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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Between Friends, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Between Friends
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8441]
+Posting Date: July 30, 2009
+Last Updated: November 3, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETWEEN FRIENDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andre Boutin-Maloney
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BETWEEN FRIENDS
+
+By Robert W. Chambers
+
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down; lying
+there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls, and the
+breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity of himself.
+
+Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed his
+bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the automatic
+pulses which never cease.
+
+Sometimes, when the sky itself crashes earthward and the world lies in
+ruins from horizon to horizon, life goes on.
+
+The things that men live through--and live!
+
+But no doubt Death was too busy elsewhere to attend to Drene.
+
+He had become very lean by the time it was all over. Gray glinted on his
+temples; gray softened his sandy mustache: youth was finished as far as
+he was concerned.
+
+An odd idea persisted in his mind that it had been winter for many
+years. And the world thawed out very slowly for him.
+
+But broken trees leaf out, and hewed roots sprout; and what he had so
+long mistaken for wintry ashes now gleamed warmly like the orange
+and gold of early autumn. After a while he began to go about more or
+less--little excursions from the dim privacy of mind and soul--and he
+found the sun not very gray; and a south wind blowing in the world once
+more.
+
+Quair and Guilder were in the studio that day on business; Drene
+continued to modify his composition in accordance with Guilder’s
+suggestions; Quair, always curious concerning Drene, was becoming slyly
+impudent.
+
+“And listen to me, Guilder. What the devil’s a woman between friends?”
+ argued Quair, with a malicious side glance at Drene. “You take my best
+girl away from me--”
+
+“But I don’t,” remarked his partner dryly.
+
+“For the sake of argument, you do. What happens? Do I raise hell? No. I
+merely thank you. Why? Because I don’t want her if you can get her away.
+That,” he added, with satisfaction, “is philosophy. Isn’t it, Drene?”
+
+Guilder intervened pleasantly:
+
+“I don’t think Drene is particularly interested in philosophy. I’m sure
+I’m not. Shut up, please.”
+
+Drene, gravely annoyed, continued to pinch bits of modeling wax out of a
+round tin box, and to stick them all over the sketch he was modifying.
+
+Now and then he gave a twirl to the top of his working table, which
+revolved with a rusty squeak.
+
+“If you two unusually intelligent gentlemen ask me what good a woman the
+world--” began Quair.
+
+“But we don’t,” interrupted Guilder, in the temperate voice peculiar to
+his negative character.
+
+“Anyway,” insisted Quair, “here’s what I think of ‘em--”
+
+“My model, yonder,” said Drene, a slight shrug of contempt, “happens
+to be feminine, and may also be human. Be decent enough to defer the
+development of your rather tiresome theory.”
+
+The girl on the model-stand laughed outright at the rebuke, stretched
+her limbs and body, and relaxed, launching a questioning glance at
+Drene.
+
+“All right; rest a bit,” said the sculptor, smearing the bit of wax he
+was pinching over the sketch before him.
+
+He gave another twirl or two to the table, wiped his bony fingers on
+a handful of cotton waste, picked up his empty pipe, and blew into the
+stem, reflectively.
+
+Quair, one of the associated architects of the new opera, who had been
+born a gentleman and looked the perfect bounder, sauntered over to
+examine the sketch. He was still red from the rebuke he had invited.
+
+Guilder, his senior colleague, got up from the lounge and walked over
+also. Drene fitted the sketch into the roughly designed group, where it
+belonged, and stood aside, sucking meditatively on his empty pipe.
+
+After a silence:
+
+“It’s all right,” said Guilder.
+
+Quair remarked that the group seemed to lack flamboyancy. It is true,
+however, that, except for Guilder’s habitual restraint, the celebrated
+firm of architects was inclined to express themselves flamboyantly, and
+to interpret Renaissance in terms of Baroque.
+
+“She’s some girl,” added Quair, looking at the lithe, modeled figure,
+and then half turning to include the model, who had seated herself on
+the lounge, and was now gazing with interest at the composition sketched
+in by Drene for the facade of the new opera.
+
+“Carpeaux and his eternal group--it’s the murderous but inevitable
+standard of comparison,” mused Drene, with a whimsical glance at the
+photograph on the wall.
+
+“Carpeaux has nothing on this young lady,” insisted Quair flippantly;
+and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the model. Once or twice
+the two others, consulting before the wax group, heard the girl’s light,
+untroubled laughter behind their backs gaily responsive to Quair’s
+wit. Perhaps Quair’s inheritance had been humor, but to some it seemed
+perilously akin to mother-wit.
+
+The pockets of Guilder’s loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with linen
+tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over these for
+a while, semi-conscious of Quair’s bantering voice and the girl’s easily
+provoked laughter behind them. And, finally:
+
+“All right, Guilder,” said Drene briefly. And the firm of celebrated
+architects prepared to evacuate the studio--Quair exhibiting symptoms of
+incipient skylarking, in which he was said to be at his best.
+
+“Drop in on me at the office some time,” he suggested to the youthful
+model, in a gracious tone born of absolute self-satisfaction.
+
+“For luncheon or dinner?” retorted the girl, with smiling audacity.
+
+“You may stay to breakfast also--”
+
+“Oh, come on,” drawled Guilder, taking his colleague’s elbow.
+
+The sculptor yawned as Quair went out: then he closed the door then
+celebrated firm of architects, and wandered back rather aimlessly.
+
+For a while he stood by the great window, watching the pigeons on
+neighboring roof. Presently he returned to his table, withdrew the
+dancing figure with its graceful, wide flung arms, set it upon the
+squeaky revolving table once more, and studied it, yawning at intervals.
+
+The girl got up from the sofa behind him, went to the model-stand, and
+mounted it. For a few moments she was busy adjusting her feet to the
+chalk marks and blocks. Finally she took the pose. She always seemed
+inclined to be more or less vocal while Drene worked; her voice, if
+untrained, was untroubled. Her singing had never bothered Drene, nor,
+until the last few days, had he even particularly noticed her blithe
+trilling--as a man a field, preoccupied, is scarcely aware of the wild
+birds’ gay irrelevancy along the way.
+
+He happened to notice it now, and a thought passed through his mind that
+the country must be very lovely in the mild spring sunshine.
+
+As he worked, the brief visualization of young grass and the faint blue
+of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl’s careless singing, made for his
+dull concentration subtly pleasant environment.
+
+“May I rest?” she asked at length.
+
+“Certainly, if it’s necessary.”
+
+“I’ve brought my lunch. It’s twelve,” she explained.
+
+He glanced at her absently, rolling a morsel of wax; then, with slight
+irritation which ended in a shrug, he motioned her to descend.
+
+After all, girls, like birds, were eternally eating. Except for that,
+and incessant preening, existence meant nothing more important to either
+species.
+
+He had been busy for a few moments with the group when she said
+something to him, and he looked around from his abstraction. She was
+holding out toward him a chicken sandwich.
+
+When his mind came back from wool gathering, he curtly declined the
+offer, and, as an afterthought, bestowed upon her a wholly mechanical
+smile, in recognition of a generosity not welcome.
+
+“Why don’t you ever eat luncheon?” she asked.
+
+“Why should I?” he replied, preoccupied.
+
+“It’s bad for you not to. Besides, you are growing thin.”
+
+“Is that your final conclusion concerning me, Cecile?” he asked,
+absently.
+
+“Won’t you please take this sandwich?”
+
+Her outstretched arm more than what she said arrested his drifting
+attention again.
+
+“Why the devil do you want me to eat?” he inquired, fishing out his
+empty pipe and filling it.
+
+“You smoke too much. It’s bad for you. It will do very queer things to
+the lining of your stomach if you smoke your luncheon instead of eating
+it.”
+
+He yawned.
+
+“Is that so?” he said.
+
+“Certainly it’s so. Please take this sandwich.”
+
+He stood looking at the outstretched arm, thinking of other things and
+the girl sprang to her feet, caught his hand, opened the fingers, placed
+the sandwich on the palm, then, with a short laugh as though slightly
+disconcerted by her own audacity, she snatched the pipe from his left
+hand and tossed it upon the table. When she had reseated herself on
+the lounge beside her pasteboard box of luncheon, she became even more
+uncertain concerning the result of what she had done, and began to view
+with rising alarm the steady gray eyes that were so silently inspecting
+her.
+
+But after a moment Drene walked over to the sofa, seated himself,
+curiously scrutinized the sandwich which lay across the palm of his
+hand, then gravely tasted it.
+
+“This will doubtless give me indigestion,” he remarked. “Why, Cecile, do
+you squander your wages on nourishment for me?”
+
+“It cost only five cents.”
+
+“But why present five cents to me?” “I gave ten to a beggar this
+morning.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Was he grateful?”
+
+“He seemed to be.”
+
+“This sandwich is excellent; but if I feel the worse for it, I’ll not be
+very grateful to you.” But he continued eating.
+
+“‘The woman tempted me,’” she quoted, glancing at him sideways.
+
+After a moment’s survey of her:
+
+“You’re one of those bright, saucy, pretty, inexplicable things that
+throng this town and occasionally flit through this profession--aren’t
+you?”
+
+“Am I?”
+
+“Yes. Nobody looks for anything except mediocrity; you’re one of the
+surprises. Nobody expects you; nobody can account for you, but you
+appear now and then, here and there, anywhere, even everywhere--a pretty
+sparkle against the gray monotony of life, a momentary flash like a
+golden moat afloat in sunshine--and what then?”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“What then? What becomes of you? Where do you go? What do you turn
+into?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“You go somewhere, don’t you? You change into something, don’t you? What
+happens to you, petite Cigale?”
+
+“When?”
+
+“When the sunshine is turned off and the snow comes.”
+
+“I don’t know, Mr. Drene.” She broke her chocolate cake into halves and
+laid one on his knee.
