
+
+And again, she said: "Let me see, what day is this?"
+
+"I think it is Thursday or Friday," he replied. "But it may be Sunday.
+I can assure you that it is afternoon, late afternoon, and I think we
+ought to dress for dinner soon. After dinner, if you still care to know,
+and will remind me, I'll try to find out the day. But I'm sure we shall
+have forgotten before to-morrow."
+
+Howard got an extension of his leave of absence and they roamed about
+England in August, reaching New York on the first day of September.
+Marian went on to Mrs. Carnarvon at Newport and Howard took rooms at the
+Waldorf. She stayed away a full week, then came to town, opened their
+apartment, and surprised him with a formal invitation to dinner.
+
+He came like a guest and they went through all the formalities of
+meeting for the first time, of increasing intimacy--condensing a
+complete courtship into one evening.
+
+"I thought you had had enough of me for the time," he said, as they sat
+in the wide window-seat, he tracing with his forefinger the line of the
+straps over her bare shoulders.
+
+"And I thought that I would give you a chance to forget how nice I am
+and so give you the pleasure of learning all over again. But it was so
+lonely and miserable up there. 'Who can come after the king?'"
+
+"Sometimes I think I ought to stir about more--meet the men who lead
+in the city. But it seems such a waste of time when I can come and call
+upon you."
+
+"But might it not be better in the long run if you did meet these men?
+Mightn't it make your getting on quicker and easier?"
+
+"Perhaps--if I were a gregarious animal, but I'm not. I'm shy and
+solitary and hard to get acquainted with. And it takes time to make
+friends. Besides, in making friends you also make enemies, and one enemy
+can do you more harm than all your friends can do you good. Then too,
+friends take up too much time. We have so little time and--we can spend
+it to so much better advantage--can't we?"
+
+Marian pushed herself closer against him and presently said dreamily:
+"So much happiness, such utter happiness which no one, nothing can take
+away. I wonder when and how the first storm will come?"
+
+"It needn't come at all--not for a long, long time. And when it does--we
+can weather it, don't you think?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the next two months they were together more than they had been in
+the spring. He imposed day office hours upon himself and did no work in
+the evenings except the correcting of editorial proofs which he had sent
+to him at the house, at the theatre, or at whatever restaurant they were
+dining. And at midnight he called up the office on the telephone
+and talked with Mr. King or Mr. Vroom about the news in hand and the
+programme for presenting it in the next morning's paper.
+
+But as "people"--meaning Marian's friends--returned to town, they fell
+into the former routine. It was in part his doing, in part hers. He was
+now thirty-seven years old and his mind, always of a serious cast, was
+intolerant of trifles and triflers.
+
+Marian's range of interests was shallower but much wider than his. Her
+beauty, her cleverness, her tact caused her to be sought. She invited
+many to their house and accepted more and more invitations. At first she
+never went without him. But he was sometimes compelled by his work to
+send her alone. He rarely went except for her sake--because he thought
+going about amused her. And he was glad and relieved when she began to
+go without him, instead of spending the evenings in solitude.
+
+"There is no reason why you should punish yourself and punish me because
+you had the ill luck to marry a working-man," he said. "It cannot be
+agreeable to sit here all by yourself evening after evening. And it
+depresses me when I am at the office at night to think of you as lonely.
+It makes me happier in my work--my pleasure, you know--to think of you
+enjoying yourself."
+
+"But aren't you afraid that some one will steal me?" she asked,
+laughingly.
+
+"Not I." He was smiling proudly at her. "If you could be stolen, if you
+could be happier anywhere than with me, you have only to let me into the
+plot."
+
+"There are some women who would not like that."
+
+"And there are men who wouldn't feel as I do. But you and I, we belong
+to a class all by ourselves, don't we?"
+
+Apparently they were as devoted each to the other as ever. But each now
+sought a separate happiness--he perforce in his work, she perforce in
+the only way left open to her. When they were together, which meant
+several hours every day and usually one whole day in the week, they
+were at once seemingly absorbed each in the other with all the rest as
+background. But none the less, they were leading separate lives, with
+separate interests, separate tastes, separate modes of thinking. The
+"bourgeois" life which they had planned--both standing behind the
+counter and both adding up the results of the day's business after they
+had put up the shutters, two as one in all the interests of life--became
+a dead and forgotten dream.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE SHENSTONE EPISODE.
+
+
+On the way to or from the opera or a party, she would peep in on him,
+watching the back of his head as he bent over his desk or read away at
+some dull-looking book, wishing that he would feel her presence and turn
+with that smile which was always hers from him, yet fearing to make a
+sound and compel his attention.
+
+"At times I think," she said one day when he caught her in his arms on a
+sudden impulse and kissed her, "that the reason you don't try to rule me
+is because you don't care enough."
+
+"That's precisely it." He was smoothing her eyebrows with his
+forefinger. "I don't care enough about ruling. I don't care enough for
+the sort of love that responds to 'must.'"
+
+"But a woman likes to have 'must' said to her sometimes."
+
+"Does she? Do you? Well--I'll say 'must' to you. You must love me freely
+and voluntarily, or not at all. You must do as you please."
+
+"But don't you see that that drives me from you often, keeps us apart in
+many ways. Now if you compelled me to think as you do, to like what you
+like--"
+
+"But I couldn't. Then you would no longer be _you_. And I like you so
+well just as you are that I would not change an idea in your head."
+
+Marian sighed and went away to her dinner party. She felt that she was
+in danger. "Not of falling in love with some other man," she thought,
+"for that's impossible. But if a man were to come along who invited me
+to be interested in his work, to keep him at whatever he was doing, I'd
+accept and that would lead on and on--where?"
+
+She soon had an opportunity to answer that question. Howard went away
+to Washington to assist the party leaders in putting through a difficult
+tariff-reform bill which all the protected interests were fighting. He
+expected to be gone a week; but week after week passed and he was still
+at the capital, directing the paper by telegraph and sending Marian
+hurried notes postponing his return. She was going about daily, early
+and late, her life vacant, her mind restlessly seeking occupation,
+interest.
+
+After he had been gone three weeks she found herself at dinner at Mrs.
+Provost's next to a tall, fair-haired athletic young man of about her
+own age. Something in his expression--perhaps the amused way in which he
+studied the faces of the others--attracted her to him. She glanced over
+at his card. It read "Mr. Shenstone."
+
+"It doesn't add much to your information, does it?" he smiled, as he
+caught her glance rising from the card.
+
+"Nothing," she confessed candidly. "I never heard of you before."
+
+"And yet I've been splashing about, trying to attract attention to
+myself, for twelve years."
+
+"Perhaps not in this particular pond."
+
+"No, that is true."
+
+"I was wondering what you do--lawyer, doctor, journalist, business man
+or what.
+
+"And what did you conclude?"
+
+"I concluded that you did nothing."
+
+"You are right. But I try--I paint."
+
+"Portraits?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That explains your way of looking at people. Only, you'll get no
+customers if you paint them as you see them."
+
+"I only see what they see when they look in the mirror."
+
+"Yes, but you see it impartial--or rather, I should say, cynically."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For calling me cynical. The two keenest pleasures a man can attain are
+for a woman to call him a cynic and for a woman to call him a devil with
+the women."
+
+"Are you a 'devil with the women'?"
+
+"Not I--not any more than I am a cynic. But let us talk about you--I
+am about exhausted as a topic of conversation. Why do you look so
+discontented?"
+
+"Because I have nothing to occupy my mind."
+
+"No children?"
+
+"None--and no dogs."
+
+"No husband?"
