Front matter (continued 2)

"I told you not to come and you came," was the burden of Suzanne's complaint.

"I didn't come to see you. I didn't even know you were in Greendale until Jack told me. And when I knew, how could I resist a chance to see you, especially as it will be months before I can see you again? Be reasonable, Suzanne. Why are you so angry at me for coming?"

Suzanne shot him an exasperated and somewhat malicious glance. Unfortunately, Mr. Minot was a lawyer and not a clairvoyant and therefore was totally without means of knowing that the chief reason for Suzanne's anger was the fact that she had been so foolishly glad to see him. For every quickened beat of her pulse in his near presence poor Roger had to pay with a lash of her tongue. Angry, indeed, was Suzanne at Roger Minot for disobeying her royal mandates, but angrier still was she at Suzanne Morrison for being automatically glad of his nearness. Scant wonder the young lawyer had a very bad quarter of an hour as he mounted the pine-needled slope toward the sunset.

Phil and Sylvia had less to say than either of the other couples, strange to say, though it had seemed to both beforehand they would have volumes. The hush of the forest and the hour seemed to have cast a spell upon them, or was it an even more potent enchantment that held them fast bound in silence? They had seen so little of each other during this brief visit of Phil's. Last night had been too full and joyous and excited for much conversation, even had Sylvia's responsibilities as hostess left her much time for her latest arrived guest. Those few moments on the stairs had been practically--indeed, the only ones--they had enjoyed alone, and this morning Phil had given to his mother while Sylvia and her guests slept away the hours up at the Hall. Both had felt a little aggrieved and cheated at the way circumstances had curtailed the pleasure of their being together for the first time since the June Commencement at college. Yet now that the awaited moment had come at last neither seemed to have anything particular to do with it. It was strange, and both felt slightly embarrassed by the strangeness, suddenly grown shy, after all their years of friendship.

"Oh!" Sylvia uttered the exclamation as she stepped out upon the great ledge of rock from which she could see the sun's gold rim just dipping behind the crest of the topmost purple peak leaving a sea of tulip colors in its wake.

For a moment neither spoke again. A mood of complete serenity was upon them that forbade speech, a sense of nearness, each to the other, and to some high other Presence which might have been God or Nature or Love or a mystic commingling of all three. Were the three, indeed, a new Trinity, perfect and indivisible? There was a crackling among the bushes behind, the sound of voices. The others were near. The enchanted moment passed. Sylvia sighed, and, turning, met Phil's eyes and her own drooped before what she saw there. No word was spoken, nor needed, yet something unforgettable had been communicated. Sylvia's heart was beating a little more quickly than usual and there was dew and star shine in her eyes as she smiled at Jack and Barbara, a shine which was lost on neither of the two new arrivals, though later it suited both to pretend they had never seen it. For the moment Barbara's only feeling was a quick compunction lest they had interrupted something which they had no right to share. As for her companion, sharp fear and half resentful jealousy went through him like keen-bladed knives. Had he lost just at the moment when he seemed to have gained something almost tangible? And then Suzanne and Roger reached the rock also, arriving rather dilatorily by another path, having arrived also apparently at a state of something faintly resembling truce, for Suzanne was wearing a spray of vivid scarlet berries which Roger had risked thorns and a possible broken neck to acquire. The risk had been worth it, it seemed, for Roger was looking happier than at any moment since Suzanne had first snubbed him several hours ago on Sylvia's piazza.

Barb, standing apart, watching the whole pageant from the outside, felt oddly cold and lonely all of a sudden. There seemed to be so much love in the world somehow and yet so little left over, as it were. And Sylvia and Suzanne--did they know? Did they even begin to know how precious love was? How one needed it in this great lonely world? She walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river whose rapid current whirled fiercely, down below her. She remembered Sylvia's story of how the rock was named. There are so many Lover's Leaps in the world and their stories are all somewhat the same story. An Indian girl and her lover had been forbidden to marry because they belonged to hostile tribes and here they had gladly taken the consecrated leap together, hand in hand, into space and eternity, one in death as they could never have been in life.

What a strange thing love was! So Barb meditated. Was it something to be avoided as Suzanne insisted because it demanded too high toll? The others had seated themselves on the rock to watch the shifting panorama of color in the western skies, but Barb wandered off by herself, still pondering about that strange thing love. And the others scarcely noticed her going, which was in its way a symbol.

Suddenly a single sharp cry broke the silence of the dusk and then ceased. They all sprang to their feet in alarm, but it was Phil Lorrimer's quick eye that first discovered what had happened. Below them, and somewhat at the right of the outcropping ledge on which they stood, hung Barbara, clinging to a slender sapling whose trunk bent, it seemed almost to snapping beneath her slight weight. Sylvia saw, too, almost at the same instant.

"There she is!" Her finger pointed. "Oh, Phil!"

But Phil had not waited for his embassy. He was already speeding down the steep bank on his way to the scene of the accident.

"Hold on," he called cheerfully. "I'm coming. Can I reach you from above?"

"No." Barb's voice sounded faraway but steady as Phil's own. "Don't try. It's all crumbly."

"Hang tight then. I'll be there in a minute."

In what appeared to be an endless stretch of time to everybody, but which was in reality an astonishingly brief interval, Phil's tall form appeared on the river bank precisely beneath the tiny figure suspended as it seemed in midair, but still clinging pluckily to the stout ash sapling which held her weight gallantly. The distance between Phil and the girl was perhaps ten feet, though it looked much more in the gulfing darkness to them both.

"All right. Let go. I'll catch you."

A shudder shook Barb's whole body. That slim, tough little ash-tree seemed all that kept her from the greedy swirl of the black river. Her hands were grooved and cut with clinging and her arms ached until it seemed as if she could not bear the pain, but for all that she felt as if the one thing she could not do was to release her hold and slip into the darkness. But there below loomed Phil Lorrimer's comforting size and strength and Barb's courage grew as she looked down into his uplifted face.

"Come on, Barbie, I'm right here." He had never called her anything but Miss Day before, not even Barbara. Barbie was Sylvia's name, as it had once been her mother's in the dear long ago. Somehow it seemed right and natural and sweet that Phil should use it now. Suddenly she became the trusting, obedient little girl Barbie again and without a quiver of dread and with a heart at peace and full of faith she let go her hold on the ash and went down, down, down into space--a surprisingly long journey it seemed, though she felt perfectly comfortable taking it. She had even time to notice that a star had come out and was smiling at her friendlily out of the dusk over a sycamore-tree. She knew somehow or rather that Phil would not fail her. Most people felt that about Phil Lorrimer. More than one of his patients had been willing and unafraid to go down the dark valley if he would stand by and help them on the way.

Certainly he did not fail Barbara. Though the shock of the impact of even her "fairy" figure made him sway and stagger a little, he caught her as deftly as he had been wont in his college days to catch a dazzling outfielder. In a second he had deposited her gently on the soft moss on the river bank. Whereupon Barb gave a quick breath of a sob then laughed a little rippling gurgle of a laugh, though there were tears in her eyes.

"D-don't mi-nd me," she begged. "I'm just being g-glad I let go."

"All safe!" Phil's big voice boomed out of the darkness to the relief of the anxious waiters above on the cliff. "All right, little lady? Seeing as you wouldn't walk down, suppose we say you shan't walk up." And Barb was swept like a sudden victim to a bird of prey into his arms.

"Oh, don't," she begged. "Please put me down. I can walk perfectly well. I'm dreadfully heavy."

"So are thistledown and dewdrops," he laughed. "Please forget you are a feminist for once and succumb to the eternal masculine superiority of brawn and muscle."

And in spite of herself, Barb felt oddly content to let herself lie passive in his arms, so much so that she closed her eyes and said never a word. At the top of the ascent, which had been short though somewhat steep, Phil put down his burden, and the rest crowded around the two, full of excitement, anxiety and questions. But Phil exercised his doctor's prerogatives and ordered them to let Barb alone and make a speedy start for home. These orders were meekly obeyed, though they managed little by little to get the information of how the accident had occurred. It had been simple enough. The rock on which Barb had been standing had been "crumbly" as she had said, and before she had had time to realize what had happened she had slipped with the shelving stone and soil and had only by the greatest of good fortune managed to snatch at the ash in her descent and thus save herself from the disastrous fall into the turbulent rock-filled bed of the river. It had been obviously a sufficiently narrow escape to make them all rather silent and sober as they packed up the remains of the feast and made their way to the road just beyond the glade where the car waited.

"Want to have a try at the wheel, old man?" asked Jack, laying an affectionate hand on Phil's shoulder when they were ready to start. "She's a bird."

