Front matter (continued 3)

In spite of all, however, she was not minded to surrender her husband willingly to another woman. She even convinced herself that as his wife she was not lively enough and resolved if he wanted gayety he should have it at home. The moment she conceived the notion she threw the gage at Lottie's aggressive head. Dolly De Castro, who saw and understood, warmly approved. "Consideration and peaceable methods are wasted on that kind of a woman. Humiliate her, my dear, and she will fawn at your feet," said Dolly unreservedly.

Alice was no novice in the art of entertaining; it remained only for her to turn her capabilities to account. She made herself mistress now of the telephone appointment, of the motoring lunch, of the dining-room gayety. Nelson himself complimented her on the success with which she had stocked her liquor cabinets.

She conceived an ambition for a wine cellar really worth while and abandoned it only when Robert Kimberly intimated that in this something more essential than ample means and the desire to achieve were necessary. But while gently discouraging her own idea as being impractical, he begged her at the same time to make use of The Towers' cellars, which he complained had fallen wholly into disuse; and was deterred only with the utmost difficulty from sending over with his baskets of flowers from the gardens of The Towers, baskets of wines that Nelson and Doane with their trained palates would have stared at if served by Alice. But MacBirney without these aids was put at the very front of dinner hosts and his table was given a presage that surprised him more than any one else. As a consequence, Cedar Lodge invitations were not declined, unless perhaps at times by Robert Kimberly.

He became less and less frequently a guest at Alice's entertainments, and not to be able to count on him as one in her new activities came after a time as a realization not altogether welcome. His declining, which at first relieved her fears of seeing him too often, became more of a vexation than she liked to admit.

Steadily refusing herself, whenever possible, to go to the Nelsons' she could hear only through her husband of those who frequented Lottie's suppers, and of the names MacBirney mentioned none came oftener than that of Robert Kimberly. Every time she heard it she resented his preferring another woman's hospitalities, especially those of a woman he professed not to like.

Mortifying some of her own pride she even consented to go at times to the Nelsons' with her husband to meet Kimberly there and rebuke him. Then, too, she resolved to humiliate herself enough to the hateful woman who so vexed her to observe just how she made things attractive for her guests; reasoning that Kimberly found some entertainment at Lottie's which he missed at Cedar Lodge.

Being in the fight, one must win and Alice meant to make Lottie Nelson weary of her warfare. But somehow she could not meet Robert Kimberly at the Nelsons'. When she went he was never there. Moreover, at those infrequent intervals in which he came to her own house he seemed ill entertained. At times she caught his eye when she was in high humor herself--telling a story or following her guests in their own lively vein--regarding her in a curious or critical way; and when in this fashion things were going at their best, Kimberly seemed never quite to enter into the mirth.

His indifference annoyed her so that as a guest she would have given him up. Yet this would involve a social loss not pleasant to face. Her invitations continued, and his regrets were frequent. Alice concluded she had in some way displeased him.

CHAPTER XVII

One morning she called up The Towers to ask Kimberly for a dinner. He answered the telephone himself and wanted to know if he might not be excused from the dinner and come over, if it were possible, in the evening.

Alice had almost expected the refusal. "I wish you would tell me," she said, laughing low and pleasantly, "what I have done."

He paused. "What you have done?"

"What I have done that you avoid coming to Cedar Lodge any more?"

"I don't, do I?" He waited for an answer but Alice remained silent. His tone was amiable and his words simple, yet her heart was beating like a hammer. "You know I haven't gone about much lately," he went on, "but whenever you really want me for a dinner you have need only to say so."

"I never ask a guest for dinner without wanting him."

It was his turn to laugh. "Do you really manage that, Mrs. MacBirney? I can't; and yet I think myself fairly independent."

"Oh, of course, we are all tied more or less, I suppose, but--you know what I mean."

"Then you do want me to appear?"

Alice suddenly found her tongue. "We should never ask any one to whom Mr. MacBirney and I are under so many obligations as we are to Mr. Kimberly without 'wanting him,' as you express it. And we really want you very much to-morrow night."

He laughed, this time with amusement. "You are rather strong now on third persons and plurals. But I think I understand that you really do want me to come."

"Haven't I just said so?" she asked with good-humored vexation.

"Not quite, but I shall arrive just the same."

Alice put up the receiver, agreeably stirred by the little tilt. It was a lift out of the ruck of uncomfortable thought that went to make up her daily portion, and the elation remained with her all day.

She decided that some vague and unwillingly defined apprehensions concerning Kimberly's feeling toward her were after all foolish. Why make herself miserable with scruples when she was beset with actual perplexities at home? Walter himself was now more of what she wanted him to be. He perceived his wife's success in her active hospitality and applauded it, and Alice began to feel she could, after all, be safe in a nearer acquaintance with Kimberly and thus lessen a little Lottie Nelson's pretensions.

It is pleasant to a woman to dress with the assurance that anticipates success. Alice went to her toilet the following afternoon with an animation that she had not felt for weeks. Every step in it pleased her and Annie's approbation as she progressed was very gratifying to her mistress.

The trifles in finishing were given twice their time, and when Alice walked into her husband's room he kissed her and held her out at arm's length in admiration. She hastened away to look at the table and the stairs rose to meet her feet as she tripped down the padded treads.

Passing the drawing-room the rustle of her steps caused a man within it to turn from a picture he was studying, and Alice to her surprise saw Kimberly standing before a sanguine of herself. She gave a little exclamation.

"I asked not to be announced," he explained. "I am early and did not want to hurry you." He extended his hand. "How are you?"

"I couldn't imagine who it was, when I looked in," exclaimed Alice cordially. "I am glad to see you."

He held out his hand and waited till she gave him hers. "You look simply stunning," he answered quietly. "There is something," he added without giving her a chance to speak and turning from the eyes of the portrait back again to her own, "in your eyes very like and yet unlike this. I find now something in them more movingly beautiful; perhaps twenty-five years against eighteen--I don't know--perhaps a trace of tears."

"Oh, Mr. Kimberly, spare your extravagances. I hear you have been away."

"At least, I have never seen you quite so beautiful as you are this moment."

"I am not beautiful at all, and I am quite aware of it, Mr. Kimberly."

"I would not wish you to think anything else. There the beauty of your character begins."

Her repugnance was evident but she bore his eyes without flinching. "You humiliate me exceedingly," was all she attempted to say.

"The truth should not humiliate you. I----"

"Must I run away?"

"Not, I hope, because I tell you you are beautiful, for I shall continue to tell you so every time I see you."

"Surely you will not take advantage of your hostess, Mr. Kimberly?"

"In what way?" he asked.

"By saying things most unpleasant for her to hear."

"I say things awkwardly, perhaps unpleasantly, but always sincerely."

Alice looked down at her fan, but spoke with even more firmness. "If we are to be good friends, you must excuse me even from sincerity on topics of this kind."

"Don't cut me from your friendship. We must be the best of friends. I cannot conceive of you as being other than kind, even patient with me."

"Then do not say things I cannot listen to."

"I will never say anything you may not listen to. But concede me the privilege--for it is one--of paying honest tribute to your loveliness when I can't help it."

Without raising her eyes she spoke with decision. "I positively will not listen." With the word she caught up her gown and started away. He walked with her. "I am afraid," he said regretfully, "you are sorry you sent for me."

She turned with burning eyes. "You should be the last to make me so, Mr. Kimberly."

"I wish to be the last. Yet I hate to sacrifice sincerity."

"There is something I put far above sincerity."

He looked mildly surprised. "What can it be?"

"Consideration for the feelings of another--particularly if she be somewhat helpless."

"Just a moment." They were entering the hall and he stopped her. "In what way are you helpless?"

"Through consideration on my part for my guest to-night, for my husband's friend, for a friend to whom we both owe much----"

"You owe that friend nothing. If you really think so, disabuse your mind. And I have never professed the slightest friendship for Mr. MacBirney. Whatever we do, let us keep the facts clear. If we speak of consideration, what about my feelings? And about helplessness--I am up against a stone wall all the time in trying to say anything."

"You have no right to say anything!" exclaimed Alice energetically and starting on as she spoke.

"Perhaps that is true. One that can't say things better than I do shouldn't attempt them. If one of us must be humiliated let it be me. Where are you taking me?"

She stopped. "Nowhere at all, Mr. Kimberly. Won't you----"

"Where are you going?"

"To look at my table. Mr. MacBirney will be right down. Won't you wait for him in the library?"

"No."

"I should be most grateful."

"I want to see the table myself."

Alice tossed her head. "This way then."

At the threshold of the dining-room, Kimberly paused. The table was dressed in yellow with the lowest tones in the fruits of the centrepiece. The pears were russet, the grapes purple, and pomegranates, apples, and golden plums supplied the tints of autumn. The handles of the old silver basket were tied with knots of broad, yellow ribbon. Alice, touching the covers here and there, passed behind the chairs.

"You get your effects very simply," observed Kimberly. "Only people with a sure touch can do that."

"I thought there were to be no more compliments."

He looked at the sconces. "Just one for the lighting. Even Dolly and Imogene sin in that way. They overdo it or underdo it, and Mrs. Nelson is impossible. Where have you put me?"

She pointed with her fan. "Next to Mrs. Nelson."

"Next to Mrs. Nelson?" he echoed in surprise.

"Why not?"

"Did you say humiliation? Do I deserve so much?"

"At dinner one tries, of course, to group congenial people," suggested Alice coldly.

"But we are not congenial."

