PREFACE (continued 3)

But no word passed between them at the time on the subject of either Ravenel, nor did these two great ladies again speak to each other on the subject of Francis Ravenel until the night of the Countess' death. But it was doubtless the bond in suffering, no less than her great love, which made the Countess write to Dermott, the first day of her convalescence, the letter which is set below:

"I am nearing the end, my dear Irish cousin, and would set the house in order before I go. What little I have (it is almost nothing, for the house goes back to the estate at my death and my income has never been large) I want to give to Katrine Dulany. I want her to have, in the old phrase, everything of which I die possessed. And of course I desire you to be the executor. Will you arrange the necessary papers and bring them with you when you come to hear her sing? And I'm hoping I may be still here to greet you and thank you once more for a lifetime of loyalty and devotion."

Sitting in his New York office, Dermott read the lines with a face saddened and gray. But the smile, so peculiarly his own, filled with

"Talk of justice!" he said. "Why, poetry can't touch this! Things always square themselves in the long run, though we may not live to see them do it, but this is one of the times when poetic justice itself got on the job."

Dermott answered this letter of Madame de Nemours in person as soon as business made it possible. Katrine, who understood from the Countess the significance of his coming, awaited him in the reception-room on the second floor. The curtains were drawn; a fitful fire made the figures in the tapestry advance and retreat; the candles in silver sconces lit up a misty Greuze over the mantel-shelf. A great bowl of white roses filled the room with fragrance, and Dermott thought, as he bent over Katrine's hand, that it was all but an exquisite setting for the girl herself.

Nearly a year had passed since their last meeting, and naturally Dermott expected some change in her. But Katrine was entirely unprepared for the change in Dermott. She had known but the one side of him in Carolina. On his previous visits to Paris, while grateful for his kindness, she was preoccupied and sad. And so,

On the instant of his coming, however, she recollected memories of the old days; recalled that underneath his bright and stagelike behavior there had ever been a certain constant attention, a sweeping glance, a quiet scrutiny of persons unaware of his observance, a memory of details and words and dates in some degree inhuman, and in the first hand-clasp she recognized the power she had not had the vision to see in the years before.

With both hands in his and her breath caught in her throat with gratitude, she said:

"If you think I'm going to try to thank you for all you've done for me here in Paris, you're mistaken, Dermott. I'm not." And then, with a quick catching of the breath: "I couldn't do it adequately, no matter how I tried. I know it was you who arranged for me to live here with Madame de Nemours; I know how you've been writing to Josef concerning my studies; I know how your kindness has followed me everywhere. That's why I can't thank you," she said, with dewy lashes and the deep note in her voice which made her speech ever seem like a caress.

"I've done little," Dermott answered. "I

"Happier than I thought I ever could be again," she answered, with an evasion.

"Once," he began, in a remote tone, "I was in Arabia with a native serving-man whom I tried to persuade to follow me on a shooting-trip in the desert. He said he couldn't go because he had a wife who wouldn't leave him. 'I made the mistake of beating her once,' he explained to me, 'and after a man has struck a woman once she'll stick to him forever.'"

If he expected angry speech of hurt remonstrance because of the too evident implication of the story, he was disappointed, for Katrine raised her eyes to his with sad frankness. "I think it speaks a truth, Dermott," she said. "Sometimes I wonder if there ever was a woman who loved the man who was kindest to her." "It's unrecorded if it ever occurred," he an

"Yes, it is arranged."

"That will mean an opera engagement somewhere, will it not?"

Katrine laughed. "That's as may be. It depends on how I sing."

There was flattery in the answer. "It will mean Covent Garden if it depends on that," Dermott said.

"Thank you," she replied; and in the conventionality of the response she realized anew that the jesting-time was by between them and she had a man to reckon with.

"To-morrow," he said, "Josef has written me that, with your permission, I may hear you sing. Have I that permission, Katrine?"

"You have," she answered, noting the handsome line of the bent head and shoulders.

"To-morrow at two?"

"To-morrow at two. And then," said Katrine, "you will see for yourself what I've been doing, so there's no use discussing it, is there? Tell me of yourself and Barney. Does the newspaper work go well?"

"

"And the land you purchased in North Carolina! Do the eagles flourish on it?" she inquired.

"Not yet. But there's excellent clay there, and I've turned it into a brick factory for the present. The truth is, I needn't have bought that land. I suppose you've heard of the new railroad through Ravenel?" he asked.

"Something," she said, "but not definitely."

"They're building it on the other side from the 'Eagle Tract,'" he explained, smiling at the words. "Mr. Ravenel is practically putting the thing through himself. Do you know, Katrine," he continued, "I think I have underrated Ravenel. Sometimes in the last year, when I've seen him clearing obstacles from his path," and the way Dermott knew how to belittle a rival was plainly shown in the pitying tone he used here, "I've almost admired him. I have sometimes thought if circumstances had been different he might have even been something of a man."

But Katrine's utter honesty was a thing Dermott had not calculated upon. "Dermott," she said, "I have always tried to be frank with you, haven't I?"

"

"I want to be so still. Madame de Nemours has told me the story of Ravenel."

McDermott waited, serene, inspiredly silent.

"But," Katrine went on, "I was a bit prepared for it. Almost the last thing father said to me before he died was that you were planning trouble for Mr. Ravenel."

McDermott waited still, but with a sterner look upon his keen and ardent face.

"Madame de Nemours has told me you need only a paper and a certain witness at Tours to carry out your purpose. Is it true?"

"It is."

"And that purpose is—" She hesitated.

"To see justice done to Madame de Nemours," he answered.

"It will mean that Mr. Ravenel has no right either to his home or his name?"

The pleading and protest in her voice did not escape Dermott as he answered:

"It will mean just that!"

"And nothing can move you from your purpose?"

"Nothing that I can now think of," he answered, adding with some vehemence: "Katrine

"Then you believe the cause just?"

"I believe that the present Ravenel's father married in America knowing that he had a living wife and child in France."

Katrine stood, hand-clasped, looking straight into Dermott's eyes. But what she saw was an old garden in Carolina, wind-blown pines, the scarlet creepers around an old bench, and a man with blanched face and restless eyes; what she heard, underneath Dermott's voice, were words from the past:

"I might lie to you, but the thing that separates us is family pride, family pride. I am going away to-day, going because I do not dare to stay!"

"

"Naturally not," McDermott answered, succinctly; "but it is not proven yet," he added, in an impartial tone, adding, "I have not been able to find the witness I need."

Was it Katrine's imagination that made her think the door moved suddenly as by human agency? Had some of the servants been listening? She paused in her talk, and, looking into the hall, saw Quantrelle the Red pass quickly up the stairs with his daily flower for Madame de Nemours.

"And, believing that Ravenel did not belong to Mr. Ravenel," she continued, "you encouraged him to build the railroad?"

"I neither encouraged nor discouraged that enterprise," Dermott answered. "Fate steered, and did it well."

"And Mrs. Ravenel?" The name, as she spoke it, was a remonstrance.

"Mademoiselle Dulany," Dermott answered, "indeed you've a wrong conception of the matter. There is to be no stage play or newspaper work in the case. It will be quietly adjusted. The Ravenels are not people to permit any publicity. There will be compromises. Mrs. Ra

"You have never liked him, have you, Dermott?" Katrine asked, with directness.

"Never," Dermott answered, with a frankness matching her own.

"Why?"

"Faith, and there are three excellent reasons," Dermott returned, with something of his old manner: "He was himself; I was myself; and a third," he paused, with all the power of his personality in his great gray eyes, "a third," he repeated, "which I hope some time to explain to you at great length, little Katrine."

XX

THE INFLUENCE OF WORK

Of Francis Ravenel at this time much could be written. In the first months of his separation from Katrine, during all of the period of his mother's illness, he remained firm in the intention expressed in the unsent letter to visit her in Paris, ask her forgiveness, and make her a formal offer of marriage. But quick on the heels of his return to New York had followed the railroad business, to which Dermott McDermott's insolence had added new reason for making the enterprise a successful one.

But underneath the several postponements of visiting Katrine, the real cause of them all, in fact, was a fear of the well-merited rebuff which he might receive from her. He understood her pride well; and although he believed that she had not ceased to love him, he doubted if he held her respect, and many times, when instinct bade him go to her, he had recalled the pleading tones of her

Katrine's letters, which came to him with perfect regularity, kept him closely in touch with her daily life in Paris. He looked anxiously in them for any variation in her sentiments toward himself, but found none.

Reading one night in Firdousi, he discovered a passage which described Katrine so perfectly to him that he put a marker between the pages of the book, and kept it by his bedside to read at night as a pious person might have kept the confession of his faith.

"She was an elemental force," wrote the old poet, "and astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after day radiating every instant redundant joy and grace on all around her. Though the bias of her nature was not to thought but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments, believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble."

And there were sometimes bits of her letters which drove him wild with regret for what he had done.