"Why, yes." Phil's frank face lit up with pleasure. "Sure you don't mind, Jackie Horner?"

"Not a bit. Glad to have a rest," acquiesced Jack cheerfully. "Pile in, Sylvia. Phil's waiting."

Sylvia's eyes flashed quick inquiry at Jack as he helped her into the seat beside the driver. He met her gaze imperturbably but she was not deceived by his noncommittal expression. Well she knew that the owner of the "bird" suffered the tortures of the damned when any hand beside his own was on the wheel. Well she knew also that he was deliberately giving Phil a chance to do more than run his car. It was so precisely like Jack, impulsively selfish one minute, impulsively generous the next. Through the white star-lit wonder of the night the car sped, while its occupants sat almost silent, wrapped in an incommunicable garment of dreams. Later, after they had taken leave of the girls, Jack and Roger went with Phil to the station at Baltimore. But Roger stayed in the car while Jack went to the train with Phil. Just as the train pulled in Jack stirred himself to say what was on his mind.

"Phil! Forgive the impertinence, old man, but I've got to know. If she has decided for you, I'll clear out. You're the better man--always were."

Phil Lorrimer drew a long breath and set his lips rather as he used to set them before a tackle in the field.

"You needn't clear out, so far as I am concerned. I haven't asked Sylvia to marry me. How can I? I've only just finished paying my college debts and she is worth something like a million. Is thy servant a fool?" he added a little bitterly.

"Yes," said Jack Amidon. "The biggest kind of fool. Do you suppose the money matters a hang to her?"

"Well, it matters to me," curtly. "Train's under way. 'By." And with a hasty but warm pressure of the hand which went out to meet his, Phil boarded the moving train, leaving Jack staring after.

"Confound the fellow!" he muttered. "Hanged if I know whether to be mad or glad he's such an idiot. How did he dare not ask Sylvia when her eyes looked like that? Gee! Perhaps he didn't see."

But Phil Lorrimer had seen, and all that night he stared sleeplessly out at the stars and the twinkling lights of villages and cities, love and pride battling within him. Once or twice he made up his mind feverishly to telegraph Sylvia the first thing in the morning. Then he would decide it would be better to write her a letter, tell her exactly how it all was and ask if she cared enough to wait for him until he had something worth while to offer her. And all the time he knew he would do nothing of the kind. He would fight on grimly by himself, and if in the meantime somebody else--Jack or another--slipped in ahead, well, that would mean she was not for him, if he knew Sylvia. And so on and so on and so on. But never in all his reasonings did it occur to him that the money was as nothing between him and Sylvia Arden, neither of advantage or disadvantage, simply a zero. Jack Amidon knew it and had generously endeavored to tell his rival. Sylvia knew it and her eyes had also tried to tell him that night in the sunset. But poor Phil, blind as the clearest sighted man sometimes becomes when a woman is involved, saw Sylvia's money as a huge, hateful, insurmountable, mountain peak behind which stood Sylvia herself, only to be reached by accumulating another pile of gold from which he could make the leap to her.

And in all that long wakeful night he never once thought of little Barbara Day. He was too used to saving people, one way or another, to think much about this latest exploit in the salvation line; and, besides, his mind was full of other things.

But Barbara dreamed of Phil and heard his deep voice calling out of the darkness, "Come on, Barbie. I'm right here." And all through her dreams the star over the sycamore-tree kept smiling at her friendlily but its smile was oddly mixed up with Phil Lorrimer's.

CHAPTER VII

OCTOBER DEVELOPMENTS

A deeper bronze to the oaks and a more vivid scarlet to the sumach. A sharper tang to the air, mornings. Hilltops veiled in amethyst and golden haze on the meadows, afternoons. At sundown, ghost-like wraiths of mists rising up from the river valley. Now and then a clanging wedge of wild geese speeding southward through the night. October!

It must be admitted that in spite of Sylvia's "vicious contentedness" she did feel the Hall a little too peaceful and quiet after her friends had gone, and she settled back into the very life she had chosen for herself. The summer had been brimful of guests and gayeties, with people coming and going all the time and always some new delightful project or enthralling interest afoot, a true Forest of Arden atmosphere of sunshine and happiness and blithe irresponsibility.

Even the sharp and sudden thunder crash, heard from overseas in that fateful early August, the din of great nations rushing to arms, came only vaguely to Sylvia's happy Hill as to most of America. Slow to waken, the country had not at once sensed the significance of what was happening. Humane and peaceful itself, it had not taken in the hideous reality of a desolated and ravaged Belgium, the inspiriting vision of a risen and consecrated France beating the enemy back from Paris, of the fearful and relentless grip of the great dog of war upon the stricken nations. To Sylvia, as to others, it all seemed impossible, incredible, not to be apprehended in terms of actuality. These things just couldn't be, that was all. There must be some mistake somewhere. But there was no mistake. People kept coming in on every steamer with harrowing tales of well-substantiated horror. The things they had seen made the heart sick and the blood run cold. It was war indeed. However horrible, these things were possible, had happened.

Perhaps the first vital realization came to Sylvia as it came to nearly every one in this country through individual testimony of friends. Even in September, rumor reached her that John Armstrong's money had helped to establish and support a field hospital "somewhere in France," that his wife and her sister Hilda were regular Red Cross nurses. And in October had come a letter from Hilda herself, describing simply but with the fearful graphicness of the bare truth, the horrors, the miracles, the splendid thrills, the supreme satisfaction of the work she and Constance had undertaken. John was driving a relief Ambulance near the battle line. Bertram was at the front somewhere. Bertram, it appeared, was the young Englishman to whom the writer had very recently become engaged after a romantically brief acquaintance. Of course it was horrible, Hilda admitted, having him there, but then she wouldn't want him not to want to be there.

All this Sylvia read with absorbed interest and straightway dispatched a generous check to John Armstrong. But giving money being altogether insufficient to express her abounding sympathy she also learned to knit, to Jack's huge delectation and much raillery, and resolutely set herself to making sponges and rather eccentric looking hose, though this process, too, scarcely satisfied her when she thought of what her friend was doing over in France. In fact, it satisfied her so little that she very speedily abandoned it entirely wherein she was rather like a good many other American women. "A thousand shall fall at thy right hand but it shall not come nigh thee" seemed to be America's motto in those days.

Perhaps the thing which came nearest, that autumn, to offering Sylvia an outlet for her restless energy was her music. She was an excellent accompanist and she and Gus Nichols spent much time together previous to his departure for the concert tour which was to begin early in November. And while Sylvia was intent on her own dreams and quandaries, weaving much she scarcely understood herself into the music, she had not the slightest perception that these hours she gave the young violinist meant anything more to him than to herself, an agreeable mutual expression in a loved art. "Music is Love in search of a word" and if the boy's violin struggled more than once to tell her what his lips would never have ventured on, Sylvia, with her mind on other things, did not hear.

Long enthusiastic letters came frequently from Suzanne, ensconced, according to schedule, in a dingy studio in the Square where one is not encumbered with needless luxuries like steam heat and bath tubs and electricity, where one steeps in "Atmosphere," and pays far more than he can afford for the privilege of living very uncomfortably but artistically. Her letters reeked of Bohemia, of "Polly's" and "Bruno's Garret," of the delicious glamour and picturesqueness of the inimitable Village, of the thrill and stimulus of the whole marvelous city of which the Village was a unique part.

Barb, too, wrote often, though with less abandon of rejoicement in her new way of life. It was all "interesting." Aunt Jo was "wonderful." The Metropolitan was "magnificent." People were "kind." But there was a faint panic-stricken note beneath it all, at first, which made Sylvia wonder if poor Barbara were a little submerged by the very seething whirlpool which was such supreme delight to Suzanne. It was as if both were on a "Merry-Go-Round," and Suzanne kept clapping her hands and crying "Faster! Faster!" while Barb's timid "pansy" eyes begged in silence for a safer, less mad rate of revolution.

Aside from her aunt, of whom Barb could never say enough, the person most frequently mentioned in her letters was Philip Lorrimer. "Dr. Lorrimer is so good to me." "Dr. Lorrimer took me to a roof garden last night." "Phil and I rode over on the ferry to Staten Island to cool off last evening." "Phil just came in and sends greetings. He is going to take me to a Socialist meeting soon." "Aunt Jo likes Phil so much," and so forth.

