Front matter (continued 2)

But as the play proceeded such reflections were forgotten in the intensity of her absorption. Again she was leaning forward with parted lips; rapt, over-borne, lost to everything, and pale with an indescribable tumult of emotion. She was conscious of no audience; of naught save the man who held her captive with a power so absolute and irresistible that birth, training, pride, weighed as nothing in the balance. His voice pierced her heart; his eyes seemed to draw the soul from her body; she trembled at her own helplessness, though the realization of it was also a strange and intoxicating pleasure.

But intermingled with that pleasure, darting through it like a tongue of flame, was a jealousy of Miss de Vere that not even the bitterest of contempt could allay. Phyllis felt to the full the degradation of being jealous of any one bearing so preposterous a name. Lydia de Vere! Her lips curled at herself. Oh, that shoddy affectation of aristocracy! Lydia de Vere! And that in a ten-twenty-thirty cent theater, and hardly clothed above the waist; and yet, in spite of her painted face, her dyed hair, and all of her thirty years, with shoulders and breast that a duchess might have envied, she was handsome in her common, flamboyant, chorus-girl way, with the meaningless good looks that one associates with tights and gilt spears. Her acting was stilted and false; her fine ladyism an impossible assumption; she railed at the Prince in the accents of a cook giving notice. But her love for Corrèze taxed no histrionic powers. It was vehement and real, as were the kisses she bestowed so freely, and the caresses she lingered over with voluptuous satisfaction. Beneath the drama of fictitious personages was another of flesh and blood, like a splash of scarlet on a printed page.

What fury and anguish lay pent up in one girlish bosom! What a suffocating sense of defeat, bitterness and shame!-- To burn with jealousy of such a woman was more lowering than to-- No, she would not admit that word to herself. It was folly, infatuation, madness--but not love. It would pass with the swiftness it had come, leaving her in wonder at herself, though the scar would remain for many a long day. This man was robbing her of something that never perhaps could be altogether replaced. How wicked it was, how unjust--she who had done nothing to tempt the lightning! She hated him for it; she clenched her teeth and defied him; she understood now what she had read in books that there are men the mind scorns even while the body surrenders. But she was made of stronger stuff; she had pride and courage; her pearls were not for swine to trample on. She would put him out of her head for ever.

It was terrible how he always got back again. There were tones in his voice that melted every resolution. If ever laughter was music, it was his, and the contagion of it swept the house; and his face, though not handsome in the accepted sense, was striking in the effect it gave of an untamed, extraordinary and powerful nature, only half revealed. What was pride or courage or anything? What availed the hatred of that hotly-beating little heart? Had he not but to look her way to make it his own? Had he crushed it in his hand, would it not have died of joy? Hatred, resentment, outraged self-respect--words, nothing but words.

As the house streamed out she waited in dread for Mrs. Beekman's criticism. However desperately she might belittle Adair to herself, Phyllis shrank from hearing condemnation on other lips. The pride that had failed so utterly to defend her, had taken sides with the enemy, devotedly, passionately. Judge of her surprise, then, her pleasure and relief, when Mrs. Beekman said to her solemnly: "Phyllis, that man's a genius! He's perfectly splendid!" Misunderstanding her companion's silence, and thinking it implied dissent, she went on with a note of argument in her voice. "Of course one can feel somehow that he has had no advantages--that he has probably never been within ten miles of the people he is trying to represent--(do you remember his shaking hands with his gloves on?)--but just the same he has a wonderful and magnificent talent, and we'll hear of him as surely as the world heard of Henry Irving, or Booth, or Bernhardt. Truly, Phyllis, I believe the day will come when we'll be bragging of having admired Adair before he was famous; that is, if you feel like me about it," she added doubtfully.

"I do, I do!" cried Phyllis. "I've never seen anybody on the stage I've liked as much."

"Well, I have," said Mrs. Beekman candidly. "He certainly suffered from being with all those idiots, and I don't like that fling-ding walk of his.--I guess he's about five years short of the winning-post, but we'll see him romp in as sure as my name's Emma Beekman."

"Romping in" jarred somewhat on Phyllis' ear, but all the same Mrs. Beekman's admiration was very sweet to her, and in a queer sort of way was comforting and reassuring. There was dignity in idolizing a genius; it raised her in her own good opinion.

She forgot the apples and the chewing-gum; she forgot even Miss de Vere; a mantle of unreasoning happiness enveloped her, and with it came a gush of affection for Mrs. Beekman that quite astonished the latter. She held her hand in the dark, and tried, with many unseen blushes, to keep the one subject uppermost. To lie back in the carriage and hear Adair praised, thrilled her with delicious sensations. She was insatiable, and kept the milliner repeating "genius, genius, genius," like a parrot. It cost her an order for a twenty dollar hat, but what did she care? She would have given the clothes off her back in the extravagance of her desire. Fortunately Mrs. Beekman was nothing loath, and would have chattered for ever on this entrancing topic. "I guess we're as bad as my girls," she said, with her good-natured laugh, "and he could put us both in the box-car, too, if he had the mind."

"I shouldn't care if I was the only one," returned Phyllis gaily, "and anyway, I've always loved traveling!"

"It would be to the devil," said Mrs. Beekman half-seriously. "That's where such men come from, and that's where they go back--and if you could follow round the circle, I guess you'd find it mile-stoned with silly girls."

"Oh, if I went, I would stay to the end," cried Phyllis. "No putting me off at a way-station. I'd take a through ticket."

"And get there alone," put in Mrs. Beekman. "Men like that don't go far with any girl. They are a power for mischief, and they weren't much wrong in the old days to run them out of town--vagabonds and strolling players, you know. I guess in those times they used to take chickens, too, and anything portable. A bad lot, my dear, and they aren't any better to-day."

This was a poor return for a twenty-dollar hat, and without knowing exactly why, it made Phyllis exceedingly miserable. She felt a diminishing affection for Mrs. Beekman; and the world altogether suddenly took on a cold and dismal aspect. Her spirits were not revived by finding her father sitting up for her.

"What was the play?" he asked, taking her wraps.

"Moths, Papa."

"What? Twice?"

"Oh, I thought it would amuse me to see it again, and besides, Mrs. Beekman preferred it to anything else in town, and I really went for her sake, you know. It's a charity to take her out sometimes; her life is so monotonous, and one feels so sorry for her."

Mr. Ladd waited, smiling in advance, for another humorous take-off of the piece. But there was no fun in Phyllis that night. She drank a glass of water, kissed him good night, and went silently up to bed.

"She doesn't seem very well," he thought, with a shade of concern, and remembered that she had been pale and tired for some days past. "If she doesn't pick up in a day or two, I believe I'll get the doctor."

Had he seen her an hour later, his misgivings would have increased. Kneeling beside her bed, her face crushed in the coverlet, she was weeping softly and heart-brokenly to herself.

CHAPTER VIII

Friday, the day that followed, was memorable to her for its decisiveness and remorse. She took a long ride, and between canters, busied her head with plans of escape. Washington, Florida, Europe--it mattered little where--so long as she got away at once. She looked at herself dispassionately, and the more she looked the more utterly despicable did she seem. She was undoubtedly in love with this cheap, showy actor--(somehow in the sunshine his genius had withered, and he seemed to share the general tawdriness of gum and apples and shop-boy sentiment)--crazily in love, infatuated; and to refuse to admit it was but to hide her head in the sand, like an ostrich.

The comparison was not a pretty one, but then she was not looking for pretty comparisons. In fact, as far as her feelings for Adair were concerned, she was eager to find words that could make her wince. She said them out loud, exulting in their brutality; gross words, picked up she hardly knew where, and put out of mind as unclean and horrible. To use them now was a form of self-flagellation, and she laid on the whip with a will. It was good for a little fool, she said viciously. Lash! lash! It would keep her out of mischief. Lash! lash! Let her understand once for all what it really meant, even if the skin curled off her back.

On her return home she stopped at the telegraph-office to carry out her intention of volunteering a visit to Aunt Sarah's. Night or day, in season or out, there she always had a refuge. If blood in Aunt Sarah's case, was not thicker than water, there was the more robust bond of hard cash always to be relied upon. A niece who descended in a shower of gold could count with confidence on the bread and salt of hospitality, and the sincerest of welcoming kisses. There is something to be said for people you can count on with confidence. An affectionate, love-you-like-a-daughter aunt might have made excuses. A money-loving, pleasure-loving, wholly selfish aunt, living very much above her income, was one of the certainties of life.

But as she reined in her horse, and the groom ran to give her his hand to dismount, she wondered, after all, whether she would telegraph. The flagellation had been very successful; the September sunshine had killed the pitiful glimmer of the footlights; the crisp invigorating air had brought sanity with every breath. No, indeed, she would not telegraph, she was not half the fool she had thought herself; it was a girlish weakness to exaggerate everything--infatuation included. She would telephone to that nice New Yorker instead and invite him to tea. That oldish man with the charming distinction and courtesy, who had shown symptoms of infatuation, too.--Yes, a good whipping to be followed by two hours of an excessively devoted Mr. Van Suydam, and perhaps a boy-and-girl-evening later with the carpet up--and why should anybody be scared of anything?

So the telegram was not sent; and a young lady, very much restored, and looking adorably fresh and pretty on her Kentucky mare, came galloping up Chestnut Avenue in excellent spirits and appetite.

