Front matter (continued 4)

"But the poor savages, doctor--they also are on the verge of extinction, are they not?" demanded Dolly.

"Then nature will provide its workers from one unfailing source--from those we have always with us, the poor and the despised. And it can be depended on with equal certainty to cast the satisfied, cultivated, and intellectual drones into outer darkness."

"My dear, but the doctor is savage, isn't he?" Lottie Nelson made the appeal indolently to Imogene. "We shall soon be asking, doctor," she concluded languidly, "which tribe you belong to."

"He would answer, the medical tribe," suggested Fritzie.

"Speaking of savages," interposed Arthur De Castro, "Charles and I were making a portage once on the York River. On the trail I met two superb little Canadian lads--straight, swarthy, handsome fellows. They couldn't speak English. 'You must be French,' I suggested, addressing the elder by way of compliment in that tongue. Imagine my surprise when he answered with perfect composure, 'Non, monsieur. Nous sommes des sauvages!'"

"For my part," said Imogene, "I am always glad to hear Doctor Bryson defend families and motherhood. I don't care how savage he gets."

"I defend motherhood because to me it is the highest state of womanhood. Merely as an instinct, its mysteries are a never-ending marvel."

Lottie Nelson looked patiently bored. "Oh, tell us about them, do, doctor."

"I will tell you of one," returned Bryson undismayed. "Take the young mother that brings her first child into the world; from the day of its birth until the day of that mother's death, her child is never wholly out of her thought. The child may die, may be forgotten by every one else on earth, may be to all other conscious existence in this world as a thing that never was. But in its mother's heart it never dies. I call that a mystery."

The doctor's glance as he finished fell on Alice's face. He was sorry at once that he had spoken at all. Her eyes were fixed on him with a look of acute pain.

Alice hardly knew Doctor Bryson, but what he saw in the sadness of her face he quite understood. And though they had never met, other than in a formal way, he never afterward felt that they were wholly strangers.

CHAPTER XXIV

"By the way, Nelson," said De Castro, "what is there in this story in the afternoon papers about Doane and Dora Morgan?"

"It is substantially true, I fancy. They have eloped."

"From whom could they possibly be eloping?" asked Lottie.

"Why, you must know Doane has a wife and two little girls," exclaimed Dolly indignantly.

"I supposed his wife was divorced," returned Lottie helplessly. "Why wasn't she?"

"Perhaps," suggested Fritzie, "there wasn't time."

"I don't care; Dora's life has been a very unhappy one," persisted Lottie, "and frankly I am sorry for her."

"Even though she has run away with another woman's husband," said Imogene.

"Don't you think she deserves a great deal of sympathy, Robert?" asked Lottie, appealing to Kimberly.

"I can't say that I do," he answered slowly. "What moves one in any consideration of a situation of that kind is, in the first place, the standards of those that fall into it. Who, for instance, can scrape up any interest in the affairs of the abandoned? Or of those who look on irregular relations pretty much as they do on regular? People to enlist sympathy in their troubles must respect themselves."

The conversation drifted and Alice, within range of both tables, caught snatches of the talk at each. She presently heard Lottie Nelson speaking petulantly, and as if repeating a question to Kimberly. "What do men most like, Robert?" Alice could not see Kimberly's face, but she understood its expression so well that she could imagine the brows either luminously raised if Kimberly were interested, or patiently flat if he were not.

"You ought to know," she heard Kimberly answer. "You have been very successful in pleasing them."

"And failed where I have most wanted to succeed. Oh, no. I am asking you. What do they like?"

The answer halted. "I can't tell you. To me, of course, few men seem worth pleasing."

"What should you do to please a man, if you were a woman?"

"Nonsense."

"I'm asking purely out of curiosity," persisted Lottie. "I have failed. I realize it and I shall never try again. But at the end--I'd like to know."

"You probably would not agree with me," answered Kimberly after a silence, "most women would not. Perhaps it would fail with most men--but as I say, most men wouldn't interest me, anyway. If I had it to try, I would appeal to a man's highest nature."

"What is his highest nature?"

"Whatever his best instincts are,"

"And then?"

"That's all."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"No, it isn't nonsense. Only I am not good at analyzing. If I once caught a man in that way I should know I had him fast forever. There is absolutely no use in flinging your mere temptations at him. Keep those quietly in the background. He will go after them fast enough when you have made sure of him on the higher plane. If you are compelled to display your temptations at the start, the case is hopeless. You have surrendered your advantage of the high appeal. Trust him to think about the other side of it, Lottie. You can't suggest to him anything he doesn't know, and perhaps--I'm not sure--he prefers to turn to that side when he thinks you are not looking. The difficulty is," he concluded, speaking slowly, "even if you get him from the lower side, he won't stay hooked. You know how a salmon strikes at a fly? All human experience shows that a man hooked from the side of his lower instincts, will sooner or later shake the bait."

"It must be something even to have him on the hook for a while, Robert."

"But you don't agree with me."

"No."

"No doubt, I'm wrong. And it isn't, I suppose, of much consequence whether the men stay caught or not. I look at it, probably, with a business instinct. When I do anything, I want it to stay done forever. When I make a deal or fasten a point I want it to stay fastened for all time. That is my nature. Now, that may not be a woman's nature. You shouldn't have asked me, don't you see, because we 'begin' differently."

"I fancy that's it, Robert. We 'begin' differently."

"Try another seer--there is De Castro. Here is Mrs. MacBirney. Mrs. MacBirney," Kimberly moved so he could command Alice's attention, "Mrs. Nelson is trying to find out what a man likes in a woman. I haven't been able to tell her----"

"It isn't that at all," smiled Lottie, wearily. "Mr. Kimberly can tell. He won't."

Kimberly appealed to Alice. "It is a great mistake not to trust your oracle when he is doing his best--don't you think so, Mrs. MacBirney?"

"I suppose an oracle is consulted on his reputation--and it is on his reputation that his clients should rely," suggested Alice.

"Anyway," declared Lottie, rising, "I am going to try another."

Kimberly turned his chair as she walked away so that he could speak to Alice. "Giving advice is not my forte. Whenever I attempt it I disappoint somebody; and this time I had a difficult subject. Mrs. Nelson wants to know what men like in women. A much more interesting subject would be, what women like in men. I should suppose, in my blundering way, that sincerity would come before everything else, Mrs. MacBirney. What do you think?"

"Sincerity ought to be of value."

"But there is a great deal else, you imply."

"Necessarily, I should think."

"As, for instance?"

"Unselfishness among other things," said Alice.

He objected frankly to her suggestion. "I don't know about unselfishness. I have my doubts about unselfishness. Are you sure?"

"Most ideals include it, I believe."

"I don't know that I have any ideals--abstract ideals, that is. Though I once took quite an interest in the Catholic Church."

"An academic interest."

"No, no; a real and concrete interest. I admire it greatly. I tried once to look into its claims. What in part discouraged me was the unpleasant things Catholics themselves told me about their church."

"They must have been bad Catholics."

"I don't know enough about them to discriminate between the good and the bad. What, by the way," he asked bluntly, "are you--a good Catholic or a bad one?"

She was taken for an instant aback; then she regarded him with an expression he did not often see in her eyes. "I am a bad one, I am ashamed to say."

"Then these I speak of must have been good ones," he remarked at once, "because they were not in the least like you."

If he thought he had perplexed her he was soon undeceived. "There are varying degrees even of badness," she returned steadily. "I hope I shall never fall low enough to speak slightingly of my faith."

"I don't understand," he persisted, musing, "why you should fall at all. Now, if I were a Catholic I should be a good one."

"Suppose you become one."

He disregarded her irony. "I may sometime. To be perfectly frank, what I found most lacking when I looked into the question was some sufficient inducement. Of what use? I asked myself. If by following Christianity and its precepts a man could make himself anything more than he is--prolong his years, or recall his youth. If he could achieve the Titanic, raise himself to the power of a demigod!" Kimberly's eyes shone wide at the thought, then they closed to a contrasting torpor. "Will religion do this for any one? I think not. But fancy what that would mean; never to grow old, never to fall ill, never to long for without possessing!" A disdainful pride was manifest in every word of his utterance, but he spoke with the easy-mannered good-nature that was his characteristic.

"A man that follows the dreams of religion," he resumed but with lessening assurance, for Alice maintained a silence almost contemptuous and he began to feel it, "is he not subject to the same failures, the same pains, the same misfortunes that we are subject to? Even as the rest of us, he must grow old and fail and die."

"Some men, of course," she suggested with scant patience, "should have a different dispensation from the average mortal."

Kimberly squirmed dissentingly. "I don't like that phrase, 'the average mortal.' It has a villainously hackneyed sound, don't you think? No, for my part I should be willing to let everybody in on the greater, the splendid dispensation."

"You might be sorry if you did."

"You mean, there are men that should die--some that should die early?"

"There are many reasons why it might not work."