+
+“Thanks for further temptation,” he said grimly.
+
+“You are welcome. It’s good, isn’t it?”
+
+“Excellent. Adam liked the apple, too. But it raised hell with him.”
+
+She laughed, shot a direct glance at him, and began to nibble her cake,
+with her eyes still fixed on him.
+
+Once or twice he encountered her gaze but his own always wandered
+absently elsewhere.
+
+“You think a great deal, don’t you?” she remarked.
+
+“Don’t you?”
+
+“I try not to--too much.”
+
+“What?” he asked, swallowing the last morsel of cake.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders:
+
+“What’s the advantage of thinking?”
+
+He considered her reply for a moment, her blue and rather childish
+eyes, and the very pure oval of her face. Then his attention flagged as
+usual--was wandering--when she sighed, very lightly, so that he scarcely
+heard it--merely noticed it sufficiently to conclude that, as usual,
+there was the inevitable hard luck story afloat in her vicinity, and
+that he lacked the interest to listen to it.
+
+“Thinking,” she said, “is a luxury to a tranquil mind and a punishment
+to a troubled one. So I try not to.”
+
+It was a moment or two before it occurred to him that the girl had
+uttered an unconscious epigram.
+
+“It sounded like somebody--probably Montaigne. Was it?” he inquired.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean.”
+
+“Oh. Then it wasn’t. You’re a funny little girl, aren’t you?”
+
+“Yes, rather.”
+
+“On purpose?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes.”
+
+He looked into her very clear eyes, now brightly blue with intelligent
+perception of his not too civil badinage.
+
+“And sometimes,” he went on, “you’re funny when you don’t intend to be.”
+
+“You are, too, Mr. Drene.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Didn’t you know it?”
+
+A dull color tinted his cheek bones.
+
+“No,” he said, “I didn’t know it.”
+
+“But you are. For instance, you don’t walk; you stalk. You do what
+novelists make their gloomy heroes do--you stride. It’s rather funny.”
+
+“Really. And do you find my movements comic?”
+
+She was a trifle scared, now, but she laughed her breathless, youthful
+laugh:
+
+“You are really very dramatic--a perfect story-book man. But, you know,
+sometimes they are funny when the author doesn’t intend them to be....
+Please don’t be angry.”
+
+Why the impudence of a model should have irritated him he was at a
+loss to understand--unless there lurked under that impudence a trace of
+unflattering truth.
+
+As he sat looking at her, all at once, and in an unexpected flash of
+self-illumination, he realized that habit had made of him an actor; that
+for a while--a long while--a space of time he could not at the moment
+conveniently compute--he had been playing a role merely because he had
+become accustomed to it.
+
+Disaster had cast him for a part. For a long while he had been that
+part. Now he was still playing it from sheer force of habit. His tragedy
+had really become only the shadow of a memory. Already he had emerged
+from that shadow into the everyday outer world. But he had forgotten
+that he still wore a somber makeup and costume which in the sunshine
+might appear grotesque. No wonder the world thought him funny.
+
+Glancing up from a perplexed and chagrined meditation he caught her
+eye--and found it penitent, troubled, and anxious.
+
+“You’re quite right,” he said, smiling easily and naturally; “I am
+unintentionally funny. And I really didn’t know it--didn’t suspect
+it--until this moment.”
+
+“Oh,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean--I know you are often unhappy--”
+
+“Nonsense!”
+
+“You are! Anybody can see--and you really do not seem to be very old,
+either--when you smile--”
+
+“I’m not very old,” he said, amused. “I’m not unhappy, either. If I ever
+was, the truth is that I’ve almost forgotten by this time what it was
+all about--”
+
+“A woman,” she quoted, “between friends”--and checked herself,
+frightened that she had dared interpret Quair’s malice.
+
+He changed countenance at that; the dull red of anger clouded his
+visage.
+
+“Oh,” she faltered, “I was not saucy, only sorry.... I have been sorry
+for you so long--”
+
+“Who intimated to you that a woman ever played any part in my career?”
+
+“It’s generally supposed. I don’t know anything more than that. But I’ve
+been--sorry. Love is a very dreadful thing,” she said under her breath.
+
+“Is it?” he asked, controlling a sudden desire to laugh.
+
+“Don’t you think so?”
+
+“I have not thought of it that way, recently.... I haven’t thought
+about it at all--for some years.... Have you?” he added, trying to speak
+gravely.
+
+“Oh, yes. I have thought of it,” she admitted.
+
+“And you conclude it to be a rather dreadful business?”
+
+“Yes, it is.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. A girl usually loves the wrong man. To be poor is
+always bad enough, but to be in love, too, is really very dreadful. It
+usually finishes us--you know.”
+
+“Are you in love?” he inquired, managing to repress his amusement.
+
+“I could be. I know that much.” She went to the sink, turned on the
+water, washed her hands, and stood with dripping fingers looking about
+for a towel.
+
+“I’ll get you one,” he said. When he brought it, she laughed and held
+out her hands to be dried.
+
+“Do you think you are a Sultana?” he inquired, draping the towel across
+her outstretched arms and leaving it there.
+
+“I thought perhaps you’d dry them,” she said sweetly.
+
+“Not in the business,” he remarked; and lighted his pipe.
+
+Her hands were her particular beauty, soft and snowy. She was much in
+demand among painters, and had posed many times for pictures of the
+Virgin, her hands usually resting against her breast.
+
+Now she bestowed great care upon them, thoroughly drying each separate,
+slender finger. Then she pushed back the heavy masses of her hair--“a
+miracle of silk and sunshine,” as Quair had whispered to her. That same
+hair, also, was very popular among painters.
+
+It was her figure that fascinated sculptors.
+
+“Are you ready?” grunted Drene. Work presently recommenced.
+
+She was entirely accustomed to praise from men, for her general
+attractiveness, for various separate features in what really was an
+unusually lovely ensemble.
+
+She was also accustomed to flattery, to importunity, to the ordinary
+variety of masculine solicitation; to the revelation of genuine feeling,
+too, in its various modes of expression--sentimental, explosive,
+insinuating--the entire gamut.
+
+She had remained, however, untouched; curious and amused, perhaps, yet
+quite satisfied, so far, to be amused; and entirely content with her own
+curiosity.
+
+She coquetted when she thought it safe; learned many things she had
+not suspected; was more cautious afterwards, but still, at intervals,
+ventured to use her attractiveness as a natural lure, as an excuse, as
+a reason, as a weapon, when the probable consequences threatened no
+embarrassment or unpleasantness for her.
+
+She was much liked, much admired, much attempted, and entirely
+untempted.
+
+When the Make-up Club gave its annual play depicting the foibles of
+artists and writers in the public eye, Cecile White was always cast for
+a role which included singing and dancing.
+
+On and off for the last year or two she had posed for Drene, had
+dropped into his studio to lounge about when he had no need of her
+professionally, and when she had half an hour of idleness confronting
+her.
+
+As she stood there now on the model stand, gazing dreamily from his busy
+hands to his lean, intent features, it occurred to her that this day
+had not been a sample of their usual humdrum relations. From the
+very beginning of their business relations he had remained merely her
+employer, self-centered, darkly absorbed in his work, or, when not
+working, bored and often yawning. She had never come to know him any
+better than when she first laid eyes on him.
+
+Always she had been a little interested in him, a little afraid,
+sometimes venturing an innocent audacity, out of sheer curiosity
+concerning the effect on him. But never had she succeeded in stirring
+him to any expression of personal feeling in regard to herself, one way
+or the other.
+
+Probably he had no personal feeling concerning her. It seemed odd to
+her; model and master thrown alone together, day after day, usually
+became friends in some degree. But there had been nothing at all of
+camaraderie in their relationship, only a colorless, professional
+sans-gene, the informality of intimacy without the kindly essence of
+personal interest on his part.
+
+He paid her wages promptly; said good morning when she came, and
+good night when she went; answered her questions when she asked them
+seriously; relapsed into indifference or into a lazy and not too civil
+badinage when she provoked him to it; and that was all.
+
+He never complimented her, never praised her; yet he must have thought
+her a good model, or he would not have continued to send for her.
+
+“Do you think me pretty?” she had asked one day, saucily invading one of
+his yawning silences.
+
+“I think you’re pretty good,” he replied, “as a model. You’d be quite
+perfect if you were also deaf and dumb.”
+
+That had been nearly a year ago. She thought of it now, a slight heat
+in her cheeks as she remembered the snub, and her almost childish
+amazement, and the hurt and offended silence which lasted all that
+morning, but which, if he noticed at all, was doubtless entirely
+gratifying to him.
+
+“May I rest?”
+
+“If it’s necessary.”
+
+She sprang lightly to the floor walked around behind him, and stood
+looking at his work.
+
+“Do you want to know my opinion?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” he said, with unexpected urbanity; “if you are clever enough to
+have an opinion. What is it?”
+
+She said, looking at the wax figure of herself and speaking with
+deliberation:
+
+“In the last hour you have made out of a rather commonplace study an
+entirely spontaneous and charming creation.”
+
+“What!” he exclaimed, his face reddening with pleasure at her opinion,
+and with surprise at her mode of expressing it.
+
+“It’s quite true. That dancing figure is wholly charming. It is no
+study; it is pure creation.”
+
+He knew it; was a little thrilled that she, representing to him an
+average and mediocre public, should recognize it so intelligently.
+
+“As though,” she continued, “you had laid aside childish things.”
+
+“What?” he asked, surprised again at the authority of the expression.
+
+“Academic precision and the respectable excellencies of-the-usual;--you
+have put away childish things and become a man.”
+
+“Where did you hear that?” he said bluntly.
+
+“I heard it when I said it. You know, Mr. Drene, I am not wholly
+uneducated, although your amiable question insinuates as much.”
