PART V

THE NEW WORLD

I

George crushed his uneasy thoughts, trying to dwell instead on the idea that he was going back to the normal, but all at once he experienced a dread of the normal, perhaps, because he was no longer normal himself. Could he limp before Sylvia with his old assurance? Would people pity him, or would he irritate them because he had a disability? And snatches of his talks at the front with Wandel etched themselves sharply against his chaotic recollections of those days. Was Wandel fair? Was it, indeed, the original George Morton people had always liked? Here, apart from the turmoil, he didn't believe it, didn't dare believe it. Those people wouldn't have cared for him except for his assumption of qualities which he had chosen as from a counter display. Yet was it the real George Morton that made him in superlative moments break the traces of his acquired judgments, as he had done at New Haven, in the Argonne, to dash selflessly into the service of others? Rotten inside, indeed! Even in the hospital he set out to crush that impulsive, dangerous part of him.

But the nearer he drew to home the more he suffered from a depression that he could only define as homesickness—homesickness for the old ways, the old habits, the old thoughts; and the memory of his temerity with Sylvia at the moment of their parting was like a great cloud threatening the future with destructive storm.

Lambert, wearing a contrivance the doctors had given him in place of what the country had taken away, accompanied by Betty and the Baillys, met the transport. Betty and Mrs. Bailly cried, and George shook his heavy stick at them.

"See here! I'm not going to limp like this always."

Bailly encircled him with his thin arms.

"You're too old to play football, anyway, George."

George found himself wanting Betty's arms, their forgetfulness, their understanding, their tenderness.

"When are you two going to be married?" he forced himself to ask.

Betty looked away, her white cheeks flushing, but Lambert hurried an answer.

"As soon as you're able to get to Princeton. You're to be best man."

"Honoured."

So Lambert's crippling hadn't made any difference to Betty, but how did Sylvia take it? He wanted to ask Lambert where she was, if anything had happened to her, any other mad affair, now that the war was over, like the one with Blodgett; but he couldn't ask, and no one volunteered to tell him, and it wasn't until his visit to Oakmont, on his first leave from the hospital, that he learned anything whatever about her, and that was only what his eyes in a moment told him.

Lambert drove over and got George, explaining that his mother wanted to see him.

"She'd have come to the dock," he said, "but Father these days is rather hard to leave."

George went reluctantly, belligerently, for since his landing his feeling of homesickness had increased with the realization that his victorious country was more radically altered than he had fancied. The ride, however, had the advantage of an uninterrupted talk with Lambert which developed gossip that Blodgett, stuffed with business, hadn't yet given him.

Goodhue and Wandel, for instance, were still abroad, holding down showy jobs at the peace conference. Dalrymple, on the other hand, had been home for months.

"Most successful war," Lambert told George. "Scarcely smelled fire, but got a couple foreign decorations, and a promotion—my poor old leg wasn't worth it, or yours, George, but what odds now? And as soon as the show stopped at Sedan he was trotting back. Can't help admiring him, for that sort of thing spells success, and he's steady as a church. Try to realize that, and take a new start with him, for he's really likeable when he keeps to the straight and narrow. Prohibition's going to fit in very well, although I believe he's got himself in hand."

George stared at the ugly, familiar landscape, trying not to listen, particularly to the rest. Why should the Planters have taken Dalrymple into the marble temple?

"A small start," Lambert was saying, "but if he makes the grade there's a big future for him there. I fancy he's anxious to meet you halfway. How about you, George?"

"I'll make no promises," George said. "It depends entirely on Dalrymple."

Lambert didn't warn him, so he didn't expect to find Dalrymple enjoying the early spring graces of Oakmont. He managed the moment of meeting, however, without disclosing anything. Dalrymple, for the time, was quite unimportant. It was Sylvia he was anxious about, Sylvia who undoubtedly nursed a sort of horror of what he had ventured to do and say at Upton. Everyone else was outside, as if making a special effort to welcome him. Where was she?

He resented the worshipful attentions of the servants.

"I'm quite capable of managing myself," he said, as he motioned them aside and lowered himself from the automobile.

He disliked old Planter's heartiness, although he could see the physical effort it cost, for the once-threatening eyes were nearly dark; and the big shoulders stooped forward as if in a constant effort to escape a pursuing pain; and the voice, which talked about heroes and the country's debt and the Planters' debt, quavered and once or twice broke altogether, then groped doubtfully ahead in an effort to recover the propelling thought.

Mrs. Planter, at least, spared him any sentimental gratitude. She was rather grayer and had in her face some unremembered lines, but those were the only changes George could detect. As far as her manner went this greeting might have followed the farewell at Upton after only a day or so.

"I hope your wound isn't very painful."

"My limping," he answered, "is simply bad habit. I'm overcoming it."

"That's nice. Then you'll be able to play polo again!"

"I should hope so, as long as ponies have four good legs."

He wished other people could be like her, so unobtrusively, unannoyingly primeval.

As he entered the hall he saw Sylvia without warning, and he caught his breath and watched her as she came slowly down the stairs. He tried to realize that this was that coveted moment he had so frequently fancied the war would deny him—the moment that brought him face to face with Sylvia again, to witness her enmity, to desire to break it down, to want her more than he had ever done.

She came straight to him, but even in the presence of the others she didn't offer her hand, and all she said was:

"I was quite sure you would come back."

"You knew I had to," he laughed.

Then he sharpened his ears, for she was telling her brother something about Betty's having telephoned she was driving over to take Lambert, Dalrymple, and herself to Princeton.

No. The war had changed her less than any one George had seen. She was as beautiful, as unforgiving, as intolerant; and he guessed that it was she and not Betty who had made the arrangement which would take her away from him.

"George will come, too," Lambert began.

"Afraid I'm not up to it," George refused, dryly.

At Betty's wedding, however, she would have to be with him, for it developed during this nervous chatter that they would share the honours of the bridal party.

So, helplessly, he had to watch her go, and for a moment he felt as if he had had a strong tonic, for she alone had been able to give him an impression that the world hadn't altered much, after all.

The reaction came in the quiet hours following. He was at first resentful that Mrs. Planter should accompany him on the painful walk the doctors had ordered him, like Old Planter, to take daily. He had wanted to go back to the little house, highest barrier of all which Sylvia would never let him climb. Then, glancing at the quiet woman, he squared his shoulders. Suppose Wandel had been right! Here was a test. At any rate, the war was a pretty large and black background for so tiny a high light. Purposefully, therefore, he carried out his original purpose. By the side of Mrs. Planter he limped toward the little house. They didn't say much. It wasn't easy for him to talk while he exercised, and perhaps she understood that.

Even before the clean white building shone in the sun through the trees he heard a sound that made him wince. It was like a distant drum, badly played. Then he understood what it was, and his boyhood, and the day of awakening and revolt, submerged him in a hot wave of shame. He could see his mother rising and bending rhythmically over fine linen which emerged from dirty water, making her arms look too red and swollen. He glanced quickly at Mrs. Planter to whose serenity had gone the upward effort of many generations. Just how appalling, now that war had mocked life so dreadfully, now that a pitiless hand had a moment ago stripped all pretence from the world, was the difference between them?

It was the woman at the tub, curiously enough, who seemed trying to tell him, trying to warn him to keep his mouth shut. Then the house was visible through the trees. He raised his stick.

"I wanted to see it again," he said, defiantly, "because I was born there. I lived there."

She paused and stared with him, without saying anything, without any change of expression. After a time she turned.

"Have you looked enough? Shall we go back, George?"

He nodded, glancing at her wonderingly. After all, he had had very little love in his life. Mrs. Bailly, Betty——

He had never dreamed of such gratitude as this. Lambert, home with his war madness fresh upon him, must have told her, as an example of what a man might do. But was her action all gratitude? Rather wasn't it a signpost at the parting of two ages?

If that were so, he told himself, the world had left Sylvia hopelessly behind.

II

The memory of that unguarded moment remained in his mind uncomfortably. He carried it finally from the hospital to his musty apartment, where he stripped off his uniform and looked in the glass, for the first time in nearly two years his own master, no man's servant.

Was he his own master as long as he could commit such sentimental follies, as long as he could suspect that he had told Wandel the truth on the Vesle? This nostalgia must be the rebound from the war, of which he had heard so much, which made men weak, or lazy, or indifferent.

He continued to stare in the glass, angry, amazed. He had to overcome this homesick feeling. He had to prepare himself for harder battles than he had ever fought. He had had plenty of warning of the selfishness that was creeping over the world like a black pestilence. Where was his own self-will that had carried him so far?