He stopped. "That is true--it might not work, if universally applied. It would do better restricted to a few of us. But no matter; since we can't have it at all, we must do the best we can. And the way to beat the game as it must be played in this world at present," he continued with contained energy, "is to fight for what we want and defend it when won, against all comers. Won't you wish me success in such an effort, Alice?"

"I have asked you not to call me Alice."

"But wish me the success, won't you? It's awfully up-hill work fighting alone. Two together can do so much better. With two the power is raised almost to the infinite. Together we could be gods--or at least make the gods envy us."

She looked at him an instant without a word, and rising, walked to an anteroom whither MacBirney, Lottie Nelson, De Castro, and Fritzie had gone to play at cards.

CHAPTER XXV

When the season was fairly open the Kimberlys made Alice the recipient of every attention. A solidarity had always seemed, in an unusual degree, to animate the family. They were happy in their common interests and their efforts united happily now to make Alice a favored one in their activities.

In everything proposed by Dolly or Imogene, Alice was consulted. When functions were arranged, guests lists were submitted to her. Entertainment was decided upon after Alice had been called in. The result was a gay season even for Second Lake. And Dolly said it was the influx of Alice's new blood into the attenuated strain at the lake that accounted for the successful summer. Alice herself grew light-hearted. In social affairs the battalions inclined to her side. Even Lottie Nelson could not stand out and was fain to make such peace as she could.

In all of this Alice found consolation for the neglect of her husband. She had begun to realize that this neglect was not so much a slight, personal to her, as a subordination of everything to the passion for money-getting. It is impossible to remain always angry and Alice's anger subsided in the end into indifference as to what her husband said or did.

She had, moreover--if it were a stimulus--the continual stimulus of Kimberly's attitude. Without insincerity or indifference he accommodated his interest in her to satisfactory restraint. This gave Alice the pleasure of realizing that her firmness had in nowise estranged him and that without being turbulent he was always very fond of her. She knew he could look to many other women for whatever he chose to ask of favor, yet apparently he looked to her alone for his pleasure in womankind; and in a hundred delicate ways he allowed her to feel this.

A handsome young Harvard man came to her at the lake seeking an opening in the refineries. His people were former Colorado acquaintances whom Alice was extremely desirous of obliging. She entertained her visitor and tried vainly to interest her husband in him. MacBirney promised but did nothing, and one day Dolly calling at Cedar Lodge found Alice writing a note to the college boy, still waiting in town on MacBirney's empty promises, telling him of the failure of her efforts and advising him not to wait longer.

"But why worry?" asked Dolly, when Alice told her. "Speak to Robert about it. He will place him within twenty-four hours."

"I can't very well ask a favor of that kind from Mr. Kimberly, Dolly."

"What nonsense! Why not?"

Alice could not say precisely why. "After my own husband hasn't found a way to place him!" she exclaimed.

Dolly did not hesitate. "I will attend to it. Give me his address. Football, did you say? Very good."

Within a week the young man wrote Alice--from the Orange River refineries, where he was, he picturesquely said, knee-deep in sugar--that he had actually been before the sugar magnate, Robert Kimberly himself, adding with the impetuous spelling of a football man, that the interview had been so gracious and lasted so long he had grown nervous about the time Mr. Kimberly was giving him.

Kimberly never referred to the matter nor did Alice ever mention it to him. It was merely pleasant to think of. And in such evidences as the frequent letters from her protégé she read her influence over the man who, even the chronicle of the day could have told her, had she needed the confirmation, extorted the interest of the world in which he moved; and over whom, apparently, no woman other than herself could claim influence.

She came tacitly to accept this position toward Kimberly. Its nature did not compromise her conscience and it seemed in this way possible both to have and not have. She grew to lean upon the thought of him as one of the consoling supports in her whirling life--the life in which reflection never reached conclusion, action never looked forward to result, and denial had neither time nor place.

The pursuit of pleasure, sweetened by that philanthropy and the munificent almsgiving which was so esteemed by those about her, made up her life. Alice concluded that those of her circle severely criticised by many who did not know them, did much good. Their failings, naturally, would not condemn them with critics who, like herself, came in contact with them at their best.

Some time after the placing of the young college man, Alice, running in one morning on Dolly found her in tears. She had never before seen Dolly even worried and was at once all solicitude. For one of the very few times in her life, it appeared, Dolly had clashed with her brother Robert. Nor could Alice get clearly from her what the difference had been about. All that was evident to Alice was that Dolly was very much grieved and mortified over something Kimberly had said or done, or refused to say or do, concerning a distinguished actress who upon finishing an American tour was to be entertained by Dolly.

Alice in the afternoon was over at Imogene's. Robert Kimberly was there with his brother. Afterward he joined Imogene and Alice under the elms and asked them to drive. While Imogene went in to make ready Alice poured a cup of tea for Kimberly. "I suppose you know you have made Dolly feel very bad," she said with a color of reproach.

Kimberly responded with the family prudence. "Have I?" Alice handed him the tea and he asked another question. "What, pray, do you know about it?"

"Nothing at all except that she is hurt, and that I am sorry."

"She didn't tell you what the difference was?"

"Except that it concerned her coming guest."

"I offered Dolly my yacht for her week. She wanted me to go with the party. Because I declined, she became greatly incensed."

"She thought, naturally, you ought to have obliged her."

"I pleaded I could not spare the time. She has the Nelsons and enough others, anyway."

"Her answer, of course, is that your time is your own."

"But the fact is, her guest made the request. Dolly without consulting me promised I would go, and now that I will not she is angry."

"I should think a week at sea would be a diversion for you."

"To tag around a week in heavy seas with wraps after a person of distinction? And pace the deck with her on damp nights?"

"That is unamiable. She is a very great actress."

Kimberly continued to object. "Suppose she should be seasick. I once went out with her and she professed to be ill every morning. I had to sit in her cabin--it was a stuffy yacht of De Castro's--and hold her hand."

"But you are so patient. You would not mind that."

"Oh, no; I am not in the least patient. The Kimberlys are described as patient when they are merely persistent. If I am even amiable, amiability is something quite other than patience. Patience is almost mysterious to me. Francis is the only patient man I ever have known."

"In this case you are not even amiable. We all have to do things we don't want to do, to oblige others. And Dolly ought to be obliged."

"Very well. If you will go, I will. What do you say?"

"You need not drag me in. I shall have guests of my own next week. If Dolly made a mistake about your inclination in the affair it would be only generous to help her out."

"Very well, I will go."

"Now you are amiable."

"They can put in at Bar Point and I will join them for the last two days. I will urge McEntee, the captain, to see that they are all sick, if possible, before I come aboard. Then they will not need very much entertaining."

"How malicious!"

"Not a bit. Dolly is a good sailor. Her guest cares nothing for me. It is only to have an American at her heels."

"They say that no one can resist her charm. You may not escape it this time."

A fortnight passed before any news came to Alice from the yachting party. Then Fritzie came home from Nelsons' one day with an interesting account of the trip. Until the story was all told, Alice felt gratified at having smoothed over Dolly's difficulty.

"They were gone longer than they expected," said Fritzie. "Robert was having such a good time. Lottie Nelson tells me Dolly's guest made the greatest sort of a hit with Robert. He didn't like her at first. Then she sang a song that attracted him, and he kept her singing that song all the time. He sat in a big chair near the piano and wouldn't move. The funny thing was, she was awfully bored the way he acted. By the way, you must not miss the golf to-morrow. Everybody will be out."

Alice hardly heard the last words. She was thinking about Kimberly's entertaining the celebrity. Every other incident of the voyage had been lost upon her. When she found herself alone her disappointment and resentment were keen. Some unaccountable dread annoyed her. He was then, she reflected, like all other men, filled with mere professions of devotion.

Something more disturbed her. The incident revealed to her that he had grown to be more in her thoughts than she realized. Racks and thumb-screws could not have dragged from her the admission that she was interested in him. It was enough that he professed to be devoted to her and had been led away by the first nod of another woman.

CHAPTER XXVI

The golf course and the casino were crowded next day when Alice arrived. Yet among the throng of men and women, her interest lay only in the meeting of one, as in turn his interest in all the summer company lay only in seeking Alice. She had hardly joined Imogene and the lake coterie when Kimberly appeared.

The players had driven off and the favorites, of whom there were many, could already be trailed across the hills by their following. When the "out" score had been posted, De Castro suggested that the party go down to the tenth hole to follow the leaders in.

A sea-breeze tempered the sunshine and the long, low lines of the club-house were gayly decorated. Pavilions, spread here and there among the trees, gave the landscape a festival air.

On the course, the bright coloring of groups of men and women moving across the fields made a spectacle changing every moment in brilliancy.

Kimberly greeted Alice with a gracious expectancy. He was met with a lack of response nothing less than chilling. Surprised, though fairly seasoned to rebuffs, and accepting the unexpected merely as a difficulty, Kimberly set out to be entertaining.