And though Sylvia made no comment on this new development it gave her cause for reflection. Sylvia was more than ever "at sea" these days. That sunset moment on Lover's Leap had been an illuminating moment for her and she guessed it had been one for Phil also. Though she told herself later she must have been mistaken, she knew in her heart she had not been so. The look in Phil's eyes as they had met hers that moment was unmistakable, more eloquent than volumes of speech. She had felt the same thing vibrating in his voice when later he had bidden her "Good night" and "Good-by" and stepped into Jack's car, something which met a quick leap of response in herself. Sylvia was very woman and she knew what had happened, though she did not know whether the thing was going to be permanent or not.

All that next day and the next and for a week beyond she watched the mails, pretending to herself, feminine wise, that she was doing nothing of the sort. And, finally, when on the tenth day a brotherly, brief, impersonal, not to say casual, note came from New York in Phil's big sprawling hand, she felt as if a shower of icy water had been hurled at her. Not that she wanted Phil to ask her to marry him, not that she was at all sure she would have said yes if he had asked her. She was by no means certain it would not be Jack to whom she would surrender when the time came for surrender. At least so she told herself to save her pride. Certainly she was far from ready to marry any man that Fall, sincerely desirous as she was to belong to herself awhile as she had told Jack. Nevertheless Phil's very discretion angered and hurt her. Every now and then she was tortured by an agonizing fear that in the strange exhilaration of that moment in the forest she might have betrayed to him more than she had been in any degree willing to admit to herself. Consequently, Philip Lorrimer, M.D., got very few and very brief letters from Arden Hall those golden autumn days.

Neither is it strange that out of favor with his "Faraway Princess" Phil turned to sympathetic little Barbara in his few idle hours. Not that he took Barb into his confidence. Indeed there were no confidences to make. To no one in the world would he have admitted that Sylvia's apparent indifference hurt. Sylvia had the right to ignore him if she chose. The Queen could do no wrong. Nor was there anything to say about the rumors which reached him frequently that Sylvia and Jack were often together, and that an engagement was obviously to be expected if not already secretly in existence. That, too, he had counted on as a possibility when he had told Jack there was no reason for him to "clear out." Phil Lorrimer was man enough to want the lady of his heart to be free in her choice. Had he been in Jack's position he would have entered the race and run, neck and neck, beside his rival and abided the end whatever it was. But he was handicapped, or so he believed, by his poverty, so he set his teeth and stood out of the way leaving Jack a clear road. If Jack could win--well, it meant Sylvia cared, that was all. Phil's philosophy was a very simple one.

In the meantime there was work. And Phil was the kind to be able to assuage nearly every mortal ill in work. In the strenuous demands of the day-time hours at the hospital he had little chance to brood over any personal woes and when night came on he took what consolation he could, man fashion, from another woman's obvious pleasure in his society, never once suspecting he was playing with edged tools any more than Barb herself did. Of the physiological action of the heart Phil Lorrimer knew a great deal but of the more subtle manifestations of that organ he knew astonishingly little.

Only Miss Josephine Murray kept her keen eyes wide open. "Babes in the wood!" she thought sometimes. "Heavens! What a fearful thing it is to be young!" And then seeing the soft flush on Barb's cheeks when she came in from an excursion with the young doctor, and the starry shine in her eyes, Miss Murray would add grimly to herself, "Fearful but divine! It's a million years since I had the gift of looking like that."

And sometimes she would ask her niece questions about young Dr. Lorrimer, and Barb would chatter on innocently about him, how he was an old, old friend of Sylvia's, so old, they were almost like brother and sister, though she and Suzanne used sometimes to think maybe Sylvia would marry him some time, but now everybody said it would be Jack Amidon. And once Barb had told the story of how she had slipped over the edge of the cliff and hung to the little ash-tree until Phil had called to her to let go and she had obeyed and gone down, down into space, not one tiny bit afraid for she had felt just as sure as sure that Phil Lorrimer would catch her just as he promised.

"He's the kind of person you just have to have faith in. You know he wouldn't fail you, no matter what happened," she had finished. And Aunt Jo had "H-med" meditatively and risen to switch on the electric light and sit down to her letters. But Barb had lingered before the gas log, watching its scintillating colors and lights and dreaming little vague pleasant dreams. Perhaps the Barb who didn't dare let herself look at the real Barb took a shy peep that night.

As for Jack Amidon, he was extraordinarily on his good behavior that autumn. His father was grimly pleased to find him prompt and assiduous at his office desk, a rather unexpected departure from his career of the past two years when he had fulfilled the obligations of his nominal post chiefly by absent treatment. Possibly the sudden change of heart on the part of his rather erratic son reminded the old man of a similar abrupt right-about-face some six years ago when the same delinquent had announced himself blandly as being "on the water wagon" after a rather strenuous course of wild oat sowing. Perhaps, too, Jackson Amidon shrewdly suspected that now as then the impetus to the reform could be traced to a vigorous-willed, clear-eyed young lady who tolerated no weaklings among her retinue.

"The boy's taken a new turn," he thought. "He'll come out all right in the end. He's sound as a nut inside for all his vagaries. And if that little girl on the Hill can make him come to, it will be one of the best jobs she ever landed." And he added also to himself that if the day ever came when he should welcome Sylvia Arden as his third daughter there would be little left to wish for in the time he had left. And then his eyes had grown sober, for his own daughters, those of his own flesh and blood, had never been of much comfort to him, dearly as he loved them. Over in Europe, Isabel was already threatening stormily to get a divorce from the titled rascal she had insisted on marrying in spite of her father's judgment and protestations. And there was Jeanette, beautiful, willful Jeanette, whose frocks were the last cry from Paris and whose cars and horses and houses and entertainments were all the most daring and expensive America could produce! He, himself, had given her all the money her little hands could hold or spend and Francis Latham had gone on with the prodigious task but neither one of them had been able to give her happiness. That was all too evident. Perhaps if there had been children it would have been different. And at this point in his reflections the old man always broke off with a sigh, for he knew that the moment when Jack should bring Sylvia home for a bride could only yield precedence in satisfaction to that other hoped-for moment when he should see his grandson, Jackson Amidon, the third. Then, indeed, the curtain might go down when it pleased.

These dreams of Jackson Amidon's did not look so all improbable that October. Jack was distinctly "on the job" as he would have expressed it, doing his level best to make a man of himself, since that was what Sylvia demanded, and sunning himself happily in her favor during their mutual leisure hours. Very good comrades the two were. Youth turns to youth as a morning glory to the sun and the Goddess of Propinquity is a lady of much influence. Certainly it was not strange that people prophesied that an engagement would soon be announced. Possibly it was not strange either, that Jack and Sylvia themselves believed such a dénouement entirely probable in course of time.

CHAPTER VIII

FIRE AND FROST

"Lois, aren't you ever going to write any more?" Sylvia on the rug before the fire with wee Marjory in her arms looked up over that young person's bobbing silver curls to ask the question.

Lois Daly sitting by the window to catch the last bit of daylight, ran her hand into a small stocking to investigate the number of casualties before she answered.

"Maybe. When the kiddies are grown up."

"But don't you mind not doing it now? Don't you want to do it dreadfully sometimes?"

"Not especially. In fact I don't believe I could write now if I tried. I've lost the knack as well as the impulse. You have no idea how much such things are a matter of mere habit." Lois' voice had an even flow suggesting cool, shady, translucent waters. Sometimes her friend's serenity irritated Sylvia. It did now.

"Well, I think that is all wrong," she announced decidedly. "You oughtn't to have let it go."

"Just how could I have helped it? You may recall I have been moderately busy these last few years. I haven't had much time to entertain literary angels."

"Oh, I know," acknowledged Sylvia penitently, curling one of Marjory's ringlets around her finger as she spoke. "You couldn't, of course, with the house and the babies and the little mother's death and everything. But couldn't you begin again now?"

"Why should I? Tom doesn't need an author in his household. He needs a housekeeper and a nurse and a seamstress and a wife." There was a faintly satirical twist to Lois' lips as she made the statement. "Of the four he needs the wife least, of course. He is too busy to enjoy my society. This hospital project is the last straw."

Sylvia looked thoughtful. Somehow there did seem to be something wrong somewhere. Doctor Tom too occupied to see anything of his beautiful, brilliant wife; she, in turn, too much immersed in household and maternal cares either to cultivate her own particular gift or pay much attention to the things her husband was so vitally interested in! These two had started out so well. They were both so fine, so thoroughly devoted at heart to each other. What was the trouble? Was marriage always a compromise like this? Sylvia did not like to think so. Somewhere there must have been something which could have been done differently. Woman-like she was a bit inclined to blame the other woman. If only Lois had cared a little more for the things Doctor Tom cared for, the things which to Sylvia seemed so splendid, his profession, his tireless service to the community, his dreams for its progress and betterment! Lois rolled up the stockings she had just finished mending and rose.