He locked himself, as it were, in his apartment. He sat down and called on his will. With a systematic brutality he got himself in hand. He reviewed his aims: to make more money, to get Sylvia. He emerged at last, hard and uncompromising, ready for the selfish ones, and went down town. Blodgett greeted him with a cheer.

"Miracles! For the first time since you got back you look yourself again."

"I am," George answered, "all but the limp. That will go some day maybe."

He wanted it to go. He desired enormously to rid himself of the last reminder of his service.

Lambert was definitely caught by the marble temple, but Goodhue and he would stay together, more or less tied to Blodgett, to accept the opportunities George foresaw for dragging money by sharp reasoning from the reconstruction period. He applied himself to exchange. From their position they could run wild in the stock market at little risk, but there were big things to be made out of exchange, about which the cleverest men didn't seem to know anything worth a penny in any currency.

Everyone noticed his recovery, and everyone congratulated him except Bailly. When George went down to Betty's wedding the long tutor met him at the station, crying out querulously:

"What's happened to you?"

George laughed.

"Got over the war reaction, I guess."

"What the deuce did you go to war for at all then?" Bailly asked.

"Haven't found that out myself yet," George answered, "but I know I wouldn't go to another, even if they'd have me."

He grimaced at his injured foot.

"And they're going to give you some kind of a medal!" Bailly cried.

"I didn't ask for it," George said, "but I daresay a lot of people, you among them, went down to Washington and did."

Bailly was a trifle uncomfortable.

"See here," George said. "I don't want your old medal, and I don't intend to be scolded about it. I suppose I've got to rush right out to the Alstons."

"Let's stop at the club," Bailly proposed. "People want to see you. We'll fight the war over with the veterans."

"Damn the war!" George said.

Mrs. Bailly, when he paused for a moment at the house in Dickinson Street, attacked him, and quite innocently, from a different direction.

"It was the wish of my life, George, that you should have Betty, and you might have had. I can't help feeling that."

"You're prejudiced," George laughed.

He went to the Alstons, nevertheless, almost unwillingly, and he delayed his arrival until the last minute. The intimate party had gathered for a dinner and a rehearsal that night. The wedding was set for the next evening.

The Tudor house had an unfamiliar air, as though Betty already had taken from it every feature that had given it distinction in George's mind. And Betty herself was caught by all those detailed considerations that surround a girl, at this vital moment of her life, with an atmosphere regal, mysterious, a little sacred. So George didn't see her until just before dinner, or Sylvia, who was upstairs with her. Lambert and Blodgett were about, however, and so was Dalrymple. George was glad Lambert had asked Blodgett to usher; he owed it to him, but he was annoyed that Dalrymple should have been included in the party, for it was another mark, on top of his presence in the marble temple, of a tightening bond of intimacy between him and the Planters. George examined the man, therefore, with an eager curiosity. He looked well enough, but George remained unconvinced by his apparent reformation, suspecting its real purpose was to impress a willing public, for he had studied Dalrymple during many years without uncovering any real strength, or any disposition not to answer gladly to every appeal of the senses. At least he was restless, rising from his chair too often to wander about the room, but George conceded with a smile that his own arrival might be responsible for that. The matter of the notes hadn't been mentioned, but they existed undoubtedly even in Dalrymple's careless mind, which must have forecasted an uncomfortable day of payment.

Lambert seemed sure enough of his friend.

"Dolly's sticking to the job like a leech," he said to George when they went upstairs to dress.

"I've no faith in him," George answered, shortly.

"You're an unforgiving brute," Lambert said.

George hastened away from the subject.

"I'm not chameleon, at least," he admitted with a smile, "which reminds me. I don't see any of your dearly beloved brothers of the ranks in your bridal party. Have you put private Oscar Liporowski up for any of your clubs yet?"

"Unforgiving and unforgetting!" Lambert laughed.

"Then you acknowledge that talk in the Argonne was war madness?"

"By no means," Lambert answered, suddenly serious. "Let me get married, will you? I can't bother with anything else now. Sylvia, whose mind isn't filled with romance, threatens to become the socialist of the family."

George stared at him.

"What are you talking about?"

"About what Sylvia's talking about," Lambert answered.

"Now I know you're mad," George said.

Lambert shook his head.

"But I don't take her very seriously. It's a nice game to seek beauties in Bolshevism. It's played in some of the best houses. You must have observed it—how wonderfully it helps get through a tea or a dinner."

III

George went to his own room, amused and curious. Could Sylvia talk communism, even parrot-like, and deny him the rights of a brother? He became more anxious than before to see her. He shrank, on the other hand, from facing Betty who was about to take this enormous step permanently away from him. Out of his window he could see the tree beneath which he had made his confession in an effort to kill Betty's kindness. If he had followed her to the castle then Lambert wouldn't be limping about exposing a happiness that made George envious and discontented. It was a reminder with a vengeance that his friends were mating. Was he, like Blodgett, doomed to a revolting celibacy?

Blodgett, as far as that went, seemed quite to have recovered from the blow Sylvia had given his pride and heart. With his increasing fortune his girth had increased, his cheeks grown fuller, his eyes smaller.

He was chatting, when George came down, with Old Planter, who sat slouched in an easy chair in the library, and Mr. Alston. It was evident that the occasion was not a joyous one for Betty's father.

"I've half a mind to sell out here," George heard him say, "and take a share in a coöperative apartment in town. Without Betty the house will be like a world without a sun."

Blodgett, George guessed, was tottering on the threshold of expansive sympathy. He drew back, beckoning George.

"Here's your purchaser, Alston. I never knew a half back stay single so long. And now he's a hero. He's bound to need a nest soon."

Mr. Alston smiled at him.

"Is there anything in that, George?"

George wanted to tell Blodgett to mind his own business. How could the man, after his recent experience, make cumbersome jokes of that colour?

"There was a time," Mr. Alston went on, "when I fancied you were going to ask me for Betty. The thought of refusing used to worry me."

George laughed uncomfortably.

"So you would have refused?"

"Naturally. I don't think I could have said yes to Lambert if it hadn't been for the war. If you ever have a daughter—just one—you'll know what I mean."

From the three men George received an impression of imminence, shared it himself. They talked merely to cover their suspense. They were like people in a throne room, attentive for the entrance of a figure, exalted, powerful, nearly legendary. Betty, he reflected, had become that because she was about to marry. He found himself fascinated, too, looking at the door, waiting with a choked feeling for that girl who had unconsciously tempted him from their first meeting. Her arrival, indeed, had about it something of the processional. Mrs. Planter entered the doorway first, nodding absent-mindedly to the men. Betty's mother followed, as imperial as ever, more so, if anything, George thought, and quite unaffected by the deeper elements that gave to this quiet wedding in a country house a breath of tragedy. Betty Alston Planter! That evolution clearly meant happiness for her. She tried to express it through vivacious gestures and cheerful, uncompleted sentences. Betty next—after a tiny interval, entering not without hesitation exposed in her walk, in her tall and graceful figure, in her face which was unaccustomedly colourful, in her eyes which turned from one to another, doubtful, apprehensive, groping. George didn't want to look at her; her appearance placed him too much in concord with her reluctant father; too much in the position of a man making a hurtful and unasked oblation.

Momentarily Betty, the portion of his past shared with her, its undeveloped possibilities, were swept from his brain. Last of all, fitting and brilliant close for the procession, came Sylvia between two bridesmaids. George scarcely saw the others. Sylvia filled his eyes, his heart, slowly crowded the dissatisfaction from his mind, centred again his thoughts and his ambitions. Nearly automatically he took Betty's hands, spoke to her a few formalities, yielded her to her father, and went on to Sylvia. For nearly two years he hadn't seen her in an evening gown. What secret did she possess that kept her constant? Already she was past the age at which most girls of her station marry, yet to him her beauty had only increased without quite maturing. And why had she calmly avoided during all these years the nets thrown perpetually by men? Only Blodgett had threatened to entangle her, and one day had found her fled. And she wasn't such a fool she didn't know the years were slipping by. More poignantly than ever he responded to a feeling of danger, imminent, unavoidable, fatal.

"My companion in the ceremonies," he said.

"I understood that was the arrangement," she answered, without looking at him.

"I'm glad," he said, "to draw even a reflection from the happiness of others."

"I often wonder," she remarked, "why people are so selfish."

"Do you mean me," he laughed, "or the leading man and lady?"

She spoke softly to avoid the possibility of anyone else hearing.