His resource in this regard was not scanty but to-day Alice succeeded in taxing his reserves. In his half-mile tramp with her in the "gallery," punctuated by occasional halts, he managed but once to separate her from the others. The sun annoyed him. Alice was aware of his lifting his straw hat frequently to press his handkerchief to beads of perspiration that gathered on his swarthy forehead, but she extended no sympathy.

In spite of his discomfort, however, his eyes flashed with their accustomed spirit and his dogged perseverance in the face of her coldness began to plead for itself. When the moving "gallery" had at last left them for an instant behind, Kimberly dropped on a bench under the friendly shade of a thorn apple tree.

"Sit down a moment, do," he begged, "until I get a breath."

"Do you find it warm?"

"Not at all," he responded with negligible irony. "It is in some respects uncommonly chilly." He spoke without the slightest petulance. "For Heaven's sake, tell me what I have done!"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, you are not kind in your manner toward me. I left you--I hoped you would remember--to do a favor for you----"

"For me?" Her tone was not in the least reassuring.

"At least, I conceived it to be for you," he replied.

"That is a mistake."

"Very good. Let us call it mistake number one. I spent five days with Dolly and her guests----"

"Guests," repeated Alice, lingering slightly on the word, as she poked the turf slowly with her sunshade, "or guest?"

"Guest!" he echoed, "Ah!" He paused. "Who has put me wrong in so simple a matter? What I did was no more than to be agreeable to Dolly's guests. I spent much time with the guest of honor at Dolly's repeated requests. She happened to sing a song that pleased me very much, for one particular reason; it was your lovely little Italian air; I am not ashamed to say it brought back pleasant moments. Since she could do nothing else that was so pleasing," he continued, "I kept her singing the song. She became bored and naturally ceased to be good-natured. Then, Dolly asked me to run around by Nantucket, which we could have done in two days. Not to be churlish, I consented. Then the coal gave out, which took another day."

"What a mishap! Well, I am glad to hear the trip went pleasantly."

"If you are, something has gone wrong with you----"

"Nothing whatever, I can assure you."

"You are offended with me."

"I assure you I am not."

"I assure you, you are." He took the sunshade from her hand. "You remember the fable about the man that tried to oblige everybody? He wasn't a refiner--he was a mere miller. At the start I really did my best for three days to entertain Dolly's lovely vampire and at the end of that time she made a face at me--and wound up by telling Dolly my head was full of another woman. Then--to be quite shamefully frank--I had to dodge Lottie Nelson's apologies for her unpleasant temper on an evening that you remember; altogether my lot was not a happy one. My head was full of another woman. You remember you said nobody could resist her charm? I thought of it. What is charm? I often asked myself. I saw nothing of charm in that charming woman. Who can define it? But penetration! She could read you like a printed book. We talked one night of American women. I dared to say they were the loveliest in the world. She grew incensed. 'They know absolutely nothing!' she exclaimed. 'That is why we like them' I answered. 'They are innocent; you are as corrupt as I am.' Then she would call me a hypocrite." He stopped suddenly and Alice felt his eyes keenly upon her. "Is it possible you do not believe what I am saying?"

"Innocent women believe whatever they are told."

"I don't deserve sarcasm. I am telling the simple truth. For once I am wholly at fault, Alice. I don't know what the matter is. What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened; only to-day I seem especially stupid."

"Are you as frank with me as I am with you?"

She made no answer. He drew back as if momentarily discouraged. "If you no longer believe me--what can I do?"

"It isn't at all that I do not believe you--what difference should it make whether or no I believe you? Suppose I were frank enough to admit that something I heard of you had disappointed me a little. What credit should I have for commenting on what in no way concerns me?"

"Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully received. Believe the best of me as long as you can. It will never be necessary, Alice, for any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day comes you will know it first from me. And if I ever am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to be--only because through my baseness I never could know what it means to be worthy of a woman far above me."

She reached out her hand for her sunshade but he refused to give it back. She tried to rise; he laid his hand on her arm. "A moment! It was about me, was it?" he continued. "Did you receive it cautiously? Put me in your position. How do you think one would fare who came to me with anything to your discredit? Think of it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look at me."

She looked up only for an instant and as if in protest. But in spite of herself something in her own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a new courage.

"You say what you hear of me does not concern you. Anything you hear of me does concern you vitally." His intensity frightened her, and thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless.

"Everything I do, important or trivial, has its relation to you. Do you believe me? Alice, you must believe me. You do believe me. How can you say that anything you hear of me does not concern you? It concerns you above every living person. It concerns your happiness----"

"Such wildness--such extravagance!" she exclaimed trying to control her fear.

"I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant. Our happiness, our very lives are bound up together. It isn't that I say to you, you are mine--I am yours."

The furious beating of her heart would not be stilled. "How can you say such things!"

"I say them because I can't escape your influence in my life. I only want to come up to where you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to where I have been condemned to be from the cradle. If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say to you, believe nothing of what you hear." His words fell like blows. "If I could show you my very heart I could not be more open. It is you who are everything to me--you alone."

Breathless and rigid she looked away. Hardly breathing himself, Kimberly watched her. Her lip quivered. "Oh, my heart!" he murmured. But in the words she heard an incredible tenderness. It moved her where intensity had failed. It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words. She drifted for an instant in a dream. New and trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a new day.

"Oh, my heart!" The words came again, as if out of another world. She felt her hand taken by a strong, warm hand. "Do you tremble for me? Is my touch so heavy? How shall I ever safeguard the flower of your delicacy to my clumsiness?"

She neither breathed nor moved. "No matter. You will teach me how, Alice. Learning how you can be happiest, I shall be happiest. I feel beggared when I lay my plea before you. What are all my words unless you breathe life upon them? A few things--not many--I have succeeded in. And I succeeded," the energy of success echoed in his confession, "only because I let nothing of effort stand between me and the goal. You have never been happy. Let me try to succeed with your happiness."

A silence followed, golden as the moment. Neither felt burdened. About them was quiet and the stillness seemed to flow from the hush of their thoughts.

"It is easy for you to speak," she faltered at last, "too easy for me to listen. I am unhappy--so are many women; many would be strong enough never to listen to what you have said. I myself should be if I were what you picture me. And that is where all the trouble lies. You mistake me; you picture to yourself an Alice that doesn't exist. If I could return your interest I should disappoint you. I am not depreciating myself to extort compliments--you would supply them easily, I know. Only--I know myself better than you know me."

"What you say," he responded, "might have point if I were a boy--it would have keen point. While to me your beauty--do not shake your head despairingly--your beauty is the delicacy of girlhood, you yourself are a woman. You have known life, and sorrow. I cannot lead you as a fairy once led you from girlhood into womanhood--would that I could have done it! He should be a very tender guide who does that for a woman.

"But I can lead you, I think, Alice, to everything in this world that consoles a woman for what she gives to it. Do not say I do not know you--that is saying I do not know myself, men, women, life--it is saying I know nothing. Modest as I am," he smiled lightly, "I am not yet ready to confess to that. I do know; as men that have lived and tasted and turned away and longed and waited, know--so I know you. And I knew from the moment I saw you that all my happiness in this world must come from you."

"Oh, I am ashamed to hear you say that. I am ashamed to hear you say anything. What base creature am I, that I have invited you to speak!" She turned and looked quickly at him, but with fear and resolve in her eyes. "This you must know, here and now, that I can never be, not if you kill me, another Dora Morgan."

He met her look with simple frankness. "The world is filled with Dora Morgans. If you could be, Alice, how could I say to you what I never have said, or thought of saying, to any Dora Morgan?"

"To be a creature would kill me. Do not be deceived--I know."

"Or do worse than kill you. No, you are like me. There is no half-way for you and me. Everything--or nothing!"

She rose to her feet. He saw that she supported herself for a moment with one hand still on the bench rail. He took her other hand within his own and drew her arm through his arm.

It was the close of the day. The sun, setting, touched the hills with evening, and below the distant Towers great copses of oak lay like islands on the mirrored landscape. They walked from the bench slowly together. "Just a little help for the start," he murmured playfully as he kept her at his side. "The path is a new one. I shall make it very easy for your feet."

CHAPTER XXVII

"I hope you rested well after your excitement," said Kimberly to Alice, laughing reassuringly as he asked. It was the day following their parting at the golf grounds. He had driven over to Cedar Lodge and found Alice in the garden waiting for Dolly. The two crossed the terrace to a sheltered corner of the garden overlooking the bay where they could be alone. After Alice had seated herself Kimberly repeated his question.

She regarded him long and thoughtfully as she answered, and with a sadness that was unexpected: "I did not rest at all. I do not even yet understand--perhaps I never shall--why I let you talk to me in that wild, wild way. But if I did not rest last night, I thought. I am to blame--I know that--as much as you are. Don't tell me. I am as much to blame as you are. But this cannot go on."

His eyes were upon her hands as they lay across flowers in her lap. He took a spray from her while she spoke and bent his look upon it. She was all in white and he loved to see her in white. In it she fulfilled to him a dream of womanhood. "I ought to ask you what you mean when you say and think these fearful things," she went on, waiting for him to lift his eyes. "I ought to ask you; but you do not care what it means, at least as far as you are concerned. And you never ask yourself what it means as far as I am concerned."