"Do you mind staying a few minutes with Marjory, Sylvia? It is cook's night out and I have to see about supper."

Sylvia assented willingly and Lois departed. Even as the door closed behind her, Sylvia heard Doctor Tom's step in the hall and his cheerful voice as he greeted his wife.

"Got in earlier than I expected. Come on back and enjoy the twilight with me," she heard him inviting.

Lois' answer was inaudible but in a moment Doctor Tom entered the living-room alone.

"Hello, here's my best daughter and my star neighbor! Come on, Cherub, and let your old Dad toss you up to the moon."

Marjory leaped with a happy little crow out of Sylvia's arms and Sylvia rose to the higher level of a chair while she smiled at the baby's gurgling delight as her father tossed her "up to the moon." Presently the doctor seated himself before the fire with his small daughter still in his arms. As he settled back with a tired sigh Sylvia saw with sudden quick compunction that Doctor Tom looked old--too old for his years. Some of his characteristic buoyancy had gone out of him.

"How is the Curry baby?" she asked.

He shook his head sadly.

"Died early this morning," he said.

"Oh!" Sylvia's exclamation was pitiful. "Can I do anything?"

"Go down and see the mother. She is like a stone. Can't even cry. Maybe the baby's better off. The father is drunk half the time and there isn't any too much to eat. But if I could have had Jimmy in a decent hospital I could have saved him. Everything was against him down there, poor little chap!" And Tom Daly's big hand closed over little Marjory's dimpled one as if somehow to keep her safe from the grim enemy that had pursued Jimmy Curry, an enemy who had altogether too many allies down in the unsanitary tenement district where the baby had wearily breathed his little life in and out again in one short year. Then the doctor's fist came down with a resounding thump on the arm of the chair. "I tell you, Sylvia, we have got to get that hospital and get it quick. We're wasting human life too fast at this rate."

"Will money help? You know I'm ready to give to the hospital any time--any amount you want."

Doctor Tom smiled his old wide-mouthed friendly grin.

"Naturally you are, Miss Christmas. I can always count on you every time. You would give your last red cent if anybody needed it. Thank Heaven you don't come into the bulk of your property till you are twenty-five. You would have made ducks and drakes of it before this if you had it all. I shall tell Gordon to keep his eye on the purse strings until you get a husband to do it for you. You have such dissipating tendencies. Don't wrinkle your nose like that. You shall give when the time is ripe. What I want just now is to wring some money out of the hides of some of these tough old Greendale sinners who keep their religion with their prayer books in the family pew and their brotherly love reduced systematically to lowest terms. The apology for a hospital we have is a disgrace and they know it or they will before I get through with 'em. There isn't even a children's ward. Little Allie Wendell died last week to the tune of Jake Casey's blasphemous D. T. music. Bah! It's rotten."

"Tom, I do wish you wouldn't shout so. I could hear you clear out in the kitchen." Thus Lois' silver cool voice from the doorway, contrasting oddly with her husband's vehement ejaculatoriness which still filled the little room. "Supper is ready. You'll stay, won't you, Sylvia? I will be with you as soon as I can get Marjory into Tessy's hands and see if Junior brushed his teeth. He is so bad these days. I can't trust him at all."

Sylvia had been about to refuse but Doctor Tom cut her short.

"Of course you will stay. You haven't been here for a dog's age. Besides, I want to talk to you about the hospital and ask what you think about--"

"Don't start to talk shop now," ordered Lois from the doorway, with small Marjory's head bobbing sleepily over her shoulder. "The omelet will go down."

"It sure will," promised the doctor. "I feel as if almost anything would go down in me this minute."

"That is the trouble with Tom," smiled Lois to Sylvia. "He doesn't know the difference between a sublimated soufflé and plain hash. It is all food to him. It is very discouraging."

Doctor Tom shook his head as the door closed upon his wife and daughter.

"If only she wouldn't fuss," he groaned. "Sylvia, I feel like a beast when I think what a lot this life we are leading takes out of her. If only she would take it a bit easier. She's such a confounded perfectionist every blessed thing she does has to be just right. That's why it uses up so much of her."

It was certainly a "just right" meal to which they sat down a few moments later. Everything was cold which should have been cold, everything hot which should have been hot. The table linen was fine and dazzling white, the silver and glass resplendently bright and clean. The bowl of yellow chrysanthemums made a perfect centerpiece, under the pleasantly shaded glow of the suspended lamp. Lois herself was exquisite in a soft clinging gray gown which she had taken the time to slip into while she had been upstairs with the children. Not a fold was awry, not a hair out of place. Serene and low-voiced and deft-motioned, she served perfect tea in quaint gold-banded cups from a green-dragoned teapot.

But somehow Sylvia was critical in her judgment to-night. The very perfectness of it all jarred upon her. She couldn't help wondering if Lois were after all the consummate artist her husband acclaimed her. Life was made for happiness and was Lois Daly happy or was she making her big-hearted, splendid-souled husband happy? Had she even noticed the tired look in his eyes to-night, the droop to his shoulders? In her conscientious supervision of Junior's teeth and Marjory's bedtime did she think or care at all about the Tommy Currys and Allie Wendells of the world who mattered so gravely to her husband? The two loved each other devotedly, Sylvia knew, yet she could not help seeing how far apart they were after five years of wedded life. It gave one food for thought.

After supper Lois excused herself to do some household auditing.

"You and Tom are going to talk hospital anyway," she added to Sylvia, "and there is no use of my listening while it is all just an air-castle. If I had that on my mind on top of the price of potatoes and bacon I don't know what would happen."

"Stay and rest and we'll call hospital taboo," promised Doctor Tom. "Never mind the old accounts to-night."

But Lois shook her head, protesting if he ran his business the way he wanted her to run hers they would soon end in the poorhouse.

"Not that you run your business any too well, Tommy dear," she had added. "You are a scandalously poor bill collector. Aren't the Williamsons ever going to pay?"

"Steve Williamson's down with pneumonia. I can't press them now."

"Pneumonia on top of twins! They are unfortunate." And Lois left the room.

Sylvia dropped her eyes quickly. Intuitively she knew she didn't want to look at Doctor Tom just then. He made no comment upon his wife's parting speech but settled down in the big armchair with a tired grunt.

"Mind if I smoke?"

"Of course not."

"All right, here goes." He took one or two long comforting puffs at his pipe. "Let's side-track the hospital for the present. Might as well since it's only an air-castle, as Lois says. I'm a bit frazzled to-night. Can't seem to get the Curry baby off my chest. Suppose you play something instead. Nothing too classic--just agreeable and anæsthetic."

Sylvia went to the piano and sat down. Her fingers drifted into a nocturne. Save for the soft music and the crackling of the logs on the hearth there was no sound in the room. Tom Daly sat staring into the leaping flames and smoked stolidly. It would have made an appropriate picture for a woman's magazine cover. The gracious, comfortable room, the tired man, basking in home peace and contentment after the labor and stress of the day; the young girl at the piano, with healing and sympathy, wordless but no less apparent in her finger tips. Only in a woman's magazine the musician would no doubt have been the man's wife. Life is sometimes oddly different from magazine covers.

It was nearly an hour before Lois returned to the living-room. She paused a moment on the threshold.

"Oh, so you aren't building hospitals after all? Forgive me for being such a bad hostess, Sylvia. Was that Brahms?"

Sylvia shook her head with a smile.

"I don't know what it was," she admitted. "Something I heard in my dreams maybe. Did I put you to sleep Doctor Tom?"

"No, just soothed the savage in me. I feel fairly pacific at the moment. Don't stop."

"Ah, but I must. Felicia will think I am lost." She rose as she spoke and Doctor Tom rose too. "Don't come," she protested. "It is too absurd when it's only such a step."

"It's a step I intend to take," he grinned. "If you must go, I'm at your service."

"I wish you wouldn't," objected Sylvia, but she let him wrap her long moss green cloak about her and in a moment they were out in the keen November air under the stars. Neither said anything until they were at the steps of the Hall. Then suddenly Doctor Tom spoke.

"Sylvia, how did you know I had the blue devils to-night?" he demanded.

"Did you?" parried Sylvia. There was something different about Doctor Tom to-night; a queer, tense something in his voice she wasn't used to.

"You know I did. You played to 'em--charmed 'em, as I said."