"Is personal happiness, after all," she wrote once, "a very important thing? Nothing can ever make me suffer again as I have suffered, for I have learned to use a man's solace: work; work in which I can go far away from myself and be as impersonal as a problem in geometry. But I ask myself, Is that what was intended? Sometimes I seem to touch the edge of the knowledge that it is (perhaps) greater to be a sad, little, suffering, incompetent mother, than to be the person which trouble and music have made of me."

But in his self-abasement Frank failed to take into the accounting the stupendous effect which the New York influences and the handling of great affairs had had upon his own character. Day by day he had learned more plainly the lessons of responsibility, of continued and concentrated action, and even McDermott himself could not use Napoleon's great question, "What has he done?" more meaningly than Frank himself did now.

But with this new manhood came a finer comprehension of his baseness to Katrine, and an emphasized doubt as to whether she ever could forgive the miserable selfishness which he had displayed.

In his visits between the States and England (he made three during Katrine's stay in Paris, be

At the Christmas-time of Katrine's last year in Paris, he received a quaint illumination with the following note of explanation:

MY DEAR UNKNOWN FRIEND,—I have thought this out and printed it, too. It is not very well done, but I have tried to make it sincere. Of course I got the idea of making prayers for myself from R.L.S.

I am sending it to you with a heart full of hope that your Christmas may be a merry one.

"Grant me the ability to do some one thing well.

"Give me sympathy for the suffering of others which has been brought to them by their own acts.

"Grant that I may have courage for the weak and the friendship of those who demand the best of my nature.

"Remove all doubts from me that there will be ultimate peace and happiness for every one.

"Let fear of the consequences of a right act be far from me. Let me forget the words expediency, convention, and reward.

"Grant me largeness of judgment, and silence for all weakness, especially that of woman.

"And give me, each day, my daily work, with rest at night under some friendly stars."

Early in April, after the lonesomest winter of his life, he received the following letter from his mother, who was still in Paris with Anne Lennox:

MY DEAR, DEAR CHILD,—I have been going about a great deal, meeting old friends and making some new ones, which accounts for my not having written you last week. Anne's house is like a Union Station for café au lait in the mornings. I enjoy it, however. One is seldom bored, though frequently exhausted. Why I am writing this dull introduction I cannot say, for I have more important things to tell.

I have met Katrine Dulany.

Anne and I went to the Countess de Nemours' reception on Friday night. We were all in a whirl of unfinished sentences when Miss Dulany entered. I wish you might have seen her, as she came toward us! Of course she was a very pretty child in North Carolina, but she has developed into something really remarkable. She wore white, décolleté, with her hair Madonna-wise. And she has such distinction! Such repose! Truly, Frank, she came in so quietly that she made every one else seem to enter on horseback.

Coming directly toward me, she said: "Perhaps you do not remember me, Mrs. Ravenel! I am Katrine Dulany. My father was overseer of your plantation, in North Carolina, for nearly three years." It was as though Mary Queen of Scots had come to life and asked me if I remembered when she was my parlor-maid!

And she stayed and talked to me with sweetest deference and an appeal in her eyes, and I went home quite exalted to think this much-desired person had singled me out for such marked attention.

But during the night (and oh, my little, little boy! you will forgive me if what I write hurts you, won't you?)

But if you don't want me to know, I won't know. I never knew anything you didn't want me to. That's a mother's way. And don't say a word about the matter to me unless you care to. Believe me, boy of my heart, I will respect your silence.

It is three months since you have been here. Miss Dulany sings on the 23d. Can't you come over? Every one is going, and we have taken a box. Do come.

Even to his mother Frank could not bring himself to mention Katrine's name, and he avoided all explanations by cabling his reply:

Will arrive in Paris on the 20th.—F.R.

XXI

THE NIGHT OF KATRINE'S DÉBUT

The yearly recital of Josef's pupils is an event to which Paris looks forward with interest, for the great teacher makes of it always an artistic triumph. That year there was more than usual excitement over the event, because of the first appearance in public of Mademoiselle Dulany, whose voice had been enthusiastically written of by every critic whom Josef had permitted to hear her sing. Two of the greatest singers of the world, old pupils of Josef, had been bidden to sing with her. Campanali and Rigard, whose sonorous bass tones have thrilled two continents, came gladly at the bidding of their old master, to whom they owed so much. The opera was "Faust." The house was packed from pit to dome, with seats in the aisles, and many great people.

The Countess, trembling with excitement, had with her in her box her old friends the Townes,

Meanwhile, Katrine, in her little white room at the Countess de Nemours', had just written:

DEAR UNKNOWN,—I have shut every one out of my room and shall see them no more until afterward. Can

They will all be there, all those people who have heard of me, and Josef. Ah, for his sake, too, I have prayed to do greatly, inspiredly, the thing he would have me do! And he will be there, too, I am told. He has crossed the ocean to hear me sing. Oh, dear God, just once, if never again, let him know me through my voice, know that I forgive and forget and understand!

The carriage is ready. Good-bye, dear, dear room, dear old books, dear old scores! Good-bye, Dear Unknown!

It is the last time I can write you of my hopes to be great. To-morrow you will know what I have done. But whether I go to success or failure, I kiss you with my heart full of love and gratitude, and so-good-bye!

"There is Josef now; look, Mrs. Ravenel!" Mrs. Lennox cried, pointing to a man who had just entered the stage box. "The man with the iron-gray hair. And the eyes! Did you ever see such eyes? And who is that with him? Great Heavens," she exclaimed, "it is that pervasive

Josef, pale as a statue, had taken a place in the shadow of the box, back from the reach of opera-glasses. His hands trembled, and at times his lips twitched backward, as one who has lost control through too long a strain.

"Do look out for him," Katrine had said to Dermott, the night before, between tears and a smile. "I can get through it all right, but I am fearful it may kill Josef. He takes me very seriously, you know."

A heavy knocking came. The leader took his place. The overture began, and when the curtain rose Campanali received the genuine ovation which was his due. At the conclusion of that great duet, "Be Mine the Delight," there was the vision of Marguerite at the spinning-wheel, and, after three years, Francis Ravenel saw Katrine, but in a blurred vision with fold upon fold of gauze between them. Finally the soldiers and maidens disappeared, and there came an expectant hush. One heard now! The pause was marked, intentional, before there came toward the footlights, in their most relentless glare, a girl with gladness and joy in her very walk. Neither a heavy German peasant girl mädchen, but a glad young soul conscious of nothing save joy, with the beauty in her face of youth and power as she looked at the gay throng of the fair. Then, with the gaze of the entire house upon her, her eyes encountered those of Faust. There was no start of surprise, but, as though drawn to him by a law beyond control, her eyes rested in his, and with no gesture, without a note sung, with nothing but a change in expression, one understood great love had come to her, the first love of a woman, which is never lived over nor forgotten.

And Francis Ravenel, sitting back of the others in the box, recalled that look and drew behind the curtains. In memory, soft arms were round his throat as a voice, the same, yet not the same, sang:

A golden voice, with tones so breathed they had the liquidness of the bluebird's call, as Paris held its breath before the beauty and wonder of it; a voice which Frank remembered amid the

"God keep you always just as you are, beloved."

From the first scene to the clear end, when, in the divine trio, Campanali, Rigard, and Katrine caught fire from each other and went mad together, in that great, strong music where right triumphs, as the song climbs higher and higher in its great insistence, it was such triumph as no first performance had been in the memory of our generation, a success that admitted no cavilling or question, a success indisputable and unparalleled, and before the performance was ended the papers were chronicling, for the ends of the earth, that a world star had arisen in the firmament of song.

McDermott's face was an open book for all who cared to read. The one woman on earth for him was triumphing, and his thoughts were all for her, and Master Josef saw and noted even in his excitement and trembling.

Frank, too, gloried in Katrine's success, but underneath the pleasure there was a senseless jealousy, a resentment of the position in which it placed her to him. And the conduct of Dermottbrava had been given and he had put his mother into the brougham, saying, abruptly, that he preferred to walk, his heart and head came to an unexpected encounter. He stood alone, unnoting the passers-by, oblivious of the superfluous praise of Katrine's voice which he heard in the broken talk, looking into the distant sky at the two great towers of Notre Dame.

It was not far to the De Nemours' house. Although very late, it would doubtless be filled with friends congratulating Katrine, and under the circumstances, he reasoned, there could seem no precipitancy in calling immediately to offer congratulations.

Giving his card to the French servant, who had ushered him with an important and excited manner into a small reception-room, he waited. His heart throbbed like a school-boy's with his first love. In a minute he would see her, would hold her hand. In his pocket he carried a letter, one of Katrine's many letters, to "The Dear Unknown."

"I have not forgotten this old love," she had written, "I shall never forget. I never close my eyes without thinking of him nor without a prayer for him upon my lips."

Suddenly there came a laugh, a jolly, musical sound of real mirth, and he heard Dermott's voice dominating and directing on the upper floor. Immediately after there came a silence, and then, from the turn in the stairs, he heard the same voice, with a touch of insolence, speak

"Say to Mr. Ravenel that Mademoiselle Dulany regrets that it is impossible for her to see him." And then, with a dramatic note, "Tell him," the Irishman added, "she leaves within an hour to sing before the Queen."