He replied with no hesitation. "I began asking myself that question almost the first time I ever saw you. I have asked myself nothing else ever since. It means for both of us exactly the same thing; for you, everything you can ask that I can give you; for me, everything I can give you that you can ask."

"If there were no gulf between us--but there is. And even if what you say were true, you can see how impossible it would be for me to say those words back to you."

He looked at the spray. "Quite true; you cannot. But I shall ask so little--less of you than of any woman in the world. And you will give only what you can, and when you can. And you alone are to be the judge of what you can give and when, until our difficulties are worked out.

"I shall only show you now that I can be patient. I never have been--I have confessed to that. Now I am going to the test. Meantime, you don't realize, Alice, quite, how young you are, do you? Nor how much in earnest I am. Let us turn to that for a while."

From a shrub at his side he plucked sprigs of rosemary and crushed them with the spray. "Even love never begins but once. So, for every hour that passes, a memory; for every hour that tarries, a happiness; for every hour that comes, a hope. Do you remember?"

"I read it on your sun-dial."

"Every one may read it there. Where I want you to read it is in my heart."

"I wonder whether it is most what you say, or the way in which you say it, that gets people into trouble?"

"On the contrary; my life has been spent in getting people out of trouble, and in waiting to say things to you."

"You are improving your opportunity in that respect. And you are losing a still more delightful opportunity, for you don't know how much relief you can give me by leaving most of them unsaid."

"It is impossible, of course, to embrace all of our opportunities--often impossible to embrace the cause of them."

"Don't pick me up in that way, please."

He held his hands over hers and dropped the crushed rosemary on them. "Would that I could in any way. Since I cannot, let me annoy you."

Dolly appeared at a distance, and they walked down the terrace to meet her. She kissed Alice. "What makes you look so girlish to-day? And what is all this color around your eyes? Never wear anything but white. I never should myself," sighed Dolly. "You know Alice and I are off for the seashore," she added, turning to her brother.

"So I hear."

"Come along."

"Who is going?"

"Everybody, I suppose. They all know about the trip."

"Where do you dine?"

"On the shore near the light-house. Arthur is bringing some English friends out from town; we are going to dance."

That night by the sea Kimberly and Alice danced together. He held her like a child, and his strength, which for a moment startled her, was a new charm when she glided across the long, half-lighted floor within his arm. Her grace responded perfectly to the ease with which he led, and they, stopped only when both were breathing fast, to stroll out on the dark pier and drink in the refreshment of the night wind from the ocean.

They remained out of doors a long time, talking sometimes, laughing sometimes, walking sometimes, sometimes sitting down for a moment or kneeling upon the stone parapet benches to listen to the surf pounding below them. When they went in, he begged her again to dance. Not answering in words she only lifted her arm with a smile. Making their way among those about them they glided, he in long, undulating steps, she retreating in swift, answering rhythm, touching the floor as lightly as if she trod on air.

"This plume in your hat," he said as they moved on and on to the low, sensuous strains of the music, "it nods so lightly. Where do you carry your wings?"

The very effort of speaking was exhilarating. "It is you," she answered, "who are supplying the wings."

The gayety of the others drew them more closely together. Little confidences of thought and feeling--in themselves nothing, in their unforbidden exchange everything--mutual confessions of early impressions each of the other, compliments more eagerly ventured and ignored now rather than resented. Surprise read in each other's eyes, dissent not ungracious and denial that only laughingly denied--all went to feed a secret happiness growing fearfully by leaps and bounds into ties that never could be broken.

The dance with its exhilaration, the plunging of her pulse and her quick, deep breathing, shone in Alice's cheeks and in her eyes. The two laughed at everything; everything colored their happiness because everything was colored by it.

The party drove home after a very late supper, Alice heavily wrapped and beside Dolly in Kimberly's car. Entertainments for the English party followed for a week and were wound up by Kimberly with an elaborate evening for them at The Towers. For the first time in years the big house was dressed en fête and the illuminations made a picture that could be seen as far as the village.

Twenty-four sat at The Towers round table that night. Alice herself helped Dolly to pair the guests and philosophically assigned her husband to Lottie Nelson. Kimberly complimented her upon her arrangement.

"Why not?" she asked simply, though not without a certain bitterness with which she always spoke of her husband. "People with tastes in common seem to drift together whether you pair them or not."

They were standing in an arbor and Kimberly was plucking grapes for her.

"He is less than nothing to me," she continued, "as you too well know--or I should not be here now eating your grapes."

"Your grapes, Alice. Everything here is yours. I haven't spoken much about our difficulties--'our' difficulties! The sweetness of the one word blots out the annoyance of the other. But you must know I shall never rest until you are installed here with all due splendor as mistress, not alone of the grapes, but of all you survey, for this is to be wholly and simply yours. And if I dare ask you now and here, Alice--you whose every breath is more to me than the thought of all other women--I want you to be my wife."

Her lips tightened. "And I am the wife of another man--it is horrible."

He heard the tremor in her tone. "Look at me."

"I cannot look at you."

"When you are free----"

"Free!" Her voice rising in despair, fell again into despair. "I shall never be free."

"You shall, and that speedily, Alice!" She could imagine the blood surging into Kimberly's neck and face as he spoke. "I am growing fearful that I cannot longer stand the thought of his being under the same roof with you."

"He cannot even speak to me except before Annie."

Kimberly paused. "I do not like it. I want it changed."

"How can I change it?"

"We shall find a way, and that very soon, to arrange your divorce from him."

"It is the one word, the one thought that crushes me." She turned toward him as if with a hard and quick resolve. "You know I am a Catholic, and you know I am ashamed to say it."

"Ashamed?"

"I have disgraced my faith."

"Nonsense, you are an ornament to any faith."

"Do not say that!" She spoke with despairing vehemence. "You don't realize how grotesque it sounds. If what you say were true I should not be here."

He drew himself up. There was a resentful note in his tone. "I did not suppose myself such a moral leper that it would be unsafe for any one to talk to me. Other Catholics--and good ones--talk to me, and apparently without contamination."

"It is only that I have no right to. Now you are going to be angry with me."

He saw her eyes quiver. "God forbid! I misunderstood. And you are sensitive, dearest."

"I am sensitive," she said reluctantly. "More than ever, perhaps, since I have ceased practising my religion."

"But why have you ceased?"

Her words came unwillingly. "I could not help it."

"Why could you not help it?"

"You ask terribly hard questions."

"You must have wanted to give it up."

"I did not want to. I was forced to."

"Who could force you?"

He saw what an effort it cost her to answer. The words were dragged from her. "I could not live with my husband and practise it."

"So much the more reason for quitting him, isn't it?"

"Oh, I want to. I want to be free. If I only could."

"Alice, you speak like one in despair. There is nothing to be so stirred about. You want to be free, I want you to be, you shall be. Don't get excited over the matter of a divorce. Your eyes are like saucers at the thought. Why?"

"Only because for me it is the final disgrace--not to be separated from him--but to marry again with him alive! It means the last step for me. And the public scandal! What will they say of me, who knew me at home?"

"Alice, this is the wildest supersensitiveness. The whole world lives in divorced marriages. Public scandal? No one will ever hear of your divorce. The courts that grant your plea will attend to suppressing everything."

"Not everything!"

"Why not? We abase them every day to so many worse things that their delicate gorges will not rise at a little favor like that."

She looked at him gravely. "What does the world say of you for doing such things?"

"I never ask. You know, of course, I never pay any attention to what the world says of anything I do. Why should I? It would be difficult for the world to despise me as much as I despise it. You don't understand the world. All you need is my strength. I felt that from the very first--that if I could give you my strength the combination would be perfect. That is why I am so helplessly in love with you--my strength must be yours. I want to put you on a throne. Then I stand by, see?--and guard your majesty with a great club. And I can do it."

They laughed together, for he spoke guardedly, as to being heard of others, but with ominous energy. "I believe you could," murmured Alice.

"Don't worry over your religion. I will make you practise it. I will make a devotee of you."

"Robert! Robert!"

He stooped for her hand and in spite of a little struggle would not release it until he had kissed it. "Do you know it is the first time my name has ever passed your lips?" he murmured.

She was silent and he went on with another thought. "Alice, I don't believe you are as bad a Catholic as you think. I'll tell you why. I have known Catholic women, and men, too, that have given up their religion. Understand, I know nothing about your religion, but I do know something about men and women. And when they begin elaborate explanations they think they deceive me. In matter of fact, they deceive only themselves. When they begin to talk about progress, freedom of thought, decay of dogmas, individual liberty and all that twaddle, and assume a distinctly high, intellectual attitude, even though I don't know what they have given up, I know what they are assuming; I get their measure instantly. I've sometimes thought that when God calls us up to speak on judgment day He will say in the most amiable manner: 'Just tell your own story in your own way.' And that our own stories, told in our own way, will be all the data He will need to go ahead on. Indeed, He would not always need divine prescience to see through them; in most cases mere human insight would be enough. Just listen to the ordinary story of the ordinary man and notice how out of his own mouth he condemns himself. I see that sort of posturing every day in weak-kneed men and women who want to enlist large sums of money to float magnificent schemes. Now you are honest with yourself and honest with me, and I see in this a vital difference."