+
+"Husbands are busy."
+
+"So you are the typical American woman--the American instinct for doing,
+the universal woman's instinct for sunshine and laziness; the husband
+absorbed in his business or profession with his domestic life as an
+incident; the wife--like you."
+
+"That is right, and wrong--nearer right than wrong, a little unjust to
+the husband."
+
+"Oh, it's probably your fault that you are not absorbed in his business
+or profession. It ought to be as much yours as his. What does he do?"
+
+"He edits a newspaper."
+
+"Oh, he's _the_ Mr. Howard. A very interesting, a very remarkable man."
+
+Marian was delighted by this appreciation. She talked with Shenstone
+again after dinner and was pleased that he was to be in the same box
+with her at the opera the next night. He had spent much of his time on
+the other side of the Atlantic. He was unusually well educated for an
+artist's, and his mind was not developed in one direction only. Like
+Marian, his point of view was artistic and emotional. Like her he had a
+reverence for tradition, a deference to caste--the latter not offensive
+for the same reason that hers was not, because good birth and good
+breeding made him of the "high caste" and not a cringer with his eyes
+craned upward. It seemed in him, as in her, a sort of self-respect.
+
+Marian showed a candid liking for his society and he was quick to take
+advantage of it. For a month they saw more and more each of the other,
+she discreet without deliberation and he discreet with deliberation.
+He talked to her of his work, of his ambition. He showed her himself
+without egotism. He made an impression upon her so distinct and so
+favourable that she admitted to herself that he was the most fascinating
+man--except one--whom she had ever met.
+
+When Howard at last returned, defeated by corruption within his
+own party and for the time disgusted with politics, she at once had
+Shenstone at the house to dine. "What do you think of Mr. Shenstone?"
+she asked when they were alone.
+
+"No wonder you're enthusiastic about him. As he talked to me, I could
+hardly keep from laughing. It was your own views, almost your own words.
+He has the look of a great man. I think he will 'arrive,' as they say in
+the Bowery."
+
+Howard went out of his way to be agreeable to Shenstone, often inviting
+him to the house and giving him a commission to paint Marian. For the
+rest of the winter Shenstone was constantly in Marian's company; so
+constantly that they were gossiped about, and all the women who were
+unpleasantly discussed "for cause" conspired to throw them together as
+much as possible.
+
+One evening in the very end of the winter, Howard called to Marian from
+his dressing room: "Why, lady, Shenstone's gone, hasn't he? I've just
+read a note from him."
+
+There was a pause before Marian answered in a constrained voice: "Yes,
+he sailed to-day."
+
+Howard was tying his bow. He paused at the curious tone, then smiled
+mysteriously to himself. He put on his waistcoat and coat and knocked on
+the half-open door. "May I come in?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--I'm waiting for dinner to be announced."
+
+She was sitting before the fire, very beautiful in her evening gown. She
+seemed not to observe that he had entered but stared on into the flames.
+He stood beside her, looking down at her with the half mocking, half
+tender smile. Presently he sat upon the arm of her chair and took one of
+her hands. "Poor, friendless, beautiful lady," he said softly.
+
+She glanced up quickly, her cheeks flaming but her eyes clear and frank.
+"Why do you say that?" she asked in the tone of one who knows why.
+
+"Other women will not be her friends because they are jealous of her,
+and as for the men--how can a man be really a friend to a woman, a
+fascinating, sympathetic woman?"
+
+Marian hid her face against the lapel of his coat. "He told me," she
+whispered, "and then he went away."
+
+"He always does tell her. But----"
+
+"But--what?"
+
+"She doesn't always send him away. Poor fellow! Still, he went into it
+with his eyes open."
+
+"He was very nice. He told it in a roundabout way. And I wasn't a bit
+afraid that he'd--he'd--you know. But I got to thinking about how I'd
+feel if he did--did touch me. And it made me--nervous."
+
+There was a long pause, then she went on: "I wonder how you'd feel about
+touching another woman?"
+
+"I? Dear me, I wonder! I never thought. You see I'm such a domestic,
+unattractive creature----"
+
+"Don't laugh at me, please," she pleaded.
+
+"I'm not laughing. Underneath, I'm thinking--thinking what I would do if
+I met you and lost you. It's very black on the Atlantic for one pair of
+eyes to-night."
+
+"And the worst of it is," she said, "that my vanity is flattered and I'm
+not really sorry for him."
+
+"Rather proud of her conquest, is she?"
+
+"Yes, it pleased me to have him care."
+
+"She likes to think that he'll carry his broken heart to the grave, does
+she?"
+
+"Yes. Isn't it shameful?"
+
+"Shameful? Shameless. I have always held that even the best woman dearly
+loves to ruin a man. It's such a triumph. And the more she loves him,
+the more she'd like to ruin him--that is, if ruin came solely through
+love for her and didn't involve her."
+
+"But I would not want to ruin you."
+
+"If that seemed to be the supreme test of my love for you--are you sure?
+I'm not. There's Thomas, knocking to announce dinner."
+
+The Shenstone incident was apparently closed. Marian, a most attractive
+woman of thirty, absorbed in a social life that demanded all her
+physical and mental energy as well as all of her time, did not long
+vividly remember him. But he had given her a standard by which she
+unconsciously measured her husband. She contrasted the life he had
+promised her, the life Shenstone reminded her of, with the life that
+was--so material, so suspiciously physical when it professed to be
+loving, so suspiciously chill when it professed to be friendly. She
+thrust aside these thoughts as disloyal and false. But they persisted in
+returning.
+
+If she had been less appreciative of Howard's intellect, less fascinated
+by the charm of his personality, she would soon have become one of the
+"misunderstood" women in search of "consolation." Instead, she turned
+her mind in the direction natural to her character--social ambition.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING.
+
+
+In such a city as New York, to be deliberately careful about money is
+the only way to keep within one's income, whether it be vast or small.
+There are temptations to buy at the end of every glance of the eye.
+The merchants are crafty in producing new and insidious allurements, in
+creating new and expensive tastes. But these might be resisted were it
+not that the habits of all one's associates are constantly and all but
+irresistibly stimulating the faculty of imitation.
+
+Neither Howard nor Marian had been brought up to be watchful about
+money. Both had been accustomed to having their wants supplied. And
+now that they had a household and a growing income, it was a matter
+of course that their expenditures should steadily expand. Before three
+years had passed they were spending more than double the sum which
+at the outset they had fixed upon as their limit. A merely decent and
+self-respecting return of the hospitalities they accepted, a carriage
+and pair and two saddle horses and the servants to look after
+them--these items accounted for the increase. They looked upon this as
+really necessary expenditure and soon would have found that curtailment
+involved genuine deprivation. From the very beginning each step in
+expansion made the next logical and inevitable, made the plea of
+necessity seem valid.
+
+An aunt of Marian's died, leaving her a "small" house--worth perhaps a
+quarter of a million--near the Avenue in Sixty-fifth Street, and eighty
+thousand in cash. About the same time Stokely told Howard of a fine
+speculative opportunity in certain copper properties. Howard hesitated.
+He knew that the way of speculation was the way of bondage for his
+newspaper and for him. But this particular adventure seemed harmless and
+he yielded. The money was invested and within a few months was producing
+an income of fifteen thousand a year which promised to be steady.
+Howard's ownership of stock in the paper increased; and as the profits
+advanced swiftly with its swift growth in its illustrated form, his own
+income was nearly fifty thousand a year. They were growing very rich.
+There was no longer the slightest anxiety as to money in his mind.