As for Mr. Van Suydam--he threw over a big reception to come, and was so agreeable and eager, in such a sweet, restrained, smiling way, that he was allowed to hold a little hand a long, long while, and murmur a whole heartful of tender things that amounted virtually to a declaration--which was cruel of Phyllis, not to say unladylike and shocking; for with half-shut eyes she tried to imagine it was quite another man who was wooing her, and abandoned herself to the fiction with a waywardness that was inexcusable. But however unjust it was towards Mr. Van Suydam, who was an honorable man, and meant what he said, and was naturally much elated--his suit did Phyllis good, and even as dummy for another, an inevitable comparison would insist upon obtruding itself. Caste is very strong; it is difficult to associate good-breeding, honor and distinction with a ten-twenty-thirty cent star; and though Mr. Van Suydam, was nothing to Phyllis personally she could not help realizing the high value she set on the qualities he exemplified--so high, indeed, that it began to seem impossible for her to care seriously for any man without them.

An evening with the sparrows rounded out that day of good resolves and healthy common sense. She danced with a zest that no genuinely-infatuated person could have felt, and told ghost stories afterwards before the fire, and listened to others being told, with shudders of unaffected enjoyment. "And my dear, when she looked at that man again, she saw that his throat was cut from ear to ear!"--It was a jolly evening, innocently hilarious, and as wholesome as an ocean breeze. Morbidity and introspection could not persist in an atmosphere so genially youthful. Phyllis never thought once of Cyril Adair, and flirted outrageously with Sam Hargreaves, convulsing the sparrows by sharing his ice-cream spoon. Ordinarily quiet and backward, and even a little disdainful, she showed herself in wild spirits that night, and her audacity, humor and gaiety were irresistible.

It was very discouraging, after a night's sleep, as untroubled as a babe's, to awaken again with a dull ache within her, and to discover, with hopeless despondency, that she was not cured at all. Alas for the girlish armor she had striven so hard to put about her--Mr. Van Suydam, Sam Hargreaves, the bitter, ugly things she had said to herself, the defiant resolutions. Where was that pride she had stung to fury? Where was that sense of caste which yesterday had seemed so peremptory?

The morning found her bereft of everything, wretched, defenseless, with no longer even the will to fly. She was under the spell once more, and powerless to throw it off. Her whole prepossession was to see Adair again, cost what it might. Nothing else mattered. She was mad, infatuated, contemptible to herself--but she could only be appeased by the sight of him. Yet how was it possible? How could she contrive it? She could not well ask Mrs. Beekman a second time. That any one should suspect her secret was intolerable--she would rather have died. The circle of her girl friends was too small to arrange another theater-party without submitting herself to unbearable innuendoes and home-thrusts. Those young women had a preternatural instinct for detecting the dawn of love. In other things they might be stupid and blind, but for this they were as watchful as hawks, and as merciless as only twenty can be. What of her admirers then--Mr. Van Suydam, say, or good-natured, fat Sam? But they could be very sharp, too--and besides, she could not be so forward as to seek an invitation. Young girls in Carthage had a great deal of liberty--but it had its limits. Perhaps she could take one of the house-maids with her to the matinée--it was Saturday and the piece was given twice. But this would appear queer, especially if it reached her father.

There seemed nothing for it but to dress very plainly and go by herself. It was something to remember that matinées practically existed for women only--though attending one alone was unheard of in Phyllis' set. It was less a social law than a sort of fact. Girls went to matinées in pairs apparently--always had--and apparently always would. "Who did you go with, my dear?" was an inevitable question. Well, if necessary, one could meet that with a fib; and if one were found out, it was no great crime after all--but rather a mild escapade that a blush could condone. Of course a box was out of the question. She could not sit solitary in a box for the whole house to gape at. But there was nothing to prevent her buying two orchestra seats, so that any one recognizing her might draw a natural deduction. An adjoining empty seat was almost a chaperon, besides permitting her to widen her distance from an unpleasant neighbor. If there should be two unpleasant neighbors, she could always rise and walk out.

At two she was passing the Thalia Theater with an air of well-feigned unconcern, though her steps grew slower, and she stole quick frightened glances at the bustling entrance. She felt the need of such a preliminary survey before she could screw her courage up to the point of joining the in-going throng, who by daylight looked so depressingly dingy and common that she was fairly daunted by the sight of them. Even in the plainest clothes she possessed, she felt that she would be noticeable among people like that, and this was brought home to her the more by the impudent stare of several young men, who parted, none too politely, for her to pass. They knew she had no business there alone; that she belonged to another world; and there was speculation, as well as forward admiration, in the looks they cast at her. She felt they had somehow divined her hesitating purpose, and were grinning at her humiliation. She quickened her pace, and got by with fiercely flaming cheeks, and a desolating sense of failure.

But the desire was so overmastering that after a few minutes she turned, and again coerced her reluctant feet. Impudent young men could do her no harm. What a coward she had been to let them disconcert her. She would put down her sixty cents, and enter boldly, telling herself she was a factory girl, whose young man happened to be late. She might even leave the second ticket at the box-office with the phantom's name on it--though no, that would mean too much talking, and she distrusted her voice. But, anyhow, nothing was going to keep her out of the theater. Didn't soldiers walk tip to breastworks, bristling with guns and cannons--whole rows of them, with probably a very similar shakiness in their legs? She would advance on that box-office in the same spirit--right, left, right, left--rubadub, rubadub--with sixty cents in her hot little hand.

She had scarcely reached the outskirts of the crowd when she suddenly heard her name called aloud. It went through her like a knife, and she hardly dared turn her guilty head. There, beside the curb, in a big automobile, was Mr. Van Suydam, with a party of women in veils and furs, all signaling to her. There ensued an animated conversation. Where was she going? Why shouldn't she jump in with them? Mr. Van Suydam would sit on the floor of the tonneau, and give her his place. They were so insistent that it was not easy to refuse. She fibbed manfully, and invented pressing engagements.... At last they rolled off, waving their hands....

But this chance meeting cost her all the poor courage she possessed. Why, she could not explain to herself--but it was gone, and there was nothing for it but to hasten away. She felt she had escaped detection by a hair; the precious matinée was lost; her eyes smarted with disappointment and chagrin. She rankled with the injustice of it, too--the unmerited and unsought disaster that this infatuation really was. She was so wholly innocent of any blame. She had done nothing--absolutely nothing--to incur it. If you caught measles or smallpox every one was sorry for you; it was admittedly a misfortune for which you were in no way responsible. But if you caught love (she smiled at her own phrase), it was an unspeakable disgrace! Yet what was the difference? Did it not lie outside one's self? How unjust it was, then, to make a criminal of a woman for what was beyond her power to control; and the exasperating part was that she felt a criminal to herself!

Her heart was heavy with shame. One instinct made her love unreasonably; another instinct arrogated the right to criticize with unsparing venom. What a contradiction! What a cruel heritage from all those thousands of dead people who had gone to make her body and her mind with odds and ends of themselves! She had done no harm, yet some blind, unknown, malignant force was grinding her under its heel. She understood now why old-fashioned people believed so implicitly in the devil. It was their crude explanation of the unexplainable.

She locked herself in her room, and impelled by a thought that had been dancing dizzily in her head, opened her desk, and drew out a sheet of note-paper. She managed to write: "Dear Mr. Adair"; and then, blushing crimson, covered her face with her hands, and began to tremble with an uncontrollable emotion. To continue that letter--to send it--was to outrage every feeling of modesty within her. Under the circumstances any letter, however cold or conventional, was an avowal. She might almost as well write "je t'adore" under her photograph, and leave it at the stage-door. But that blind, unknown, malignant force, after a moment of respite, again drove her on. She might shiver and blush, but the compulsion of it was like iron, and she had to obey.

"Dear Mr. Adair," she wrote, "I have seen Moths twice, and may I, a mere member of the public, and altogether unknown to you, take the great liberty of expressing my admiration of your wonderful performance?" She stopped at the last word, and debated it over with herself--quite coolly, considering the throes she had been in a minute before. No, "performance" would not do. Bears performed; so did acrobats; it was not the right word at all.--She took another sheet of paper, and began again: "Dear Mr. Adair: I have seen Moths twice, and may I, a mere member of the public, and altogether unknown to you, take the great liberty of expressing my admiration of your powerful portrayal of a noble nature struggling against an illicit passion? Nothing I have ever seen on the stage has moved me so deeply, and though praise from an absolute stranger may seem little in your eyes, I can not resist the impulse that makes me write. Trusting you will receive this in the spirit that prompts it, believe me, in sincere homage, Phyllis Ladd."

She read it, and re-read it till the words lost all meaning. What would he think of it? What sort of person would it conjure up to him? The hand, and the paper, and the engraved address all denoted refinement and good taste. It would be quite evident to him that she was a lady, with a social position of the best--that is, if he knew what Chestnut Avenue meant in Carthage, and especially such a number as 214. But there was nothing to show that she was young, or unmarried--or--or--good-looking. The letter might just as well have been written by a matron of fifty. If only she could have added "aged twenty-one, and generally considered a very pretty woman." She would have liked him to know that, even if she were never to see him again; would have liked to tantalize his curiosity in regard to the unknown Phyllis Ladd whose name was signed at the end.--Though he probably received bushels of notes. All actors were said to. And being a man he would probably like some of the warmer ones better--those from frankly adoring shop-girls, hampered neither by social position nor backwardness. Hers would be pushed to one side, and never thought of again. Oh, the little fool she was to send it! What could come of it but shame, and good Heavens, hadn't she had enough of that already?

