The Adventures of a Modest Man

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_The_ ADVENTURES _of_

A Modest Man

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Works of Robert W. Chambers

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The Adventures of a Modest Man Ailsa Paige The Danger Mark Special Messenger The Firing Line The Younger Set The Fighting Chance Some Ladies in Haste The Tree of Heaven The Tracer of Lost Persons A Young Man in a Hurry Lorraine Maids of Paradise Ashes of Empire The Red Republic Outsiders The Green Mouse Iole The Reckoning The Maid-at-Arms Cardigan The Haunts of Men The Mystery of Choice The Cambric Mask The Maker of Moons The King in Yellow In Search of the Unknown The Conspirators A King and a Few Dukes In the Quarter

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For Children

Garden-Land Forest-Land River-Land Mountain-Land Orchard-Land Outdoorland Hide and Seek in Forest-Land

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Copyright, 1900, 1911, By Robert W. Chambers

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Copyright, 1904, by Harper & Brothers Copyright, 1904, 1905, 1910, by The Curtis Publishing Company

_The_ ADVENTURES _of_ A MODEST MAN

_By_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

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Illustrated By Edmund Frederick

D. Appleton And Company New York And London: MCMXI

[Illustration: "'I realised that I was going to kiss her if she didn't move.... And--she didn't.'"--[Page 276.]]

To Mr. And Mrs. C. Wheaton Vaughan

This volume packed with bric-à-brac I offer you with my affection,-- The story halts, the rhymes are slack-- Poor stuff to add to your collection. Gems you possess from ages back: It is the modern junk you lack.

We three once moused through marble halls, Immersed in Art and deep dejection, Mid golden thrones and choir-stalls And gems beyond my recollection-- Yet soft!--my memory recalls Red labels pasted on the walls!

And so, perhaps, _my_ bric-à-brac May pass the test of your inspection; Perhaps you will not send it back, But place it--if you've no objection-- Under some nick-nack laden rack Where platters dangle on a tack.

So if you'll take this book from me And hide it in your cupboards laden Beside some Dresden filigree And frivolously fetching maiden-- Who knows?--that Dresden maid may see My book--and read it through pardie!

R. W. C.

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"Senilis stultitia quae deliratio appellari solet, senum levium est, non omnium."

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I. CONCERNING TWO GENTLEMEN FROM LONG ISLAND, DESTINY, AND A POT OF BLACK PAINT 1 II. A CHAPTER DEPICTING A RATHER GARRULOUS REUNION 14 III. TROUBLE FOR TWO 25 IV. WHEREIN A MODEST MAN IS BULLIED AND A LITERARY MAN PRACTICES STYLE 42 V. DREAMLAND 58 VI. SOUL AND BODY 74 VII. THE BITER, THE BITTEN, AND THE UN-BITTEN 85 VIII. A MATTER OF PRONUNCIATION 98 IX. FATE 104 X. CHANCE 117 XI. DESTINY 129 XII. IN WHICH A MODEST MAN MAUNDERS 143 XIII. A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 154 XIV. A STATE OF MIND 168 XV. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 181 XVI. THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION OF AN ANCIENT PROBLEM 194 XVII. SHOWING HOW IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO MAKE OF HIMSELF A CHUMP 208 XVIII. THE MASTER KNOT OF HUMAN FATE 221 XIX. THE TIME AND THE PLACE 234 XX. DOWN THE SEINE 242 XXI. IN A BELGIAN GARDEN 269 XXII. A YOUTHFUL PATRIOT 287 XXIII. ON THE WALL 292 XXIV. A JOURNEY TO THE MOON 303 XXV. THE ARMY OF PARIS 316

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List Of Illustrations

FACING PAGE "'I realised that I was going to kiss her if she didn't move.... And--she didn't'" _Frontispiece_ "'Give up my dead!' she whispered. 'Give up my dead!'" 40 "Christmas Eve she knelt, crying, before the pedestal" 80 "'Only one person in the world can ever matter to me--now'" 140 "Beyond, rocking wildly in a gilded boat, sat two people and a placid swan" 190 "'I--I don't know,' she stammered; 'my shoe seems tied to yours'" 214

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An Inadvertent Poem

_There is a little flow-urr_ _In our yard it does grow_ _Where many a happy hou-urr_ _I watch our rooster crow;_ _While clothes hang on the clothes-line_ _And plowing has began_ --_And the name they call this lit-tul vine_ _Is just "Old Man."_

_Old Man, Old Man_ _A-growing in our yard,_ _Every spring a-coming up_ _While yet the ground is har-rrd;_ _Pottering 'round the chickens' pan,_ _Creeping low and slow,_ _And why they call it Old Man_ _I never asked to know._ _I never want to know._

_Crawling through the chick-weed,_ _Dragging through the quack,_ _Pussly, tansy, tick-weed_ _Almost break his back._ _Catnip, cockle, dock prevent_ _His travelling all they can,_ _But still he goes the ways he's went,_ _Poor Old Man!_

_Old Man, Old Man,_ _What's the use of you?_ _No one wants to see you, like_ _As if you hadn't grew._ _You ain't no good to nothing_ _So far as I can see,_ _Unless some maiden fair will sing_ _These lines I've wrote to thee._ _And sing 'em soft to me._

_Some maiden fa-hair_ _With_ { _ra-haven_ } _hair_ { _go-holden_ } _Will si-hing this so-hong_ _To me-hee-ee!_

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Chapter I

Concerning Two Gentlemen From Long Island, Destiny, And A Pot Of Black Paint

"Hello, old man!" he began.

"Gillian," I said, "don't call me 'Old Man.' At twenty, it flattered me; at thirty, it was all right; at forty, I suspected _double entendre_; and now I don't like it."

"Of course, if you feel that way," he protested, smiling.

"Well, I do, dammit!"--the last a German phrase. I am rather strong on languages.

Now another thing that is irritating-- I've got ahead of my story, partly, perhaps, because I hesitate to come to the point.

For I have a certain delicacy in admitting that my second visit abroad, after twenty years, was due to a pig. So now that the secret is out--the pig also--I'll begin properly.

* * * * *

I purchased the porker at a Long Island cattle show; why, I don't know, except that my neighbor, Gillian Schuyler Van Dieman, put me up to it.

We are an inoffensive community maintaining a hunt club and the traditions of a by-gone generation. To the latter our children refuse to subscribe.

Our houses are what are popularly known as "fine old Colonial mansions." They were built recently. So was the pig. You see, I can never get away from that pig, although--but the paradox might injure the story. It has sufficiently injured me--the pig and the story, both.

The architecture of the pig was a kind of degenerate Chippendale, modified by Louis XVI and traces of Bavarian baroque. And his squeal resembled the atmospheric preliminaries for a Texas norther.

Van Dieman said I ought to buy him. I bought him. My men built him a chaste bower to leeward of an edifice dedicated to cows.

Here I sometimes came to contemplate him while my horse was being saddled.

That particular morning, when Van Dieman saluted me so suspiciously at the country club, I had been gazing at the pig.

And now, as we settled down to our morning game of chess, I said:

"Van, that pig of mine seems to be in nowise remarkable. Why the devil do you suppose I bought him?"

"How do I know?"

"You ought to. You suggested that I buy him. Why did you?"

"To see whether you would."

I said rather warmly: "Did you think me weak-minded enough to do whatever you suggested?"

"The fact remains that you did," he said calmly, pushing the king's knight to queen's bishop six.

"Did what?" I snapped.

"What you didn't really want to do."

"Buy the pig?"

"Exactly."

I thought a moment, took a pawn with satisfaction, considered.

"Van," I said, "why do you suppose I bought that pig?"

"_Ennui._"

"A man doesn't buy pigs to escape from _ennui_!"

"You can't predict what a man will do to escape it," he said, smiling. "The trouble with you is that you're been here too long; you're in a rut; you're gone stale. Year in, year out, you do the same things in the same way, rise at the same time, retire at the same hour, see the same people, drive, motor, ride, potter about your lawns and gardens, come here to the club--and it's enough to petrify anybody's intellect."

"Do you mean to say that _mine_----"

"Partly. Don't get mad. No man who lives year after year in a Long Island community could escape it. What you need is to go abroad. What you require is a good dose of Paris."

"For twenty odd years I have avoided Paris," I said, restlessly. "Why should I go back there?"

"Haven't you been there in twenty years?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Well, for one thing, to avoid meeting the entire United States."

"All right," said Van Dieman, "if you want to become an old uncle foozle, continue to take root in Long Island." He announced mate in two moves. After I had silently conceded it, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigarette.

"It's my opinion," he said, "that you've already gone too stale to take care of your own pig."

Even years of intimacy scarcely justified this.

"When the day comes," said I, "that I find myself no longer competent to look after my own affairs, I'll take your advice and get out of Long Island."

He looked up with a smile. "Suppose somebody stole that pig, for instance."

"They couldn't."

"Suppose they did, under your very nose."

"If anything happens to that pig," I said--"anything untoward, due to any negligence or stupidity of mine, I'll admit that I need waking up.... Now get that pig if you can!"

"Will you promise to go to Paris for a jolly little jaunt if anything does happen to your pig?" he asked.

"Why the devil do _you_ want _me_ to go to Paris?"

"Do you good, intellectually."

Then I got mad.

"Van," I said, "if anybody can get that pig away from me, I'll do anything you suggest for the next six months."

"_À nous deux, alors!_" he said. He speaks French too fast for me to translate. It's a foolish way to talk a foreign language. But he has never yet been able to put it over me.

"_À la guerre comme à la guerre_," I replied carelessly. It's a phrase one can use in reply to any remark that was ever uttered in French. I use it constantly.

* * * * *

That afternoon I went and took a good look at my pig. Later, as I was walking on the main street of Oyster Bay, a man touched his hat and asked me for a job. Instantly it occurred to me to hire him as night watchman for the pig. He had excellent references, and his countenance expressed a capacity for honest and faithful service. That night before I went to bed, I walked around to the sty. My man was there on duty.

"That," thought I, "will hold Van Dieman for a while."

When my daughters had retired and all the servants were abed, I did a thing I have not done in years--not since I was a freshman at Harvard: I sat up with my pipe and an unexpurged translation of Henry James until nearly eleven o'clock. However, by midnight I was asleep.

It was full starlight when I awoke and jumped softly out of bed. Somebody was tapping at the front door. I put on a dressing-gown and slippers and waited; but no servants were aroused by the persistent rapping.

After a moment I went to the window, raised it gently and looked out. A farmer with a lantern stood below.

"Say, squire," he said, when he beheld my head, "I guess I'll have to ask for help. I'm on my way to market and my pig broke loose and I can't ketch him nohow."

"Hush!" I whispered; "I'll come down."

Very cautiously I unbarred the front door and stepped out into the lovely April starlight. In the road beyond my hedge stood a farm-wagon containing an empty crate. Near it moved the farmer, and just beyond his outstretched hands sported a playful pig. He was a black pig. Mine was white. Besides I went around to the pen and saw, in the darkness, my Oyster Bay retainer still on guard. So, it being a genuine case, I returned to the road.

The farmer's dilemma touched me. What in the world was so utterly hopeless to pursue, unaided, as a coy pig at midnight.

"If you will just stand there, squire, and sorter spread out your skirts, I'll git him in a jiffy," said the panting farmer.

I did as I was bidden. The farmer approached; the pig pranced between his legs.

"By gum!" exclaimed the protected of Ceres.

But, after half an hour, the pig became over-confident, and the tiller of phosphites seized him and bore him, shrieking, to the wooden crate in the wagon, there depositing him, fastening the door, and climbing into his seat with warm thanks to me for my aid.

I told the Brother to the Ox that he was welcome. Then, with heart serenely warmed by brotherly love and a knowledge of my own condescension, I retired to sleep soundly until Higgins came to shave me at eight o'clock next morning.

"Beg pardon, sir," said Higgins, stirring his lather as I returned from the bath to submit my chin to his razor--"beg pardon, sir, but--but the pig, sir----"

"What pig?" I asked sharply. Had Higgins beheld me pursuing that midnight porker? And if he had, was he going to tell about it?

"What pig, sir? Why, THE pig, sir."

"I do not understand you, Higgins," I said coldly.

"Beg pardon, sir, but Miss Alida asked me to tell you, that the pig----"

"WHAT PIG?" I repeated exasperated.

"Why--why--OURS, sir."

I turned to stare at him. "MY pig?" I asked.

"Yes, sir--he's gone, sir----"

"Gone!" I thundered.

"Stolen, sir, out o' the pen last night."

Stunned, I could only stare at Higgins. Stolen? My pig? Last night?

"Some one," said Higgins, "went and opened that lovely fancy sty, sir; and the pig he bolted. It takes a handy thief to stop and steal a pig, sir. There must ha' been two on 'em to catch that pig!"

"Where's that miserable ruffian I hired to watch the sty?" I demanded hotly.

"He has gone back to work for Mr. Van Dieman, sir. His hands was all over black paint, and I see him a-wipin' of 'em onto your white picket fence."

The calmness of despair came over me. I saw it, now. I had been called out of bed to help catch my own pig. For nearly half an hour I had dodged about there in front of my own house, too stupid to suspect, too stupid even to recognize my own pig in the disguised and capricious porker shying and caracolling about in the moonlight. Good heavens! Van Dieman was right. A man who helps to steal his own pig is fit for nothing but Paris or a sanitarium.

"Shave me speedily, Higgins," I said. "I am not very well, and it is difficult for me to preserve sufficient composure to sit still. And, Higgins, it is not at all necessary for you to refer to that pig hereafter. You understand? Very well. Go to the telephone and call up the Cunard office."

Presently I was in communication with Bowling Green.

That morning in the breakfast-room, when I had kissed my daughter Alida, aged eighteen, and my daughter Dulcima, aged nineteen, the younger said: "Papa, do you know that our pig has been stolen?"

"Alida," I replied, "I myself disposed of him"--which was the dreadful truth.

"You sold him?" asked Dulcima in surprise.

"N--not exactly. These grape-fruit are too sour!"

"You gave him away?" inquired Alida.

"Yes--after a fashion. Is this the same coffee we have been using? It has a peculiar----"

"Who did you give him to?" persisted my younger child.

"A--man."

"What man?"

"Nobody you know, child."

"But----"

"Stop!" said I firmly. "It is a subject too complicated to discuss."

"Oh, pooh!" said Dulcima; "everybody discusses everything in Oyster Bay. And besides I want to know----"

"About the pig!" broke in Alida.

"And that man to whom you gave the pig----"

"Alida," said I, with misleading mildness, "how would you like to go to Paris?"

"Oh! papa----"

"And you, Dulcima?"

"Darling papa!"

"When?" cried Alida.

"Wednesday," I replied with false urbanity.

"Oh! The darling!" they cried in rapture, and made toward me.

"Wait!" I said with a hideous smile. "We have not yet left Sandy Hook! And I solemnly promise you both that if either of you ever again ask me one question concerning that pig--nay, if you so much as look askance at me over the breakfast bacon--neither you nor I will ever leave Sandy Hook alive!"

They have kept their promises--or I should never have trodden the deck of the _S. S. Cambodia_, the pride of the great Cunard Line, with my daughter Dulcima on one side and my daughter Alida on the other side of me, and my old friend Van Dieman waving me adieu from a crowded pier, where hundreds of handkerchiefs flutter in the breeze.

"_Au revoir et bon voyage!_" he called up to me.

"_Toujours la politesse_," I muttered, nodding sagely.

"That was a funny reply to make, papa," said Dulcima.

"Not at all," I replied, with animation; "to know a language is to know when to use its idioms." They both looked a little blank, but continued to wave their handkerchiefs.

"_À bien-tôt!_" called Alida softly, as the towering black sides of the steamer slipped along the wooden wharf.

Van Dieman raised his hat on the pier below, and answered: "_À bien-tôt? C'est la mort, jusqu'à bien-tôt! Donc, vîve la vie, Mademoiselle!_"

"There is no necessity in chattering like a Frenchman when you talk French," I observed to Alida. "Could you make out what Van Dieman said to you?"

