Front matter (continued 4)

"I'm a better critic than I am a poet," said Wright, after a time. "I think you have a gift, Mavis. This," he flicked the paper with a thumb and finger, "has grace and delicacy. It's not good, of course,—not according to—well, say, Bill's standards,—but it has promise. I won't tell Bill, if you'd rather not, although I think he would help you a great deal—and I'm sure he'd go quite out of his head with excitement. May I see, sometime, anything else you have? Only, for the love of Mike, what's the idea of being so morbid? Haven't you happier things to write about, child?"

I put my hand over his,

"Sure you won't tell?" I begged.

"I swear, by all the Muses," he replied, "Bill shall never know, from me."

"Know what?" asked Bill, appearing disconcertingly around the tree.

I snatched my hand from Wright's and felt myself grow scarlet. We must both have looked guilty, for Wright's guileless blonde face reflected my embarrassment.

"Secret!" said Wright, firmly.

"Oh, I see."

Bill glanced from one to the other of us, to the paper in Wright's hand, and then considerately walked off.

"Lunch is ready," he remarked, over his shoulder. "Been calling you for about ten minutes."

Wright helped me to my feet.

"Close call," he said.

"Hush!" I said, for my husband was still within ear-shot.

"Is he always like that?" asked Wright, anxiously, as we went toward the house.

"Like what?" I asked, in all innocence.

"Positively green-eyed with rage if you are alone for half a minute with another man—even so harmless a specimen as myself?"

"Don't be silly," said I, with finality.

"I'm not, and if he is going to be jealous as all that, why don't you get to him first before he can accuse you, and demand that he cease baying at the moon with that human leopardess who vamps around these diggings?"

"She'll be here this afternoon, on a visit," I announced, laughing. "Why don't you monopolize her yourself?"

"I never went in for that kind," said Wright with firmness. "I might get scratched. Gentle and soft-spoken, that's my type. Besides, Miss Howells is going to look just like her mother, and that's a warning to any man!"

That afternoon Mercedes arrived. Her bag proved to be a trunk, and within an hour of her arrival, she had charmed the kitchen, made eyes at Silas, called Wright by his first name, hurt her finger—with resultant medical attention, and confided to me that she "hated men!"

After which, she departed in the direction of the palm-grove with "Billy" and "Wright."

I went to her room and viewed her gowns, hanging, like flowers, in her innovation steamer-trunk. After which, I went to my own room and took stock of my chiffon and satin armor.

Bill came back at tea time.

"Wright is reciting poetry to Mercedes on the stone bench under the orchids, and sketching her between verses," he announced, "but I crave more material food."

"You might have stayed on," I suggested, passing him the sandwiches, "and made the recitation competitive."

"Competitive," he remarked, choosing a ripe, red disk of tomato, flanked with thin circles of bread, and biting into it reflectively, "calls for numbers. I don't enjoy being part of a mob-scene, or a mass-meeting."

"Here comes the Meistersänger," I said, as Wright came up the steps, with Mercedes unnecessarily on his arm.

Selecting chairs, cups, plates and food, our guests joined us around the wicker tea-wagon.

"He is not a nice young man at all," said Mercedes frankly, exhibiting a rather clever little pastel of herself, "this Wright. He says to me the most beautiful poetry, so sad and so lovely, all about unrequited love and dead girls floating in moonlit pools, and when, touched to the heart, I weep a little, he laughs and says it is wonderful how much tragedy one can turn out at fifty cents a line!"

She opened ocular fire on her host as she spoke, and Bill responded nicely.

"I'm sure," he said gravely, "that Wright will have plenty of happier inspiration now."

And said Wright to me, under his breath,

"In all justice, one must concede her a certain amount of beauty. I don't think she's going to look like her mother after all."

"Whispering's rude," said Mercedes severely, "isn't it, Billy?"

So the conversation became general again.

At six, Bill drove over to the neighboring plantation to fetch Peterkins, who had spent the day there with the Crowell children, back to supper. When he returned, he looked rather serious.

"What's up?" asked Wright idly, from the canvas verandah swing.

"Nothing much," he answered, "that is, not yet. Run along to Sarah, Peter,—there's a good fellow."

But I knew that something was wrong, and after the child had left us, I asked quietly,

"Tell us, Bill, please!"

"Crowell's been having some trouble with the natives," he answered, frowning. "It may blow over—and it may spread. They're like a lot of sheep. But I feel responsible to Reynolds, even if Silas is in charge. The people have a healthy respect for Silas, and they trust him,—but—"

"What sort of trouble?" asked Wright, practically.

"Oh, threats—and little gatherings—and demonstrations. They are always restless, and the slightest thing sets them off. Crowell discharged one of his surliest men the other day. Unfortunately, the chap is related to half Guayabal. We've some of his cousins and brothers and uncles on this place, I suppose! Anyway, this Miguel person has been going about trying to incite the people to open enmity against the resident Americans. Of course, it probably won't amount to a hill of beans, but you never know where you stand."

"Haven't they just finished a comic-opera revolution here?" asked Wright. "Seems to me I read something about it."

"There are always uprisings," answered Mercedes, covering a yawn, "generally in the eastern districts—nearer Santiago. They are like children, these people."

She turned, with a shrug which dismissed the subject, to Bill.

"Come," she urged prettily, "play my accompaniment for me. I want to sing you some of the old songs my little, Spanish grandmother taught her grandchildren."

We had a little while before we need dress for dinner, and so Bill followed her obediently into the living-room, and presently, her light, sweet voice floated out to Wright and me on the verandah.

"Sings well, doesn't she?" said Wright.

But I was not attending.

"Doesn't Bill seem worried to you?" I asked, more casually than my mental state warranted.

"Who? Bill? Why no, I don't think so," he answered, absently. "He's probably put all this native business out of his head by now. Bill's not an alarmist. Wonder what that song is—quaint, isn't it?"

But I was not satisfied, and after dinner, I deliberately found an opportunity, contrary to custom, to speak with my husband alone.

"About the Crowell plantation," I said, "is there any danger to them from the natives—to us?"

"There is always more or less danger," he answered, with the formal courtesy which had recently characterized all of our infrequent, unattended encounters, "but I do not think we need worry. Still, I shall forbid Peter to go out in the fields, or beyond the house alone, and I must ask you also to be careful. I'm sorry to curtail your freedom—but, if you don't mind—?"

Perversely, I suddenly "minded" very much.

"I won't run any risks," I answered, with mental reservations.

"There you two are again! Sneaking off, whispering, heads together! Aren't you just a little tired of twosing by now?"

It was Wright, coming up behind us. I thought I detected a little, cynical gleam in Mercedes' eyes, and laid my hand defiantly on Bill's arm.

"Are you tired?" I asked him gaily.

He laid his free hand over mine.

"Do men tire of life?" he counter questioned, gallantly, and I knew a swift admiration for his histrionic powers. For his voice went a little deep, quite suddenly, and the hand over mine shook.

"Nice answer," said Wright critically, "quite emotional, but open to argument. Of course men tire of life. Some of them commit suicide, some of them drink, others get married! The remedy is entirely according to temperament."

"Horrid man!" said Mercedes, pouting. And answering amiably, "Am I not?" Wright guided her to the bridge table, having persuaded her at dinner that, with him as partner, she could trump his ace to her heart's content.

As we followed them, Bill said, very low,

"Remember—not to go out alone, Mavis."

"I'll remember," I answered, non-committally, and we sat down to the cards.

It was interesting to observe that Mercedes, her previous assertions to the contrary, played a much better game than any of us, excepting, perhaps, Bill.

So, after all, it had been from choice and not lack of knowledge, that she had not joined the game the night of the dinner. Which looked as if someone else had been manoeuvering besides myself. But I forgave her. She was so pretty that one could not expect her to always play quite "according to Hoyle."

CHAPTER XVI

I arrived in the kitchen the following morning, to discuss luncheon with Norah, and found the entire kitchen-force massed at the screened-door, watching Mercedes coquetting with Arthur. There was a temptation to draw an analogy between the brilliantly-plumaged, addle-pated bird and the decorative girl who stood at the cage-door, poking her white fingers perilously through the wiring and cooing to him in softest Spanish. It must be admitted, that weeks of painstaking effort on my part to win Arthur to a display of friendliness toward me, had resulted in nothing. But ten minutes with Mercedes had proved his undoing: the bird was positively maudlin. I came out to the cage, and at once the half-closed orbs of Arthur underwent an unflattering change. He opened them to their widest and bleakest and said, hoarsely sarcastic, "Pretty darling! Darling! Bow-wow-wow! Carramba!" at which Mercedes exclaimed delightedly,

"Oh, isn't he clever! Who taught him that?"

"The swearing, or the pet names?" I answered, stooping to say goodmorning to Wiggles, "I haven't the remotest idea."

"Billy?" suggested my guest, touching her perfectly dressed hair with highly manicured finger-tips.

"Possibly," I answered. "He invariably barks and then swears at me, before luncheon."

"Billy or Arthur?" inquired Mercedes with interest.

I laughed.

"Have you seen either of the men this morning?" I asked. "I heard them go out early."

"They went to Crowell's," she answered. "I saw them off. They will not be back before tea, Billy told me."

I tried to look as if I had heard these plans before, and merely forgotten them for a moment.

"How nice!" I said, insincerely, "We will have a nice, long day together—with no disturbing male element," I added maliciously.

"I will like that too," said Mercedes, with great unexpectedness. "You never let me talk to you alone, Mavis, and" she finished with a funny little undercurrent of wistfulness in her pretty voice, "I have no friends my own age—women friends, I mean."