"I'm not sure, but I fancy you are the most selfish person I have ever met."

"That's a stupendous indictment these days," he said with a smile, but he didn't take her seriously at all, didn't apply her charge to his soul.

"I'm so glad you're here," he went on, "that we're to be together. I've wanted it for a long time. You must know that."

She gave him an uncomfortable sense of being captive, of seeking blindly any course to freedom.

"I no longer know anything about you. I don't care to know."

Lambert and Dalrymple strolled in. Dalrymple opened the cage. George moved away, aching to prevent such interference by any means he could. His emotion made him uneasy. To what resolution were his relations with Dalrymple drifting? How far was he capable of going to keep the other in his place?

He stood by the mantel, speaking only when it was necessary and then without consciousness, his whole interest caught by the picture Dalrymple and Sylvia made, close together by the centre table in the soft light of a reading lamp.

A servant entered with cocktails. George's interest sharpened. Betty took hers with the others. Only Sylvia and Dalrymple shook their heads. Clearly it was an understanding between them—a little denial of hers to make his infinitely greater one less difficult. She smiled up at him, indeed, comprehendingly; but George's glance didn't waver from Dalrymple, and it caught an increase in the other's restlessness, a following nearly hypnotic, by thoughtful eyes, of the tray with the little glasses as it passed around the room. George relaxed. He was conscious enough of Blodgett's bellow:

"Here's to the blushing bride!"

What lack of taste! But how much greater the lack of taste that restless inheritor exposed! Couldn't even join a formal toast, didn't dare probably, or was it that he only dared not risk it in public, in front of Sylvia? And she pandered to his weakness, smiled upon it as if it were an epic strength. He was sufficiently glad now that Dalrymple had got into him for so much money.

IV

For George dinner was chiefly a sea of meaningless chatter continually ruffled by the storm of Blodgett's voice.

"Your brother tells me," he said to Sylvia, "that you're irritating yourself with socialism."

She looked at him with a little interest then.

"I've been reading. It's quite extraordinary. Odd I should have lived so long without really knowing anything about such things."

"Not odd at all," George contradicted her. "I should call it odd that you find any interest in them now. Why do you?"

"One has to occupy one's mind," she answered.

He glanced at her. Why did she have to occupy herself with matter she couldn't possibly understand, that she would interpret always in a wrong or unsafe manner? She, too, was restless.

That was the only possible explanation. From Blodgett she had sprung to war-time fads. From those she had leaped at this convenient one which tempted people to make sparkling and meaningless phrases.

"It doesn't strike you as at all amusing," he asked, "that you should be red, that I should be conservative?"

She didn't answer. Blodgett swept them out to sea again.

Later in the evening, however, George repeated his question, and demanded an answer. They had accomplished the farce of a rehearsal, source of cumbersome jokes for Blodgett and the clergyman; of doubts and dreary prospects for Mr. Alston, who had done his share as if submitting to an undreamed-of punishment.

There was the key-ring joke. It must be a part of the curriculum of all the theological seminaries. George acted up to it, promising to tie a string around his finger, or to pin the circlet to his waistcoat.

"Or," Blodgett roared, "at a pinch you might use the ring of the wedding bells."

George stared at him. How could the man, Sylvia within handgrasp, grin and feed such a mood? It suddenly occurred to him that once more he was reading Blodgett wrong, that the man was admirable, far more so than he could be under an equal trial. Would he, a little later, be asked to face such an ordeal?

With the departure of the clergyman a cloud of reaction descended upon the party. Some yawns were scarcely stifled. Sporadic attempts to dance to a victrola faded into dialogues carried on indifferently, lazily, where the dancers had chanced to stop with the music. Mr. Alston had relinquished Sylvia to George at the moment the record had stuttered out. They were left at a distance from any other couple. George pointed out a convenient chair, and she sat down and glanced about the room indifferently.

"At dinner," George said, "I asked you if it didn't impress you as strange that our social views should be what they are, and opposite."

She didn't answer.

"I mean," he went on, "that I should benefit by your alteration."

"How?" she asked, idly fingering a flower, not looking at him.

"I fancy," he said, "that you'll admit your chief objection to me has always been my origin, my ridiculous position trotting watchfully behind the most unsocial Miss Planter. Am I not right?"

"You are entirely wrong," she said, wearily. "That has never had anything to do with my—my dislike. I think I shall go——"

"Wait," he said. "You are not telling me the truth. If you are consistent you will turn your enmity to friendship at least. You will decide there was nothing unusual in my asking you to marry me. You will even find in that a reason for my anxiety at Upton. You will understand that it is quite inevitable I should ask you to marry me again."

She sprang up and hurried away from him.

"Put on another record, Dolly——"

And almost before he had realized it Betty had taken her away, and the evening's opportunities had closed.

V

For him the house became like a room at night out of which the only lamp has been carried.

The others drifted away. George tried to read in the library. His uneasiness, his anger, held him from bed. When at last he went upstairs he fancied everyone was asleep, but moving in the hall outside his room he saw a figure in a dressing gown. It paused as if it didn't care to be detected going in the direction of the stairs. George caught the figure's embarrassed hesitation, fancied a movement of retreat.

"Dalrymple!" he called, softly.

The other waited sullenly.

"What you up to?" George asked.

"Thought I'd explore downstairs for a book. Couldn't sleep. Nothing in my room worth bothering with."

George smiled, the memory of Blodgett's admirable behaviour crowding his mind. What better time than now to let his anger dictate to him, as it had done that day in his office?

"Come in for a minute," he proposed to Dalrymple, and opened his door.

Dalrymple shook his head, but George took his arm and led him, guessing that Dalrymple feared the subject of the notes.

"Bad humour!" George said. "You seem to be the only one up. I don't mind chatting with you before turning in. Fact is, these wedding parties are stupid, don't you think?"

Possibly George's manner was reassuring to Dalrymple. At any rate, he yielded. George took off his coat, sat in an easy chair, and pressed the call button.

"What's that for?" Dalrymple asked, uneasily.

"Sit down," George said. "Stupid and dry, these things! I'm going to try to raise a servant. I want to gossip over a drink before I go to bed. You'll join me?"

Dalrymple sat down. He moistened his lips.

"On the wagon," he muttered. "A long time on the wagon. Place to be, too, and all that."

George didn't believe the other. If Dalrymple cared to prove him right that was his own business.

"Before prohibition offers the steps?" he laughed.

"Nothing to do with it," Dalrymple muttered. "Got my reasons—good enough ones, too."

"Right!" George said. "Only don't leave me to myself until I've wet my whistle."

And when the sleepy servant had come George asked him for some whiskey and soda water. He talked of the Alstons, of the war, of anything to tide the wait for the caraffe and the bottles and glasses; and during that period Dalrymple's restlessness increased. Just what had he been sneaking downstairs for in the middle of the night? George watched the other's eyes drawn by the tray when the servant had set it down.

"Why did he bring two glasses?" Dalrymple asked, irritably.

"Oh," George said, carelessly, "I suppose he thought—naturally——Have a biscuit, anyway."

George poured a drink and supped contentedly.

"Dry rations—biscuits," Dalrymple complained.

He fingered the caraffe.

"I've an idea—wedding—special occasion, and all that. Change my mind—up here—one friendly drop——"

George watched the friendly drop expand to half a tumbler full, and he observed that the hand that poured was not quite steady. It wouldn't be long now before he would know whether or not Dalrymple's reformation was merely a pose in public, a pose for Sylvia.

Dalrymple sighed, sat down, and talked quite pleasantly about the horrors of Chaumont. After a time he refilled his glass, and repeated the performance a number of times with diminishing intervals. George smiled. A child could tell the other was breaking no extended abstinence. He drifted from war to New York and his apparent success with the house of Planter.

"Slavery, this office stuff!" he rattled on, "but good fun to get things done, to climb up on shoulders of men—oh, no idea how many, Morton—who're only good to push a pen or pound a typewriter. Of course, you know, though. Done plenty of climbing yourself."

His enunciation suffered and his assurance strengthened as the caraffe emptied. No extended abstinence, George reflected, but almost certainly a very painful one of a few days.

"Am making money, Morton—a little, not much," he said, confidentially, and with condescension. "Not enough by long shot to pay those beastly notes I owe you. Know they're over due. Don't think I'd ever forget that. Want to do right thing, Morton. You used hard words when I borrowed that money, but forget, and all that. White of you to let me have it, and I'll do right thing."

A sickly look of content overspread his face. He expanded. His assurance seemed to crowd the room.

"Wouldn't worry for a minute 'bout those notes if I were you."