"Y--yes," she admitted, with a slight blush.

I glanced at Dulcima. There was a mischievous light in her blue eyes.

"Pooh!" I thought; "Van Dieman is forty if he's a day."

While the ship slid on past Castle William and poked her nose toward the forts at the Narrows, I watched the distant pier which we had left. It was still black with people, moving like ants. And, as I looked, I muttered ever: "Pooh! Van Dieman's forty. There's nothing in it, nothing in it, nothing whatever."

Off Fort Hamilton I noticed that Alida had a tear in one of her brown eyes. "There's nothing in it," I repeated obstinately.

Off Sandy Hook we ran into a sea-storm. In a few minutes many of the passengers went below; in a few more minutes the remainder of the passengers went below; and I was on the way below with my daughter Alida on one arm and my daughter Dulcima on the other.

"There is nothing in it," I reflected, as the ship shuddered, pitched, and we involuntarily began running down a toboggan slide, taking little timorous steps. Then the deck flew up and caught the soles of our shoes before we were ready to put our feet down. "Alida," I said, "do you feel bored?"

There was no mistaking the tears in her eyes now. "There's nothing in it. There's nothing in anything," I muttered faintly. And I was right as far as it concerned the passengers on the pitching _Cambodia_.

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Chapter II

A Chapter Depicting A Rather Garrulous Reunion

The second day we ran out of the storm. I remember on that day that I wore a rather doggy suit of gray--a trifle too doggy for a man of my years. In my button-hole reposed a white carnation, and as I strolled into the smoking-room I was humming under my breath an air from "Miss Helyet"--a thing I had not thought of in twenty years.

"Well, upon my word!" exclaimed a man who looked up from his novel as I entered the doorway. "Gad! You haven't changed in twenty years!--except that your moustache is----"

"Sure! And my temples, Williams! Besides, I have two grown-up daughters aboard! How are you, anyway, you Latin Quarter come-back?"

We settled ourselves, hands still warmly clasped.

"You're not going back to Paris?" I asked.

"Why, man, I live there."

"By George, so you do! I forgot."

There was a silence--that smiling, retrospective silence which ends inevitably in a sigh not entirely painful.

"Are any of the old men left there?" I asked.

"Some."

"I--I suppose the city has changed a lot. Men who've been over since, say so."

"It hasn't changed, radically."

"Hasn't it, Williams?" I asked wistfully.

"No. The old café is exactly the same. The Luxembourg Quarter will seem familiar to you----"

"I'm not going there," I said hastily.

He smiled; I could see him doing it, askance. But my features remained dignified and my attitude detached.

"I wonder," I began carelessly, "whether----"

"She got married," he said casually; "I'm glad. She was a sweet little thing."

"She was exceedingly charming," I said, selecting a cigar. "And the other?"

"Which?"

"I forget her name."

"Oh, you mean Delancy's?"

"Yes."

"I don't know whatever became of her," he said.

"Whatever became of Delancy?"

"Oh, he did what we all usually do--he came back, married, and spent the better part of his life in trying to keep his daughter from marrying that young Harroll."

"Sir Peter's son?"

"Yes. I was a guest at the Delancy's at the time, and I nearly died. Harroll confided in me, Catharine Delancy confided in me, John Delancy told me his woes. It's an amusing story. Do you want to hear it?"

"Go ahead," I said. "My sympathies are already with Delancy. I've a pair of daughters myself, and I'm trying to shoo away every sort of man and keep 'em for myself a little longer."

Williams smiled:

"Well, you listen to what those two did to John Delancy. It was some."

I lit my cigar; he lit his; and I settled back, looking at him attentively as he began with a wave of his gloved hand, a story of peculiar interest to a man with two unusually attractive daughters:

* * * * *

Now, although Harroll had been refused a dozen times--not by Miss Delancy, but by her father--the young man's naturally optimistic spirits suffered only temporary depression; and a few evenings later he asked for her again, making it a bakers' dozen--an uncanny record.

"No," said Mr. Delancy.

"Won't you let me have her when I become tenth vice-president of the Half-Moon Title Guarantee and Trust----"

"No, I won't."

"When will you let me try for her?"

There was no reply.

"Well, sir," said the young man cheerfully, "there must be some way, of course."

"Really, Jim, I don't see what way," said Mr. Delancy, without emotion. "I don't want you for a son-in-law, and I'm not going to have you. That's one of the reasons I allow you the run of the house. My daughter sees too much of you to care for you. It's a theory of my own, and a good one, too."

"Why don't you want me for a son-in-law?" asked the young man, for the hundredth time.

"Can you give me one single reason why I should want you?" asked Mr. Delancy wearily.

Harroll stood buried in meditation for a few moments. "No," he said, "I can't recall any important reasons at the moment."

"I can supply you with one--your sense of honor--but it doesn't count in this case, because you wouldn't be in my house if you didn't have any."

Harroll looked at the fire.

"I've told you a hundred times that when my little girl marries, she marries one of her own kind. I don't like Englishmen. And that is all there is to it, Jim."

"Don't you like me?"

"I'm not infatuated with you."

"Well," said Harroll, slowly pacing the rug in front of the fire, "it's curious, isn't it?--but, do you know, I think that I am going to marry Catharine one of these days?"

"Oh, I think not," replied Mr. Delancy amiably. "And perhaps this is a good opportunity to say good-by for a while. You know we go to Palm Beach to-morrow?"

"Catharine told me," said the young man, placidly. "So I've wired for quarters at The Breakers--for two weeks."

The two men smiled at one another.

"You take your vacation late," said Mr. Delancy.

"Not too late, I trust."

"You think you can afford Palm Beach, Jim?"

"No; but I'm going."

Mr. Delancy rose and stood thoughtfully twirling his monocle by the string. Then he threw away his cigar, concealed a yawn, and glanced gravely at the clock on the mantel.

"May I go in and say good-night to Catharine, sir?" asked young Harroll.

Mr. Delancy looked bored, but nodded civilly enough.

"And, Jim," he drawled, as the young man started toward the drawing-room, "I wouldn't go to Palm Beach if I were you."

"Yes, you would, sir--if you were I."

"Young man," said Mr. Delancy, mildly, "I'm damned if I have you for a son-in-law! Good-night."

They shook hands. Harroll walked into the drawing-room and found it empty. The music-room, however, was lighted, and Catharine Delancy sat tucked up in a deep window-seat, studying a map of southern Florida and feeding bonbons to an enormous white Persian cat.

"Jim," she said, raising her dark eyes as he sauntered up, "you and father have lately fallen into the disreputable habit of sitting behind closed doors and gossiping. You have done it thirteen times in three months. Don't be such pigs; scandal, like other pleasures, was meant to be shared."

At a gesture of invitation he seated himself beside her and lifted the Persian pussy to his lap.

"Well," she inquired, "are you really going with us?"

"I can't go when you do, but I'm going to The Breakers for a week or two--solely to keep an eye on your behavior."

"That is jolly!" she said, flushing with pleasure. "Was father pleased when you told him?"

"He didn't say he was pleased."

"He is always reticent," she said, quickly. "But won't it be too jolly for words! We'll travel miles and miles together in bicycle-chairs, and we'll yacht and bathe and ride and golf, and catch amber-jack and sharks, and--you'll persuade father to let me gamble just once at the club--won't you?"

"Not much! Where did you hear that sort of talk, Catharine?"

"Don't tweak Omar's tail and I'll tell you--there! you've done it again, and I won't tell you."

He fell to stroking the cat's fur, gazing the while into space with an absent eye that piqued her curiosity. For a year now he had acquired that trick of suddenly detaching himself from earth and gazing speculatively toward heaven, lost in a revery far from flattering to the ignored onlooker. And now he was doing it again under her very nose. What was he thinking about? He seemed, all at once, a thousand miles removed from her. Where were his thoughts?

Touched in her _amour propre_, she quietly resumed the map of southern Florida; but even the rustle of the paper did not disturb his self-centred and provoking meditation.

She looked at him, looked at the map, considered him again, and finally watched him.

Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she thought him dangerously attractive. Surprised and interested, she regarded him in this new light, impersonally for the moment. So far away had he apparently drifted in his meditation that it seemed to her as though she were observing a stranger--a most interesting and most unusual young man.

He turned and looked her straight in the eyes.

Twenty-two, and her first season half over, and to be caught blushing like a school-girl!

There was no constraint; her self-possession cooled her cheeks--and he was not looking at her, after all: he was looking through her, at something his fancy focused far, far beyond her.

Never had she thought any man half as attractive as this old friend in a new light--this handsome, well-built, careless young fellow absorbed in thoughts which excluded her. No doubt he was so habituated to herself in all her moods that nothing except the friendliest indifference could ever----

To her consternation another tint of warm color slowly spread over neck and cheek. He rose at the same moment, dropped the cat back among the cushions, and smiling down at her, held out his hand. She took it, met his eyes with an effort; but what message she divined in them Heaven alone knows, for all at once her heart stood still and a strange thrill left her fingers nerveless in his hand.

He was saying slowly, "Then I shall see you at Palm Beach next week?"

"Yes.... You will come, won't you?"

"Yes, I will come."

"But if you--change your mind?"

"I never change. May I write you?"

"Good-night.... You may write me if you wish."

"I will write, every day--if you don't mind."

"No--I don't mind," she said thoughtfully.

She withdrew her hand and stood perfectly still as he left the room. She heard a servant open the door, she heard Harroll's quick step echo on the stoop, then the door closed.

A second later Mr. Delancy in the library was aroused from complacent meditation by the swish of a silken skirt, and glancing up, beheld a tall, prettily formed girl looking at him with a sober and rather colorless face.

"Father," she said, "I'm in love with Jim Harroll!"

Mr. Delancy groped for his monocle, screwed it into his left eye, and examined his daughter.

"It's true, and I thought I'd better tell you," she said.

"Yes," he agreed, "it's as well to let me know. Ah--er--when and how did it occur?"

"I don't know, father. I was feeding Omar bonbons and looking over the map of South Florida, and thinking about nothing in particular, when Jim came in. He said he was going to Palm Beach, and I said, 'How jolly!' and he sat down and picked up Omar, and--I don't know how it was, but I began to think him very attractive, and the first thing I knew--it--happened!"

"Oh! So that's the way it happened?"

"I think it was, father."

"No doubt you'll outgrow it."

"Do you think so?"

"I haven't a doubt of it, little daughter."

"I have."

Mr. Delancy dropped his monocle and looked at the fire. The fire was all right.

"Do you--do you suppose that Jim is--does--thinks--knows----"

"I never speculate on what Jim is, does, thinks, or knows," said her father, thoughtfully, stirring the embers and spoiling a perfectly good fire. When he looked up again she had gone.

"One theory smashed!" observed Mr. Delancy. "I'll try another, with separation as the main ingredient."

He sat down before the fire and lighted a fresh cigar, which wasn't good for him.

"Must avoid making a martyr of Jim or there will be trouble," he mused. "There remains another way--make a martyr of myself."

He sat swinging his monocle around his forefinger, gazing vacantly at the pattern the shadows cast across the hearth.

"Avalon!" he said, abruptly. "Avalon! The 'back-to-nature' business, 'grass-cure' and all. It can't harm either Catharine or me, I fancy--or any other pair of donkeys!"

[Illustration]

Chapter III

Trouble For Two

_A Note Found by Young Harroll on his Dresser the Evening of his Arrival at Palm Beach._

"11.30 A.M.

"DEAR JIM--Everything is spoiled, after all! Father's failing health has suddenly become a serious matter, and we are going to try the 'nature cure,' or whatever they call it, at Avalon Island. I had no idea he was really ill. Evidently he is alarmed, for we have only been here six days, and in a few minutes we are to start for Avalon. Isn't it perfectly horrid? And to think that you are coming this evening and expecting to find us here!

"Father says you can't come to Avalon; that only invalids are received (I didn't know I was one, but it seems I'm to take the treatment, too!), and he says that nobody is received for less than a month's treatment, so I suppose that bars you even if you were self-sacrificing enough to endure a 'nature cure' for the pleasure of spending two weeks with [_me_, crossed out] us.

"I'm actually on the verge of tears when I think of all we had planned to do together! And there's my maid at the door, knocking. Good-by. You will write, won't you?

"Catharine Delancy."

* * * * *

_Mr. James Harroll to Miss Catharine Delancy, Avalon, Balboa County, Florida._

"Holy Cross Light, February 15.

"DEAR CATHARINE--Your father was right: they refuse to take me at Avalon. As soon as I found your note I telegraphed to Avalon for accommodations. It seems Avalon is an island, and they have to wait for the steamers to carry telegrams over from the mainland. So the reply has just reached me that they won't take me for less than a month; and my limit from business is two weeks or give up my position with your father.

"Yesterday I came out here to Holy Cross Spring to shoot ducks. I'd scarcely begun shooting, at dawn, when along came a couple of men through the fog, rowing like the mischief plump into my decoys, and I shouted out, 'What the deuce are you about?' and they begged my pardon, and said they had thought the point unoccupied, and that the fog was thicker than several things--which was true.

"So I invited them into the blind to--oh, the usual ceremony--and they came, and they turned out to be Jack Selden--the chap I told you about who was so decent to me in Paris--and his guide.

"So we had--ceremonies--several of them--and Selden stayed to shoot with me over my decoys, and our bag was fifty-three, all big duck except fifteen bluebills.

"Selden is a godsend to me. We're going to stay out here to-night at the lighthouse, and shoot all to-morrow if it doesn't blow too hard. It's blowing great guns now. I'm here in the lighthouse, writing in the glow of a lamp in the keeper's living-room, with his good little wife sewing by the fire and a half-dozen of his kids tumbling about on the floor. It's a pretty sight; I love children and firesides and that sort of thing. They've got hold of Selden now, and are making him tell stories of adventure. He's been all over the world, and is perfectly crazy to get married. Says he would prefer a widow with yellow hair and blue eyes. Do you know any? He's a nice chap."

"Catharine, I wish I were in Avalon. They could put me in a strait-jacket and I wouldn't care as long as [_you were_, crossed out] I could be with [_you_, crossed out] your father and you in Avalon.

"It's growing late, and Selden and I should be on the ducking-grounds to-morrow before dawn. The keeper's wife says it will blow too hard, but Selden only smiles. He's a cool one, and if he has the nerve to go out I'll go, too.

"With sincere regards to your father and every wish for his speedy recovery, I remain

"Yours faithfully, "JAMES HARROLL."

* * * * *

_Lines Scribbled on the Leaf of a Note-book and Found in a Bottle in the Pocket of an old Shooting-coat a Year Later._

"Atlantic Ocean, "Miles South Of Holy Cross Light, "February 16.

"CATHARINE--I think this is the end. Selden and I have been blown out to sea in a rowboat, and it's leaking. I only want to say good-by. Telegraph Selden's mother, Lenox, Massachusetts. I have nobody to notify. Good-by.

"James Harroll."

* * * * *

_Telegram to James Harroll, Received and Opened by the Keeper while Search-boats Were still Out after Mr. Harroll and Mr. Selden, Two Days Missing._

"James Harroll, Holy Cross Light, Florida, East Coast:

"Don't run any risks. Be careful for our sakes. Terrible storm on the coast reported here. Wire me that you are safe.

"CATHARINE DELANCY, "Avalon, Florida."

* * * * *

_Telegrams Addressed to Young Harroll, and Opened by the Keeper of the Lighthouse after the Search-boats Had Returned._

No. 1.

"Why don't you telegraph us? Your silence and the reports of the storm alarm us. Reply at once.

"Catharine."

No. 2.

"Wire Catharine, Jim. You surely were not ass enough to go out in such a storm.

"S. Delancy."

No. 3.

"For pity's sake telegraph to me that you are safe. I cannot sleep.

"Catharine."

* * * * *

_Telegram to Miss Catharine Delancy, Avalon, Florida._

"Holy Cross Light.

"Miss Catharine Delancy:

"Rowboat containing Mr. Harroll and Mr. Selden blown out to sea. Search-boats returned without finding any trace of them.