"I supposed you were Mrs. Nelson's most frequent guest."

"I have not been at Mrs. Nelson's since the evening Guyot and Lambert were there," said Kimberly. "You, yourself, were there that night."

Alice betrayed no confusion but she was shocked a little to realize that she believed him instantly. Kimberly, at least as to truthfulness, had won her confidence. Her own husband had forfeited it. The difficulty now, she felt, would be ever to believe him at all.

"I remember," she assented with returning cordiality. "I was very proud to listen that night."

Kimberly stood with his hand on the back of a chair. "Lambert is a brilliant fellow."

"Possibly; my sympathies were not with his views.

"So I sit here?" continued Kimberly patiently. "Who sits next to you?"

"Your brother."

Kimberly spoke with resignation. "Charles always had the luck of the family."

A door opened and a butler entered the room. On seeing Kimberly he attempted to withdraw.

"Come in, Bell," said Alice. "What is it?"

"The juggler, Mrs. MacBirney; his assistant has telephoned they've missed their train."

"Oh, Bell!" exclaimed his mistress in indignant protest. "Don't tell me that."

"And it's the last out, till ten-thirty o'clock."

Alice's face fell. "That ends my evening. Isn't it too exasperating. Stupid jugglers!"

Kimberly intervened. "What train did he miss, Bell?"

"The seven-ten, sir, from town."

"Why don't you call up the division superintendent and ask his office to stop the eight-ten?"

Bell looked at his mistress. "I might do that, sir."

"Oh, can you?" cried Alice.

"You ought to have done it without being told, Bell," observed Kimberly. "You've done such things before."

"Might I use your name, sir?"

"Use whatever is necessary to get him. And ask them to hunt up the juggler in the waiting-room and put him aboard. Who is he?"

"A China boy, sir, I understand."

"In that case, they could not miss him."

The butler left the room. "Do you think they will do it?" asked Alice anxiously.

"Don't give it further thought. We could get him out on a special if necessary."

Voices came from the front room. Alice started forward. "There are guests."

"By-the-way," added Kimberly, pointing to the card on his cover and that on his brother's, "you don't mind my correcting this mistake, do you?"

Alice looked very frankly at him, for the success of the dinner was keenly on her mind. "You will be of more assistance, Mr. Kimberly, if you will not make any change. Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Morgan are my difficulties and I hoped you would solve them for me."

"By all means."

Dolly's voice was heard in the hall. "Where are you, Alice? Here are the McCreas, from town, and Doctor Hamilton."

They sat down fourteen at the table--the Kimberlys, De Castros, Nelsons, McCreas, Hamilton, Miss Venable, and Dora Morgan.

Alice was playing to the enemy and meant to demonstrate to the Nelson coterie that she needed no assistance from them to establish herself as a hostess at Second Lake. If she wished, on this occasion, for a great success it was hers. The dinner was good, and the moment that Nelson had assured himself of this he began good-naturedly to help things on.

A remark from some one about the gulf between law and justice gave him a chance. "Why associate the two at all?" he asked lazily. "Law is strictly a game of the wits. It is played under the convention of an appeal to justice, but justice is invoked merely to satisfy the imagination. If people understood this there would be no complaint about a gulf between the two. We imagine justice; we get law. Similarly, we imagine heaven; we get--what we deserve. If the imagination be satisfied, man will endure the sweat of Sisyphus; most of us suffer it in this world, anyway. Law and justice are like chemical incompatibles and there must be a gulf between them. And law is no better and no worse than other conventions of society. Who that studies human government in any form has ever been able to regard it otherwise than with contempt?"

"Certainly," interposed Fritzie Venable, with formal irony. "No one that takes care of the Kimberly interests at Washington."

"The Kimberly interests at Washington," returned Nelson with complaisance, "are so well behaved that they take care of themselves."

"Then I don't see what contempt you should have for this government," retorted Fritzie vigorously.

"Only that it affords him no adequate exercise for his ingenuity," suggested Arthur De Castro.

"I don't care," protested Fritzie; "I am an American and I won't have our government abused. I believe in sticking to your own."

"Well, if we haven't stuck to our own, I should like to know who has?" observed Charles Kimberly benevolently. "We've stuck for fifty years to our tariff builders, as Mustard would to a stot. MacBirney's farmers are doing the work for us now," he continued. "Our beet growers guard the sugar schedule at Washington. These wonderful Western States; lowest in illiteracy, highest in political sagacity! It is really a shame to take the money."

"I don't see how you conscientiously can take it," declared Hamilton, appealing to Robert Kimberly.

"I do it by educating my conscience, Doctor," responded Robert Kimberly. "Every one that takes the trouble to inquire knows I am a free trader. I abstain from the Reform Club, but that is out of deference to my partners. I contribute to both campaign funds; to the one for our shareholders, to the other for my conscience; for as I say, personally I am a free trader."

"And a tariff beneficiary," added Arthur De Castro.

"Why not, Arthur? Wasn't it Disraeli who said sensible men are all of one religion? He might better have said, sensible men are all of one politics. It is true, we are tariff beneficiaries, but this country is doing business under a protective theory. We are engaged, as we were long before there was a tariff, in what is now a protected industry. We can't change our business because the government changes its economic policy.

"And if anybody is to have protection here, Arthur, why shouldn't we? Who has a better right to it? Our warrants of occupation were extorted from the Iroquois. We fought the Indian, we fought the French, we fought the English----"

"Was there anybody you didn't fight?"

"We put up our credit in Paris and Amsterdam for the colonies and for the Federal Government when the colonies and the Federal Government had none. Then along comes a little coterie of steel men in our own day," Kimberly tossed his head with disdainful impatience, "who make the toil of a hundred years look like a farce--out-Herod Herod in protection and pile up hundreds of millions while we are up to our armpits in molasses trying to grind out a mere living. Protection! We don't get half enough. Who has any better sanction for exercising that airy, invisible pressure of a tariff tax?" he demanded, lifting a glass of wine to the light.

"Picturesque old pirate," murmured Hamilton.

"And he needs the money," commented De Castro. "Why quarrel with him?"

"I am sure you will all pledge the sugar business," continued Kimberly, raising a refilled glass blandly, "and join me in welcoming anybody that wants to go into it. This is a free country, gentlemen."

"What do you use on competitors, the rack and dungeon?"

"Nothing that savors of them."

"But you take care of competition," persisted Hamilton.

Kimberly laughed.

"Certainly we do," interposed McCrea, quickly and frankly. "But without unnecessary cruelty, as Mr. Robert Kimberly puts it. No man that ever fought the company and had horse-sense has ever starved to death. We can use such a man's talents better than he can, and very often he comes into camp and becomes our teacher; that has happened. Our system of combination has brought comforts and luxuries into thousands of homes that never would have known them under the waste of competition. Hundreds and thousands of men have profited by uniting their efforts with ours. And no man that wasn't a business lunatic has ever been the worse for anything we've done."

"Your husband talks well, Mrs. McCrea," said Robert Kimberly, to a quiet little woman near him.

"He has had able teachers," laughed Mrs. McCrea.

"No, it is because he believes in himself. It's a great thing to be able to believe in yourself."

"Don't you?"

"Far from it."

"You've made a good many others believe in you."

"Not always for their own best interests, I'm afraid."

"Yes, I know," Dolly was saying to those of the women who were listening to her, "the weight of authority is against me. But I have always held, and hold yet, that a simple thing, such as lapis-lazuli, is best set in gold--much better than in silver. Talk with Castellani about it sometime, or Viola."

"Yes, and they'll tell you silver, every time," interrupted Fritzie vigorously.

Dolly waved her hand as if to dismiss controversy.

"Gold is so common," objected Lottie Nelson.

"Not more so than lapis," retorted Dolly.

"But isn't that the glory of gold," suggested Robert, "that it is common? It has the seal of approval of mankind; what higher sanction do you want? You are always safe in resting with that approval. I believe in common things--pearls for example and rubies. I am just common enough to like them."

Bell, passing behind his mistress, spoke in her ear. Alice's face lighted and she caught Kimberly's eye. "He is here," she nodded laughingly across the table.

The juggler had come and as the dessert was being served he followed a butler into the room in his native robes and assumed his place as one of Bell's assistants. The Chinaman was handsome and of great size and strength. Alice only hinted to her guests what awkwardness might be looked for from the new footman, and the juggler smiling in Oriental silence began to cajole the senses of his spectators.

After he had amused them with trifles he floated a gossamer veil of yellow silk over a huge glass bowl filled with fruit from a serving table. With this in his hands he hastened to the fireplace at the end of the room and turning heaved the bowl swiftly toward the ceiling, catching it in his arms as it descended filled with quivering goldfish swimming in water of crystal clearness.

He took oranges from the side tables and, splitting them, released song-birds into the air. The guests tossed fruit at him, and from apples and pomegranates he cut favors for them--jewelled stick-pins, belt agraffes and Florentine bonbonières. When the evening was over Alice thanked her guests for their compliments. Lottie Nelson's words in particular left a flush of triumph in Alice's cheeks and she looked so happy that Kimberly paused before he spoke.

"Well?" said Alice questioningly. And then: "If you have had a good time, don't be afraid to say so."

He looked at her as if pleased at her fervor. "Are you a little bit sorry?" he asked quizzically.

Her brows rose with a pretty assumption of ignorance. "I have nothing to be sorry for."

"Then I suppose I must have."

She dropped her eyes for a moment to her sandalwood fan. "Of course, you will decide that."