+
+“I’m not unamiable. Only I didn’t suppose--”
+
+“Oh, you never have supposed anything concerning me. So why are you
+surprised when I express myself with fragmentary intelligence?”
+
+“I’m sorry--”
+
+“Listen to me. I’m not afraid of you any more. I’ve been afraid for two
+years. Now, I’m not. Your study is masterly. I know it. You know it. You
+didn’t know I knew it; you didn’t know I knew anything. And you didn’t
+care.”
+
+She sat down on the sofa, facing him with a breathless smile.
+
+“You don’t care what I think, what I am, what interests I may have, what
+intellect, what of human desire, hope, fear, ambition animates me; do
+you? You don’t care whether I am ignorant or educated, bad or good, ill
+or well--as long as it does not affect my posing for you; whether I am
+happy or unhappy, whether I--”
+
+“For Heaven’s sake--”
+
+“But you don’t care!... Do you?”
+
+He was silent; he stood looking at her in a stupid sort of way.
+
+After a moment or two she rose, picked up her hat, went to the glass and
+pinned it on, then strolled slowly back, drawing on her gloves.
+
+“It’s five o’clock, you know, Drene.”
+
+“Yes, certainly.”
+
+“Do you want me to-morrow?”
+
+“Yes. Yes, of course.”
+
+“You are not offended?”
+
+He did not answer. She came up to him and repeated the question in a
+childishly anxious voice that was a trifle too humble. And looking down
+into her eyes he saw a gleam of pure mischief in them.
+
+“You little villain!” he said; and caught her wrists. “A lot you care
+whether I am offended!”
+
+She looked away from him, turning her profile. Her expression was
+inscrutable. After a silence he dropped her wrists with a vague laugh.
+
+“You should have let me alone,” he said.
+
+“‘The woman tempted me,’” she repeated, still looking away from him. He
+said nothing.
+
+“Good night,” she nodded, and turned toward the door.
+
+He went with her, falling into step beside her. One arm slipped around
+her waist as they entered the hallway. They walked slowly to the door.
+He unlatched it, hesitated; she moved one foot forward, and he took a
+step at the same time which brought her across his path so closely that
+contact was unavoidable. And he kissed her.
+
+“Oh,” she said. “So you are human after all! I often wondered.”
+
+She looked up, trying to laugh, but could not seem to take it as coolly
+as she might have wished to.
+
+“Not that a kiss is very important in these days,” she continued, “yet
+it might interest you to hear that a friend of yours rather fancies
+me. He wouldn’t like you to do it. But--” She lifted her blue eyes with
+faint malice--“What is a woman between friends?”
+
+“Who is he?”
+
+“Jack Graylock.”
+
+Drene remained motionless.
+
+“I haven’t encouraged him,” she said. “Perhaps that is why.”
+
+“Why he fancies you?”
+
+“Why he asked me to marry him. It was the only thing he had not asked.”
+
+“He asked that?”
+
+“After he realized it was the only way, I suppose,” she said coolly.
+Drene took her into his arms and kissed her deliberately on the mouth.
+Looking up at him she said: “After all, he is your friend, isn’t he?”
+
+“A friend of many years. But, as you say, what is a woman between
+friends?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said the girl. And, still clasped in his arms, she bent
+her head, thoughtfully, considering the question.
+
+And as though she had come to some final conclusion, she raised her
+head, lifted her eyes slowly, and her lips, to the man whose arms
+enfolded her. It was her answer to his question, and her own.
+
+When she had gone, he went back and stood again by the great window,
+watching the cote on a neighboring roof, where the pigeons were
+strutting and coquetting in the last rays of the western sun.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When she came again to the studio, she was different, subdued, evading,
+avoiding, smiling a little in her flushed diffidence at his gay ease of
+manner--or assumption of both ease and gaiety.
+
+He was inclined to rally her, tease her, but her reticence was not all
+embarrassment. The lightest contact, the slightest caress from him,
+added a seriousness to her face, making it very lovely under its
+heightened color, and strangely childlike.
+
+Model and master they would have remained no longer had it been for him
+to say, he desiring now to make it a favor and concession on her part to
+aid him professionally, she gravely insisting on professionalism as the
+basis of whatever entente might develop between them, as well as the
+only avowed excuse for her presence there alone with him.
+
+“Please. It’s respectable,” she insisted her agreeable, modulated voice.
+“I had rather the reason for my coming here be business--whatever else
+happens.”
+
+“What has happened,” he said, balancing a handful of wet clay in
+one hand and looking laughingly up at her, where she stood on the
+model-stand, “is that a pretty girl strolled in here one day and held
+up a mirror to a solemn ass who was stalking theatrically through life.
+That solemn ass is very grateful for the glimpse he had of himself. He
+behaved gratefully, didn’t he?”
+
+“Very,” she said with a forced smile.
+
+“Do you object to the manner in which he expressed his gratitude?”
+
+She hung her head.
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+After a while she raised her eyes, her head still lowered. He was
+working, darkly absorbed as usual in the plastic mass under his fingers.
+
+She watched him curiously, not his hands, now, but his lean, intent
+face, striving to penetrate that masculine mask, trying to understand.
+Varying and odd reflections and emotions possessed her in turn, and
+passed--wonder, bewilderment at herself, at him; a slight sense of fear,
+then a brief and sudden access of shyness, succeeded by the by glow
+of an emotion new and strange and deep. And this, in turn, by vague
+bewilderment again, in which there was both a hint of fear, and a tinge
+of something exquisite.
+
+Within herself she was dimly conscious that a certain gaiety, an
+irresponsibility and lightness had died out in her, perhaps permanently,
+yet leaving no void. What it was that replaced these she could not
+name--she only was conscious that if these had been subdued by a newer
+knowledge, with a newer seriousness, this unaccustomed gravity had left
+her heart no less tender, and had deepened her capacity for emotion
+to depths as profound and unexplored as the sudden mystery of their
+discovery by herself.
+
+Always, now, while she posed, she was looking at him with a still
+intentness, as though he really wore a mask and she, breathlessly
+vigilant, watched for the moment when he might forget and lift it.
+
+But during the weeks that followed, if the mask were indeed only the
+steady preoccupation that his visage wore, she seemed to learn nothing
+more about him when his features lost their dark absorption and he
+caught her eye and smiled. No, the smile revealed nothing except another
+mask under the more serious cast of concentration--only another
+disguise that covered whatever this man might truly be deeper down--this
+masculine and unknown invader of frontiers surrendered ere she had
+understood they were even besieged.
+
+And during these weeks in early spring their characteristics, even
+characters, seemed to have shifted curiously and become reversed; his
+was now the light, irresponsible, half-mocking badinage--almost boyishly
+boisterous at times, as, for instance, when he stepped forward after the
+pose and swung her laughingly from the model-platform to her corner on
+the sofa.
+
+“You pretty and clever little thing,” he said, “why are you becoming so
+serious and absent-minded?”
+
+“Am I becoming so?”
+
+“You are. You oughtn’t to: you’ve made a new and completely different
+man of me.”
+
+As though that were an admirable achievement, or even of any particular
+importance. And yet she seemed to think it was both of these when,
+resting against him, within the circle of his arm, still shy and silent
+under the breathless poignancy of an emotion which ever seemed to sound
+within her depths unsuspected.
+
+But when he said that she had made a new and completely different man of
+him, she remembered his low-voiced when that change impended as he held
+her by her wrists a moment, then dropped them. He had said, half to
+himself: “You should have let me alone!”
+
+Sometimes at noon she remembered this when they went out for luncheon
+realizing they would never have been seated together in a restaurant had
+she not satisfied her curiosity. She should have let him alone; she
+knew that. She tried to wish that she had--tried to regret everything,
+anything; and could not, even when within her the faint sense of alarm
+awoke amid the softly unchangeable unreality of these last six weeks of
+spring.
+
+Was this then really love?--this drifting through alternating dreams
+of shyness, tenderness, suspense, pierced at moments by tiny flashes
+of fear, as lightning flickers, far buried in softly shrouded depths of
+cloud?
+
+She had long periods of silent and absorbed dreaming, conscious only
+that she dreamed, but not of the dream itself.
+
+She was aware, too, of a curious loneliness within her, and dimly
+understood that it was the companion of a lifetime she was missing--her
+conscience. Where was it? Had it gone? Had it died? Were the little,
+inexplicable flashes of fear proof of its disintegration? Or its
+immortal vitality?
+
+Dead, dormant, departed, she knew not which, she was dully aware of its
+loss--dimly and childishly troubled that she could remember nothing to
+be sorry for. And there was so much.
+
+Men in his profession who knew him began to look askance at him and her,
+amused or otherwise, according to their individual characters.
+
+That Cecile White went about more or less with the sculptor Drene was
+a nine days’ gossip among circles familiar to them both, and was
+forgotten--as are all wonders--in nine days.
+
+Some of his acquaintances recalled what had been supposed to be the
+tragedy of his life, mentioning a woman’s name, and a man’s--Drene’s
+closest friend. But gossip does not last long among the busy--not that
+the busy are incapable of gossip, but they finish with it quickly,
+having other matters to think about.
+
+Even Quair, after recovering from his wonder that his own condescending
+advances had been ignored, bestowed his fatuously inflammable attentions
+elsewhere.
+
+He had been inclined to complain one day in the studio, when he and
+Guilder visited Drene professionally; and Guilder looked at his dapper
+confrere in surprise and slight disgust; and Drene, at first bored, grew
+irritable.
+
+“What are you talking about?” he said sharply.
+
+“I’m talking about Cecile White,” continued Quair, looking rather oddly
+at the sculptor out of his slightly prominent eyes. “I didn’t suppose
+you could be interested in any woman--not that I mind your interfering
+with any little affair between Cecile and me--”
+
+“There wasn’t any.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Drene--”
+
+“There wasn’t any!” repeated Drene, with curt contempt. “Don’t talk
+about her, anyway.”