They walked back through the garden and encountered Brother Francis who was taking the air. Kimberly stopped him. Nelson and Imogene joined the group. "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?"

"Not this time, Mrs. Kimberly."

"Come now, confess. What were you doing?"

Brother Francis demurred and protested but there was no escape. He pointed to The Towers. "I came out to see the beautiful illumination. It is very beautiful, is it not?"

"But that isn't all, for when we came along you were looking at the sky."

"Ah, the night is so clear--the stars are so strong to-night----"

"Go on."

"I was thinking of Italy."

CHAPTER XXVIII

"I never can catch Brother Francis, thinking of anything but Italy," remarked Kimberly.

"Who can blame him?" exclaimed Imogene.

"Or the hereafter," added Kimberly.

Nelson grunted. "I'm afraid he doesn't find much sympathy here on that subject," he observed, looking from one to another.

"Don't be mistaken, Nelson," said Kimberly, "I think about it, and Francis will tell you so. I have already made tentative arrangements with him on that score. Francis is to play Lazarus to my Dives. When I am in hell I am to have my cup of cold water from him. And remember, Francis, if you love me, the conditions. Don't forget the conditions; they are the essence of the contract. I am to have the water one drop at a time. Don't forget that; one drop at a time. Eternity is a long, long while."

Francis, ill at ease, took a pinch of snuff to compose himself.

"Your rôle doesn't seem altogether to your liking, Francis," suggested Imogene.

"His rôle! Why, it's paradise itself compared to mine," urged Kimberly.

Brother Francis drew his handkerchief and wiped his nose very simply. "I pray, Robert," he said, "that you may never be in hell."

"But keep me in your eye, Francis. Don't relax your efforts. A sugar man is liable to stumble and fall in while your back is turned."

"We must get started for the lake," announced Imogene. "Brother Francis, we are all going down to see The Towers from the water. Will you come?"

Francis excused himself, and his companions joined the other guests who were gathering at the water. Oarsmen were waiting with barges and fires burned from the pillars of the esplanade. As the boats left the shore, music came across the water. Alice, with Kimberly, caught a glimpse of her husband in a passing boat. "Having a good time?" he cried. For answer she waved her hand.

"Are you really having a good time?" Kimberly asked. "I mean, do you care at all for this kind of thing?"

"Of course, I care for it. Who could help it? It is lovely. Where are we going?"

"Down the lake a mile or two; then the boats will return for the fireworks."

"You don't seem very lively yourself to-night. Are you bored?"

"No; only wondering whether you will go driving with me to-morrow."

"I said I would not."

"I hoped, of course, you might reconsider."

He did not again press the subject of the drive, but when they were walking up the hill after the rockets and showers of gold falling down the dark sky, she told him he might come for her the next day. "I don't know how it is," she murmured, "but you always have your own way. You wind me right around your finger."

He laughed. "If I do, it is only because I don't try to."

"I realize it; that is what puzzles me."

"The real secret is, not that I wind you around my finger, but that you don't want to hurt my feelings. I find something to wonder at, too. When I am with you--even when you are anywhere near me, I am totally different. Alone, I am capable of withdrawing wholly within myself. I am self-absorbed and concentrated. With you I am never wholly within myself. I am, seemingly, partly in your consciousness."

Alice shook her head. "It is true," he persisted. "It is one of the consequences of love; to be drawn out of one's self. I have it." He turned to her, questioningly, "Can you understand it?"

"I think so."

"But do you ever feel it?"

"Sometimes."

"Never, of course, for me?"

"Sometimes."

CHAPTER XXIX

"This is a courtship without any spring," said Dolly one night to her husband. They were discussing her brother and Alice. "At first it was all winter, now it is all summer."

She thought they showed themselves together too much in public, and their careless intimacy was, in fact, outwardly unrestrained.

Not that Dolly was censorious. Her philosophy found refuge in fatalism. And since what is to be must be--especially where the Kimberlys were concerned--why worry over the complications? Seemliness, however, Dolly held, was to be regarded, and concerning this she felt she ought to be consulted. The way to be consulted she had long ago learned was to find fault.

But if she herself reproved Kimberly and Alice, Dolly allowed no one else to make their affairs a subject of comment. Lottie Nelson, who could never be wholly suppressed, was silenced when occasion offered. One afternoon at The Hickories, Alice's name being mentioned, Lottie asked whether Robert was still chasing her.

"Chasing her?" echoed Dolly contemptuously and ringing the changes on the objectionable word, "Of course; why shouldn't he chase her? Who else is there to chase? He loves the excitement of the hunt; and who else around here is there to hunt? The other women hunt him. No man wants anything that comes tumbling after him. What we want is what we can't get; or at least what we're not sure of getting."

Kimberly and Alice if not quite unconscious of comment were at least oblivious of it. They motored a great deal, always at their own will, and they accounted to no one for their excursions.

"They are just a pair of bad children," said Imogene to Dolly. "And they act like children."

One of their diversions in their rambling drives was to stop children and talk with them or ask questions of them. One day near Sunbury they encountered a puny, skeleton-faced boy, a highway acquaintance, wheeling himself along in an invalid chair.

They had never hitherto talked with this boy and they now stopped their car and backed up. Alice usually asked the questions. "I thought you lived away at the other end of the village, laddie?"

"Yes'm, I do."

"You haven't wheeled yourself all this way?"

"Yes'm."

"What's the matter with you that you can't walk, Tommie?" demanded Kimberly.

"My back is broken."

Alice made a sympathetic exclamation. "My dear little fellow--I'm very sorry for you!"

The boy smiled. "Oh, don't be sorry for me."

"Not sorry for you?"

"I have a pretty good time; it's my mother--I'm sorry for her."

"Ah, indeed, your mother!" echoed Alice, struck by his words. "I am sorry for both of you then. And how did you break your back?"

"In our yard--climbing, ma'am."

"Poor devil, he's not the first one that has broken his back climbing," muttered Kimberly, taking a note from his waistcoat. "Give him something, Alice."

"As much as this?" cried Alice under her breath, looking at the note and at Kimberly.

"Why not? It's of no possible use to us, and it will be a nine-months' wonder in that little household."

Alice folded the note up and stretched her white-gloved hand toward the boy. "Take this home to your mother."

"Thank you. I can make little baskets," he added shyly.

"Can you?" echoed Alice, pleased. "Would you make one for me?"

"I will bring one up to your house if you want me to."

"That would be too far! And you don't know where I live."

The boy looked at the green and black car as if he could not be mistaken. "Up at The Towers, ma'am."

Brice, who took more than a mild interest in the situation, grinned inwardly.

Kimberly and Alice laughed together. "Very well; bring it to The Towers," directed Kimberly, "I'll see that she gets it."

"Yes, sir."

"And see here; don't lose that note, Tommie. By Heavens, he handles money more carelessly than I do. No matter, wait till his mother sees it."

While they were talking to the boy, Dolly drove up in her car and stopped a moment to chat and scold. They laughed at her and she drove away as if they were hopeless.

"Your sister is the dearest woman," remarked Alice as Dolly's car disappeared. "I am so fond of her, I believe I am growing like her."

"Don't grow too like her."

"Why not?"

"Dolly has too much heart. It gets her into trouble."

"She says you have too much, yourself."

"I've paid for it, too; I've been in trouble."

"And I shall be, if you don't take me home pretty soon."

"Don't let us go home as long as we can go anywhere else," pleaded Kimberly. "When we go home we are separated."

He often attempted to talk with Alice of her husband. "Does he persecute you in any way?" demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.

Alice's answer was always the same. "Not now."

"But he used to?" Kimberly would persist.

"Don't ask me about that."

"If he ever should lay a hand on you, Alice----"

"Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that. And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a hand on me."

They did not reach Cedar Lodge until sundown and when they drove up to the house MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big porch alone. They called a greeting to him as they slowed up and he answered in kind. Kimberly, without any embarrassment, got out to assist Alice from the car. The courtesy of his manner toward her seemed emphasized in MacBirney's presence.

On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of Kimberly standing at the door of his own car giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that angered the husband more than anything that had gone before. Kimberly's consideration for Alice was so pronounced as completely to ignore MacBirney himself.

The small talk between the two when Alice alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly meant so to be understood. Kimberly good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end and Alice could now accept them with the utmost composure.

Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the evening with MacBirney on business affairs. He then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.

MacBirney, smarting with the stings of jealousy, found no outlet for his feeling until he was left alone with his wife. It was after eleven o'clock when Alice, reading in her sitting-room, heard her husband try the door connecting from his apartments. Finding it bolted, as usual, MacBirney walked out on the loggia and came into her room through the east door which she had left open for the sea-breeze. He was smoking and he sat down on a divan. Alice laid her book on her knee.