But undeterred, and wilful in spite of everything, she addressed an envelope, folded her letter inside it, and went out to drop it herself into the box. As it slipped from her fingers she felt an intense pleasure in her daring. It was only a coward who took no risks. There was her letter in the box gone beyond retaking. For better or worse, for good or evil, it had started on its road, and let come what might.

CHAPTER IX

The next morning, towards noon, Cyril Adair was lounging over the bar of the Good Fellows' Grotto, with one well-shod foot perched on the metal rest below. Before him was a Martini cocktail, and the admiring, deferential face of Larry, the bar-keeper. Adair stood the scrutiny of daylight better than most actors. Late hours, dissipation and grease-paint had not impaired a fine and ruddy skin that the morning razor left as fresh as a boy's. His brown eyes were clear, and there was about him an air of unassailable health that was enhanced by broad shoulders, a neck as firm as any ever cut from Greek marble, and a finely-swelling chest--the physique, in fact, of what he had some pretensions to be--a good, welter-weight boxer. His skill in this direction was well known, and his readiness when tipsy to exercise it on any one unfortunate enough to offend him, was one of the scandals of his stormy and scandalous life. His engagements, nine times out of ten, had the knack of ending in the police court, with raw beefsteak for the plaintiff's eye, and the option of "seven day's hard" for the uncontrite defendant. Even when stark sober--and to do him justice he drank only in fits and starts, with long intermissions between--there was something subtly formidable in the man, and people instinctively made way for him, and treated him with a respect verging on fear.

He was over-dressed in what was the last accentuation of the prevailing fashion--with far too much braided cuff, with far too startling a waistcoat, with far too extravagant a tie and pin--and worse than anything, wore them all with assertiveness and self-complacency. Though his manners were good (when he liked,) and his address agreeable, and even ingratiating, he was too showy, too self-satisfied, too elaborately at ease, and his assurance seemed to rest, not on the conventional groundwork of birth and breeding, but rather on his power and will to knock you through the door if he cared to take the trouble.

Of course, he was profoundly ignorant, knowing nothing, reading little, his life bounded by the footlights on one side, and the stage-door on the other--and like all such men perpetually nervous lest he should be found out. His inherent ability was enormous--as enormous as his vanity. He had fought his way up from nothing--from the muddy streets in which he had sold papers, and begged, and starved, his whole boyhood long. He was full of instincts that had never had the chance of becoming anything more--instincts, which, if cultivated, might have made him a very different man. He was passionately fond of bad music; delighted in the only pictures he knew, those in hotels and saloons; he had, stored away in a memory that never forgot anything, half the plays of Shakespeare, and thousands of lines of trashy verse. A savage, in fact, in the midst of our civilization, which, after trying to grind him into powder, and denying him everything, was unjust enough to despise him heartily for what he had made of himself unaided. Could he have refrained from taking offense at trifles, and from punching people's heads, he could easily have retained the high place he had once held on the New York stage. He had no one to thank but himself if he were now touring the country in a fifty-class company, with an enemy in every manager who had ever employed him. He had a strong, unusual talent. In the delineation of somber and misunderstood natures, contradictory, pent-up, heroic--the out and out bad man with a spark of good--he was admitted by metropolitan critics to have no equal in America. Others copied him slavishly and made successes, while he, their inspiration and their model, remained comparatively unknown. There were times when he felt very badly about it, but a pretty face and a provocative petticoat could always divert his attention. Needless to say he had not to look far to find either.

"Larry," he asked nonchalantly, "do you know any people in Carthage here named Ladd?"

"I don't believe I do, Mr. Adair," returned Larry, scratching his head. "Leastways, none except Robert T. R. Ladd, the railroad president." Larry was unable to conceive that this mighty name could possibly have any bearing on Adair's question. "No, I don't believe I do."

"Oh, the railroad president? Any family?"

"Just one daughter."

"Well, go on--tell me about her."

"Why, there isn't much to say, except people call her the prettiest girl in Carthage--but then they always say that of a millionaire's daughter--Emma Satterlee would turn the milk sour, and yet in the society notes--"

"Did you ever see her?--No, no, I don't mean that one--the railroad man's--the Ladd girl?"

"Yes, I saw her onst in a church fair. She hit me all right. Slender brunette, very aristocracy, with the kind of eyes that if you're fond of brunettes--seem like--"

"How old is she?"

"Hell, how do I know! Twenty--twenty-one--something around there. Just a girl."

"And the prettiest one in Carthage?" repeated Adair, sipping his cocktail as though the description pleased him.

"Well, I would leave my happy home for her," said Larry, with a grin. "Pretty--I'd say she was pretty--pretty enough to eat."

"Lives out Chestnut Avenue way, doesn't she?"

"Yes, in the stone house that's set back in a kind of park, with a big gate in front and a driveway. The Ladds' are at the top of the top, you know. My, I felt I was breaking into the swell bunch myself when she told my fortune for a dollar. If I had had the nerve and the money I guess she would be telling it yet! And she smiled so sweet when she took it, like I was as good as anybody. God forgive me if I seem to talk disrespectful of her, for she's a lady through and through, and I knew it even if I was only a bar-keeper."

"Toss you for the drinks," said Adair, draining his glass. "Hand over the box, Larry."

"Sure Mike," said the bar-keeper rattling the dice.

Adair encountered an acquaintance, a commercial traveler named Hellman, on the sidewalk outside.

"Just the fellow I wanted to see," he cried. "Hellman, there is such a word as temerity, isn't there?"

"Bet your life," said Hellman. "The temerity of my playing Hamlet, you know--the temerity of you thinking yourself a better-looking man than I am--the temerity of--"

"And you spell it t-e-m-e-r-i-t-y?" interrupted Adair.

"Yes, why?"

"Oh, I used it in a letter I was writing to a girl, and I didn't want to mail it till I was sure." He showed the envelope in his hand, with his thumb hiding the name.

"Always at it," said Hellman, with an unpleasant laugh. "Who are you throwing the handkerchief at now?"

"The prettiest girl in Carthage," returned Adair genially. "There's a box over there--let's drop it in."

And together they crossed the street, and sent the letter on its way.

It was to Phyllis, begging in warm but respectful language for the privilege of calling on her.

CHAPTER X

"Dear Mr. Adair: I hardly expected you to reply to my note, nor could I have thought it would please you so much as you say. Indeed, I hope you will not misjudge it--or me--for it was written on the same impulse that makes one applaud in the theater itself, and with no ulterior idea. Frankly, I do not think I ought to ask you to call--the circumstances are so peculiar--and it is all so against the conventionalities. In Washington or New York it would be different, but this little place--like all little places--is strait-laced beyond belief. It will be my loss more than yours, which perhaps will be some consolation to you. Yet it seems too stupid to say no--that is, if you really do want to come--and I am going to ask you after all. Surely a little talk over a cup of tea to-morrow at five ought not to arrest the stars in their courses, or bring down the pillars of the universe on our unfortunate heads? And if any one should come in, we might say that we had met before in Washington? That would place our acquaintance on a more correct footing, and save me, at least, the possibility of embarrassment. Is this asking too much of you? Sincerely yours, Phyllis Ladd."

CHAPTER XI

There are men who pursue women with a skill, zest and pertinacity that others do bears or tigers, and with very much the same hardihood and delight. In the rich preserves of the world, so well stocked with youth and beauty, they find an unending enjoyment, and an unending occupation. No sooner have they brought down one, and beheld her bleeding and stricken at their feet, than they are up and off, with another notch on their gun, and fresh ardor in their hearts. They are debarred from taking the tangible trophies of skin and head; a slipper, a glove, a bundle of letters are often all they have to show; but within them wells the satisfaction of the hunter who has made a "kill."

Amongst this race of sportsmen there were few hardier or more daring than Cyril Adair. That the game was cruel or cowardly had never occurred to him. The women he knew--all of the lower class--frequently played their side of it with eyes wide open, and ran--not to escape--but with the full intention of being caught. This is not urged in his extenuation. Often he was not aware of the subterfuge. Women to him were but prey, and in more venerable times he would have waylaid any lady he favored, with a club.

Behold him in immaculate afternoon costume, striding along Chestnut Avenue--boutonniere, silk-hat, cane, new suede gloves, etc.--a devil of a fellow in his own estimation, with an air and a swagger that reflected his profound contentment with himself. He had never gone a-hunting before in such a splendid wood. The thought that he was actually going to invade one of those imposing mansions made his pulses leap. How big they were, how aristocratic! What incomes they represented! What mysteries of ease and luxury lay hidden behind those stately windows! He was tremendously stirred; tremendously excited. He swelled with self-complacency. He was hardly over thirty, he was handsome, he was a genius--and the women loved him!

A man-servant admitted him. Yes, Miss Ladd was expecting him. His hat and cane were taken, while he gazed, somewhat daunted, at the immense hall in which he found himself. He had a confused sense of tapestries; of stone bas-reliefs very worn and old; of oriental rugs; of strange-looking, moldy chairs, straight-backed and carved, with massive arms, on which there was still the fading gilt of the fifteenth century.--He was led through another room of a similar cold and spacious magnificence, and then up-stairs to the drawing-room. Here he was left, while the man departed to inform his mistress of the visitor's arrival.