+
+"You know the great dread I had in marrying," he said to her one day,
+"was lest I should make myself and you dependents, should some day
+sacrifice my freedom to my fear of losing--happiness."
+
+"Yes, and very foolish you were, not to have more confidence in yourself
+and in me."
+
+"Perhaps. But what I am thinking is that you have brought me luck. I am
+free, beyond anybody's reach. I could quit the paper to-morrow and we
+should hardly have to change our style of living even if I did not get
+something else to do."
+
+"Style of living--" in that phrase lay the key to the change that was
+swiftly going on in Howard's mind and mental attitude. It is not easy
+for a man with environment wholly in his favour to keep his point
+of view correct, to keep his horizon wide and clear, his sense of
+proportion just. It is next to impossible for him to do so when his
+environment opposes.
+
+The man who looks out from misery and squalor upon misery and squalor
+is, if he thinks at all, naturally an anarchist. To him the established
+order shows only injustice and persistence of injustice. The man who
+looks out from luxury and ease and well-being upon luxury and ease and
+well-being is forced by the very limitations of the human mind to an
+over-reverence for the established order. He is unreasonably suspicious
+of anything that threatens change. "When I'm comfortable all's well in
+the world; change might bring discomfort to me." And he flatters himself
+that he is a "conservative."
+
+Howard had had a long training at the correct standpoint and in right
+thinking. But the influences were there, were at work, were destroying
+his devotion to a social and political ideal wholly alien to the life
+he was now living under the leading of his wife. He did not blame her,
+indeed he could not justly have blamed her, for his falling away from
+what he knew were correct principles for him. While she had brought him
+into this environment, while at first it was in large part for her that
+he gave so much time and thought to the accumulation of wealth, soon
+love of luxury, dependence upon a train of servants, fondness for the
+great extravagances to which New York tempts the rich and those living
+near the rich, became stronger in him than it was in her. And through
+the inevitable reaction of environment upon the man, the central point
+in his valuation of men and women tended to shift from the fundamentals,
+mind and character, to the surface qualities--dress and style and
+manners and refinement, and even dress.
+
+This process of demoralisation was well advanced when they moved from
+the apartment. After four years of "expansion" there, they had begun
+to feel cramped; and a year after Marian inherited the house Howard had
+progressed to the mental, the moral, the financial state where it seemed
+natural, logical, practically necessary that they should set up a real
+New York "establishment."
+
+"Isn't this just the house for us?" she said. "I hate huge, big houses.
+Like you, I think the taste of the occupants should be everywhere. Now
+this house is just big enough. You don't know how wonderful it would
+be."
+
+"Oh, yes, I do," he laughed, "and you must try it." He was as
+enthusiastic as she.
+
+In the late autumn the house was ready; and there was not a more
+artistic interior in New York. It was not so much the result of great
+expense as of intelligence and taste. It was an expression of an
+individuality--a revelation of a woman's beautiful mind, inspired by
+love.
+
+"At last I have something to interest, to occupy me," she said. "This is
+our very own, through and through our own. It will be such a pleasure to
+me to keep it always like this."
+
+"You--degenerated into a household drudge," he mocked. "Why, you used to
+laugh at me when I held up a wife who was a good housekeeper as one of
+my ideals."
+
+"Did I?" she answered. "Well, as you would say, see what I've come to
+through living with--a member of the working-classes."
+
+Howard's own particular part of this house included a library with a
+small study next to it. In the study was a most attractive table with
+plenty of room to spread about books and papers, a huge divan in the
+corner and a fire-place near by. He found himself doing more and more of
+his work at home. There were not so many interruptions as at the office,
+the beauty of the surroundings, the consciousness that "she" was not far
+away--all combined to keep him at home and to enable him to do more and
+better work there.
+
+He was justly and greatly proud of her achievement; and where he used to
+be more regretful than he admitted even to himself when they had guests,
+he was now glad to see others about, admiring her taste, appreciating
+her skill as a hostess and giving him opportunities to look at her from
+an ever new point of view.
+
+Of course these guests were almost all "_their_ kind of
+people"--amiable, well mannered persons who thought and acted in that
+most conventional of moulds, the mould of "good society." They
+fitted into the surroundings, they did their part toward making those
+surroundings luxurious--a "wallow of self-complacent content." And this
+environment soon suited and fitted him exactly.
+
+But to her he was still The Democrat. She loved him in the way and to
+the degree which her character, as the years had developed it, permitted
+her to love. And this love, or rather admiring respect, was wholly based
+upon her ideal of him, her belief in the honesty and intensity of his
+convictions. While she did not share them, she had breadth enough to
+admire them and to regard them as high removed above her own ideas to
+which for herself she held tenaciously, instinct and association and
+"tradition" triumphing over reason.
+
+Howard retained his ideal of her, never examining her closely, never
+seeing or suspecting what a pale love she gave him and how shrivelled
+had become the part of her nature which she and he both assumed was most
+strongly developed. He knew how she idealised him and did not dare to
+undeceive her. Therefore he practised toward her a hypocrisy that grew
+steadily more disgraceful, yet grew so gradually that there was no
+single moment at which he could conveniently halt and "straighten the
+record." At first he was often and heartily ashamed of himself; but by
+degrees this feeling deadened into cynical insensibility and he was
+only ashamed to let her see him as he really was. She had kept her
+self-respect. She esteemed self-respect at the exalted valuation he had
+formerly put upon it. What if she should find him out?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the famous "coal conspiracy" was formed, three of the men
+conspicuous in it were among their intimates--that is, their families
+were often at his house and he and Marian were often at theirs. Yet he
+had never made a more relentless attack. Nor did he, either in the news
+columns or on the editorial page, conceal the connection of his three
+friends with the conspiracy.
+
+"Mrs. Mercer was here this morning," Marian said as they were waiting
+for the butler to announce dinner. She was flushed and embarrassed.
+
+Howard laughed. "And did she tell you what a dreadful husband you had?"
+
+"Oh, she didn't blame you at all. She said they all knew how perfectly
+upright you were. Only, she said you did not understand and were doing
+Mr. Mercer a great injustice."
+
+"Well, what do you think?"
+
+"Why--I can't believe--is it possible, dear--I was just reading one of
+your editorials. Can Mr. Mercer be in such a scheme? The way she told
+it to me, he and the others were really doing a lot of people a
+valuable service, putting their property on a paying basis, enabling the
+railroads to meet their expenses and to keep thousands and thousands of
+men employed."
+
+"Poor Mercer!" Howard said ironically. "Poor misunderstood
+philanthropist! What a pity that that sort of benevolence has to be
+carried on by bribing judges and prosecutors and legislatures, by making
+the poor shiver and freeze, by subtracting from the pleasures and
+adding to the anxieties of millions. One would almost say that such
+a philanthropy had better not be undertaken. It is so likely to be
+misunderstood by the 'unruly classes.'"
+
+"Oh, I knew you were right. I told her you must be right, that you never
+wrote until you knew."
+
+"And what was the result?"
+
+"Well, we are making some very bitter enemies."
+
+"I doubt it. I suspect that before long they'll come wheedling about in
+the hope that I'll let up on them or be a little easier next time."
+
+"I'm sure I do not care what they do," said Marian, drawing herself up.
+"All I care for is--you, and to see you do your duty at whatever cost
+or regardless of cost--" she was leaning over the back of his chair with
+her arms about his neck and her lips very near to his ear--"you are my
+love without fear and without reproach."
+
+"Listen, dear." He took her hand and drew her arms more closely about
+his neck. "Suppose that the lines were drawn--as they may be any day.