"I presume," he continued, taking the fan without apology from her hands, "I may come over when you are not at home and look at your portrait?"

"I am sure you don't realize how silly that sounds. I hear you have a new picture," she added, looking up.

"It is to be hung next week. MacBirney is to bring you over to see it. Are you sorry I came?"

"Oh, is that what you meant? Why, such a question! You saved my evening."

"But are you sorry?"

"I shouldn't say so if I were, should I?"

"No, but answer, anyway."

Her expression of vexation was pleasing. "How obstinate! No, then. And you saved my evening besides."

"You must take me as I am."

"You cannot, I know, be less than you should be."

"How about you?"

She drew herself up the least bit. "I hope no friend of mine would wish me anything less."

"We are both then to be all we should be."

"Don't you think I am very patient?" she demanded impatiently.

"You are. We are both to be, aren't we?"

She did not conceal her annoyance. "I sincerely trust so," she said coldly. "But there is a limit to all things."

He held out his hand. "Thank you for a delightful evening."

CHAPTER XVIII

The new picture at The Towers made a topic of interest among Kimberly's friends, but Alice found excuses for not going to see it until MacBirney would brook no further delays. They drove over one afternoon and found Doctor Hamilton and Imogene in the library. Robert Kimberly came downstairs with Charles and greeted the MacBirneys. Tea was brought presently and Kimberly asked Alice to pour it.

"I haven't seen you since your dinner," said he, sitting down after a time by Alice. "You were indisposed the day I called. Imogene tells me you intend spending the winter in town."

"Mr. MacBirney wants to."

"I hoped you would winter in the country."

"I like the country, but Mr. MacBirney likes the town. I shall enjoy it, too. You know we are really country folk and haven't had as much town life as you have."

The others started for the east room. "Come," said Dolly, beckoning Alice, "you want to see the Rubens."

The new picture was hung as a panel between a smaller Rubens and an unknown head of the Virgin, in the manner of Botticelli. Kimberly seated Alice apart from the others and stood behind her.

"You have been in this room before?" he said questioningly.

"Once before. It is very much richer now." She indicated the new picture as she spoke, a large canvas of the Crucifixion. "There are two titles for it," explained Kimberly, "a Latin and a Dutch. I like the Dutch best: 'The Ninth Hour.' This picture doesn't appeal so much to my friends as it has appealed to me. But see what this master magician has chosen here; the supreme moment of the Crucifixion."

Those with them were chatting apart. Alice sat in silence while Kimberly spoke and when he had done they were silent together. "I hope you are going to like it," he said after a pause.

MacBirney asked a question, and Kimberly walked to where he was seated. When he came back he seemed unable to wait longer for Alice's comment. "What is the verdict?"

"Nothing I have ever seen of Rubens's leaves me unmoved," she answered. "This is almost overwhelming, terrible."

"Mrs. MacBirney likes my 'Crucifixion,' Dolly," observed Kimberly after another silence.

"Oh, you needn't quote Alice," exclaimed Dolly from a window seat. "So do I like it. All I said was, that it is a sin to pay so much for a picture."

"No price is too great for a great inspiration. See," he pointed for Alice to the face of a Roman soldier cowering in the foreground of the canvas. "There is one man's face. Hamilton has studied a good many pictures and watched unnumbered faces in every expression of suffering. He has told me that, so far as he knows pictures, the emotion of fear has never been depicted on the human countenance except in that face. As a great surgeon, of a very wide experience, he may be said to know what fear pictured on a human face should be. And there it is before us. Conceive what a triumph for that man to have achieved this, so far from us in the dead centuries, and yet so near to us in this magic of his skill. Observe what a background he has chosen to depict it from--Jerusalem, bathed in the uncanny, terrifying light that accompanies a convulsion of nature. The earth rent, the dead issuing from their graves, nature prostrate, and everywhere--brooding over everything, but stamped most of all on this one guilty face--fear. How it all builds up the agony of that death sweat on the cross! By Heaven, it is tremendous! And Dolly says it is a sin to spend so much money for it. Brother Francis doesn't agree with her; I found him in here early one morning saying his prayers to it."

"Before it," said Alice instantly.

"I thought that no mean tribute. Frankly, do you think me extravagant?"

"Did you really pay the price named in the newspapers?"

"Even then?"

"It does take one's breath away--at least, it took mine."

"I have wanted this picture for years. Hamilton made one trip over with me to look at it--he told me of it first. Then I had to wait all these years for the opportunity to acquire it."

"What patience!"

His eyes were fixed on the picture. "It must have taken patience to paint it. But patience gives us everything in this life." Alice was silent. "You don't agree with me?"

"How do you know that?"

"I feel it; the air is thick with your dissent. But, Alice, I am right and you are wrong."

Her name coming so suddenly and for the first time from his lips astonished her. Her heart sent its blood in protest to her very ears. In a room with other people nothing could be said. But she rose and turning from Kimberly called to her husband, asking if he were ready.

"Before you go I have a favor to ask," said Kimberly, intervening, and Kimberly's petitions had always something of the color of command. "I told you," he said, speaking to Alice, "of my mother's portrait. It is upstairs; will you come see it?"

"I should like very much to see it. Come, Walter," she held out her hand for her husband. "Mr. Kimberly wants us to see his mother's portrait."

Kimberly made no comment, but the manner with which he paused, waiting for MacBirney to join them, sufficiently indicated that he was conscious of waiting. When MacBirney noticed his attitude he moved from those he was with much more quickly than he would have done at his wife's behest. Dolly came with MacBirney and the four walked upstairs. Kimberly's rooms opened to the south. There were five in the apartment and while Kimberly excused himself to take MacBirney in for a moment to speak to his uncle, Dolly took Alice through Kimberly's suite.

"These rooms are charming!" exclaimed Alice, when the men came in to them. "You must see them, Walter. The breakfast room is dear."

They were standing in the library, which served as a writing room and a conference room. It was finished in oak and on the east the breakfast room opened, in white and green.

Alice took her husband's arm. "See, Walter," she said passing through the open door; "isn't this darling? These tones must be restful to wake to!"

"I had lunch here once," announced MacBirney in his choppy way. "With you and your brother and McCrea," he added, turning to Kimberly.

"You never said a word to me about seeing such a pretty place," remarked his wife.

"You've been in the west room?" asked Kimberly.

"Yes, Alice sang for me while you were with Uncle John," responded Dolly.

"I thought I heard music," remarked Kimberly, looking at Alice. "What did you sing?"

"I only hummed an old air."

Kimberly tried to get her to go back to the piano but could not. "I miss music keenly," he said, "I wish I could make a contract with you to sing here every day."

Alice laughed.

"You would be in very good company," interposed Dolly. "Some famous artistes have sung at that piano. Robert," she added, as the two women walked toward his dressing-room, "has everything here but what he ought to have--a wife. When mother lived, The Towers was more than a habitation--it was a home."

In his bedroom, Kimberly indicated a portrait above the fireplace. "This is my mother," he said to Alice. "Sit down for just a moment--I want you to like her."

"I like her very much, already," returned Alice. "But I should like to sit a moment to enjoy the portrait. I wish I could have known your mother."

"This room I fancy best of them all," Dolly was saying to MacBirney as they walked on. "All of this wall panelling and ceiling was made from one mahogany log brought up from Santo Domingo many years ago with a cargo of sugar."

Kimberly, sitting with Alice before his mother's picture, showed a self-consciousness he did not often betray, a solicitude, seemingly, that Alice should agree with his own estimate of his mother. "She was the most tender, kindly woman in the world," he said after a moment.

"Such a mother ought to be an inspiration to you for everything high and good, Mr. Kimberly."

"Yet I have never reached anything high and good."

"Sometime you will."

He looked at her curiously. "Do you really think that?"

"Yes, I do. And thank you for letting me see your mother."

"If you only could have met her!" There was an intensity of regret in his words. "It was a tragedy for such a woman to die young. I have long wanted you to see her portrait; you constantly make me think of her, Alice."

She turned calmly and frankly. "It is most kind of you to say that, Mr. Kimberly. So kind that I am going to be bold enough to ask a favor."

"I know what you are going to ask, but I wish you wouldn't. I want very much to do what you are about to ask me not to do----"

"It is almost nothing--only not to call me Alice."

"There is no use my asking a favor, is there?" He turned with almost a boyish humor in his manner. His mother's eyes seemed to look at her in his eyes as he spoke.

"Not, Mr. Kimberly, this time. I want you to oblige me."

"You are afraid of me." There was no resentment in the words; nothing beyond a regret.

Her answer was low but neither weak nor confused. "Is it quite generous, Mr. Kimberly--here?"

"No," he answered in the same even voice, "it is not. Unhappily, there are times when generosity is weakness. I've been trying ever since I have known you to think of you just as I think of myself. I believe I have tried to give you a little the best of it--yet a selfish man can't always be sure of doing that."

"I trust you think of me," she responded, "only as one of the least important among your friends."

"You are afraid of me. And yet I want your confidence above everything in this world--and I must in some way deserve and win it."

"I do wish you would not say these things. I have to try very hard not to dislike you exceedingly when you speak in this way."

"You do dislike me exceedingly when I speak in this way. I know it perfectly."

If her voice trembled the least bit it was with indignation. "I sometimes ask myself whether I should suffer it even for my husband's sake. You will force me to do something unpleasant, I fear."

"I never will force you to do anything. I do want to call you Alice. But don't hate me for that."