"CASWELL, _Keeper_."

* * * * *

_Telegram from Mr. Delancy to Keeper of Holy Cross Light._

"Caswell:

"Charter a fast ocean-going tug and as many launches as necessary. Don't give up the search. Spare no expense. Check mailed to you to-day.

"I will give ten thousand dollars to the man who rescues James Harroll. You may draw on me for any amount necessary. Keep me constantly informed of your progress by wire.

"Stephen Delancy."

* * * * *

In from the open sea drifted the castaways, the sun rising in tropic splendor behind them, before them a far strip of snowy surf edging green shores.

Selden sat in the bow, bailing; Harroll dug vigorously into the Atlantic with both oars; a heavy flood-tide was doing the rest. Presently Selden picked up the ducking-glass and examined the shore.

Harroll rested his oars, took a pull at the mineral water, and sighed deeply. "Except for the scare and the confounded leak it's been rather amusing, hasn't it?" he said.

"It's all right.... Hope you didn't set that farewell message afloat."

"What message?"

"Oh--I thought I saw you scribbling in your notebook and----"

"And what?"

"And stick the leaf into the bottle of gun-oil. If I was mistaken, kindly give me my bottle of gun-oil."

"Pooh!" said Harroll. "The storm was magnificent. Can't a man jot down impressions? Open a can of sardines, will you? And pass me the bread, you idiot!"

Selden constructed a sandwich and passed it aft. "When we near those ducks," he said, "we'd better give them a broadside--our larder's getting low. I'll load for us both."

He fished about among the cartridge-sacks for some dry shells, loaded the guns, and laid them ready.

"Bluebills," observed Harroll, as the boat drew near. "How tame they are! Look, Selden! It would be murder to shoot."

The boat, drifting rapidly, passed in among the raft of ducks; here and there a glistening silver-breasted bird paddled lazily out of the way, but the bulk of the flock floated serenely on either side, riding the swell, bright golden eyes fearlessly observing the intruders.

"Oh, a man can't shoot at things that act like that!" exclaimed Selden petulantly. "Shoo! Shoo--o!" he cried, waving his gun in hopes that a scurry and rise might justify assassination. But the birds only watched him in perfect confidence. The boat drove on; the young men sat staring across the waves, guns idly balanced across their knees. Presently Harroll finished his sandwich and resumed the oars.

"Better bail some more," he said. "What are you looking at?"--for Selden, using the ducking-glass, had begun to chuckle.

"Well, upon my word!" he said slowly--"of all luck! Where do you suppose we are?"

"Well, where the devil are we?"

"Off Avalon!"

"Avalon!" repeated Harroll, stupidly. "Why, man, it's a hundred miles south of Holy Cross!"

"Well, we've made it, I tell you. I can see one of their dinky little temples shining among the trees. Hark! There go the bells ringing for meditation!"

A mellow chime came across the water.

"It can't be Avalon," repeated Harroll, not daring to hope for such fortune. "What do you know about Avalon, anyway?"

"What I've heard."

"What's that?"

"Why, it's a resort for played-out people who've gone the pace. When a girl dances herself into the fidgets, or a Newport matron goes to pieces, or a Wall Street man begins to talk to himself, hither they toddle. It's the fashionable round-up for smashed nerves and wibbly-wobbly intellects--a sort of "back-to-nature" enterprise run by a "doctor." He makes 'em all wear garments cut in the style of the humble bed-sheet, and then he turns 'em out to grass; and they may roll on it or frisk on it or eat it if they like. Incidentally, I believe, they're obliged to wallow in the ocean several times a day, run races afoot, chuck the classic discus, go barefooted and sandal-shod, wear wreaths of flowers instead of hats, meditate in silence when the temple bells ring, eat grain and fruit and drink milk, and pay enormous bills to the quack who runs the place. It must be a merry life, Harroll. No tobacco, no billiards, no bridge. And hit the downy at nine-thirty by the curfew!"

"Good Lord!" muttered Harroll.

"That's Avalon," repeated Selden. "And we're almost there. Look sharp! Stand by for a ducking! This surf means trouble ahead!"

It certainly did; the boat soared skyward on the crest of the swell; a smashing roller hurled it into the surf, smothering craft and crew in hissing foam. A second later two heads appeared, and two half-suffocated young men floundered up the beach and dropped, dripping and speechless, on the sand.

They lay inert for a while, salt water oozing at every pore. Harroll was the first to sit up.

"Right?" he inquired.

"All right. Where's the boat?"

"Ashore below us." He rose, dripping, and made off toward the battered boat, which lay in the shoals, heeled over. Selden followed; together they dragged the wreck up high and dry; then they sat down on the sand, eying one another.

"It's a fine day," said Selden, with a vacant grin. He rolled over on his back, clutching handfuls of hot sand. "Isn't this immense?" he said. "My! how nice and dry and solid everything is! Roll on your back, Harroll! You'll enjoy it more that way."

But Harroll got up and began dragging the guns and cartridge-sacks from the boat.

"I've some friends here," he said briefly. "Come on."

"Are your friends hospitably inclined to the shipwrecked? I'm about ready to be killed with hospitality," observed Selden, shouldering gun and sack and slopping along in his wet boots.

They entered a thicket of sweet-bay and palmetto, breast-high, and forced a path through toward a bit of vivid green lawn, which gave underfoot like velvet.

"There's a patient now--in his toga," said Selden, in a low voice. "Better hit him with a piteous tale of shipwreck, hadn't we?"

The patient was seated on a carved bench of marble under the shade of a live oak. His attitude suggested _ennui_; he yawned at intervals; at intervals he dug in the turf with idle bare toes.

"The back of that gentleman's head," said Harroll, "resembles the back of a head I know."

"Oh! One of those friends you mentioned?"

"Well--I never saw him in toga and sandals, wearing a wreath of flowers on his head. Let's take a front view."

The squeaky, sloppy sound of Selden's hip boots aroused the gentleman in the toga from his attitude of bored meditation.

"How do you do, sir?" said Harroll, blandly, "I thought I'd come to Avalon."

The old gentleman fumbled in his toga, found a monocle, screwed it firmly into his eye, and inspected Harroll from head to heel.

"You're rather wet, Jim," he said, steadying his voice.

Harroll admitted it. "This is my old friend, Jack Selden--the Lenox Seldens, you know, sir." And, to Selden, he reverently named Mr. Delancy.

"How do?" said Mr. Delancy. "You're wet, too."

There was a silence. Mr. Delancy executed a facial contortion which released the monocle. Then he touched his faded eyes with the hem of his handkerchief. The lashes and furrowed cheeks were moist.

"You're so devilish abrupt, Jim," he said. "Did you get any telegrams from us?"

"Telegrams? No, sir. When?"

"No matter," said Mr. Delancy.

Another silence, and Harroll said: "Fact is, sir, we were blown out to sea, and that's how we came here. I fancy Selden wouldn't mind an invitation to dinner and a chance to dry his clothes."

Selden smiled hopefully and modestly as Mr. Delancy surveyed him.

"Pray accept my hospitality, gentlemen," said Mr. Delancy, with a grim smile. "I've been ass enough to take a villa in this forsaken place. The food I have to offer you might be relished by squirrels, perhaps; the clothing resembles my own, and can be furnished you by the simple process of removing the sheets from your beds."

He rose, flung the flap of his toga over one shoulder, and passed his arm through Harroll's.

"Don't you like it here?" asked Harroll.

"_Like_ it!" repeated Mr. Delancy.

"But--why did you come?"

"I came," said Mr. Delancy slowly, "because I desired to be rid of you."

Selden instinctively fell back out of earshot. Harroll reddened.

"I thought your theory was----"

"You smashed that theory--now you've shattered this--you and Catharine between you."

Harroll looked thoughtfully at Selden, who stood watching two pretty girls playing handball on the green.

"Young man," said Mr. Delancy, "do you realize what I've been through in one week? I have been obliged to wear this unspeakable garment, I've been obliged to endure every species of tomfoolery, I've been fed on bird seed, deprived of cigars, and sent to bed at half past nine. And I'm as sound in limb and body as you are. And all because I desired to be rid of you. I had two theories! both are smashed. I refuse to entertain any more theories concerning anything!"

Harroll laughed; then his attention became concentrated on the exquisite landscape, where amid green foliage white villas of Georgia marble glimmered, buried in blossoming thickets of oleander, wistaria, and Cherokee roses--where through the trees a placid lake lay reflecting the violet sky--where fallow-deer wandered, lipping young maple buds--where beneath a pergola heavily draped with golden jasmine a white-robed figure moved in the shade--a still, sunny world of green and gold and violet exhaling incense under a cloudless sky.

"I would like to see Catharine," he said, slowly, "with your permission--and in view of the fate of the theories."

"Jim," said Mr. Delancy, "you are doubtless unconscious of the trouble you have created in my family."

"Trouble, sir?" repeated the young man, flushing up.

"Trouble for two. My daughter and I believed you drowned."

Harroll stood perfectly still. Mr. Delancy took a step or two forward, turned, and came back across the lawn. "She is sitting under that pergola yonder, looking out to sea, and I'm afraid she's crying her eyes out for something she wants. It's probably not good for her, either. But--such as it is--she may have it."

The two men looked at one another steadily.

"I'm rather glad you were not drowned," said Mr. Delancy, "but I'm not infatuated with you."

They shook hands solemnly, then Mr. Delancy walked over and joined Selden, who appeared to be fascinated by an attractive girl in Greek robes and sandals who was playing handball on the green.

"Young man," said Mr. Delancy, "there's always trouble for two in this world. That young woman with yellow hair and violet eyes who is playing handball with her sister, and who appears to hypnotize you, is here to recuperate from the loss of an elderly husband."

"A widow with yellow hair and blue eyes!" murmured Selden, entranced.

"Precisely. Your train, however, leaves to-night--unless you mean to remain here on a diet of bird-seed."

Selden smiled absently. Bird-seed had no terror for him.

"Besides," he said, "I'm rather good at handball."

A moment later he looked around, presumably for Harroll. That young man was already half-way to the jasmine-covered arbor, where a young girl sat, dry-eyed, deathly pale, staring out to sea.

The sea was blue and smiling; the soft thunder of the surf came up to her. She heard the gulls mewing in the sky and the hum of bees in the wind-stirred blossoms; she saw a crested osprey plunge into the shallows and a great tarpon fling its mass of silver into the sun. Paroquets gleaming like living jewels rustled and preened in the china-trees; black and gold butterflies, covered with pollen, crawled over and over the massed orange bloom. Ah, the mask of youth that the sly world wore to mock her! Ah, the living lie of the sky, and the false, smooth sea fawning at her feet!

Little persuasive breezes came whispering, plucking at the white hem of her robe to curry favor; the ingratiating surf purred, blinking with a million iridescent bubbles. The smug smile of nature appalled her; its hypocrisy sickened her; and she bent her dark eyes fiercely on the sea and clinched her little hands.

[Illustration: "'Give up my dead!' she whispered. 'Give up my dead!'"]

"Give up my dead!" she whispered. "Give up my dead!"

"Catharine!"

Dazed, she rose to her sandalled feet, the white folds of her robe falling straight and slim.

"Catharine!"

Her voiceless lips repeated his name; she swayed, steadying herself by the arm around her waist.

Then trouble for two began.

* * * * *

As Williams ended, I looked at him with indignation.

"As far as I can see," I said, "you are acting as attorney for the defense. That's a fine story to tell a father of two attractive daughters. You needn't repeat it to them."

"But it happened, old man----"

"Don't call me 'old man,' either. I'll explain to you why." And I did, peevishly.

After that I saw less of Williams, from choice. He has a literary way with him in telling a story--and I didn't wish Alida and Dulcima to sympathize with young Harroll and that little ninny, Catharine Delancy. So I kept clear of Williams until we arrived in Paris.

[Illustration]

Chapter IV

Wherein A Modest Man Is Bullied And A Literary Man Practices Style

"What was your first impression of Paris, Mr. Van Twiller?" inquired the young man from East Boston, as I was lighting my cigar in the corridor of the Hôtel des Michetons after breakfast.

"The first thing I noticed," said I, "was the entire United States walking down the Boulevard des Italiens."

"And your second impression, sir?" he asked somewhat uncertainly.

"The entire United States walking back again." He lighted a cigarette and tried to appear cheerful. He knew I possessed two daughters. A man in possession of such knowledge will endure much.

Presently the stout young man from Chicago came up to request a light for his cigar. "See Paris and die, eh?" he observed with odious affability.

"I doubt that the city can be as unhealthy as that," I said coldly.

Defeated, he joined forces with the young man from East Boston, and they retired to the terrace to sit and hate me.

My daughter Alida, my daughter Dulcima, and I spent our first day in Paris "_ong voitoor_" as the denizen of East Boston informed me later.

"What is your first impression, Alida?" I asked, as our taxi rolled smoothly down the Avenue de l'Opera.

"Paris? An enormous blossom carved out of stone!--a huge architectural Renaissance rose with white stone petals!"

I looked at my pretty daughter with pride.

"That is what Mr. Van Dieman says," she added conscientiously.

My enthusiasm cooled at once.

"Van Dieman exaggerates," I said. "Dulcima, what do you find to characterize Paris?"

"The gowns!" she cried. "Oh, papa! did you see that girl driving past just now?"

I opened my guidebook in silence. I _had_ seen her.

The sunshine flooded everything; the scent of flowers filled the soft air; the city was a garden, sweet with green leaves, embroidered with green grass--a garden, too, in architecture, carved out in silvery gray foliage of stone. The streets are as smooth and clean as a steamer's deck, with little clear rivulets running in gutters that seem as inviting as country brooks. It did not resemble Manhattan.

Paris!

Paris is a big city full of red-legged soldiers.

Paris is a forest of pink and white chestnut blossoms under which the inhabitants sit without their hats.

Paris is a collection of vistas; at the end of every vista is a misty masterpiece of architecture; on the summit of every _monument_ is a masterpiece of sculpture.

Paris is a city of several millions of inhabitants, every inhabitant holding both hands out to you for a tip.

Paris is a park, smothered in foliage, under which asphalted streets lead to Paradise.

Paris is a sanitarium so skillfully conducted that nobody can tell the patients from the physicians; and all the inmates are firmly convinced that the outside world is mad.

I looked back at the gilded mass of the Opera--that great pile of stone set lightly there as the toe of a ballet-girl's satin slipper----

"What are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.

"Nothing," I said hastily, amazed at my own frivolity. "Notice," said I, "the exquisite harmony of the sky-line. Here in Paris the Government regulates the height of buildings. Nothing inharmonious can be built; the selfishness and indifference of private ownership which in New York erects skyscrapers around our loveliest architectural remains, the City Hall, would not be tolerated here, where artistic _ensemble_ is as necessary to people as the bread they eat."

"Dear me, where have I read that?" exclaimed Alida innocently.

I said nothing more.

We were now passing through that wing of the Louvre which faces the Carousal, and we turned sharply to the right under the little arc, and straight past the Tuileries Gardens, all blooming with tulips and hyacinths, past the quaint weather-stained statues of an epoch as dead as its own sculptors, past the long arcades of the Rivoli, under which human spiders lurk for the tourist of Cook, and out into the Place de la Concorde--the finest square in the world.

The sun glittered on the brass inlaid base on which towered the monolyth. The splashing of the great fountains filled the air with a fresh sweet sound. Round us, in a vast circle, sat the "Cities of France," with "Strasburg" smothered in crêpe and funeral wreaths, each still stone figure crowned with battlemented crowns and bearing the carved symbols of their ancient power on time-indented escutcheons, all of stone.

The fresh wet pavement blazed in the sunshine; men wheeled handcarts filled with violets or piled high with yellow jonquils and silvery hyacinths.

Violet, white, and yellow--these are the colors which Paris wears in springtime, twined in her chaplet of tender green.

I said this aloud to Dulcima, who replied that they were wearing blue in Paris this spring, and that she would like to know how soon we were going to the dressmakers.