XXII

FRANK AND KATRINE MEET AT THE VAN RENSSELAER'S

In the three months which followed Katrine's great success, Frank heard of her constantly, always with a curious self-belittling and a reviewing of his own conduct, fine in its self-depreciation. He had betrayed the great unspoken trust of the finest human being he had ever known, and afterward dallied, for fear of rebuff to his vanity, from squaring the account as well as he could by giving her a chance to refuse him openly. He felt that he could never again be to her what he had been. Three years of such work as she had done would change her ideals much.

He reflected, too, upon the changes in himself, one of the greatest being his recognition of the sound virtues of Dermott McDermott. There had been times when circumvention by this son of Erin had been so masterly, so deft, so unexpected that Frank had felt like extend

Soon after the Paris visit, Frank heard, through Anne Lennox, of the death of Madame de Nemours. The letter reiterated, as well, that Katrine had sung to England's good old Queen. Before this confirmation Frank had doubted this statement as one of the outputs of Dermott's oriental imagination.

In August, having had no letter from Katrine or his mother for over a month, he accepted Nick van Rensselaer's invitation to Waring-on-the-Sea, with no knowledge whatever as to the other members of the party. As he was driven up the carriageway, under great New England pines, and saw the shining sea and the far-off Magnolia hills, he thought, for the first time, of other guests who would probably be there, and recalled with annoyance how one meets the same people every

At the foot of the stairs he encountered Sally Porter, whom he had not met since she had been his mother's guest at Ravenel, three years before.

"Why, Frank Ravenel!" she cried, at sight of him. "I thought you were in—where did we hear he was, mother?"

"Several places, my dear," her mother responded, placidly.

"Java, Japan, or Jupiter," Nick van Rensselaer broke in, coming forward with outstretched hand. "How are you, old man!"

As Frank returned the grip he looked over Nick's shoulder to a merry group which stood near the entrance to the music-room, and his amazed eyes rested upon Katrine Dulany. A new Katrine, yet still the old. She wore white lace. Her black hair was parted and rippled over the ears into a low coil. There was even more the look of an August peach to her than he remembered: dusky pink with decided yellow in the curve of her chin, as he had once laughingly asserted. But the softness and uplifted expression of the misty blue eyes were the same,

For a moment he seemed unable to make any effort to go to her, and then came to him an intense consciousness of himself, of her, and their mutual past. As their eyes met, however, he discovered that whatever embarrassment existed was his own, for Katrine saw him, seemed to make sure that her eyes did not deceive her, and with a glad smile stretched both hands toward him.

"Why, it's Mr. Ravenel!" she cried.

Her eyes rested in his as she spoke. "It has been three, oh, so many years, since we have met," she began, with a smile.

"Don't," he answered, holding her hands. "It was only yesterday."

"Three yesterdays," she said, with the old "make-believe" look in her eyes. "Half a week. Somehow it seems longer, doesn't it?"

"I was sorry to miss seeing you in Paris last May," Frank said. "I wanted so much to congratulate you; but congratulations would have been an old story even at that time."

"Everything was in such a ferment the night you called," she explained. "Josef was quite

At dinner Francis found, with some annoyance, that he was placed between Mrs. Dysart and Miss Porter, at the remote end of the table from Katrine, whom he could see at Nick van Rensselaer's right, showing her dimples and the flash of white teeth and scarlet lips as she told some story of her own.

He noted how easily she was first, so sure of herself and her power, but with a marked deference to the women as well as to the men who courted her attention so openly. "Such considered conduct!" he commented to himself, approvingly.

No chance came to him to talk to Katrine again that night, but, analytical as he was of woman, he could discern no smallest sign that it was by any design of hers, nor that she noted his presence more than that of another. She neither avoided nor sought his glance, and it was not until midnight that he had even a word alone with her.

"I am going to sing," she said, turning with

In a minute he came forward and led her to the piano. "The Serenade," he said.

Her eyes gleamed through the long lashes as she looked away from him.

"Ah," she answered, "I seem to have outgrown it!"

XXIII

AN INTERRUPTED CONFESSION

On the fourth day, because of a nasty twist at polo, the doctor ordered Frank to rest. Coaching and golf had left the house deserted as he lay on the couch in the second hall, thinking of Katrine's masterly deftness in avoiding him.

"I have never known another woman who could have done it so well," he thought. "She seems to have neither resentment nor remembrance. It is as though the whole affair had never been. I wonder—"

The noise of a door opening at the far end of the corridor disturbed his reflections, and as though walking into his thought, Katrine came down the hall.

She wore a house-gown of pale blue, low in the neck, with long, flowing sleeves. Under her arm she carried a music-score in regular school-girl fashion, and she was humming to herself as she came.

"I am not going to bid you a good-morning, seeing that I am obliged by doctor's orders to do it in this position. It doesn't seem respectful," he explained.

The surprise, the dimples, the gay, low laugh seemed such a part of her as she paused beside his couch.

"You are ill?" she asked. "Or," with a twinkle of the wide eyes, "didn't you want to go on the coaching-party?"

"I took a fall at polo yesterday. I was not at dinner last night. I am flattered at the way you have dwelt upon my absence."

"I dined at the Crosbys' or I might have spent a sleepless night concerning it. There were a great many people there. Your friend, Dermott McDermott, for one. He is coming here to-day." Her face was illumined by the spirit of teasing as she spoke. "Only," she went on, with a sweet and instant sympathy, "I am hoping you are not badly hurt or suffering."

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, the matter, except the doctor. He is all broken up over the accident, and says I must lie here or some

Katrine laughed as she turned to go.

"I was intending to study some," she said, looking down at her music. "Will it annoy you?"

A quick, amused smile came to his face at the question, and he looked up with eyes full of laughter as he answered:

"Certainly, I am naturally unappreciative of music."

"I didn't mean that," Katrine explained, smiling back at him as she went along the corridor.

"Miss Dulany!" he called.

She turned toward him, her face waiting and expectant.

"As the German girl said in Rudder Grange, 'It is very loneful here.'"

"You mean," she asked, "that you would like to have me stay with you?"

"Nobody on earth could have stated my wish more accurately," he answered, in a merry, impersonal tone, as though addressing some imaginary third person.

She came back to him, drawing a low wicker chair near the couch and putting her music on

"You do not care for them?" he asked.

"They are not for me, those horrible realist folk. I like books where things fall as they should rather than as they do; and the poetry where beautiful things happen. Things as they aren't are what I care for in literature."

He laughed. "We won't read," he said, "and I sha'n't talk. You must. All about yourself, the wonderful things that you have been living and achieving. You will tell it all in just your own way, full of quick pauses and sentences finished by funny little gestures."

This was dangerous walking, and he felt it on the instant.

But the Irish of the girl, the instinct to make a story, to entertain, came at his demanding, bringing the old gleam back to her eyes.

"Ah!" she said, deprecatingly. "The tale of me! It would bore you, would it not? It is just full of Josef and work and the Countess and Father Menalis and a few great names, and then more work, with a little more Josef," she added, could you give it up?' 'But you said the last time I was here—'

"It must have been a wonderful life," Francis said, a great appreciation in his voice.

"It was; I miss it here—some, although people are so kind. And you?" she demanded. "Tell me about yourself."

"There is nothing to tell. Things are just the same with me. I suppose they will never be much different."

"Mrs. Lennox told me last winter that you were doing quite wonderful things in business."

He smiled, but made no explanation. "Are your engagements arranged as yet, Katrine?" he asked.

"It is probable that I shall sing in St. Petersburg first. It is what I want most if I sing in public next winter at all."

There was a pause.

"You have not changed so much as I had thought," he said, at length.

"More than I show, I am afraid," she answered.

"Oh," he returned, "even I can discern some

"How horrible!" she laughed.

"Not at all, only not as I remembered you." He spoke the words slowly, against his will and his judgment, and in defiance of taste or conduct, looking up as he did so into eyes which from their first glance, over three years before in the woods in North Carolina, had been able to stir him as no other eyes had ever done. And it seemed to him as though in that look all conventions were dropped between them. "You were kind to me then, Katrine."

She looked at him steadily, as a child might have done, with no shrinking in her glance, with neither anger nor shame. "And you?" she asked, wistfully. "Were you very kind to me?"

"I was not. God!" he said, "if you could only know how I have suffered for the way I acted! To feel such shame as I have felt! Oh," he cried, "nobody on earth could make me talk this way but you! There was always between us

"I knew you would suffer. I was sorry for that," she answered, gravely.

"Were you, truly? Were you big enough for that?"

"Well," and the sad smile with which the Irish so often speak of personal grief came to her lips, "you see, I loved you. And when one loves one wishes for happiness for the one beloved, does one not? Yes," she said, "I was honestly sorry to think that you would have even a regret. I would have taken all the sorrow if I could."

"You loved me then?" His head was gone. He remembered only the sweetness of her presence and the nearness of her. "You did love me then, Katrine?"