The elegance and beauty with which Adair found himself surrounded fairly took his breath away. His only standard was that of fashionable hotels, yet here was something that made the splendors of the Waldorf or the Auditorium seem suddenly tawdry in comparison. His instinctive good taste was ravished by the old Venetian brocades, the rich dark pictures, the Sheriton furniture, the harmonious blending of all these, and so many other half-seen and half-comprehended things into a gracious and exquisite whole. Near him was the table set out for tea, with silver that it was a joy to look at; and about the little island it made in the vastness of the room was a wealth of red roses, marking as it were the boundaries of coziness and intimacy.

Adair's complacency was not proof against such aristocratic and undreamed of surroundings. His exultation fell, and pangs of self-pity assailed him. What was he but a child of the gutter, an outcast--a man full of yearning for the unattainable, who had been starved and kept down by merciless circumstances? Such swift transitions were not unusual in his peculiar and contradictory nature. After all, he was an artist, even if often a brute and a fool, and somewhere within him, very much overlaid and shrouded, there was a spark of the divine fire. Yes, he said to himself, he was coarse and common, and ignorant and unrefined. He had done much with himself; he had achieved wonders, considering the handicap he had always been under--but admitting all that, what enormous deficiencies still remained! How ill at ease he was in such a room as this! How hard he would have to strive to hide his lack of knowledge and breeding! He had almost wished he had never come. In such a place he was an intruder--a boor--condemned to blunder through a part with no author's lines to help him.

As it turned out, nothing could have been more fortunate for him than this dejected mood. First appearances are everything, and he might easily--so easily--have made an intolerable impression. Indeed, in the cold fit, almost the terror, succeeding the impulse that had caused Phyllis to invite him, she was prepared to find him forward, and perhaps eager to take advantage of her recklessness, and misconstrue it. At the hint of such a thing she would have frozen; and the fact that she would only have had herself to blame would have doubled her humiliation. A woman who makes the first advances to a man is more capable than any of sudden revulsions. Her pride is on edge, and morbidly apprehensive.

But the grave, quiet, handsome man awaiting her dispelled these fancies as soon as their eyes had met. He thanked her with an embarrassment not unbecoming under the circumstances, for the unconventionality that had given him the privilege of meeting her. His smile as he said this was charming; his respect and courtesy beyond reproach; that other nature of his, the artist-nature, so quick and responsive in its intuitions warned him to put a guard on himself. Besides, if the room had over-awed him, how much more overpowering was the apparition of this slim and radiant woman, the mistress of all this splendor, whose pure dark face filled him with an indefinable sense of another world in which he was but a clod. Though he was a connoisseur of pretty women, and had possessed in his disreputable past many of greater physical beauty than Phyllis, not one of them had had the least pretensions to what in her appealed to him so strongly--distinction. From her glossy hair to the tips of her little feet, she was the embodiment of race, of high-breeding and high spirit; it was as marked in her girlish beauty as in any thoroughbred. She was the child of those who had admitted no superior save their God and their King.

Adair found himself bereft of all his assurance. The professional besieger, accustomed to advance with sureness and precision, unaccountably held back, hardly knowing why his heart had turned to water. It seemed presumptuous enough that he should even talk on terms of equality with one so immeasurably above him. His humility was painful. He stammered. He colored. His hand trembled on his tea-cup as he strove to keep alive a conversation of the usual commonplaces.

"Miss Ladd," he said suddenly, "you mustn't think I am a gentleman--because I am not. I am not accustomed to this kind of thing; you are the first lady I--I've ever met." He arrested the expostulation on her lips and went on hurriedly. "It's much better to tell you that right off. I don't know those books you speak of; I don't know anything very much; I am awfully uncultivated and ignorant. There, I have said it! It will make me feel more comfortable, and it will be lots better than pretending I am something I'm not."

"You are a great actor, Mr. Adair."

"My God," he returned with simplicity, "sometimes I'm not so sure that I am." Then he burst into laughter at his own artlessness--a delightful laugh, contagious and musical, that no one could hear without liking him the better. Phyllis laughed, too, and somehow with it the ice seemed broken, and constraint disappeared. "Miss Ladd," he went on, "people like you, and places like this, are the realities which we try so hard to copy with our poor theatrical pasteboard and calico. I used to hate Mansfield for saying we ought to work as servants amongst--well, people we couldn't meet in any other way, and yet the ones we are audacious enough to represent on the stage. He meant it as an insult, of course--but he was right in some ways. Just seeing you pour tea makes me feel how badly we do even that!"

Phyllis, naturally, was touched and flattered.

"Why, we just pour it anyhow," she said, smiling.

"Precisely," exclaimed Adair, "and now let me do it our way!" He drew nearer the table, put his hand to the tea-pot, and grimacing at an imaginary company, proceeded to pour and pass several imaginary cups with a grotesque affectation of grace and elegance. "Two lumps, dear Sir James?--Patricia, the Bishop is famishing for some almond cake.--Oh, mercy me, and what's become of the Dook?" It was an admirable bit of mimicry, and so gay and captivating in its satire that Phyllis thought she had never seen anything so clever. She laughed with delight and clapped her hands.

"Though you shock me, too," she protested. "Corrèze mustn't do things like that--it isn't in keeping."

"Corrèze?"

"Yes, you are not Mr. Adair to me, though I know that's your name, and I have invited you. I can only think of you as Corrèze."

"Was I as good as that in the part?"

"I told you what I thought of it in my note."

"And you really meant it?"

"Would I have written if I hadn't? It was an awful thing to do. I can't think of it without burning with shame.--How can you say you are not a gentleman, Mr. Adair? Only a gentleman would have put the right construction on it."

He was questioning her face with his fine eyes. His intuition again stood him in good stead. This was not provocation, it was innocence. To himself he said: "No, it is impossible."

Then aloud: "It was the only construction--and I felt childishly pleased. We're great children, you know, we actors; and after all, are we to blame for liking approbation? Just think a moment. How close it all is to the ridiculous, our standing up there and declaiming all sorts of red-hot emotions, with painted paper on one side, and bald-headed fiddlers on the other! Doesn't it sometimes come over a man--sort of shoot through him--the feeling of what a monkey-spectacle he is making of himself? You go ahead and play Lady Macbeth in a nightgown; rage and strut before those cold, scornful faces. Then let one amongst them cry: 'Bravo, bravo,' and give you a hand!--My Lord, you'd give him your watch and chain, your diamond pin--don't you see, he returns you your self-respect, makes your work worth the doing?--and that's what your note did for me, Miss Ladd."

"Oh, Mr. Adair, don't talk to me about the cold, scornful faces at your performance. I was there twice, and saw how they called you out!"

"Miss Ladd," he said, his strong, handsome, eager face whimsically alight, "let me confess the honest truth--an actor simply can't have enough admiration!"

"You worry me for fear I didn't make mine warm enough! For really, Mr. Adair, in all sincerity, I--"

"Well, go on."

"Bravo, bravo!" Her lips parted mockingly over her white teeth as she pretended to applaud madly. It was the daintiest teasing, and more charming in the intimacy it implied than any downright praise. Adair glowed with a pleasure so honest and boyish that Phyllis might be forgiven for not suspecting the baser depths he hid so well.

"I'm a conceited ass," he admitted, "and after all, isn't it enough to turn a man's head to be here with you, and feel I owe it to the ginger I put into Corrèze? Most people get their friends by introductions and all that, but I just snatched you out of a whole theater full of strangers. For you are my friend, aren't you, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, Corrèze."

"You'll be making me jealous of the chap," he cried running his hands through his hair with make-believe exasperation. "I think he is a good deal of a whining humbug myself, and the sly way he throws bouquets at himself is disgusting. Miss Ladd, I am ever so much nicer than he is--really I am--though I see I shall never be able to convince you."

"No reason why you shouldn't try."

"Perhaps I am ashamed to," he returned, with an intensity of expression that became him well. "You find me in a wretched little theater, the cheapest of cheap stars--the hoodlum's pet, the shop-girl's dream--and how can it help coloring your whole idea of me? You admire my Corrèze, but for me myself how can you have anything but contempt? No, no--listen--it's true--and the more you knew of my history the more contemptuous you'd be. I've been rated very high; I've had every chance in the world; I've played with the biggest kind of people, and--succeeded. Yet I have always been the dog who hanged himself. No, there is no mystery about it--there never is with a man who is sinking--a man of ability. It's his own fault every time--every, every time."

His earnestness made Phyllis thrill. Adair was playing his best rôle--himself, and playing it with the fire and eloquence he could always bring to it. His voice, incomparable in the beauty and range of its tones, was never so effective as when tinged with emotion. Nothing was more manly, more sincere, more moving. It rose and fell in cadences that lingered in the ear after the words themselves were spoken--veritable music, affecting not only the listener, but the musician as well. Under the spell of it he now found himself tempted into strange confidences. Never before had he spoken of his childhood and early life except to lie, to brag, to romance. Yet here, to his own wonder, and impelled by he hardly knew what, he was unbosoming himself of the whole ignoble truth. That instinct of his, so often wiser than himself, so diabolically helpful, was showing him the right road. Had Phyllis been some little milliner this would have been no road at all; such a one would have been too familiar with the seamy side of life to find any glamour in the tale; such a one would have preferred the bogus palaces and bogus splendors his instinct would then have indicated. Phyllis' intelligence was too keen thus to be deceived; even genuine splendors would have interested her less than this pitiful story of the slums; it not only touched her sensibility to the quick, but enhanced Adair in her tender and sympathetic eyes.