She heard with relief Dolly talking to her husband in the doorway. "It was almost three years before Imogene saw Charles again," Alice heard Dolly say, "and, would you believe it, he began exactly where he left off. After that Imogene decided it was of no use. So, she is Mrs. Kimberly!"

"By Jove! He had patience," laughed MacBirney.

Dolly laughed a little, too. "That is the only exasperating thing about the Kimberly men--their patience."

CHAPTER XIX

MacBirney's decision to spend the winter in town became very welcome to Alice; the atmosphere within a wide radius of The Towers seemed too charged with electricity for mental peace. And her husband, having tasted for the first time the excitement of the stock markets, desired to be near his brokers.

Fritzie, who was an authority in town affairs, made it easy for Alice to find acceptable quarters. In general the Second Lake people cared less and less for opening their town houses. Robert Kimberly's house, while nominally open, never saw its master. Charles and Imogene Kimberly for several years had spent their winters cruising and now made ready to take Grace De Castro to the eastern Mediterranean. Arthur and Dolly were to winter at Biarritz and join Charles and Imogene in Sicily on their return from the Levant. Fritzie accepted Alice's invitation to spend the season in town with her. Dora Morgan had already gone to Paris for an indefinite stay and the Nelsons, Congress being in session, were starting for Washington.

MacBirney came over to The Towers just before leaving with Alice for town to see Robert Kimberly. When Kimberly asked him what was on his mind, "I would like to know," MacBirney answered frankly, "what I can make some money in this winter." It was the second time he had brought the subject up and Kimberly who had once evaded his inquiries saw that nothing was to be gained by further effort in that direction.

Kimberly regarded him gravely. "Buy standard railway shares," he suggested, "on a four-and-a-half-per-cent average."

"But I want to do better than four-and-a-half-per-cent. It costs something to live."

"I mean, you would have your profit in the advances. But your present income ought to cover a very liberal scale of living," said Kimberly.

MacBirney squirmed in his chair. Kimberly would have preferred he should sit still. "That is true," assented MacBirney, with smiling candor, "but a poor man doesn't want to spend all his money. Isn't there a chance," he asked, coming to the point in his mind, "to make some money in our own stock? I have heard a rumor there would be, but I can't run it down."

"There are always chances if you are closely enough in touch with general conditions. Charles keeps better track of those things than I do; suppose you talk with him."

"Charles sends me to you," protested MacBirney good naturedly.

"Our shares seem just now to be one of the speculative favorites," returned Kimberly. "That means, as you know, violent fluctuations."

MacBirney was impatient of hazards. "Put me next on any one of your own plans, Mr. Kimberly, that you might feel like trusting me with," said MacBirney, jocularly.

"I don't often have any speculative schemes of my own," returned Kimberly. "However," he hesitated a moment; MacBirney leaned forward. "Doane," continued Kimberly abruptly, "has a strong party interested now in putting up the common. They profess to think that on its earnings it should sell higher. In fact, they have sounded me about an extra dividend. I am opposed to that--until Congress adjourns, at any rate. But the company is making a great deal of money. I can't uncover Doane's deal, but I can say this to you: I have agreed to help them as much as I safely can. By that, I mean, that their speculative interests must always come second to the investment interests of our shareholders."

"By Jove, I wish I could get in on a movement like that, Mr. Kimberly. With you behind it----"

"I am not behind it--only not opposed to it. For my part, I never advise any one to speculate in our securities. I can't do it. I do business with speculators, but I never speculate myself. You don't credit that, do you? What I mean is this: I never take chances. If it is necessary, for cogent reasons, to move our securities up or down, I am in a position to do so without taking any extreme chances. That is natural, isn't it?"

MacBirney laughed and swayed in his chair. "I'd like to be fixed that way for just one year of my life!" he exclaimed.

"If you were you would find plenty of other things to engage your attention."

"Well, can you do anything for me on this present deal?"

Kimberly reflected a moment. "Yes," he said finally, "if you will operate through the brokers I name and do exactly as I say, and run the risk of losing half the money you put up--I don't see how you could lose more than that. But if you don't do exactly as I tell you, without question, you might lose a great deal more. I am not supposing, of course, that you would risk more than you could afford to lose."

"Not at all. I want to play safe."

"Place your orders to-day and to-morrow then for what common you can carry. Hamilton will let you have what money you need--or he will get it for you. Then forget all about your investment until I tell you to sell. Don't question the advice, but get out promptly at that moment no matter what you hear or what the market looks like. Can you do that? And keep your own counsel?"

"Trust me."

"Good luck then. And if it should come bad, try not to feel incensed at me," concluded Kimberly, rising.

"Surely not!" exclaimed MacBirney.

Kimberly smiled. "But you will, just the same. At least, that is my experience."

"What about the winter, Mr. Kimberly--are you going in town?"

"I haven't decided."

But although Kimberly had made no decision he had made vague promises to every one. With Charles he talked about putting his own yacht into commission, taking Larrie from the refineries for a breathing spell and meeting Charlie's party in February at Taormina. He discussed with Dolly a shorter vacation, one of taking passage to Cherbourg, motoring with Arthur and herself across France and meeting Charles at Nice, whence all could come home together.

The Nelsons left the lake last. Lottie gave Kimberly a parting thrust as she said good-by, delivering it in such a way that she hoped to upset him. "So you are in love with Alice MacBirney?" she said smilingly.

Kimberly looked frankly into her clear, sensuous eyes. "What put that into your head, Lottie?"

She laughed unsympathetically. "I'm glad you've got some one this time that will make you do the walking--not one like the rest of us poor creatures."

"Why do you talk about 'this time,' and 'us poor creatures'? Let me tell you something."

"Do, so I can tell it to Alice."

"You may at any time tell Mrs. MacBirney anything I say. It is this: if I should ever find a woman to love, I expect to do the walking. Tell her that, will you? I respect Mrs. MacBirney very highly and admire her very much--is that clear? But that is far from outraging her feelings by coupling her name with mine or mine with hers. Don't do that. I will never forgive it." She had never seen him so angry.

He realized more than once during the long winter that the slighted woman had told him only the truth. But from her it was an impertinent truth. And it galled him to be forced to admit to the loose-thinking members of his own set what he felt toward Alice.

Meantime, he spent the whole winter at The Towers with Uncle John, the tireless Francis, and his own unruly thoughts. His time went to conferences with his city associates, infrequent inspections of the refineries, horseback rides over the winter landscape, and to winter sunsets watched alone from the great western windows.

In town Alice found Fritzie an admirable guide.

"I try," said Fritzie calmly, answering one of Alice's jests at her wide acquaintance, "to move with the best. I suppose in heaven we shall encounter all sorts. And if we don't cultivate the elect here we may never have another chance to."

"You are far-sighted, Fritzie dear," smiled Alice. "What I can't understand is, why you don't marry."

"I have too many rich relations. I couldn't marry anybody in their class. I should have to pick up with some wretched millionaire and be reduced to misery. The Lord deliver us from people that watch their incomes--they are the limit. And it must, I have always thought, be terrible, Alice, to live with a man that has made a million honestly. He would be so mean. Of course, we are mean, too; but happily a good part of our meannesses are underground--buried with our ancestors."

Fritzie's light words struck home with an unsuspected force. Alice knew Fritzie had no thought of painting MacBirney; it was only Alice herself who recognized her husband's portrait.

Fritzie certainly had, as she admitted, an appetite for the luxurious and even MacBirney liked her novel extravagances. In their few resting hours the two women talked of Second Lake. "Fritzie," said Alice one night when they were together before the fire, "the first time I met you, you said every one at Second Lake was contented, with two exceptions. You were one; who was the other?"

"Robert, dear. He is the most discontented mortal alive. Isn't it all a strange world?"

Alice, too, had thoughts that winter, but they were confused thoughts and not always to be tolerated. She, likewise, was beginning to think it a strange world.

MacBirney, guided by McCrea, followed the pool operations with sleepless vigilance. They reached their height when Congress adjourned early without disturbing the tariff. The street saw enormous gains ahead for the crowd operating in the Kimberly stocks and with public buying underway the upward movement in the shares took on renewed strength.

It was just at this moment of the adjournment of Congress that Kimberly sent McCrea to MacBirney with directions to sell, and explicitly as to how and through whom to sell. MacBirney, to McCrea's surprise, demurred at the advice and argued that if he dropped out now he should lose the best profits of the venture.

McCrea consented to talk to Kimberly again. Doane, the Hamilton banking interests and their associates were still ostensibly buying and were talking even higher prices. It did not look right to MacBirney to sell under such circumstances but McCrea came back the very next day with one word: "Sell." No reasons, no explanations were given, nothing vouchsafed but a curt command.

MacBirney, doubtful and excited, consulted Alice, to whom indeed, in serious perplexity, he often turned. Knowing nothing about the situation, she advised him to do precisely as Kimberly directed and to do so without loss of time. He was still stubborn. No one but himself knew that he was carrying twice the load of stock he had any right to assume, and battling thus between greed and prudence he reluctantly placed the selling orders.

Just as he had gotten fairly out of it, the market, to his mortification, advanced. A few days later it ran quite away. Huge blocks of stock thrown into it made hardly any impression. The market, as MacBirney had predicted, continued strong. At the end of the week he felt sure that Kimberly had tricked him, and in spite of winning more money than he had ever made in his life he was in bad humor. Kimberly himself deigned no word of enlightenment. McCrea tried to explain to MacBirney that the public had run away with the market--as it sometimes did. But MacBirney nursed resentment.