She rose suddenly as though to leave him.

"Don't go," he said, reaching his hand toward her with pleading in his tone.

She reseated herself, her face exquisitely pale. "Ah," she said, "you know I loved you! I was so young, and it was all so terrible to me! Please God, you may never suffer as I did! I have lain awake night after night praying to die, or waking with dread at the knowledge that as soon as

"Katrine!" he cried, and, the doctor's orders forgotten, he sat up and leaned toward her "believe me, I have waited all these years to see you, to talk with you! But unless two people are entirely honest, I knew the thing would be impossible. I thought you would forgive me, would understand as you grew older!"

"I understood then," she interrupted. "My whole life had trained me to understand. I was not in the least critical of you. I am not now. You followed your birth and your training. You had been taught no self-control. Women had spoiled you. You had never had to consider others. I want to be perfectly frank with you about it all. I never deceived you in word, tone, or look. I shall not begin now. You were my ideal man in everything. You know," she paused, an amused smile upon her lips and her lids lowered, "you know I thought Henry of Agincourt, Wolfe Tone, and Robert Bruce must

She ceased speaking, and her eyes rested upon the far-away sea with the remembering tenderness a woman might give to an old plaything of childhood before she continued:

"It was from Josef, of course, that I had most help, always belittling this affair, always trying to make me forget in work. I was too tired at night to grieve; I had to sleep. 'Women,' he said, 'coddle their griefs! They revel in hopeless passion! They nurse it! Remember,' he said, 'there are two ways to forget: weeping and making swings.' Well," she finished, "he taught me to make swings."

"And you have forgotten?" Francis asked, standing beside her, magnetic, compelling, taken out of himself.

Memories were drawing them together. Remembered kisses, words, spoken lips to lips, and that elemental sweet attraction of man for woman, which should be ranked with the other great elemental things like fire, water, earth, and air. Katrine rose also, and they stood looking into each other's eyes.

"No," she answered, quite steadily, "I have not forgotten. I never shall forget. I would

"Will you be frank with me, Katrine?" he demanded.

"Have I ever been anything else?" she questioned, in return.

"You have avoided me since you came."

"Yes, only I hope not noticeably."

"No, it was well done, but why?"

"Can you ask?"

"I do ask."

"I did not want ever to see you again nor to talk to you as we are talking now."

"Answer me, Katrine!" he cried, bending toward her. "Answer me! Why did you never want to see me again?"

There still was the look in her eyes of sweetest frankness as she answered: "There were many reasons before I saw you that first night why I should never wish to see you again. But after that there was only one—one—one that filled my mind. I am afraid."

"Afraid!" he repeated, with the man's look of the chase in his eye, "afraid of what, Katrine?"

She had moved by the fireplace, and with a hand on the chimney-shelf turned her eyes to

"When I first saw you here, the night I sang, I became afraid you were a man whom I had simply overestimated in the past because of my youth. I have avoided you ever since for fear I should find it to be true. I am afraid you are a man who is simply 'not worth while.'" The words were spoken softly, even with a certain odd tenderness, but they struck Francis Ravenel like a blow in the face, and he set his lips, as a man does in physical suffering.

"I think it is just," he said, at length. "I think that describes me as I am: a man who is not worth while. Only, you see, Katrine, I was not prepared to hear the truth from you." He grew white as he spoke. "In all of your letters you spoke so divinely of that old-time love."

For an instant she regarded him with startled attention, her eyebrows drawn together, both hands brought suddenly to her throat.

"My letters," she repeated, "my letters!" And then, her quick intuition having told her all, "How could you do it? Oh, how could you do it?" she cried, the tears in her eyes and the quick sobs choking her speech. "It was you who sent me abroad to study! It is you to now. Only," she said, pressing her hand over her heart, "I hurt so! The pain makes me say things I would rather not say. Oh, I wonder if another man in all the world ever hurt a woman's pride as you have hurt mine!"

"Katrine," Frank said, "God knows I never intended to tell you! There was always the thought in my mind that you should never know, but you hurt me so, I forgot. Oh, Katrine, forgive me!"

"I am grateful," she interrupted, in her hurried, generous way, "grateful for the kind thought for me; but I am angry, too, so angry that I don't dare trust myself," she smiled through her tears, the funny, heart-breaking smile. She gathered up her music. "Good-bye," she said, "I shall try to go away in the

He knew she would keep her word, knew that the morning would take her from him, and the pain of hurt pride and wounded love goading him on, he covered the distance to the bolted door.

"Katrine!" he called.

Within he heard the noise of sobbing, of quick breaths choked with pain.

"Katrine Dulany!" he repeated, with tenderness.

"Yes!" she answered from within.

"I want to speak to you."

There was no response.

"I must speak to you, Katrine."

He waited, fearing her new contempt, until the silence became unendurable.

"Katrine," he said, "you will either come out or I will come in."

There was another silence before there came, at the end of the lower corridor, a great commotion of quick orders given and executed, of luggage being placed, and through it all a low singing as of one much at home. It would be an awkward situation, he thought, for the servants to find him clamoring at Miss Dulany's

and Dermott the jaunty, the extremely elegant, in black riding-clothes, with the jewelled crop of North Carolina days, stood in the afternoon sunlight at the head of the great stairs.

"Ah, Ravenel," he cried, "I have been staying at the Crosbys', and heard but last night from Miss Dulany that you were here! I accepted the invitation Van Rensselaer hadn't yet given me to ride over and stay awhile. I am," and here he had the superb impudence to adjust an eyeglass for a complete survey of Frank, "I am interested in your doings just now, Ravenel, very much interested," he repeated, with a smile.

XXIV

"I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU"

After a brief exchange of incivilities with Dermott, Frank went to his own room with a flushed cheek, a kindling eye, and something like a song of victory singing low and strong in his heart. It was a strange mood to follow such an interview, for there was scarcely a sentence of his during the talk with Katrine of which he was not ashamed. The lack of taste, of delicacy, the rawness of his conduct came back to him, producing a singular sense of elation; for by them he realized that his love was a thing stronger than himself; a thing which carried him along with it; buffeted him, did with him as it would, while considered conduct and the well-turned phrase stood pushed aside to watch the torrent as it passed.

There had been times when he feared that his ancestry of inherited self-indulgence had left him without the ability to desire anything con

He dressed early, hoping to have a word with Katrine before the other guests came down, but she was the last to enter the drawing-room before dinner was announced. Standing by the doorway, he saw her coming along the wide hall alone. She wore black, unqualified black, low and sleeveless. Her hair, which seemed blacker than the gown, was worn high, not in the loose curls he knew so well, but in some statelier manner, with an old jewelled comb placed like a coronet, and she held herself more aloof from him than ever before, her eyes avoiding his glance and her cheeks exquisitely flushed.

But at sight of Dermott her bearing changed, and Frank saw with jealousy that she went quickly toward the Irishman, holding out both hands and saying, "Dermott," in a voice which seemed to have a sob in it as well as a claim for protection.

When the ladies were leaving, Dermott took the situation in both hands, as it were, by rising with them and turning a laughing face to the men, who were calling his name.

"I'm going to join the ladies now, if they will have me!" he cried. "I have less of their society than I like, belonging, as I do, to the working-classes. And besides," he waved a hand, white and beautifully slender, toward them, "I know you all, unfortunately well, as it is!"

A chorus of friendly insults were thrown after him, but he dropped the curtain with no further word, and an hour later Frank encountered him walking slowly up and down the terrace in the moonlight with Katrine.

They were talking earnestly, McDermott urging something which Francis was glad to see

Try as he surely did, he found it impossible to have a word alone with her that evening, and the next morning he learned from the servants that her luggage was to be taken to the station the following day at an early hour.

She was not at luncheon, and Frank was meditating on the possibility of leaving with her on the early train, when a note was brought to him by her maid.

Would you care to walk with me now? [it read] I should like to tell you something before I leave.

This was surely the unexpected, and he waited for her on the portico with the feeling that there was some mistake, and that the maid might reappear any minute to ask the missive back again.

But Katrine herself came around the corner from the greenhouses and called to him from below. She wore a black walking-skirt, a black leather jacket, and a three-cornered black hat,

In silence they went down the driveway to the beach road, along the path to the cliffs. There was a chill in the sea-wind, for the afternoon sun gave only a rose-red glow, but little warmth, as they stood looking at the crumpled reflections in the water. "It is almost sunset," Frank began, abruptly, drawing nearer to her. "It might almost be a North Carolina sunset, mightn't it? I don't know, Katrine, what you want of me, but I want, for the sake of that summer full of sunsets which we knew together, that you should let me tell my story and judge me—finest woman—that—ever—lived—judge me after the telling as it may seem just for you to do!"

There was a piteous quiver of her lips as her eyes looked bravely into his as she nodded an acquiescence.