+
+“You mean I’m not to talk about a common artist’s model--”
+
+“Not that way.”
+
+“Oh. Is she yours?”
+
+“She isn’t anybody’s, I fancy. Therefore, let her alone, or I’ll throw
+you out of doors.”
+
+Quair said to Guilder after they had departed:
+
+“Fancy old Drene playing about with that girl on a strictly pious basis!
+He’s doubtless dub enough to waste his time. But what’s in it for her?”
+
+“Perhaps a little unaccustomed masculine decency.”
+
+“Everybody is decent enough to her as far as I know.”
+
+“Including yourself?”
+
+“Certainly, including myself,” retorted Quair, adding naively: “Besides,
+I knew any attempt at philandering would be time wasted.”
+
+“Yet you tried it,” mused Guilder, entering his big touring car and
+depositing a bundle of blue-prints and linen tracing paper at his own
+ponderous feet. Quair followed him and spoke briefly to the chauffeur,
+then:
+
+“Tried nothing,” he said. “A little chaff, that’s all. When it comes to
+a man like Jack Graylock going so far as to ask her to marry him, good
+night, nurse! Nothing doing, even for me.”
+
+“Even for you,” repeated Guilder in his moderate and always modulated
+voice. “Well, if she’s escaped you and Graylock, she’s beyond any danger
+from Drene, I fancy.”
+
+Quair smiled appreciatively, as though a delicate compliment had been
+offered him. Several times on the way to call on Graylock he insisted on
+stopping the car at as many celebrated cafes. Guilder patiently awaited
+him in the car and each time Quair emerged from the cafe bar a little
+more flushed and a trifle jauntier than when he had entered.
+
+He was a man so perfectly attired and so scrupulously fastidious about
+his person that Guilder often speculated as to just why Quair always
+seemed to him a trifle soiled.
+
+Now, looking him over as he climbed into the car, unusually red in the
+face, breathing out the aroma of spirits through his little, pinched
+nostrils, a faint sensation of disgust came over the senior member of
+the firm as though the junior member were physically unclean.
+
+“That’s about ten drinks since luncheon,” he remarked, as the car rolled
+on down Fifth Avenue.
+
+Quair, who usually grew disagreeably familiar when mellow, poked his
+gloved thumb:
+
+“You’re a merry old cock, aren’t you?” he inquired genially, “--like a
+pig’s wrist! If I hadn’t the drinking of the entire firm to do, who’d
+ever talk about Guilder and Quair, architects?”
+
+It was common rumor that Quair did his brilliant work only when
+“soused.” And he never appeared to be perfectly sober, even when he was.
+
+Graylock received them in his office--a big, reckless-eyed, handsome
+man, with Broad Street written all over him and “danger” etched in every
+deepened line of his face.
+
+“Well, how about that business of mine?” he inquired. “It’s all right to
+keep me waiting, of course, while you and Quair here match for highballs
+at the Ritz.”
+
+“I had to see Drene--that’s why we are late,” explained Guilder. “We’re
+ready to go ahead and let your contracts for you--”
+
+“Drene?” interrupted Graylock, looking straight at Guilder with a
+curious and staring intensity. “Why drag Drene into an excuse?”
+
+“Because we went to his studio,” said Guilder. “Now about letting the
+contracts--”
+
+“Were you at Drene’s studio?”
+
+“Yes. He’s doing the groups for the new opera for us.”
+
+Quair, watching Graylock, was seized with a malicious impulse:
+
+“Neat little skirt he has up there--that White girl,” he remarked,
+seating himself on Graylock’s polished table.
+
+A dull flush stained Graylock’s cheekbones, and his keen eyes turned on
+Quair. The latter lighted a cigarette, expelled the smoke in two thin
+streams from his abnormally narrow nostrils.
+
+“Some skirt,” he repeated. “And it looks as though old Drene had her
+number--”
+
+Guilder’s level voice interrupted:
+
+“The contracts are ready to be--”
+
+But Graylock, not heeding, and perhaps not hearing, and looking all the
+time at Quair, said slowly:
+
+“Drene isn’t that kind.... Is he?”
+
+“Our kind, you mean?” inquired Quair, with a malice so buried under
+flippancy that the deliberate effrontery passed for it with Graylock.
+Which amused Quair for a moment, but the satisfaction was not
+sufficient. He desired that Graylock should feel the gaff.
+
+“Drene,” he said, “is one of those fussers who jellify when hurled on
+their necks--the kind that ask that kind of girl to marry them after
+she’s turned down everything else they suggest.”
+
+Graylock’s square jaw tightened and his steady eyes seemed to grow even
+paler; but Quair, as though perfectly unconscious of this man’s record
+with the wife of his closest friend, and of the rumors which connected
+him so seriously with Cecile White, swung his leg unconcernedly, where
+it dangled over the table’s edge, and smiled frankly and knowingly upon
+Graylock:
+
+“There’s always somebody to marry that sort of girl; all mush isn’t
+on the breakfast table. When you and I are ready to quit, Graylock,
+Providence has created a species of man who settles our bills.”
+
+He threw back his head, inhaled the smoke of his cigarette, sent two
+thin streams through his nose.
+
+“Maybe Drene may marry her himself. But--I don’t believe he’ll have
+to.... Now, about those contracts--” he affected a yawn, “--go on and
+tell him, Guilder,” he added, his words distorted by another yawn.
+
+He stepped down to the floor from his perch on the table, stretched his
+arms, looking affably all the while at Graylock, who had never moved a
+muscle.
+
+“I believe you had a run-in with that Cecile girl once, didn’t you,
+Graylock? Like the rest of us, eh? Oh, well--my hat off to old Drene
+if he wins out. I hold no malice. After all, Graylock, what’s a woman
+between friends?”
+
+And he nodded gaily at Graylock and sauntered leisurely to the window.
+
+And kept his back turned, fearful of exploding with laughter in the very
+face of the man who had been staring at him out of pale, unchanging eyes
+so steadily and so long.
+
+Guilder’s patient, bored, but moderate voice was raised once more:
+
+“In regard to the letting of these contracts--”
+
+But Graylock, staring at Quair’s back, neither heeded nor heard him, for
+his brain was still ringing with the mockery of Quair’s words--“What is
+a woman between friends?” And now, for the first time, he was beginning
+to understand what the answer might be.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+She had not posed for Drene during the last two weeks, and he had begun
+to miss her, after his own fashion--that is, he thought of her when not
+preoccupied and sometimes desired her companionship when unoccupied.
+
+And one evening he went to his desk, rummaged among note-books, and
+scribbled sheets of paper, until he found her address, which he could
+never remember, wrote it down on another slip of paper, pocketed it, and
+went out to his dinner.
+
+But as he dined, other matters reoccupied his mind, matters
+professional, schemes little and great, broad and in detail, which
+gradually, though not excluding her entirely, quenched his desire to see
+her at that particular time.
+
+Sometimes it was sheer disinclination to make an effort to communicate
+with her, sometimes, and usually, the self-centering concentration
+which included himself and his career, as well as his work, seemed to
+obliterate even any memory of her existence.
+
+Now and then, when alone in his shabby bedroom, reading a dull book, or
+duly preparing to retire, far in the dim recesses of heart and brain a
+faint pain became apparent--if it could still be called pain, this vague
+ghost of anger stirring in the ashes of dead years--and at such moments
+he thought of Graylock, and of another; and the partly paralyzed
+emotion, which memory of these two evoked, stirred him finally to think
+of Cecile.
+
+It was at such times that he always determined to seek her the next day
+and continue with her what had been begun--an intimacy which depended
+upon his own will; a destiny for her which instinct whispered was within
+his own control. But the next day found him at work; models of various
+types, ages, and degrees of stupidity came, posed, were paid, and
+departed; his studies for the groups in collaboration with Guilder and
+Quair were approaching the intensely interesting period--that stage of
+completion where composition has been determined upon and the excitement
+of developing the construction and the technical charm of modeling
+begins.
+
+And evening always found him physically tired and mentally satisfied--or
+perturbed--to the exclusion of such minor interests as life is
+made of--dress, amusement, food, women. Between a man and a beloved
+profession in full shock of embrace there is no real room for these or
+thought of these.
+
+He ate irregularly and worked with the lack of wisdom characteristic
+of creative ability, and he grew thinner and grayer at the temples, and
+grayer of flesh, too, so that within a month, between the torrid New
+York summer and his own unwisdom, he became again the gaunt, silent,
+darkly absorbed recluse, never even stirring abroad for air until some
+half-deadened pang of hunger, or the heavy warning of a headache, set
+him in reluctant motion.
+
+He heard of Cecile now and then; Cosby had used her for a figure on
+a fountain destined to embellish the estate of a wealthy young man
+somewhere or other; Greer employed her for the central figure of
+Innocence in his lovely and springlike decoration for some Western
+public edifice. Quair had met her several times at Manhattan Beach with
+various and assorted wealthy young men.
+
+And one evening Guilder came alone to his studio and found him lying on
+the lounge, his lank, muscular hands, still clay-stained, hanging inert
+to the floor above an evening paper fallen there.
+
+“Hello, Guilder,” he said, without rising, as the big architect shambled
+loosely through the open doorway.
+
+“How are you, Drene?”
+
+“All right. It’s hot.”
+
+“There’s not a breath of air. It looks like a thunder-storm in the
+west.”
+
+He pulled up a chair and sprawled on it, wiping his grave features with
+a damp handkerchief.
+
+“Drene,” he said, “a philanthropic guy of sorts wants to add a chapel to
+the church at Shallow Brook, Long Island. We’ve pinched the job. Can you
+do an altar piece?”
+
+“What sort?”
+
+“They want a Virgin. It’s to be called the Chapel of the Annunciation.
+It’s for women to repair to--under certain and natural circumstances.”