+Suppose that we had to choose, with all these friends of yours, with our
+position, yes, even the place I have won in my profession, my place as
+editor--all that we now have on the one side; and on the other side a
+thankless, unprofitable, apparently useless standing up for the right.
+Wouldn't you miss your friends?"
+
+"_All_ our friends? And who will be on the other side?"
+
+"Almost no one that we know--that you would care to call upon or go
+about with or have here at the house. Nobody with any great amount of
+wealth or social position. Those other people who are in town when it is
+said 'Nobody is in town now!'"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Where would you be?" he repeated.
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of that." She came around and sat on his
+knee. "Where? Why, there's only one 'where' in all this world for
+me--'wheresoever thou goest.'"
+
+And so the half-formed impulse to begin to straighten himself out with
+her was smothered by her.
+
+Both were silent through dinner. She was thinking how honest, how
+fearless he was, how he loved her, how eagerly she would follow him,
+how blessed she was in the love of such a man. And he--he was regretting
+that his "pose" had carried him so far; he was wishing that he had not
+been so bitter in his attacks upon his and his wife's friends, the coal
+conspirators. When he had definitely cast in his lot with "the shearers"
+why persist in making his hypocrisy more abominable by protesting more
+loudly than ever in behalf of "the sheep?" Above all, why had he let
+his habit of voluble denunciation lead him into this hypocrisy with the
+woman he loved?
+
+He admitted to himself that "causes" had ceased to interest him except
+as they might contribute to the advancement of his power. Power!--that
+was his ambition now. First he had wished to have an independent income
+in order to be free. When he had achieved that, it was at the sacrifice
+of his mental freedom. And now, with the clearness of self-knowledge
+which only men of great ability have, he knew that the one cause for
+which he would make sacrifices was--himself.
+
+"Of what are you thinking so gloomily?" she interrupted.
+
+"Oh--I--let me see--well, I was thinking what a fraud I am; and that I
+wished I could dupe myself as completely as I can dupe--"
+
+"Me?" she laughed. "Oh, we're all frauds--shocking frauds. I wouldn't
+have you see me as I really am for anything."
+
+Although her remark was a commonplace, of small meaning, as he knew,
+he got comfort out of it, so desperately was he casting about for some
+consolation.
+
+"That's true, my dear," he said. "And I wish that you liked the kind of
+a fraud I am as well as I like the kind of a fraud you are."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+"MR. VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH."
+
+
+Stokely came rushing into his office the next morning. "Good God, old
+man," he exclaimed, "What's the meaning of this attack on the coal
+roads?"
+
+Howard flushed with resentment, not at what Stokely said, but at his
+tone.
+
+"Now, don't get on your high horse. I don't think you understand."
+Stokely's tone had moderated. "Don't you know that the Delaware Valley
+road is in this?"
+
+Howard started. He had just invested two hundred thousand dollars in
+that stock on Stokely's advice "No, I didn't know it." He recovered
+himself. "And furthermore I don't give a damn." He struck his desk
+angrily. His simulation of incorruptible indignation for the moment half
+deceived himself.
+
+"Why, man, if this infernal roast is kept up, you'll lose a hundred
+thousand. Then there are my interests. I'm up to my neck in this deal."
+
+"My advice to you is to get out of it. I'm sorry, but you know as well
+as I do that the thing is infamous."
+
+"Infamous--nonsense! It will double our dividends and the consumers
+won't feel it."
+
+"Let us not discuss it, Stokely. There--don't say anything you'll
+regret."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Now, Stokely--don't argue it with me."
+
+Stokely put on his hat, stood up and looked at Howard with sullen
+admiration. "You will drive away the last friend you've got on earth, if
+you keep this up. Good morning."
+
+Howard sent a smile of cynical amusement after him, then stared
+thoughtfully into the mass of papers on his desk for five, ten, fifteen
+minutes. When his plan was formed he touched the electric button.
+
+"Please tell Mr. King I'd like to see him," he said to the answering
+boy.
+
+Mr. King entered with a bundle of legal documents. "I suppose it's the
+injunction you want to discuss," he said. "We've got the papers all
+ready. It's simply great. Those fellows will be in a corner and will
+have to give up. They can't get away from us. The price of coal will
+drop half a dollar within a week, I'll bet."
+
+"I'm afraid you are over sanguine," Howard said. "I've just been going
+over the matter with my lawyer. But leave the papers with me. And--about
+the news--be careful what you say. We've been going a little strong. I
+think a little less personal matter would be advisable."
+
+Mr. King was amazed and looked it. He slowly pulled himself together to
+say, "All right, Mr. Howard. I think I understand." He laid the papers
+down and departed. Outside the door he laughed softly to himself.
+"Somebody's been cutting his comb, I guess," he murmured. "Well, I
+didn't think he'd last. New York always gets 'em when they're worth
+while."
+
+As the door closed behind King, Howard drew out the lowest and deepest
+drawer of his desk. It was half-filled with long-undisturbed pamphlets
+and newspaper cuttings. He tossed in the injunction papers. A cloud of
+dust flew up and settled thickly upon them. He shut the drawer.
+
+He went to the window and looked out over the city--that seductive,
+that overwhelming expression of wealth and power. "What was it my father
+wrote me when I told him I was going to New York?" and he recalled
+almost the exact words--"New York that lures young men from the towns
+and the farms, and prostitutes them, teaches them to sell themselves
+with unblushing cheeks for a fee, for an office, for riches, for power."
+He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, drew himself up, returned to his desk
+and was soon absorbed in his work.
+
+The next morning the _News-Record's_ double-leaded "leader" on the
+Coal Trust was a discharge of heavy artillery. But it was artillery
+in retreat. And in the succeeding days, the retreat continued--not
+precipitate but orderly, masterly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten days after their talk on the "coal conspiracy" Marian greeted him
+late in the afternoon with "Oh, such a row with Mrs. Mercer!"
+
+"Mrs. Mercer! Why, what was she angry about?"
+
+"She wasn't--at least, not at first. It was I. I went to see her and she
+asked me to thank you for stopping that fight on the coal conspiracy."
+
+"That was tactful of her," Howard said, turning away to hide his
+nervousness.
+
+"And I told her that you had not stopped, that you wouldn't stop until
+you had broken it up. And she smiled in a superior way and said I was
+quite mistaken, that I didn't read the paper, I haven't read it for
+several days, but I knew _you_, dear, and I remembered what you had
+said. And so we just had it. We were polite but furious when I went. I
+shall never go near her again."
+
+"But, unfortunately, we have stopped. We had to do it. We could
+accomplish nothing."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter. What angered me was her insinuation."
+
+"That was irritating. But, tell me, what if it had been true?" Howard's
+voice was strained and he was looking at her eagerly, with fever in his
+eyes.
+
+"But it couldn't be. It isn't worth while imagining. You could not be
+a coward and a traitor." So complete was her confidence in him that
+suspicion of him was impossible.
+
+"Would you sit in judgment on me?"
+
+"Not if I could help it."
+
+"But you can--you could help it." His manner was agitated, and he spoke
+almost fiercely. "I am free," he went on, and as she watched his
+eyes she understood why men feared him. "I do what I will. I am not
+accountable to you, not even to you. I have never asked you to approve
+of me, to approve what I do, to love me. You are free also, free to
+love, free to withdraw your love. I follow the law of my own being. You
+must take me as you find me or not at all."