"When I left you, Katrine, like the coward I was, that dreadful morning, so long ago, I wandered around like an Ishmaelite, more wretched than I believed it possible for a human creature to be, longing for you, always, day and

"When the news came of your father's death I was in the Canadian woods. I started home immediately; I had no fixed plan, except to see you, to help you in some way. In New York I had a telegram saying that my mother was very ill at Bar Harbor. There was nothing to do but to go to her, of course. It was before this that she had sent me Nick van Rensselaer's letter, and the idea came to me from that, that I might be the one to do something to make your life a bit happier. You may think it was reparation for the suffering I had caused you, but it was not. I couldn't let you go out of my life. In this way, I reasoned, I could keep in touch with you for years. When I stipulated that you were to write once a fortnight, I had no idea the letters would be anything but simple statements of your daily life. You see, I forgot," he smiled again, the charming, whimsical smile that seemed so much a part of him, "that you were Irish and could do nothing impersonally.

"Immediately after mother's illness came the

"No," she answered. "I am glad to know how it all was. Over there in Paris, when I was alone, I often wondered."

"The interest in my own railroad naturally led to interests in the two adjoining ones, and always, always, Katrine, there were those letters of yours urging me on by your divine belief in me. That you loved me, thought of me, wished me well, prayed for me,—a man has to be worse than I ever was to fail to be helped by that. And your loyalty, the very selflessness of your love, your willingness to be hurt if it would help me—Katrine," he interrupted himself, "there were other women in my life, but, one by one,'I have not forgotten, I do not wish to forget. I want to make of myself so great a woman that some day he may say, with pride, "Once that woman loved me."' I disliked to know that your white letter had even touched the other one, and that night the man I hope to make of myself was born. If there be any achievement in my life that is worth while, if I ever count for anything in the world's work, it is you who have done it, you and the letters which you blame me so much for permitting you to write."

She turned toward him, her face flushed and divinely illumined, anger forgotten. "You mean it?" she said.

"As God hears, it is the truth."

"Then," she paused, "I am happier than I thought it possible I should ever be in this life!"

"And you forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive."

"That gives me courage to go on," he said. "Do you remember," he put his hand over hers as he spoke, and they both went back in

As she looked at him, her eyes were incredulous. "Don't let us talk of such a thing," she said, abruptly, turning her small hand upward to meet his in a friendly clasp.

"But, Katrine, it is the only thing in the world I care to talk about. Oh," he said, "I know how hard it is for you, that you are going to make it hard for me, that you are not going to believe me, nor in me. But, whether you believe it or not, it is the white truth I tell you, that ever since the first night I saw you I loved you, and wanted you for my wife."

She sat on the brown rocks, her knees clasped in her slender arms, looking through the sea-mist at the sun going down behind the Magnolia Hills.

"Don't let us talk of it," she said, decisively; "the thing is utterly impossible. Tell me about

"The last four years of my life have contained something overmuch of Dermott McDermott—" And then, the animosity gone from him, "Katrine," he cried, "in Heaven's name, what did I ever do to him? He seems to spend his time trying to circumvent my plans. He hates me so that it seems"—he waited for an appropriate word—"funny," he ended, with a laugh. "I have sometimes thought he was in love with you. Is he in love with you, Katrine?"

"Tell me about the railroad," she said, taking no note whatever of his question. "I have heard many things of it."

"Well," he began, "there were many things to hear. One by one the men who had pledged themselves 'went back on me,' as the Street phrase is, which brought out all the obstinacy in me. I built it myself. It's a success, and it's lucky," he ended, "for if it weren't I don't know where I should have ended in a money way. I was desolate and, as you told me cheerfully in one of the letters to the Great Unknown, 'full of ignorances and narrow-mindedness.' There was never anything better came to me, save one,

"It's queer, queer, queer, this little world, isn't it?" she demanded, abruptly.

"It is, indeed."

"Here are we, together again, after many years, talking about ourselves, just as we did in those other days."

The old Katrine was beside him, with the pleading, explaining, dependent note in her voice, the same rapid, short sentences, the same shy look which was ever hers when doing a kindness. "I must tell you the reason I wrote the note. Last night I was very angry at you. I forgot Josef, who showed me that anger is for fools only. Then Dermott came, and while we were walking on the terrace I told him everything: that I owed you money; that I wanted it paid at once. He is Madame de Nemours' executor. She left me—not a great fortune, you know, but more than enough to repay your loan to me. So much is simple. But there is more." She hesitated before slipping her small, bare hand in his again. "Dermott thinks he knows something which will cause you much sorrow and trouble. He is not certain. He is waiting letters from France. And I wanted to tell you boyish loyalty in her eyes, "I will keep my word. You must not worry; I will take care of you." It was like a mother's promise to protect a child, and, save for the sweet confidence in her own powers, Frank, not understanding, could have laughed aloud. "I want you to think of this to-night, when Dermott talks to you—will you?—and to remember that the matter is far from proven. Madame de Nemours herself did not believe it."

"Katrine," he cried, impressed by her serious face and tone, "what is this mysterious trouble that is coming to me? Can't you tell me?"

"I have thought of that, but I believe that you would be happier in the future to know that we had never discussed it together. I know I should. It's all so foolish," she ended.

"You are really going to-morrow, Katrine?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"

"For you?"

"For both of us."

"Ah, Katrine, why? You are a great enough woman to forgive. Can't you do it? You have done so much already."

"I am afraid," she answered. "I suffered too much. It was too horrible. Only," and she touched his shoulder gently, "you are not to think that I don't care for you. It mayn't be in just the way that I used to do; but nobody else could ever be to me what you have been. I don't believe a woman, a real woman, ever loves twice in her life, do you?" She asked the question with the manner distinctively her own, of comradeship, of wanting to touch souls even on this question most vital to them both.

"I hope it's true of you, Katrine."

The gray sea broke in white lines on the shore beneath them; the gulls uttered shrill, clattering cries above their heads, before Katrine rose.

"We must be going—on!" she said, looking seaward, her hands clasped in front of her, her face saddened and white.

"But, Katrine," he cried, "look at me, Katrine! Nothing has been settled between us. I have asked you to marry me. You say you will not.

There was nothing but kindness and affection in her face as she stood with appealing eyes looking up at him.

"Do you want me to tell you what I believe to be the truth?"

"Yes; but, Katrine, don't make it hurt too much," he said.

"I think," she spoke the words softly, "if I had gone out of your life, had had no voice, had not succeeded, if the world had not spoken my name to you, you would have forgotten me in a year. I believe it is not Katrine Dulany, the daughter of your Irish overseer, whom you love, but La Dulany, who happens to have a gift, the adopted daughter of the Countess de Nemours, the woman whom you have heard the Duc de Launay wishes to marry!"

"Oh, Katrine!"

"I don't want to hurt you! indeed, indeed I don't," she repeated. "I wanted you to know exactly what I think. Ah," she cried, "be fair! Do you blame me?"

"No," he answered. "I blame you for noth

They returned to the house, through the incoming sea fog, in silence. At the foot of the side-stair they shook hands and said "good-bye" softly.

He had not expected to see her again in the evening. But here he failed to understand that the excitement under which she was laboring made either solitude or inaction unendurable. She was among the first to come down to dinner, and never, he reviewed the entire past before he came to the conclusion, had he seen her more beautiful. She wore pink, modish in the extreme, with many jewels—he recalled that he had never before seen her wear jewels—and she seemed in sky-scraping spirits, her eyes alight with fire and vivacity; and at the table he could hear the droll tones of her voice before the laughter came; and altogether she went far toward driving him daft by an apparent gayety at parting with him forever.

Ravenel followed him, after a nod of acquiescence, and stood on one side of a great chimney, which was filled with glowing logs, waiting for the Irishman to speak. He was entirely unprepared, however, for the consideration, even the impersonal kindness in Dermott's voice as he said, "I'm afraid I'm letting you in for a pretty bad time, Ravenel."

Frank bowed. Even McDermott was forced to admire his serene manner.

"Miss Dulany told me last night of her obligation to you."

Frank waited with no change of expression for Dermott to proceed.

"She said she desired her money obligation to be paid immediately."

"It is an affair of small moment," Frank answered.

"You know, perhaps, that my cousin, Madame de Nemours, left her property to Miss Dulany?"

"I heard of it at the time," Frank returned.

"

"A fact which escaped me," Ravenel answered, suavely.

"It has taken some time to settle the estate," Dermott continued, "because of a certain claim which, if proven, makes the estate a very valuable one. This claim nearly concerns you."

"Go on," Frank said, briefly, discourteously as well.

"I do not know," Dermott continued, "whether you are aware or not that your father made an earlier marriage than the one with your mother."

An ominous chill passed over Frank, though he answered, bravely, "I was not."

"When he was living at Tours he married a girl, an Irish girl, who ran away from a convent to become his wife. She was but sixteen at the time. Her name was Patricia McDermott, my cousin, afterward the Countess de Nemours."

Frank continued to listen, but, although his eyes held keen apprehension and his face was white, he showed a fine courage.