The Nelsons came over from Washington that week--it was Holy Week--for the opera and the week-end, and MacBirney asked his wife to entertain them, together with Lambert, at dinner on Friday night.

Alice fought the proposal, but MacBirney could not be moved. She endeavored to have the date changed to Easter Sunday; MacBirney was relentless. He knew it was Good Friday and that his wife was trying to avoid entertaining during the evening. But he thought it an opportunity to discipline her. Alice sent out her invitations and they were accepted. No such luck, she knew, as a declination would be hers.

Lottie, amusing herself for the winter with Lambert, was in excellent humor. But Alice was nervous and everything went wrong. They rose from the table to go to the opera, where Nelson had the Robert Kimberly box. Alice seeking the retirement of an easy-chair gave her attention to the stage and to her own thoughts. In neither did she find anything satisfying. Mrs. Nelson, too talkative with the men, was a mild irritation to her, and of all nights in the year this was the last on which Alice would have wished to be at the opera. It was only one more link in the long chain of sacrifices she wore for domestic peace, but to-night her gyves lay heavy on her wrists. She realized that she was hardly amiable. This box she was enjoying the seclusion of, brought Kimberly close to her. The difference there would be within it if he himself were present, suggested itself indolently to her in her depression. How loath, she reflected, Kimberly would have been to drag her out when she wished to be at home. It was not the first time that she had compared him with her husband, but this was the first time she was conscious of having done so. All they were enjoying was his; yet she knew he would have been indifferent to everything except what she preferred.

And it was not alone what he had indicated in deferring to her wishes; it was what he often did in deferring in indifferent things to the wishes of others that had impressed itself upon her more than any trait in his character. How much happier she should be if her own husband were to show a mere trace of such a disposition, she felt past even the possibility of telling him; it seemed too useless. He could not be made to understand.

For supper the party went with Nelson. The gayety of the others left Alice cold. Nelson, with the art of the practised entertainer, urged the eating and drinking, and when the party left the buzzing café some of them were heated and unrestrained. At two o'clock, Alice with her husband and Fritzie reached their apartment, and Alice, very tired, went directly to her own rooms. MacBirney came in, somewhat out of humor. "What's the matter with you to-night?" he demanded. Alice had dismissed Annie and her husband sat down beside her table.

"With me? Nothing, Walter; why?"

"You acted so cattish all the evening," he complained, with an irritating little oath.

Alice was in no mood to help him along. "How so?" she asked tying her hair as she turned to look at him.

An inelegant exclamation annoyed her further. "You know what I mean just as well as I do," he went on curtly. "You never opened your mouth the whole evening. Lottie asked me what the matter was with you----"

Alice repeated but one word of the complaining sentence. "Lottie!" she echoed. Her husband's anger grew. "If Lottie would talk less," continued Alice quietly, "and drink less, I should be less ashamed to be seen with her. And perhaps I could talk more myself."

"You never did like anybody that liked me. So it is Lottie you're jealous of?"

"No, not 'jealous of,' only ashamed of. Even at the dinner she was scandalous, I thought."

Her husband regarded her with stubborn contempt, and it hurt. "You are very high and mighty to-night. I wonder," he said with a scarcely concealed sneer, "whether prosperity has turned your head."

"You need not look at me in that way, Walter, and you need not taunt me."

"You have been abusing Lottie Nelson a good deal lately. I wish you would stop it." He rose and stood with one hand on the table. Alice was slipping her rings into the cup in front of her and she dropped in the last with some spirit.

"I will stop it. And I hope you will never speak of her again. I certainly never will entertain her again under any circumstances," she exclaimed.

"You will entertain her the next time I tell you to."

Alice turned quite white. "Have you anything else to say to me?"

Her very restraint enraged him. "Only that if you try to ride your high horse with me," he replied, "I will send you back to St. Louis some fine day."

"Is that all?"

"That is all. And if you think I don't mean what I say, try it sometime." As he spoke he pushed the chair in which he had been sitting roughly aside.

Alice rose to her feet. "I despise your threats," she said, choking with her own words. "I despise you. I can't tell you how I despise you." Her heart beat rebelliously and she shook in every limb; expressions that she would not have known for her own fell stinging from her lips. "You have bullied me for the last time. I have stood your abuse for five years. It will stop now. You will do the cringing and creeping from now on. That woman never shall sit down at a table with me again, not if you beg it of me on your knees. You are a cowardly wretch; I know you perfectly; you never were anything else. I have paid dearly for ever believing you a man." Her contempt burned the words she uttered. "Now drive me one step further," she sobbed wildly, "if you dare!"

She snapped out the light above her head with an angry twist. Another light shone through the open door of her sleeping-room and through this door she swiftly passed, slamming it shut and locking it sharply behind her.

MacBirney had never seen his wife in such a state. He was surprised; but there could be no mistake. Her blood was certainly up.

CHAPTER XX

If Alice or her husband apprehended a stormy sequel to the unpleasant scene in her dressing room both were relieved that none followed. Not a word came up between them as a result of the breach. There was the usual silence that follows a tempestuous outbreak and the usual indirect, almost accidental, resumption of speaking relations after the acute suspicion of renewed hostilities had worn itself out.

MacBirney had the best of reasons for ignoring what had passed. He had, in fact, experienced the most surprising moments of his life and caution advised against the stirring up of any further altercation. Heretofore he had always known just what his wife, when bullied, would do; but he no longer knew and the uncertainty gave him pause.

He found matter for surprise, indeed for a series of surprises, in the manner in which Alice stood newly revealed to him. Dependence and timidity seemed suddenly to have left her. She walked a new path; not one of complete indifference to her husband, but of decision complete in itself. Forced to cast aside his judgment and fall back on her own, Alice accepted the alternative openly. Her new attitude made itself felt in unnumbered ways--sometimes in no more than arranging for a day down-town with Fritzie, sometimes in discussing when Cedar Lodge should be opened and how. MacBirney found himself no longer consulted; Alice told him what she intended to do. If he gave arbitrary or unreasonable orders they were ignored. If he followed the subject further his inquiries were ignored.

Alice realized it was not right to live in a home in this way, but MacBirney himself had taught her so many ways of wrong living that compunction had grown dull. His pupil, long unwilling to accept his debasing standards of married life, long suffering the cruelty of finding them enforced upon her, had at last become all that he had made her and something unpleasantly more--she made herself now complete mistress of her own affairs.

Nor was Alice less surprised at the abject surrender of her husband. She knew him in the end better than he knew himself, and cowardly though he was, she felt the new situation would not endure forever--that worse must surely follow. But those who learn to sleep on dumb reproach and still for years the cry of waking apprehension, learn also not to look with foreboding ahead.

There were, it is true, times in which Alice asked herself if in her new attitude she were not walking in a dream; slumbers in which the old shrinking fear returned; moments in which she could hardly realize her own determination. But the fear that had so long subdued her now served to support her courage. Go back she would not; the present she had made her own, the future must account for itself.

Moreover, as the acuteness of the crisis passed everything looked better. The present tends always to justify itself. And prosperous skies opening on MacBirney's speculative ventures consoled him for such loss of prestige as he suffered in his own home.

He was again, curiously enough, Alice thought, in cordial touch with Robert Kimberly. She never asked a question and did not know for a long time what could account for this change, since he had been abusing Kimberly vigorously during the life of the market pool. Kimberly had never called at the town apartment and Alice heard of him only through Fritzie, who visited The Towers on monetary errands and always spoke interestingly of Robert's affairs.

And now spring airs came even to town, and Alice, breathing them, with the sudden sunshine and the morning song of birds, longed for her country home. She kept the telephone wire busy summoning her gardener to conferences and laid out elaborate plans with him for making Cedar Lodge more beautiful for the summer. A number of things conspired to keep her from getting out to Second Lake early. But the servants had been installed and the lodge put in readiness for her coming.

One night in May--a summer night, warm, lighted by the moon and still--an impulse seized Alice to break away from everything for the country. Morning found her with Fritzie, and accompanied only by their maids, in a big motor-car speeding over the ribbon roads toward Second Lake. A curious play of emotions possessed Alice as they whirled through the dust of the village and swung into the hills toward The Towers. She had given no instructions to her chauffeur as to which road he should take and he had chosen the southern road because the grades were better.

It was months since Alice had seen Kimberly. But not until now did she realize with some apprehension how much he had been in her mind all winter. The near prospect of meeting him disturbed her and she felt an uneasiness at the thought. It was too late to change the route. She felt she had been wrong not to give orders for the north road in time. Then the notion came that she must meet him sometime, anyway, and whenever they met he must be kept within bounds she had set many times since their last hour together. She could see in the distance The Towers gates and the lodge, sentinel-like, away up the road. The mere sight of the familiar entrance brought Kimberly up sharply. The chauffeur checked the car to ask whether he should drive through the grounds. Fritzie said, "Yes."

Alice corrected her, "No, no."

"Why, my dear," exclaimed Fritzie, "not stop to speak to Robert!"

"It will delay us, and I am crazy to get home."

"But it will cut off two miles!"

"And keep us an hour."

"It won't keep us five minutes and the grounds are beautiful."

"We will see them to-morrow. Drive straight ahead, Peters."

Fritzie protested as they flew past the lodge. "I feel like a heathen going by The Towers in this way. I hope Robert won't hear of it."

"I will take all the blame," returned Alice, with a bravado she did not feel. Then she laid her hand on Fritzie's arm. "You may come back right after luncheon."