+
+She tried to stop him but could not. His words poured on. He leaned
+forward and took her hand and his eyes were brilliant and piercing. "I
+love you," he said. "Ah, how I love you--not because you love me, not
+because you are an angel, not because you are a superior being. No, not
+for any reason in all this wide world but because you are you. Do what
+you will and I shall love you. Whether I had to look up among the stars
+or down in the mire to find you, I would look just as steadily, just as
+proudly."
+
+He drew along breath and his hand trembled. "If I were a traitor, then,
+if you loved me, you would say, 'What! Is he to be found among traitors?
+How I love treason!' If I were a coward, liar, thief, a sum of all the
+vices, then, if you ever had loved me you would love me still. I want
+no love with mental reservations, no love with ifs and buts and
+provided-thats. I want love, free and fearless, that adapts itself to
+changing human nature as the colour of the sea adapts itself to the
+colour of the sky; love that does not have to be cajoled and persuaded
+lest it be not there when I most need it. I want the love that loves."
+
+"You know you have it." She had been compelled by his mood and was
+herself in a fever. She looked at him with the expression which used to
+make his nerves vibrate. "You know that no human being ever was more to
+another than I to you. But you can't expect me to be just the same
+as you are. I love _you_--not the false, base creature you picture. I
+admire the way you love, but I could not love in that way. Thank God, my
+love, my dear--I shall never be put to that test. For my love for you is
+my--my all."
+
+"We are very serious about a mere supposition."
+
+Howard was laughing, but not naturally. "We take each the other far too
+seriously. I'm sorry you idealise me so. Who knows--you might find me
+out some day--and then--well, don't blame me."
+
+Marian said no more, but late that evening she put her hands on his
+shoulders and said: "You're not hiding something from me--something we
+ought to bear together?"
+
+"Not I." Howard smiled down into her eyes and kissed her.
+
+His mood of reaction, of hysteria had passed. He was thinking how
+little in reality she had had to do with his outburst. He had not been
+addressing her at all, except as she seemed to him for the moment the
+embodiment of his self-respect--or rather, of an "absurd," "extremely
+youthful" ideal of self-respect which he had "outgrown."
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+THE PROMISED LAND.
+
+
+A woman with a powerful personality may absorb in herself a man of
+strong and resolute ambition, may compel him to make her his career, to
+feel that to get and to keep her is all that he asks from destiny. But
+Marian was not such a woman.
+
+She had come into Howard's life at just the time and in just the way to
+arouse his latent passion for power and to give it a sufficient initial
+impetus. It was love for her that set him to lifting himself from among
+those who work through themselves alone to the potent few who work
+chiefly by directing the labour of others.
+
+Once in this class, once having tasted the joy of power, Howard was
+lost to her. She was unable to restrain or direct, or even clearly to
+understand. She became an incident in his life. As riches came with
+power, they pushed him to one side in her life. Living in separate parts
+of a large house, leading separate lives, rarely meeting except when
+others were present--following the typical life of New Yorkers of
+fortune and fashion--they gradually grew to know little and see little
+and think little each of the other.
+
+There was no abruptness in the transition. Every day had contributed its
+little toward widening the gap. There was no coolness, no consciousness
+of separation; simply the slow formation of the habit of complete
+independence each of the other.
+
+His ambitions absorbed his thought and his time. To them he found her
+very useful. The social side--forming and keeping up friendly relations
+with the families whose heads were men of influence--was a vital part of
+his plan. But he used her just as he used every and any one else whom
+he found capable of contributing to his advancement; and, as she never
+insisted upon herself, never sought to influence or even to inquire into
+his course of action, she did not find him out.
+
+She was in a vague way an unhappy woman. A discontent, a feeling that
+her life was incomplete, perpetually teased her. He was distinctly
+unhappy, often gloomy, at times morose. In her rare analytic moods she
+attributed their failure to prolong the happiness of their courtship to
+the hard work which kept him from her, kept them from enjoying the great
+love which she assumed they felt each for the other. She would not and
+could not see that that love had long disappeared, leaving a mask of
+forms, of phrases and of impulses of passion to conceal its departure.
+And to this view he outwardly assented, when she suggested it; but he
+knew that she was deceiving herself as to him, and wondered if she were
+not deceiving herself as to her own feelings.
+
+Up to the time of the "Coal Conspiracy" and his attempt to put himself
+straight with her, the idea of his love for her and of her oneness with
+him had at least a hold upon his imagination. He then saw how far apart
+they had drifted; and he dismissed from his mind even the pretense
+that love played any part in his life. After that definite break with
+principle and self-respect for the sake of his coal holdings, his
+Wall Street friends and his newspaper career, the development of his
+character continued along strictly logical lines with accelerating
+speed. And it was accompanied by an ever franker, more cynical
+acceptance of the change.
+
+He could not deceive himself, nor can any man with the clearness of
+judgment necessary to great achievement--although many "successful" men,
+for obvious reasons of self-interest, diligently encourage the popular
+theory of warped conscience. He was well aware that he had shifted from
+the ideal of use _to_ his fellow-beings to the ideal of use _of_ his
+fellow-beings, from the ideal of character to the ideal of reputation.
+And he knew that the two ideals can not be combined and that he not
+only was not attempting to combine them but had no desire so to do. He
+despised his former ideals; but also he despised himself for despising
+them.
+
+His quarrel with himself was that he seemed to himself a rather vulgar
+sort of hypocrite. This was highly disagreeable to him, as his whole
+nature tended to make him wish to be himself, to make him shrink from
+the part of the truckler and the sycophant which he was playing so
+haughtily and so artistically. At times it exasperated him that he could
+not regard his change of front as a deliberate sale for value received,
+and not as the weak and cowardly surrender which he saw that it really
+was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the day after Howard's forty-fourth birthday Coulter fell dead at the
+entrance to the Union Club. When Stokely heard of it he went direct to
+the _News-Record_ office.
+
+"I happen to know something about Coulter's will," he said to Howard.
+"The _News-Record_ stock is to be sold and you and I are to have the
+first chance to take it at three hundred and fifty--which is certainly
+cheap enough."
+
+"Why did he arrange to dispose of the most valuable part of his estate?"
+
+"Well, we had an agreement about it. Then, too, Coulter had no faith in
+newspapers as a permanent investment. You know there are only the widow,
+the girl and that worthless boy. Heavens, what an ass that boy is!
+Coulter has tied up his estate until the youngest grandchild comes of
+age. He hopes that there will be a son among the grandchildren who will
+realise his dream."
+
+"Dream?" Howard smiled. "I didn't know that Coulter ever indulged in
+dreams."
+
+"Yes, he had the rich man's mania--the craze for founding a family. So
+everything is to be put into real estate and long-term bonds. And for
+years New York is to be reminded of Samuel Coulter by some incapable
+who'll use his name and his money to advertise nature's contempt for
+family pride in her distributions of brains. I think even a fine tomb is
+a wiser memorial."
+
+"Well, how much of the stock shall you take?" Howard asked.
+
+"Not a share," Stokely replied dejectedly. "Coulter couldn't have died
+at a worse time for me. I'm tied in every direction and shall be for a
+year at least. So you've got a chance to become controlling owner."
+
+"I?" Howard laughed. "Where could I get a million and a half?"
+
+"How much could you take in cash?"
+
+"Well--let me see--perhaps--five hundred thousand."
+
+"You can borrow the million with the stock as collateral."
+
+"But how could I pay?"
+
+"Why, your dividends at our present rate would be more than two hundred
+thousand a year. Your interest charge would be under seventy-five
+thousand. Perhaps I can arrange it so that it won't be more than fifty
+thousand. You can let the balance go on reducing the loan. Then I may
+be able to put you onto a few good things. At any rate you can't lose
+anything. Your stock would bring five hundred even at forced sale. It's
+your chance, old man. I want to see you take it."