Now at last we were rolling up the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de Triomphe, a bridge of pearl at the end of the finest vista in the world. Past us galloped gay cavalry officers, out for a morning canter in the Bois de Boulogne; past us whizzed automobiles of every hue, shape and species.

Past us, too, trotted shoals of people well diluted by our fellow countrymen, yet a truly Parisian crowd for all that. Hundreds of uniforms dotted the throngs; cuirassiers in short blue stable jackets, sabres hooked under their left elbows, little _piou-piou_ lads, in baggy red trousers and shakos bound with yellow; hussars jingling along, wearing jackets of robin's-egg blue faced with white; chasseurs à Cheval, wearing turquoise blue braided with black; then came the priests in black, well groomed as jackdaws in April; policemen in sombre uniforms, wearing sword bayonets; gendarmes off duty--for the Republican Guard takes the place of the Gendarmerie within the walls of Paris; smart officers from the Fontainebleau artillery school, in cherry-red and black; Saint-Cyr soldiers in crude blues and reds, with the blue shako smothered under plumes; then Sisters, in their dark habits and white coifs, with sweet, serene faces looking out on the sinful world they spend their lives in praying for.

"Dulcima," I said, "what particular characteristic strikes you when you watch these passing throngs of women?"

"Their necks; every Parisienne is a beauty from behind--such exquisite necks and hair."

"Their ankles," added Alida innocently; "they are the best-shod women in the world!"

I had noticed something of the sort; in fact, there is no escape for a man's eyes in Paris. Look where he will, he is bound to bring up against two neat little shoes trotting along demurely about their own frivolous business. One cannot help wondering what that business may be or where those little polished shoes are going so lightly, tap! tap! across the polished asphalt. And there are thousands on thousands of such shoes, passing, repassing, twinkling everywhere, exquisite, shapely, gay little shoes of Paris, pattering through boulevard and avenue, square, and street until the whole city takes the cadence, keeping time, day and night, to the little tripping feet of the Parisienne--bless her, heart and sole!

"Of what are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.

"Nothing, child, nothing," I muttered.

We left our taxi and mounted to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The world around us was bathed in a delicate haze; silver-gray and emerald the view stretched on every side from the great Basilica on Montmârtre to the silent Fortress of Mont-Valerien; from the vast dome of the Pantheon, springing up like a silver bubble in the sky, to the dull golden dome of the Invalides, and the dome of the Val-de-Grâce.

Spite of the Sainte Chapel, with its gilded lace-work, spite of the bizarre Tour Saint-Jacques, spite of the lean monster raised by Monsieur Eiffel, straddling the vase Esplanade in the west, the solid twin towers of Nôtre-Dame dominated the spreading city by their sheer majesty--dominated Saint-Sulpice, dominated the Trocadero, dominated even the Pantheon.

"From those towers," said I, "Quasimodo looked down and saw the slim body of Esmeralda hanging on the gibbet."

"What became of her goat?" asked Alida, who was fond of pets.

"That reminds me," began Dulcima, "that now we are safely in Paris we might be allowed to ask papa about that----"

"There is a steamer which sails for New York to-morrow," I said calmly. "Any mention of that pig will ensure us staterooms in half an hour."

Considerably subdued, the girls meekly opened their Baedekers and patronized the view, while I lighted a cigar and mused.

It was my second cigar that morning. Certainly I was a changed man--but was it a change for the better? Within me I felt something stirring--I knew not what.

It was that long-buried germ of gayety, that latent uncultivated and embryotic germ which lies dormant in all Anglo-Saxons; and usually dies dormant or is drowned in solitary cocktails at a solemn club.

Certainly I was changing. Van Dieman was right. Doubtless any change could not be the worse for a man who has not sufficient intelligence to take care of his own pig.

"There is," said Dulcima, referring to her guidebook, "a café near here in the Bois de Boulogne, called the Café des Fleurs de Chine. I should so love to breakfast at a Chinese café."

"With chopsticks!" added Alida, soulfully clasping her gloved hands.

"Your Café Chinois is doubtless a rendezvous for Apaches," I said, "but we'll try it if you wish."

I am wondering, now, just what sort of a place that café is, set like a jewel among the green trees of the Bois. I know it is expensive, but not very expensive; I know, also, that the dainty young persons who sipped mint on the terrace appeared to disregard certain conventionalities which I had been led to believe were never disregarded in France.

The safest way was to pretend a grave abstraction when their bright eyes wandered toward one; and I did this, without exactly knowing why I did.

"I wish," said I to Dulcima, "that Van Dieman were here. He understands all this surface life one sees in the parks and streets."

"Do you really wish that Mr. Van Dieman were here?" asked Alida, softly coloring.

I looked at her gravely.

"Because," she said, "I believe he is coming about the middle of May."

"Oh, he is, is he?" I said, without enthusiasm. "Well, we shall doubtless be in the Rhine by the middle of May."

"My gowns couldn't be finished until June any way," said Dulcima, laying her gloved fingers on Alida's chair.

So they were allies, then.

"I didn't know you had ordered any gowns," I said superciliously.

"I haven't--yet," she said coolly.

"Neither have I," began Alida; but I refused to hear any more.

"When you are at your modistes you may talk gowns until you faint away," said I; "but now let us try to take an intelligent interest in this famous and ancient capital of European civilization and liberty----"

"Did you notice that girl's gown?" motioned Alida to Dulcima.

I also looked. But it was not the beauty of the gown that I found so remarkable.

"I wonder," thought I--"but no matter. I wish that idiot Van Dieman were here."

* * * * *

That evening, after my daughters had retired, I determined to sit up later than I ought to. The reckless ideas which Paris inspired in me, alarmed me now and then. But I was game.

So I seated myself in the moonlit court of the hotel and lighted an unwise cigar and ordered what concerns nobody except the man who swallowed it, and, crossing my legs, looked amiably around.

Williams sat at the next table.

"Hello, old sport," he said affably.

"Williams," I said, "guess who I was thinking about a moment ago."

"A girl?"

"No, of course not. I was thinking of Jim Landon. What ever became of him?"

"Jim? Oh, he's all right."

"Successful?"

"Very. You ought to have heard of him over there; but I suppose you don't keep up with art news."

"No," I admitted, ashamed--"it's rather difficult to keep up with anything on Long Island. Does Jim Landon live here?"

"In Normandy, with his wife."

"Oh, he got married. Was it that wealthy St. Louis girl who----"

"No; she married into the British Peerage. No, Landon didn't do anything of that sort. Quite the contrary."

"He--he didn't marry his model, did he?"

"Yes--in a way."

"In a way?"

Williams summoned a waiter who shifted his equipment to my table.

"It's rather an unusual story," he said. "Would you care to hear it?"

"Does it portray, with your well known literary skill, the confusion of a parent?" I inquired cautiously. "If it does, don't tell it."

"It doesn't."

"Oh. Nobody puts it all over the old man?"

"No, not in this particular instance. Shall I begin?"

"Shoot," I said.

He began with his usual graceful gesture:

* * * * *

Landon was dead broke.

As it had not been convenient for him to breakfast that morning, he was irritable. The mockery of handsome hangings and antique furniture in the outer studio increased his irritation as he walked through it into the rough, inner workshop, which was hung with dusty casts and dreary with clay and plaster.

Here Ellis found him, an hour later, smoking a cigarette to deceive his appetite, and sulkily wetting down the clay bust of a sheep-faced old lady--an order of the post-mortem variety which he was executing from a gruesome photograph.

"How," inquired Ellis, "is the coy Muse treating you these palmy, balmy days?"

Landon swore and squirted a spongeful of water over the old lady's side curls.

"My! my! As bad as that?" commented Ellis, raising his eyebrows. "I thought you expected to be paid for that tombstone."

"Man, I've been eating, drinking, and sleeping on that tombstone all winter. Last night I gnawed off the 'Hic Jacet' and washed it down with the date. There's nothing left."

"You've--ah--breakfasted, dear friend?"

"That's all right----"

"_Have_ you?"

"No. But there's a man from Fourth Avenue coming to buy some of that superfluous magnificence in the show studio. Besides, I'll be paid for this old lady in a day or two-- Where are you going?"

"Out," said Ellis, briefly.

Landon, left alone, threw a bit of wet clay at the doorknob, stood irresolutely, first on one foot, then on the other; then with a hearty scowl at the sheep-faced old lady washed her complacent face with a dripping sponge.

* * * * *

"Williams!" I interrupted violently, "how do you know all those details?"

"My Lord, man!" he retorted; "I write for a living. I've got to know them."

"Go on, then," I said.

He went on:

* * * * *

A few moments later Ellis came in with rolls, milk and fruit.

"That's very decent of you," said Landon, but the other cut him short, excitedly.

"Jim, who is the divinity I just met in your hallway? Yours?"

"What divinity?"

"Her hair," said Ellis, a little wildly, "is the color of Tuscan gold; her eyes, ultra marine; and the skin of her is just pure snow with a brushful of carmine across the lips--and the Great Sculptor Himself must have moulded her body----"

Landon shrugged and buttered a roll. "You let her alone," he said.

"Reveal to me instantly her name, titles, and quality!" shouted Ellis, unsheathing a Japanese sword.

"Her name," said Landon, "is O'Connor; her quality is that of a shopgirl. She is motherless and alone, and inhabits a kennel across the hall. Don't make eyes at her. She'll probably believe whatever the first gentlemanly blackguard tells her."

Ellis said: "Why may I not--in a delicately detached and gayly impersonal, yet delightfully and evasively irrational manner, calculated to deceive nobody----"

"That would sound very funny in the Latin Quarter. This is New York." He rose, frowning. Presently he picked up the sponge. "Better let a lonely heart alone, unless you're in earnest," he said, and flung the sponge back into a bucket of water, dried his hands, and looked around.

"Have you sold any pictures yet?"

"Not one. I thought I had a Copper King nailed to the easel, but Fate separated us on a clinch and he got away and disappeared behind the bars of his safe deposit. How goes the market with you?"

"Dead. I can live on my furniture for a while."

"I thought you were going in on that competition for the Department of Peace at Washington."

"I am, if I have enough money left to hire a model."

Ellis rose, twirled his walking-stick meditatively, glanced at his carefully brushed hat, and placed it gravely on his head.

"Soon," he said cheerfully, "it will be time for straw hats. But where I'm going to get one I don't know. Poverty used to be considered funny in the Quarter; but it's no idle jest in this town. Well--I'll let your best girl alone, Jim, if you feel that way about it."

They laughed and shook hands.

In the corridor Ellis looked hard at the closed door opposite, and his volatile heart gave a tortured thump; he twirled his stick and sauntered out into Stuyvesant Square.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Chapter V

Dreamland

As winter faded into spring the first tracery of green fringed the branches in Stuyvesant Square. The municipal authorities decorated the grass with tulips and later with geraniums. Later still, cannas and foliage plants were planted, over which two fountains spurted aqua Crotonis.

But in spite of tasteless horticulture it is a quaint old square, a little sad and shabby, perhaps, yet mercifully green inside its two iron-railed parallelograms. Above the great sycamores and elms the truncated towers of St. George's brood heavily; along the short, leafy reach of Rutherford Place an old-time Quaker meeting-house keeps gentle vigil; northward, aged mansions peer at the square through time-dimmed windows; south, above the Sisters of The Assumption, a painted Virgin clasps her stone hands and looks down on the little children of the poor.

Along the east side of the square runs Livingston Place; behind it an elevated railroad roars; in front lies the square, shabby, unkempt, but lovely always, when night lends to it her mystery. For at night the trees loom gigantic; lights sparkle over lawn and fountain; the illuminated dial of St. George's hangs yellow as a harvest moon above the foliage; and the pleasant bell sounds from the towers, changing, for a moment, the streets' incessant monotone to a harmony.

Into this square went Landon; oftener, as the summer grew hotter and work grew scarcer.

Once, at the close of a scorching afternoon, his pretty neighbour from across the corridor came slowly into the square and rested for a few moments on the same bench he occupied.

So lovely and fresh and sweet she seemed in the early dusk that he, for an instant, was tempted from his parched loneliness to speak to her; but before he could bring himself to it she turned, recognized him, rose and went back to the house without a second glance.

"We've been neighbours for a year," he thought, "and she has never been civil enough to look at me yet--and I've been too civil to look at her. I was an ass."

He was wrong; she had looked at him often, when unafraid that his eyes might surprise her.

He was amusingly wrong. Waking, she remembered him; during the long day she thought of him; at night, when she returned from business, the radiance from his studio lamp streaming through the transom had for her all the thrilling fascination that a lighted shop window, at Christmas, has for a lonesome child passing in darkness.

From the dim monotony of her own life she had, at times, caught glimpses through his open door of splendours scarcely guessed. In her eyes an enchanted world lay just beyond his studio's threshold; a bright, warm, mellow wonderland, indistinct in the golden lamplight, where only a detail here and there half revealed a figured tapestry or carved foliation--perhaps some soft miracle of ancient Eastern weaving on the floor, perhaps a mysterious marble shape veiled in ruddy shadow--enough to set her youthful imagination on fire, enough to check her breath and start the pulses racing as she turned the key in her own door and reëntered the white dusk of her own life once more.

The three most important events of her brief career had occurred within the twelvemonth--her mother's death, her coming here to live--and love. That also had happened. But she did not call it love; it did not occur to her to consider him in any possible, tangible relation to herself.

She never even expected to know him, to speak to him, or that he could possibly care to speak to her. As far as the east is from the west, so far apart were their two worlds. For them the gusty corridor was wider than interstellar voids; she had not even a thought that a miracle might bridge the infinite from her tiny world to his, which seemed to her so bright and splendid; she had never advanced farther than the happiness of lying still after the day's work, and thinking, innocently, of what she knew about him and what she timidly divined.

At such times, stretched across her bed, the backs of her hands resting on her closed lids, she pondered on that alluring wonderland, his studio--of the mystery that so fittingly surrounded his artist's life. She saw him always amid the tints and hues of ancient textiles, sometimes dreaming, sometimes achieving with fiery inspiration--but precisely how or what he achieved remained to her part of his mystery. She cherished only the confused vision of the youth of him, and its glorious energy and wisdom.

He could be very human, too, she thought; and often the smile curved her lips and cheeks at the recollection of the noisy gayety coming in gusts through his transom on those nights when his friends were gathered there--laughter and song--the incense of tobacco drifting into her own white room from the corridor. She loved it; the odor seemed spicy with a delicate hint of sweet-brier, and she opened her transom wider to let it in.

Usually she fell asleep, the distant uproar of gayety lulling her into happier slumbers. And for days and nights afterward its recollection made life easier and pleasanter, as though she lived with amusing memories of events in which she herself had participated.

All day long, in a fashionable dry-goods shop, she sold cobweb finery and frail, intimate, lacy stuffs to very fine ladies, who usually drew a surprised breath at her beauty, and sometimes dealt with her as though they were dealing with one of their own caste.

At night, tired, she looked forward to her return, when, behind her own closed door, she could rest or read a little, or lie still and think of Landon. But even in the daring magic of waking dreams she had scarcely ventured any acquaintance with him; in dreamland they were as yet only just aware of one another. He had lately--oh, breathless and audacious imagination of hers!--smiled at her in the corridors of dreamland; and she had been a good many days trying to decide what she was going to do about it. In her phantom world matters were going well with her.

Meanwhile, except for the stupefying heat, the actual world was also going well with her. She had saved a little money, enough to give her ten days of luxury and fresh air when the time came. She needed it; the city had been hard on her. Yet the pleasure of going was not unmixed; for, as the day of her release drew nearer, she realized how, within the year, he had, in her dreams, insensibly become to her a part of her real life, and that she would miss him sorely. Which gave her courage to hasten their acquaintance in dreamland; and so it came about that he spoke to her one night as she lay dreaming, awake on her pillow; and she felt her cheeks burn in the dark as though it had all been real.

Yet he was very gentle with her in dreamland--quite wonderful--indeed, all that the most stilted vision of a young girl could desire.

Less unquiet, now that they knew each other, she looked forward to the real separation with comparative resignation.