"My uncle, her father, was an ardent Roman Catholic," Dermott explained, "a gloomy, overfed, and melancholy man who never forgave his daughter. In a short time your father seemed

"Mr. Ravenel," Dermott changed his tone of recital to a more intimate one, "to speak truth, the matter is inexplicable to me. Your father was a brilliant man; a man of the world who, if he had no religious scruples on the subject of bigamy, must have had respect for law. Why," Dermott rose from the table by which he had been sitting, and stood directly facing Frank—"why he should have made a second marriage, with a wife and child living in France, is beyond explanation."

"It may be," Dermott returned, calmly. "Most things are open to that interpretation. I'm afraid, however, you will have difficulty in proving it so. I have had the certificates of the marriage and of the birth of the child for a long time, but international law requires much. I have living witnesses. In Carolina, in looking up the matter," he spoke the word vaguely, "I failed to find anything which would disprove the points I have just placed before you. I was awaiting some letters from France before explaining the case to you, when Katrine demanded that her debt to you be paid immediately. There are many reasons why I do not wish to pay that debt now, reasons which we, as men, can understand. She might not comprehend them, and she certainly would not give the idea a straw's weight if she did, having once made up her mind. Now I'm going to tell her that I've paid her debt, Mr. Ravenel. It will comfort her. But with the matter which I have revealed to you still a little unsettled, and the

"Mr. McDermott, Miss Dulany's indebtedness to me is too slight to consider. About this other terrible business, I shall search my father's papers! It is necessary that I do everything I can to protect my mother's name as well as my own."

"That's reason," Dermott agreed.

"As to Miss Dulany—"

Both men turned, for at the far end of the room Katrine stood, under the swinging light of a Japanese lamp, regarding them.

She came rapidly toward them, her head a little forward, her cheeks scarlet, and a gleam of temper in her eyes, which Frank had never seen, but with which Dermott was not unfamiliar, and took a place between them.

"See!" she cried, smiling, and there was never another woman in all the world who had the appealing smile of Katrine Dulany. "Don't let us make this all so dreadful. There is just some mistake," she said, with a gesture of impatience; and from here she went on with a certain terrify

"Oh," she said, with a gesture including them both, "you've done what I asked you not to do, Dermott!" she said. "You've claimed a yet unproven thing. I'm tired of the whole of it. It is better that we three should understand one another altogether and not go talking by twos," and she faced Dermott as she turned. "You may prove everything, and I'll never believe a word of it! Give me Ravenel, and I'll return it to those to whom it belongs. It's his," indicating Frank, "and his mother's, and they shall keep it, no matter what you prove! As for me!" she laughed, giving herself a shake as a bird does. "Hark!" she cried, raising one finger. Softly, as a bird calls to the purpling east at dawn, she took a note, listening intently, going up, up, up, till the tone, a mere thread of gladness, reached high E, where it swelled, rounder and fuller, until it seemed to fill all space, descending in a sparkling shower of chromatics to lower G.

"Did you mark that?" she cried, in a defiant bit of appreciation of herself. "What do I need with money? I can go out on the streets and come back with hands full." And before they

"And what do you think of that, now?" demanded Dermott of Frank, with a touch of the brogue, as they stood together in some bewilderment, looking after her.

XXV

KATRINE IN NEW YORK

The following morning, in a drizzling rain and wind from the east, Dermott McDermott stood beside Katrine at the station, arranging for her comfort, directing her maid, and wiring Nora in New York, lest she should be unprepared for this hastily determined return to the city.

"I was sorry for Ravenel last night, Katrine," he said, with an earnest sympathy in his tone. "I think I have never known a man who drew me to him less; but that has nothing to do with the matter. I was sorry for him," he repeated. "Isn't it a dreadful performance, this tragedy of life?" he demanded, looking down at her intently, unmindful of noise of luggage or the shrill voices of the passers to and fro. "But the thing to do," he cried, straightening himself and raising his chest, "is to show a brave front always! Never let the world know you're downed in anything. So carry all off with a laugh and a song.

They stood, hands clasped, on the platform as the train drew in, looking into each other's eyes, and Katrine's lips trembled as she spoke the word "good-bye."

"Sure it's not 'good-bye' at all," Dermott cried, changing his mood to cheer her—"not 'good-bye' at all! I'll be in town in a day or two bothering you with my visits and advice. And if anything definite turns up about the Ravenel matter I'll write you. Do you know, Katrine, I felt so sorry for him last night I'm almost hoping he can disprove everything."

And Katrine found, as the train pulled out, that there was another who had not been unmindful of her going, for Frank's man appeared from nowhere, touched his hat with accented deference, gave her a letter in silence, and disappeared into the blankness from which he came. But for the envelope she held, Katrine might have believed him a vision that had passed.

There was no formal beginning. The letter ran:

I shall not see you again until I know the truth. You will understand the reasons. I am going to Ravenel to-day to make some investigations. Of the outcome of these I cannot speak.

In all of this there is one thing sure. Everything may be changed in my life but my love for you.

It was still early in October when Katrine returned to New York and to Nora, who was waiting for her in an old-fashioned apartment just off Washington Square. The Irishwoman had driven a thrifty bargain for the place, and in a well-contented spirit was setting up the household goods.

There was a great porch at the rear of the rooms, with locust-trees in the yard below, and Nora had already put flowers in pots about it, to make a "nearly garden," she explained. Here, for over a month, Katrine enjoyed the homemaking; the arranging of her Paris belongings; the transformation of the shabby surroundings into a delightful spot of restful color and peace.

The day after her arrival from the Van Rensselaer's, Nora announced, with a twinkle in her eye, that there was a gentleman below whom she had told to come right up, and Barney O'Grady entered before his mother had ceased speaking.

No one could have been more helpful than he, in their present situation, however, and Katrine learned anew day by day the gratitude he cherished toward her for the help given so long before.

Slender and tall, with red face and high cheek-bones, thin nose turned upward, showing the inside of the nostril, and the lines like a parenthesis mark on either side of the mouth, he scanned the world alertly with his pale-blue eyes, scenting news like a human hunter-dog.

But he had many of the faults of his race, for with fine insight and ability to forecast events, he fell short in the execution of his brave schemes; failed to keep the respect of others after he had won it; accepted insufficient proof on all subjects, relying dangerously on a much-vaunted intuition, a fault in him which changed Katrine's whole life. In a way, he had become a power in

"There's another man that I could put in jail."

But there was an unworded matter which gave Katrine a kinder feeling toward Barney than either her love for Nora or any past acquaintance between them might have done, and this was his admiration for Frank Ravenel.

If Barney had any knowledge, directly, through Nora, or indirectly through his intuition, of the interwovenness of Katrine's life with Ravenel's, he had the taste and the ability to conceal it.

But his literary temperament got the better of him where Katrine was concerned, and before a week was past he set up a hopeless passion for her, as she laughingly put it.

"He'd die for you, Miss Katrine," Nora explained one evening.

"Sure I don't doubt it for a minute, if there were enough people by to see him do it," Katrine answered, with Irish comprehension.

With this over-informed person, her little French maid, whom Barney called "Her Irre

Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolina associates, Katrine had news of Frank's return to Ravenel immediately after the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to France following close upon the heels of his return.

Early in November—it was the afternoon of the first snowfall—delayed letters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for her signature. She was to have her première in May, and Josef wrote that he would go up from Paris with her.

This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris, so that the claim afterward made that Katrine's Metropolitan engagement was cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was to sing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.

In the mail containing the contracts came other

But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion. The first was McDermott, who, as he put it, "wasn't going to betray a trust because a girl flouted him a bit"; and the second, Ravenel himself, who was showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflagging search he was making for the truth.

She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almost daily messages or tokens of his remembrance. During his first visit he mentioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street, and that he was watching the money situation day and night with little time for visiting.

His second coming was a fortnight later. In

At five Nora brought in the tea-things, and Katrine closed the book over which she had been dreaming.

"Nora," she began, for the Irishwoman was like a mother to her, "did you ever forget your first love?"

"I did worse than that, I married him. Barney's the result," was the answer.

"But you never could have married any one else but Dennis, could you?" Katrine persisted.

"Niver!" the little old woman returned, with ready decision. "He bate me, Miss Katrine, and misprized me, and came and wint as he listed, and finally left me altogether; but I could never have chose another. It's the way with Irish

And Katrine, her tea forgotten, repeated, "It's that way with Irishwomen—the dream never comes but once."

At sunset the bitter wind which had been blowing all day long turned into a gale, a rascal wind, which slapped a handful of sleet and ice, hard as glass, on one side of your face, and scurried round the corner to come back and strike harder from an entirely different direction.

The storm must have suited his mood in some way, for Dermott McDermott chose to walk through it, arriving at Katrine's door breathless and flushed, the fur of his coat gleaming with ice and snow. Here he found a glowing fire, with the old mahogany settle on one side and the green grandmother's chair on the other; the dull glow of old tapestry; flowers; the odor of mignonette; and Katrine herself, in a scarlet gown, delighted as a child at his coming. Perhaps it was the clatter and roaring and discomfort without which accentuated the peace and happiness

"Will you marry me, Katrine?"