His father had been an Englishman--a remittance man named Mayne--George Cyril Augustus Fitzroy Mayne. Whether his pretensions were justified or not, and they were inordinate, including "Wales" and "Cambridge," he was beyond all doubt a gentleman, with grand manners, a back like a ramrod, and a curt, military directness in speaking. He used to say "dammy"; was fond of alluding to himself as "an old Hussar"; was wont to remark that a gentleman could always be told by his hat and his boots; and once, when attacked on the street, had shown extraordinary courage and adroitness in defending himself with a light cane. This was about all Adair remembered of him, except that he drank hard; had recurring fits of delirium tremens in which he raged and fought like a wild beast; and finally, dying in a hospital ward, was buried like a dog in the Potter's Field.

Adair's mother had been an Irish peasant girl. She was kind and warm-hearted, and spoke with a brogue; she was always laughing and singing, even under circumstances when a right-minded person would have thrown himself into the East River. She drank, too. Everybody drank. He used to be given sips from her glass, and knew what it was to be tipsy before he was eight. It was about that time he began to sell papers on the streets, for his father was dead, and his mother-- Well, he wouldn't go into that. But in her way she had always been good to him. She wouldn't let the men beat him. When she was sent to the Island for the second time he thought his little heart would break. She didn't last long after that. How could she, gone as she was in consumption, and drinking like a fish? Oh, what a hell it was--what a hell! His pennies were all his own now, though he often had to fight to keep them. He was always fighting to keep them--first in desperation, then by degrees with some coolness and science. The bigger boys coached him; egged him on; he became a regular little bantam. They'd make up a purse--a quarter or something--and set two little wretches to pounding each other. Anything was allowed, you know--biting, kicking, scrooging, hair pulling! There was only one rule, and that was to win.

Well, so it went on, till he was sixteen or thereabouts, the toughest young tough you could see on Avenue A. He was nicknamed Fighting Joe, and they used to get up cheap little matches for him in the back rooms of saloons--real fighting, stripped to the waist, and four ounce gloves. His only ambition was to get into the prize ring, and in his dreams at night he would see his picture in the Police Gazette. Then the Settlement workers came--a pale-looking outfit, with Mission furniture and leaflets. They were regarded as a great infliction--as an insult to an honest tough neighborhood. It was the correct thing to break their windows, and lambast their followers. Fighting Joe took a prominent part in this righteous task. What did it matter that several of them were women? What did such brutes care for that? If ever there was a young savage on earth it was he.

One of the women was tall and pretty--not very young--twenty-eight or twenty-nine perhaps. Miss Cooke, she was--Miss Grace Cooke. She would never see him but what she would turn white with anger and fear. You see, everything was put down to him, all that he did do, and all that he didn't--and totaling up both sides of it, it ran to a lot. He couldn't begin to remember the caddish things he was answerable for; he didn't care to try; my God, what a brute he was, what a brute! And yet he admired this woman; guessed he was in love with her in a calfy way; took every chance to see her--and insult her! Of course, there wasn't the faintest reason why he shouldn't have walked into the Settlement, said he was sorry, and have been received with open arms. But people like that can't say they are sorry--they don't know how. Besides, the social disgrace of it would have been awful! Joe Mayne running with that gospel gang! The thing was incredible.

Late one winter afternoon he saw her in the midst of a crowd of hobbledehoys, hooting and jeering at her. She was walking as fast as she dared, looking straight ahead of her, and pretending not to notice. It was dark; the street was empty; and if she was scared she had mighty good reason for it. One of the fellows lurched against her, and down she went on the sidewalk; as she tried to rise another rolled her over, and tore her hat off. Of course, it was a great joke, and they were all roaring with laughter. Then it was he came running up--Joe--and when she saw him she gave him a look he would remember to the day he died. Oh, the terror of it--the shrinking! But he smashed one on the jaw, caught another between the eyes, and lifted her up, half fainting as she was, and tried with his dirty hands to smooth her hair, and put on her hat again.--That's how they came to be friends; that's how he came to be landed in the Settlement; everything real in his life dated from that moment.

He was with them two years; with them as long as she lived. There wasn't a good quality in him that she didn't put there. On census forms, and such things, when asked his religion, he always felt inclined to write: "Grace Cooke." By God, it would have been the truth. She was his religion yet, far though he had fallen away from it--oh, so far--! She stood for everything that was good and beautiful and noble. It wasn't love. It was beyond all love. She was a Madonna, a saint, and he had had the privilege to kneel at her feet--a Caliban of the slums, a tough, a hoodlum, unworthy to touch the hem of her garment. Then she died, and that was the end of it. He didn't care for the Settlement after she died. He got a job as chucker-out in a low place called the Crystal Palace. There was a dais, and performers used to sing. He thought he would try it himself, and made quite a hit. Then he began giving recitations--The Fi-erman's Dream, and that kind of thing, and they caught on. He owed it all to Grace Cooke, who had taught him to read--(not ordinary reading, he had picked that up somehow for himself)--but real reading, dramatic reading. From this it was a step to monologues in costume, and from that to the vaudeville stage.

Sitting there in the growing dusk, and in an atmosphere so conducive to confidence, Adair unfolded his early life with a tender, persuasive and charming humor. He often laughed; often he was silent; again and again he would look up, and seek Phyllis' eyes in a lingering glance as though to assure himself of her interest. For once in his life he was shy; the slim, pretty hand he gazed at so covetously was safe from any touch of his; something told him that the least familiarity would cost him all he had gained.--It was not policy on his part. He was too humble to think of policy. To be with her alone seemed presumption enough--to feel her sympathy, her friendship. Not a word or act of his should mar that wonderful day.

He rose, apologizing for having stayed so long.

"It is your own fault," he said, holding out his hand, "you've made me forget everything."

"I'm afraid it was the other way round, Mr. Adair," she returned, trying to smile, and thankful for the darkness that veiled her face.

"Am I ever to see you again?"

She shook her head.

"You mean it is good-by, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, it's good-by."

Her hand was in his, so soft, so motionless, yet somehow so reluctant to leave his grasp. His head was turning; he could not go like that. No, no, he could not. He suddenly pulled her towards him, and caught her in his arms, kissing her hair, her cheek, her mouth, with a passion that cared little whether she was crushed or smothered in his embrace. Good God, what was he doing? After holding back so long, what diabolical folly had tempted him to this? Yet she had said it was good-by. He had nothing to lose. Let her pant and struggle and tremble, he would take tribute of her beauty nevertheless, however much she was insulted or outraged. His lips were wet with her tears. He forced her to receive his kisses on her mouth, exulting in the strength that allowed her no escape. But was she resisting him? A tremor of maddening delight shot through his frame. Her mouth was seeking his, and he heard her whispering breathlessly: "I love you, I love you, I love you!"

It was so unexpected, so surprising, that he let her free. She sank into a chair and covered her burning face, repelling him as he threw himself on his knees beside her.

"If you don't go, I shall never forgive you!" she exclaimed. "Haven't you shamed me enough? Do you want me to die of humiliation?" Then, from the heart, came the woman's cry: "What will you think of me?"

That instinct, which in Adair took the place of conscience, honor, all the conventional virtues and restraints, again came steadfastly to his help. He bent down; kissed her on the brow; and getting his hat and cane abruptly took his departure.

CHAPTER XII

The dictionary with unhesitating positiveness informs us that infatuation is "unreasonable or extravagant passion." But are there not those who have stayed unreasonably impassioned to the end, those whose earthly parting has been but at the grave? And does not love of the admitted, recognized, unextravagant, very much approved, bless-you-my-children kind only too often ring out its knell in the divorce court? That Phyllis was infatuated with this good-looking scamp was beyond question, if by that one meant his physical attraction held her as much a slave as any of our ravished ancestors in the Vikings' boats. Her will was gone; her judgment; all her nicely-balanced highly-critical young-ladyism. It was horrifying to her to realize it; her powerlessness was at once an agony and a delight; it came over her, with a frightening sense of injustice, that a woman's happiness lies beyond herself, and is for ever dependent on some man.

Naturally she sat down, and wrote him a sad little letter. He was to forget everything that had passed, and not misjudge her for an uncontrollable impulse. Were he to presume upon it, she would not only die of shame, but would be forced to perceive that her trust had been misplaced. As a gentleman and a man of honor--and she knew him to be both--he would understand that it was impossible for them ever to meet again, and that her good-by was indeed irrevocable. But her good wishes would always attend him, and she would sign herself, in all sincerity, his friend, Phyllis Ladd. This done, she waited in a fever of impatience for his answer, hoping, dreading, tumultuously inconsistent, hot fits and cold succeeding each other in her troubled and anxious heart.