When they reached the hill beyond Black Rock they saw Cedar Point lying below in the sunshine of the lake. Alice cried out at the beauty of it. Her spirits rose with an emotion that surprised her. For an instant she could not speak. Her eyes moistened and the load that had oppressed her a moment earlier took wings. Before she had quite recovered, the car was down the hill and speeding through the green gates, up the winding avenue of maples, and swinging in an alarming ellipse around to the front of the house.

She ran in through the open doors as if she had left it all but yesterday. Flowers were everywhere. She passed from room to room with the bubbling spirits of a child and dropped at last into her own little chair at her toilet table. Annie, infected with the happiness of her mistress, was wreathed in smiles as she took her hat, while Fritzie, sitting in dusty veil and gloves, telephone in hand, was calling The Towers and in the same breath begging her maid to prepare her bath. No response to Fritzie's telephone message came until late in the afternoon. About four o'clock Robert Kimberly called her up.

"I hear you have arrived," he said.

"This is a pretty time for you to be answering, Robert. Where have you been all day?"

"Driving with Francis. He hasn't been very well lately. I took him over to the Sound. How is Mrs. MacBirney, Fritzie?"

"Come over and see."

"Call her to the telephone."

Alice took the receiver. "How do you do, Mr. Kimberly?"

"Glad to hear your voice. Fritzie has been telling me stories about you all winter."

Alice controlled the pleasant excitement that came with the familiar sound of his own voice. "You mustn't believe the stories you hear," she laughed. "How are you all?"

"One story to-day sounded pretty straight."

"Sometimes those are the least reliable. How is your uncle?"

"Still I shall have to have it out with you--passing us by this morning."

"But you weren't at home."

"Worse and worse--you didn't know that."

She laughed again happily. "You may scold as much as you like, I'm so happy to get home I'm walking on air."

"How do you manage that? I never can get up any excitement over getting home. I wish I might come and see how it affects you."

"Do come."

"Unfortunately I am leaving to-night for the Southwest."

"For the Southwest?" she echoed in surprise. "But we heard of you just back from the West."

"Yes, and with some stories for you. This time it is New Orleans and a terminal project."

"So busy a man! I hope we shall see you when you return."

"I certainly hope so. If I didn't, I shouldn't go. By-the-way," he added humorously, "I seem to have dropped something."

"What can it be?"

"The string you held out a minute ago."

Alice's eyes danced but only the telephone receiver saw them. "What string?"

"About letting me come over. A car was set in this afternoon at Sunbury but the train doesn't pick me up till eleven o'clock to-night. I might run over to see you on my way down----"

"Oh, by all means, do, Mr. Kimberly."

"--just to see how you look when you are happy."

"Do come; but I am always happy."

He hesitated a moment. "If I were sure of that I might not come."

"You may be 'sure,' I assure you. And why, pray, shouldn't you come?"

He retreated easily. "Because in that case I could see your happiness, without intruding on you when you are tired--as you must be now. However, I will run in for a few moments after dinner."

Kimberly appeared shortly before nine o'clock. Fritzie greeted him. "Oh, aren't you youthful to-night?" she exclaimed. He was in a travelling suit and his face was tanned from his Western trip. "You should never wear anything but gray, Robert."

"Has she been as agreeable as this all winter?" asked Kimberly turning to greet Alice.

"All winter," declared Fritzie, answering for herself, "except once when Lottie Nelson's dog chewed up a lace hat for me, and Robert, I have spent this whole winter saying good things about you--haven't I Alice? Even when we saw they were trying to put you in jail."

"Many worthy people seemed to sympathize with that effort," responded Kimberly dryly. "I trust you didn't?" he added turning to Alice.

"I? Not in the least. If they had succeeded, I should have brought you flowers."

The three sat down. Kimberly looked at Alice. "What have you been doing all winter?"

"Nothing."

"Listen to that!" exclaimed Fritzie. "Why, we've been as busy as ants all winter."

"Fritzie would never allow you to do nothing," said Kimberly. "You met a lot of people she tells me."

"I said 'nothing,' because the time went so fast I found no time to do anything I had intended to."

Fritzie objected again: "You kept at your singing all winter, didn't you?"

Kimberly showed interest at once. "Good! Let us hear now how your voice sounds in the country air."

"I haven't any songs."

"You threw some into the wicker trunk," interposed Fritzie.

"Find them, Fritzie, do," said Kimberly. "And what else did you do?" he asked of Alice as Fritzie ran upstairs.

"Everything that country people do," responded Alice. "And you've been West? Tell me all about it."

Kimberly looked very comfortable in a Roman chair as he bent his eyes upon her. "Hardly a spot in Colorado escaped me this time. And I went to Piedmont----"

"To Piedmont?" cried Alice. "Oh, to see the little factory."

"To see the house you lived in when you were there."

"What possible interest could that poor cottage have for any one? You must have realized that we began housekeeping very modestly."

He brushed her suggestion away with a gesture.

"I wanted to see it merely because you had lived in it." He waited a moment. "Can't you understand that?"

"Frankly, I cannot."

"St. Louis was very interesting," he went on.

"Oh, I love St. Louis!" Alice exclaimed.

"So do I," assented Kimberly. "And in St. Louis I went to see the house you were born in. It was worth looking at; your father's house was a house of character and dignity----"

"Why, thank you!"

"--Like many of the older houses I ran across in searching it out----"

Alice seemed unable to rise quite above her embarrassment. "I can hardly believe you are not making fun of me. What ridiculous quests in St. Louis and in Piedmont! Surely there must have been incidents of more importance than these in a three-weeks' trip."

He ignored her comment. "I stood a long time staring at your father's house, and wishing I might have been born in that little old cottage just across the street from where that rich little girl of sixteen lived. I would rather have known you then than lived all I have lived since you were born there."

Alice returned his look with control of every feature. "I did not live there till I was sixteen, if you mean the old home. And if you had been born just across the street you would have had no absurd idea about that little girl in your head. Little girls are not usually interested in little boys across the street. Little boys born thousands of miles away have better chances, I think, of knowing them. And it is better so--for they, at least, don't know what absurd, selfish little things girls across the street are."

"That is all wrong----"

"It is not," declared Alice pointedly.

But the force of everything she said was swept away by his manner. "Only give me the same street and the meanest house in it!" His intensity would not be answered. "I would have taken the chances of winning."

"What confidence!"

"And I'd have done it or torn the house down."

Fritzie came back. "I can't find the music anywhere."

Kimberly rose to go to the music room. "No matter," he persisted, "sing anything you can remember, Mrs. MacBirney--just sing."

It seemed easier, as it always seemed when Kimberly persisted, to consent than to decline. Alice sang an English ballad. Then a scrap--all she could remember--of a Moskowski song; then an Italian ballad. Kimberly leaned on the piano.

"Do you like any of those?" asked Alice with her hands running over the keys.

"All of them. But what was the last?"

"An Italian air."

"Yes, I remember it--in Italy. Sing it again, will you?"

"Tell me about that song," he said when she had repeated it. "It is lovely."

"I don't know much. It is a very old song."

"Have I ever told you about a villa on Lago Maggiore?"

"Fritzie has told me. She says it is a dream."

"I should like to hear you sing that song there sometime."

The moon was rising when Kimberly left for the train. Fritzie objected to his going. "Give up your trip. Stay over to-night. What's the difference?"

"I can't, Fritzie. I'm going like a minstrel show, billed for one-night stands. I have engagements ahead of me all the way and if I miss a day I upset the whole schedule."

"What's it all about?"

"A railroad terminal and reorganization. And I've just time to get around and back for Charles's return."

"And the country dance!" said Fritzie.

"Dolly's country dance," explained Alice.

"Good. I don't want to miss that."

Fritzie caught his sleeve. "You disappointed us last year."

"You may count on me," promised Kimberly.

Fritzie pouted. "I know what that means, 'don't count on me!'"

"This time," returned Kimberly as the door of his motor-car was opened for him, "it isn't going to mean that, Fritzie."

CHAPTER XXI

MacBirney followed his household to the country after two weeks. The De Castros were then back and Dolly enlisted Alice and Fritzie to make ready for the dance at Black Rock barn which regularly signalized at Second Lake what Nelson termed the "opening of navigation."

Alice, with Fritzie to help, was charged with the decorations for the event, and two days before it, the available men about the place, under their direction, were emptying the green-houses and laying the woods under tribute.

The lighting scheme Alice pronounced ineffective. For years no one had given the subject any attention. At the last moment electricians were brought out from town to work early and late and lights were installed from which operators in elevated cages could throw sheets of color on the dancers.

When Imogene and Charles got home--and they were late, arriving only the evening before the party--Dolly, who met them at the train, drove them directly to Black Rock, where Alice with her husband, Fritzie, and Arthur De Castro was conducting a rehearsal of the electrical effects. The kisses and embraces of the committee and the arrivals took place under the rays of the new spot lights.

"Now if Robert were here," cried Fritzie impatiently, "everything would be complete. No one knows where he is. Suppose he doesn't come?"

"He is in town and will be out to-morrow." Imogene as she made the announcement put her arm around Alice. "Sweetheart, you must be dead."

Alice was sustained by the excitement. "Nothing of the sort. I haven't done anything but suggest," she said gayly. "Fritzie has done all the work. In the morning we will bring in the apple blossoms and we are through."

But when she had received all the enthusiasm and compliments she went home tired. MacBirney came to her room to talk, but he had no word for the successful decorations and Alice pleading fatigue went directly to bed.