I had grown to be a little annoyed at my guest, but somehow, her simple statement opened up a vista before me which I had not dreamed existed. The child seemed, after all, hungry for companionship. It was out of the question that she should find it with her own indolent mother, who treated her as if she were half plaything and half infant; or with her father, whose attitude toward her was a curious commingling of affectionate despotism and anxiety: and the basis on which she met all her many men-satellites was not one guaranteed to produce comradeship.

I put my arm through hers and took her into the kitchen with me. After my inconsiderable domestic task was completed, we went out on the verandah together, armed with sewing. Mercedes sewed beautifully, an art which her early convent education had taught her, and I took a real aesthetic pleasure in watching the smooth, dark head, bent over the fine linen in her lap.

"What are you making?" I asked her, idly.

She exhibited the very feminine garment: exquisitely embroidered and sewn with the most exact and even of tiny stitches.

"I wish I could sew like that," I said, enviously, "but I should think you would ruin your eyes."

She raised to mine the tremendous pools of liquid darkness in question.

"But no," she said. "All Spanish girls are clever with the needle. The Sisters taught me when I was very young."

I had been, with the Howells, to one of the convents near Havana, and I recalled now the sweet, patient faces of the nuns, and the marvelous work they showed us. Some of it lay in one of my trunks now, a present to Mrs. Goodrich from Bill and me. The thought of Mercedes behind the austere cloister walls was incongruous.

"Were you long with the nuns?" I asked her.

"Seven years," she answered, and then, amazingly, "I was very happy there—for a long time I wanted to take the veil, but Father was simply horrified at the idea."

I was somewhat horrified myself.

"I can't imagine it," I said flatly.

"Why?"

I didn't answer for a moment, and she went on,

"But I know why—you think me very light and frivolous, do you not, Mavis?"

"It would be difficult," I answered cautiously, "to imagine you as a nun!"

"They are good women," she said, and was silent.

Suddenly I realized that I knew very little more about this girl than I had known on the boat coming down to Havana, and yet, I had been with her almost constantly ever since.

"Didn't you care for college?" I inquired, rather diffidently.

Her great eyes lighted up.

"It was wonderful—in some ways—" she said slowly, "so many girls, of all classes, gathered together. At first I could not understand. At home, you know, one is very careful whom one knows. It is changing a little now. I remember I was scandalized, my first months at college, to find that the President of the Senior class was a waitress in one of the campus houses—actually waiting on the table! It was too incredible! I wrote home, and Mother begged Father to send for me at once. She was even more shocked than I! But Father laughed, she said, and told her it would do me good. He said it was high time that a little of my American blood came to the fore. Later I learned that this girl, the Senior President, had practically worked her way through the four years of college. She was the daughter of a very poor man—a peasant, we would call him. And yet there was hardly a girl in that great college who would not have given everything she had for the respect and admiration and love which that quiet, plain-featured girl had won and held from students and faculty alike."

"You too?" I asked.

"I, too," said Mercedes simply. She bent her head a little lower over the white fabric in her lap and went on, not quite clearly. "I was not very popular. Some liked me, yes. They even asked me to their homes for the shorter vacations. But they liked me because I was 'different': because it was 'smart' to say that they had a Spanish-American girl as a friend: or because I was pretty and bright and did not care much to study. But I made no real friendships."

I was, by now, very interested. Here was a cross-section of life that I had no knowledge of. A feeling of sympathy stirred in me: this gay, alien little creature, with the blood of two widely dissimilar nations warring in her, coming fresh from her convent to the democratic freedom of an American college. I said,

"Tell me a little about it all, Mercedes. I only know college-life second hand, for, as perhaps Bill has told you, I was a helpless invalid for eleven years. But I was fortunate in my friends, although I had few of my own age, and in a Father who was my greatest playfellow and my most understanding comrade."

The quick, facile tears rose to the big eyes. She pulled her chair a little closer and laid her warm, vibrant hand on mine.

"I didn't know," she said. "I'm so sorry. Billy told me that you had been ill—but I didn't dream.—You're wonderful, Mavis," she said, "delicate and lovely as an orchid. I always feel clumsy and too highly-colored beside you. And you have been so kind and sweet—"

I grew very remorseful: my feelings toward Mercedes Howells had been anything but "kind and sweet." They had been distinctly critical and almost unfriendly. For the first time, I did not resent her easy use of my husband's given name: for the first time I realized the old truth that to know people is to like them.

I gave the narrow, high-bred hand a little squeeze.

"Don't be silly, child," I said lightly. "And tell me more about your American impressions."

"You sound just like the reporter who came on the boat, my first trip North," said Mercedes, with a little giggle. "Such a nice young man! But the things he put in the paper about me! 'Beautiful Spanish-American heiress screams with delight at the first glimpse of her father's country.' I didn't really scream," she explained conscientiously, "but I talked more than I should have. Father wrote me quite an angry letter about it. He is very well known," she added, without pride, "and it annoyed him. He says no woman can hold her tongue, anyway! But how was I to know that the nice young man was a reporter?"

I had a vision of Mercedes, hands flying, eyes everywhere, babbling and bubbling for the New York Press. It was too amusing. No wonder Mr. Howells had been 'annoyed.'

"Go on," I said encouragingly.

"The girls I went home with," she said, after a while, "they lived in wonderful houses and had such beautiful clothes. But I didn't like them, somehow. You see, at home we are very strictly brought up. After a girl is out, she has some freedom, of course, and, after she marries, it is quite different—she can do as she likes. And until Father had insisted upon my being educated in the States, my Mother had had all the care of me. And I was brought up as the Spanish girls are, as my Mother was in her own Madrid. These American girls I visited thought of nothing but good times. They spoke no language but their own—"

"How many do you speak, Mercedes?" I interrupted, curiously.

"English, Spanish, French, of course," she answered, "and a little smattering of Italian and German. I had governesses until I was ten, and then I went to the convent. And much emphasis was laid on languages."

I suppressed a gasp, and she went on.

"It was from them—my college friends—that I learned that it is easy to deceive one's parents. And that it is quite right and proper to have as many cavaliers as one can. 'Scalp-hunting' they called it—"

I thought of Mercedes' not inadept efforts along the line of scalps, and thinking, asked,

"But haven't Spanish girls—and girls all over the world—very much the same ambitions along that line?"

Mercedes knitted her brows, and as she looked at me, I was startled, for, for the first time, I saw in her a very definite resemblance to her father. There was a strength of jaw there, to which the rounded, soft chin had blinded me: a certain Northern keenness in the Southern eyes.

"Why yes," she answered, "but it is—to marry that they—shall I say—hunt? But it was not that with my New York friends. They had no desire to marry: many of them told me that they would hate being tied down, that they disliked children. No, it was not to marry—but merely to play and to be amused—"

I laughed.

"It's the motive then," I said, "that makes the difference in your eyes?"

"Of course," she said frankly. "To marry, to have a family, to be mistress in one's own home, that is—"

"The legitimate ambition of every woman," I concluded for her.

"Si, Senora," she answered, laughing in spite of herself.

"But," I argued, "you must have met other American girls whose interest was not solely centered in the fine art of flirtation."

"I understood them—those you speak of, even less!" said Mercedes guilelessly. "My roommate was such a one. She wanted to be an engineer just fancy! And she was so pretty too!"

"An engineer!" I ejaculated, for even to my American mind this was an unusual ambition for my sex to harbor. "And she had no use for men, too?" I asked.

"That was just it," said Mercedes, in obvious wonderment. "She had any number of men friends: corresponded with them, saw them at dances: they even called upon her at college. But a flirt she was not. They were her friends, she said. And she was like another boy with them. I went to her home once, a little town in Massachusetts, and I could not understand her at all. She was like a sister to her mother, a son to her father, and a comrade to her dance-partners. It was too amazing!"

There was the whole thing in a nutshell, I thought. She could understand but not condone the promiscuous flirtations of her American sisters: but the girl who was comrade to a man, and friend, and who looked on him as such, and not as an extra "scalp" or a possible husband, was beyond her comprehension.

"But," I argued, "returning to the butterflies, surely, Mercedes, you have quite as much freedom now as any American girl. And, forgive me, my dear, but you employ it in much the same manner."

Her glance was mischievous and rather child-like.

"That has only been since my return home," she said. "Mother is not pleased, but Father says, 'let her go ahead.' And—as to what you say, I am trying very hard to be American now."

"Not the comrade sort, such as your mechanical roommate?" I suggested.

She regarded me in amazement.

"But most of the men I meet are Cubans," she stated. "Do you think they would understand it—if I could be like that little Mary Adams?"

I considered, shook my head.

"Of course not," she said, answering her own question. "They would laugh and shrug—and be, perhaps, disagreeable. They can accept such a manner in an American girl. They do not like it, or comprehend it, but some of them have learned their lesson. And they must respect it. But—in a Spanish girl—it would be unthinkable. Besides," she added frankly, "I couldn't—"

She was right. Temperamentally unfit, emotionally too highly developed.

"And—as to the flirting," she said shyly, "I—I like to attract people. I like to make them laugh and say nice things. And perhaps my American friends have taught me something of their methods."

"And your motive—?" I asked.

She stretched her graceful arms wide. Her hair had a blue sheen in the shaded light of the verandah and her skin was magnolia-white.

"I haven't any!" said Mercedes frankly.

"Not even a small gold band in the perspective?" I said.

She looked down at her ringless hands: at the heap of fragrant linen lying in her lap.