+
+“I’ve so much on hand--”
+
+“It’s only a single figure-barring the dove. Why don’t you do it?”
+
+“There are plenty of other men--”
+
+“They want you. There’ll be no difficulty about terms.”
+
+Drene said with a shrug:
+
+“Terms are coming to mean less and less to me, Guilder. It costs very
+little for me to live.” He turned his gray, tired face. “Look at this
+barn of a place; and go in there and look at my bedroom. I have no use
+for what are known as necessities.”
+
+“Still, terms are terms--”
+
+“Oh, yes. A truck may run over me. Even at that, I’ve enough to live
+life out as I am living it here--between these empty walls--and that
+expanse of glass overhead. That’s about all life holds for me--a sheet
+of glass and four empty walls--and a fistfull of wet clay.”
+
+“Are you a trifle morbid, Drene?”
+
+“I’m not by any means; I merely prefer to live this way. I have
+sufficient means to live otherwise if I wish. But this is enough of the
+world to suit me, Guilder--and I can go to a noisy restaurant to eat in
+when I’m so inclined--” He laughed a rather mirthless laugh and glanced
+up, catching a peculiar expression in Guilder’s eyes.
+
+“You’re thinking,” said Drene coolly, “what a god I once set up on the
+altar of domesticity. I used to talk a lot once, didn’t I?--a hell of
+a clamor I made in eulogy of the domestic virtues. Well, only idiots
+retain the same opinions longer than twenty-four hours. Fixity is
+imbecility; the inconstant alone progress; dissatisfaction is only a
+synonym for intelligence; contentment translated means stagnation..... I
+have changed my opinion concerning the virtues of domesticity.”
+
+Guilder said, in his even, moderate voice:
+
+“Your logic is weird, Drene: in one breath you say you have changed your
+opinion; in another that you are content; in another that contentment is
+the fixedness of imbecility--”
+
+Drene, reddening slightly, half rose on one elbow from his couch:
+
+“What I meant was that I change in my convictions from day to day,
+without reproaching myself with inconstancy. What I believed with all my
+heart to be sacred yesterday I find a barrier to-day; and push it aside
+and go on.”
+
+“Toward what?”
+
+“I go on, that’s all I know--toward sanctuary.”
+
+“You mean professionally.”
+
+“In every way--ethically--spiritually. The gods of yesterday, too, were
+very real--yesterday.”
+
+“Drene, a man may change and progress on his way toward what never
+changes. But standards remained fixed. They were there in the beginning;
+they are immutable. If they shifted, humanity could have no goal.”
+
+“Is there a goal?”
+
+“Where are you going, then?”
+
+“Just on.”
+
+“In your profession there is a goal toward which you sculptors all
+journey.”
+
+“Perfection?”
+
+Guilder nodded.
+
+“But,” smiled Drene, “no two sculptors ever see it alike.”
+
+“It is still Perfection. It is still the goal to the color-blind and
+normal alike, whatever they call it, however, they visualize it. That
+is its only importance; it is The Goal..... In things spiritual the same
+obtains--whether one’s vision embraces Nirvana, or the Algonquin Ocean
+of Light, or a pallid Christ half hidden in floating clouds--Drene,
+it is all one, all one. It is not the Goal that changes; only our
+intelligence concerning its existence and its immortality.”
+
+Drene lay looking at him:
+
+“You never knew pain--real pain, did you? The world never ended for you,
+did it?”
+
+“In one manner or another we all must be reborn before we can progress.”
+
+“That is a cant phrase.”
+
+“No; there’s truth under the cant. Under all the sleek, smooth, canty
+phrases of ecclesiastic proverb, precept, axiom, and lore, there is
+truth worth the sifting out.”
+
+“You are welcome to think so, Guilder.”
+
+“You also could come to no other conclusion if you took the trouble to
+investigate.”
+
+Drene smiled:
+
+“Morals are no more than folk-ways--merely mental condition consequent
+upon custom. Spiritual beliefs are radically dependant upon folkways
+and the resultant physical and mental condition of the human brain which
+creates everything that has been and that is to be.”
+
+“Physiology has proven that no idea, no thought, ever originated within
+the concrete and physical brain.”
+
+“I’ve read of those experiments.”
+
+“Then you can’t ignore a conclusion.”
+
+“I haven’t reached a conclusion. Meanwhile, I have my own beliefs.”
+
+“That’s all that’s necessary,” said Guilder, gravely, “--to entertain
+some belief, temporary or final.” He smiled slightly down at Drene’s
+drawn, gray visage.
+
+“You and I have been friends of many years, Drene, but we have never
+before talked this way. I did not feel at liberty to assume any intimacy
+with you, even when I wanted to, even when--when you were in trouble--”
+ He hesitated.
+
+“Go on,” grunted the other. “I’m out of trouble now.”
+
+“I just--it’s a whimsical notion--no, it’s a belief;--I just wanted to
+tell you one or two things concerning my own beliefs--”
+
+“Temporary?”
+
+“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter; they are beliefs. And this is one: all
+physical and mental ills are created only by our own minds--”
+
+“Christian Science?” sneered Drene.
+
+“Call it what you like,” said Guilder serenely. “And call this what you
+like: All who believe worthily will find that particular belief true in
+every detail after death.”
+
+“What do you call that?” demanded Drene, amused.
+
+“God knows. It seems to be my interpretation of the Goal. I seem to be
+journeying toward it without more obstacles and more embarrassments to
+encounter than confront the wayfarer who professes any other creed.”
+
+After a while Drene sat up on his couch:
+
+“How did all this conversation start?” he asked uneasily.
+
+“It was about the Virgin for that chapel we are going to do..... That’s
+part of my belief: those who pray for her intercession will find
+her after death, interceding--” he smiled, “--if any intercession be
+necessary between us and Him who made us.”
+
+“And those unlisted millions who importune Mohammed and Buddha?”
+
+“They shall find Mohammed and Buddha, who importune them worthily.”
+
+“And--Christ?”
+
+“He bears that name also--He!”
+
+“Oh! And so, spiritually as well as artistically, you believe in the
+Virgin?”
+
+“You also can make a better Virgin if you believe in her otherwise than
+esthetically.”
+
+Drene gazed at him incredulously, then, with a shrug:
+
+“When do you want this thing started?”
+
+“Now.”
+
+“I can’t take it on now.”
+
+“I want a sketch pretty soon--the composition. You can have a model of
+the chapel to--morrow. We went on with it as a speculation. Now we’ve
+clinched the thing. When shall I send it up from the office?”
+
+“I’ll look it over, but--”
+
+“And,” interrupted Guilder, “you had better get that Miss White for the
+Virgin--before she goes off somewhere out of reach.”
+
+Drene looked up somberly:
+
+“I haven’t kept in touch with her. I don’t know what her engagements may
+be.”
+
+“One of her engagements just now seems to be to go about with Graylock,”
+ said Guilder.
+
+Drene flushed, but said nothing.
+
+“If he marries her,” added Guilder, “as it’s generally understood he
+is trying to, the best sculptor’s model in town is out of the question.
+Better secure her now.”
+
+“He wants to marry her?” repeated Drene, in a curiously still voice.
+
+“He’s mad about her. He’s abject. It’s no secret among his friends. Men
+like that--and of that age--sometimes arrive at such a terminal--men
+with Graylock’s record sometimes get theirs. She has given him a run,
+believe me, and he’s brought up with a crash against a stone wall. He is
+lying there all doubled up at her feet like a rabbit with a broken back.
+There was nothing left for him to do but lie there. He’s lying there
+still, with one of her little feet on his bull neck. All the town knows
+it.”
+
+“He wants to marry her,” repeated Drene, as though to himself.
+
+“She may not take him at that. They’re queer--some women. I suppose
+she’d jump at it if she were not straight. But there’s another thing--”
+ Guilder looked curiously at Drene. “Some people think she’s rather crazy
+about you.”
+
+Drene gazed into space.
+
+“But that wouldn’t hurt her,” added Guilder, in his calm, pleasant
+voice. “She’s a straight little thing--white and straight. She could
+come to no harm through a man like you.”
+
+Drene continued to stare at space.
+
+“So,” continued the other, confident, “when she recovers from a natural
+and childlike infatuation for you she’ll marry somebody... Possibly even
+such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can’t ever tell about
+such men at the eleventh hour.”
+
+Drene turned his eyes on him. There was no trace of color in his face.
+
+“Aren’t you pretty damned charitable?”
+
+“Charitable? Well, I--I’m so inclined, I fancy.”
+
+“You’d be content to see that girl marry a dog like that?”
+
+“I did not say so. I am no judge of men. No man knows enough to condemn
+souls.”
+
+Drene looked at him:
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you something. I know enough to do it. I had rather
+damn my soul--and hers, too--than see her marry the man you have named.
+It would be worth it to me.”
+
+After a strained silence, Guilder said:
+
+“There is a mode of dealing with those who have injured you, which is
+radically different--”
+
+“I deal with such people in my own fashion!”
+
+“But, after all, the infamy is Graylock’s. Why oblige him by sharing it
+with him?”
+
+“Do you know what he did to me and mine?”
+
+“A few of us know,” said Guilder, gently, “--your old friends.”
+
+There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene’s eyes:
+
+“I’ll take your commission for that altar piece,” he said.
+
+“What is it? An Annunciation?”
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by the
+middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine until five;
+every evening they had dined together at the seashore or other suburban
+and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer entertainment in
+town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings together in his studio,
+chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes discussing he work in hand
+or other subjects of he moment, even topics covering a wider and more
+varied range than he had ever before discussed with any woman.
+
+He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had
+been absent from his face--the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to have
+become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times, smoothed
+out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.
+
+If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety had
+been not entirely spontaneous, his smile shadowed with something duller,
+his laughter a trifle forced, she had not perceived it in her surprised
+and shyly troubled preoccupation with this amazing and delightful
+transfiguration.