She woke with the sun streaming through the east windows. It was late and though still tired she rose at once. The morning was superb, and, while dressing, Alice surprised Annie by singing to herself.

Fritzie drove over with her to Black Rock. Alice running in to speak to Dolly found her in bed. Dolly kissed her. "You look so fresh, dear." Alice drew herself up with a laugh. "It's the morning, Dolly."

"By-the-way, Robert is here. He came late and he and Arthur talked so long he stayed all night. He is just across the hall in the blue room."

"Then every one is accounted for. I must be off, Dolly."

"Where are you going?"

"To the woods with Fritzie to get the blossoms."

An old coaching brake had been sent up from the stables and Arthur De Castro was waiting for the two women. "I am going to drive you down the field before I take my ride," he explained.

"You do need exercise. You look sleepy, Arthur," remarked Fritzie, critically.

"Robert kept me up all night." Arthur turned to Alice. "You knew he was back?"

"Dolly told me."

"The lazy fellow isn't up yet," said Fritzie.

Arthur corrected her. "He is up and gone home. But he will be over again this morning."

The horses were fresh and took Arthur's attention across the field and the big wagon lurched as the team danced along. In the woods they found Grace De Castro with the men who were to work. Arthur's saddle-horse was in waiting. The men began loading the brake with elder blossoms, brier roses, and branches from the forest trees. Arthur had meant to take his groom with him, but found there would be nobody to drive the brake back to the barn.

"No matter, Mr. De Castro," said Alice. "Take him. I will drive back." Arthur demurred, but Alice insisted. "I would rather drive the team than not. I drive our horses all the time."

Arthur and the groom rode away. Fritzie and Grace looked at Alice in astonishment when the wagon had been loaded and Alice took the driver's high seat, pulled her glove gauntlets back taut and a gardener handed her the reins.

"Aren't you afraid?" cried Grace.

"Not in the least," Alice answered, slipping her hands into the driving loops and putting her foot on the wheel-brake.

"Really," declared Grace, "you have quite an air."

Fritzie was apprehensive. "For Heaven's sake, don't let them run away, Allie."

The men at the bridles stood aside, Alice spoke and the team leaped swiftly ahead. She gave them leeway for a few moments, but kept them under control and her manner was so confident that Fritzie's fears were allayed before the brake had crossed the first hill. As Alice made the turn in the road and looked laughingly back the two girls waved approval at her. They saw the brim of her broad hat rising and falling like a bird's wings as she nodded to them; then she threw on the wheel-brake and started down the hill.

For a moment the difficulty of holding the pair in check increased and by the time the barn was in sight the struggle had stirred her blood. It colored two little circles in her cheeks and had lighted fires of animation in her gray eyes. She saw the rising entrance to the barn and only took heed that the doors were wide open. Then she gave all her strength to guiding the rushing horses up the long incline. Just as their heads shot under the doorway the off horse shied. The front wheels of the brake bounced over the threshold and Alice saw, standing within, Robert Kimberly.

She gave an exclamation of surprise as she threw on the wheel-brake, pulled with all her strength on the reins and brought her horses to a halt. Kimberly with one hand on the casement stood perfectly still until she looked around. Then he came forward laughing. "You certainly are a capital whip."

"You frightened me nearly to death!" exclaimed Alice with a long breath. "Where, pray, did you come from?" she demanded, looking down from her eminence.

"From almost everywhere. And you?"

"From the woods."

He laid a hand on the foot-board. "Really, I wonder whether there is anything you can't do."

"I am afraid there is one thing now. I don't see how I am going to get down. Aren't there any men around to take the horses?"

"The horses will stand. Just hook your lines and jump from the wheel."

Alice looked at the distance in dismay. "That is easy to say."

"Not hard to do," returned Kimberly. "I'll break your flight."

"I'm a wretched jumper."

"Nonsense. You can't tell me you're a wretched anything after that drive."

"Step away then and I'll jump. Only, I don't see just how I am going to stop after I start."

"What do you want to stop for? Come ahead."

She put her foot cautiously on the wheel; it was a very pretty foot. Then she steadied herself and with her hand swept little ringlets of hair from her eyes.

She knew he was waiting to receive her and, meaning to elude him, turned at the last instant and jumped away from where he stood. Kimberly, in spite of her precaution, caught her as her feet struck the floor, and leaned an instant over her. "Beautifully done!" he exclaimed, and drawing her suddenly into his arms he kissed her.

She pushed him back with all her strength. He met her consternation with good humor. "I couldn't help it."

Alice, burning with angry blushes, retreated. He hoped it would end there and ignored the outraged spirit in her eyes as she took her handkerchief from her waist.

He tried to laugh again. "Don't be angry." But Alice put both hands to her face and walked quickly away.

CHAPTER XXII

Kimberly followed her through the open door. "Where are you going?" he asked. Her answer came in her quickened step. He repeated his words without eliciting any response. Then he stepped directly in front of her in the path. "Stop for one moment. Alice, you can't go any farther while you are as angry at me as you are now."

"I am Alice to no one but my husband," she exclaimed controlling herself as well as she could. "You shall not stop me, you have no right to."

"Where are you going?"

"I am going home."

"Listen; you are Alice to me--now, and forever; remember that."

Her knees trembled as she strove to escape him. She tried to pass through the shrubbery and could not. She felt faint and dizzy. The very world had changed with a kiss. Everything in life seemed upset, every safeguard gone.

He took her arm. "Come back to the path, Alice. We must walk it together."

She paused an instant for breath and made an effort to speak as she put his hand angrily away. "I insist," she cried, "that you do not continue to insult me."

"If you wait for me to insult you, Alice, you will wait a long time. I should be as likely to insult my own mother."

"I have done nothing to deserve this," she sobbed, frantic with confusion.

"You deserve more a thousand times than my devotion ever can bring you. But all it can ever bring, from the moment I kissed you, is yours."

Her eyes blazed through her tears. In her helpless wrath she stamped her foot. "You are shameless. I detest your conduct. If you are going to the house I will stay here. If you are not, let me go."

He met her denunciation with steadiness. "Nothing you can say will anger me."

"You mean you have no respect for me." She spoke so fast she could scarcely frame the words. "Why don't you say so? Are you too cowardly?"

The imputation stung him. He seemed to explode inwardly. "I have nothing but respect for you, Alice," he insisted with terrifying energy, "but this thing must be fought out----"

She attempted to speak. His words drowned her. "I want to say nothing that will wound or offend you. You make it very hard for me to speak at all----"

"You have no right to speak----"

"But, Alice," he exclaimed, throwing all his force into the words, "you don't love that man. That is why I speak. If you did love him, if even he loved you, I could be silent."

"I love my husband as a wife should," she cried, struggling vainly to escape his accusation.

"You do not. You cannot!"

They spoke at white heat, she fighting vainly to control her trembling limbs and Kimberly pausing at times to deal better his sledge-hammer blows at her pitiful strength.

"You do not love that man. If I believed you did," he spoke with a bitterness she had never heard before, "I should never want to see another sun rise. I respect you above all women that breathe; but in that I am right, I can't be wrong. I have suppressed and stifled and smothered as long as I can and it will come out!"

"I will not hear you!"

"Sometime, somewhere, you will hear me. Don't speak!" he exclaimed vehemently. The veins knotted upon his forehead. "I forgot myself for a moment. If you knew what it costs me to remember! But, Alice, for me it is you--or nothing in this world. Remember! You or nothing!"

She searched his face for pity. "I am sinking with shame. What further, what more humiliation do you want? We are in plain view of the house. I am utterly helpless. Will you not have the decency to leave me?"

"I wish I could have said this better; I do nothing well. If I have hurt you, I am very, very sorry." He strode away toward the garden.

Trying to compose herself, Alice walked to the house. Providentially, Dolly had already started for the field. Summoning a servant, Alice ordered her car and with her head whirling started for home. As she was hurried over the country road her mind gradually righted itself, and strange thoughts ran like lightning flashes through her brain. Reaching home, she hastened upstairs and locked her door.

What startled her most painfully in her reflections was the unwelcome conviction that there was nothing new, nothing surprising in her situation. Nothing, at least, except this violent outburst which she now realized she ought long ago to have foreseen. She was suddenly conscious that she had long known Kimberly loved her, and that one day he would call her to account--for the crime of being loved in spite of herself, she reflected bitterly.

She threw herself on her couch and held her hands upon her burning temples. He had caught her in his arms and forced a kiss upon her. The blood suffused her face at the recollection. Again and again, though she turned from the picture, imagination brought it back. She saw his eyes as he bent over her; the thought of the moment was too much to support. Her very forehead crimsoned as the scene presented itself. And worse, was the realizing that something of fascination lingered in the horror of that instant of amazement and fear and mad repulsion of his embrace. She hid her face in her pillow.

After a time she grew calmer, and with her racing pulse quieted, her emotion wore itself somewhat out. Saner thoughts asserted themselves. She felt that she could fight it out. She searched her heart and found no wantonness within it. Strongly assailed, and not, she felt, through her own fault, she would fight and resist. He had challenged her when he had said it should be fought out. She, too, resolved it should be.

She bathed her forehead, and when she felt sure of herself, rang for Annie. Lunch was served in her room, but she could eat nothing. At moments she felt the comforting conviction of having settled her mind. Unhappily, her mind would not stay settled. Nothing would stay settled. No mood that brought relief would remain. The blood came unbidden to her cheeks even while Annie was serving her and her breath would catch at the opening of a door.