She looked again quickly, to see if he could be jesting. In North Carolina it was his custom to ask her every day; but his sudden pallor and the choked voice told how terribly he was in earnest.

She answered, with a note of despair in her voice, "I wish with all my heart I could, Dermott."

"And why not?" he asked.

"It wouldn't be fair to you. There is some one else," she explained, bravely, a great wave of coloring coming to her face at the confession.

"Whom ye will marry?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think not. It seems as if I could almost say I hope not."

"Dear," Dermott said, "I've loved you—always—ever since I've known you. When you were just a wee bit girl in New York, six years ago, and ye stood off the mob of boys who were

He waited a little as though recalling stage life, in which he had taken some active part, before he continued with a noble selfishness.

"And I dread this St. Petersburg experience! You, just a bit of a girl alone, with nobody but an old Irishwoman and that Josef, who has a rainbow in his soul but no common-sense in his head. So, whether you care or not, I want you to know, to remember, if trouble comes, that there's a man here in New York thinking always of you, one who would give his life to save you from pain."

XXVI

DERMOTT MCDERMOTT

About Christmas-time the Metropolitan managers offered Katrine an engagement for next season. In a lengthy interview with their extremely courteous representative she explained her inability to accept the very flattering terms by reason of the already signed St. Petersburg contracts. Although there seemed no definite outcome from the interview, the gentleman with whom it was held left her, as all did, charmed by her sincerity, her enthusiasm, and her great generosity.

She accepted the offer with small hesitation, asking no one's advice about an unheralded début. She was too great an artist to desire anything but stern criticism, and if she could sing greatly, she reasoned, the public would be quick enough to discover it. The opera to be given was "Faust." Her costumes were quite ready by reason of her Paris début, and she went to the morning rehearsals with the same joy in her work that she had known when studying with Josef.

About four of the afternoon, before the final rehearsal, it began to snow persistently in small flakes which dropped evenly from a leaden sky. Standing by the window, twisting the curtain-string unconsciously, with her soul out in the storm, she became conscious of excited cries of "Extra!" in the street below, and as though in accompaniment to them there came an incessant ringing of the bell at the street door.

Nora being absent on some self-appointed business of her own, the maid who had brought in the tea, and one of the very damp papers which

Katrine, left alone, poured the tea herself, her eyes scanning the news indifferently until they rested on some heavy black lines heading the last column. Again and again she looked, hoping that the printing would stay still, would stop seeming to dance up and down between the floor and ceiling—stop long enough for her to get its dreadful import:

REPORTED ASSIGNMENT OF FRANCIS RAVENEL!

Combined Attack Made on M.S. and R. Railroad!

Mr. Ravenel Dangerously Ill at the Savoy!

Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! Dangerously ill! The words began going over and over in her brain, seeming to strike from within on her temples in a kind of hammering that she felt would set her mad. She stood helpless, her career, her work, her ambition gone from her in a divine self-forgetting and desire to help, as his gayety, his charm, "his difference" from all others came back to her. She made new excuses for his conduct. She told herself, as a mother

She had long since realized the weight of Frank's words the morning of their parting.

"And remember, that if I did not do the best, I did not do the worst; that I am going away when I might stay," and she knew, looking back on her youth and trustfulness, how much truth there might have been in those words. She clasped her hands to her head trying to think. The throbbing in her head began to be followed by horrid sensations of things around going far away to an immeasurable distance, and returning again rapidly and horribly enlarged.

"Dangerously ill!" she repeated. "Dying, perhaps, alone in hotel rooms with none but paid attendance."

Her throat became choked at thought of it. "Father in heaven," she cried, her hands clasped together, "help me to help him! Don't let him suffer!" she pleaded. "I promised to help him always. Help me to keep my promise!"

Outside, the controversy between the maid at the door and some other was growing louder, and

"A gentleman to see you, mademoiselle."

"I can see no one," Katrine answered, briefly, her face averted.

"He says his business is most important."

"Who is it, Marcelle?" she asked.

"It is Nora's son, mademoiselle, and he has been drinking; but if I were you, I'd see him."

The significance of the girl's tone changed Katrine's former decision.

"Tell him to come in," she said.

Barney came as far as the doorway and stood leaning against the frame of it, his eyes hot and angry, waving a newspaper wildly over his head.

"Of all the damned dirty businesses," he cried, "this is the damnedest and dirtiest I ever got up against! 'Combined attack," he quoted, striking the printed words with his fist. "Do you know the name of that combination? Dermott McDermott, that's its name. There may be a few others mixed up in it—Marix, for instance—for looks only. But it's McDermott at the bottom; this same McDermott mother's always tellin' me to imitate. Damned rascal! He's hated Mr.

He was too excited to sit down, but walked back and forth, talking loudly with excited gestures.

"Mr. Ravenel got back from Europe only three days ago, Tuesday, and in the evening he sent for me to come to the Savoy. Miss Katrine, I've never seen so dreadful a change in any one. He was like an old man. The look of death was on him, and he said he'd sent for me to cheer him up with my talk."

The boy was unable to continue for the sobs which shook him, and he covered his face with his hands for a space before he could proceed.

"He'd found bad news in Europe, he told me, and wanted me to cheer him up. I stayed the night with him, and in the morning when I called him he did not answer, but just lay still and white, looking at me, unable to speak. We got Dr. Johnston right away, and telegraphed Mr. Ravenel's mother, who arrived the next day. Yesterday morning that hound Marix, whose affairs are all mixed up with McDermott's, sent this note to me."

He extended a bit of yellow paper toward her, upon which was written:

"Sell Ravenel stocks within the next twenty-four hours, and hold for the bottom to drop out of them."

"But I'll get even with him, this Marix!" Barney shrieked, in his rage. "The only reason he gives me tips is because I know something disgraceful of him! I'll publish him from one end of the country to the other! I'll send him to the penitentiary! But I can't reach McDermott! Oh," he cried, with clinched fists, "if I only could!"

"I can," Katrine said, quietly; asking, after a minute's doubting, "You're sure it is Dermott McDermott who is at the foot of the trouble?"

"Who else has the money or the reasons to make such an attack?" he demanded of her as an answer. "And Marix as good as told me McDermott had some big deal on against the Ravenel interests last month."

She stood looking up at him, the folded yellow paper in her hand, driven by race instinct to fight in the open, to get into the enemy's country, especially if McDermott were the enemy.

With an angry light in her eyes she called for a storm-cloak and demanded a cab, setting Nora and her remonstrances aside with abrupt decision. Giving the cabman the address of Mc

"Come in!" he called, curtly.

She entered to find him alone, standing by the window looking absent-mindedly over the snowy chimney-tops, as though projecting a holiday.

"By all the saints at once!" he cried, gayly, at sight of her. "Here have I been ruminating on the sins of the fathers; on the triumphant fifth act, with vice punished and virtue rewarded at the fall of the curtain, when you enter!" And here her silence and pallor and accusing eyes stopped his talking. "What is it, Katrine?" he demanded.

"Did you bring this trouble to Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, her eyes filled with a dangerous light which in a second was matched by the blaze in his.

"

"Forgive me, McDermott!" she cried. "Oh, forgive me! I want no further proof. Your face is enough for me. But I'm beside myself with grief."

"I suppose," he continued, "that you reasoned I was capable of this because of that affair about the land on the other side of the river?"

"I did think of it," Katrine admitted. "Forgive me for it, Dermott, but I did think of it!"

"Do you know for whom I bought that land,

"Oh, Dermott!" she pleaded, the Irish form of speech coming back to her. "You'll just be forgiving me, won't you?" She put her hand on his sleeve and looked up at him with imploring eyes. "You must know how great and good I still believed you to be when I tell you that I came to you to ask you to help him. I've some money—the Countess, you know," she explained—"and I thought if you'd faith in my voice—and ye've said often that ye have—that if"—she broke into a storm of weeping—"if you'd just lend him the money that's needed I could sing the debt clear in the years to come."

Dermott looked down at the bowed head upon his old desk, his eyes moist, his lips twitching.

"Perhaps," he broke in, the angry light still in his eyes, "ye'll tell me who accuses me of this business?"

For answer she extended toward him the yellow paper which Barney had given her, signed with John Marix's initials.

"And so you believed Barney, although ye know his weakness for jumping at conclusions? Ye must have believed him, for my name's

"He told me Mr. Marix had intimated to him that you were behind the attack."

"Ah! and so it's Marix that's been misusing my name, is it?" he cried, his eyes narrowed. "I'll settle with him!" And then, "Ye love Ravenel, Katrine?"

"Yes," she answered: "there's just nothing else in life for me."

"And after all that's gone between him and me, you are asking me to help him?"

"Dermott," she said, gravely, sobbing between the words, "I came to you because I have always known the greatness, the selflessness of you, and I trust you."

They stood in silence, not looking at each other.

"I have no one else," she went on. "There is no one else in the world I trust as I do you."

He held himself more erect at the words, a great light in his face.