+
+At first she scarcely knew what to look for, what to expect from him,
+from herself, when she came into the studio after many weeks of absence;
+and she always halted in the doorway, trembling a little, as always,
+when in contact with him.
+
+But he was very delightful, smiling, easy, and deferential enough to
+reassure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty
+hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and released it.
+
+From the moment of their reunion he had never touched her, save for
+a quick, firm, smiling hand-clasp in the morning and another at the
+night’s parting.
+
+Now, little by little, she was finding herself delightfully at ease with
+him, emerging by degrees from her charming bewilderment out of isolation
+to a happy companionship never before shared with any man.
+
+Nor even vaguely had she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such
+a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such
+patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and
+sympathy.
+
+And never, now, was her troubled consciousness aware of anything
+disquieting in his attitude, of anything to perturb her.
+
+He seemed to enjoy himself like a boy, with her companionship, wholly,
+heartily, without any motive other than the pleasure of the moment;
+and so, little by little, she gave herself up to it too, in the same
+fashion, unguardedly, frankly, innocently revealing herself to him by
+degrees as their comradeship became deliciously unembarrassed.
+
+He was making a full length study in clay now. All day long she sat
+there enthroned, her eyes partly closed, the head lifted a trifle and
+fallen back, and her lovely hands resting on her heart--and sometimes
+she strove to imagine something of the divine moment which she was
+embodying; pondering, dreaming, wondering; and sometimes, in the
+stillness, through her trance crept a thrill, subtle, exquisite, as
+though in faint perception of the heavenly moment. And once, into her
+half-dreaming senses came the soft stirring of wings, and she opened her
+eyes and looked up, startled and thrilled.
+
+But it was only a pigeon which had come through the great window from
+the cote on the adjacent roof and which circled above her on whimpering
+wings for a moment and then sheered out into the sunlight.
+
+They dined together at a roof garden that evening, the music was
+particularly and surprisingly good, and what surprised him even more was
+that she knew it and spoke of it. And continued speaking of music, he
+not interrupting.
+
+Reticent hitherto concerning her antecedents he learned now something
+of them--and inferred more; nothing unusual--a musical career determined
+upon, death intervening dragging over her isolation the steel meshes of
+destitution--the necessity for self-support, a friend who knew a painter
+who employed models--not anything unusual, not even dramatic.
+
+He nodded as she ended:
+
+“Have you saved anything?”
+
+“A hundred dollars.”
+
+“That’s fine.”
+
+She smiled, then sighed unconsciously.
+
+“You are thinking,” he said, “that youth is flying.”
+
+She smiled wistfully.
+
+“Youth is the time to study. You were thinking that, too.”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“You could have married.”
+
+“Why?” she asked, troubled.
+
+“To obtain the means for a musical education.”
+
+She gazed at him in amazement, then: “I could go out on the street, too,
+as far as that is concerned. It would be no more disgraceful.”
+
+“Folk-ways sanction self-sale, when guaranteed by the clergy,” he said.
+She turned her head and he saw the pure, cold profile against the golden
+table-lamp, and he saw something else under the palms beyond--Graylock’s
+light eyes riveted upon them both.
+
+“You know,” he said, under his breath, “that I shall not marry you.
+But--would you care to begin your studies again?”
+
+There was a long silence: She remained with face partly averted until
+the orchestra ceased. Then she turned and looked at him, and he saw her
+lip tremble.
+
+“I had not thought you meant to ask me--that. I do not quite understand
+what you mean.”
+
+“I care enough for you to wish to help you. May I?”
+
+“I was not sure you cared--enough--”
+
+“Do you--for me?”
+
+“Before I say that I do--care for you--” she began, tremulously--“tell
+me that I have nothing to fear--”
+
+Neither spoke. Over her shoulder Drene stared at the distant man who
+stared back at him.
+
+Presently his eyes reverted to hers, absently studying the childlike
+beauty of her.
+
+“I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “Love is no more wonderful
+than hate, no more perfect, no more eternal. And it is less fierce, and
+not as strong.”
+
+“What!” she whispered, bewildered at the sinister change in him.
+
+“And I want to tell you another thing. I am alone in the world. What I
+have, I have devised to you--in case I step out--suddenly--”
+
+He paused, hesitated, then:
+
+“Also I desire you to hear something else,” he went on. “This is the
+proper time for you to hear it, I think--now--to-night--”
+
+He lifted his blazing eyes and looked at the other man.
+
+“There was a woman,” he said--“She happened to be my wife. Also there
+was my closest friend: and myself. The comedy was cast. Afterward
+she died--abroad. I believe he was there at the time--Kept up a
+semblance--But he never married her.... And I do not intend to
+marry--you.”
+
+After a moment: “And that,” she whispered, “is why you once said to me
+that I should have let you alone.”
+
+“Did I say that to you?”
+
+“Yes.” She looked up at him, straight into his eyes: “But if you care
+for me--I do not regret that I did not let you alone.”
+
+“I shall not marry you.”
+
+Her lip trembled but she smiled.
+
+“That is nothing new to me,” she said. “Only one man has offered that.”
+
+“Why didn’t you take him?” he asked, with an ugly laugh.
+
+“I couldn’t. I cared for you.”
+
+“And now,” he said, “are you afraid of me?”
+
+“Yes--a little.”
+
+He leaned forward suddenly, “You’d better steer clear of me!” Her
+startled eyes beheld in him a change as swift as his words.
+
+“Fair warning!” he added: “look out for yourself.” Everything that was
+brutal in him; everything ruthless and violent had marred his features
+so that all in a moment the mouth had grown ugly and a hard, bruised
+look stamped the pallid muscles of his features and twitched at them.
+
+“You’re taking chances from now on,” he said. “I told you once to let me
+alone. You’d better do it now. And--” he stared at the distant man--“I
+told you that hate is more vital than love. It is. I’ve waited a long
+time to strike. Even now it isn’t in me to do it as I have meant to
+do it. And so I tell you to keep away from me; and I’ll strike in the
+old-fashioned way, and end it--to-night.”
+
+Stunned by his sudden and dreadful metamorphosis, her ears ringing with
+his disjointed incoherencies, she rose, scarcely knowing what she was
+doing, scarcely conscious that he was beside her, moving lightly and in
+silence out into the brilliant darkness of the streets.
+
+It was only at her own door that he spoke again: standing there on the
+shabby steps of her boarding-house, the light from the transom yellowing
+his ghastly face.
+
+“Something snapped”--he passed an unsteady hand across his eyes;--“I
+care very deeply for you. I--they’ll make over to you--what I have. You
+can study on it--live on it, modestly--”
+
+“W-what is the matter? Are you ill?” she stammered, white and
+frightened.
+
+But he only muttered that she had her warning and that she should keep
+away from him, and that it would not be long before she should have an
+opportunity in life. And he went his way not looking back.
+
+When he reached his studio the hall was dark. As he turned the key he
+thought he heard something stirring in the shadows, but went in--leaving
+the door into the hallway open--and straight on across the room to his
+desk.
+
+He was putting something into his coat pocket, and his back was still
+turned to the open door when Graylock stepped quietly across the
+threshold; and Drene heard him, but closed his desk, leisurely, and
+then, as leisurely, turned, knowing who had entered.
+
+And so they stood alone together after many years.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Graylock looked at Drene’s heavily sagging pocket and knew what was in
+it. A sudden sweat chilled his temples, but he said steadily enough:
+
+“I’d like to say a word or two--if you’ll give me time.” And, as Drene
+made no reply;--“You’re quite right: This business of ours should be
+finished one way or another. I can’t stand it any longer.”
+
+“In that case,” remarked Drene with an evil stare at him, “I may
+postpone it--to find out how much you can stand.” He dropped his right
+hand into the sagging pocket, looking intently at Graylock all the
+while:
+
+“What do you want here anyway?”
+
+“I fancy that you have already guessed.”
+
+“Maybe. All the same, what do you want?”--fumbling with his bulging
+pocket for a moment and then remaining motionless.
+
+Graylock’s worn eyes rested on the outline of the shrouded weapon: he
+stood eyeing it absently for a moment, then seated himself on the sofa,
+his heavy eyes shifting from one object to another.
+
+But there were few objects to be seen in that silent place;--a star
+overhead glimmering through the high expanse of glass above;--otherwise
+gray monotony of wall, a clay shape or two swathed in wet clothes, a
+narrow ring of lamp light, and formless shadow.
+
+“It’s a long time, Drene.”
+
+Drene mused in silence, now and then watching the other obliquely.
+
+Presently he withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket, pulled an
+armchair toward him and seated himself.
+
+“It’s many years,” repeated Graylock. “I expected you to do something
+before this.”
+
+“Were you uneasy?” sneered Drene. Then he shrugged, knowing that
+Graylock was no coward, sorry he had intimated as much, like a man who
+deals a premature and useless blow.
+
+He sat brooding for a while, his lean dangerous head lowered sideways as
+though listening; his oblique glance always covering Graylock.
+
+“I suppose you’ll be surprised when I tell you one reason that I came
+here,” said Graylock.
+
+“Do you suppose you can still surprise me by anything you may say or
+do?”
+
+The man remained silent, sitting with his hands tightly clasped on his
+knees.
+
+“Drene,” he said, in a low voice, “don’t strike at me through this young
+girl.”
+
+Drene began to laugh, unpleasantly.
+
+“Are you in love with her?”
+
+“Yes.... You know it.”
+
+Drene said, still laughing: “It’s the common rumor. You may imagine it
+amuses your friends--if you have any left.”
+
+Graylock spoke in a voice that had a ghostly sound in the great room:
+
+“Don’t harm her, Drene. It is not necessary. I shall never see her
+again--if that will content you.”