"I'm glad," said Sylvia. "Glad I charmed them, I mean. You need a rest, Doctor Tom. You are going a pace that would kill any man who wasn't as strong as an ox."

He laughed a little grimly.

"Well, Miss Nestor, any more sage advice to offer your grandfather? Just how am I going to shunt the world I happen to have on my shoulders at present?"

"Just drop it off. You could if you had to. Why don't you and Lois go on a vacation? Felicia and I will look after the babies."

"Thanks, Miss Christmas. That is like you and mighty kind, but do you see Lois letting anybody--the angel Gabriel himself--look after the babies for her?"

"She might," dubiously.

"And again she mightn't. But, aside from Lois, I have too many life and death jobs on hand at present to quit. A doctor's no business to get nerves. He ought to leave that to his patients. Anyway, it isn't the work that is getting me just now, it is the damnable futility of it all. The Curry baby is a symbol. I'm pouring water in a sieve, Sylvia, and that's the devil's truth."

"It isn't. You aren't," denied Sylvia quickly. "You are doing miracles every day of your life and everybody knows it. Doctor Tom, I never heard you talk like that before. Don't. It makes me feel as if everything were tottering on its foundations."

"Sometimes I think they are with that infernal senseless war going on over there after all our peace prating. Sylvia, what's it all for? Where are we going? What's the use?"

"Everything's the use. Maybe we can't see behind all the agony and blundering but there must be something there even if we can't see it. Why, Doctor Tom, there must be." Sylvia's eyes were earnest, her face uplifted to the stars lit with the fine fires of youth's faith. Tom Daly shook himself like one coming out of a trance. He was suddenly ashamed that he, the strong man, had been outdistanced in courage by the slim girl before him.

"Right you are," he said heartily. "There must be. It's the only way to look at it. Thank you, Sylvia. I won't bleat again. If only--" But what was to have followed that sharp wrung "if only" Sylvia never knew for suddenly Tom Daly crushed both her hands in a vicelike grip and then turned and fled with a gruff "good night" down the path.

In his own yard close by he met his wife placidly draping a blanket over a rhododendron bush.

"I thought there might be a frost to-night," she observed, and her tone had all the clear crispness of frost in it as she spoke. Tom Daly was only human. It was scarcely strange that he could not help contrasting his wife's voice with that other eager, vibrant, younger, warmer voice he had just heard, passionately asserting faith in that something behind all the miseries and misunderstandings of things without which life were indeed scarcely to be endured.

There was a world war on. Little Jimmy Curry lay dead unnecessarily. Tom Daly's nerves and courage and endurance were strained all but to the breaking point. And his wife Lois thought there might be a frost. But long after Tom Daly had fallen into the heavy sleep of complete physical exhaustion Lois lay wide-eyed and sleepless, staring into the darkness.

CHAPTER IX

THE MOTH AND THE STAR

The audience settled itself into place, rattling its programs, prepared idly to be either amused or bored as the opportunity presented itself, mildly curious as to the personality and talent of the young violinist "heard for the first time in this country."

"They say he used to be old man McIntosh's office boy. He certainly struck it soft. Old man's worth near a million they say and this darned Dago'll get it all I suppose. Some folks just naturally nab the luck." Thus a young reporter to his neighbor.

"I don't know about that. I can't imagine old McIntosh standing for this fiddling business. He's a husky old Puritan."

"Well, he did stand for it to the tune of quite a pretty price, I understand. The chap's had four years of Berlin and Dresden and the rest of it. Some mixture! Italian birth, American start, Scotch bringing up, German polish. Whew! Wonder what he's like with all that in him. Talk about your melting pots!"

"There's old McIntosh in the box now. No, the left. Ugly old snoozer, ain't he? But brains. Gee! He's shrewd as they make 'em. Hello! Who's the dame? Pretty easy to look at it, ain't she?"

"That's Miss Arden--lives on a high mucky muck hill out in Greendale. She's something to old McIntosh. Niece maybe. I forget."

"No, she isn't. Old man used to be bookkeeper for her father's firm. I remember. My dad knew 'em. Arden and Daly--big cotton concern. Arden died young. Daly lost his money in some railroad slump and croaked too. Son's a doctor--making the wires hum out in Greendale about a hospital or something. So that's Miss Arden. Engaged to young Amidon, isn't she?"

"I reckon. Shut up. There he comes. Gee! He's nothing but a kid."

It must be admitted that Gus, appearing on the program as Gustavus Niccolini, did look very much indeed like a "kid" as he came across the stage and made a shy, stiff little bow to the audience. Angus McIntosh fidgeted in his chair and cleared his throat irritably. "Fool to let him try," he thought. "How do I know whether he can play or not? What if he can't?" A cold perspiration stood out on the old man's forehead. What if the boy made a failure of the thing? What if the audience smiled, hissed? Audiences did behave like that sometimes. Why hadn't he told the boy, short-off, long ago, he shouldn't try it? Thus he worked himself into a perfect passion of apprehension. But in the midst of his perturbation Sylvia's hand rested on his knee and Sylvia's eyes smiled reassurance.

"It's all right, Daddy McIntosh," she whispered. "Just you wait till they hear him."

In a moment they did hear him and the great hall was hushed to respectful silence. The audience had the grace to recognize a master touch when they heard it. Angus McIntosh was justified. The boy whom he had plucked out of a den of squalor and vice was an artist, and the grim old man who had had a hand in the creation had been something of an artist at the job himself. As for Sylvia, who was behind it all, she hardly breathed until the music ceased. She listened rapt while the voice of the violin sang and soared, now rapturous, now tender, now triumphant, now dying away like the note of a wild bird in the night. She had known before that Gus could play, but this--why this was a thing born of Heaven to which she listened reverently. Finally the last note came and quivered into silence. There was an instant's hush then the applause thundered. The boy lifted his head quietly, but with a certain grave pride, and his eyes sought the box where Angus McIntosh and Sylvia sat. Then suddenly his face was lit with a light which was not a smile but an enveloping radiance which seemed to say, "This is yours. I give it to you. I am glad it is worth giving." Then he bowed to the audience and the applause redoubled.

Angus McIntosh never knew much about the rest of that program. He knew it went on and the applause went on, that the boy went through the varied and difficult performance with ease and serenity and simplicity, but what he was playing the old man never knew. It might have been "Yankee Doodle" or the "Cam'el's are Coming" for all he heard. He only knew the thing was beautiful. All the remnants of still lingering prejudices floated off into some dim cavern where such limbo is stored or annihilated. There was a place in the world it seemed for sheer beauty. Maybe it had a spiritual essence all its own. Anyway, this music of the boy's seemed oddly connected in his mind with the psalms and other fine old religious poetry with which his mother had filled his mind long ago. He was humbly glad that he had had a share in letting loose this thing upon the world. He remembered always that it was Sylvia who had really opened the door. Beauty--Kindness--Happiness--Love--all these things had been slipping almost beyond his grasp that December nearly six years ago when Sylvia and her Christmas family had brought them back. It was Sylvia who had given the boy to him, Sylvia, who had given his music to the world by making himself who had been blind see.

The concert was over and Herr Bernsdorf, Gus' old music teacher, had rushed up to the box and was pumping Mr. McIntosh's hand up and down violently with inarticulate croonings and mutterings of delight and congratulation. "Haf I not told you that the boy was a genius? Haf I not said it hundertmal? I knew. I, who was his master, I knew. They haf done well by him over there, they haf done well. But somebody else, she haf done more? Is it you, mein Fraulein?" He turned his flashing little black eyes on Sylvia as he asked the question.

"I! Oh, no. I have done nothing," disclaimed Sylvia.

"No? Maybe it is another, in Berlin or Dresden or elsewhere. I know not. I only know the boy haf learned to play like that from luf. Luf haf taught him. Only luf learns to play like that. Ach! Do I not know?"

And then Gus himself stepped into the box, having gently but firmly slipped away from the crowd which would have waylaid him.

"Did you like it, Daddy McIntosh?" he asked playfully, and the old man coughed and sputtered and could not speak. But Gus was satisfied. Even as he grasped his sponsor's hand the boy's eyes went beyond to Sylvia, who had purposely stepped back. Though his lips said nothing, his eyes asked her too, "Did you like it, Sylvia?" and said again what they had proclaimed from the stage. "It is yours. I give it to you."

And a little shiver went over Sylvia as she read the boy's eyes, and suddenly she felt very sad and humble and a little ashamed because she had been so blind. She knew he was asking nothing, probably never would ask anything, but she also knew he was giving something very precious, something for which she had nothing to give in exchange. Mr. McIntosh, absorbed in his emotions, did not understand, but the old music teacher did.