It was a moment before he spoke. "You seem to be making Kimberly a pretty intimate member of the family," he began.

"Oh, do you think so? Charles or Robert?"

"You know very well who I mean."

"If you mean Robert, he is a familiar in every family circle around the lake. It is his way, isn't it? I don't suppose he is more intimate here than at Lottie's, is he? Or at Dolly's or Imogene's?"

"They are his sisters," returned MacBirney, curtly.

"Lottie isn't. And I thought you wanted me rather to cultivate Robert, didn't you, Walter?" asked Alice indifferently.

He was annoyed to be reminded of the fact but made no reply.

"Robert is a delightfully interesting man," continued Alice recklessly, "don't you think so?"

MacBirney returned to the quarrel from another quarter. "Do you know how much money you have spent here at Cedar Lodge in the last four months?"

Alice maintained her composure. "I haven't an idea."

He paused. "I will tell you how much, since you're so very superior to the subject. Just twice as much as we spent the first five years we were married."

"Quite a difference, isn't it?"

"It is--quite a difference. And the difference is reckless extravagance. You seem to have lost your head."

"Suppose it is reckless extravagance! What do you mean to say--that I spent all the money? This establishment is of your choosing, isn't it? And have you spent nothing? How do you expect to move in a circle of people such as live around this lake without reckless extravagance?"

"By using a little common-sense in your expenditures."

For some moments they wrangled over various details of the ménage. Alice at length cut the purposeless recrimination short. "You spoke of the first five years we were married. You know I spent literally nothing the first five years of our married life. You continually said you were trying 'to build up.' That was your cry from morning till night, and like a dutiful wife, I wore my own old clothes for the first two years. Then the next three years I wore made-over hats and hunted up ready-made suits to enable you to 'build up.'"

"Yes," he muttered, "and we were a good deal happier then than we are now."

She made an impatient gesture. "Do speak for yourself, Walter. You were happier, no doubt. I can't remember that you ever gave me any chance to be happy."

"Too bad about you. You look like a poor, unhappy thing--half-fed and half-clothed."

"Now that you have 'built up,'" continued Alice, "and brought me into a circle not in the least of my choosing, and instructed me again and again to 'keep our end up,' you complain of 'reckless extravagance.'"

"Well, for a woman that I took with a travelling suit from a bankrupt father, and put at the head of this establishment, you certainly can hold your 'end up,'" laughed MacBirney harshly.

"Just a moment," returned Alice, with angry eyes. "You need not taunt me about my father. When you were measuring every day the sugar and coffee we were to use during the first five years of our married life, you should have foreseen you couldn't move as a millionaire among multimillionaires without spending a lot of money."

MacBirney turned white. "Thank you for reminding me," he retorted, with shining teeth, "of the thrift of which you have since had the advantages."

"Oh dear, no, Walter. The advantages of that kind of thrift are purely imaginary. The least spark of loving-kindness during those years would have been more to me than all the petty meannesses necessary to build up a fortune. But it is too late to discuss all this."

MacBirney could hardly believe his ears. He rose hastily and threw himself into another chair. "You've changed your tune mightily since 'the first five years of our married life,'" he said.

Alice tossed her head.

"But I want you to understand, I haven't."

"I believe that!"

"And I've brought you to time before now, with all of your high airs, and I'll do it again."

"Oh, no; not again."

"I'll teach you who is master under this roof."

"How like the sweet first five years that sounds!"

He threw his cigar angrily away. "I know exactly what's the matter with you. You have run around with this lordly Kimberly till he has turned your head. Now you are going to stop it, now and here!"

"Am I?"

"You are."

"Hadn't you better tell Mr. Kimberly that?"

"I will tell you, you are getting yourself talked about, and it is going to stop. Everybody is talking about you."

Alice threw back her head. "So? Where did you hear that?"

"Lambert told me yesterday."

"I hope you were manly enough to defend your wife. Where did you see Lambert?"

"I saw him in town."

"I shouldn't listen to silly gossip from Lambert, and I shouldn't see Lambert again."

"How long have you been adviser as to whom I had better or better not see?" asked MacBirney contemptuously.

"You will find me a good adviser on some points in your affairs, and that is one."

"If you value your advice highly, you should part with it sparingly."

"I know what you value highly; and if Robert Kimberly finds out you are consorting with Lambert it will end your usefulness in his combinations very suddenly."

The thrust, severe in any event, was made keener by the fact that it frightened him into rage. "Since you come from a family that has made such a brilliant financial showing--" he began.

"Oh, I know," she returned wearily, "but you had better take care." He looked at his wife astounded. "You have insulted me enough," she added calmly, "about the troubles of my father. The 'first five years' are at an end. I have spoiled you, Walter, by taking your abuse so long without striking back and I won't do it any more."

"What do you mean?" he cried, springing from his chair. "Do you think you are to keep your doors bolted against me for six months at a time and then browbeat and abuse me when I come into your room to talk to you? Who paid for these clothes you wear?" he demanded, pointing in a fury.

"I try never to think of that, Walter," replied Alice, rising to her feet but controlling herself more than she could have believed possible. "I try never to think of the price I have paid for anything I have; if I did, I should go mad and strip these rags from my shoulders."

She stood her ground with flashing eyes. "I, not you," she cried, "have paid for what I have and the clothes I wear. I paid for them--not you--with my youth and health and hopes and happiness. I paid for them with the life of my little girl; with all that a wretched woman can sacrifice to a brute. Paid for them! God help me! How haven't I paid for them?"

She stopped for sheer breath, but before he could find words she spoke again. "Now, I am done with you forever. I am out of your power forever. Thank God, some one will protect me from your brutality for the rest of my life----"

MacBirney clutched the back of a chair. "So you have picked up a lover, have you? This sounds very edifying from my dear, dutiful, religious wife." Hardly able to form the words between his trembling lips, he smiled horribly.

She turned on him like a tigress. "No," she panted, "no! I am no longer your religious wife. It wasn't enough that I should go shabby and hungry to make you rich. Because I still had something left in my miserable life to help me bear your cruelty and meanness you must take that away too. What harm did my religion do you that you should ridicule it and sneer at it and threaten and abuse me for it? You grudged the few hours I took from your household drudgery to get to church. You promised before you married me that our children should be baptized in my faith, and then refused baptism to my dying baby."

Her words rained on him in a torrent. "You robbed me of my religion. You made me live in continual sin. When I pleaded for children, you swore you would have no children. When I told you I was a mother you cursed and villified me."

"Stop!" he screamed, running at her with an oath.

The hatred and suffering of years were compressed into her moment of revolt. They flamed in her cheeks and burned in her eyes as she cried out her choking words. "Stop me if you dare!" she sobbed, watching him clench his fist. "If you raise your hand I will disgrace you publicly, now, to-night!"

He struck her. She disdained even to protect herself and crying loudly for Annie fell backward. Her head caught the edge of the table from which she had risen.

Annie ran from the bedroom at the sound of her mistress's voice. But when she opened the boudoir door, Alice was lying alone and unconscious on the floor.

CHAPTER XXX

She revived only after long and anxious ministrations on Annie's part. But with the return of her senses the blood surged again in her veins in defiance of her husband. Her first thought was one of passionate hatred of him, and the throbbing pain in her head from her fall against the table served to sharpen her resentment.

MacBirney, possessed of enough craft to slip away from an unpleasant situation, returned early to town, only hoping the affair would blow over, and still somewhat dazed by the amazing rebellion of an enduring wife.

He realized that a storm might break now at any moment over his head. Always heavily committed in the speculative markets, he well understood that if Kimberly should be roused to vengeance by any word from Alice the consequences to his own fortune might be appalling.

It chanced that Kimberly was away the following day and Alice had twenty-four hours to let her wrath cool. Two days of reflection were enough. The sense of her shame and her degradation as a woman at the hands of a man so base as her husband were alone enough to suggest moderation in speaking to Kimberly of the quarrel.

But more than this was to be considered. What would Kimberly do if she told him everything? A scandalous encounter, even a more serious issue between the two men was too much to think of. She felt that Kimberly was capable in anger of doing anything immoderate and it was better by far, her calmer judgment told her, to bury her humiliation in her own heart than to risk something worse. She was now, she well knew, with this secret, a terror to her cowardly husband, just as he had been, through a nightmare of wretched years, her own terror.

For the first time, on the afternoon of the second day, she found herself awaiting with burning impatience some word from The Towers. She had resolved what to say to Kimberly and wanted now to say it quickly. When the telephone bell rang promptly at four o'clock her heart dilated with happiness; she knew the call came from one who never would fail her. Alice answered the bell herself and her tones were never so maddening in Kimberly's ears as when she told him, not only that he might come, but that she was weary with waiting. She stood at the window when his car drove up and tripped rapidly downstairs. When she greeted him he bent down to kiss her hand.