+
+Drene laughed: “I never saw my wife again. Did that help me? I never saw
+her again, but as long as she lived I knew what she was ... My wife. And
+when she died, still my wife. There was no relief--no relief.”
+
+Graylock, deathly white, framed his haggard face between his hands and
+stared at nothing:
+
+“I know,” he said. “I understand now. I am here to-night to pay the
+reckoning.”
+
+“You can’t pay it.”
+
+“No, not the whole score. There’s another bill, I suppose, waiting for
+me--somewhere. But I can settle my indebtedness to you--”
+
+“How?”
+
+“That’s up to you, Drene.”
+
+“How?” repeated Drene, violently.
+
+Graylock made a slight gesture with his head toward Drene’s sagging
+pocket: “That way if you like. Or,” he added, “There is a harder
+punishment.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“To give her up.”
+
+“Yes,” said Drene, “that is harder. But I can make it even harder than
+that. I can make it as hard for you as you made it for me. I can let you
+live through it.”
+
+He laughed, fisted in his pocket, drew out the lumpy automatic and
+leisurely pushed the lever to “safe.”
+
+He said: “To kill you would be like opening the cell door for a lifer.
+You know what you are while you’re alive; maybe you’d forget if you were
+dead. I--”
+
+He ceased, fiddling absently with the dull-colored weapon on his knee;
+and for a while they remained silent, not looking at each other. And
+when Drene spoke again he was still intent upon the automatic.
+
+“If I knew what happens after a man dies I could act intelligently.” He
+shot an ugly look at Graylock: “I don’t know about you, either. You’re a
+rat. But you might fool me at that. You might be repentant. And in that
+case you’d get away--if it’s true that the eleventh hour is not too
+late.... If it’s true that Christ is merciful.... So I’ll take no
+chances of a getaway. You might fool me--one way or another--if you were
+dead.”
+
+Graylock lifted his head from his hands: “I don’t know how much of the
+other debt I’ve already paid, Drene. But I’ve paid heavily since I knew
+her--if that is any satisfaction to you. And since I knew she cared for
+you, and when I realized that you meant to strike me through her--I have
+paid, heavily.... Yet, if you were honestly in love with her--”
+
+“Is that any of your damned business?”
+
+“She’s only a child--”
+
+“You rat! That’s what’s coming to you!”
+
+“If you say so. But what is coming to her, Drene?”
+
+“Continue to guess. But I know you. It’s yourself you’re sorry for and
+what you’ll have to endure--live through. That’s what you can’t stand,
+and remain the sleek, self-satisfied rat you are. No, it will make earth
+a living hell for you; never a second, day or night, will you be able
+to forget--if you really do love her.... And I believe you do--I don’t
+understand how a thing like you can love--but it seems it can.”
+
+After a silence Graylock said: “You don’t care if you damn yourself?”
+
+“It’s worth it to me.”
+
+“Are you willing that I should know you are as great a blackguard as I
+am?” Drene’s gaunt features reddened and he set his jaws in silence.
+
+“Don’t you care what you do to her?” asked Graylock, unsteadily. “It’s a
+viler business than that for which you are punishing me.”
+
+For a long time Drene sat there looking down at the weapon on his knees.
+And after a while, the other man spoke huskily: “It’s bad enough either
+way for me, Drene. I’ll do what you wish in the matter. I’ll leave
+the country; I’ll stay; whichever you say. Or,” he said with a ghastly
+smile, “I’ll clean out that automatic for you to-night--if you’ll marry
+her.”
+
+Drene looked up, slowly:
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“I said that I’d clean out your automatic for you--to-night--if you
+wish.... It can be an accident or not, just as you say.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In my own rooms--if it is to be an accident.”
+
+“Do you offer--”
+
+“Yes; if you’ll marry her afterwards. If you say you will I’ll take your
+word.”
+
+“And then you’ll be out of your misery, you damned coward!”
+
+“God knows.... But I think not,” said Graylock, under his breath.
+
+Drene twisted the automatic, rose and continued to twirl it,
+considering. Presently he began to pace the floor, no longer noticing
+the other man. Once his promenade brought him up facing the wall where a
+calendar hung.
+
+He stood for a while looking at it absently. After a few moments he
+stepped nearer, detached the sheet for the present month, then one by
+one tore off the remaining sheets until he came to the month marked
+December, Graylock watching him all the while.
+
+“I think it happened on Christmas,” remarked Drene turning toward the
+other and laying a finger on the number 25 printed in red.
+
+Graylock’s head bent slightly.
+
+“Very well. Suppose about eleven o’clock on Christmas night you give
+your automatic a thorough cleaning.
+
+“If you say so.”
+
+“You have one?”
+
+“I shall buy one.”
+
+“Didn’t you come here armed?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Drene looked at him very intently. But Graylock had never been a liar.
+After a few moments he went over to his desk, replaced the weapon under
+the papers, and, still busy, said over his shoulder:
+
+“All right. You can go.”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+He wrote to Cecile once:
+
+Hereafter keep clear of men like Graylock and like me. We’re both of a
+stripe--the same sort under our skins. I’ve known him all my life. It
+all depends upon the opportunity, the circumstances, and the woman. And,
+what is a woman between friends--between such friends as Graylock and I
+once were--or between the sort of friends we have now become? Keep clear
+of such men as we are. We were boys together.
+
+
+For a week or two he kept his door locked and lived on what the janitor
+provided for him, never going out of the studio at all.
+
+He did no work, although there were several unexecuted commissions
+awaiting his attention and a number of sketches, clay studies, and one
+marble standing around the studio in various stages of progress. The
+marble was the Annunciation. The head and throat and slender hands were
+completed, and one slim naked foot.
+
+Sometimes he wandered from one study to the next, vague-eyed, standing
+for a long time before each, staring, lost in thought. Sometimes, in the
+evening he read, choosing a book at random among the motley collection
+in a corner case--a dusty, soiled assortment of books, ephemeral novels
+of the moment, ponderous volumes which are in everybody’s library but
+which nobody reads, sets of histories, memoirs, essays, beautifully
+bound and once cared for, but now dirty from neglect--jetsam from a
+wrecked home.
+
+There had been a time when law, order and neatness formed the basis
+of Drene’s going forth and coming in. He had been exact, precise,
+fastidious; he had been sensitive to environment, a lover of beautiful
+things, a man who deeply appreciated any symbol that suggested home and
+hearth and family.
+
+But when these three were shattered in the twinkling of an eye,
+something else broke, too. And he gradually emerged from chaos,
+indifferent to all that had formerly been a part of him, a silent
+emotionless, burnt out thing, callous to all that he had once cared for.
+
+Yet something of what he had been must have remained latent within him
+for with unimpaired precision and logic he constructed his clay and
+chiseled his marble; and there must have been in him something to
+express, for the beauty of his work, spiritual and material, had set him
+high among the highest in his profession.
+
+Sometimes sorrow changes the dross from the lamp of the spirit so
+that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears,
+rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under
+the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is noble, hardening
+all that is ignoble; and is extinguished leaving a devil behind
+it--fully equipped to slay the crippled soul.
+
+Alone in his studio at night, motionless in his chair, Drene was
+becoming aware of this devil. Reading by lamplight he grew conscious of
+it; recognized it as a companion of many years, now understanding that
+although pain had ended, hatred had remained, hiding, biding, and very,
+very quiet.
+
+And suddenly this hatred had flamed like hell-fire, amazing even
+himself--that day when, lifted out of his indifference for an instant
+by a young girl’s gaiety--and with a smile, half-responsive, on his own
+unaccustomed lips, he had learned from her in the same instant, that the
+man he had almost ceased to remember was honestly in love with her.
+
+And suddenly he knew that he hated and that he should strike, and that
+there could be no comparison in perfection between hatred and what
+perhaps was love.
+
+Sometimes, at night, lying on the studio couch, he found himself still
+hesitating. Could Graylock be reached after death? Was it possible?
+If he broke his word after Graylock was dead could he still strike and
+reach him through the woman for whose sake he, Graylock, was going to
+step out of things?
+
+That occupied his mind continually, now. Was there anybody who could
+tell him about such matters? Did clergymen really know whether the soul
+survived? And if it did, and if truly there were a hell, could a living
+man add anything to its torments for his enemy’s benefit?
+
+One day the janitor, lingering, ventured to ask Drene whether he was
+feeling quite well.
+
+“Yes” said Drene, “I am well.”
+
+The janitor spoke of his not eating. And, as Drene said nothing, he
+mentioned the fact that Drene had not set foot outside his own quarters
+in many weeks.
+
+Drene nodded: “I expect to go for a walk this evening.”
+
+But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness,
+wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days.
+
+What were the nights of a condemned man like? Did Graylock sleep? Did
+he suffer? Was the suspense a living death to him? Had he ever suspected
+him, Drene, of treachery after he, Graylock, had fulfilled his final
+part of the bargain.
+
+For a long time, now, a fierce curiosity concerning what Graylock was
+thinking and doing had possessed Drene. What does a man, who is in good
+physical health, do, when he is at liberty to compute to the very second
+how many seconds of life remain for him?
+
+Drene’s sick brain ached with the problem day and night.
+
+In November the snow fell. Drene had not been out except in imagination.
+
+Day after day, in imagination, he had followed Graylock, night after
+night, slyly, stealthily, shirking after him through busy avenues at
+midday, lurking by shadowy houses at midnight, burning to see what
+expression this man wore, what was imprinted on his features;--obsessed
+by a desire to learn what he might be thinking--with death drawing
+nearer.
+
+But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly room--a
+gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all day in his
+chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly across his couch
+at night staring at the stars through the dirty crust of glass above.
+
+One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back at
+him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness following his
+enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.
+
+For a while he lay very still, listening; but when he realized that the
+laughter was his own he sat up, pressing his temples between hot and
+trembling fingers.