He suddenly switched, shaking his finger at the caraffe.

"Very pleasant, little drop like this—night cap on the quiet. But not often."

His content sought expression in a smile.

"Dolly's off the hootch."

George lighted a cigarette. He noticed that his fingers were quite steady, yet he was perfectly conscious of each beat of his heart.

"May I ask," he said, "what possible connection there can be between my not worrying about your notes and your keeping off the hootch, as you call it?"

Dalrymple arose, finished the caraffe, and tapped George's shoulder.

"Every connection," he answered. "Expect you have a right to know. Don't you worry, old Shylock Morton. You're goin' to get your pound ah flesh."

"I fancy I am," George laughed. "What's your idea of it?"

Dalrymple waved his glass.

"Lady of my heart—surrender after long siege, but only brave deserve fair. Good thing college education. Congratulate me, Morton. But secret for you, 'cause you old Shylock. Wouldn't say anything to Sylvia till she lets it loose."

As George walked quietly to the door, which the servant a long time ago had left a trifle open, he heard Dalrymple mouthing disconnected words: "Model husband." "Can't be too soon for Dolly."

Then, as he closed the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket, he heard Dalrymple say aloud, sharply:

"What the devil you doing, Morton?"

George turned. Ammunition against Dalrymple! He had been collecting it. Now, clearly, was the time to use it. In his mind the locked room held precariously all of Sylvia's happiness and his.

He didn't hesitate. He walked straight to the table. Dalrymple had slumped down in his chair, the content and triumph of his inflamed eyes replaced by a sullen fear.

VI

"What's the idea?" Dalrymple asked, uncertainly, watching George, grasping the arms of his chair preparatory to rising.

"Sit still, and I'll tell you," George answered.

"Why you lock the door?"

From Dalrymple's palpable fear George watched escape a reluctant and fascinated curiosity.

"No more of that strong-arm stuff with me——"

"I locked the door," George answered, "so that I could point out to you, quite undisturbed, just why you are going to leave Sylvia Planter alone."

Dalrymple relaxed. He commenced incredulously and nervously to laugh, but in his eyes, which followed George, the fear and the curiosity increased.

"What the devil are you talking about? Have you gone out of your head?"

George smiled confidently.

"It's an invariable rule, unless you have the strength to handle them, to give insane people their way. So you'll be nice and quiet; and I might remind you if you started a rumpus, the first questions the aroused house would ask would be, 'Why did Dolly fall off the wagon, and where did he get the edge?'"

He drew a chair close to Dalrymple and sat down. The other lay back, continuing to stare at him, quite unable to project the impression he undoubtedly sought of contemptuous amusement.

"We've waited a long time for this little chat," George said, quietly. "Sometimes I've hoped it wouldn't be necessary. Of course, sooner or later, it had to be."

His manner disclosed little of his anxiety, nothing whatever of his determination, through Dalrymple's weakness, to save Sylvia and himself, but his will had never been stronger.

"You may as well understand," he said, "that you shan't leave this room until you've agreed to give up any idea of this preposterous marriage you pretend to have arranged. Perhaps you have. That makes no difference. I'm quite satisfied its disarranging will break no hearts."

Dalrymple had a little controlled himself. George's brusque campaign had steadied him, had hastened a reaction that gave to his eyes an unhealthy and furtive look. He tried to grin.

"You must think you're God Almighty——"

"Let's get to business," George interrupted. "I once told you that what you borrow you have to pay back in one way or another. This is where we settle, and I've outlined the terms."

Dalrymple whistled.

"You complete rotter! You mean to blackmail—because you know I haven't got your filthy money, and can't raise it in a minute."

"Never mind that," George snapped. "Your opinion of what I'm doing doesn't interest me. I've thought it out. I know quite thoroughly what I'm about."

He did, and he was not without distaste for his methods, nor without realization that they might hurt him most of all with the very person they were designed to serve; yet he couldn't hesitate, because no other way offered.

"You're going to pay my notes, but not with money."

Dalrymple's grin exploded into a harsh sound resembling laughter.

"Are you—jealous? Do you fancy Sylvia would be affected by anything you'd do or say? See here! Good God! Are you mad enough to look at her? That's funny! That's a scream!"

There was, however, no conviction behind the pretended amazement and contempt; and George suspected that Dalrymple had all along sounded his chief ambition; had, in fact, made his secretive announcement just now, because, his judgment drugged, he had desired to call a rival's attention to his triumphant posture on the steps of attainment.

"I've no intention of discussing causes," George answered, evenly, "but I do imagine the entire family would be noticeably affected by my story."

"Which you couldn't tell," Dalrymple cried. "Which you couldn't possibly tell."

"Which I don't think I shall have to tell," George said with a smile. "Look at your position, Dalrymple. If you borrow money on the strength of this approaching marriage you announce its chief purpose quite distinctly. I fancy Old Planter, ill as he is, would want to take a club to you. You've always wished, haven't you, to keep your borrowings from Lambert? You can't do it if you persist in involving the Planters in your extravagances. And remember you gave me a pretty thorough list of your debtors—not reading for women, but Lambert would understand, and make its meaning clear. Then let us go back to that afternoon in my office, when you tried to say unspeakable things——"

Impulsively Dalrymple bared his teeth.

"Got you there, Morton! I told Lambert it was you who had been impertinent——"

All at once George felt better and cleaner. He whistled.

"When I let you off then I never dreamed you'd try to back that lie up."

"Will they believe me," the other asked, "or you, who come from God knows what; God knows where?"

"Fortunately," George said, "Lambert and his sister share that supernal knowledge. They'll believe me."

He stood up.

"That's all. You know what to expect. Just one thing more."

He spoke softly, without any apparent passion, but he displayed before the man in the chair his two hands.

"If necessary I'd stop you marrying Sylvia Planter with those."

Dalrymple got to his feet, struggled to assume a cloak of bravado.

"Won't put up with such threats. Actionable——"

"Give me your decision," George said, harshly. "Will you keep away from her? If there is really an understanding, will you so arrange things that she can destroy it immediately? Come. Yes or no?"

"Give me that key."

George shrugged his shoulders.

"I needn't trouble you."

He walked swiftly to the door, unlocked it, and drew it invitingly wide; but now that the way was clear Dalrymple hesitated. Again George shrugged his shoulders and stepped to the hall. Dalrymple, abruptly active, ran after him, grasping at his arm.

"Where you going?" he whispered.

"To Lambert's room."

"Not to-night," the other begged. "I don't admit you could make any real trouble, but I want to spare Sylvia any possible unpleasantness. Well! Don't you, too? You lost your temper. Maybe I did mine. Give us both a chance to think it over. Now see here, Morton, I won't ask you another favour, and I'll do nothing in the meantime. I couldn't very well. I mean, status quo, and all that——"

"Lambert, to-morrow," George said, "is going away for more than a month."

"But you could always get hold of him, at a pinch," Dalrymple urged. "Heaven knows I'm not likely to talk to Sylvia about what you've said. Let us both think it over until Lambert comes back."

George sighed, experiencing a glow of victory. The other's eagerness confessed at last an accurate measure of the power of his ammunition; and George didn't want to go to the Planters on such an errand as long as any other means existed. The more Dalrymple thought, the more thoroughly he must realize George had him. From the first George had manœuvred to avoid the necessity of shocking habits of thought and action that were inborn in the Planters, so he gladly agreed.

"Meantime, you'll keep away from her?"

"Just as far as possible," Dalrymple answered. "You'll be able to see that for yourself."

"Then," George said, "you arrange to get yourself out of the way as soon as Lambert and Betty return. Meantime, if you go back on your word, I'll get hold of Lambert."

Dalrymple leant against the wall, morosely angry, restless, discouraged.

"I'll admit you could make some unpleasantness all around," he said, moistening his lips. "I wish I'd never touched your dirty money——"

George stepped into his room and closed the door.

VII

The awakening of the house to its most momentous day aroused George early, hurried him from his bed, sent him downstairs in a depressed, self-censorious mood, as if he and not Dalrymple had finished the caraffe. That necessary battle behind a locked door continued to fill his mind like the memory of a vivid and revolting nightmare. He fled from the increasing turmoil of an exceptional agitation, but he could not escape his own evil temper. Even the flowering lanes where Goodhue and he had run so frequently during their undergraduate days mocked his limping steps, his heavy cane; seemed asking him what there was in common between that eager youth and the man who had come back to share a definite farewell with Betty; to stand, stripped of his veneer, against a wall to avoid a more difficult parting from Sylvia. There was one thing: the determination of the boy lived in the man, become greater, more headstrong, more relentless.