When she heard the hum of a motor-car on the open highway her heart jumped. She opened the porch doors and went out to where she could look on the lake. Her eyes fell upon the distant Towers and her anger against Kimberly rose. She resolved he should realize how he had outraged her self-respect. She picked from the troubled current of her thought cutting things that she ought to have said. She despised herself for not having more angrily resented his conduct, and determined, if he dared further persist, to expose him relentlessly to the circle of their friends, even if they were his own relations. There should be no guilty secret between them; this, at least, she could insure.

When the telephone bell rang, Annie answered it. Dolly was calling for Alice and went into a state when told that Alice had come home affected by the heat, and had given up and gone to bed; she hoped yet, Annie said, to be all right for the evening. Fritzie took the wire at Black Rock to ask what she could do, and Annie assured her there was nothing her mistress needed but quiet and rest.

When the receiver had been hung up the first bridge was crossed, for Alice was resolved above all things not to be seen that night at the dance. When Fritzie came back to Cedar Lodge to dress, Alice was still in bed. Her room was darkened and Annie thought she might be sleeping. At dinner-time, MacBirney, who had been in town all day, came in to see how she was. She told her husband that he would have to go to Dolly's with Fritzie.

MacBirney bent over his wife and kissed her, greatly to her mental discomfort. An unwelcome kiss from him seemed to bring back more confusingly the recollection of Kimberly's kiss, and to increase her perplexities. She detested her husband's caresses; they meant no real affection and she did not intend he should think she believed they did. But she never could decide where to draw the line with him, and was divided between a desire to keep him always at a distance and a wish not to seem always unamiable.

Fritzie, after she was dressed, tiptoed in. The room was lighted to show Alice the new gown. It was one of their spring achievements, and Alice raised herself on her pillow to give a complete approval of the effect. "It is a stunning thing; simply stunning. If you would only stop running yourself to death, Fritzie, and put on ten pounds, you would be absolute perfection."

"If I stopped running myself to death what would there be to live for?" demanded Fritzie, refastening the last pin in her Dresden girdle. "We all have to live for something."

Alice put her hand to her head. "I wonder what I have to live for?"

Fritzie turned sharply. "You? Why nothing but to spend your money and have a good time. Too bad about you, isn't it? You'll soon have a million a year for pin-money."

Alice shook her head. "A dozen millions a year would not interest me, Fritzie."

Fritzie laughed. "Don't be too sure, my dear; not too sure. Well," Fritzie's hands ran carefully over her hair for the last time, "there are a lot of men coming over from the Sound to-night. I may meet my fate!"

"I wish you may with all my heart, Fritzie. Why is it fates always come to people that don't want them?"

"Don't you believe it," cried Fritzie, "they do want them."

"They don't--not always."

"Don't you ever believe it--they only say they don't or think they don't!" she exclaimed, with accustomed vehemence.

Alice moved upon her pillow in impatient disapproval. "I hope you'll have a good time to-night."

MacBirney was ready and Fritzie joined him. The house grew quiet after they left. Annie brought up a tray and Alice took a cup of broth. She did not long resist the drowsiness that followed. She thought vaguely for a moment of a prayer for safety. But her married life had long excluded prayer. What good could come of praying to be kept unharmed while living in a state that had in itself driven her from prayer? That, at least, would be too absurd, and with a dull fear gnawing and dying alternately at her heart she fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXIII

At noon next day MacBirney, seeking his wife, found her in her dressing-room. She had come from the garden and stood before a table filled with flowers, which she was arranging in vases.

"I've been looking for you." MacBirney threw himself into a convenient chair as he spoke. "Robert Kimberly is downstairs."

"Mr. Kimberly? To see you, I suppose."

"No, to see you."

"To see me?" Alice with flowers in her hand, paused. Then she carried a vase to the mantel-piece. "At this time of day?"

"Well--to see us, he says."

She returned to the table. "What in the world does he want to see us about?"

MacBirney laughed. "He says he has something to say to both of us. I told him I would bring you down."

A breath would have toppled Alice over. "I can't dress to go down now," she managed to say. "It may be something from Dolly. Ask him to give you any message he has."

Walking hurriedly to the mantel with another jar of roses, she found her fear extreme. Could it be possible Kimberly would dream of saying to her husband what he had said to her yesterday? She smothered at the thought, yet she knew his appalling candor and felt unpleasantly convinced that he was capable of repeating every word of it. The idea threw her into a panic. She resolved not to face him under such circumstances; she was in no position to do so. "Tell him," she said abruptly, "that as much as I should like to hear what he has to say, he will have to excuse me this morning."

"He offered to come this evening if you preferred."

"We have other guests to-night," returned Alice coldly. "And I can't be bothered now."

"Bothered?" echoed MacBirney with sarcasm. "Perhaps I had better tell him that."

"By all means, if you want to," she retorted in desperation. "Tell him anything you like."

Her husband rose. "You are amiable this morning."

"No, I am not, I'm sorry to say. I am not quite well--that is the real truth and must be my excuse. Make it for me or not as you like."

MacBirney walked downstairs. After an interminable time, Alice, breathing more freely, heard Kimberly's car moving from the door. When she went down herself she watched narrowly the expression of her husband's face. But he was plainly interested in nothing more serious than Fritzie's account of the country dance. When Alice ventured to ask directly what Kimberly's messages were, he answered that Kimberly had given none. With Fritzie, Alice took a drive after luncheon somewhat easier in mind. Yet she reflected that scarcely twenty-four hours had passed and she already found herself in an atmosphere of suspense and apprehension from which there seemed no escape.

While she was dressing that night, flowers from The Towers' gardens were brought to Cedar Lodge in boxfuls, just as they had regularly been sent the year before--roses for the tables, violets for Alice's rooms, orchids for herself. If she only dared send them back! Not, she knew, that it would make any difference with the sender, but it would at least express her indignation. She still speculated as to whether Kimberly would dare to tell her husband and upon what would happen if he should tell him.

And her little dream of publicity as an antidote! What had become of it already? So far as Kimberly was concerned, she now firmly believed he was ready to publish his attitude toward her to the world. And she shrank with every instinct from the prospective shame and humiliation.

The water about her seemed very deep as she reflected, and she felt singularly helpless. She had never heard of a situation just such as this, never imagined one exactly like it. This man seemed different from every other she had ever conceived of; more frankly brutal than other brutes and more to be dreaded than other men.

A week passed before Kimberly and Alice met. It was at Charles Kimberly's. Doctor Bryson, the Nelsons, and Fritzie were there.

As Alice and her husband came down, Charles Kimberly and Robert walked out of the library. Robert bowed to MacBirney and to Alice--who scarcely allowed her eyes to answer his greeting.

"Are you always glad to get back to your own country, Mrs. Kimberly?" asked MacBirney greeting his hostess.

Imogene smiled. "Dutifully glad."

"Is that all?"

"At least, I come back with the same feeling of relief that I am getting back to democracy."

"That is," suggested Lottie Nelson, "getting back to where you are the aristocracy."

Dolly, who with her husband joined them in time to hear the remark, tossed her head. "I always thank Heaven, Lottie, that we have no aristocracy here."

"But you are wrong, Dolly, we have," objected Robert Kimberly as the party went into the drawing-room. "Democracy is nothing but an aristocracy of ability. What else can happen when you give everybody a chance? We began in this country by ridding ourselves of an aristocracy of heredity and privilege; and we have only succeeded in substituting for it the coldest, cruelest aristocracy known to man--the aristocracy of brains. This is the aristocracy that controls our manufacturing, our transportation, our public service and our finance; it makes our laws and apportions our taxation. And from this fell cause done our present griefs arise."

"But you must rid yourself of the grossly material conception of an aristocracy, Mr. Kimberly," said Nelson. "Our real aristocracy, I take it, is not our material one, as Robert Kimberly insists. The true aristocrat, I hold, is the real but mere gentleman."

"Exactly right," assented De Castro. "The gentleman and nothing else is the thing."

"There is nothing more interesting than the gentleman," returned Robert Kimberly, "except the gentleman plus the brute. But the exception is enormous, for it supplies our material aristocrat."

"You must remember, though, that ideas of superiority and inferiority are very tricky," commented Imogene. "And they persist for centuries. To the Naples beggar, even to-day, the Germans are 'barbarians.' And whenever I encounter the two I never can decide which is the aristocrat, the traveller or the beggar."

"I read your speech at the New England dinner last night," said Imogene, turning to Nelson, "and I saw all the nice things that were said about it this morning."

"If credit were due anywhere it would be to the occasion," returned Nelson. "There is always something now in such gatherings to suggest the discomforting reflection that our best native stock is dying out."

Dolly looked distressed. "Oh, dear, are those unfortunate people still dying out? I've been worrying over their situation for years. Can't any one do anything?"

"Don't let it disturb you, Mrs. De Castro," said Bryson.

"But I am afraid it is getting on my nerves."

"Nothing dies out that doesn't deserve to die out," continued Bryson. "As to the people Nelson speaks of, I incline to think they ought to die out. Their whole philosophy of life has been bad. Nature ought to be ashamed, of course, to pass them by and turn to inferior races for her recruits. But since all races are inferior to them, what can she do but take refuge with the despised foreigner? The men and women that take life on the light-housekeeping plan may do so if they will--for one generation. What may safely be counted on is that nature will find its workers in the human hive even if it has to turn to the savage tribes."