It may be imagined how unkindly Adair took her commands. In his large, straggling hand, and over six sheets of hotel paper he expressed his energetic dissent. It was a trite letter--flowery and theatrical--her haunting eyes, the memory of her adorable beauty, the despair of a man who had found love only to lose it, etc. Had Phyllis been herself it would have made her smile. Nothing, indeed, could have shown how far she had traveled on the road of illusion than her acceptance of these well-worn phrases. The tears sprang to her eyes at the smooth and nicely-rounded description of his wretchedness; she glowed and thrilled at the praise of herself, its boldness redeemed by what she ascribed to a lover's ardor; the pathetic plea for another meeting was irresistible. It might be unwise; it was sure to be painful; but, after all, it was his right. He loved her; he bowed to her decision; his life was hard at best, and now doubly so; what he asked was so little for her to give, yet to him it was everything--to see her once more before they parted for ever.

They met this time at the corner of a remote street. He was very pale, very quiet, and it was not a lie he told her that he had been unable to sleep for thinking of her. Had she known better what those thoughts were she would have shrunk from him. But, fortunately or not, she did not know. She, too, was quiet and pale, and it was with the sense of an impending fate that she took his arm, and slowly walked with him along the foot-path. Unconsciously he was more masterful with her, now that she was away from that daunting house, and that awe-inspiring drawing-room. The sanctity that had enveloped her there had largely disappeared. Here was a situation he was used to--a distractingly pretty girl, a sidewalk rendezvous, and an infatuation that needed but the right handling to bring it to the proper conclusion.

Yet with everything so plain--and apparently so easy, Adair himself was in a whirl of strange and new emotions. Something had pierced his colossal selfishness, and was disturbing him. It was annoying at a time when he needed all his wits about him, and he resented it as a symptom of unmanly weakness. One drop of real love in that ocean of sham was threatening to poison the whole. He did not put it thus concretely. He only knew that he was uncomfortable, and not rising as he should to the occasion. Except for that far-away Grace Cooke he had never known a decent woman. His counterfeit love had been lavished on counterfeit innocence: and counterfeit purity. Fooling, he had always been fooled.

But this proud and melting young beauty lay outside of all his experience. Had she defended herself he would have known better how to attack. But she made no demur when he took her hand and kissed it; she did not resist, when, after looking up and down the street to see if they had it to themselves, he caught her boldly in his arms, and crushed her against himself, murmuring a torrent of words that came so readily to his practised lips. How radiantly she smiled when he tore off a tiny corner of her letter, and told her she had to eat it as a punishment. Her saucy obedience put him in a seventh heaven, and it was with a sort of ecstasy that he snatched it from her, fearful lest it might do her harm. That letter, in one sense, had been disposed of almost as soon as they had met. She had tried, for a moment or two, to adhere to it, and to make him see the necessity of that good-by. But under the glamour of his presence she faltered and broke down, and all that was left of the matter was her incoherent plea for forgiveness. What tenderness she put into this request! There never could be a good-by between them--never, never--and her eyes swam with tears at her disloyalty to him.

Both felt an uplifting gaiety and light-heartedness, as she said, in extenuation of her happy laughter, that they were like people who had grown rich overnight, for had they not discovered an enormous nugget--a nugget of love? It had been lying there for any to find, but they had been the lucky ones! They had a right to be excited, hadn't they? The only really serious thing was the fact that they might have missed it. They might have stubbed against it, and passed on--like idiots. She developed this fantasy with captivating grace and archness, Adair meanwhile lost in admiration, not only of the delicate fancy that kept him smiling, but of her varying expressions so revealing of unexpected charm. She grew prettier and prettier to him--more kissable, more adorable. He kept forgetting his ulterior purpose in the rapture of being with her; he forgot his conceit, forgot his role; he was perilously near being in love. Perhaps he was in love. At any rate, when he recollected to take advantage of this unconcealed regard for him--of all this young ardor and innocent passion--the words somehow would not leave his tongue.

Her sensitive mouth, so responsive to every look of his, the sweet candor of her eyes, her transparent belief in him--all forbade. There would be time enough for that; and having made this concession to his manhood, he straightway put the idea by, dimly realizing to himself that it was unpleasant to him. It takes a bad man to appreciate and exalt the best of women; he sees her in such a contrasting light; her baser sisters give her by relief an angelic brightness. It is not for nothing that they say the reformed rake makes the best husband. Not that Adair had gone so far as this, however. He was not reformed, and cold chills would have run down his back at the horrid prospect; while his own brief career as a husband had left him with a hatred for the word and the institution. It was merely a fleeting impulse, stronger for the moment than he was, and induced by his artist love of beauty, which included this time in its comprehension, a rare, gracious and exquisite nature.

They were together for nearly two hours, and when they were forced at last to part it seemed as though only the half had been said. Yet not for an instant had they ever got near the realities. With Adair these were consciously avoided. It was one thing to say: "I love you," with mellow vibrations, and impassioned eyes; quite another to descend to the practical considerations that might reasonably be expected to follow. He felt neither in the humor to lie, nor to palter with the ugly truth, and in a sort of anger dismissed both alternatives. He was intoxicated with her; she mounted to his brain like wine; he only knew one thing, that come what might, she should never get away from him. This was all his dizzy head could hold. The future could take care of itself.

As for Phyllis she was in that rapt state of happiness when a woman can do nothing but glow and worship. Had not the king descended from his throne for her? At last was not her long heart-hunger gloriously appeased? Was she not so possessed with this demigod that all other sublunary concerns seemed to vanish into insignificance? She walked on air; she exulted in the memory of his caresses; she was the more precious to herself now that she was his, now that she belonged to him so utterly. She hoarded every compliment he had paid her; and wondered, in delicious doubt, though not altogether unconvinced, whether she could be, indeed, all that she had seemed to him. As for the deeper questions, she had the woman's faculty of answering them in formless dreams.

They were settled in a vague, tender and altogether perfect manner. He--and she--and a billowing bliss on which they floated evermore, hand pressed in hand, mouth against mouth, in an ineffable and transcendant content.

Adair, once beyond her influence, was aware of a certain sagging of that higher nature she had conjured into being. Not that he loved her any less; he was on fire for her, and his coarse passion was inflamed a thousandfold by their second meeting. But, as he said to himself, he had muffed it. He was not the first man to feel a twinge of guilt at having been good. He was a child of his world, of his conditions, upbringing and environment, and ought not to be blamed over-much--rather commended for the first faint stirrings of an embryo conscience, which, if it had died all too soon, was still a spark of grace.

The performance tired him more than usual. He was slack, and could not get into his part. As a consequence, to offset his disinclination, he overplayed, and left the theater thoroughly exasperated, and out of heart. He took supper moodily by himself, and though ordinarily abstemious--for no one with his complexion could be accused of habitual excess--he drank high-ball after high-ball with a brutal satisfaction in fuddling himself. He grew wickeder with every gulp, more cold-blooded and determined. He would see this thing through, by God. He would take her with him on the road. She was ripe for it; she was crazy about him--lady and all, there was the devil in her all right. The nicest women were the worst when they let themselves go. What a fool he had been ever to bother with the other kind. He had always been a cheap fellow, pleased with cheap things--with raddled actresses, and silly tiresome shop-girls. Here was a little piece that put them all in the shade; prettier than the prettiest, dewy fresh, with a twist to everything she said so that it was an endless pleasure to be with her. She was so quick, so daintily impudent, so finely bred and educated. God, what an armful! God, what a little mistress for a tired and lonely man, sick to death of common women!

He reeled up-stairs, half drunk, and sought his room, to sleep the sleep of perfect health and perfect digestion. Whatever else Adair was, he was a sound and vigorous human animal, with a constitution of iron. No dreams disturbed his repose--no spectral finger of remorse pointed at him. A child could not have lain more peacefully on its cot than he.

It will be asked why he could not Have married Phyllis properly and honestly? Apart from other considerations was she not the only daughter of a millionaire father? How did Adair come to overlook this very obvious advantage, and embark instead on all the troubles and vexations attending an illicit connection? To answer this question it is necessary to go back four or five years, and rake up his marriage with Ruby Raeburn, the dancer. She, too, had been the daughter of a rich man--Laidlaw Wright, the Michigan lumber king. Adair had thought he was doing a very good thing for himself. To have a father-in-law who is a "lumber king" has a pleasant sound. Without knowing exactly how it was to happen, he looked forward confidently to a flow of dollars in his direction, either in cash, or vicariously in royal "tips." Surely a lumber king would take care of his own--and of his own's husband. Ruby herself had not been above reproach in holding out the bait, and everybody had congratulated him, or sneered at him for "marrying money." Alas, for the disillusion that followed. Laidlaw Wright was the hardest-fisted man on the Lakes, and no bulldog, guarding a lunch basket, could have shown more formidable fangs than he at any hand slipping towards his money-bags. Adair learned the sad truth that when you possess the millionaire's daughter, it does not necessarily follow that you possess the millionaire. His dead body must too often be crossed first--and this event, however desirable, can not be unduly hurried.