"I haf said it," he thought triumphantly. "I haf had right. It was luf--luf and no other who have learned the boy to play like that. I haf heard it from his fingers and now I haf seen it in his eyes. And by and by he will play efen better, for luf will also learn him pain, and pain he is the great master. He it is who learn the masters themselves. Haf I not seen it?"

Only for a moment Gus had let his eyes betray him, so brief an interval indeed that Sylvia thought afterward she must have imagined it so naturally did she and the young man find themselves chatting over the details of the concert.

But later, after she was home in Greendale and curled comfortably in bed, that eloquent look from those dark eyes came back and would not let her sleep.

"Oh, dear," she thought. "Who would ever have thought it of Gus, of all people? I thought he was just wrapped up in his music. Why won't they stay friends? It is so discouraging and uncomfortable. There is no end to the trouble it makes when they begin to want to be lovers. Jack is likely to come any minute and tell me what a good boy he is and demand the plums out of the Christmas pie. I don't want to marry any of them. I don't. I don't. So there."

But even as she snuggled down among the pillows she heard a wee distinct little voice inside her somewhere say something quite different.

"Oh, yes, you do," it said. "You want to marry Phil, by and by, way off in the future, a thousand years from now. Only he doesn't want to marry you, and that is what makes you so restless and discontented and horrid. That's why you've been flirting with Jack and--yes, Gus, too, in a demure, artistic sort of way, not thinking it would do any harm to anybody. And even Doctor Tom looked funny at you the other night. And--but then it is all Phil's fault--so you needn't worry."

And then Sylvia put her hands over her ears, for she didn't want to hear any more of that kind of talk.

"You are quite mistaken," she retorted to the disagreeable little voice. "I haven't been flirting with anybody. Jack and Gus are both good friends and I can't help being nice to them. And Doctor Tom is safe and married, so he doesn't count. But, anyway, I'll be careful after this and I don't want to marry anybody--not anybody."

And down in the near-by city the young violinist who had scored such a success that the papers were already writing up flattering notices about him sat in his room, furiously scribbling poetry, at least that is what he would probably have called it, poetry whose theme was mostly borrowed from another young lover, and had in it a lot about the "desire of the moth for the star" or some such rubbish. Gus was very young yet if he was a master violinist and Love was beginning to teach him other things than how to make his violin sing. But the poetry was not so good as his music and presently he pushed aside his scribblings in disgust and went and stood by the window looking out into the night.

It had been raining and the pavements glistened in the light reflected from the arc-lamps. And suddenly the twinkling lights called up to the boy the memory of a Christmas eve when he had followed Angus McIntosh into a brilliantly lighted room with a wonderful Christmas tree in the center, such a Christmas tree as he had never dreamed of in his wildest dreams. And then he forgot the tree and remembered Sylvia smiling kindly at him, saying, "Christmas Family, here are Mr. McIntosh and Gus Nichols. Isn't it nice they could get here to-night?"

He knew now that the desire of the moth for the star had been born then and there, only it wasn't even a desire, it was just a worship.

And in the Oriole Inn, at the foot of Sylvia's Hill, Hope Williams lay asleep with Stephen Kinnard's four weeks' old letter under her pillow, and a smile on her lips, for she was dreaming she was back in the garden with Stephen sketching her among the wistaria vines. But Stephen Kinnard was having a very amusing and profitable time sketching a wild, little beauty of a half breed on an Arizona desert these days and had all but forgotten such a person as Hope existed. But never once in all his wanderings did he forget to mail a weekly letter to Felicia Emory, who had rejected him "with reasons."

So things go in this piquant world of ours. And there is much truth hidden for the wise in the depths of the "Grecian Urn."

CHAPTER X

THE CITY

By November Barbara had become so accustomed to the city that she no longer jumped at its noises or shrank physically from its crowds. She learned to ignore the thunder of the El and to regard the Subway as a necessary evil, the traffic policeman a very present help in time of trouble. She even learned to zigzag deftly, alone and unprotected, in and out among the automobiles, and to calculate on the chance that a Fifth Avenue Bus driver would probably prefer not to run her down, other things being equal.

But she never quite made friends with the big, strange city--the Step-Mother city--as some one has called it. Always it seemed to hold her at a distance, perfectly amicable and perfectly impersonal. It seemed to say to her "What are you to me? There are hundreds---yes, thousands, like you in my gigantic household. Can I be expected to care for you each as individuals? Watch the motes dancing in the sunshine. As the motes to you so you to me. Go look at the sands shining on the beach at Coney. As the grains to you so you to me. Let your eyes follow the ripples of my big river. As the ripples to you so you and all the rest of the human eddies which make up my great tide to me."

Yet there were moments when Barb felt as if she had almost surprised the city's secret, caught it unaware, as it were, and half ashamed, slipping into its holy of holies. Once coming over on the ferry from Jersey City she had scanned the great towers and buildings, set with twinkling lights as with many jewels, and beheld the huge bridges, across which an endless stream of traffic passed and repassed, like human life itself in its unending succession. And then she had seemed to see for a moment what the city really meant. Sordid, material, menacing, heartless as it was in many of its aspects did it not after all cherish a big vision? Were not those very towers and bridges the symbol of its restless aspiration?

Suddenly above it all had risen a pale lackadaisical looking moon, slipping quietly from behind a smoke bank to look down at the seething tumultuous life of the great city. To Barb the moon had seemed almost to smile, a world-weary, somewhat cynical smile as one who should say "Go on. Keep it up. Burrow and build, crush and create, scream and scuffle. What will it matter a million years hence? You will have learned by then to be cold and calm like me."

But the bridges and towers had mocked the moon and defied it. "We are wood and stone and steel," they said. "We may crumble and fall but what we stand for will neither crumble nor fall. For we are the symbol of man, aspirant, conquering--a spirit which shall not grow cold or calm while there is anything in life to which to aspire, anything left to conquer. We are nothing. That we grant you, Moon. But the spirit of man is everything, yes, even God himself, God passioning, agonizing, ultimately victorious."

So the vision came to little Barb, and after that she was not afraid of the city. She had the clew as to what it was all about. It whirred and rumbled and rushed and screeched like its own busses but it had a method in its madness. Like the busses, it had a destination. It was going somewhere whether it knew it or not.

As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning. At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human question--the human questions.

How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy. They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful, some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very sad.

Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work. She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly efficient substitute.

And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her business in the background!

The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulæ! How she hugged to her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they were precious!

The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined than ever to storm the citadel.

In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and getting great dark circles under her eyes.

But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any.

"Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving, straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.

Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too, looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in, protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper people.

On the Bus Phil turned to Barb to ask a rather odd question.

"Roger Minot been in town lately?"

"I don't think so. Suzanne wouldn't let him see her if he did come. Why?"

"I just wondered. Suzanne is looking a little peaked, don't you think?"

"Dreadful," sighed Barb. "Suzanne is such a fiend for work. She owned up to forgetting to eat any luncheon to-day she was so interested in what she was doing. I'm afraid she forgets rather often."

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Phil. He had seen more than one young man and young woman, too, for that matter, who had developed that convenient kind of memory about food in the city when pockets were empty. He shrewdly suspected that Suzanne was "up against it" in his own parlance. He had made a fair diagnosis of her case in the garish lights of the German restaurant. "Overwork, underfeeding, devilish desperation. Something sure to snap soon." Thus he summed the matter up mentally, for he had not thought it necessary to alarm Barb about her friend's situation, since she was so obviously unsuspecting. He knew Suzanne would brook no help nor pity. "Proud as Lucifer, of course," he thought. But he made up his mind to keep his eye on Suzanne, as he put it.

To that end he made his way to the Village a few evenings later, found from Giovanni that Suzanne was out and discovered her, for himself shortly, sitting in a bench on the Square, looking pinched and blue about the lips. Phil Lorrimer was a very direct person and usually went straight for any goal he had in sight. He finally succeeded in wringing the truth out of Suzanne. She had not sold a story since she came to New York or "landed" a play. Her money was all but gone and she had been living on one meal a day for a week past.

"And the worst of it is, I'm a rotten failure. That's what I can't stand." And Suzanne had clenched her fist in her shabby little glove and set her white teeth together sharply. "I won't give up. I tell you I won't. I won't go home and I won't ask 'em for a cent. I won't let 'em say, 'I told you so.' I won't. I won't. Phil Lorrimer, if you dare to hint one word of what I've told you to-night to Rog--er--to my people, I'll borrow a stiletto of Giovanni and ram it clean through you. What did you ever make me tell you for, anyway? You hadn't any business to. I hate you!" And with an ejaculation somewhere between a snarl and a sob, Suzanne had turned and fled away from him into the night.