+
+"I'll think it over. I have no head for figures."
+
+"Let me manage it for you." Stokely rose to go. Howard began thanking
+him, but he cut him off with:
+
+"You owe me no thanks. You've made money for me--big money. I owe you
+my help. Besides, I don't want any outsider in here. Let me know when
+you're ready." He nodded and was gone.
+
+"What a chance!" Howard repeated again and again.
+
+He was looking out over New York.
+
+Twenty years before he had faced it, asking of it nothing but a living
+and his freedom. For twenty years he had fought. Year by year, even
+when he seemed to be standing still or going backward, he had steadily
+gained, making each step won a vantage-ground for forward attack. And
+now--victory. Power, wealth, fame, all his!
+
+Yet a deep melancholy came over him. And he fell to despising himself
+for the kind of exultation that filled him, its selfishness, its
+sordidness, the absence of all high enthusiasm. Why was he denied the
+happiness of self-deception? Why could he not forget the means, blot it
+out, now that the end was attained?
+
+His mind went out, not to Marian, but to that other--the one sleeping
+under the many, many layers of autumn leaves at Asheville. And he heard
+a voice saying so faintly, so timidly: "I lay awake night after night
+listening to your breathing, and whispering under my breath, 'I love
+you, I love you. Why can't you love me?'" And then--he flung down the
+cover of his desk and rushed away home.
+
+"Why did I think of Alice?" he asked himself. And the answer
+came--because in those days, in the days of his youth, he had had
+beliefs, high principles; he had been incapable of this slavery to
+appearances, to vain show, incapable of this passion for reputation
+regardless of character. His weaknesses were then weaknesses only, and
+not, as now, the laws of his being controlling his every act.
+
+He smiled cynically at the self of such a few years ago--yet he could
+not meet those honest, fearless eyes that looked out at him from the
+mirror of memory.
+
+He was triumphant, but self-respect had gone and not all the thick
+swathings of vanity covered him from the stabs of self-contempt.
+
+"When I am really free, when the paper is paid for and I can do as
+I please, why not try to be a man again? Why not? It would cost me
+nothing."
+
+But a man is the sum of _all_ his past.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+IN POSSESSION.
+
+
+Stokely arranged the loan, and within six months Howard was controlling
+owner of the _News-Record._ There was a debt of a million and a quarter
+attached to his ownership, but he saw how that would be wiped out. Once
+more he threw himself into his work with the energy of a boy. He had
+to give much of his time to the business department--to the details of
+circulation and advertising. He felt that the profits of the paper
+could be greatly increased by improving its facilities for reaching
+the advertiser and the public. He had never been satisfied with the
+circulation methods; but theretofore his ignorance of business and
+his position as mere salaried editor had acted in restraint upon his
+interference with the "ground floor."
+
+As he had suspected, the business office was afflicted with the twin
+diseases--routine and imitativeness. It followed an old system, devised
+in days of small circulation and grudgingly improved, not by thought
+on the part of those who circulated the paper, but by compulsion on
+the part of the public. No attempts were made to originate schemes for
+advertising the paper. The only methods were wooden variations upon
+placards in the street cars and the elevated stations, and cards hung
+up at the news-stands. As forgetting advertising business, they thought
+they showed enterprise by a little canvassing among the conspicuous
+merchants in Greater New York.
+
+Howard had charts made showing the circulation by districts. With these
+as a basis he ordered an elaborate campaign to "push" the paper in the
+districts where it was circulated least and to increase its hold where
+it was strong. "We do not reach one-third of the people who would like
+to take our paper," he told Jowett, the business manager. "Let us have
+an army of agents and let us take up our territory by districts."
+
+The Sunday edition was the largest source of revenue, both because it
+carried a great deal more advertising at much higher rates than did the
+week-day editions, and because it sold at a price which yielded a profit
+on the paper itself, while the price of the weekday editions did not.
+News constituted less than one-fourth of its contents. The rest was
+"feature articles," as interesting a week late to a man in Seattle as on
+the day of publication within a mile of the office.
+
+"We get out the very best magazine in the market," said Howard to
+Jowett. "Are we pushing it in the east, in the west, in the south? Look
+at the charts.
+
+"We have a Sunday circulation of five hundred in Oregon, of one thousand
+in Texas, of six hundred in Georgia, of two thousand in Maine. Why not
+ten times as much in each of those states? Why not ten times as much as
+we now have near New York?"
+
+There was no reason except failure to "push" the paper. That reason
+Howard proceeded to remove. But these enterprises involved large
+expenditures, perhaps might mean postponement of the payment of the
+debt. Receipts must be increased and the most promising way was an
+increase in the advertising business.
+
+Howard noted on the chart nineteen cities and large towns near New York
+in each of which the daily circulation of the _News-Record_ was equal
+to that of any paper published there and far exceeded the combined
+circulations of all the home dailies on Sunday. This suggested a system
+of local advertising pages, and for its working out he engaged one of
+the most capable newspaper advertising men in the city. Within three
+months the idea had "caught on" and, instead of sending useless columns
+of New York "want-ads" and the like to places where they could not be
+useful, the _News-Record_ was presenting to its readers in twelve cities
+and towns the advertisements of their local merchants.
+
+A year of this work, with Howard giving many hours of each day
+personally to tiresome details, brought the natural results. The profits
+of the _News-Record_ had risen to five hundred and forty thousand, of
+which Howard's share was nearly three hundred thousand. The next year
+the profits were seven hundred and fifty thousand, and Howard had
+reduced his debt to eight hundred thousand.
+
+"We shall be free and clear in less than three years," he said to
+Marian.
+
+"If we have luck," she added.
+
+"No--if we work--and we shall. Luck is a stone which envy flings at
+success."
+
+"Then you don't think you have been lucky?"
+
+"Indeed I do not."
+
+"Not even," she smiled, drawing herself up.
+
+"Not even--" he said with a faint, sad answering smile. "If you only
+knew how hard I worked preparing myself to be able to get you when you
+came; if you only, only knew how life made me pay, pay, pay; if you only
+knew--"
+
+"Go on," she said, coming closer to him.
+
+He sighed--not for the reason of sentiment which she fancied, though he
+put his arms around her. "How willingly I paid," he evaded.
+
+He went to his desk and she stood looking at him. There was still
+the charm of youth, even freshness, in her beauty--and she was not
+unconscious of the fact.
+
+And he--he was handsome, distinguished looking and certainly did not
+suggest age or the approach of age; but in his hair, so grey at the
+temples, in the stern, rather haughty lines of his features, in the
+weariness of his eyes, there was not a vestige of youth. "How he has
+worked for me and for his ideals," she thought, sadly yet proudly. "Ah,
+he is indeed a great man, and _my_ husband!" And she bent over him
+and kissed him on an impulse to a kind of tenderness which was now so
+strange to her that it made her feel shy.
+
+"And what a radical you'll be," she laughed, after a moment's silence.
+"What a radical, what a democrat!"
+
+"When?" He was flushing a little and avoided her eyes.
+
+"When you're free--really the proprietor--able to express your own
+views, all your own views. We shall become outcasts."
+
+"I wonder," he replied slowly, "does a rich man own his property or does
+it own him?"
+
+For an instant he had an impulse of his old longing for sympathy, for
+companionship. She was now thirty-six and, save for an expression of
+experience, of self-control, seemed hardly so much as thirty. But with
+the years, with the habit of self-restraint, with instinctive rather
+than conscious realisation of his indifference toward her, had come a
+chill perceptible at the surface and permeating her entire character. In
+her own way she had become as self-absorbed, as ambitious as he.