"This is to be part of my trousseau," she answered, indirectly, "part of what you call a 'Hope Chest.' All girls of my class sew a great deal and lay it all away until they marry. And, after all, I am not like my New York cousins, for where they say 'perhaps—when I get tired of playing,' I say, 'someday, when I meet the right man.' And so, you see, I am not like my Mother's people either—not quite. For they say, 'someday when my parents are satisfied—and let us hope it will be soon!'"

I didn't wonder that Bill—that the men found her charming. The mixture of innocence and sophistication, the innate and the acquired worldliness was really delicious.

"Do you talk to many people like this?" I asked curiously.

"Of course not," she answered, wide-eyed. "I know of no one who would understand. There are times," she admitted, with a little sigh, "When I really do not understand myself."

At the luncheon table I found myself looking at Mercedes, half as if she were a stranger, half as if she were an old friend.

"I envy you and Bill, Mavis," she said, once, when Fong had left the room, "you have so much to make you happy. He's a very lucky man."

I smiled. It was not a subject on which I wished to be interrogated.

"And you," she went on, "are a lucky girl. He's awfully fine, that husband of yours."

She played for a moment with her tea-spoon, and looked at me, rather pathetically.

"I like the way American men are with their wives," she said, "I wish I could have met a Billy—"

I might have responded that, in a few months' time, my husband would be legally free to take an interest in such remarks, but I refrained.

"You must have met a number of men, in two years," I said.

"Not Billies," she answered firmly, "awfully young they were, and—" she paused.

Fong came in just then, and the conversation took a more discreet turn. After luncheon, siesta-ing in the two big swings down among the palms, I brought up the subject again.

"So, after all," I said, "the 'right man' must be an American, Mercedes?"

I had not calculated on the effect of my idle words. A vivid scarlet spread to the roots of the black hair.

"On the boat," she answered, "we talked, your Bill and I—and since then, also. And I have learned a little of the reverence for women that your fine men have: a little of the way they guard and protect them—not by bars and bolts and commands, but by love and chivalry and thoughtfulness. I have seen that too, in my Father, a little. But, after all, my Father married Mother, and so, it is different with him. And he has never talked to me as he would to the daughter, perhaps, of an American wife—"

I thought of my own Father and knew a swift pang of pity, for this rather rudderless little craft.

"It was through Billy that I got to know you," Mercedes went on—"he was always talking about you. And you—you always held me off—"

Something very warm and sweet crept into my heart, and I put my hand out, across the space between.

"I'm sorry," I said, "awfully sorry, Mercedes,—you see, perhaps I wasn't quite used to girls."

"You'll really be my friend now?" she asked, naïvely: and I was conscious that I spoke the whole truth as I answered,

"I am your friend, Mercedes,—never doubt it."

Our hands clasped on that, and within ten minutes, her quiet breathing told me that she slept. I lay awake a little longer, thinking very hard. So Bill had really seen the best of her after all. He had not told me, for I had never tried to know, even second hand. He would have let me go on believing the girl to be heartless and silly, and admiration-loving, nothing else. It was not fair! And then I stopped to realize that I had not wanted to believe her anything else. Before I fell asleep, I had absolved Mercedes Howells from deliberately trying to flirt with my husband. She would have been my friend more than his, had I wished her to be. Failing that, she had turned to the person, who, oddly enough, had apparently comprehended her little complexities. I looked over at the serene face, the heavy, white lids, with their weight of dark lashes, folded over the big eyes. A little smile curved the lovely, full mouth, and she slept, as a child sleeps, one hand under her soft cheek.

It was very still. The palm leaves rustled faintly over my head, and the sunlight fell hot and golden through the trees. My eyes closed in spite of myself, and with a very tender impulse toward my new friend, I turned on my side and slept.

CHAPTER XVII

"What are you two girls whispering about?" asked Wright, coming up behind us on the glassed-in porch of the Country Club.

"It is none of your affairs," responded Mercedes with dignity, "but as you are so rude as to ask, I will tell you that the last affair of the season is to be held at the home of Consuelo Mendez—a ball—next week. And I have asked Mavis if she will let me steal you for the evening—provided you have no objection. It will be amusing, I think, and you will meet many pretty girls."

"As to that, I would not have to leave Guayabal," said Wright politely, "but I am honored that you implore my escort—"

"Implore!" said Mercedes with scorn.

"Be careful," I warned. "She'll withdraw her invitation. And I'm sure you'd have a wonderful time. I shan't go, of course, although Senora Mendez has been gracious enough to include me in the invitation. And Bill declares he is too old for such festivities. But I have told Mercedes she may have you—"

"And welcome?" suggested Wright, tragically.

"I shall stop on at 'The Palms' till then," said Mercedes—"Mavis has asked me. And if you will come into Havana with me the day of the dance, my Mother will be very glad to have you stay with us over that night. For it will be a late party, of course—too late for you to return to Guayabal."

"Bully," said Wright with enthusiasm, "I'd love it. What does one wear?" he asked anxiously.

"Low neck and short sleeves," answered Bill, appearing from the locker rooms.

"Wright thinks," said Mercedes pensively, "that at an affair almost entirely within the Spanish-Cuban set, the gentlemen appear attired as toreodores."

Wright looked aggrieved.

"Not at all," he contradicted, "only the Anglo-Saxon fashions for men are utterly devoid of beauty. I wish I had lived some time back—in the satin knee-breeches and lace cuff period."

"But you're bow-legged!" objected Bill insultingly.

"I am not," said Wright indignantly. "Observe!" He thrust out a far from unshapely calf, in tweed knickers. "If my extremities show a slight tendency to bow, it is merely a sign of physical strength, and many years spent in the saddle and on the base-ball diamond."

Said Mercedes to me, in an aside.

"Now, you know, my Mother would never have listened to such a discussion—in Madrid!"

"She would never have had the opportunity," I whispered back.

"To return to the Mendez ball," said Wright, raising his voice, with intent. "I thought a simple flower in my hair or thrust into my waistcoat...."

"You are an ass!" remarked Bill, yawning.

"Perhaps," conceded Wright pleasantly, "but it is a quality which keeps me much in demand."

"You will never," said Bill deliberately, "get very far in your work, old man. For one thing—you have too much money: for another, you take nothing seriously."

"How about yourself?" asked Wright, a little stirred.

Bill glanced at Mercedes, but she smiled at him and nodded.

"I have found out about you, Billy," she said, "So go ahead and talk."

"Who told you?" demanded my husband, not very angrily.

"Partly Wright—I wormed it out of him, after he had let something slip—and, more recently, Mavis."

"Mavis!" said Bill in astonishment.

I did not meet his eyes.

"Why not?" asked Mercedes. "She is bursting with pride in you, naturally. Cela va sans dire! So, after I had probed and begged a little, she let me see the book. It is very wonderful," she ended, with that utter lack of self-consciousness in expressing her emotions and opinions, which, after one was used to it, was rather endearing.

"Well, then, as you're among friends, Billy, I repeat, what about yourself?"

"I have my profession," Bill answered quietly. "I am a doctor—and I love it. It is, perhaps, my vocation—to heal and to mend, and to help. And equally, perhaps, poetry is my avocation."

"Dictionary definition of avocation is 'diversion,'" said Wright, triumphantly.

"And the definition of diversion is 'recreation'!" I put in.

"Exactly," said Bill, "re-creation. To create anew—to refresh. That is, perhaps, the mission of poetry, and applies to the poet as well as to his audience. Poetry is, for me, the language of dreams: the ceaseless search for beauty: something common to all men. For the peasant dreams as well as the inventor: the man of science, as well as the financier and the college professor who thinks of education as something bigger than is contained between the covers of a text-book. And from the soil, the shop, the laboratory, the office and the school-room great songs have been sung,—not all of them in words!"

"The financier dreams?" said Wright, incredulously. "Not much!"

"If he didn't, he wouldn't be where he is," answered Bill. "If the engineer didn't dream, the bridges would not be swung over the boiling rivers of strange countries, or the railroad tracks laid through the virgin jungle and the ageless desert—"

I had a curious sensation, listening to that even, low voice. It was as if, for the first time, I had heard Richard Warren speak.

"I guess you're right," said the other man, after a moment of silence.

"Of course I am," answered Bill. "And so, the poets dream dreams too, and try to interpret other men's dreams: those which are built in brick and stone: materialized into steel: founded in a huge office building. The grim reality of war stands for dreams sometimes. Many inarticulate poets have gone singing to the bayonet thrust. Once, a handful of people dreamed of Liberty; and the United States was their expression of that dream."

Someone drew a deep breath. It was I, perhaps.

Bill looked over at me, shaking the ash from his cigarette. And for a moment I forgot the feud between us: forgot that we were very soon to go our separate ways: forgot a number of things that I had known and I remembered only the songs that Richard Warren had sung for the world.

"It was a dream, too," said Mercedes, "which made Cuba free!"

We were grave, as, together, we four had never been through the sunny, idle days. I had the oddest feeling that between us all lay something unspoken, unnamed, intangible, as if, too, for the moment, we were closely knit together, completely en rapport.

"Well," said Wright easily, swinging the conversation back to its starting place, "It's all very well to talk. And perhaps you are more serious than I, Bill. Mind, I don't altogether admit it—but you tune your lyre to a deeper key than I do mine. I can't claim to be a poet: a versifier, yes...."

"You do yourself an injustice," I said warmly, for Wright's somewhat exotic pen-name had long since come into my knowledge and I had seen some of his magazine verse.

"You've a gift," said my husband, "not lightly to be disregarded. But you're too versatile—you paint better than you write, and there's a lot in the old parable of the talents. And, by George, you've no honest right to your talent if, in some way, you do not use it for the good of your fellow-men."

"That's what I tell him," broke in Mercedes, in a little earnest note, and blushed a rosy red.