Then came that unexpected episode when she seated herself on the same bench with him, unintentionally braving him in the flesh.

All that night she thought about it in consternation--piteously explaining it to him in dreamland. He understood--in dreamland--but did he understand in real life? Would he think she had meant to give him a chance to speak--horror of crimson dismay! Would he think her absurd to leave so abruptly when he caught her eye? And oh, she cared so much what he might think, so much more than she supposed she dared care!

All day long it made her miserable as she moved listlessly behind the counter; at night the heated pavements almost stunned her as she walked home to save the pennies.

She saw no light in his studio as she slipped through the corridor into her stifling room. Later, she bathed and dressed in a thinner gown, but it, also, was in black, in memory of her mother, and seemed to sere her body. The room grew hotter; she went out to the passage; no light threatened her from his transom, so she ventured to leave her door open.

But even this brought no relief; the heat became unendurable; and she rose at last, pinned on her big black hat of straw, and went out into the dusk.

Through the gates of the square she saw the poor surging into the park. The police had opened the scant bits of lawn to them. Men, women, children, lay half-naked on the grass, fighting for breath. And, after a little while, she crossed the street and went in among them.

The splash of the fountain was refreshing. She wandered at random, past the illuminated façade of the Lying-in Hospital, past the painted Virgin, then crossed Second Avenue, entered the gates again, and turned aimlessly by the second fountain. There seemed to be no resting-place for her on the crowded benches.

Beyond the fountain a shadowy sycamore stood in the centre of a strip of lawn. She went toward it, hesitated, glancing at the motionless, recumbent figures near by, then ventured to seat herself on the grass and lean back against the tree. Presently, she unpinned her hat, lifted a white face to the night, and closed her eyes.

How long she sat there she did not know when again she opened her tired lids.

A figure stood near her. For a moment she confused dream and reality and smiled at him; then sat up, rigid, breathless, as the figure stirred and came forward.

She remembered attempting to rise, remembered nothing else very distinctly--not even his first words, though his voice was gentle and pleasant, just as it was in dreamland.

"Do you mind my speaking to you?" he was asking now.

"No," she said faintly.

He raised his head and looked out across the feverish city, passing one thin hand across his eyes. Then, with a slight movement of his shoulders, he seated himself on the ground at her feet.

"We have been neighbours so long," he said, "that I thought perhaps I might dare to speak to you to-night. My name is Landon--James Landon. I think I know your last name."

"O'Connor--Ellie O'Connor--Eleanor, I mean," she added, unafraid. A curious peace seemed to possess her at the sound of his voice. There was a stillness in it that reassured.

The silence between them was ringed with the distant roar of the city. He looked around him at the shadowy forms flung across bench and lawn; his absent glance swept the surrounding walls of masonry and iron, all a-glitter with tiny, lighted windows. Overhead a tarnished moon looked down into the vast trap where five million souls lay caught, gasping for air--he among the others--and this young girl beside him--trapped, helpless, foredoomed. The city had got them all! But he sat up the straighter, giving the same slightly-impatient shake to his shoulders.

"I came," he said, "to ask you one or two questions--if I may."

"Ask them," she answered, as in a dream.

"Then--you go to business, do you not?"

"Yes."

He nodded: "And now I'm going to venture another question which may sound impertinent, but I do not mean it so. May I?"

"Yes," she said in a low, hushed voice, as though a clearer tone might break some spell.

"It is about your salary. I do not suppose it is very large."

"My wages? Shall I tell you?" she asked, so innocently that he flushed up.

"No, no!--I merely wish to--to find out from you whether you might care to take a chance of increasing your salary."

"I don't think I know what you mean," she said, looking at him.

"I know you don't," he said, patiently; "let me begin a little farther back. I am a sculptor. You know, of course, what that is----"

"Yes. I am educated." She even found courage to smile at him.

His answering smile covered both confusion and surprise; then perplexity etched a crease between his brows.

"That makes it rather harder for me"--he hesitated--"or easier; I don't know which."

"What makes it harder?" she asked.

"Your being--I don't know--different--from what I imagined----"

"Educated?"

"Y-yes----"

She laughed deliciously in her new-born confidence.

"What is it you wish to ask?"

"I'll tell you," he said. "I need a model--and I'm too poor to pay for one. I've pledged everything in my studio. A chance has come to me. It's only a chance, however. But I can't take it because I cannot afford a model."

There was a silence; then she inquired what he meant by a model. And he told her--not everything, not clearly.

"You mean that you wish me to sit for my portrait in marble?"

"There are two figures to be executed for the new Department of Peace in Washington," he explained, "and they are to be called 'Soul' and 'Body.' Six sculptors have been invited to compete. I am one. We have a year before us."

She remained silent.

"It is perfectly apparent, of course, that you are exquis--admirably fitted"--he stammered under her direct gaze, then went on; "I scarcely dared dream of such a model even if I had the means to afford--" He could get no further.

"Are you really poor?" she asked in gentle wonder.

"At present--yes."

"I never dreamed it," she said. "I thought--otherwise."

"Oh, it is nothing; some day things will come out right. Only--I have a chance now--if you--if you would help me.... I _could_ win with you; I know it. And if I do win--with your aid--I will double your present salary. And that is what I've come here to say. Is that fair?"

He waited, watching her intently. She had dropped her eyes, sitting there very silent at the foot of the tree, cradling the big straw hat in her lap.

"Whatever you decide to be fair--" he began again, but she looked up wistfully.

"I was not thinking of that," she said; "I was only--sorry."

"Sorry?"

"That you are poor."

He misunderstood her. "I know; I wish I could offer you something beside a chance----"

"Oh-h," she whispered, but so low that he heard only a long, indrawn breath.

She sat motionless, eyes on the grass. When again she lifted them their pure beauty held him.

"What is it you wish?" she asked. "That I should be your model for the--this prize which you desire to strive for?"

"Yes; for that."

"How can I? I work all day."

"I could use you at night and on Saturday afternoons, and all day Sunday. And--have you had your yearly vacation?"

She drew a quietly tired breath. "No," she said.

"Then--I will give you two hundred dollars extra for those ten days," he went on eagerly--so eagerly that he forgot the contingency on which hung any payment at all. As for her, payment was not even in her thoughts.

Through the deep, sweet content which came to her with the chance of serving him, ran an undercurrent of confused pain that he could so blindly misunderstand her. If she thought at all of the amazing possibility of such a fortune as he offered, she knew that she would not accept it from him. But this, and the pain of his misunderstanding, scarcely stirred the current of a strange, new happiness that flowed through every vein.

"Do you think I could really help you?"

"If you will." His voice trembled.

"Are you sure--quite sure? If you are--I will do what you wish."

He sprang up buoyant, transfigured.

"If I win it will be _you_!" he said. "Could you come into the studio a moment? I'll show you the two sketches I have made for 'Soul' and 'Body'."

On the prospect of a chance--the chance that had come at last--he was completely forgetting that she must be prepared to comprehend what he required of her; he forgot that she could know nothing of a sculptor's ways and methods of production. On the way to the studio, however, he tardily remembered, and it rather scared him.

"Do you know any painters or sculptors?" he asked, keeping impatient pace beside her.

"I know a woman who makes casts of hands and arms," she said shyly. "She stopped me in the street once and asked permission to cast my hands. Would you call her a sculptor?"

"N--well, perhaps she may be. We sculptors often use casts of the human body." He plunged into it more frankly: "You know, of course, that to become a sculptor or a painter, one has to model and paint from living people."

"Yes," she said, undisturbed.

"And," he continued, "it would be impossible for a sculptor to produce the beautiful marbles you have seen--er--around--unless he could pose a living model to copy from."

An unquiet little pulse began to beat in her breast; she looked up at him, but he was smiling so amiably that she smiled, too.

Mortally afraid of frightening her, he could not exactly estimate how much she divined of what was to be required of her.

He continued patiently: "Unless a student dissects he can never become a surgeon. It is the same with us; our inspiration and originality must be founded on a solid study of the human body. That is why we must always have before us as perfect a living model as we can find."

"Do--do you think--" she stopped, pink and confused.

"I think," he said, quietly impersonal, "that, speaking as a sculptor, you are as perfect and as beautiful a model as ever the old Greek masters saw, alive or in their dreams."

"I--did not--know it," she faltered, thrilling from head to foot.

They entered the corridor together. Her breath came faster as he unlocked his door and, turning up a lamp, invited her to enter.

At last in the magic world! And with _him_!

Figured tapestries hung from the golden mystery of the ceiling; ancient dyes glowed in the soft rugs under foot; the mellow light glimmered on dull foliations. She stood still, looking about her as in a trance.

"All this I will buy back again with your help," he said, laughingly; but his unsteady voice betrayed the tension to which he was keyed. A slow excitement was gaining on her, too.

"I will redeem all these things, never fear," he said, gayly.

"Oh--if you only can.... It is too cruel to take such things from you."

The emotion in her eyes and voice surprised him for one troubled moment. Then the selfishness of the artist ignored all else save the work and the opportunity.

"You _will_ help me, won't you?" he asked. "It is a promise?"

"Yes--I will."

"Is it a _promise_?"

"Yes," she said, wondering.

"Then please sit here. I will bring the sketches. They merely represent my first idea; they are done without a living model." He was off, lighting a match as he hastened. A tapestry fell back into place; she lifted her blue eyes to the faded figures of saints and seraphim stirring when the fabric moved.

[Illustration]

Chapter VI

Soul And Body

As in a blessed vision, doubting the reality of it all, she sat looking upward until his step on some outer floor aroused her to the wondrous reality.

He came, holding two clay figures. The first was an exquisite winged shape, standing with delicate limbs parallel, arms extended, palms outward. The head was lifted a little, poised exquisitely on the perfect neck. Its loveliness thrilled her.

"Is it an angel?" she asked, innocently.

"No.... I thought you understood--this is only a sketch I made. And this is the other." And he placed on a table the second figure, a smooth, youthful, sensuous shape, looking aside and down at her own white fingers playing with her hair.

"Is it Eve?" she inquired, wondering.

"These," he said slowly, "are the first two sketches, done without a model, for my two figures 'Soul' and 'Body'."

She looked at him, not comprehending.

"I--I must have a _living_ model--for these," he stammered. "Didn't you understand? I want _you_ to work from."

From brow to throat the scarlet stain deepened and spread. She turned, laid one small hand on the back of the chair, faltered, sank onto it, covering her face.

"I thought you understood," he repeated stupidly. "Forgive me--I thought you understood what sort of help I needed." He dropped on one knee beside her. "I am so sorry. Try to reason a little. You--you must know I meant no offense--that I never could wish to offend you. Look at me, please; I am not that sort of a man. Can't you realize how desperate I was--how I dared hazard the chance that you might help me?"

She rose, her face still covered.

"_Can't_ you comprehend?" he pleaded, "that I meant no offense?"

"Y-yes. Let me go."

"Can you forgive me?"

"I--yes."

"And you cannot--help me?"

"H-help you?... Oh, no, no, no!" She broke down, sobbing in the chair, her golden head buried in her arms.

Confused, miserable, he watched her. Already the old helpless feeling had come surging back, that there was to be no chance for him in the world, no hope of all he had dared to believe in, no future. Watching her he felt his own courage falling with her tears, his own will drooping as she drooped there--slender and white in her thin, black gown.

Again he spoke, for the moment forgetting himself.

"Don't cry, because there is nothing to cry about. You know I did not mean to hurt you; I know that you would help me if you could. Isn't it true?"

"Y-yes," she sobbed.

"It was only a sculptor who asked you, not a man at all. You understand what I mean?--only a poor devil of a sculptor, carried away by the glamour of a chance for better fortune that seemed to open before him for a moment. So you must not feel distressed or sensitive or ashamed----"

She sat up, wet eyed, cheeks aflame.

"I am thinking of _you_!" she cried, almost fiercely, "not of myself; and you don't understand! Do you think I would cry over myself? I--it is because I cannot help _you_!"

He found no words to answer as she rose and moved toward the door. She crossed the threshold, turned and looked at him. Then she entered her own doorway.

* * * * *

And the world went badly for her that night, and, after that, day and night, the world went badly.

Always the confusion of shame and dread returned to burn her; but that was the least; for in the long hours, lying amid the fragments of her shattered dreams, the knowledge that he needed her and that she could not respond, overwhelmed her.

The house, the corridor, her room became unendurable; she desired to go--anywhere--and try to forget. But she could not; she could not leave, she could not forget, she could not go to him and offer the only aid he desired, she could not forgive herself.

In vain, in vain, white with the agony of courage, she strove to teach herself that she was nothing, her body nothing, that the cost was nothing, compared to the terrible importance of his necessity. She knew in her heart that she could have died for him; but--but--her courage could go no further.

In terrible silence she walked her room, thinking of him as one in peril, as one ruined for lack of the aid she withheld. Sometimes she passed hours on her knees, tearless, wordless; sometimes sheerest fear set her creeping to the door to peer out, dreading lest his closed door concealed a tragedy.

And always, burning like twin gray flames before her eyes, she saw the figures he had made, 'Soul' and 'Body.' Every detail remained clear; their terrible beauty haunted her. Night after night, rigid on her bed's edge, she stretched her bared, white arms, staring at them, then flung them hopelessly across her eyes, whispering, "I cannot--O God--I cannot--even for him."

And there came a day--a Saturday--when the silence of the house, of her room, the silence in her soul, became insupportable.

All day she walked in the icy, roaring streets, driving herself forward toward the phantom of forgetfulness which fled before her like her shadow. And at the edge of noon she found herself--where she knew she must come one day--seeking the woman who made plaster casts of hands and arms and shapely feet.

For a little while they talked together. The woman surprised, smiling sometimes, but always very gentle; the girl flushed, stammering, distressed in forming her naïve questions.

Yes, it could be done; it had been done. But it was a long process; it must be executed in sections, then set together limb by limb, for there were many difficulties--and it was not pleasant to endure, even sometimes painful.

"I do not mind the pain," said the girl. "Will it scar me?"

"No, not that.... But, another thing; it would be expensive."

"I have my vacation money, and a little more." She named the sum timidly.

Yes, it was enough. And when could she come for the first casts to be taken?

She was ready now.

A little later, turning a lovely, flushed face over her bare shoulder: "One figure stood like this," and, after a pause, "the other this way.... If you make them from me, can a sculptor work from life casts such as these?"

A sculptor could.

About dusk she crept home, trembling in every nerve. Her vacation had begun.

She had been promoted to a position as expert lace buyer, which permitted larger liberty. From choice she had taken no vacation during the summer. Now her vacation, which she requested for December, lasted ten days; and at the end of it her last penny had been spent, but in a manner so wonderful, so strange, that no maid ever dreamed such things might be.

[Illustration: "Christmas Eve she knelt, crying, before the pedestal."]

And on the last evening of it, which was Christmas Eve, she knelt, crying, before two pedestals from which rose her body and soul as white as death.

An hour later the snowy twins stood in his empty studio, swathed in their corpse-white winding-sheets--unstained cerements, sealing beneath their folds her dead pride, dead hope--all that was delicate and intimate and subtle and sweet--slain and in cerements, for his sake.

And now she must go before he returned. Her small trunk was ready; her small account settled. With strangely weak and unsteady hands she stood before the glass knotting her veil.

Since that night together last summer she had not spoken to him, merely returning his low greeting in the corridor with a silent little inclination of her head. But, although she had had no speech with him, she had learned that he was teaching at the League now, and she knew his hours and his movements well enough to time her own by them.

He was not due for another hour; she looked out into the snowy darkness, drawing on her gloves and buttoning the scant fur collar close about her throat.

The old janitor came to say good-by.

"An' God be with you, miss, this Christmas Eve"--taking the coin irresolutely, but pocketing it for fear of hurting her.

His fingers, numbed and aged, fumbling in the pocket encountered another object.

"Musha, thin, I'm afther forgettin' phwat I'm here f'r to tell ye, miss," he rambled on. "Misther Landon wishes ye f'r to know that he do be lavin' the house"--the old man moistened his lips in an effort to remember with all the elegance required of him--"an' Misther Landon is wishful f'r to say a genteel good luck to ye, miss."