"You are the only one who has always, always been kind to me," she continued, "and I'd give all there is of me to come to you, heart whole, as your wife. But I can't do it, Dermott, I can't do it! I've tried; no one knows how I tried to forget this love in my heart. I studied to forget, willed to forget, but"—and here she spoke the truth of life—"when great love has once been between a man and a woman, the man may forget, but the woman never. I've wealth and beauty, they say, and gift, and they're all just nothing to me except to help him. Before I'd been two days at the Van Rensselaer's it was just as it had been in Carolina. It was only fear that kept me from saying I'd marry him."

"He wants to marry you now? He has asked you?" Dermott spoke softly for her sake, keeping from his voice the scorn he felt for Ravenel.

"Yes," she returned. "And I know all you're thinking; but it makes no difference! When I think of him, ill, perhaps dying, his fortune gone, and nameless, maybe, as well, I'd give my soul to save him!" she cried, tear-eyed and pale, but glorious in self-abnegation.

She had risen and stood before him with eyes uplifted and unseeing. For a moment only she stood thus, before, the strain of the time proving too great for her to endure longer, she turned suddenly, and but for his supporting arm would have fallen. For a little while her dear, dark head lay against his breast, a moment never to be forgotten by him, though with stoical delicacy he refrained from thoughts which might have

"Go home, little girl," he said. "Go home and be at peace. I give my word to help him. I give my word that all, so far as I can make it, will be well with him."

"Ah," she cried, "you are so good, so good!"

He made no answer whatever, standing gray-faced by the window, looking into the storm without as she drew her cloak about her.

"Good-bye," she said.

"I'll take you to the carriage," he answered, quietly. "The storm is still violent, I see."

Coming back to the office, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat beside the dying fire alone. In the outer room he could hear the click of poker dice, could even distinguish the voices of the players, but they seemed far off. Life itself seemed slipping from him. Suddenly he threw himself face downward on the rug in front of the fire and lay shivering, catching his breath every little while in dry sobs, impossible for any one to endure for long. Every little while he clutched the edge of the rug in his sinewy hand, not knowing in his agony what he did. The dreams and

All night and far into the morning he lay. About five, the storm outside having died away, the gray light began showing faintly at the window edges, and with the coming of the dawn the soul of the man gripped him and demanded an accounting. "Was this the way he helped?" he asked himself, accusingly.

By chairs and desk, for his strength was spent, he reached a small cabinet, and, finding a certain powder, took one, and, after a little while, another. Then he felt his pulse, timing it by the watch as he did so. Satisfied, he crossed the room to a safe, and with uncertain hands placed package after package of papers on the desk in careful order. Last, from an inner compartment, he took one labelled "Ravenel," and stood looking at it with speculative eyes.

The case was so complete. Quantrelle and his brother, a curé of Dieppe, of known integrity, had sworn themselves as witnesses, through an open window, of Madame de Nemours' mar

"God forgive me!" he cried, as he sat down to write the following letter:

DEAR RAVENEL,—You will remember, I said in my last interview that the matter upon which we spoke could not be fully proven until I received further letters from France. They have come, and I hasten to write you that the marriage we spoke of was not a legal one, the witness, Quantrelle Le Rouge, being a great liar. It is thoroughly proven. Pray give yourself no more anxiety on the subject, and forgive me for doing what my duty prompted me to do. The thing is completely by with as far as I am concerned, and I have burned all of the papers relative to the matter. With best wishes for your complete restoration to health, I remain,

He folded the letter and sealed it, a curious smile upon his lips as he did so. Afterward he

About eight he went to his hotel, bathed, dressed himself for the day, and neither of the facts that his heart was breaking, nor that he was about to shake the money market of New York, prevented him from regarding himself critically in the mirror to see if he showed suffering, nor from changing his neck-scarf to one of gallant red.

Underneath the bitterness of his heart lay a desire to square accounts with Marix. But it was part of his nature to excuse the weak, and on the way down to Wall Street the remembrance of the broker's timid-looking wife and the three little ones came to him. It was easy, after all, to forgive. Marix was too unintelligent to understand that it paid to be honest. "Perhaps," he reasoned, "God meant that even the fools and traitors should be helped, too."

Going into the stock-room, he looked over the quotations of the day before in an unimportant manner, waiting for Marix to come in.

"Hello! Hello!" he cried, at sight of him, with a genial laugh, putting a hand on each of the little broker's shoulders and looking down

The blue light of battle was in his eyes; his hat was far back on his head and his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he waited for the gong to call him to the fight. He saw that many were regarding him curiously, and his cheeks flushed with the Celtic instinct to do the thing well—dramatically well. He knew that, in the long night vigil, part of him had died forever, but with chin well up, like a knight of old, he went, at the sound of the great bell, to battle for the happiness of the woman he loved.

XXVII

SELF-SURRENDER

When Katrine returned to her apartment after her visit to Dermott, she found Nora, with an excited countenance, waiting for her at the door. Finger on lip, she indicated a wish for Katrine to follow to her bedroom.

"Miss Katrine," she said, closing the door by backing against it, "there's one waiting for you. And you must think quick whether ye want to see her—with all that it may mean to you—with the rehearsal to-night. Though, poor lady, God knows her troubles! It's Mrs. Ravenel," she concluded.

"Alone?" Katrine asked.

"Yes, and with the tears streaming from her eyes and the look of death on her face. Mr. Frank's dyin', they say. But I want you to think—to think for yourself, Miss Katrine. Remember the night in Paris, when the world hung on your voice! Think of the afternoon when the

"Oh, Nora!" cried Katrine, reproachfully, "how can any one think of a voice in a time like this?"

As Katrine entered, Mrs. Ravenel turned from the fire by which she was standing and came toward her with outstretched hands.

Her eyes were red with weeping, and there was a hurried, despairing note in her voice as she spoke. "Katrine Dulany," she said, "I've come to you for help." Years of thought could not have given her better words, and the strong, young hands enfolded the cold ones of the suffering mother.

"If there is anything I can do for you, I will do it, oh, so gladly!" Katrine answered.

"Frank is very"—Mrs. Ravenel hesitated, as though lacking courage to speak her fears—"perhaps dangerously ill. For nearly two months the trouble has been coming on—ever since he

"There is nothing not forgiven," Katrine said. "I would give my life to save him," and the two clung to each other, weeping, before setting out, wifehood and motherhood, to battle with death.

Well hidden by the curtains, Nora watched Katrine enter the carriage after Mrs. Ravenel, realizing, with more anger than she had ever felt, all that the going meant. She had hoped that after a few years of the singing Katrine's heart would turn to Dermott, and as she saw her hopes fade away she shook her head knowingly, with even a touch of vindictive satisfaction.

"There are two kinds of men," she reflected, her eyes on the departing carriage: "the man who wants a woman to put her head on his shoulder, and the man who wants to put his head on a woman's shoulder. And when a girl's fool enough to like the last kind best, she generally pays."

XXVIII

UNDER THE SOUTHERN PINES ONCE MORE

When Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine entered Frank's apartments they found Dr. Johnston by the window of the sitting-room, and, with no spoken word, Katrine knew he had been waiting for her to come. His face bespoke more than professional anxiety; it bore a look of sorrow and the dread of losing a dear friend.

According Katrine but a scant nod of recognition, he crossed to the door of the sleeping-room, and, after looking in, made a gesture, stealthy and cautious, for Katrine to enter.

The room was dark save for a night light. Frank's face was turned toward her, his eyes closed. One hand, helpless, unutterably appealing, lay outside the white cover, and at sight of him thus it seemed her heart would break.

With a swift movement she knelt beside the bed, waiting to take the poor, tired head upon her

"Dear," she said.

There was silence, and then: "It is worth all—it is worth all—for this," he whispered. "Touch me, Katrine!"

And she laid her cheek on his.

"Katrine?"

"Yes, dear."

"You will stay? I will try to sleep now if you will touch me. Katrine, you will not slip away?"

"I shall stay until you are quite well, beloved."

At three in the morning he awoke with a shiver. "Where are you?" he called. "Where are you, Katrine?"

"Here," she answered, laying a hand on his cheek.

"Ah, thank God!"

It was over a month before Mrs. Ravenel and Katrine were able to take Frank south, where he longed to be. The St. Petersburg engagement was cancelled, and the Metropolitan manager, angry at Katrine's forgetfulness to notify him that she could not sing the night Mrs. Ravenel

There was a splendid Celtic recklessness in the way she surrendered everything for him, a generosity which Mrs. Ravenel saw with commending eyes, believing it, by some strange mother-reasoning, to be but just. But Frank was far from taking the same attitude in the matter. Almost the first day he was able to be wheeled on the great piazza in the sunshine he spoke to Katrine of the time she must soon leave, to keep the St. Petersburg engagements.

"I have no St. Petersburg engagements," she explained, briefly. "I cancelled them."

He sat with closed eyes, but she saw the tears between the lids as he spoke. "I have not had the courage to tell you," he said, at length, slowly, "before, but all that McDermott said is true, Katrine."