The links were almost deserted, and the tea-hour long past. Realizing that it would be late before we reached home, I rose, reluctantly. For there had been a spirit around the table which could not easily be recaptured—and I regretted its passing.

"The tourists have practically all left," said Mercedes, on the way to the car. "Very few are here still. And the residents have already begun to go North."

"You'll practise again this year?" asked Wright of Bill, as the car drove off, and I heard my husband answer,

"That depends very much on Mavis."

"Is he to poetize or administer pills?" asked Wright, turning to me.

"Both, I hope," I answered casually. "Good doctors may not be as rare as good poets, but the combination is remarkable."

"I should think," said Mercedes, with candour, "that you would be awfully jealous...."

"Grateful lady patients?" asked Wright.

She nodded.

"I've not had the opportunity yet," I answered. "Since I've known him Bill hasn't had many patients except me—"

"Quite a serious case," remarked Wright solemnly, "one that demands incessant medical attention."

Bill laughed.

"If Mavis can stand for irregular hours and cold meals," he said, "I'll start in again when our vacation is over."

"You needn't rub it into me that I don't have to work for a living," said Wright. "Look at you, taking a year off, careless-like. 'Tisn't decent—for a doctor. I can't help it that my late lamented uncle made tin-pans successfully—and that I was his only living relative. He didn't approve of me at all," he concluded modestly, "and he thought my verses immoral, but he couldn't leave it all to charity, you know—"

"I've never lacked having more money than I needed," said Bill, as we drove through the hot, quiet night, "but I've been glad of it. If it didn't provide me with an added incentive to work, it at least allowed me to do a good deal that I otherwise could not have done."

"The Denton Free Clinic, for instance," said Wright. But Bill did not answer.

For just a second I was hurt that he hadn't told me. And then I remembered how little I knew about the man who was my husband.

Mercedes, in the front seat with Bill, asked him a question. Under the cover of their voices Wright said to me,

"I shouldn't chaff Bill like that. I don't suppose that there is another medico of his age in New York who has done so much charity-doctoring. There are districts where the people have absolutely canonized him."

"He never tells me about that side of it," I said.

"I don't suppose he would," answered Wright. "You get to know these things by chance. But he had a streak in him—even at Princeton—that made him different from the rest of us. And men who were with him at Johns Hopkins could tell you tales—"

"Bridge tonight?" said Mercedes.

I jumped. My thoughts had been very far away, filling in gaps.

"You'll have to play with me," said Wright. "I understand all your signals, Mercedes!"

"But you don't profit by them," she answered, as we came within sight of the house.

I played a wretched game that evening. I couldn't keep my mind on the cards. It was off—back at the Country Club again, listening to a poet talk of poets: it was wondering a little about the "Denton Free Clinic": and, in consequence, I revoked twice, to the extreme amusement of our opponents.

"Haven't come to the point where you swear at your wife at the bridge-table, have you Bill?" asked Wright, as he carefully took the penalty.

"No," replied my husband, "that's a form of indoor sport I could never quite understand. It doesn't seem fair—for she couldn't swear back."

"Oh, couldn't I?" said I with ardour.

"I shan't give you the opportunity," he answered. "And now, if you please, one no trump."

The game broke up rather early. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Wright and Mercedes, with the excuse that they were keenly interested in astronomy, walked out on the verandah. I told them good-night.

"You'll stay to chaperone the Irresponsibles?" I asked my husband.

"Gladly," he said, "and discreetly—from a distance."

There was something so comfortable and lovable about him that night that I suddenly wanted to tell him I was sorry that we had quarrelled, sorry that the barrier had arisen between us. But I couldn't. In one way, however, I might make amends. I said,

"I've grown awfully fond of Mercedes. I hope she will come North sometime—for the summer, perhaps. I think I misjudged her cruelly for a while."

The steel-blue eyes grew warm.

"She's a very nice child," said Bill, "and I knew you'd find it out before long. You didn't give her a chance at first. But I'm glad you like her, Mavis, for you can do her a lot of good."

"How?" I asked curiously.

"Well, for one thing, you're pretty well balanced—most of the time. And for another, you have had the advantage of a unique and splendid upbringing. And for another, you are—unless given certain circumstances—most uncommonly sweet."

He said it in a very matter-of-fact tone: and looked at his watch as he spoke—not at me. I was absurdly embarrassed.

"Are—are you a 'certain circumstance'?" I asked daringly, and escaped to my room before he could answer. I heard him start to follow me, but apparently he thought better of it. But long after I was in bed, I heard a foot-fall under my windows, the smell of a pipe drifted in through the flower-scent, and the sound of a baritone voice singing softly,

"Who is Sylvia—who is she—?"

"Is she kind as she is fair—?"

I lay for some time, listening, and finally, as the footsteps turned away and the song grew fainter, I laid my hot cheek to the pillow and slept, dreamlessly, until morning.

But when morning came, it all seemed very far away—that talk at the Country Club—and the steps below my window. Wright was in his silliest mood, and Mercedes and he kept up a running fire of foolishness. Bill was preoccupied, almost abrupt. He left us directly after lunch, on one of his now daily visits to the Crowell plantation. And Mercedes disappeared with Wright at the same time. Where they were, I do not know to this day.

I had tea alone: Peter was with Sarah, and after tea I went out restlessly and walked, stopping at old Manuel's and at Annunciata's. It was growing dark before I turned homewards again, and there was a strange lingering light in the sky which drew my attention. A great, sulphur-colored cloud, murky and ominous, not like any cloud I had ever seen. I hurried on and had reached the gates before the wind came. A rush, a tearing at trees and bushes, a tremendous sweep of hot, choking dust and air. I could hardly keep my feet, and struggled, step by step, head down, almost defenceless in the face of the storm. The wind had risen, apparently, without warning. And yet, looking back on it afterwards, I realized that, had I been a little more familiar with the vagaries of Cuban climate, I would have noticed the curious hush, the absolute stillness, expectant and breathless, which lay over Guayabal just before the storm broke. Nearing the house, I heard a tremendous crash, voices, and the sound of hurrying foot-steps. The wind was increasing in volume, and I fairly stumbled up the steps, almost falling. When my hand was finally on the door, it was wrenched open with violence, and I saw Bill on the threshold, very white, with burning blue eyes.

He caught me by the arm and pulled me into the room.

"Where have you been?" he said, furiously.

"Walking," said I, the ruins of my hat in my hand.

He made a sound in his throat, half-anger, half-impotence.

"The roof of the garage has blown off," he said. "It's a nice little storm. I have been looking for you all over the plantation. No one had any idea where you were. I found Wright and sent Mercedes in the house—she's had rather a narrow escape—from a falling tree. She's all right, but hysterical—"

"I must go to her at once," I said, starting off.

The long arm shot out and I was pulled close to the tall, lean figure.

"Just a minute," said Bill. "Mercedes is all right, as I said. Sarah is with her. But I want to ask you this ... quite aside from the danger you ran, in a wind like this, why did you disobey my express wishes and go out—alone—away from the house?"

Then I remembered.

"I—" said I, and was silent.

Bill dropped my arm.

"I suppose," he said with bitterness, "it was because I asked you not to. Very well, I've learned my lesson. You knew that Guayabal is in a very unsettled state: you knew that Crowell had had trouble on his plantation: I told you there had been threats—demonstrations. I asked you not to run any risks. That is why, I suppose, when the opportunity arose, you deliberately ignored my wishes."

"You are very unjust," I said, fighting back the tears.

"I hope so," said Bill quietly, "but I'm afraid not. It seems as if we couldn't have a whole day of peace and friendliness under the same roof. I've tried my best, Mavis, to be as little in your way as possible—to make the best of a trying situation. But at every turn you manage to antagonize me and to rebel against me. I might have known—"

He turned away and lighted a cigarette with fingers which shook.

"I'm sorry," I said, steadying my voice with an effort, "if I have annoyed you. I did not go out this afternoon with such intention."

I would have stopped there, but the lift of his shoulders angered me until I finally lost all control of myself.

"I'll not be a burden to you long," I said. "As soon as we are home again I will release you from your responsibilities. I have wanted to spare Father, but I see that I can't—you go too far. I don't know how such things are done, but it shouldn't be very difficult to obtain an annulment of our marriage. The whole thing has been a ghastly mistake ... an impulse I have regretted ever since. But it's not too late," I said, with my head held very high, "to rectify that mistake."

I walked past him into my own room. Somehow the pride that had always come to my rescue was missing now. I was just hurt—hurt, and unhappy and very lonely. To speak to me so! To look at me so, out of those steel-blue eyes! It was not just; it was not anything but deliberate cruelty!

Once having said that I would make myself free, the thing crystalized for me as it had never done before. Of course, I had meant all along to separate from my temporary husband. That was understood at the outset. But it had seemed a long way off, indefinitely vague. And now that my decision was spoken, it loomed very near. Irrevocable. I shrank, in anticipation, from the publicity of it, the questions, the prying eyes. Wright would wonder and grieve—and Mercedes—and I? I hardly knew. On Father's sorrow and self-reproach I dared not dwell. Now I had nothing left.

I rose and bathed my eyes. They were swollen from crying and my throat ached abominably. And then, with a tremendous effort, I opened my door and went out to find Mercedes.

She was in her room, shaken but quite recovered, and full of gratitude to Wright for seeing her danger and pulling her away just in time.

"Where were you?" she asked anxiously. "You weren't hurt, were you? You look dreadfully, Mavis!"

Hurt? Yes, I was hurt beyond healing. But Mercedes must not know.

"I was in no danger," I said, evasively. "I came in just as the storm was beginning."