But it had not taken Phil's long legs many seconds to be up with her again.

"See here, Suzanne," he urged. "Don't take it like that. My knowing doesn't count. Doctors and priests are dumb as the grave. I won't peach, but do let me help you over the bad spot. I haven't much myself, as you know, but I'd be glad to ease you along a bit if you'll let me, man to man."

Suzanne smiled an April smile at him.

"Man to man, you are a darling, Phil Lorrimer. I'd let you help me if I'd let any one but I won't. My pride's all I have left, and I'm going to hang on to that like grim death. Don't you worry. I know what I can do and I'm going to do it."

"What?" Phil was somewhat dubious about the sudden flush on Suzanne's cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.

She shook her head, mischief written in every line of her thin, pretty, piquant face.

"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

Till you applaud the deed,'"

she quoted gayly. "It is much better you shouldn't know. I'm not even going to tell Barb. She will only be informed that I am out of town with friends. My esteemed parents and dear Roger will hear the same. Your job is to sit tight and know nothing. You won't be responsible. Your skirts--I mean your coat-tails---will be entirely clear."

"Suzanne, I've half a mind to telegraph your father this minute--or Roger. Maybe it would be better to summon Roger." He eyed her sternly.

Suzanne giggled wickedly.

"You will do nothing of the sort, dear Dumb as the Grave. I have your sacred oath not to peach."

"Let me off, Suzanne," he begged. "Honest, I'm worried about you. You look wild."

But Suzanne only laughed again, and assured him she was saner than the statue of Liberty.

"Let you off nothing, dear sir," she added for good measure. "But please don't fret. I assure you I am not going to do a thing either desperate or immoral. I'm going on a lark, that is all. You can't down Suzanne. Like Ivory Soap--it floats. Here we are at my alley. My fruit stand's just beyond. Shake hands like a good boy and wish me luck. Don't frown like that. It spoils your leonine beauty. Good night--and good-by." And, before he could speak, Suzanne had darted into her own doorway leaving Phil staring rather ruefully after her.

"Now what in time or eternity is she up to?" he pondered. "She isn't the kind to play the fool to any great extent. Got too much head and too little heart. I may as well let her gang her own gait. She's bound to anyway. Poor old Roger! She is certainly leading him a trail. Wouldn't he curse me for letting her make a getaway like this if he knew? Out of town with friends!" he muttered as he descended into the depths of the subway. "I'd like to see the friends. And if I were Rod Minot, I would too, or know the reason why."

Thus satisfactorily can one young man sum up the whole duty of another in a recreant courtship though remaining as helpless and inefficient as a new-born infant in the management of his own.

CHAPTER XI

MARGINS

"Hello, Jack! I had no idea you were home." Sylvia, rosy and blown from a spin behind Doctor Tom's frolicsome black mare, entered the living-room at Arden Hall, bringing with her a whiff of fresh outdoor air. She threw down her muff and held out a welcoming hand to her guest who had been waiting her return.

"Bad penny, you know." Jack captured both hands instead of the one vouchsafed as he spoke. "Can't leave business very long, you see." His eyes twinkled mischievously as he looked down at Sylvia, making shameless bid for her favor. Sylvia laughed, but she withdrew her hands and shook her head at him.

"You are a dreadful fraud, Jack. You don't really care such a lot about the business all at once. You know you don't."

"Not a tinker's dam," he shrugged. "Whatever that may be."

"Then why--" began Sylvia and stopped.

"There is only one why, young lady, and you know it."

Sylvia frowned and jabbing out her hatpins a little irritably, tossed her black velvet toque on the table. She had already removed her coat and furs and stood, trim and tailored, in her simple blue serge dress; a simplicity which was exceedingly becoming and likewise extremely expensive as Jack's approving gaze, sweeping the lithe young curves of her figure, knew very well.

"I wish you wouldn't, Jack."

"Wouldn't what?" blandly.

"Wouldn't work--just because I want you to. It is so horribly like a bribe."

"It is a bribe."

"Then I don't like it. I told you I didn't promise anything."

"And I told you I didn't expect anything. You can't blame a fellow for putting all the eggs he can find into his basket."

"Put all the eggs you like into the basket, only don't blame me if they get smashed. Sometimes, Jack, I think you don't really want to marry me at all--you just want the fun of pursuing me."

"Maybe so," agreed Jack so amicably that Sylvia lifted her eyebrows at him. "I was brought up never to contradict a lady."

Sylvia laughed at that and sat down, running her hand over her hair, to brush back its turbulent ripple, a gesture Jack loved because it was so interwoven with his mental pictures of her.

"Let's not discuss ourselves," she added. "Tell me the news. Did you see Barb and Suzanne?"

"I saw Barb. Suzanne has fled the coop."

"What?"

"The report is she is out of town, traveling with friends. Barb looks worried and Phil looks wise but neither has much to say."

"Does Phil know where she is?"

"He says not, but he knows something, or I miss my guess. Not that the old oyster would open up his shell a fraction of an inch even to oblige yours truly. I pried like a good one but to no purpose. Talk about your professional secrecy! Phil's got it down to the finish. The old chap is different somehow, older and solemn as a fish. Horrible example of what work will do to a fellow!" he grinned.

Sylvia stooped to pick up the tongs and stir the fire, which was smoldering a little sulkily on the hearth. Out of the tail of his eye Jack watched her.

"He and Barb seem to be remarkably good pals," he continued. "The Aunt orders him about like a member of the family. Don't wonder he obeys. That woman is a general. I wouldn't be surprised if she took the vote away from the men and gave it to the women any day, if she took the notion. Lucky she and Napoleon didn't hitch their wagons to the same star in the same generation. The star would have dragged Aunt Josephine and ditched the emperor, that's certain."

"Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."

Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the grim December wind outside had gotten into it.

"I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published. Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they feared the worst."

"Jack!"

"Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no wonder."

"Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go off on a tangent like that?"

"Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable."

"Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely.

"Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?"

"After Christmas. Why?"

"Nothing especial. I thought a dose of you might be good for her, that is all."

And that was all the explanation that Sylvia extracted on that subject, though she guessed that there was more than Jack admitted behind his rather enigmatic remarks. Jack was incredibly clear-sighted about some things, and it was evident he saw cause to worry about his sister Jeanette, even to the extent of hurrying Sylvia to New York where he himself could not follow unless he turned back the page of the virtuous new leaf of his devotion to business. There was a puzzle behind it somewhere, Sylvia knew. She also knew she was going to be left to discover the exact nature of the puzzle for herself.

So December went its way. Suzanne continued mysteriously "traveling with friends." Barb and Phil kept hard at work in the city and managed to see a good deal of each other in their off hours. Sylvia and Phil had almost ceased to write to each other, though there was no open break in their friendship. It was rather that a wall, intangible but unsurmountable, had risen between them, as perhaps it had, for pride is a mightier barrier than a mountain peak sometimes. Gus went his quiet, successful way on his concert tour, refusing politely but conclusively to be made a lion of, keeping rather to himself in his leisure hours, living on his unspoken dreams and managing to get a great deal of pure happiness out of his star worship. To Sylvia's delight, and almost to Felicia's consternation, the latter's designs for a mural relief, which Stephen Kinnard had fairly bullied her into submitting in a competition, had been accepted and she was hard at work on the actual modeling these brief winter days, though she found time, Felicia fashion, to be an excellent "Home-keeper" and Mother along with the other task.

Early in November Lois Daly had rather astonishingly announced her intention of "doing some writing" as she put it rather vaguely. Lois was always reticent, especially about her literary work, and even her husband asked no questions, realizing it suited her better to be let alone to work out her purpose for herself. She was far too conscientious about her other duties to neglect any of them and it was consequently the long evenings when the children were in bed and the household affairs quiescent that she found most profitable for her new work. This arrangement was admirable in all but two respects. It made Lois' working day an almost impossibly long one and left her a little too weary for restful sleep when she did finally creep into bed. It also curtailed almost to a minimum the moments which she had to spare for her husband's society, which had been all too few even before the advent of this new era. Doctor Tom made no protest as to this. He was always over-sensitive to the sacrifice of her work which Lois had made for him and his, but he did beg her at times not to "bother" so much about the house and the children and himself.