She did not resist his eagerness. She even drew a deep breath as she returned his look, and having made ready for him with a woman's lovely cunning, enjoyed its reward.

"I've been crazy to see you," he cried. "It is two days, Alice. How can I tell you how lovely you are?"

Her eyes, cast down, were lifted to his when she made her confession. "Do you really like this rig? It is the first toilet I ever made with the thought of nobody but you in my head. So I told Annie" she murmured, letting her hand rest on his coat sleeve, "to be sure I was exactly right."

He caught her hands.

"Let's go into the garden," she said as he held them. "I have something to say to you."

They sat down together. "Something has happened since I saw you," she began.

"Has the break come?" demanded Kimberly instantly.

"We had a very painful scene night before last," said Alice. "The break has come. He has gone to town--he went yesterday morning. I have asked myself many questions since then. My father and mother are dead. I have no home to go to, and I will not live even under the same roof with him any longer. I feel so strange. I feel turned out, though there was nothing of that in what he said--indeed, I am afraid I did most of the talking."

"I wish to God I had heard you!"

"It is better not. Every heart knoweth its own bitterness----"

"Let me help bear yours."

"I feel homeless, I feel so alone, so ashamed--I don't know what I don't feel. You will never know what humiliation, what pain I have been through for two days. Robert--" her voice faltered for an instant. Then she spoke on, "I never can tell you of the sickness and shame I have long felt of even pretending to live with some one I could not respect."

"Close the book of its recollection. I came into your life for just such a moment, to be everything you need. I am home, husband, and protection--everything."

"If I could only make my senses believe my ears." She paused. "It seems as if I am in a dream and shall wake with a horror."

"No, this is a dream come true. I foresaw this time and I have provided for it. Only delicacy has kept me from asking you before about your very personal affairs and your private purse, Alice. Understand at once," he took her hands vehemently, "everything I have is yours without the least reserve. Do you understand? Money is the last thing to make any one happy, I well know that, but in addition to the word of my heart to your heart--the transfers to you, Alice, have long been made and at this moment you have, merely waiting for you to draw upon them, more funds than you could make use of in ten lifetimes. Everything is provided for. There are tears in your eyes. Sit still for a moment and let me speak."

"No, I must speak. I am in a horrible position. I cannot at such a juncture receive anything from you. But there are matters to be faced. Shall I stay here? If I do, he must go. Shall I go? And if I do go, where?"

"Let me answer with a suggestion. My family are all devoted to us. Dolly and Imogene are good counsellors. I will lay the matter before them. After a family council we shall know just what to do and how. I have my own idea; we shall see what the others say. Dolly, you know, has taken you under her wing from the first, and Dolly you will find is a powerful protector. If I tell you what I did to-day you will gasp with astonishment. I cabled for a whole new set of photographs of the Maggiore villa. I want our first year together, Alice, to be in Italy."

CHAPTER XXXI

Accompanied by Imogene, Dolly hastened over to Cedar Lodge in the morning. Alice met them in the hall. "My dear," cried Dolly, folding her impulsively in her arms, "you are charged with fate!"

Then she drew back, laid her hands on Alice's shoulders and, bringing her face tenderly forward, kissed her. "How can I blame Robert for falling in love with you? And yet!" She turned to Imogene. "If we had been told that first night that this was the woman of our destiny! How do you bear your new honors, dearie? What! Tears! Nonsense, my child. You are freighted with the Kimberly hopes now. You are one of us. Tears are at an end. I, too, cried when I first knew of it. Come, sit down. Imogene will tell you everything." And having announced this much, Dolly proceeded with the telling herself.

"When you first knew of it?" echoed Alice. "Pray, when was that?"

"Oh, long, long ago--before ever you did, my dear. But no matter now. We talked last night, Arthur, Charles, Imogene, and Robert and I until midnight. And this is what we said: 'The dignity of your personal position is, before everything else, to be rigidly maintained.' Mr. MacBirney will be required to do this. He will be counselled on this point--made to understand that the obligation to maintain the dignity of his wife's position is primary. Robert, of course, objected to this. He was for allowing no one but himself to do anything----"

"I hope you clearly understand, Dolly, I should allow Mr. Kimberly to do nothing whatever at this juncture," interposed Alice quickly.

"I understand perfectly, dear. But there are others of us, you know, friends of your own dear mother, remember. Only, aside from all of that, we considered that the situation admitted of but one arrangement. Charles will tell Nelson exactly what MacBirney is to do, and Nelson will see that it is done. The proper bankers will advise you of your credits from your husband, for the present--and they are to be very generous ones, my dear," added Dolly significantly. "So all that is taken care of and Mr. MacBirney will further be counselled not to come near Cedar Lodge or Second Lake until further orders. Do you understand?"

"Why, yes, Dolly," assented Alice perplexed, "but Mr. MacBirney's acquiescence in all this is very necessary it seems to me. And he may agree to none of it."

"My dear, it isn't at all a question of his agreeing. He will do as he is advised to do. Do you imagine he can afford breaking with the Kimberlys? A man that pursues money, dear heart, is no longer a free agent. His interests confront him at every turn. Fledgling millionaires are in no way new to us. Mercy, they pass in and out of our lives every day! A millionaire, dear, is nothing but a million meannesses and they all do exactly as they are told. Really, I am sorry for some of them. Of all unfortunates they are nowadays the worst. They are simply ground to powder between the multi-millionaires and the laboring classes. In this case, happily, it is only a matter of making one do what he ought to do, so give it no thought."

Dolly proved a good prophet concerning MacBirney's course in the circumstances. MacBirney, desirous of playing at once to the lake public in the affair of his domestic difficulties, made unexceptional allowances for his wife's maintenance. Yet at every dollar that came to her from his abundance she felt humiliated. She knew now why she had endured so much at his hands for so long; it was because she had realized her utter dependence on him and that her dreams of self-support were likely, if she had ever acted on them, to end in very bitter realities.

At the first sign of hot weather, Charles and Imogene put to sea with a party for a coasting cruise; Dolly sailed for the continent to bring Grace back with her. Robert Kimberly unwilling to leave for any extended period would not let Alice desert him; accordingly, Fritzie was sent for and came over to stay with her. The lake country made a delightful roaming place and Alice was shown by Kimberly's confidences how close she was to him.

He confided to her the journal of the day, whatever it might be. Nothing was held back. His successes, failures, and worries all came to her at night. He often asked her for advice upon his affairs and her wonder grew as the inwardness of the monetary world in which he moved stood revealed to her. She spoke of it one day.

"To be sought after as you are--to have so many men running out here to find you; to be consulted by so many----"

Kimberly interrupted her. "Do you know why they seek me? Because I make money for them, Alice. They would run after anybody that could make them money. But they are wolves and if I lost for them they would try to tear me to pieces. No man is so alone as the man the public follows for a day even while it hates or fears him. And the man the bankers like is the man that can make money for them; their friendship is as cold and thin as autumn ice."

"But even then, to have the ability for making money and doing magnificent things; to be able to succeed where so many men fail--it seems so wonderful to me."

"Don't cherish any illusions about it. Everyone that makes money must be guilty of a thousand cold-blooded things, a thousand sharp turns, a thousand cruelties; it's a game of cruelties. Fortunately, I'm not a brilliant success in that line, anyway; people merely think I am. The ideal money-maker always is and always will be a man without a temper, without a heart, and with an infusion, in our day, of hypocrisy. He takes refuge in hypocrisy because the public hates him and he is forced to do it to keep from hating himself. When public opinion gets too strong for him he plays to it. When it isn't too strong, he plays to himself. I can't do that; I have too much vanity to play to anybody. And the recollection of a single defeat rankles above the memory of a thousand victories. This is all wrong--far, far from the ideal of money getting; in fact, I'm not a professional in the game at all--merely an amateur. A very successful man should never be trusted anyway."

"Why not?"

"Because success comes first with him. It comes before friendship and he will sacrifice you to success without a pang."

She looked at him with laughing interest. "What is it?" he asked changing his tone.

"I was thinking of how I am impressed sometimes by the most unexpected things. You could never imagine what most put me in awe of you before I met you."

"There must have been a severe revulsion of feeling when you did meet me," suggested Kimberly.

"We were going up the river in your yacht and Mr. McCrea was showing us the refineries. All that I then knew of you was what I had read in newspapers about calculating and cold-blooded trust magnates. Mr. McCrea was pointing out the different plants as we went along."

"The river is very pretty at the Narrows."

"First, we passed the independent houses. They kept getting bigger and bigger until I couldn't imagine anything to overshadow them and I began to get frightened and wonder what your refineries would be like. Then, just as we turned at the island, Mr. McCrea pointed out a perfectly huge cluster of buildings and said those were the Kimberly plants. Really, they took my breath away. And in the midst of them rose that enormous oblong chimney-stack. A soft, lazy column of smoke hovered over it--such as hovers over Vesuvius." She smiled at the remembrance. "But the repose and size of that chimney seemed to me like the strength of the pyramids. When we steamed nearer I could read, near the top, the great terra-cotta plaque: KIMBERLYS AND COMPANY. Then I thought: Oh, what a tremendous personage Mr. Robert Kimberly must be!"