The girl shook her head.

"Tell Mr. Landon good-by for me, Patrick. Say--from me--God bless him.... Will you remember?... And a--a happy Christmas."

"I will, Miss."

She touched her eyes with her handkerchief hastily, and held out her hand to the old man.

"I think that is all," she whispered.

She was mistaken; the janitor was holding out a note to her.

"In case ye found it onconvaynient f'r to see Misther Landon, I was to projooce the letter, Miss."

She took it; a shiver passed over her.

When the old man had shambled off down the passage she reëntered her room, held the envelope a moment close under the lighted lamp, then nervously tore it wide.

"_You will read this in case you refuse to say good-by to me. But I only wanted to offer you a little gift at Christmastide--not in reparation, for I meant no injury--but in deepest respect for you. And so I ask you once more to wait for me. Will you?_"

Minute after minute she sat there, dumb, confused, nerves at the breaking point, her heart and soul crying out for him. Then the memory of what was awaiting him in his studio choked her with fright. She sprang to her feet, and at the same moment the outer gate clanged.

Terror froze her; then she remembered that it was too early for him; it must be the expressman for her trunk. And she went to the door and opened it.

"Oh-h!" she breathed, shrinking back; but Landon had seen his letter in her hand, and he followed her into the room.

He was paler than she: his voice was failing him, too, as he laid his gift on the bare table--only a little book, prettily bound.

"Will you take it?" he asked in a colorless voice; but she could not answer, could not move.

"I wish you a happy Christmas," he whispered. "Good-by."

She strove to meet his eyes, strove to speak, lifted her slim hand to stay him. It fell, strength spent, in both of his.

Suddenly Time went all wrong, reeling off centuries in seconds. And through the endless interstellar space that stretched between her world and his she heard his voice bridging it: "I love you--I love you dearly.... Once more I am the beggar--a beggar at Christmastide, asking your mercy--asking more, your love. Dear, is it plain this time? Is all clear, dearest among women?"

She looked up into his eyes; his hands tightened over hers.

"Can you love me?" he said.

"Yes," answered her eyes and the fragrant mouth assented, quivering under his lips.

Then, without will or effort of her own, from very far away, her voice stole back to her faintly.

"Is all this true? I have dreamed so long--so long--of loving you----"

He drew her closer; she laid both hands against his coat and hid her face between them.

He whispered:

"It was your unselfishness, your sweetness, and--_you_--all of you--yes--your beauty--the loveliness of you, too! I could not put it from me; I knew that night that I loved you--and to-day they said you were going--so I came with my Christmas gift--the sorry, sorry gift--myself----"

"Ah!" she whispered, clinging closer. "And what of my gift--my twin gifts--there, in your studio! Oh, you don't know, you don't know----"

"Dearest!"

"No--you can never know how much easier it had been for me to die than to love--as I have loved a man this day."

* * * * *

"Confound you, Williams," I said, blinking.

But he did not hear me, sitting there in a literary revery, mentally repolishing the carefully considered paragraphs with which he had just regaled me.

"Williams?"

"What?"

"So--they're living in Normandy."

"Who?"

"Jim Landon and that girl, dammit!" I said, crossly.

"Yes--oh, yes, of course. Children--bunches of 'em--and all that."

"Williams?"

"What?"

"_Was_ she so pretty?"

"Certainly," he said, absently. "Don't bother me now; I've got an idea for another story."

[Illustration]

Chapter VII

The Biter, The Bitten, And The Un-Bitten

"Mais tout le monde," began the chasseur of the Hôtel des Michetons--"mais, monsieur, tout le grand monde----"

"Exactly," said I, complacently. "Le grand monde means the great world; and," I added, "the world is a planet of no unusual magnitude, inhabited by bipeds whose entire existence is passed in attempting to get something for nothing."

The chasseur of the Hôtel des Michetons bowed, doubtfully.

"You request me," I continued, "not to forget you when I go away. Why should I not forget you? Are you historical, are you antique, are you rococo, are you a Rosacrucian?"

The chasseur, amiably perplexed, twirled his gold-banded cap between his fingers.

"Have you," I asked, "ever done one solitary thing for me besides touching your expensive cap?"

The chasseur touched his cap, smiled, and hopefully held out his large empty hand.

"Go to the devil," I said gently; "it is not for what you have done but for what you have not done that I give you this silver piece," and I paid the tribute which I despised myself for paying. Still, his gay smile and prompt salute are certainly worth something to see, but what their precise value may be you can only determine when, on returning to New York, you hear a gripman curse a woman for crossing the sacred tracks of the Metropolitan Street Railroad Company. So, with my daughter Dulcima and my daughter Alida, and with a wagon-load of baggage, I left the gorgeously gilded Hôtel des Michetons--for these three reasons:

Number one: it was full of Americans.

Number two: that entire section of Paris resembled a slice of the Waldorf-Astoria.

Number three: I wanted to be rid of the New York _Herald_. Surely somewhere in Paris there existed French newspapers, French people, and French speech. I meant to discover them or write and complain to the _Outlook_.

The new hotel I had selected was called the Hôtel de l'Univers. I had noticed it while wandering out of the Luxembourg Gardens. It appeared to be a well situated, modest, clean hotel, and not only thoroughly respectable--which the great gilded Hôtel des Michetons was not--but also typically and thoroughly French. So I took an apartment on the first floor and laid my plans to dine out every evening with my daughters.

They were naturally not favourably impressed with the Hôtel de l'Univers, but I insisted on trying it for a week, desiring that my daughters should have at least a brief experience in a typical French hotel.

On the third day of our stay my daughters asked me why the guests at the Hôtel de l'Univers all appeared to be afflicted in one way or another. I myself had noticed that many of the guests wore court-plaster on hands and faces, and some even had their hands bandaged in slings.

I thought, too, that the passers-by in the street eyed the modest hotel with an interest somewhat out of proportion to its importance. But I set that down to French alertness and inbred curiosity, and dismissed the subject from my mind. The hotel was pretty clean and highly respectable. Titled names were not wanting among the guests, and the perfect courtesy of the proprietor, his servants, and of the guests was most refreshing after the carelessness and bad manners of the crowds at the Hôtel des Michetons.

"Can it be possible?" said Alida, as we three strolled out of our hotel into the Boulevard St. Michel.

"What?" I asked.

"That we are in the Latin Quarter? Why this boulevard is beautiful, and I had always pictured the Latin Quarter as very dreadful."

"It's the inhabitants that are dreadful," said I with a shudder as a black-eyed young girl, in passing, gave me an amused and exceedingly saucy smile.

The "Quarter!" It is beautiful--one of the most beautiful portions of Paris. The Luxembourg Gardens are the centre and heart of the Latin Quarter--these ancient gardens, with their groves of swaying chestnuts all in bloom, quaint weather-beaten statues in a grim semicircle looking out over the flowering almonds on the terrace to the great blue basin of the fountain where toy yachts battle with waves almost an inch high.

Here the big drab-colored pigeons strut and coo in the sunshine, here the carp splash in the mossy fountain of Marie de Medici, here come the nursemaids with their squalling charges, to sit on the marble benches and coquette with the red-trousered soldiers, who are the proper and natural prey of all nursemaids in all climes.

"What is that banging and squeaking?" asked Alida, as we entered the foliage of the southern terrace. "Not Punch and Judy--oh, I haven't seen Punch since I was centuries younger! Do let us go, papa!"

Around the painted puppet box children sat, open-mouthed. Back of them crowded parents and nurses and pretty girls and gay young officers, while, from the pulpit, Punch held forth amid screams of infantile delight, or banged his friends with his stick in the same old fashion that delighted us all--centuries since.

"Such a handsome officer," said Alida under her breath.

The officer in question, a dragoon, was looking at Dulcima in that slightly mischievous yet well-bred manner peculiar to European officers.

Dulcima did not appear to observe him.

"Why--why, that is Monsieur de Barsac, who came over on our ship!" said Alida, plucking me by the sleeve. "Don't you remember how nice he was when we were so--so sea--miserable? You really ought to bow to him, papa. If you don't, I will."

I looked at the dragoon and caught his eye--such a bright, intelligent, mischievous eye!--and I could not avoid bowing.

Up he came, sword clanking, white-gloved hand glued to the polished visor of his crimson cap, and--the girls were delighted.

Now what do you suppose that Frenchman did? He gave up his entire day to showing us the beauties of the Rive Gauche.

Under his generous guidance my daughters saw what few tourists see intelligently--the New Sorbonne, with its magnificent mural decorations by Puvis de Chavannes; we saw the great white-domed Observatory, piled up in the sky like an Eastern temple, and the beautiful old palace of the Luxembourg. Also, we beheld the Republican Guards, _à cheval_, marching out of their barracks on the Rue de Tournon; and a splendid glittering company of cavalry they were, with their silver helmets, orange-red facings, white gauntlets, and high, polished boots--the picked men of all the French forces, as far as physique is concerned.

In the late afternoon haze the dome of the Pantheon, towering over the Latin Quarter, turned to purest cobalt in the sky. Under its majestic shadow the Boulevard St. Michel ran all green and gold with gas-jets already lighted in lamps and restaurants and the scores of students' cafés which line the main artery of the "Quartier Latin."

"I wish," said Alida, "that it were perfectly proper for us to walk along those terraces."

Captain de Barsac appeared extremely doubtful, but entirely at our disposal.

"You know what our students are, monsieur," he said, twisting his short blond moustache; "however--if monsieur wishes----?"

So, with my daughters in the centre, and Captain de Barsac and myself thrown out in strong flanking parties, we began our march.

The famous cafés of the Latin Quarter were all ablaze with electricity and gas and colored incandescent globes. On the terraces hundreds of tables and chairs stood, occupied by students in every imaginable civilian costume, although the straight-brimmed stovepipe and the _béret_ appeared to be the favorite headgear. At least a third of the throng was made up of military students from the Polytechnic, from Fontainebleau, and from Saint-Cyr. Set in the crowded terraces like bunches of blossoms were chattering groups of girls--bright-eyed, vivacious, beribboned and befrilled young persons, sipping the petit-verre or Amer-Picon, gossiping, babbling, laughing like dainty exotic birds. To and fro sped the bald-headed, white-aproned waiters, balancing trays full of glasses brimming with red and blue and amber liquids.

Here was the Café d'Harcourt, all a-glitter, with music playing somewhere inside--the favorite resort of the medical students from the Sorbonne, according to Captain de Barsac. Here was the Café de la Source, with its cascade of falling water and its miniature mill-wheel turning under a crimson glow of light; here was the famous Café Vachette, celebrated as the centre of all Latin Quarter mischief; and, opposite to it, blazed the lights of the "CAFÉ DES BLEAUS," so called because haunted almost exclusively by artillery officers from the great school of Fontainebleau.

Up the boulevard and down the boulevard moved the big double-decked tram-cars, horns sounding incessantly; cabs dashed up to the cafés, deposited their loads of students or pretty women, then darted away toward the river, their lamps shining like stars.

It was truly a fairy scene, with the electric lights playing on the foliage of the trees, turning the warm tender green of the chestnut leaves to a wonderful pale bluish tint, and etching the pavements underfoot with exquisite Chinese shadows.

"It is a shame that this lovely scene should not be entirely respectable," said Alida, resentfully.

"Vice," murmured de Barsac to me, "could not exist unless it were made attractive."

As far as the surface of the life before us was concerned, there was nothing visible to shock anybody; and, under escort, there is no earthly reason why decent women of any age should not enjoy the spectacle of the "BOUL' MICH." on a night in springtime.

An innocent woman, married or unmarried, ought not to detect anything unpleasant in the St. Michel district; but, alas! what is known as "Smart Society" is so preternaturally wise in these piping times o' wisdom, that the child is not only truly the father of the man, but also his instructor and interpreter--to that same man's astonishment and horror. It may always have been so--even before the days when our theatres were first licensed to instruct our children in object lessons of the seven deadly sins--but I cannot recollect the time when, as a youngster, I was tolerantly familiar with the scenes now nightly offered to our children through the courtesy of our New York theatre managers.

Slowly we turned to retrace our steps, strolling up the boulevard through the fragrant May evening, until we came to the gilded railing which encircles the Luxembourg Gardens from the School of Mines to the Palais-du-Sénat.

Here Captain De Barsac took leave of us with all the delightful and engaging courtesy of a well-bred Frenchman; and he seemed to be grateful for the privilege of showing us about over a district as tiresomely familiar to him as his own barracks.

I could do no less than ask him to call on us, though his devotion to Dulcima both on shipboard and here made me a trifle wary.

"We are stopping," said I, "at the Hôtel de l'Univers----"

He started and gazed at me so earnestly that I asked him why he did so.

"The--the Hôtel de l'Univers?" he repeated, looking from me to Dulcima and from Dulcima to Alida.

"Is it not respectable?" I demanded, somewhat alarmed.

"--But--but perfectly, monsieur. It is, of course, the very best hotel of _that_ kind----"

"_What_ kind?" I asked.

"Why--for the purpose. Ah, monsieur, I had no idea that you came to Paris for _that_. I am so sorry, so deeply grieved to hear it. But of course all will be well----"

He stopped and gazed earnestly at Dulcima.

"It is not--not _you_, mademoiselle, is it?"

My children and I stared at each other in consternation.

"What in heaven's name is the matter with that hotel?" I asked.

Captain de Barsac looked startled.

"Is there anything wrong with the guests there?" asked Dulcima, faintly.

"No--oh, no--only, of course, they are all under treatment----"

"Under treatment!" I cried nervously. "For what!!!"

"Is it possible," muttered the captain, "that you went to that hotel not knowing? Did you not notice anything peculiar about the guests there?"

"They all seem to wear court-plaster or carry their arms in slings," faltered Dulcima.

"And they come from all over the world--Russia, Belgium, Spain," murmured Alida nervously. "What do they want?"

"Thank heaven!" cried De Barsac, radiantly; "then you are not there for the treatment!"

"Treatment for what?" I groaned.

"Hydrophobia!"

I wound my arms around my shrinking children.

"It is the hotel where all the best people go who come to Paris for Pasteur's treatment," he said, trying to look grave; but Dulcima threw back her pretty head and burst into an uncontrollable gale of laughter; and there we stood on the sidewalk, laughing and laughing while passing students grinned in sympathy and a cloaked policeman on the corner smiled discreetly and rubbed his chin.

That evening, after my progeny were safely asleep, casting a furtive glance around me I slunk off to my old café--the Café Jaune. I hadn't been there in over twenty years; I passed among crowded tables, skulked through the entrance, and slid into my old corner as though I had never missed an evening there.

They brought me a Bock. As I lifted the icy glass to my lips, over the foam I beheld Williams, smiling.

"Eh bien, mon vieux?" he said, pleasantly.

"By gad, Williams, this seems natural--especially with you sitting next."

"It sure does," he said.

I pointed toward a leather settee. "Archie used to sit over there with his best girl. Do you remember? And that was Dillon's seat--and Smithy and Palmyre--Oh, Lord!--And Seabury always had that other corner."... I paused, lost in happy reminiscences. "What has become of Jack Seabury?" I inquired.

"The usual."

"Married?"

"Oh, very much."

"Where does he live."

"In Philadelphia."

I mused for a while.

"So he's married, too," I said, thoughtfully. "Well--it's a funny life, isn't it, Williams."

"I've never seen a funnier. Seabury's marriage was funny too--I mean his courtship."

I looked up at Williams, suspiciously.

"Is this one of your professional literary stories?"

"It's a true one. What's the harm in my enveloping it in a professional glamour?"

"None," I said, resignedly; "go ahead."

"All right, mon vieux."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Chapter VIII

A Matter Of Pronunciation

This is a story of the Mystic Three--Fate, Chance, and Destiny; and what happens to people who trifle with them.

It begins with a young man running after a train. He had to run.