"You heard the roof go then?" she asked. "Wasn't it awful? It is a wonder Bill wasn't killed—he was just driving the car in...."

"Bill?" I said, stupidly.

"What's the matter? Didn't he tell you? You're white as a sheet!"

She jumped up from the bed and put her arms about me.

"Mavis, are you faint? Let me call Bill!"

"Please don't," I said. "I'm all right now."

The dreadful dizziness had passed: my ears stopped singing and the room assumed its normal aspect again.

"If you don't mind," I said, "I'll lie down beside you for a bit. Please don't tell anyone. I'm nervous, I suppose, and upset."

And so, it was in Mercedes Howells' arms that I finally cried myself into calmness. And Mercedes, suddenly tender and very gentle, never asked why, and, bless her heart, never told.

CHAPTER XVIII

A day or so went by, devoid of any particular incident. If Bill and I spoke to each other at all, it was to discuss our plans for leaving Cuba. The Goodriches were returning shortly from Europe: Father sent a homesick-for-me cable from Green Hill: the weather was beginning to grow very warm: in short, a hundred and one things warned us that the Spring were better spent in the North. We fixed our departure for a day not two weeks distant, and Bill went into Havana to book our passage. Even in public we had dropped the pretence of marital banter. But Wright and Mercedes, apparently absorbed in each other, did not notice: or, if they did, kept each his and her own counsel, as far as I knew.

The lazy, sun-steeped days seemed interminable. I had, luckily, a number of things to arrange—another trunk to buy and some sewing to accomplish, with Annunciata's help. And Bill's obvious preoccupation could easily have been laid to the growing unrest in Guayabal. Mr. Crowell, an anxious, nervous, but charming person, had been more than once at "The Palms" to discuss the situation. If it had not been for my husband's sense of responsibility towards the Reynolds, I think that we should have packed up and left Cuba in short order. But he was anxious to stay on for a time longer and see Silas, and what men were loyal to their American employer, through what he hoped would prove a passing phase of revolt—or so he said.

As for me, I went through the days, weighted under a burden of uncertainty and a sorrow without name. Father's miniature, lying open on my night-table, seemed to reproach me: seemed, too, at times, to reproach himself, which was even harder to bear. "I have done my human best for you," the gentle-strong mouth seemed to say. "I have never wanted anything but your happiness, my little Mavis." And the kind, humorous eyes added, "Is it my fault that I must hear you sobbing through these long, unhappy nights?"

No, not his fault. Whose, then? I dared not ask the picture in the little leather case, for I was afraid it might answer.

"It is his fault, Father," I would defend myself mutely. "We might have been content, even happy, in a friendly way, if it had not been for him."

"It was not for Friendship alone that I gave you to him, Daughter," the answer would come, "but for something dearer, bigger, deeper. You were so young and so alien from the world. I had thought that the man to whom we both owe everything would be the one to help you through all that first difficult time: to teach you, finally, Life's loveliest lesson. And I had hoped, prayed even, that you would one day come to be to him what your Mother was to me.... There was not much time," the beloved voice went on, very sadly, "for me to make a decision. It was hard to feel I might have to leave you ... alone ... unsheltered.... How hard, you will never know ... unless some day you are called upon to leave a child of your own...."

"Father!" I begged—"Please—"

"If the mistake was mine," said the voice which still seemed to come from that unsmiling miniature, "I can only ask your forgiveness, Mavis. Even your Father, who loves you beyond all earthly things, was wrong to try and shape your destiny."

"No—no—" I sobbed.

I laid the minature on the table again. The voice in my heart had ceased to speak: There were only the pictured eyes, looking into mine from a little leather case. But for a long time, Father had talked to me so. I read between the lines of his letters and prayed that he should not read between the lying phrases of mine. Was it all lies? "I am happy," I told him again and again: and he, who knew me so well, was convinced, perhaps because, in a certain, curious sense, that much was true.

Underneath bewilderment, misunderstanding, the pinpricks of pride, and the smart of old resentments, I had been happy. It was as if I walked on a strange, new road, toward some unknown goal, some unguessed shelter. There were turnings in the path: dark places: uneven stretches: but always a bird sang, sweetly, in the distance,—the sun cleared the clouds and Adventure waited for me just around the corner. But lately, the ground had fallen away from under my very feet, and left me standing at the edge of an abyss, looking across a chasm of despair, to the far country I would never reach....

Mercedes knocked at my door, and came in.

"You've been away so long," she said, reproachfully. "Wright is going to mass with me, in the Church at Ceube. Won't you come too, Mavis?"

It's Sunday then, I thought, wondering how the days had passed, nameless and unheeded by me—every one bringing me nearer—

"Sure you want me?" I asked, and at her assurance, I got my hat and set out with her and Wright in the car.

Bill drove us down: he didn't come in, but went about other business after he had left us at the little church, solidly built of time and weather stained adobe, red-roofed, and squatly towered.

The small room was filled with people. We squeezed into an already overcrowded pew, and kneeling, I was almost drugged with the clouds of incense, and the hot, close air.

At the altar, the red-robed priest, very old and frail, intoned the ceremonial service. A full-grown altar-"boy," black as his robes, and slippered, swung the heavy censer, and looked over the audience for possible disturbances. They occurred more than once. The brown babies cooed or cried, according to their several temperaments; a mongrel dog ran in and out of the pews, at a late-comer's heels; and here and there, a black-eyed girl looked over her shoulder at some responsive cavalier who stood or knelt with the many worshippers lining the walls.

There was an amazing, almost tangible spirit in the place: a mingling of childlike devotion and equally childlike theatricalism. The people came to the service, like children to a parent, wholly natural, wholly simple, and yet not wholly devoid of a certain dramatic instinct and, above all, keenly sensitive to the sweet-scented vapor, the well-worn lace and vestments of the priest, the solemn intonation of the Mass.

Bright-winged birds flew astonishingly in and out of the open-shuttered windows: the consumptive organ wheezed and muttered: the voices of the people rose with a grave eagerness upon the heavy air. And here and there an adventurous ray of sunshine fell alike on old and young heads, lingered on the gay colors of the girls' dresses, slid like a finger of gold over the red-robed priest at the little altar, and danced across the heavy, smoky rafters of the ceiling.

Mercedes, her lovely face hidden, told her silver and pearl rosary. Wright, after his first moment of embarrassment and instinctive recoil from so much massed humanity, was engrossed in her, in his surroundings. I imagined I saw a picture shaping—a little more tender, a little more serious than anything he had done yet. And I, kneeling in the stuffy chapel with an alien people of a different expression of Faith, felt for the first time in many, many hours, a sense of release, of peace, a cooling touch on my hot and aching heart.

Mass over, the people poured, laughing, talking, gesticulating out into the thick, yellow sunshine. The half-flirtations which had deflected the thoughts of some of the younger worshippers, were renewed and pursued. A young mother sat on the steps of the church and bared her brown breast to her baby's fumbling lips. She looked a deep-eyed Madonna, as she sat there, unconscious of the people around her, a white mantilla framing her face. Her husband, a clean-featured man, taller than the average Cuban, stood behind her, smoking, his coarse white trousers dazzling in the sunshine, his bright purple "American" shirt worn like a smock, after the "dress" regulations of Guayabal on Sunday.

Bill drove up presently, and as usual, the straggling children clustered around the car. He was always dear with children—white or black, brown or yellow. They were instantly his friends.

Wiggles, riding proudly in the front seat, created quite a sensation, and Mercedes, climbing in to hold him in her pretty, primrose-dimity lap, had great difficulty in restraining him.

"Where is his collar, Mavis?" she asked, clutching the frantic dog to her demure, white frills.

"He was uncomfortable with it, in the heat," I answered. "Weren't you, Wigglesworth? So I took it off—"

The car gave a sudden leap—and I knew that Bill had been listening for my answer; knew that he knew that I could not throw innocent Wiggles away, but that, when the mask had fallen from Richard Warren, I had, in a fit of anger, taken away the too-significant collar. It was in my trunk—but sometimes I wondered what had happened to my lucky charm of cool, green jade—flung from my window in a moment of pure rage.

Once, I had looked for it—the day after Mercedes and I had siesta-ed in the palm-grove—not since.

When we had arrived home, Wright drew me mysteriously aside.

"Let me see those last two poems of yours again, will you, Mavis?" he said. "One of the men I was at college with wants me to go in with him on a book-shop and publishing venture—you know, odd books, quaintly bound, and all that sort of thing. He has his eye on a place in Greenwich Village, and just the right, short-haired, but delusively shrewd girl to run it—the shop end, I mean."

"What do you want the verses for?" I asked suspiciously.

Wright grinned.

"If I am to be the Angel in this affair," he said, "how could I employ celestial qualities better than to boost my friends—and incidentally, myself? We can collect your poems, publish them in a sufficiently bizarre edition to attract attention—and, without letting Mr. John Denton's solid and conservative firm into the secret—you can astonish your husband, by Christmas, say, with a book of your own."

"But," I argued, "they're not good enough—"

"They're good enough for me," said Wright magnificently, "and it will be rather fun, having a business of this sort to play with. It's one way of revenging myself on those beastly tin-pans."

I grew just a little excited, picturing Bill's astonishment. And I would not be there to hear his criticism. I had a dozen verses or more which Wright had not yet seen: the best, I thought, of all. And, of the poems I had styled "Cuban Pastels," the two he had just spoken of headed the group.