He paused and, chin in hand, rested against a gate. What about Wandel, who had admired the original George Morton? Would he approve of his threats to Dalrymple, of his probable course with the Planters? If he were consistent he would have to; yet people were so seldom consistent. It was even likely that George's repetition of Dalrymple's shocking insults would be frowned upon more blackly than the original, unforgiveable wrong. George straightened and walked back toward the house. It made no difference what people thought. He was George Morton. Even at the cost of his own future he would keep Sylvia from joining her life to Dalrymple's, and certainly Lambert could be made to understand why that had to be.

The warm sun cheered him a little. Dalrymple was scared. He wouldn't make George take any further steps. It was going to be all right. But why didn't women see through Dalrymple, or rather why didn't he more thoroughly give himself away to them? Because, George decided, guarded women from their little windows failed to see the real world.

Dalrymple obsessed him even when, after luncheon, he sat with Lambert upstairs, discussing business chiefly. He wanted to burst out with:

"Why don't you wake up? How can you approve of this intimacy between your sister and a man like that?"

He didn't believe the other knew that intimacy had progressed; and when Lambert spoke of Dalrymple, calling attention again to his apparent reformation, George cleansed his mind a trifle, placing, as it were, the foundation for a possible announcement of a more active enmity.

"Don't see why you admire anything he does, Lambert. It isn't particularly pleasant for me to have you, for I've been watching him, and I've quite made up my mind. You asked me when I first got home if I wouldn't meet him halfway. I don't fancy he'd ever start in my direction, but if he did I wouldn't meet him. Sorry. That's definite. I must use my own judgment even where it clashes with your admirations."

Lambert stared at him.

"You'll never cease being headstrong," he said. "It's rather safer to have any man for a friend."

George had an uncomfortable sense of having received a warning, but Blodgett blundered in just then with news from the feminine side of the house.

"Some people downstairs already, and I've just had word—from one of those little angels that talk like the devil—that Betty's got all her war-paint on."

"You have the ring?" Lambert asked George.

George laughed.

"Yes, I have the ring, and I shan't lose it, or drop it; and I'll keep you out of people's way, and tell you what to answer, and see generally you don't make an idiot of yourself. Josiah, if he faints, help me pick him up."

Blodgett's gardenia bobbed.

"Weddings make Josiah feel old. Say, George, you're no spring chicken yourself. I know lots of little girls who cry their eyes out for you."

"Shut up," George said. "How about a reconnaissance, Lambert?"

But they were summoned then, and crept down a side staircase, and heard music, and found themselves involved in Betty's great moment.

At first George could only think of Betty as she had stood long ago in the doorway of Bailly's study, and it was difficult to find in this white-clothed, veiled, and stately woman the girl he had seen first of all that night. This, after a fashion, was his last glimpse of her. She appeared to share that conception, for she carried to the improvised altar in the drawing-room an air of facing far places, divided by boundaries she couldn't possibly define from all that she had ever known. After the ceremony she smiled wonderingly at George while she absorbed the vapid and pattered remarks of, perhaps, a hundred old friends of the family. George, who knew most of them, resented their sympathy and curiosity.

"If they don't stop asking me about the war," he whispered to Blodgett during a lull, "I'm going to call for help."

Some, however, managed to interest him with remarks about the rebirth of football. Green had been at Princeton all along, Stringham was coming back in the fall, and there were brilliant team prospects. Would George be able to help with the coaching? He indicated his injured leg. He hadn't the time, anyway. He was going to stick closer than ever to Wall Street. He fancied that Sylvia, who stood near him, resented the lively interest of these people. She spoke to him only when she couldn't possibly avoid it, glancing, George noticed, at Dalrymple who rather pointedly kept away from her. So far so good. Then Dalrymple did realize George would have his way. George looked at Sylvia, thinking whimsically:

"I shan't let anybody put you where you wouldn't bother to hate me any more."

He spoke to her aloud.

"I believe we're to have a bite to eat."

She followed him reluctantly, and during the supper yielded of herself nothing whatever to him, chatting by preference with any one convenient, even with Blodgett whom she had treated so shabbily. Very early she left the room with Betty and Mrs. Alston, and George experienced a strong desire to escape also, to flee anywhere away from this house and the bitter dissatisfactions he had found within its familiar walls. He saw Mrs. Bailly and took her hand.

"I want to go home with you and Squibs to-night."

Mrs. Bailly smiled her gratitude, but as he was about to move away she stopped him with a curiosity he had not expected from her.

"Isn't Sylvia Planter beautiful? Why do you suppose she doesn't marry?"

George laughed shortly, shook his head, and hurried upstairs to Lambert's room; yet Mrs. Bailly had increased his uneasiness. Perhaps it was the too-frequent repetition of that question that had made Sylvia turn temporarily to Blodgett; that was, possibly, focussing her eyes on Dalrymple now; yet why, from such a field, did she choose these men? What was one to make of her mind and its unexpected reactions? The matter of marriage was, not unnaturally, in the air here. Lambert faced him with it.

"Josiah's right. When are you going to make a home, Apollo Morton?"

George turned on him angrily, not bothering to choose his words.

"Such a question from you is ridiculous. You've not forgotten the dark ages either."

Lambert looked at him for a moment affectionately, not without sympathy.

"Don't be an ass, George."

George's laughter was impatient.

"Don't forget, Lambert, your old friends, Corporal Sol Roseberg, and Bugler Ignatius Chronos. No men better! Chairs at the club! Legs under the table at Oakmont——"

Lambert put his hands on George's shoulders.

"It isn't that at all. You know it very well."

"What is it then?" George asked, sharply.

"Don't pretend ignorance," Lambert answered, "and it must be your own fault. Whose else could it possibly be? And I'm sorry, have been for years."

"It isn't my fault," George said. "The situation exists. I'm glad you recognize it. You'll understand it's a subject I can't let you joke about."

"All right," Lambert said, "but I wonder why you're always asking for trouble."

VIII

Betty had plenty of colour to-night. As she passed George, her head bent against the confetti, he managed to touch her hand, felt a quick responsive pressure, heard her say:

"Good-bye, George."

The whispered farewell was like a curtain, too heavy ever to be lifted again, abruptly let down between two fond people.

IX

Unexpectedly the companionships of the little house in Dickinson Street failed to lighten George's discontented humour. Mrs. Bailly's question lingered in his mind, coupling itself there with her disappointment that he, instead of Lambert, hadn't married Betty; and, when she retired, the tutor went back to his unwelcome demands of the day before. Hadn't George made anything of his great experience? Was it possible it had left him quite unchanged? What were his immediate plans, anyway?

"You may as well understand, sir," George broke in, impatiently, "that I am going to stay right in Wall Street and make as much money and get as much power as I can."

"Why? In the name of heaven, why?" Bailly asked, irritably. "You are already a very rich man. You've dug for treasure and found it, but can you tell me you've kept your hands clean? Money is merely a conception—a false one. Capitalism will pass from the world."

George grunted.

"With the last two surviving human beings."

"Mockery won't keep you blind always," Bailly said, "to the strivings of men in the mines and the factories——"

"And in the Senate and the House," George jeered, "and in Russia and Germany, and in little, ambitious corners. If you're against the League of Nations it's because, like all those people, you're willing Rome should burn as long as personal causes can be fostered and selfish schemes forwarded. No agitator, naturally, wants the suffering world given a sedative——"

Bailly smiled.

"Even if you're wrong-headed, I'm glad to hear you talk that way. At last you're thinking of humanity."

"I'm thinking of myself," George snapped.

Bailly shook his head.

"I believe you're talking from your heart."

"I'm talking from a smashed leg," George cried, "and I'm sleepy and tired and cross, and I guess I'd better go to bed."

"It all runs back to the beginning," Bailly said in a discouraged voice. "I'm afraid you'll never learn the meaning of service."

George sprang up, wincing. Bailly's wrinkled face softened; his young eyes filled with sympathy.

"Does that wound still bother you, George?"

"Yes, sir," George answered, softly. "I guess it bothers as much as it ever did."

X

One virtue of the restlessness of which Bailly had reminded him was its power to swing George's mind for a time from his unpleasant understanding with Dalrymple. It had got even into Blodgett's blood.

"About the honestest man I can think of these days," he complained to George one morning, "is the operator of a crooked racing stable. All the cards are marked. All the dice are loaded. If they didn't have to let us in on some of the tricks, we'd go bust, George, my boy."