+
+He looked at her, felt this chill, sighed, smiled at himself. Yes, he
+was alone--and he preferred to be alone.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+THE HARVEST.
+
+
+Through all his scheming and shifting Howard had kept the _News-Record_
+in the main an "organ of the people." Coulter and Stokely had on many
+occasions tried to persuade him to change, but he had stood out. He did
+not confess to them that his real reason was not his alleged principles
+but his cold judgment that the increases in circulation which produced
+increases in advertising patronage were dependent upon the paper's
+reputation of fearless democracy.
+
+In the fourth year of his ownership he felt that the time had come for
+the change, that he could safely slip over to the other side--the
+side of wealth and power, the winning side, the side with offices
+and privileges to distribute. His debt was so far reduced that he had
+nothing to fear from it. A presidential campaign was coming on and was
+causing unusual confusion, a general shift of party lines. And he had
+put the _News-Record_ in such a position that it could move in any
+direction without shock to its readers.
+
+The "great battle" was on--the battle he had in his younger days looked
+forward to and longed for--the battle against Privilege and for
+a "restoration of government by the people." The candidates were
+nominated, the platforms put forward and the issue squarely joined.
+
+The same issue had been involved in previous campaigns; but the
+statement of the case by the party opposed to "government of, by and for
+plutocracy" had been fantastic, extreme, entangled with social, economic
+and political lunacies. And Howard had strengthened the _News-Record_ by
+refusing to permit it to "go crazy." Now, however, there was in honesty
+no reason for refusing support to the advocates of his professed
+principles.
+
+But the _News-Record_ was silent. Howard and Marian went away to their
+cottage at Newport, and he left rigid instructions that no political
+editorials were to be published except those which he might send. There
+he got typhoid fever and was at the point of death for two weeks.
+
+Marian gave herself to nursing him, stayed close beside him, read books
+and the newspapers to him throughout his convalescence. They were
+more intimate than they had been for years. A feeling bearing a remote
+resemblance to the love he had once had for her arose out of his
+weakness and dependence and his seclusion from the instruments and
+objects of his ambition. And she swept aside the barriers she had
+erected between herself and him and returned, as nearly as one may, to
+the love and interest of their early days together.
+
+In the first week of September came Stokely with Senator Hereford, the
+chairman of the "Plutocracy" campaign committee.
+
+"I shall not annoy you with evasions," said Hereford, "as Mr. Stokely
+assures me that I may speak freely to you, that you personally are with
+us. The fact is, our campaign is in a bad way, especially in New York
+State, and there especially in New York City."
+
+"You surprise me," said Howard. "All my information has come from the
+newspapers which my wife reads me. I had gathered that the victory was
+all but won."
+
+"We encourage that impression. You know how many weak-kneed fellows
+there are who like to be on the winning side. We've been pouring out the
+money and stand ready to pour it out like water. But these damned reform
+ballot-laws make it hard for us to control the vote. We buy, but we fear
+that the goods will not be delivered. Feeling is high against us. Even
+our farmers and shopkeepers are acting queerly. And the other fellows
+have at last put up a safe man on a conservative platform."
+
+Howard turned his face away. There was still the memory, the now
+quickened memory, of his former self to make him wince at being included
+in such an "us."
+
+"You can't afford to keep silent any longer," Hereford continued.
+"You've done the cause a world of good by your silence thus far. You
+have the reputation of being the leading popular organ, and your keeping
+quiet has meant thousands of votes for us. But the time has come to
+attack. And you must attack if we are to carry New York. You can turn
+the tide in the state, and--well, we have a very high regard for your
+genius for making your points clearly and interestingly. We need your
+ideas for our editors and speakers as much as we need your influence."
+
+"I cannot discuss it to-day," Howard answered after a moment's silence.
+"It would be a grave step for the _News-Record_ to take. I am not well,
+as you see. To-morrow or next day I'll decide. You'll see my answer in
+the paper, I think." He closed his eyes with significant weariness.
+
+Hereford looked at him uneasily. Just outside the door Stokely
+whispered, "Don't be alarmed. You've got him. He's with us, I tell you."
+
+"I must make sure," whispered Hereford. "I wish to speak to him alone
+for a moment."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Howard," he said as he re-entered the room. "I
+forgot an important part of my mission. Our candidate authorized me to
+say to you on his behalf that he felt sure you would see your duty; that
+he esteemed your character and judgment too highly to have any doubts;
+and that he intends to show his appreciation of the conscientious,
+independent vote which is rallying to his support; in the event of his
+election, he feels that he could not do so in a more satisfactory manner
+than by offering you either a place in his cabinet or an ambassadorship
+as you may prefer."
+
+As soon as Howard saw Hereford returning, he knew the reason. He had
+never before been offered a bribe; but he could not mistake the meaning
+of Hereford's bold yet frightened expression. He kept his eyes averted
+during the delivery of the long, rambling sentence. At the end, he
+looked at Hereford frankly and said in his most gracious manner:
+
+"Thank him for me, will you? And express my appreciation of so high a
+compliment from such a man."
+
+Hereford looked relieved, delighted. "I'm glad to have met you, Mr.
+Howard, and to have had so satisfactory an interview."
+
+Again outside the door, he muttered gleefully: "Yes, we've him.
+Otherwise he would have had his servants kick me down stairs. Gad, no
+wonder ---- is on his way to the Presidency, I had a sneaking fear that
+this fellow might be sincere. But _he_ saw through him without ever
+having seen him. I suppose two men of that stripe instinctively
+understand each other."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was on a Sunday afternoon. On the following Wednesday, as Marian
+came into Howard's sitting-room with the newspapers, she laughed: "I've
+been reading such a speech from your candidate, you radical! I must
+say I liked to read it. It was so like you, your very phrases in many
+places, the things you used to talk to me before you gave me up as
+hopeless. Just listen."
+
+And she read him the oration--a reproduction of the Howard she first
+saw, the Howard she admired and loved and had never lost. "Isn't it
+superb?" she asked at the end. "You must have written it for him. Don't
+you like it?"
+
+"Very able," was Howard's only comment.
+
+Marian continued to read the paper, glancing from column to column,
+giving him the substance of the news. Soon she reached the editorial
+page. He was stealthily watching her face. He saw her glance through a
+few lines of the leader, start, read on, look in a terrified way at him,
+and then skip abruptly to the next page.
+
+"Read me the leader, won't you?" he asked.
+
+"My voice is tired," she pleaded. "I'll read it after awhile."
+
+"Please," he insisted. "I'm especially anxious to hear it."
+
+"I think," she almost stammered, "that somebody has taken advantage
+of your illness. I didn't want to tell you until I'd had a chance to
+think."
+
+"Please read it." His tone was abrupt. She had never heard that tone
+before.
+
+She read. It was an assertion of that which her Howard most disbelieved,
+most protested against; a defense of the public corruption she had heard
+him denounce so often; an attack upon the ideas, the principles, the
+elements she had so often heard him eulogize. It was as adroit as it was
+detestable, as plausible as it was unprincipled.
+
+When she had done, there was a long silence which he broke. "What do you
+think of it?"
+
+"Only a wretch, an enemy of yours could have written it. Who can it have
+been?" Her eyes were ablaze and her voice trembled with anger.
+
+"I wrote it," he said.