The connection at Westport Junction was normally a close one, but now, even before the incoming train had entirely stopped, the local on the other line began to move out, while the engineers of the two locomotives, leaning from their cab windows, exchanged sooty grins. It was none of their business--this squabble between the two roads which was making the term, "Junction," as applied to Westport, a snare and a derision.

So the roads squabbled, and young Seabury ran. Other passengers ran, too, amid the gibes of newsboys and the patronizing applause of station loafers.

He heard them; he also heard squeaks emitted by females whose highest speed was a dignified and scuttering waddle. Meanwhile he was running, and running hard through the falling snow; the ice under foot did not aid him; his overcoat and suit-case handicapped him; the passengers on the moving train smiled at him behind frosty windows.

One very thin man smoking a cigar rubbed his thumb on the pane in order to see better; he was laughing, and Seabury wished him evil.

There were only two cars, and the last one was already rolling by him. And at one of the windows of this car he saw a pretty girl in chinchilla furs watching him curiously. Then she also smiled.

It may have been the frank amusement of a pretty woman, and it may have been the sorrowful apathy of a red-nosed brakeman tying the loose end of the signal rope on the rear platform; doubtless one or the other spurred him to a desperate flying leap which landed him and his suit-case on the rear platform of the last car. And there he stuck, too mad to speak, until a whirlwind of snow and cinders drove him to shelter inside.

The choice of cars was limited to a combination baggage and smoker and a more fragrant passenger coach. He selected a place in the latter across the aisle from the attractive girl in chinchilla furs who had smiled at his misfortunes--not very maliciously. Now, as he seated himself, she glanced up at him without the slightest visible interest, and returned to her study of the winter landscape.

The car was hot; he was hot. Burning thoughts concerning the insolence of railroads made him hotter; the knowledge that he had furnished amusement for the passengers of two trains did not cool him.

Meanwhile everybody in the car had become tired of staring at him; a little boy across the aisle giggled his last giggle; several men resumed their newspapers; a shopgirl remembered her gum and began chewing it again.

A large mottled man with a damp moustache, seated opposite him, said: "Vell, Mister, you runned pooty quvick alretty py dot Vestport train!"

"It seems to me," observed Seabury, touching his heated face with his handkerchief, "that the public ought to do something."

"Yaw; der bublic it runs," said the large man, resuming his eyeglasses and holding his newspaper nearer to the window in the fading light.

Seabury smiled to himself and ventured to glance across the aisle in time to see the dawning smile in the blue eyes of his neighbor die out instantly as he turned. It was the second smile he had extinguished since his appearance aboard the train.

The conductor, a fat, unbuttoned, untidy official, wearing spectacles and a walrus moustache, came straddling down the aisle. He looked over the tops of his spectacles at Seabury doubtfully.

"I managed to jump aboard," explained the young man, smiling.

"Tickuts!" returned the conductor without interest.

"I haven't a ticket; I'll pay----"

"Sure," said the conductor; "vere you ged owid?"

"What?"

"Vere do you ged _owid_?"

"Oh, where do I get _out_? I'm going to Beverly----"

"Peverly? Sefenty-vive cends."

"Not to Peverly, to Beverly----"

"Yaw, Peverly----"

"No, no; Beverly! not Peverly----"

"Aind I said Peverly alretty? Sefenty-vive----"

"Look here; there's a Beverly and a Peverly on this line, and I don't want to go to Peverly and I do want to go to Beverly----"

"You go py Peverly und you don'd go py Beverly alretty! Sure! Sefenty-vive ce----"

The young man cast an exasperated glance across the aisle in time to catch a glimpse of two deliciously blue eyes suffused with mirth. And instantly, as before, the mirth died out. As an extinguisher of smiles he was a success, anyway; and he turned again to the placid conductor who was in the act of punching a ticket.

"Wait! Hold on! Don't do that until I get this matter straight! Now, do you understand where I wish to go?"

"You go py Peverly----"

"No, Beverly! Beverly! _Beverly_," he repeated in patiently studied accents.

The large mottled man with the damp moustache looked up gravely over his newspaper: "Yaw, der gonductor he also says Peverly."

"But Peverly isn't Beverly----"

"Aind I said it blenty enough dimes?" demanded the conductor, becoming irritable.

"But you haven't said it right yet!" insisted Seabury.

The conductor was growing madder and madder. "Peverly! Peverly!! _Peverly!!!_ In Gottes Himmel, don'd you English yet alretty understandt? Sefenty-vive cends! Und"--here he jammed a seat check into the rattling windows-sill--"Und ven I sez Peverly it iss Peverly, und ven I sez Beverly it iss Beverly, und ven I sez sefenty-vive cends so iss it sefenty-vi----"

Seabury thrust three silver quarters at him; it was impossible to pursue the subject; madness lay in that direction. And when the affronted conductor, mumbling muffled indignation, had straddled off down the aisle, the young man took a cautious glance at the check in the window-sill. But on it was printed only, "Please show this to the conductor," so he got no satisfaction there. He had mislaid his time-table, too, and the large mottled man opposite had none, and began an endless and patient explanation which naturally resulted in nothing, as his labials were similar to the conductor's; even more so.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Chapter IX

Fate

Turning to the man behind him Seabury attempted to extract a little information, and the man was very affable and anxious to be of help, but all he could do was to nod and utter Teutonic gutturals through a bushy beard with a deep, buzzing sound, and Seabury sank back, beaten and dejected.

"Good Lord!" he muttered to himself, "is the entire Fatherland travelling on this accursed car! I--I've half a mind----"

He stole a doubtful sidelong glance at his blue-eyed neighbor across the aisle, but she was looking out of her own window this time, her cheeks buried in the fur of her chinchilla muff.

"And after all," he reflected, "if I ask her, she might turn out to be of the same nationality." But it was not exactly that which prevented him.

The train was slowing down; sundry hoarse toots from the locomotive indicated a station somewhere in the vicinity.

"Plue Pirt Lake! Change heraus für Bleasant Falley!" shouted the conductor, opening the forward door. He lingered long enough to glare balefully at Seabury, then, as nobody apparently cared either to get out at Blue Bird Lake or change for Pleasant Valley, he slammed the door and jerked the signal rope; the locomotive emitted a scornful Teutonic grunt; the train moved forward into the deepening twilight of the December night.

The snow was now falling more heavily--it was light enough to see that--a fine gray powder sifting down out of obscurity, blowing past the windows in misty streamers.

The bulky man opposite breathed on the pane, rubbed it with a thumb like a pincushion, and peered out.

"Der next station iss Beverly," he said.

"The next is Peverly?"

"No, der next iss _B_everly; und der nextest iss Peverly.

"Then, if I am going to Beverly, I get out at the next station, don't I?" stammered the perplexed young fellow, trying to be polite.

The man became peevish. "Nun, wass ist es?" he growled. "I dell you Peverly und you say Beverly. Don'd I know vat it iss I say alretty?"

"Yes--but _I_ don't----"

"Also, you ged owid vere you tam blease!" retorted the incensed passenger, and resumed his newspaper, hunching himself around to present nothing to Seabury except a vast expanse of neck and shoulder.

Seabury, painfully embarrassed, let it go at that. Probably the poor man _had_ managed to enunciate the name of the station properly; no doubt the next stop was Beverly, after all. He was due there at 6.17. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six already. The next stop _must_ be Beverly--supposing the train to be on time.

And already the guttural warning of the locomotive sounded from the darkness ahead; already he sensed the gritting resistance of the brakes.

Permitting himself a farewell and perfectly inoffensive glance across the aisle, he perceived her of the blue eyes and chinchilla furs preparing for departure; and, what he had not before noticed, her maid in the seat behind her, gathering a dainty satchel, umbrella, and suit-case marked C. G.

So she was going to Beverly, too! He hoped she might be bound for the Christmas Eve frolic at the Austins'. It was perfectly possible--in fact, probable.

He was a young man whose optimism colored his personal wishes so vividly that sometimes what he desired became presently, in his imagination, a charming and delightful probability. And already his misgivings concerning the proper name of the next station had vanished. He _wanted_ Beverly to be the next station, and already it was, for him. Also, he had quite made up his mind that she of the chinchillas was bound for the Austins'.

A cynical blast from the locomotive; a jerking pull of brakes, and, from the forward smoker, entered the fat conductor.

"Beverly! Beverly!" he shouted.

So he, too, had managed to master his _P's_ and _B's_, concluded the young man, smiling to himself as he rose, invested himself with his heavy coat, and picked up his suit-case.

The young lady of the chinchillas had already left the car, followed by her maid, before he stepped into the aisle ready for departure.

A shadow of misgiving fell upon him when, glancing politely at his fellow-passenger, he encountered only a huge sneer, and concluded that the nod of courtesy was superfluous.

Also he hesitated as he passed the fat conductor, who was glaring at him, mouth agape--hesitated a moment only, then, realizing the dreadful possibilities of reopening the subject, swallowed his question in silence.

"It's _got_ to be Beverly, now," he thought, making his way to the snowy platform and looking about him for some sign of a conveyance which might be destined for him. There were several sleighs and depot-wagons there--a number of footmen bustling about in furs.

"I'll just glance at the name of the station to be sure," he thought to himself, peering up through the thickly descending snow where the name of the station ought to be. And, as he stepped out to get a good view, he backed into a fur-robed footman, who touched his hat in hasty apology.

"Oh, Bailey! Is that you?" said Seabury, relieved to encounter one of Mrs. Austin's men.

"Yes, sir. Mr. Seabury, sir! Were you expected----?"

"Certainly," nodded the young man gayly, abandoning his suit-case to the footman and following him to a big depot-sleigh.

And there, sure enough, was his lady of the chinchillas, nestling under the robes to her pretty chin, and her maid on the box with the coachman--a strangely fat coachman--no doubt a new one to replace old Martin.

When Seabury came up the young lady turned and looked at him, and he took off his hat politely, and she acknowledged his presence very gravely and he seated himself decorously, and the footman swung to the rumble.

Then the chiming silver sleigh-bells rang out through the snow, the magnificent pair of plumed horses swung around the circle under the bleared lights of the station and away they speeded into snowy darkness.

A decent interval of silence elapsed before he considered himself at liberty to use a traveller's privilege. Then he said something sufficiently commonplace to permit her the choice of conversing or remaining silent. She hesitated; she had never been particularly wedded to silence. Besides, she was scarcely twenty--much too young to be wedded to anything. So she said something, with perfect composure, which left the choice to him. And his choice was obvious.

"I have no idea how far it is; have you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said coolly.

"This is a jolly sleigh," he continued with unimpaired cheerfulness.

She thought it comfortable. And for a while the conversation clung so closely around the sleigh that it might have been run over had not he dragged it into another path.

"Isn't it amazing how indifferent railroads are to the convenience of their passengers?"

She turned her blue eyes on him; there was the faintest glimmer in their depths.

"I know you saw me running after that train," he said, laughingly attempting to break the ice.

"I?"

"Certainly. And it amused you, I think."

She raised her eyebrows a trifle. "What is there amusing about that?"

"But you _did_ smile--at least I thought so."

Evidently she had no comment to offer. She _was_ hard to talk to. But he tried again.

"The fact is, I never expected to catch your--that train. It was only when I saw--saw"--he floundered on the verge of saying "you," but veered off hastily--"when I saw that brakeman's expression of tired contempt, I simply sailed through the air like a--a--like a--one of those--er you know----"

"Do you mean kangaroos?" she ventured so listlessly that the quick flush of chagrin on his face died out again; because it was quite impossible that such infantine coldness and candour could be secretly trifling with his dignity.

"It was a long jump," he concluded gayly, "but I did some jumping at Harvard and I made it and managed to hold on."

"You were very fortunate," she said, smiling for the first time.

And, looking at her, he thought he was; and he admitted it so blandly that he overdid the part. But he didn't know that.

"I fancy," he continued, "that everybody on that train except you and I were Germans. Such a type as sat opposite me----"

"Which car were you in?" she asked simply.

"Why--in your car----"

"In _my_ car?"

"Why--er--yes," he explained; "you were sitting across the aisle, you know."

"Was I?" she asked with pleasant surprise; "across the aisle from you?"

He grew red; he had certainly supposed that she had noticed him enough to identify him again. Evidently she had not. Mistakes like that are annoying. Every man instinctively supposes himself enough of an entity to be noticed by a pretty woman.

"I had no end of trouble of finding out where Beverly was," he said after a minute.

"Oh! And how did you find out?"

"I didn't until I backed into Bailey, yonder.... Do you know that I had a curious sort of presentiment that I should find you in this sleigh?"

"That is strange," she said. "When did you have it?"

"In the car--long before you got off."

She thought it most remarkable--rather listlessly.

"Those things happen, you know," he went on; "like thinking of a person you don't expect to see, and looking up and suddenly seeing that very person walking along."

"How does that resemble your case?" she asked.

It didn't. He realised it even before he began to try to explain the similarity. It really didn't matter one way or the other; it was nothing to turn red about, but he was turning. Somehow or other she managed to say things that never permitted that easy, graceful flow of language which characterised him in his normal state. Somehow or other, he felt that he was not doing himself justice. He could converse well enough with people as a rule. Something in that topsy-turvy and maddeningly foolish colloquy with those Germans must have twisted his tongue or unbalanced his logic.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "there's no similarity between the two cases except the basic idea of premonition."

She had been watching him disentangle himself with bright eyes in which something was sparkling--perhaps sympathy and perhaps not. It may have been the glimmer of malice. Perhaps she thought him just a trifle too ornamental--for he certainly was a very good-looking youth--perhaps something in the entire episode appealed to her sense of mischief. Probably even she herself could not explain just why she had thought it funny to see him running for his train, and later entangling himself in a futile word-fest with the conductor and the large mottled man.

"So," she said thoughtfully, "you were obsessed by a premonition."

"Not--er--exactly obsessed," he said suspiciously. Then his face cleared. How could anybody be suspicious of such sweetly inquiring frankness? "You see," he admitted, "that I--well, I rather hoped you would be going to the Austins'."

"The _Austins'_!" she repeated.

"Yes. I--I couldn't help speculating----"

"About me?" she asked. "Why should you?"

"I--there was no reason, of course, only I k-kept seeing you without trying to----"

"Me?"

"Certainly. I couldn't help seeing you, could I?"

"Not if you were looking at me," she murmured, pressing her muff to her face. Perhaps she was cold.

Again it occurred to him that there was something foolish in her reply. Certainly she was a little difficult to talk to. But then she was young--very young and--close enough to being a beauty to excuse herself from any overstrenuous claim to intellectuality.

"Yes," he said kindly and patiently, "I did see you, and I did hope that you were going to the Austins'. And then I bumped into somebody and there you were. I don't mean," as she raised her pretty eyebrows--"mean that you were Bailey. Good Lord, _what_ is the matter with my tongue!" he said, flushing with annoyance. "I don't talk this way usually."

"Don't you?" she managed to whisper behind her muff.

"No, I don't. That conductor's jargon seems to have inoculated me. You will probably not believe it, but I _can_ talk the English tongue sometimes----"

She was laughing now--a clear, delicious, irrepressible little peal that rang sweetly in the frosty air, harmonising with the chiming sleigh-bells. And he laughed, too, still uncomfortably flushed.

"Do you think it would help if we began all over again?" she asked, looking wickedly at him over her muff. "Let me see--you had an obsession which turned into a premonition that bumped Bailey and you found it wasn't Bailey at all, but a stranger in chinchillas who was going to--_where_ did you say she was going? Oh, to the Austins'! _That_ is clear, isn't it?"

"About as clear as anything that's happened to me to-night," he said.

"A snowy night does make a difference," she reflected.

"A--a difference?"

"Yes--doesn't it?" she asked innocently.

"I--in _what_?"

"In clearness. Things are clearer by daylight?"

"I don't see--I--exactly how--as a matter of fact I don't follow you at all," he said desperately. "You say things--and they sound all right--but somehow my answers seem queer. _Do_ you suppose that German conversation has mentally twisted me?"

Her eyes above the fluffy fur of her muff were bright as stars, but she did not laugh.