"You mean we're crooked, too?" George asked.

"Only by infection," Blodgett defended himself, "but honest, George, I'd sell out if I could. I'm disgusted."

George couldn't hide a smile.

"In the old days when you were coming up, you never did anything the least bit out of line yourself?"

Blodgett mopped his face with one of his brilliant handkerchiefs. His eyes twinkled.

"I've been shrewd at times, George, but isn't that legitimate? I may have made some crowds pretty sick by cutting under them, but that's business. I won't say I haven't played some cute little tricks with stocks, but that's finesse, and the other fellow had the same chance. I'm not aware that I ever busted a bank, or held a loaded gun to a man's head and asked him to hand over his clothes as well as his cash. That's the spirit we're up against now. That's why Papa Blodgett advises selling out those mill stocks we kept big blocks of at the time of the armistice."

"They're making money," George said.

Blodgett tapped a file of reports.

"Have you read the opinions of the directors?"

"Yes," George answered, "and at a pinch they might have to go into coöperation, but they'd still pay some dividends."

Blodgett puffed out his cheeks.

"You're sure the unions would want a share in the business?"

"Why not?" George asked. "Isn't that practical communism?"

"Hay! Here's a fellow believes there's something practical in the world nowadays! Sell out, son."

"Then who would run our mills?"

"Maybe some philanthropist with more money than brains."

"You mean," George asked, "that our products, unless conditions improve, will disappear from the world, because no one will be able to afford to manufacture them?"

Blodgett pursed his lips. George stared from the window at the forest of buildings which impressed him, indeed, as giant tree trunks from which all the foliage had been stripped. Had there been awakened in the world an illiberal individuality with the power to fell them every one, and to turn up the system out of which they had sprung as from a rich soil? Was that what he had helped fight the war for?

"You're talking about the dark ages," he said, feeling the necessity of faith and stability. "Sell your stocks if you want, I choose to keep mine."

Blodgett yawned.

"We'll go down together, George. I won't jump from a sinking ship as long as you cling to the bridge."

"The ship isn't sinking," George cried. "It's too buoyant."

XI

Wandel and Goodhue came home, suffering from this universal restlessness.

"Ah, mon brave!" Wandel greeted George. "Mon vieux Georges, grand et incomparable! So the country's dry! Jewels are cheaper than beefsteaks! Congress is building spite fences! None the less, I'm glad to be home."

"Glad enough to have you," George said. "I'm not sure we won't go back to our bargain pretty soon. I'm about ready for a pet politician."

"Let me get clean," Wandel laughed. "You must have a lot of money."

"I can control enough," George said, confidently.

"Bon! But don't send me to Washington at first. I don't want to put on skirts, use snuff, or practise gossiping."

For a time he refused to apply himself to anything that didn't lead to pleasure. Goodhue went at once to Rhode Island for a visit with his father and mother, while Wandel flitted from place to place, from house to house, as if driven by his restlessness to the play he had abandoned during five years. Once or twice George caught him with Rogers in town, and bluntly asked him why.

"An eye to the future, my dear George. Are you the most forgetful of class presidents? Perfect henchman type. When one goes into politics one must have henchmen."

But George had an unwelcome feeling that Rogers, eyes always open, was taking advantage, in his small way, of the world's unsettled condition. People were inclined to laugh at him, but they treated him well for Wandel's sake.

"Still in the bond business," he explained to George. "It isn't what it was befo' de war. I'm thinking of taking up oil stocks and corners in heaven, although I doubt if there are as many suckers as fell for P. T. B. Trouble nowadays is that the simplest of them are too busy trying to find somebody just a little simpler to sting. Darned if they don't usually hook one. Still bum securities are a great weakness with most people. Promise a man a hundred per cent. and he'll complain it isn't a hundred and fifty."

George reflected that Rogers was bound for disillusionment, then he wasn't so sure, for America seemed more than ever friendly to that brisk, insincere, back-bending type. Out of the sea of money formed by the war examples sprang up on nearly every side, scarcely troubled by racial, religious, or educational handicaps; loudly convinced that they could buy with money all at once every object of matter or spirit the centuries had painstakingly evolved. One night in the crowds of the theatre district, when with Wandel he had watched the hysterical competition for tickets, cabs, and tables in restaurants where the prices of indigestion had soared nearly beyond belief, he burst out angrily:

"The world is mad, Driggs. I wouldn't be surprised to hear these people cry for golden gondolas to float them home on rivers of money. Stark, raving mad, Driggs! The world's out of its head!"

Wandel smiled, twirling his cane.

"Just found it out, great man? Always has been; always will be—chronic! This happens to be a violent stage."

XII

It was Wandel, indeed, who drew George from his preoccupation, and reminded him that another world existed as yet scarcely more than threatened by the driving universal invaders. George had looked in at his apartment one night when Wandel was just back from a northern week-end.

"Saw Sylvia. You know, George, she's turning back the years and prancing like a débutante."

George sat down, uneasy, wondering what the other's unprepared announcement was designed to convey.

"I'll lay you what you want," Wandel went on, lighting a cigar, "that she forgets the Blodgett fiasco, and marries before snow falls."

Had it been designed as a warning? George studied Wandel, trying to read his expression, but the light was restricted by heavy, valuable, and smothering shades; and Wandel sat at some distance from the nearest, close to a window to catch what breezes stole through. Confound the man! What was he after? He hadn't mentioned Sylvia that self-revealing day in France; but George had guessed then that he must have known of his persistent ambition, and had wondered why his unexpected communicativeness hadn't included it. At least a lack of curiosity now was valueless, so George said:

"Who's the man?"

"I don't suggest a name," Wandel drawled. "I merely call attention to a possibility. Perhaps discussing the charming lady at all we're a trifle out of bounds; but we've known the Planters many years; years enough to wonder why Sylvia hasn't been caught before, why Blodgett failed at the last minute."

George stirred impatiently.

"It was inevitable he should. I once disliked Josiah, but that was because I was too young to see quite straight. Just the same, he wasn't up to her. Most of all, he was too old."

"I daresay. I daresay," Wandel said. "So much for jolly Josiah. But the others? It isn't exaggeration to suggest that she might have had about any man in this country or England. She hasn't had. She's still the loveliest thing about, and how many years since she was introduced—many, many, isn't it, George?"

"What odds?" George muttered. "She's still young."

He felt self-conscious and warm. Was Wandel trying to make him say too much?

"Why do you ask me?"

Wandel yawned.

"Gossiping, George. Poking about in the dark. Thought you might have some light."

"How should I have?" George demanded.

"Because," Wandel drawled, "you're the greatest and most penetrating of men."

George's discomfort grew. He tried to turn Wandel's attack.

"How does it happen you've never entered the ring?"

Wandel laughed quietly.

"I did, during my school days. She was quite splendid about it. I mean, she said very splendidly that she couldn't abide little men; but any time since I'd have fallen cheerfully at her feet if I'd ever become a big man, a great man, like you."

Before he had weighed those words, unquestionably pointed and significant, George had let slip an impulsive question.

"Can you picture her fancying a figure like Dalrymple?"

He was sorry as soon as it was out. Anxiously he watched Wandel through the dusk of the room. The little man spoke with a troubled hesitation, as if for once he wasn't quite sure what he ought to reply.

"You acknowledged a moment ago that you had failed to see Josiah straight. Hasn't your view of Dolly always been from a prejudiced angle?"

"I've always disliked him," George said, frankly. "He's given me reasons enough. You know some of them."

"I know," Wandel drawled, "that he isn't what even Sylvia would call a little man, and he has the faculty of making himself exceptionally pleasant to the ladies."

"Yet he couldn't marry any one of mine," George said under his breath. "If I had a sister, I mean, I'd somehow stop him."

Wandel laughed on a sharp note, caught himself, went on with an amused tone:

"Forgive me, George. Somewhere in your pockets you carry the Pilgrim Fathers. Most men are shaggy birds of evil habit, while most young women are delicately feathered nestlings, and quite helpless; yet the two must mate. Dolly, by the way, drains a pitcher of water every time he sees a violation of prohibition."

"He drinks in sly places," George said.

"After all," Wandel said, slowly, "why do we cling to the suggestion of Dolly? Although I fancy he does figure—somewhere in the odds."