And meanness was not the only drawback to Laidlaw Wright's character. He could spend money as viciously as he withheld it, and make of it a whip of scorpions for the scourging of sons-in-law. When Adair's domestic unhappiness reached the acute stage, the cantankerous old fellow jumped into the ring, snorting battle and destruction. Money was poured out like water; giants of the bar were retained at enormous fees; detective bureaus' worked night and day. Adair was shadowed; his door was burst open at a time of all others when he would have much preferred to have it stay shut; statutes of which he had never dreamed, lying hidden and unrepealed in the dark recesses of the law, were evoked against him with startling effect. He was sent to prison in default of the bail he could not give. Then after eighteen weary days, which the giants of the bar would willingly have made eighteen months, he was tried, and his case dismissed. But as he left the court room he was again arrested. That implacable old man, with his cohorts of lawyers and detectives, had furbished up fresh charges. The indictment was a mile long. Again there was bail, default, and gnashing of teeth in a stinking cell. Of course, he had legal remedies, but these involved legal tender. He had spent his last dollar; legal remedies had to be paid for, and he had nothing to pay with. A wealthy and vindictive man, if he choose to do so, and does not grudge the outlay, can make our judicial machinery into a most serviceable steam-roller.

After the divorce, when all seemed settled and done with, there were alimony bomb-shells to be contended with. This tribute on his son-in-law's freedom became the obsessing prepossession of Laidlaw Wright's life. He subordinated the lumber business to collecting this forty-five dollars a week, until it became Adair's fixed and unalterable purpose to escape payment by every means in his power. North or South, East or West, the battle went on. Injunctions, contempt proceedings, printed forms in immense envelopes, beginning with the familiar phrase: "You are cited to appear before Judge So-and-So to show cause why that you, etc., etc."--rained on Adair's head wherever Saturday night might find it. Incidentally eyes were blackened; blood streamed on box-office floors; bandaged functionaries and limping attorneys cried for vengeance in shabby court rooms--and not only cried, but often got it, in a heaping measure. And afar, the lumber king, like a horrible spider whose net covered the country from sea to sea, kept the wires busy and hot with hate.

When Ruby was killed in what was called "the hansom cab mystery"--an ugly affair that was never really cleared up--the old man probably mourned less for her than for the loss of his cheerless hobby--the persecution of Cyril Adair. However wealthy you are, you can not move the legal steam-roller without at least a pretense of justification; and now the justification lay with Ruby Raeburn in the grave, as stilled as her dancing feet, as finished and done with as the life that had gone out so tragically.

It had all left Adair with a profound hatred of marriage, and a still profounder hatred of rich fathers-in-law. The one suggested jail, mortification, alimony, raided box-offices, large and determined individuals bursting in your doors; the other an unrelenting monster, pitiless and crafty, trailing after you night and day, like a bloodhound. There was no glamour to Adair in Robert Ladd's millions, but rather a sinister and awful significance; and as for marrying Phyllis, and putting his head again in that noose--who that had been in hell ever willingly went back to it? The very thought made him shudder. He might be weak and impulsive, and easily swept off his feet by her damned beauty--but he wasn't as weak and impulsive as that!

CHAPTER XIII

As had been previously arranged he met her the next day at the same place. He had come in a closed cab, which he had left a couple of blocks away, and he insisted on their returning to it, and having out their talk in its shelter. Phyllis demurred at first; it wore an unpleasant look to her; it was not fear exactly--she trusted Adair too absolutely for that--but rather a disinclination in which good taste played the bigger part. It seemed to her low, and discreditable, and unworthy. Her love was too fine a thing, and too dear to her, to have it associated with dingy cushions, a dirty floor carpet, and the vulgarizing secrecy of that shabby interior. It took some persuasion to get her to consent; and though she did so at last under the spell of that irresistible voice, it was with a sudden quenching of the brightness that had illumined her heart.

But it never occurred to her to think the worse of Adair. A man could not be expected to have the sensitiveness of a woman. His love was like himself, robust and masterful; he fastened a string to your little collar, and dragged you after him with a splendid insouciance. Every one of your four little paws might be holding back; you might be whimpering most pitifully, but if he wanted a closed cab, in you had to go, whether you liked it or not. Not that you would have had him different; it was sweet to submit; and if he were big, and direct, and unshakable--so, too, was his love.

They drove slowly through the suburban streets, locked in each other's arms. He kissed her back to happiness, to rapture, the discreet twilight screening them in its shadow. Her qualms disappeared, her reluctance, her shrinkings from the ugliness and commonness of that horrid old box. Nothing mattered so long as they could be together, and in her exaltation she even suffered some pangs of remorse for having resisted his pleadings at all.--She had never cared for children, but as her arms were clasped about his neck, she felt a welling tenderness for him that opened her understanding to the love of a mother for her babe--the divine compassion, the exquisite desire to protect and shield, the willingness, if need be, to die herself rather than to have it suffer the least of harm. She whispered this to him in words so sincere and moving, with eyes so moist, and lips so quivering, and her whole young face so glorified by the shining soul within, that Adair would have been less than human had he not succumbed.

He was abashed; his carefully rehearsed plans were glad to creep out of sight and hide; it would have needed very little for him to fall on his knees, penitent and ashamed, and blurt out--not the truth; the truth wasn't tellable--but enough to make him seem less of a beast to himself, less of a hypocrite and villain. But he paused midway; and the impulse, which, if he had allowed it to control him might have carried him into unsuspected regions of honor and manliness, died still-born; and left him--if not exactly what he had been--at least not so very much the better.

With everything so favorable to his purpose, it continued to be a mystery to him that he still held back. This backwardness, this fear, was a new sensation. He had won prettier women in his day, and had won them briskly and straightforwardly, move by move, with cool premeditation.

Why should he falter at this one, like a ninny? What was it about her that checked and daunted him? She had flung herself at him; she had neither the will nor the knowledge to protect herself; she was as innocent as a child, and had delivered herself over to him as guilelessly. But it was not her innocence that stood in his way; he had no such scruples about innocence; innocence, if anything, ought to have whetted the pursuit. It was something subtler than that--this withholding force. It was more as though she were some proud young queen who had been craftily made drunk with drugs, and then had been abandoned in her helplessness to become the sport of a passing soldier.... How surprised Adair would have been had he been told that the love always on his lips, profaned with every breath he drew, a lie in every sense save the very lowest, was, in all good earnest, stealthily making entry in his heart!

Making? Why, it had been there from the first, all unknown to him. But like many a man the devious road seemed to him the straighter; it was the one he meant to follow, anyhow, lead where it might; he would overcome this strange squeamishness that annoyed and bewildered him. What an ass he was! He remembered his first deer, and how the rifle had shaken in his hands--how his teeth had chattered--how it had calmly walked past him, not twelve yards away, and disappeared unscathed. The boys had called it "buck fever," and had guyed him. Hell, this was a kind of buck fever, too, though without the excuse of inexperience ... but still there was no sense in hurrying matters. There was plenty of time, old fellow, plenty of time.

Thus the day lingered out in talk and vows and kisses, with nothing achieved in any direction, and the situation apparently unchanged. Love has a wonderful power of floating on without ever touching the banks of reality! And when one of the lovers keeps the bark deliberately in mid-stream, and the other poor lunatic is so lost in ecstasy that her understanding is in the skies--hours can pass like minutes, and darkness descend all unawares.

Again they kissed and parted, and Phyllis returned home in the sweet weariness of one who has drunk deep of the cup of love. No unanswered questions fretted her, no disturbing thoughts of why he had been silent on the most important thing of all. She was young, fresh, pretty, well-born and rich--why then should she doubt? What, to a little milliner, would have been the inevitable and all-engrossing conjecture, troubled her not a bit. Men had been proposing to her for two years; love out of wedlock, while it might be familiar in books, was inconceivably remote to her; marriage was like breathing; it was one of the great unconsidered facts of life; one loved--one married.

Her preoccupation was rather with closer and dearer things--the varying expressions of that fine and intensely alive face; the mouth with its ever changing charm; that, smiling, could lift one to paradise, that, laughing, seemed to gladden the whole world; the eyes so lustrous, so melting, and yet that at a word could turn so fierce; the wavy hair that was such a joy to her to caress; the broad shoulders that had pillowed her girlish head, and had given her such a comforting sense of vigor and strength--all her own by the divinest of divine rights. Womanlike, she was trying to merge herself in the man she loved; to subordinate her own individuality in his; to become, if she could, a slim, small, dainty counterpart of this God-given creature who had stooped to her from high Heaven itself.

She ate a good dinner and enjoyed it; drank a glass of claret with a connoisseur-like satisfaction in its fine bouquet; for she came of a stock with a royal taste for pleasure, in little things as well as big. If her father appeared somewhat constrained, and more grave and silent than was his wont, she ascribed it to nothing more than a hard day at the office; and exerted herself with all her superabundant good humor to amuse and distract him. But for once she was unsuccessful, and as the meal proceeded his brown study increased. After dinner, as usual when they were alone, they went up to his "den," the custom being for him to smoke a cigar while she glanced over the evening papers, and read to him what seemed to be of interest. As she stood leaning negligently against the mantelpiece she was surprised to notice that he did not settle himself in his usual chair. He came up to her instead, and she felt a sudden knocking at the heart as her uplifted eyes met his.

"How long has this been going on?" he demanded in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Papa?"

He paused as though to control himself.--She knew very well what he meant, and shivers ran down her back.

"Your carrying on with this actor fellow. This--this Adair." He snapped out the name as though it tasted bitter on his lips--spat it--his gray mustache bristling.