+
+He did not dare to look at her for a few seconds. Then, with a flimsy
+mask of pretended calmness only the more clearly revealing self-contempt
+and cowardice, he faced her amazed eyes, her pale cheeks, her parted
+lips--and dropped his gaze to the floor.
+
+"You?" she whispered. "You?"
+
+"Yes, I."
+
+She sat so still that he reached over and touched her hand. It was cold.
+She shivered and drew it away. They were silent for a long time--several
+minutes. She was looking at his face. It was old and sad and
+feeble--pitiful, contemptible. She had never seen those lines of
+weakness about his mouth before. She had never before noted that his
+features had lost the expression of exalted character, the light of free
+and independent manhood which made her look again the first time she saw
+him. When had the man she loved departed? When had the new man come? How
+long had she been giving herself to a stranger--and _such_ a stranger?
+
+"Yes--I," he repeated. "I have come over to your side." He laughed and
+she shivered again. "Well--what do you think?"
+
+"Think?--I?--Oh, I think----"
+
+She burst into tears, flung herself down at his feet and buried her head
+in his lap.
+
+"I think nothing," she sobbed, "except that I--I love you."
+
+He fell to smoothing her hair, slowly, gently, patronisingly. His face
+was composed and he was looking down at her trembling head and agitated
+shoulders with an absent-minded smile. How easily this once
+dreaded crisis had passed! How he had overestimated her! How he had
+underestimated himself!
+
+His glance and his thoughts soon fastened upon the copy of his newspaper
+which she had thrown aside--_his_ newspaper indeed, his creation and his
+creature, the epitome of his intellect and character, of his strength
+and his weakness. Half a million circulation daily, three quarters of a
+million on Sunday--how mighty as a direct influence upon the people! Its
+clearness and vigour, its intelligence, its truth-like sophistry--how
+mighty as an indirect influence upon the minds of other editors and of
+public men! "Power--Success," he repeated to himself in an exaltation of
+vanity and arrogance.
+
+Marian lifted her head and, turning, put it against his knee. She
+reached out for his hand. He began to speak at once in a low persuasive
+voice:
+
+"Trust me, dear, can't you? You do not--have not been reading the paper
+until recently. You are not interested in politics. There have been many
+changes in the few last years. And I too have changed. I am no longer
+without responsibilities. They have sobered me, have given me
+an appreciation of property, stability, conservatism. Youth is
+enthusiastic, theoretical. I have--"
+
+"Ah, but I do trust you," she interrupted eagerly, fearful lest his
+explanations would make it the more difficult for her to convince
+herself of what she felt she must believe if life were to go on. "And
+you--I don't want you to excite yourself. You must be quiet--must get
+well."
+
+Each avoided meeting the other's eyes as she arranged the pillows for
+him before leaving him alone to rest.
+
+The longer she juggled with her discovery the less appalling it seemed.
+His line of action fitted too closely to her own ambitions of social
+distinction, social leadership. If he had been her lover, the shock
+would have killed love and set up contempt in its stead. But he was
+not her lover, had not been for years; and to find that her husband was
+doing a husband's duty, was winning position and power for himself and
+therefore for his wife--that was a disclosure with mitigating aspects at
+least. Besides, might she not be in part mistaken? Surely any course so
+satisfactory in its results could not be wholly wrong, might perhaps be
+the right in an unexpected, unaccustomed form.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+SUCCESS.
+
+
+French had made a portrait of the new American ambassador to the Court
+of St. James and it was shown at the spring exhibition of the Royal
+Academy. The ambassador and his wife wished to see how it had been
+hung, but they did not wish to be seen. So they chose an early hour of
+a chill, rainy May morning to drive in a hansom from their place in Park
+Lane to Burlington House.
+
+They found the portrait in Room VI, on the line, in a corner, but where
+it had the benefit of such light as there was. When they entered no one
+was there; but, as they were standing close to the picture, admiring
+the energy and simplicity of the strokes of the master's brush, a crowd
+swept in and enclosed them.
+
+"Let us go," Howard said in a low tone.
+
+Just then a man, almost at his shoulder because of the pressure of those
+behind, said: "Wonderful, isn't it? I've never seen a better example of
+his work. He had a subject that suited him perfectly."
+
+"No, let us stay," Marian whispered in reply to her husband. "They can't
+see our faces and I'd like to hear."
+
+"Yes, it is superb," came the answer to the man behind them in a voice
+unmistakably American. "Now, tell me, Saverhill, what sort of a person
+would you say the ambassador is from that picture? You don't know him?"
+
+"Never heard of him until I read of his appointment," replied the first
+voice.
+
+"I've heard of him often enough," came in the American voice. "But I've
+never seen him."
+
+"You know him now," resumed the Englishman, "inside as well as out.
+French always paints what he sees and always sees what he's painting."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Let us go," whispered Marian. But Howard did not heed her.
+
+"I see--a fallen man. He was evidently a real man once; but he sold
+himself."
+
+"Yes? Where does it show?"
+
+"He's got a good mind, this fellow-countryman of yours. There are the
+eyes of a thinker and a doer. Nothing could have kept him down. His face
+is almost as relentless as Kitchener's and fully as aggressive, except
+that it shows intellect, and Kitchener's doesn't. Now note the corners
+of his eyes, Marshall, and his mouth and nostrils and chin, and you'll
+see why he sold himself, and the--the consequences."
+
+Howard and Marian, fascinated, compelled, looked where the unknown
+requested.
+
+"I think I see what you mean," came in Marshall's voice, laughingly.
+"But go on."
+
+"Ah, there it all is--hypocrisy, vanity, lack of principle, and,
+plainest of all, weakness. It's a common enough type among your
+successful men. The man himself is the fixed market price for a certain
+kind of success. But, according to French, this ambassador of yours
+seems to know what he has paid; and the knowledge doesn't make him more
+content with his bargain. He has more brains than vanity; therefore he's
+an unhappy hypocrite instead of a happy self-deceiver."
+
+Howard and Marian shrunk together with their heads close in the effort
+to make sure of concealing their faces. She was suffering for herself,
+but more acutely for him. She knew, as if she were looking into his
+mind, his frightful humiliation. "Hereafter," she thought, "whenever any
+one looks at him he will feel the thought behind the look."
+
+"How nearly did I come to him?" asked Saverhill.
+
+Howard started and Marian caught the rail for support.
+
+"A centre-shot," replied Marshall, "if the people who know him and have
+talked to me about him tell the truth."
+
+"Oh, they're 'on to' him, as you say, over there, are they?"
+
+"No, not everybody. Only his friends and the few who are on the inside.
+There's an ugly story going about privately as to how he got the
+ambassadorship. They say he was bought with it. But--he's admired and
+envied even by a good many who know or suspect that he's only an article
+of commerce. He's got the cash and he's got position; and his paper
+gives him tremendous power. Then too, as you say, all about him there
+are men like himself. The only punishment he's likely to get is the
+penalty of having to live with himself."
+
+"A good, round price if French is not mistaken," replied Saverhill.
+
+The two men passed on. Howard and Marian looked guiltily about, then
+slipped away in the opposite direction. He helped her into the waiting
+hansom. As they were driven homeward she cast a stealthy side-glance at
+him.
+
+"Yes," she thought, "the portrait is a portrait of his face; and his
+face is a portrait of himself."
+
+He caught her glance in the little mirror in the side of the
+hansom--caught it and read it. And he began to hate her, this instrument
+to his punishment, this constant remembrancer of his downfall.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great God Success, by
+John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT GOD SUCCESS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 7989.txt or 7989.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/7/9/8/7989/
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, William Craig, Charles Franks and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+