For a time George said nothing. He was quite convinced that Wandel had meant to warn him, and he had received that warning, straight and hard and painfully. During several weeks he hadn't seen Dalrymple, had been lulled into a sense of security, perhaps through the turmoil down town; and Lambert and Betty had lingered beyond their announced month. Clearly Wandel had sounded George's chief aim, as he had once satisfied himself of his origin; and just now had meant to say that since his return he had witnessed enough to be convinced that Dalrymple was still after Sylvia, and with a chance of success. To George that meant that Dalrymple had broken the bargain. He felt himself drawn irresistibly back to his narrow, absorbing pursuit.

"You're becoming a hermit," Wandel was saying.

"You've become a butterfly," George countered.

"Ah," Wandel answered, "but the butterfly can touch with its wings the beautiful Sylvia Planter, and out of its eyes can watch her débutante frivolities. Why not come away with me Friday?"

"Whither?"

"To the Sinclairs."

George got up and wandered to the door.

"By by, Driggs. I think I might slip off Friday. I've a mind to renounce the veil."

XIII

George fulfilled his resolution thoroughly. With the migratory bachelors he ran from house to house, found Sylvia or not, and so thought the effort worth while or not. The first time he saw her, indeed, he appreciated Wandel's wisdom, for she stood with Dalrymple at the edge of a high lawn that looked out over the sea. Her hair in the breeze was a little astray, her cheeks were flushed, and she bent if anything toward her companion who talked earnestly and with nervous gestures. George crushed his quick impulse to go down, to step between them, to have it out with Dalrymple then and there, even in Sylvia's presence; but they strolled back to the house almost immediately, and Sylvia lost her apparent good humour, and Dalrymple descended from satisfaction to a fidgety apprehension. Sylvia met George's hand briefly.

"You'll be here long?"

The question expressed a wish.

"Only until Monday. I wish it might be longer, for I'm glad to find you—and you, Dalrymple."

"Nobody said you were expected," Dalrymple grumbled. "Everybody said you were working like a horse."

George glanced at Sylvia, smiling blandly.

"Every horse goes to grass occasionally."

He turned back to Dalrymple.

"I daresay you know Lambert and Betty are due back the first of the week?"

Sylvia nodded carelessly, and started along the verandah. Dalrymple, reddening, prepared to heel, but George beckoned him back.

"I'd like a word with you."

Sylvia glanced around, probably surprised at the sharp, authoritative tone.

"Just a minute, Sylvia," Dalrymple apologized uneasily. "Little business. Hard to catch Morton. Must grasp opportunity, and all that."

And when they were alone he went close to George eagerly.

"No need to wait for Betty and Lambert, Morton. It's done. Dolly's got himself thrown over——"

"I don't believe you," George said.

"Why not?"

"What are you doing here?" George asked. "It was understood you should avoid her."

Dalrymple's grin was sickly.

"Way she's tearing around now I'd have exactly no place to go."

"You seemed rather too friendly," George pointed out, "for parties to a broken engagement."

George fancied there was something of anger in the other's face.

"Must say I'm not flattered by that. Guess you were right. One heart's not smashed, anyway."

George turned on his heel. Dalrymple caught him.

"What about those notes?"

"I don't trust you, Dalrymple. I'll keep my eye on you yet awhile."

"Ask Sylvia if you want," Dalrymple cried.

George smiled.

"I wonder if I could."

He went to his room, trying to believe Dalrymple. Was that romance really in the same class as the one with Blodgett? If so, why did she involve herself in restive affairs with less obvious men? As best he could he tried to find out that night when she was a little off guard because of some unquiet statements she had just made of Russian rumours.

"You don't mean those things," he said, "or else you've no idea what they mean."

Through her quick resentment she let herself be caught in a corner, as it were. Everyone was preparing to leave the house for a dance in benefit of some local charity. Momentarily they were left alone. He indicated the over-luxurious and rather tasteless room.

"You're asking for the confiscation of all this, and your own Oakmont, and every delightful setting to which you've been accustomed all your life. You're asking for rationed food; for a shakedown, maybe, in a garret. You're asking for a task in a kitchen or a field. Why not a negro's kitchen; a Chinaman's field?"

He looked at her, asking gravely:

"Do you quite understand the principles of communism as they affect women?"

He fancied a heightening of her colour.

"You of all men," she said, "ought to understand the strivings of the people."

He shook his head vehemently.

"I'm for the palace," he laughed, "and I fancy it means more to me than it could to a man who's never used his brain. Let those stay in the hovel who haven't the courage to climb out."

"And you're one of the people!" she murmured. "One of the people!"

"You don't say that," he answered, quickly, "to tell me it makes me admirable in your eyes. You say it to hurt, as you used to call me, 'groom'. It doesn't inflict the least pain."

There was no question about her flush now.

"Tell me," he urged, "why you permit your brain such inconsistencies, why you accept such a patent fad, why you need fads at all?"

"Why won't you leave me alone?" she asked, harshly.

"You're always asking that," he smiled, "and you see I never do. Why are you unlike these other women? Why did you turn to Blodgett? Why have you made a fool of Dalrymple?"

She stared at him.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, why don't you come to me?"

He watched the angry challenge in her eyes, the deliberate stiffening of her entire body as if to a defensive attitude. He held out his hand to her.

"Sylvia! We are growing old."

Yet in her radiant presence it was preposterous to speak of age. She drew away with a sort of shudder.

"You wouldn't dare touch me again——"

He captured her glance. He felt that from his own eyes he failed to keep the unsatisfied desire of years.

"I haven't forgotten Upton, either. When will you give me what I want, Sylvia?"

Her glance eluded him. Swiftly she receded. Through the open door drifted a growing medley of voices. She hurried to the door, but he followed her, and purposefully climbed into the automobile she had entered, but they were no longer alone. Only once, when he made her dance with him in a huge, over-decorated tent, did he manage a whisper.

"No more nonsense with Dalrymple or anybody. Please stop making unhappiness."

XIV

George returned to New York with an uneasy spirit, filled with doubt as to Dalrymple's statement of renunciation, and of his own course in saying what he had of Dalrymple to Sylvia. Mightn't that very expression of disapproval, indeed, tend to swing her back to the man? When Lambert walked in a day or two later George looked at the happy, bronzed face, recalling his assurance that Betty wasn't one to give by halves. Through eyes clouded by such happiness Lambert couldn't be expected to see very far into the dangerous and avaricious discontent of the majority. How much less time, then, would he have for George's personal worries? George, nevertheless, guided the conversation to Dalrymple.

"He's running down to Oakmont with me to-night," Lambert said, carelessly. "You know Betty's there with the family for a few days."

George hid his temper. There was no possible chance about this. Would Dalrymple go to Oakmont after the breaking off of even a secret engagement; or, defeated in his main purpose, was he hanging about for what crumbs might yet fall from the Planters' table. Nearly without reflection he burst out with:

"It's inconceivable you should permit that man about your sister."

Probably Lambert's great content forbade an answer equally angry.

"Still at it! See here. Sylvia doesn't care for you."

"I'm not talking of myself," George said. "I'm talking of Dalrymple."

With an air of kindness, undoubtedly borrowed from Betty, Lambert said easily:

"Stop worrying about him, then. Giving a friend encouragement doesn't mean asking him into the family. That idea seems to obsess you. What difference does it make to you, anyway, what man Sylvia marries? I'll say this, if you wish: Since I've had Betty I see things a bit clearer. I really shouldn't care to have Dolly the man. I don't think there's a chance of it."

"You mean," George asked, eagerly, "if there were you'd stop it?"

"I shouldn't like it," Lambert answered. "Naturally, I'd express myself."

"See here. Dalrymple isn't to be trusted. You've been too occupied. You haven't watched your sister. How can you tell what's in her mind? You didn't forecast the affair with Josiah, eh? There's only one way I can play my game—the thorough way. If it came to a real engagement I should have to say things, Lambert—things I'd hate myself for; things that would hurt me, perhaps, more than any one else. If necessary I shall say them. Will you tell me, if—if——"

Lambert smiled uneasily.

"You're shying at phantoms, but you've always played every game to that point, and perhaps you're justified. I'll come to you if circumstances ever promise to prove you right."

"Thanks," George said, infinitely relieved; yet he had an unpleasant feeling that Lambert had held his temper and had agreed because he was aware of the existence of a great debt, one that he could never quite pay.

XV

This creation of a check on Dalrymple and the assurance that Lambert would warn him of danger came at a useful time for George, since the market-place more and more demanded an undisturbed mind. He conceded that Blodgett's earlier pessimism bade fair to be justified. He watched a succession of industrial upheavals, seeking a safe course among innumerable and perilous shoals that seemed to defy charting; conquering whatever instinct he might have had to sympathize with the men, since he judged their methods as hysterical, grabbing, and wasteful.