"The chimney is yours."

"Oh, no, keep it, pray--but it really did put me wondering just what you were like."

"It must have been an inspiration that made me build that chimney. The directors thought I would embarrass the company before we got the foundations in. I didn't know then whom I was building it for, but I know now; and if you got a single thrill out of it the expenditure is justified. And I think mention of the thrill should go into the directors' minutes on the page where they objected to the bill--we will see about that. But you never expected at that moment to own the chimney, did you? You shall. I will have the trustees release it from the general mortgage and convey it to you."

"And speaking of Vesuvius, you never dreamed of a volcano lying in wait for you beneath the lazy smoke of that chimney, did you? And that before very long you would not alone own the chimney but would be carrying the volcano around in your vanity bag?"

CHAPTER XXXII

One afternoon in the early autumn Kimberly came to Cedar Lodge a little later than usual and asked Alice, as he often did, to walk to the lake. He started down the path with something more than his ordinary decision and inclined for a time to reticence. They stopped at a bench near an elm overlooking the water. "You have been in town to-day," said Alice.

"Yes; a conference this morning on the market. Something extraordinary happened."

"In the market?"

"Market conditions are bad enough, but this was something personal."

"Tell me about it."

"MacBirney was present at the conference. After the meeting he came to the head of the table where I was talking with McCrea--and sat down. When McCrea joined the others in the lunchroom, MacBirney said he wanted to speak to me a moment. I told him to go ahead.

"He began at once about his differences with you. His talk puzzled me. I was on the defensive, naturally. But as far as I could see, he designed no attack on me; and of you he could utter nothing but praise--it was rather trying to listen to. I could not fathom his purpose in bringing the matter before me in this singular way, but he ended with an appeal----"

"An appeal!"

"He asked me to bring a message to you. I told him I would deliver any message entrusted to me. He wants you to know that he is very sorry for what has taken place. He admits that he has been in the wrong----"

"It is too late!" Alice in her emotion rose to her feet.

"And he asks you, through me," Kimberly spoke under a strain he did not wholly conceal, "if he may come back and let the past bury itself."

"It is too late."

"He said," Kimberly rose and faced Alice, "there had been differences about religion----"

"Ask him," she returned evenly, "whether I ever sought to interfere with his religious views or practices."

"These, he promises, shall not come between you again."

"Wretched man! His words are not the slightest guarantee of his conduct."

Kimberly took his hat from his head and wiped his forehead. "This was the message, Alice; is he to come back to you?"

"Whatever becomes of me, I never will live again with him."

"That is irrevocable?"

"Yes."

"I have kept my word--that you should have his message as straight as I could carry it."

"I believe you have. He certainly could not, whatever his intentions, have paid you a higher tribute than to entrust you with one for me."

"Then he does not and never can stand between you and me, Alice?"

"He never can."

The expression of his eyes would have frightened her at a moment less intense. Slightly paler than she had been a year earlier and showing in her manner rather than in her face only indefinable traces of the trouble she had been through, Alice brought each day to Kimberly an attraction that renewed itself unfailingly.

He looked now upon her eyes--he was always asking whether they were blue or gray--and upon her brown hair, as it framed her white forehead. He looked with tender fondness on the delicate cheeks that made not alone a setting for her frank eyes but for him added to the appeal of her lips. He sat down again, catching her hand to bring her close.

"Come," he urged, relaxing from his intensity, "sit down. By Heaven, I have suffered to-day! But who wouldn't suffer for you? Who but for the love of woman would bear the cares and burdens of this world?"

Alice smiled oddly. "We have to bear them, you know, for the love of man." She sat down on the bench beside him. "Tell me, how have you suffered to-day?"

"Do you want to know?"

"Of course, I want to know. Don't you always want to know how I have suffered? Though I used to think," she added, as if moved by unpleasant recollections, "that nobody cares when a woman suffers."

"The man that loves her cares. It is one of love's attributes. It makes a woman's sorrow and pain his, just as her joy and happiness are his. Pleasure and pain are twins, anyway, and you cannot separate them. Alice!" He looked suddenly at her. "You love me, don't you?"

Her face crimsoned, for she realized he was bent on making her answer.

"Let us talk about something else, Robert."

He repeated his question.

"Don't make me put it into words yet, Robert," she said at last. "You have so long known the answer--and know that I still speak as his wife. Do I love you?" She covered her face with her hands.

"Alice!" His appeal drew her eyes back to his. They looked speechless at each other. The moment was too much. Instinctively she sprang in fear to her feet, but only to find herself caught within his arm and to feel his burning lips on her lips. She fought his embrace in half-delirious reproach. Then her eyes submitted to his pleading and their lips met with her soft, plunging pulse beating swiftly upon his heart.

It was only for an instant. She pushed him away. "I have answered you. You must spare me now or I shall sink with shame."

"But you are mine," he persisted, "all mine."

She led him up the path toward the house.

"Sometimes I am afraid I shall swallow you up, as the sea swallows up the ship, in a storm of passion."

"Oh no, you will not."

"Why not?"

"Because I am helpless. Was there more to your story?"

"You know then I haven't told it all."

"Tell me the rest."

"When he had finished, I told him I, too, had something to say. 'I shall deliver your message to Alice,' I said. 'But it is only fair to say to you I mean to make her my wife if she will accept me, and her choice will lie between you and me, MacBirney.'

"You should have seen his amazement. Then he collected himself for a stab--and I tried not to let him see that it went deep. 'Whatever the outcome,' he said, 'she will never marry you.'

"'You must recollect you have not been in her confidence for some time,' I retorted. He seemed in no way disconcerted and ended by disconcerting me. 'Remember what I tell you, Mr. Kimberly,' he repeated, 'you will find me a good prophet. She is a Catholic and will never marry you or any other man while I live.'

"'You may be right,' I replied. 'But if Alice marries me she will never live to regret it for one moment on account of her religion. I have no religion myself, except her. She is my religion, she alone and her happiness. You seem to invoke her religion against me. What right have you to do this? Have you helped her in its practice? Have you kept the promises you made when you married a Catholic wife? Or have you made her life a hell on earth because she tried to practise her religion, as you promised she should be free to do? Is she a better Catholic because she believed in you, or a worse because to live in peace with you she was forced to abandon the practice of her religion? These are questions for you to think over, MacBirney. I will give her your message----'

"'Give her my message,' he sneered. 'You would be likely to!'

"'Stop!' I said. 'My word, MacBirney, is good. Friend and foe of mine will tell you that. Even my enemies accept my word. But if I could bring myself to deceive those that trust me I would choose enemies to prey upon before I chose friends. I could deceive my own partners. I could play false to my own brother--all this I could do and more. But if I could practise deceits a thousand times viler than these, I could not, so help me God, lie to a trusting girl that I had asked to be my wife and the mother of my children! Whatever else of baseness I stooped to, that word should be forever good!'

"Alice, I struck the table a blow that made the inkstands jump. My eye-glasses went with a crash. Nelson and McCrea came running in; MacBirney turned white. He tried to stretch his lips in a smile; it was ghastly. Everybody was looking at me. I got up without a word to any one and left the room."

Alice caught his sleeve. "Robert, I am proud of you! How much better you struck than you knew! Oh," she cried, "how could I help loving you?"

"Do you love me?"

"I would give my life for you."

"Don't give it for me; keep it for me. You will marry me; won't you? What did the cur mean by saying what he did, Alice?"

"He meant to taunt me; to remind me of how long I tried to live in some measure up to the religion that he used every means to drive me from--and did drive me from."

"We will restore all that."

"He meant I must come to you without its blessing."

He looked suddenly and keenly at her. "Should you be happier with its blessing?"

"Ah, Robert."

"But should you?"

She gazed away. "It is a happiness I have lost."

"Then you shall have it again."

"I will trust to God for some escape from my difficulties. What else can I do? My husband!" she exclaimed bitterly--"generous man to remind me of religion!"

Kimberly spoke with a quick resolve. "I am going to look into this matter of where you stand as a wife. I am going to know why you can't have a chance to live your life with me. If I give you back what he has robbed you of, our happiness will be doubled."

CHAPTER XXXIII

When Kimberly reached The Towers it was dusk. Brother Francis was walking on the terrace. Kimberly joined him. "How is Uncle John to-day, Francis?"

"Always the same. It is an astonishing vitality in your family, Robert."

"They need all they have."

"But all that need strength do not have it. How is your market to-day?"

"Bad," muttered Kimberly absently.

"I am sorry that you are worried."

"More than the market worries me, Francis. But the market is getting worse and worse. We met again to-day and reduced prices. The outsiders are cutting. We retaliate to protect our customers. When we cut, the cut is universal. Their warfare is guerilla. They are here to-day, there to-morrow."