1 Havana Harbor

Hued as a peacock's plumage, wide unfurled, The sea dreams, smiling. Far off, toylike, frail A boat drifts to the blue edge of the world, The brilliant sunlight glinting from it's sail. An idle cruiser, sinister and grey, Drifts, out of tune with sunlight and with dreams, While, on the city-wall, the rainbow-spray Scatters to crystal, shot with opal gleams. The shore curves tender as a clasping arm— Like cardboard structures from a clever hand, Bright in the sun, and touched with old-world charm, Unreal, the ragged lines of houses stand. Dim with the Past, a fortress close-guards yet A city whose once-fettered feet are free, To wear, serene as some white-limbed coquette, The gold-and-sapphire anklet of the Sea.

2 Morro Castle

An old fortress, wrapped in magic sleep, The city's crouching watchdog, fronts the sea, And locks stone lips on tales of dungeon-keep; On legends of dead terrors, buried deep; And gives no hint of once-screamed, strangled plea, Choked to swift silence in the torture cell, In ages dark with bloody sweat of pain.... Ah! if the Morro ghosts could walk again, What whispered horror could those bruised throats tell, Wrung by the cruel, long hands of Ancient Spain!

I gave the verses to Wright, after luncheon,—all of them. He could do with them as he liked, I said. Revise, correct, re-group. I was tired of singing songs, but I did not tell him that. In my heart I thought I would be glad to have my verses, bound and shut in a little book. They would remind me of Cuba, and of other things, when I was too old, too armoured by time, to feel the hurt of remembering. I would keep my Diary, too, against that distant day. Time, I had read, heals all. It was pleasant to think that sometime the ache in my breast would be stilled. But I thought perhaps I would miss it, it would grow to be part of me after a while—

Mercedes, looking in on me from the flowers screening the verandah where I sat, asked coaxingly,

"Coming walking with us, Mavis!"

"Us?" I inquired.

"Wright, and Billy, and me."

I shook my hand.

"I think not," I answered. "I have some letters to write."

"Billy said you wouldn't come," said she, pouting.

"Did he?"

For a moment I was inclined to reconsider, but the delight of proving my husband wrong would not have atoned for an hour of his society. And well I knew that Wright and Mercedes would, eventually, wander off or get surprisingly lost, or accomplish one of the fifty odd things which they managed so ingenuously, and which would rid them of even the most friendly chaperonage.

Mercedes waited.

"Bill is right," I said, "as always. I think I'll not go, Mercedes, if you and Wright don't mind."

"Not at all," she said generously, "only," and here her voice grew wistful, "only the time is getting so short, Mavis. In two days I'll be going to Havana for the Mendez dance—and to stay. And then, before we know it, you will be going home again."

"But you're following shortly," I reminded her.

"With my family!" she added.

"Won't your Mother consider lending you to me for a while this summer?" I asked. "I shall be—" and almost I had said "so very lonely" before I thought. I stopped.

"Shall be what?" asked Mercedes, coming up the steps and dropping to my feet, on a crimson cushion.

"So very glad to see you," I answered, and truly.

"I wonder," said Mercedes.

"That's not very nice of you," I accused her.

"I didn't mean—what you said," she hastened to explain. "I only meant—I wonder if Wright would wait over and go up with us? It is so dull," she went on, "just travelling with the family, and Father likes him so much. What do you think, Mavis?"

Mavis thought that without Wright's pleasant, obtuse presence, that homeward voyage would be a nightmare. But she did not say so.

"I'm sure he'd love to," I answered, smiling into the pretty, eager face, "especially if you ask him—very nicely."

Mercedes laid her flushed cheek for a minute against my knees. Through the thin fabric of my gown I could feel the warmth of it.

"You like Wright, don't you?" she asked, a little anxiously. "And he's Billy's best friend—?"

I put my hand on her smooth, heavy hair. A scent, as of youth and flowers and sunshine came to me from the polished coils of it. Wright was a very fortunate young person.

"I'm very fond of him, Silly," said I, "and Bill adores him. There, is that recommendation enough?"

She jumped up, in a whirl of skirts, and kissed me impetuously: held me a moment in the clasp of her strong, young arms, and then, her high heels clicking on the tiles, ran into the house.

"More than enough," she called over her shoulder.

But when, charmingly hatted, dragging the point of a butterfly sunshade after her, she went down the path between Bill and Wright, there was no sign of her recent agitation on that smooth, creamy cheek.

Left alone, I sighed a little, and looked ahead. They had fallen in love so wholeheartedly, so gaily, those two. I pictured them, if all went well, going through life like the Princess and Prince in the fairy-tale, living "happily forever after." She could love, I knew, that feather-brained, big-hearted little friend of mine. She was young, too, younger than her years, an astonishing thing in Southern women. She would be easily assimilated, would adapt herself gracefully. And it was patent that she thought Wright head and shoulders above the average cut of men. She had told me so, without knowing it, over and over again. And Wright, diffident, sensitive Wright, under his absurdities and his worldly airs? He would cherish her, I knew, and be good to her all his life: invest her with a never-failing glamour, make her his model and his sovereign lady: write madrigals about her: worship at her tiny feet. It was a very pretty little Romance....

They would never have pain in their love, I thought: never know undreamed of depths of agony and self-knowledge: never know secret shrines despoiled, the altars overthrown, desecrated....

I heard Peter's voice in the living room, and Sarah's asking where I was. I called to them and went in.

It was strange, I thought, as I discussed with Sarah the preliminaries of packing, how much I seemed to know about Love. I, who had never known, nor felt any save my Father's and that of my few, placid friends ... and perhaps that Love that is all dream-stuff. And in my heart was a voice which questioned and which I dared not answer. "How do you know?" it said to me. "How do you know?"

I closed my ears to it and drew Peter into my lap.

"Will you be glad to go home?" I asked him.

"Well," said Peter, considering, "there's—Silas."

"So there is," I assented.

"Couldn't he come with us?" asked Peter, coaxingly. "He could sleep in my room—"

I looked at Sarah, for appreciation of this. Lean, long Silas lodging in Peter's small nest. And I looked twice. Sarah, her head bent over an armful of my gowns, was—blushing! I couldn't believe my eyes. I might have fancied the Rock of Gibraltar moved to such soft symptoms of complexion, before Sarah.

"Why, Sarah!" I said, in amazement.

The difficult red crept up to her honest eyes. She raised them and met mine, and what I saw there was very beautiful.

I put Peter off my lap.

"Run out and play for a while, dear," I said, "before tea."

And then,

"Sarah?"

"He's a good man, Miss Mavis," she answered, clutching the gowns to her, ruinously—my careful Sarah! "And we're neither of us so young, nor so flighty that we wouldn't know our own minds. Mr. Reynolds has written him that he has a buyer for the place, and we thought that when things was settled down here, Silas could come up North to Green Hill—and—"

"But, Sarah," I cried out, in childish dismay, "I can't lose you—I can't—"

She put the gowns on a nearby chair and touched my hair with her faithful old hand.

"Indeed, Miss Mavis," she said earnestly, "not for a hundred Silases would I leave you: But Silas spoke to the Doctor about a place—and the Doctor said he needed a man to drive for him, and so, if you want us, we could both stay on. No one could take care of you," she said, jealously, "except me."

"Does the Doctor know—about you?" I asked.

"Silas didn't tell him—and I was going to wait until we got home. It come all at once," she explained, "but Silas thinks maybe he's guessed—"

And I had been so blind—so blind to the times when Sarah walked out with Silas, for "a breath of air": so blind to the long silences in the kitchen of an evening, under Norah's cordial, Irish eyes.

"It's wonderful!" I said, at last. "Silas is a lucky man. I'm awfully happy for you, Sarah."

"You ain't angry?" she asked timidly. "You don't think it's foolishness—at my age?"

"I think it's beautiful," I said, and as she turned to go, I put out a hand to draw her near, to kiss her. The only mother I had ever known, faithful, self-sacrificing, tender—I was glad that her old age would be sheltered and made happy for her.

After she had gone, I sat for a long time in silence. The voices of the others, their steps on the path, aroused me. And, as I went out obediently to Wright's hail, I thought of Mercedes—and now Sarah—each with her love-story and her pride: the enchanting, spoiled young daughter of America and Spain with her poet, and the elderly woman, austere as her own New England, her shoulders bent in my service, with a good man of her own kind—. Well, Father was left to me, thank God—but—

I felt terribly lonely.

CHAPTER XIX

The morning the Howells' car came to take Mercedes and Wright to Havana and the Mendez dance, Mrs. Howells came with it. She would not wait for luncheon, but had a little talk with me while Mercedes, in a flutter, was collecting her things. It was a very little talk, and consisted mostly in shruggings of the maternal shoulders, lifting of the placid, maternal brows, and half-finished phrases, unspoken questions. And she left, indolently satisfied. The tin-pans had won her. I foresaw a cloudless sky of courtship for Wright, as far as his Mercedes' mother was concerned.

Mercedes, promising to "return" Wright on the morrow, was reluctant to go.

"I've been so happy here," she whispered, as she kissed me good-by. "You'll never know how happy. And I'm so grateful, Mavis!"

She kissed Bill, too, when her mother's back was turned, the merest ghost of a caress, brushing his cheek, accompanied by a little giggle of pure mischief. And he patted her slim shoulders with a tolerant hand, as he bade her "run along and enjoy her party."

"My aunt!" said Wright to me, tragically, "couldn't you persuade the old lady to sit in the front seat with that brigand in a general's uniform who is driving the car?"

I waved them farewell with a sinking at my heart. It was as if Youth and Gaiety were leaving me, hand in hand, with never a backward glance.