+
+It seemed to silence the laughter: terror subsided to a tremulous
+apprehension--as though he had been on the verge of something horrible
+sinking into it for a moment--but had escaped.
+
+Again he found himself thinking of Graylock, and presently he laughed;
+then frightened, checked himself. But his fevered brain had been afire
+too long; he lay fighting with his thoughts to hold them in leash lest
+they slip out into the night like blood hounds on the trail of the man
+they had dogged so long.
+
+Trembling, terrified, he set his teeth in his bleeding lip, and clenched
+his gaunt fists: He could not hold his thoughts in leash; could not
+control the terrifying laughter; hatred blazed like hell-fire scorching
+the soul in him, searing his aching brain with flames which destroy.
+
+In the darkness he struggled blindly to his feet; and he saw the stars
+through the glass roof all ablaze in the midnight sky; saw the infernal
+flicker of pale flames in the obscurity around him, heard a voice
+calling for help--his own voice--
+
+Then something stirred in the darkness; he listened, stared, striving to
+pierce the obscurity with fevered eyes.
+
+Long since the cloths that swathed the clay figures in the studio had
+dried out unnoticed by him. He gazed from one to another, holding his
+breath. Then his eyes rested upon the altar piece, fell on the snowy
+foot, were lifted inch by inch along the marble folds upward slowly to
+the slim and child-like hands--
+
+“Oh, God!” he whispered, knowing he had gone mad at last.
+
+For, under the carven fingers, the marble folds of the robe over the
+heart were faintly glowing from some inward radiance. And, as he reeled
+forward and dropped at the altar foot, lifting his burning eyes, he saw
+the child-like head bend toward him from the slender neck--saw that the
+eyes were faintly blue--
+
+“Mother of God!” he screamed, “my mind is dying--my mind is dying! ...
+We were boys, he and I.... Let God judge him.... Let him be judged...
+mercifully.... I am worse than he.... There is no hell. I have
+striven to fashion one--I have desired to send him thither--Mother of
+God--Cecile--”
+
+Under his fevered eyes he was confusing them, now, and he sank down
+close against the pedestal and laid his f ace against her small cold
+foot.
+
+“I am sick,” he rambled on--“and very tired.... We were boys together,
+Cecile.... When I am in my right mind I would not harm him.... He was so
+handsome and daring. There was nothing he dared not do.... So young, and
+straight, and daring.... I would not harm him. Or you, Cecile.... Only
+I am sick, burning out, with only a crippled mind left--from being
+badly hurt--It never got well. ... And now it is dying of its
+hurt--Cecile!--Mother of God!--before it dies I do forgive him--and ask
+forgiveness--for Christ’s sake--”
+
+Toward noon the janitor broke in the door.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+It was late in December before Drene opened his eyes in his right
+senses. He unclosed them languidly, gazed at the footboard of his bed,
+then, around at the four shabby walls of his room.
+
+“Cecile?” he said, distinctly.
+
+The girl who had been watching him laid aside her sewing, rose, and
+bent over him. Suddenly her pale face flushed and one hand flew to her
+throat.
+
+“Dearest?” he said, inquiringly.
+
+Then down on her knees fell the girl, and groped for his wasted hand and
+laid her cheek on it, crying silently.
+
+As for Drene, he lay there, his hollow eyes roaming from wall to wall.
+At last he turned his head on the pillow and looked down at her.
+
+The next day when he opened his eyes from a light sleep his skin was
+moist and cool and he managed to move his hand toward hers as she bent
+over him.
+
+“I want--Graylock,” he whispered. The girl flushed, bent nearer, gazing
+at him intently.
+
+“Graylock,” he repeated.
+
+“Not now,” she murmured, “not today. Rest for a while.”
+
+“Please,” he said, looking up at her trustfully--“Graylock. Now.”
+
+“When you are well--”
+
+“I am--well. Please, dear.”
+
+For a while she continued sitting there on the side of his bed, his limp
+hands in hers, her lips pressed against them. But he never took his
+eyes from her, and in them she saw only the same wistful expression,
+unchanging, trustful that she would do his bidding.
+
+So at last she went into the studio and wrote a note to Graylock. It was
+late. She went downstairs to the janitor’s quarters where there was a
+messenger call. But no messenger came probably Christmas day kept them
+busy. Perhaps, too, some portion of the holiday was permitted them,
+for it was long after dinner and the full tide of gaiety in town was
+doubtless at its flood.
+
+So she waited until it was plain that no messenger was coming; then
+she rose from the chair and stood gazing out into the wintry darkness
+through the dirty basement window. Clocks were striking eleven.
+
+As she turned to go her eye fell upon the telephone. She hesitated. But
+the memory of Drene’s eyes, their wistfulness and trust decided her.
+
+After a little waiting she got Graylock’s apartment. A servant asked her
+to hold the wire.
+
+After an interval she recognized Graylock’s voice at the telephone,
+pleasant, courteous, serenely wishing her the happiness of the season.
+
+“What are you doing this Christmas night?” she asked. “Surely you are
+not all alone there at home?”
+
+“I am rather too old for anything else,” he said.
+
+“But what are you doing? Reading?”
+
+“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I happened to be cleaning an automatic
+revolver when you called up.”
+
+“What a gay employment for Christmas night! Is that your idea of
+celebrating?”
+
+“There happens to be nothing else for me to do tonight.”
+
+“But there is. You are requested to make a call.”
+
+“On whom?” he asked, quietly.
+
+“On Mr. Drene.”
+
+For a full minute he remained silent, although she spoke to him twice,
+thinking the connection might have been interrupted. Then his voice
+came, curiously altered:
+
+“Who asked that of me?”
+
+“Mr. Drene.”
+
+“Mr. Drene is very ill, I hear.”
+
+“He is convalescent.”
+
+“Did he ask you to call me?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Then--you are with him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In his apartment. I came downstairs to the janitor’s rooms. I am
+telephoning from there what he wished me to ask you.”
+
+After a pause Graylock said: “Is his mind perfectly clear?”
+
+“Perfectly, now.”
+
+“He asked for me?”
+
+“Yes. Will you come?”
+
+“He asked for me? Tonight? At eleven o’clock?”
+
+She said: “I don’t think he knows even what month it is. He has only
+been conscious for a day or two. Had he known it was Christmas night
+perhaps he might not have disturbed you. But--will you come?”
+
+“I am afraid it is too late--to-night.”
+
+“Tomorrow, then? Shall I tell him?”
+
+There was a silence. She repeated the question. But Graylock’s reply was
+inaudible and she thought he said good-bye instead of good night.
+
+Somewhere in the rear of the basement the janitor and his family and
+probably all his relatives were celebrating. A fiddle squeaked in there;
+there was a steady tumult of voices and laughter.
+
+The girl stood a while listening, a slight smile on her lips. Blessed
+happiness had come to her in time for Christmas--a strange and heavenly
+happiness, more wonderful than when a life is spared to one who loves,
+for it had been more than the mere life of this man she had asked of
+God: it had been his mind.
+
+He lay asleep when she entered and stood by the shaded lamp, looking
+down at him.
+
+After a while she seated herself and took up her sewing. But laid it
+aside again as there came a low knocking at the door.
+
+Drene opened his eyes as Graylock entered all alone and stood still
+beside the bed looking down at him. In the studio Cecile moved about
+singing under her breath. They both heard her.
+
+Drene nodded weakly. After a moment he made the effort to speak:
+
+“I am trying to get well--to start again--better--live more--nobly. ...
+Take your chance, too.”
+
+“If you wish, Drene.”
+
+“Yes. I was not--very--well. I had been ill--very--a long while ...
+And you are not to clean the automatic.... Only your own-soul.... Ask
+help.... You’ll get it..... I did.... And--all that is true--what
+we believed--as boys.... I know. I’ve seen. And it’s all true--all
+true--what we believed--as little boys.”
+
+He looked up at Graylock, then closed his eyes with the shadow of a
+smile in them.
+
+“Good-bye--Jack,” he whispered.
+
+Graylock’s mouth quivered, his lips moved in speech; and perhaps Drene
+heard and understood, for he opened his eyes and looked once more at his
+boyhood friend.
+
+“Somewhere--somebody will straighten out--all this,” he murmured,
+closing his eyes again: “We can’t; we can only try--to straighten
+out--ourselves.”
+
+Graylock looked down at him in silence, then, tall and heavily erect, he
+turned away.
+
+Cecile met him from the studio.
+
+“Good night,” she said, offering her hand.... “And a happy Christmas....
+I hope you will not be lonely.”
+
+He took her hand, gravely, thanked her, and went his way forever.
+
+For a few minutes she lingered in the doorway connecting Drene’s bedroom
+with the studio. She held a sprig of holly.
+
+After a little while he opened his eyes and looked at her, and, smiling,
+she came forward to the bedside.
+
+“It was a terrible dream,” he whispered--“all those years. But it was a
+dream.”
+
+“You must dream no more.”
+
+“No. Come nearer.”
+
+She rested on the bed’s edge beside him and laid one hand on his. The
+other held the holly, but he did not notice it until she offered it.
+
+“Dear,” she whispered, “it is Christmas night. And you did not even know
+it.”
+
+Suddenly the tears he had not known for years burned in his eyes, and
+he closed them, trembling, awed by the mercy of God that had been
+vouchsafed to him at the eleventh hour, else he had slain his soul.
+
+After a while he felt her lips touching his brow. And now silent in
+the spell of the dream that invaded her--the exquisite vision of
+wifehood--she sat motionless with childlike eyes lost in thought.
+
+Once more he turned his head and looked at her. Then her slender neck
+bent, and he saw that her eyes were divinely blue--
+
+“Cecile!”--he faltered--“Madonna inviolate!... The
+woman--between--friends--”
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Between Friends, by Robert W. Chambers
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