She was panic-stricken; her knees weakened beneath her; she had only presence of mind enough to tell herself that lies could not help her. But lies or not, at that moment she could not have uttered a word. It was all she could do to hold to the mantel for support.

Mr. Ladd drew out his pocket-book, and from it a letter.

"A man like that always has some female consort," he went on brutally, "some woman of his own class who follows his shabby fortunes, and considers him for the time being as her especial property; and who protects herself when that property is in danger by ways that suggest themselves to vulgar and common minds. At least, I do not consider it an unjust inference that this anonymous letter--"

Phyllis uttered a little cry, and hid her face in her hands.--So that was what it was?--She ought to have suspected it. But even in her shame a dart of jealousy passed through her heart. Who was this woman who was trying to rob her of Adair?

"It is a typical letter of the kind," continued Mr. Ladd, with grim persistence, "and written in a hand supposed to be disguised, as though anything could disguise the greater matter of the writer's innate vileness and swinishness. It starts with the usual pretense of good will, of friendly warning; and then passes, with hardly a transition, to charges that in a police court would entail its being cleared of any women amongst the spectators. Frankly, Phyllis, it is abominable--though I am going to read it to you, not with the idea of causing you pain, of punishing you, but to show you much better than any words of mine could do, the sort of cattle you are getting mixed up with. One judges men by the company they keep; whoever this woman is, it may be presumed she knows Adair well, and is a friend of his; otherwise what could prompt all this venom? The letter is a mass of lies, but it has a side-light value on this man you're letting fool you. They are a squalid, contemptible crew, and all tarred with the same stick."

He stopped to put his glasses on his nose; and smoothing out the letter, began deliberately to read it: "'You ought to know the goings-on of that girl of yours, and if nobody else is enough your friend to tell you, I--'"

But Phyllis cried out before he could proceed further.

"Oh, Papa," she exclaimed in passionate entreaty, "don't, don't! You mustn't! You're degrading me! I--I can't stand it!"

"You know my reasons for wanting you to hear it," he said coldly.

"And you are going to force me to?"

"Yes, I am--for your own good, Phyllis."

As their eyes met something within her seemed to break. In all her life her father had been everything that was kind and gentle and indulgent. His arms had ever been her refuge; she had cried out her baby sorrows on his shoulder; how often, in contrast to other girls, she had thought herself the most fortunate of women to have such a father. Now, in her direst need he was pitiless and inflexible. He was determined to humiliate her with that horrible letter--for his manner, everything, said that it was horrible. To gain his point he was willing to sweep away the fabric of all these years. Oh, the stupidity of it, the cruelty! Nothing could ever be the same again between them after that. He could degrade her, but it would cost him every iota of her love.

Her bosom swelled. Her anger was at so white a heat that she no longer felt the fears and shrinkings that had at first assailed her; her heart beat high, but to another and a fiercer measure.

What a moment for him to begin again: "'You ought to know the goings-on of that girl of yours, and if nobody else--'"

"Papa, Papa!"

"My dear, you must not interrupt me. I insist on--"

"Then let me read it to myself."

He paused, looking at her in indecision; and from her to the coals in the grate. She perceived the meaning of his hesitation, and laughed scornfully.

"Oh, you can trust me," she said, holding out her hand. "Do you want my word, or what? I won't destroy it. Rest assured I shall give you the pleasure of knowing I am reading every word of it."

He resigned it to her, tugging at his mustache, and watching her covertly as she moved nearer the light and began to read. He marveled at her composure, her decision. She was not evading the ugly task--her eyes moved too slowly for that, and her face reflected too clearly the unsparing comments on her behavior.

It was coarse beyond belief. Only a man half out of his wits could have allowed any woman of his family to read such a thing. Many of the expressions she had never heard before, but it is a peculiarity of gross Anglo-Saxon to be readily understood. Nothing was lost on Phyllis, either in the description of the man she loved, or the accusations of the vilest kind leveled at herself. It was an infamous production, soiling and disgusting, nakedly spiteful, and nakedly pornographic.

She perused it unflinchingly to the end; studied the signature, "One who knows," and handed it back to her father.

"I thought people were put in prison for writing such letters," she said in an even voice.

"So they are," he returned curtly, "though that isn't quite the point."

"What is the point?"

"To know how much of it is true."

Again her composure startled him. "Is it possible you believe any of it?" she asked.

"Yes, I do," he said.--He was holding the letter in his hand, like a lawyer in court, cross-examining a witness. He was determined to get at the bottom of all this.

"Is it true you went to the theater twice?"

"As a spectator--yes."

"Is it true that you wrote a letter to him?"

"Yes."

"Is it true you invited him here?"

"Yes, he came once."

"And it's true you met him afterwards on one of the streets in the Richmond district?"

"Yes."

"It's true you let him kiss you there before everybody--embrace you--hug you like a silly servant-girl?"

She ignored the insult, and answered imperturbably: "It was a deserted place; I didn't know any one was spying on us."

"And it's true to-day you met him again?"

"Yes."

"And drove together in a closed cab?"

"Yes."

"Now, Phyllis, my girl, on your honor; I am asking you this as your father; I have the right to ask it, and the right to a sacredly truthful answer--the affair has gone no further than this?"

"No."

"On your honor?"

"On my honor."

"And all the rest of it?"--He touched the letter.

"Lies, Papa--revolting, hideous lies."

He stumbled towards his chair; seated himself in it; reached for the cigar-box. He had expected a scene; he had expected tears, pleading, and repentance. He had a penetrating sense of having mismanaged everything. Perhaps he ought not to have shown her that letter. It had shocked her through and through, but not in the way he had intended. He had meant it to be like a surgeon's knife--one sure swift stroke, and she was to rise cured, disillusioned. The effect had been disconcertingly different; he had affronted her to the quick, he had roused a defiance all the more to be feared because it was cool, subdued, controlled--the kind that is apt to last.--He lit his cigar, and blew out breath after breath of smoke. He must not make another mistake. He would think a little while before he began again.

She glided slowly towards the door, but with an air so unconcerned, so free from any suggestion of flight, that he suspected nothing. The fact of her leaving the door ajar seemed to imply an immediate return. Several minutes passed before he suddenly became uneasy. So peremptory was his conviction that she was near that he cried: "Phyllis, Phyllis," before rising to find out what had become of her. But she was not in the corridor outside. He sought her boudoir--nor was she here either. Her bedroom off it? It was empty, too. Thoroughly alarmed, he descended the stairs, softly calling out, "Phyllis, Phyllis!" He was answered by a servant's voice below: "Is it you, Sir?"

"Yes, Henry, I am looking for Miss Phyllis?"

"She went out a minute ago, Sir."

"Went out?"

"Yes, Sir."

Good God, she was gone!

CHAPTER XIV

Once outside the door, she had raced downstairs like the wind, put on her hat anyhow, and sped into the darkness, without waiting for wrap or gloves. Her first idea had been to reach the theater, but as she turned down side streets in order to evade pursuit and get the Fairmount Avenue car line, she realized that this involved too much time. Her watch, hastily looked at under a lamp, showed that it was after eight o'clock, and that she could not hope to gain the theater before the first act began. She decided to telephone instead, and accordingly, walking very fast, and sometimes running until a pain in her side forced her to desist, she made her way to Fairmount Avenue, and to a drug-store she knew to be there. It was the matter of a moment to look up the number of the Thalia Theater, unhook the receiver, and get central.

"Nick-el," murmured that impersonal arbiter of human destinies.

"I don't understand--please give me my number, I'm in such a hurry."

"Nick-el!"

"Drop a nickel in the slot, Miss," said the clerk helpfully.

She had come away without her purse. She hadn't a penny!

As quick as thought she pulled off one of her rings, and laid it on the counter.

"I have forgotten my purse," she said. "Please let me have a quarter, and I'll redeem the ring to-morrow."

She had been resourceful enough to recollect she needed more than a nickel--there was the trolley fare to the theater and back.

The clerk took the ring with no great willingness; examined it with every apparent intention of denying her request; then examined her with the same sharp look. The horrid creature recognized her, and his manner changed to a cringing deference. "Oh, Miss Ladd, I beg your pardon, I didn't know it was you, Miss Ladd. A quarter? Why certainly, Miss Ladd. Only too happy to oblige you, Miss Ladd. Take back your ring, and pay any time at your convenience, Miss Ladd." He rang open his cash register, and passed her three nickels and a dime, together with the ring. "Put it back where it belongs," he said, smirking and rubbing his hands. "My, what would the boss say to me if I told him I had kept Miss Phyllis Ladd's ring!"

She thanked him, and again gave the number at the telephone, dropping in the nickel that had cost her so much. The clerk, though he had moved away, was all eyes and ears, and she had an unpleasant sensation of being watched. But it was too late to draw back now. Her need was too urgent, too desperate for such irritating trifles to deter her from her purpose. The horrid creature would stare. Well, let him stare! He would chatter about it, too, of course. Well, let him chatter!

"Thalia Theater--box-office."

"I want to speak to Mr. Adair at once."

"It's impossible--he's in his dressing-room, and we ring up in eight minutes."

"I simply have to speak to him."

"Can't do it--it's against the rules."

"Oh, you must, you simply must!"

"Who are you?"

"Miss Ladd!"

"Who did you say?"

"Miss Ladd--L-A-D-D."

"What is it, please, that you want to see Mr. Adair about?"