But Lois always shook her head at his pleas and explained quietly that he and the house and the children were her real job and she could not neglect them for the other. And if Tom Daly found it in his heart to wonder sometimes if his wife's "real job" did not include a little closer companionship with himself he never voiced his wondering. He was no "martyr," as he had once long ago protested to Sylvia.

But human relations are never static and while Lois shut herself in her den and wrote feverishly, night after night, her husband, being only human, easily drifted into the habit of finding elsewhere than at his own home the companionship and sympathy which even the strongest and most independent of men half-consciously crave. Arden Hall and Sylvia were close at hand and it was almost inevitable that he should find his way to the two rather often. Sylvia was intensely interested in all his schemes for the hospital and other altruistic visions which made up a very large part of his wide, busy career. Often they talked eagerly for hours, either with or without Felicia's presence. Oftener still Tom Daly would sit and smoke in contented silence while Sylvia played soft music or read aloud out of some magazine stories which let his mind rest instead of wrestle.

It was all the most natural, even inevitable development. The two were old friends. Tom Daly was thirty-eight and happily married. Sylvia Arden was twenty-two questing for experience innocently enough. There was no one to question or warn, or indeed, anything to question or warn against. Yet there sat Nature spinning away at her web all the time and Tom Daly and Sylvia were near to being caught in the mesh, without even knowing there was any mesh. And the danger for Tom Daly as it happened was considerably greater than for Sylvia just because he was a man. Man is the so-called reasoning sex, but, as has been more than once noted, sex is the one subject upon which he will not reason. And so things slipped easily and pleasantly along up to Christmas time.

It was Jack Amidon who involuntarily opened Sylvia's eyes by uttering an unusually sharp protest that she went nowhere any more, either with him or any one else, but just sat in the chimney corner and played Joan to Tom Daly's Darby. "And soon there'll be the deuce to pay whether you know it or not," he had added darkly.

Of course Sylvia had flared out in quick anger at his implications.

"What do you mean, Jack Amidon, by saying such horrid things?" she had stormed. "It is perfectly ridiculous. Doctor Tom is years and years older than I am. He is just like a brother."

Jack had seen the brother dodge worked before and said so somewhat caustically, whereupon Sylvia lost what little temper she had left, and having delivered a volley of violent wrath upon her guest's imprudent head, shot out of the room, leaving him to enjoy the hospitality of the Hall in solitude or beat a retreat as pleased him best.

Meanwhile, upstairs in her own room, Sylvia threw herself on the bed, and, first of all, woman fashion, relieved her feelings by indulging in a good old-fashioned "weep," her anger dissipating with her tears. Presently she sat up and began to take stock of the situation and herself, and found to her consternation that things as they actually were, were about as safe as a child with a box of matches in a haymow.

She was a perfectly clear-eyed and sophisticated young woman and when her attention was called, however brutally, to the fact that you cannot see a man, night after night, week after week, as she had been seeing Tom Daly, without there being at least the possibility of the "deuce to pay," as Jack had bluntly expressed it, she was willing to acknowledge the fact to herself at least. She carefully analyzed her own mental processes for the past few weeks and discovered to her surprise and some chagrin that she had been ruthlessly cutting out engagements in which Tom Daly did not figure, and eagerly making those in which he did figure, that she had deliberately plunged into everything that interested him, Red Cross work, the new hospital, the needs of some of his poorer patients; everything, in short, that he cared about heartily. She even had to admit to herself that she had been a little complacent and self righteous in her genuine interest and sympathy with these things because she resented Lois Daly's apathy in the matter and felt profoundly sorry for Doctor Tom. She discovered that it is not prudent in the world as it is lived to be too sorry for another woman's husband. That way danger lies, and a signboard to that effect is in order. Beyond this, however, Sylvia knew she had little for which to blame herself. She was not a deliberate coquette. She had acted in all simplicity and naturalness, but there had been a risk to the experiment for all that and she was a bit ashamed of her hitherto state of blindness.

Being a very honest young person, Sylvia sat down, as soon as she had threshed the whole matter out to the satisfaction of her clear, fair mind, and wrote a very artistically penitent note to Jack, retracting some of the unwarrantable things she had said in her wrath and admitting rather hazily that there was a faint possibility that he might have been in the right about certain matters, implying that she was magnanimously willing even to ignore his objectionable rightness if he so desired.

And her note crossed one from Jack, begging her to forgive his "darned impertinence" and adding that he had behaved like a jackass and a dog in the manger and Heaven knows how many other kinds of animals, but if she would be good enough to overlook his misdemeanors he would be eternally grateful.

And the next evening Sylvia appeared under Jack's escort at the Honeycutt ball, wearing a marvelous new gown and looking extraordinarily pretty after her temporary estrangement from Vanity Fair. And from that time on during all the mad gayeties of Christmas week Jack was constantly in attendance, obviously the favored knight. Life is mostly made up of reactions. The pendulum having swung so far to the left, swings back an equal distance to the right. Sylvia was the kinder to Jack because of her deflection away from him in an entirely opposite direction. And he, with the wisdom born of considerable experience of the feminine sex in general, and Sylvia Arden in particular, made no comment though he perfectly understood what had happened, but sunned himself agreeably in his lady's rather uncertain grace and bided his time.

And the night of the Honeycutt ball for the first time in several weeks Tom Daly sat and smoked before his own fireside and not once did he think of the new hospital.

CHAPTER XII

"SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS"

"Phil? That you, my boy? Come up and take dinner with us to-night, won't you? I have a proposition to make to you."

Thus the smooth voice of Justin Huntley over the telephone. Justin Huntley was a famous nerve specialist, a classmate and lifelong friend of Phil Lorrimer's father, who had kept a friendly eye on the young man ever since he had come to the city.

Phil accepted the invitation, and later, as he left the Subway and strolled down Seventy-second Street toward the river, he speculated vaguely as to what the proposition might be likely to be. Doctor Huntley was quite capable of initiating any kind of a suggestion, from proposing a marriage to an heiress to the use of a new serum. Consequently Phil had little to go upon in his speculations.

It was an agreeable dinner. Dinner at the Huntleys' always was agreeable, moving by pleasant stages to a perfect end, gastronomically speaking. There were no other guests to-night and presently, Mrs. Huntley, a frail tired looking little lady who always seemed to be deprecating the weight of her silks and the brilliancy of her jewels, rose and left the two men together.

"Any curiosity about the proposition I baited my hook with to get you here to-night?" Dr. Huntley surveyed his guest a little quizzically as he launched the question.

"I didn't need any bait," said Phil. "But I admit the curiosity."

The older man leaned forward and deliberately lit his cigarette from a candle that stood close at hand.

"You don't smoke?" he remarked irrelevantly.

"No," admitted Phil. "At least, not often. Bad for the operating table."

"Bad! It's the devil. You have a deal of sense, young man. How would you like to be my partner?" The question was put as casually as if he were offering a fellow traveler, caught in the rain, a share of his umbrella, but his shrewd eyes took full account of the face of the young man. Phil flushed and his mouth opened slightly. It was a proposition to make any ambitious young man drop his jaw. Justin Huntley had one of the largest and most remunerative practices in the city. It was a dazzling prospect to open suddenly before the eyes of a small-salaried worker in a free clinic. It meant success, money--Sylvia, something to offer her, at last.

"Well?"

"It is a wonderful chance," said Phil steadily, "but I should like to think it over, if you don't mind."

"Eh?" It was Dr. Huntley's jaw that dropped this time. He had scarcely expected a young man in Phil Lorrimer's position to need to think over an offer such as he had just made. Most young men would have jumped at it quickly as a trout leaps at a shining fly lest the fascinating thing disappear from view before it could be apprehended. "What did you say?"

"I said I should have to think it over," repeated Phil. "Your kind of practice isn't the kind I am interested in, to speak frankly."

"Interested! Good Lord! Who expects to be interested in anything nowadays? A lot of damn women with nothing on earth the matter with them except fool notions, and having nothing on earth or in Heaven to occupy themselves with, dyspeptics, neurasthenics, hypochondriacs, dope fiends, gentlemen drunkards and worse! That is my kind of practice, boy. Pah! Interesting! Of course, they aren't interesting. They are fools. But they pay. Lord, how they pay! They wouldn't be sick if they didn't have so much money. You would open your eyes if you saw my books. But I've had 'most enough of 'em. I want somebody to take the brunt of their damn foolnesses off of me. That is what I want a partner for. Some day I'll be telling 'em what I really think of 'em and it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do. I've got to have an understudy. You've a close mouth and a good head and you'd like the money. Don't tell me you wouldn't like it," querulously. "Everybody wants money these days. The whole world's after it."