I did not see Bill again until luncheon an hour later. It was one of our old-time silent meals, although we talked in a desultory manner, while the slippered servitors were in the room. Bill passed me salt after the manner of an ancient monarch handing poison—with deadly courtesy. I responded with pepper. And after Wing and Fong had left us, at the end of the meal, I tried desperately to make small talk.

"I miss Mercedes so much," I said, "and Wright too."

No answer.

"It looks like a match," said I presently.

"It does," said Bill, gloomily.

I waited.

"Wright's crazy about her," proffered my husband, after a time, leaning back in his chair.

"Did he tell you so?" I asked curiously.

"Kept me up one whole night, expatiating on her charms and his extreme unworthiness," he replied.

I laughed.

"When I think of the things he said about her at first: 'female leopardess,' and 'did you take him for a lion tamer?'" I said, "it really is funny."

"A little antagonism at the outset," said Bill, blowing neat rings, "is very good for the course of true love—sometimes."

I was silent.

"Of course," said Bill, positively growling, "it's a lottery anyway—"

He was so absurd, so little-boyish, so ill-tempered, that I wanted to mother him. I had seen Peterkins just like that when things went wrong.—After all, I thought, it must be trying to be even temporarily bound to a woman you dislike so much.

"Speaking of lotteries," I said lightly, "you haven't heard the results of the last drawing, have you?"

"No," he answered, "but Silas is counting the hours until the afternoon when the papers come up—he bought half a dozen tickets from that chap who rode up here the other day—"

He rose from his chair and called the garage on the phone. By a miracle, Silas was there, and I heard Bill ask him the number of his tickets. Then, jotting them down, he called Havana and some mysterious person and asked for the winning numbers.

As he spoke in rapid Spanish, I was forced to wait until he turned from the phone to say, "By George, Silas has made a killing!"

I jumped up and was at his elbow when he put the receiver down.

"Oh what is it?" I asked, fairly dancing with excitement.

"Not the big prize," he answered, "but $1500 for all of that—"

"Sarah will die of joy," I began.

"So it's true then," said Bill, interrupting.

"True as true," I answered, "and I think it's splendid."

"I thought there was something afoot," said Bill, "when Silas asked for a job with me. I was glad to give him one. He can be useful to me in a hundred ways. He's a corker—"

"They could build a little house at the back of the garden. Father would be so pleased—" I said, eagerly. "Sarah wouldn't leave me, you know—"

I stopped.

Bill, with his hat in his hands, turned.

"It will be difficult to arrange that," he said, "as you have made other plans. And I shall leave Green Hill—so I am afraid," he concluded evenly, "that a 'little house in the garden'—unless you wish to keep Silas on—wouldn't be quite feasible."

He went out with that, and it was some time before I had pulled myself together and gone in to tell Sarah the news. I saw her later, flying in a most indecorous manner toward the garage, and knew that she and Silas would presently be sitting on the step of the car building air-castles in Green Hill with their new fortune. Well I knew that one of them would be reared in the back of my little garden, just as I thoughtless enough, had one. It wouldn't be fair to hurt Sarah now, I told myself. I would wait till we were home. Sarah would be sorry—she liked Bill—but Father would keep both Sarah and Silas on—the place needed a permanent man-of-all-work....

But there were breakers ahead—bitter waters. I was to be spared nothing—nothing—to the final humiliation.

There was a letter from Father when the mail came in. It isn't necessary to set it down here. Suffice it to say that something I had said in my last letter about his never-failing generosity to me, had called forth a denial that "the bit of pin-money—to make you feel independent, dear!" amounted to anything. And then a word about the income Bill had settled on me: "I think you should know, Mavis," he concluded, "although I am breaking word with Bill. He told me he didn't want your small, unworldly head to be bothered with money matters. But it is time that you learned to be practical—"

He mentioned the little allowance he had insisted on making me: it would hardly have paid for my shoes. And eventually it was clear to me that the money in the bank ... my clothes ... my lovingly purchased gifts for my friends ... Sarah's wages ... my many extravagances since coming to Cuba ... everything, everything had come from the one source ... Bill. And I, more ignorant than any child about the value of money, had not even asked, except once. And then he had lied to me, had told me it was my money, my Father's money, and all the time I had been living on charity. How well he knew me, that he took the chance that I would not ask Father for a definite statement of what allowance he was making me!

I was overwhelmed with shame and dismay. It seemed as if this were the proverbial last straw. "They make gold out of straws, don't they?" my sick brain inquired childishly. It was hard to think coherently.

I went to the telephone and called the garage. Silas answered. I managed, somehow, to congratulate him on the lottery drawing before I asked him to find Dr. Denton, please, and ask him to come up to the house, if he were not too busy. I wished to speak to him.

Ten full, wretched minutes I endured before he came.

"Is anything the matter?" he asked, bursting in precipitately.

Mutely, I gave him the letter.

He read it, and crumpled the sheets in his hand.

Instantly on the defensive,

"Well?" he said.

"Was there any reason to lie to me?" I counter-questioned, quietly. "You must have known that, sooner or later, I would know ... if not now, then when I saw Father again."

I think my eyes warned him that this was a time for very plain speaking.

"I had hoped," he answered, after a little pause, "to persuade your Father to bear me out in what I believed a harmless enough conspiracy.—After all," he added, breaking my persistent silence, "it would be difficult to explain to your Father that you refused to let me support you."

"I am sorry," I said, rather more gently than I felt, "to have been more of a burden on you than I knew. Had I known, had I for one instant dreamed that I would be dependent on you, I would never have consented to this arrangement. This may sound very foolish, I know, and I see now how impossible it all would have been,—but this is how I felt, and you, I think, knew."

He nodded, eyes on mine.

"Yes," said he.

"You have had a very pretty revenge," I told him, each word dropping like a cold, little stone into the hush of the big room. "You must have laughed, often, to yourself. No doubt it has been very amusing, waiting for the bubble to break. If you will make me out a statement, as nearly as you can, of just how much I am indebted to you, I will try to repay you little by little."

I felt the absurdity of the situation, the utter arrogance and futility of my words as I spoke them. But I had to speak.

"Please—" he flung out a protesting hand, "why do you fret yourself with trifles? Are you not willing to make some further sacrifice for your Father? When the time comes for us to separate, I had hoped—after all, it would be only the usual thing to do—to make you an allowance."

"Did you intend to consult me about it?" I asked, furiously.

He hesitated.

"Please answer," I said.

At my tone, he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.

"I am waiting," I announced, with dangerous patience.

"Well—I admit the situation seemed difficult, but it was in the future," he answered finally, "and I thought, perhaps—"

"Never mind. You would have gone out of my life with the amusing knowledge that you had a hold on me, to a certain extent? It was well planned," I said, growing colder and colder minute by minute, until in the sunny warmth of the windows I shivered uncontrollably. "But you must have thought me even more of an imbecile than I am. I owe you," I ended, "a large sum of money. When we are separated, when Father gets used to that fact, and when he realizes how well I am, how strong, there will be some sort of work for me somewhere, I am sure, that will both occupy my time, and enable me to repay you."

"Work?" said Bill, and then, under his breath, "My God!"

He was angry, I knew—hurt, I felt. And I was glad.

"I am not a—charity patient, Dr. Denton!" I said, and left the room.

The rest of that day is a blank to me now. If I had suffered before, I suffered a thousand-fold now. I could not look at the miniature. I was even angry with Father—dearest Father, who had done his "human best" for me. I hated myself, I hated life, I wanted to die. To be laughed at; to have had my little defiances and independences met with the secret thought "the very clothes on her back were bought with my money"; to have been fooled and fooled again, to his heart's content; to have lived on the bounty of a man who despised me, hurt and wounded me at every turn—it was unbearable.

When I was home again, when the tangle finally became unraveled, I would go to Uncle John. I would ask him frankly what to do; tell him the whole, bitter little story; ask him to find work for me—reading proof, correcting manuscript, scrubbing floors—I didn't care. There were business schools, I thought vaguely—and cursed the years of invalidism which had kept from me so much knowledge of the world, so unfitted me to cope with it, once I was on my material feet.

Father need never know. He would think it a whim, would be, I imagined, even a little proud, would believe, even, that I sought to distract myself after the wreck of my married life. Other women had done the same thing.

I thought of the city as I had seen it: the crowds and the loneliness and the bleakness of the streets: the hurrying, uncaring people—I had read of girls in the city; the indignities of the boarding house; the strain and the demand and the difficult way that lies before the untrained wage-earner—

Mavis of Green Hill in a New York office! I laughed aloud at the thought, and the sound of my own voice frightened me.

I couldn't cry. Somehow, I hadn't a tear left. I could only clench and unclench my hands on the lap of the little mauve gown which William Denton had bought for me—I wondered if Mrs. Goodrich knew. It had been she who had attended to all my purchases before I left Green Hill, who had gone into town with my measurements and returned with two trunks full of everything I needed, and assured me that the "bill was taken care of."

What a fool I had been!

I did not go out to tea. Sarah brought me something in my room. I told her I had a headache. It was the truth. And through my closed door I could hear Bill's voice asking for me. Mr. Crowell was there; he had ridden over some time before. I sent my regrets and stayed in my room.

At dinner I hardly spoke. I was too conscious of the clothes I wore, the food I ate. The one burdened me, the other choked me.

Bill, which was unusual, talked nervously all through the meal, about everything and nothing. Even through the dull sense of impotence and anger that possessed me, I could see that he was ill-at-ease, excited, waiting for something—waiting, perhaps, for me to reopen the last painful chapter. He could wait, I thought.

We had just been served with salad, when Fong came in, brushed Wing aside, and bent over Bill, saying something very low.

A little gleam of some inner excitement came into the steel-blue eyes. He flung down his napkin.