"Suppose," she said, demurely, "that _you_ choose a subject of conversation and try to make sense of it. If you _are_ mentally twisted it will be good practice."

"And you will--you won't say things--I mean things not germane to the subject?"

"Did you say German?"

"No, germane."

"Oh! Have _I_ been irrelevant, too?"

"Well, you mixed up mental clarity with snowy nights. Of course it was a little joke--I saw that soon enough; I'd have seen it at once, only I _am_ rather upset and nervous after that German experience."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Chapter X

Chance

She considered him with guileless eyes. He was _too_ good-looking, too attractive, too young, and far too much pleased with himself. That was the impression he gave her. And, as he was, in addition, plainly one of her own sort, a man she was likely to meet anywhere--a well-bred, well-mannered and agreeable young fellow, probably a recent undergraduate, which might account for his really inoffensive breeziness--she felt perfectly at ease with him and safe enough to continue imprudently her mischief.

"If you are going to begin at the beginning," she said, "perhaps it might steady your nerves to repeat your own name very slowly and distinctly. Physicians recommend it sometimes," she added seriously.

"My name is John Seabury," he said, laughing. "Am I lucid?"

"Lucid so far," she said gravely. "I knew a Lily Seabury----"

"My sister. She's in Paris."

"Yes, I knew that, too," mused the girl, looking at him in a different light--different in this way that his credentials were now unquestionable, and she could be as mischievous as she pleased with the minimum of imprudence.

"Do you ever take the advice of physicians," he asked naïvely, "about repeating names?"

"Seldom," she said. "I don't require the treatment."

"I was only wondering----"

"You were wondering what C. G. stood for on my satchel? I will be very glad to tell you, Mr. Seabury. _C_ stands for Cecil, and _G_ for Gay; Cecil Gay. Is that lucid?"

"Cecil!" he said; "that's a man's name."

"How rude! It is _my_ name. Now, do you think your mental calibre requires any more re-boring?"

"Oh, you know about calibres and things. Do you shoot? I _can_ talk about dogs and guns. Listen to me, Miss Gay." The subject shifted from shooting to fishing, and from hunting to driving four-in-hand, and eventually came back to the horses and the quaint depot-sleigh which was whirling them so swiftly toward their destination.

"Jack Austin and I were in Paris," he observed.

"Oh--recently?"

"Last year."

"I thought so."

"Why?" he asked.

"Oh, I suppose it was one of those obsessed premonitions----"

"You are laughing at me, Miss Gay."

"Am I? Why?"

"Why? How on earth is a man to know why? _I_ don't know why you do it, but you do--all the time."

"Not _all_ the time, Mr. Seabury, because I don't know you well enough."

"But you know my sister!"

"Yes. She is a dear."

"Won't that introduce me? And, besides, you know Jack Austin----"

"No, I don't."

"Isn't that odd?" he said. "You don't know Jack Austin and I don't know Mrs. Austin. It was nice of her to ask me. They say she is one of the best ever."

"It was certainly nice of her to ask you," said the girl, eyes brightening over her muff.

"I was in Europe when they were married," he said. "I suppose you were there."

"No, I wasn't. That sounds rather strange, doesn't it?"

"Why, yes, rather!" he replied, looking up at her in his boyish, perplexed way. And for a moment her heart failed her; he _was_ nice, but also he was a living temptation. Never before in all her brief life had she been tempted to do to anybody what she was doing to him. She had often been imprudent in a circumspect way--conventionally unconventional at times--even a little daring. At sheer audacity she had drawn the line, and now the impulse to cross that line had been too much for her. But even she did not know exactly why temptation had overcome her.

There was something that she ought to tell him--and tell him at once. Yet, after all, it was really already too late to tell him--had been too late from the first. Fate, Chance and Destiny, the Mystic Three, disguised, as usual, one as a German conductor; one as a large mottled man; the other as a furry footman had been bumped by Seabury and jeered at by a girl wearing dark blue eyes and chinchillas. And now the affronted Three were taking exclusive charge of John Seabury and Cecil Gay. She was partly aware of this; she did not feel inclined to interfere where interference could do no good. And that being the case, why not extract amusement from matters as they stood? Alas, it is not well to laugh at the Mystic Three! But Cecil Gay didn't know that. You see, even _she_ didn't know everything.

* * * * *

"You will like Jack Austin," he asserted.

"Really?"

"I'm willing to bet----"

"Oh, wait till we know one another officially before we begin to make wagers.... Still, I might, perhaps safely wager that I shall not find your friend Jack Austin very agreeable to-night."

So they settled the terms of the wager; cigarettes versus the inevitable bonbons.

"Everybody likes Jack Austin on sight," he said triumphantly, "so you may as well send the cigarettes when you are ready;" and he mentioned the brand.

"You will never smoke those cigarettes," she mused aloud, looking dreamily at him, her muff pressed alongside of her pretty cheek. "Tell me, Mr. Seabury, are you vindictive?"

"Not very."

"Revengeful?"

"Well--no, I don't think so," he replied. "Why?"

"I'm much relieved," she said, simply.

"Why?"

"Because I've done a dreadful thing--perfectly dreadful."

"To me?"

She nodded.

Perplexed and curious, he attempted to learn what she meant, but she parried everything smiling. And now, the faster the horses sped, the faster her pulses beat, and the more uncertain and repentant she became until her uncertainty increased to a miniature panic, and, thoroughly scared, she relapsed into a silence from which he found it beyond his powers to lure her.

For already a bright light was streaming out toward them from somewhere ahead. In its rays the falling snow turned golden, every separate flake distinct as they passed a great gate with the lodge beside it and went spinning away along a splendid wooded avenue and then straight up toward a great house, every window ablaze with light.

John Seabury jumped out and offered his aid to Cecil Gay as several servants appeared under the porte-cochère.

"I had no idea that Jack Austin lived so splendidly," he whispered to Miss Gay, as they entered the big hall.

But she was past speech now--a thoroughly scared girl; and she lost no time in following a maid into the elevator, whither Seabury presently followed her in tow of a man-servant.

"Luxury! Great Scott," thought Seabury. "This dubbing a palace a cottage is the worse sort of affectation, and I'll tell Jack Austin so, too."

The elevator stopped; the doors clicked open; Seabury turned smilingly to Cecil Gay, but she hurried past him, crimson-cheeked, head bent, and he followed his pilot to his room.

"Dinner is hannounced at 'awf awfter height, sir," announced the man with dignity.

"Thank you," said Seabury, watching a valet do sleight-of-hand tricks with the contents of his suit-case. And when he was alone he hopped nimbly out of his apparel and into a bath and out again in a high state of excitement, talking to himself all the while he was dressing.

"Good old Jack! The Mrs. must have had the means to do this sort of thing so well. I'm delighted!--de--lighted!... If ever a man deserved affluence, it's Jack Austin! It suits him. It will do him good. It becomes him.... Plucky fellow to go on grinding at the law!... Only thing to do, of course--decent thing to do--self-respect and all that.... But, by jingo!"--he looked about him as he stood buttoning his collar. "Hah!" stepping to the wall and examining a picture--"Great Jenkins!--why, here's a real Fortuny--in a _bedroom_!"

He cared for good pictures, and he stood before the exquisite aquarelle as long as he dared. Then, glancing at his watch, he completed his toilet, opened his door, and, scorning the lift, fled blithely down the great staircase on pleasing bent--and on being pleased.

A big drawing-room, charmingly lighted, and gay already with the chatter and laughter of a very jolly throng--this is what confronted him as a servant offered him a tray containing cards.

"I don't see my name here," he said, examining the slim envelopes.

"Beg pardon, sir--what name, sir?"

"Mr. Seabury."

The servant looked and Seabury looked in vain.

"An oversight," commented the young fellow, coolly. "I'll ask Mrs. Austin about it." And he walked in, and, singling out the hostess, advanced with smiling confidence, thinking to himself: "She _is_ pretty; Jack's right. But--but, by George!--she looks like Cecil Gay!"

His hostess received him very charmingly, saying that it was so good of him to come; and he said it was so good of her to have asked him, and then they said several similar things. He spoke of Jack--mentioning him and continuing to another subject; and she smiled a trifle uncertainly. Her smile was still more vague and uncertain when he laughingly mentioned the dinner-cards; and she said it was a vexing oversight and would be immediately arranged--glancing rather sharply at an amiable gentleman standing near her. And this amiable gentleman came up to Seabury and shook hands very cordially, and said several agreeable things to which Seabury responded, until new arrivals separated him from his hostess and the amiable gentleman, and he fell back and glanced about him. And, after a little while an odd expression came into his eyes; he stood very still; a slight flush slowly spread over his face which had grown firmer. In a few moments the color went as it had come, slowly; the faint glitter died out in his eyes.

There were several people he knew among the guests; he nodded quietly to young Van Guilder, to Brimwell and others, then crossed to speak to Catherine Hyland and Dorothy Minster. He was very agreeable, but a little distrait. He seemed to have something on his mind.

Meanwhile his hostess was saying to her husband: "Who _is_ that, Jim?" And her husband said: "You can search me. Didn't you ask him?" And his wife responded: "He's talking to nearly everybody. It's curious, isn't it?" Here she was interrupted by the flushed entrance of her unmarried sister, Cecil Gay.

Meanwhile, Seabury was saying coolly: "I haven't seen Jack yet."

"Jack?" repeated Dorothy Minster. "Which Jack?"

"Jack Austin."

"Oh," said Miss Minster, who did not know him; "is he to be here?"

But Seabury only smiled vaguely. His mind, his eyes, his attention were fixed upon a vision of loveliness in the foreground--a charmingly flushed young girl who knew everybody and was evidently a tremendous favorite, judging from the gay greetings, the little volleys of laughter, and the animated stirring of groups among which she passed.

Watching her, quite oblivious to his surroundings, the servant at his elbow was obliged to cough discreetly half a dozen times and repeat "Beg pardon, sir," before he turned to notice the silver salver extended.

"Oh--thank you," he said, picking up an envelope directed, "Mr. Seabury," and opening it. Then a trifle surprised but smiling, he turned to find the girl whose name was written on the card. She was speaking to the hostess and the amiable man who had first greeted him. And this is what he didn't hear as he watched her, waiting grimly for a chance at her:

"Cecil! _Who_ is that very young man?"

"Betty, how should _I_ know----"

"Look here, Cis," from the amiable gentleman; "this is some of your deviltry----"

"Oh, _thank_ you, Jim!"

"Yes, it is. Who is he and where did you rope him?"

"Jim!"

"Cecil! What nonsense is this?" demanded her hostess and elder sister. "How did he get here and who is he?"

"I did _not_ bring him, Betty. He simply came?"

"How?"

"In the depot-sleigh, of course----"

"With _you_?"

"Certainly. He wanted to come. He _would_ come! I couldn't turn him out, could I--after he climbed in?"

Host and hostess glared at their flushed and defiant relative, who tried to look saucy, but only looked scared. "_He_ doesn't know he's made a mistake," she faltered; "and there's no need to tell him yet--is there?... I put my name down on his card; he'll take me in.... Jim, don't, for Heaven's sake, say anything if he calls Betty Mrs. Austin. Oh, Jim, be decent, please! I _was_ a fool to do it; I don't know what possessed me! Wait until to-morrow before you say anything! Besides, he may be furious! Please wait until I'm out of the house. He'll breakfast late, I hope; and I promise you I'll be up early and off by the seven o'clock train----"

"In Heaven's name, who _is_ he?" broke in the amiable man so fiercely that Cecil jumped.

"He's only Lily Seabury's brother," she said, meekly, "and he thinks he's at the Austins'--and he might as well be, because he knows half the people here, and I've simply _got_ to keep him out of their way so that nobody can tell him where he is. Oh, Betty--I've spoiled my own Christmas fun, and his, too! _Is_ there any way to get him to the Austins' now?'

"The Jack Austins' of Beverly!" exclaimed her sister, incredulously. "Of course not!"

"And you _let_ him think he was on his way there?" demanded her brother-in-law. "Well--you--are--the--limit!"

"So is _he_," murmured the abashed maid, slinking back to give place to a new and last arrival. Then she turned her guilty face in a sort of panic of premonition. She was a true prophetess; Seabury had seen his chance and was coming. And _that's_ what comes of mocking the Mystic Three and cutting capers before High Heaven.

[Illustration]

Chapter XI

Destiny

He had taken her in and was apparently climbing rapidly through the seven Heavens of rapture--having arrived as far as the third unchecked and without mishap. It is not probable that she kept pace with him: she had other things to think of.

Dinner was served at small tables; and it required all her will, all her limited experience, every atom of her intelligence, to keep him from talking about things that meant exposure for her. Never apparently had he been so flattered by any individual girl's attention; she was gay, witty, audacious, charming, leading and carrying every theme to a scintillating conclusion.

The other four people at their table he had not before met--she had seen to that--and it proved to be a very jolly group, and there was a steady, gay tumult of voices around it, swept by little gusts of laughter; and he knew perfectly well that he had never had such a good time as he was having--had never been so clever, so interesting, so quick with his wit, so amusing. He had never seen such a girl as had been allotted to him--never! Besides, something else had nerved him to do his best. And he was doing it.

"It's a curious thing," he said, with that odd new smile of his, "what a resemblance there is between you and Mrs. Austin."

"What Mrs. Austin?" began the girl opposite; but got no further, for Cecil Gay was appealing to him to act as arbiter in a disputed Bridge question; and he did so with nice discrimination and a logical explanation which tided matters over that time. But it was a close call; and the color had not all returned to Cecil's cheeks when he finished, with great credit to his own reputation as a Bridge expert.

But the very deuce seemed to possess him to talk on subjects from which she strove to lead him.

These are the other breaks he made, and as far as he got with each break--stopped neatly every time in time:

"Curious I haven't seen Jack Aus----"

"Mrs. Austin _does_ resemble----"

"This is the first time I have ever been in Bev----"

And each time she managed to repair the break unnoticed. But it was telling on her; she couldn't last another round--she knew that. Only the figurative bell could save her now. And she could almost _hear_ it as her sister rose.

Saved! But--but--_what_ might some of these men say to him if he lingered here for coffee and cigarettes?

"You won't, will you?" she said desperately, as all rose.

"Won't--what?" he asked.

"Stay--_long_."

He rapidly made his way from the third into the fourth Heaven. She watched him.

"No, indeed," he said under his breath.

She lingered, fascinated by her own peril. _Could_ she get him away at once?

"I--I wonder, Mr. Seabury, what you would think if I--if I suggested that you smoke--smoke--on the stairs--now--with me?"

He hastily scrambled out of the fourth Heaven into the fifth. She saw him do it.

"I'd rather smoke there than anywhere in the world----"

"Quick, then! Saunter over to the door--stroll about a little first--no, don't do even that!--I--I mean--you'd better hurry. _Please!_" She cast a rapid look about her; she could not linger another moment. Then, concentrating all the sweetness and audacity in her, and turning to him, she gave him one last look. It was sufficient to send him in one wild, flying leap from the fifth Heaven plump into the sixth. The sixth Heaven was on the stairs; and his legs carried him thither at a slow and indifferent saunter, though it required every scrap of his self-control to prevent his legs from breaking into a triumphant trot. Yet all the while that odd smile flickered, went out, and flickered in his eyes.

She was there, very fluffy, very brilliant, and flustered and adorable, the light from the sconces playing over her bare arms and shoulders and spinning all sorts of aureoles around her bright hair. Hah! She had him alone now. She was safe; she could breathe again. And he might harp on the Austins all he chose. Let him!

"No, _I_ can't have cigarettes," she explained, "because it isn't good for my voice. I'm supposed to possess a voice, you know."

"It's about the sweetest voice I ever heard," he said so sincerely that the bright tint in her cheeks deepened.

"That is nicer than a compliment," she said, looking at him with a little laugh of pleasure. He nodded, watching the smoke rings drifting through the hall.

"Do you know something?" he said.

"Not very much. What?"

"If I were a great matrimonial prize----"

"You are, aren't you?"

"_If_ I was," he continued, ignoring her, "like a king or a grand duke----"

"Exa