"Tell Juan to wait," he said, and rose.

"I beg your pardon," he said formally to me, "but I am afraid that you must eat your dinner alone. Someone has come up from the village to see me."

"Juan?" I asked. "Is Annunciata ill again?"

"No, no," he was clearly impatient and started from the room.

"Shall I have Norah save some dinner for you?" I asked, mechanically.

"Don't bother," he said, hesitated, and then, suddenly crossing the room in four strides, he was beside me. I felt his hand on my hair and stiffened under the unaccustomed touch. The hand dropped to his side.

"Don't think so badly of me, Mavis," he said, "even if you have been a 'charity patient'—do you know the Bible meaning of Charity?"

Before I could speak, he was gone. He had not changed for dinner, a real innovation, and was in riding things. I heard the ring of the little spurs he wore on the tiles, and the sound of a closing door.

"The Bible meaning of Charity?" But that was—that was—Love. What did he mean—a love-patient?

I sat, my hands under my chin, while Wing came and went with the untasted food. A love-patient?

Something terribly sweet and keen pierced my heart. It couldn't be. Love wasn't like that—cruel and wounding and hurting. Love "suffereth long and is kind." That was in the Bible too. "Love suffereth long and is kind—seeketh not its own—beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth."

The big tears ran down my cheeks. "Love never faileth."

If it was true then—"Oh, God, let it be true!" I prayed, mutely. If it were true then, how blind I had been! Sacrifice—patience—hope—. Would he have done so much for someone he despised—even for revenge? I began to remember—

There were voices outside—loud, excited, almost hysterical—Was Bill there? I waited for him in my chair. I had not moved. He would find me as he had left me. Perhaps he had come back to tell me what he had meant. Charity—Love.

The door flew open and Sarah burst in. She was crying. I saw that at once, and wanted to say to her,

"So you have heard? It isn't true, Sarah, it wasn't charity, after all, it was love—"

But she came straight to me and caught desperately at my hands,

"Miss Mavis,—the cane—it's been set afire—Silas is down there, and Dr. Denton—"

Then I awoke.

"Dr. Denton!" I had her by the shoulders, I was shaking her—"Not Dr. Denton!"

"Yes, Miss Mavis. Juan crept up here to warn him. But those devils fired the cane while he was in this very house. Fields of it in flame, and Silas there—"

She was in a chair now, her apron twisted between her work-worn fingers, the sobs taking her by the throat.

Funny that she could cry like that, I thought, watching her. I must give her something to make her stop—if Bill were here—

Bill! Bill!

I must have screamed. Sarah, her arms around me, was herself in a minute, had herself in hand.

"There, there," she said soothingly. "They'll be all right, I am sure. You're to be calm, Miss Mavis, and not take on so."

Calm! With the Far Country just within reach—and the fire sweeping across the cane-fields.

I put her away from me.

"Go to the kitchen, Sarah dear," I said very quietly, "and wait for news. Have Wing and Fong gone too?"

She nodded.

"I'll wait here," I said. "I had better get out the Doctor's kit and all the first-aid things. Someone may be burned—"

She sobbed at that, but turned and went to the kitchen.

I went into Bill's room.

For a minute I did nothing—only touched the things on his bureau—his brush, his comb—

A little snap-shot of me stood there. Of me, in a wheel-chair—I had forgotten that—

I opened a leather case which stood on the bureau, it had his initials on it, and a small key lay beside it. Opened it and saw my letters to Richard Warren. They were tossed together, as if he had been reading them. He had told me that he never kept letters.

Somehow, I found the first-aid things and the little emergency case. They were on the table by his bed. And then, taking them into the living-room, I called out to Sarah to find some linen and tear it into sheets—we had very little gauze in the house.

My hands on the first-aid kit, I sat down to think. It was too bad Wright was not here. He would not lose his head. But Mercedes would. I was glad she was in Havana. Suddenly I laughed to think of them, dancing at the Mendez ball—

Sarah came in, her hands full of an old sheet.

"Any news?" I asked, steadily.

"It's going fast," she said dully. "You can see it—"

I went to the window. The whole sky was crimson. I saw the smoke wreathing up through the flame, fancied that I heard shouts—strained my eyes for the sight of a tall, lean figure. He would come soon, I knew, and tell me that it had been a nightmare, that he was safe, that he had been in no danger—

I looked around. Sarah had gone out, quietly. No one was there.

Softly I went across the room, opened the door, and slipped like a ghost into the menacing night.

I walked at first. Then ran. The plants and trees caught at my dress. They wanted to hold me back. I shook myself free and went on. Nearer and nearer. How much smoke there was! The whole last crop gone. Thousands of arrobas of sugar, gone in a breath! Good, loyal Juan, I thought, as I went on, stumbling, falling once to my knees. My dress was ruined. Bill will buy me another, I said aloud. Not Charity—Love.

Suddenly I was in the midst of it. The flame and the smoke, the hurrying figures, black with soot and sweat, digging the trenches that might save the cane.

"Bill!"

My own voice pierced through the smoke and crackle. I was going on. I would not stop until I had found him.

Was that Bill, blackened, a figure in a dream, his shirt burned away from one bare shoulder. There were red marks on his shoulder—

He didn't hear me? Didn't he want to? Was he angry? I was sorry I had been so foolish, but I hadn't known that he cared. Why hadn't he told me? Or had he tried to, and I wouldn't listen?

"Bill!"

A spark on my dress—a glare and a flame. I was part of the roaring and the smoke and the crimson glare about me, beating at the little, licking, red tongues with ineffectual hands.

Death then? But I wanted to live! It wasn't fair!

Bill!

His arms about me, his bare hands crushing out the flames, his agonized voice in my ears—

"Mavis! My darling!—"

I was safe. I tried to put my arms around his neck, but they fell weakly to my side. He took my hands in his and clasped them where they belonged. I was lifted, borne swiftly through the night.

Crimson flame and smoke—a roaring—a voice pleading with me to raise my head, to answer, only to speak—.

Darkness....

CHAPTER XX

Once, in the night, I awoke—fully. Before that, there had been periods of half-stupor, and then, a deep, restful sleep. But just for a minute, I was wide-awake, abnormally conscious.

"Bill?"

He was sitting beside the bed. The light was very dim. His hand was on my bandaged hand which was lying over the sheet.

"Dearest?"

"You're all right?"

"I'm well," he said, "and you will be much better in the morning. Close the dear eyes now, and sleep."

"You won't go away?"

"Never. Go to sleep, Mavis."

In the morning he was still there, sleeping, wrapped in his funny, fuzzy bathrobe, in a big chair close to the bed. His hand was still on mine.

I looked for a long minute at his tired face. One eyebrow was burned almost all off. There were marks of burns on his face. And he was smiling in his sleep.

I felt so rested, so very well, except for a languor and a weakness. My hands pained me. Both, I was amused to discover, were bandaged. There was a little burn on my arm.

Through water and fire—

"Good morning!" said Bill, smiling at me.

I closed my eyes against the look in his. It was beautiful to have him look at me so, but I could not bear it.

"G-Good morning," said I, and felt the hot color flood my face. From the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair I was blushing.

It was very early. The sudden tropical dawn was only a few minutes old. There was a riot of bird-song outside the window, and a wonderful, dew-washed breeze blowing through the room.

"Mavis?" said Bill.

He was on his knees beside the bed. I put out one bandaged hand and clumsily touched his hair.

"Do you know what you've done?" he asked.

"Been a fool, as usual," I suggested, looking ruefully at the bandages.

"Sweet little fool," he said, in that new, deep voice. "Mavis, how could you, you frightened me almost to death—?"

I thought of those leaping flames, the angry, crimson sky, and shuddered.

"I'm sorry," I said meekly.

He gave a little low laugh under his quickened breath.

"You love me!" announced my husband arrogantly, beginning, as usual, at the wrong end.

"Why so I do!" I admitted in a small voice.

His arms went around me, gently, closely, and I shut my eyes under the touch of his lips on their lids. The dawn-birds were singing—in the room: in my heart.

"I love you," said Bill, and kissed my mouth.

I lay quite still then, between tears and laughter.

"It has taken you," I said, "a very long time to find it out!"

"It took me," he contradicted pleasantly, "about three minutes. From the very first—darling."

"Me, too!" said I, in utter astonishment. It was true. From the very first. I had fought a good fight, I thought, as I lay there in my utter content, against this heavenly surrender. I pity men who never know this wonderful release of self.

Followed a half-hour of the most ridiculous cross-examination:

"When did you first—?"

"Do you remember—?"

"How could you say—?"

"Whose girl are you, Mavis? Tell me!"

And all the rest of the eternal litany of lovers.

Sarah, peeped in to see how I was. Silas, I discovered from her beaming countenance, was all right. I had forgotten to ask. It was with assumed enthusiasm that I heard that a portion of the cane had been saved. It really didn't matter—not to me. Nothing mattered. Only Bill, and my sense of Harbor in the Far Country of my dreams—

"Such a nice fire!" I said, happily, my face on Bill's one unscarred shoulder.

"You little wretch!"

He kissed me again.

Norah arrived with a very early breakfast. I twisted in Bill's hold. To no avail. Bar, again, such strong bars, so tender, so utterly protective.

"What's the matter?"

"Norah—"

"But," said Bill in triumph, after the door had been shut behind the smiling woman, "after all, Mavis, we're married!"

"Why, so we are!"

I sat up in bed and stared at him.

"It's not fair!" said I, hotly.

"What?"

"We've not even been engaged," I said, "or anything. I don't like it!"

"Don't you, honestly?"

I shook my head, and then nodded, violently.