"But I don't believe," he told Blodgett, "these strikes have been ordered from the Kremlin; still, other colours may quite easily combine to form red."

"God help the employers. God help the employees," Blodgett grumbled.

"And most of all, may God help the great public," George suggested.

But Blodgett was preoccupied these days with an Oakmont stripped of passion. George knew that Old Planter had sent for him, and he found something quite pitiful in that final surrender of the great man who was now worse off than the youngest, grimiest groveller in the furnaces; so he was not surprised when it was announced that Blodgett would shortly move over to the marble temple, a partner at last with individuality and initiative, one, in fact, who would control everything for Old Planter and his heirs until Lambert should be older. Lambert was sufficiently unhappy over the change, because it painted so clearly the inevitable end. The Fifth Avenue house was opened early that fall as if the old man desired to get as close as possible to the centre of turbulent events, hoping that so his waning sight might serve.

Consequently George had more opportunities of meeting Sylvia; did meet her from time to time in the evenings, and watched her gaiety which frequently impressed him as a too noticeably moulded posture. It served, nevertheless, admirably with the men of all ages who flocked about her as if, indeed, she were a débutante once more.

In these groups George was glad not to see Dalrymple often, but he noticed that Goodhue was near rather more than he had been formerly, and he experienced a sharp uneasiness, an instinct to go to Goodhue and say:

"Don't. Keep away. She's caused enough unhappiness."

Still you couldn't tell about Goodhue. The very fact that he fluttered near Sylvia might indicate that his real interest lay carefully concealed, some distance away. He had, moreover, always stood singularly aside from the pursuit of the feminine.

George's first meeting with Betty since her return was coloured by a frank acceptance on her part of new conditions that revived his sense of a sombre and helpless nostalgia. All was well with Betty. If there had ever been any doubt in her Lambert had swept it away. Whatever emotion she experienced for George was, in fact, that of a fond sister for a brother; and George, studying her and Lambert, longed as he had never done to find some such eager and confident content. The propulsion of pure ambition slipped from his desire for Sylvia. With a growing wonder he found himself craving through her just the satisfied simplicity so clearly experienced by Lambert and Betty. Could anything make her brilliancy less hard, less headstrong, less cruel?

George cast about for the means. Lambert was on watch. There was still time—plenty of time.

He hadn't spoken again to Lambert about Dalrymple. There hadn't seemed any point, for Lambert was entirely trustworthy, and, since Betty and he lived for the present in the Fifth Avenue house, he saw Sylvia constantly. Their conversation instead when they met for luncheon, as they did frequently, revolved about threats which a few years back they hadn't dreamed would ever face them. Blodgett, George noticed, didn't point the finger of scorn at him for holding on to the mill stocks. George wouldn't have minded if he had. They had originally cost him little, their total loss would not materially affect his fortune, and he was glad through them to have a personal share in the irritating and absorbing evolution in the mills. He heard of Allen frequently as a fiery and fairly successful organizer of trouble, and he sent for him when he thought the situation warranted it. Allen came readily enough, walking into the office, shorn of his London frills, but evidently retentive of the habit of keeping neat and clean. The eyes, too, had altered, but not obviously, letting through, perhaps, a certain disillusionment.

"What are you doing to my mills?" George wanted to know.

Allen, surprisingly, didn't once lose his temper, listening to George's complaints without change of expression while he wandered about, his eyes taking in each detail of the richly furnished office.

"The directors report that the men have refused to enter into a fair and above-board coöperative arrangement, and we've figured all along it was turning the business over to them; taking money out of our own pockets. It's a form of communism, and they throw it down. Why, Allen? I want this straight."

Allen paused in his walk, and looked closely at George. There was no change in his face even when he commenced to speak.

"A share in a business," he said, softly, "carries uncomfortable responsibilities. You can't go to yourself, for instance, and say: 'Give me more wages—more than the traffic will bear; then you sweat about it in your office, but don't bother me in my cottage.'"

"You acknowledge it!" George cried.

Allen's face at last became a trifle animated.

"Why not—to you? Everybody's out to get it—the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. The capitalist most of all. Why not the man that turns the wheels?"

George whistled.

"You'd crush essential industries off the face of the earth! You'd go back to the stone age!"

"Not," Allen answered, slowly, "as long as the profits of the past can be got out of somebody's pockets."

"You'd grab capital!"

"Like a flash; and what are you going to do about it?"

"I'll tell you what I am going to do," George answered, "and I fancy a lot of others will follow my example. I am going to get rid of those stocks if I have to throw them out of the window, then you'll have no gun to hold at my head."

"Throw too much away," Allen warned, "and you'll throw it all."

"The beautiful, pure social revolution!" George sneered. "You're less honest than you were when you dropped everything to go to London for me. What's the matter with you, Allen?"

Allen appraised again the comfortable room. Even now his expression didn't alter materially.

"Nothing. I don't know. Unless the universal spirit of grab has got in my own veins."

"Then, my friend," George said, pleasantly, "there's the door."

XVI

George found himself thinking and talking of Allen's views quite enough to please even Bailly. Blodgett, on the other hand, perhaps because of the heavy, settled atmosphere of the marble temple, had changed his tune.

"Things are bound to come right in the end."

As far as George was concerned he might as well have said:

"This marble surrounding me is so many feet thick. Who do you think is going to interfere with that?"

Something of quite a different nature bothered Lambert, and for a few days George thought it a not unnatural resentment at seeing Blodgett in his father's office, but Lambert took pains to awaken him to the truth, walking in one afternoon a few weeks after the Planters' move to town. He had an uncertain and discontented appearance.

"By the way, George," he said not without difficulty, "Dolly's about a good deal."

It was quite certain Lambert hadn't come to announce only that, so George shrank from his next words, confident that something definite must have happened. He controlled his anxiety with the thought that Lambert had, indeed, come to him, and that Dalrymple couldn't permit the announcement of an engagement without meeting the fulfilment of George's penalties.

"It's been on my mind for the past week," Lambert went on. "I mean, he hasn't been seeing her much in public, but he's been hanging around the house, and last night I spoke to Sylvia about it, told her I didn't think father would want him any more than I did, pointed out his financial record, and said I had gathered he owed you no small sum——"

"You blind idiot!" George cried. "Why did you have to say that? How did you even guess it? I've never opened my mouth."

"He'd milked everybody else dry," Lambert answered, "and Driggs mentioned a long time ago you'd had a curiously generous notion you'd like to help Dolly if he ever needed it."

"It wasn't generosity," George said, dryly. "Go ahead. Did you make any more blunders?"

"You're scarcely one to accuse," Lambert answered. "You put me up to it in the first place, although I'll admit now, I'd have spoken anyway. I don't want Sylvia marrying him. I don't want him down town as more than a salaried man, unless he changes more than he has. I didn't feel even last night that Sylvia really loved him, but I made her furious, and you're right. I shouldn't have said that. I daresay she guessed, too, it wasn't all generosity that had led you to pay Dolly's debts. Anyway, she wouldn't talk reasonably, said she'd marry any one she pleased—oh, quite the young lady who sent me after you with a horse whip, and I daresay she'd have been glad to do it again last night. I spoke to Mother. She said Sylvia hadn't said anything to her, but she added, if Sylvia wanted him, she wouldn't oppose her. Naturally she wouldn't, seeing only Dolly's good points, which are regularly displayed for the benefit of the ladies. Anyway, I agreed to tell you, and you promised, if it came to the point, you'd have some things to say to me——"

George nodded shortly.

"Yes, but I blame you for forcing me to say them. You've thrown them together——"

"I've always wanted to help Dolly as you would any old friend who had wandered a little to the side, and was anxious to get back on the path. I can't figure every man that comes about the place as a suitor for Sylvia. Let's forget all that. What are these important and unpleasant things you have to tell me? I daresay you know where the money you loaned Dolly went."

George pressed his lips tight. He frowned. Even now he hesitated to soil his hands, to divide himself, perhaps, permanently from Sylvia at the very moment of saving her; and he wasn't quite sure, in view of her pride and her quick temper, that his very effort wouldn't defeat its own purpose. If only Lambert hadn't made that worst of all possible blunders. He wondered how a man felt on the rack. He bent swiftly and picked up the telephone.

"I shall talk with Dalrymple first," he said. "I'm going to ask him to come over here at once. I think he'll come."

But Lambert shook his head, stopped him before he could take the receiver from the hook.

"Isn't in the office. Hasn't been back since luncheon. Left no word then."

"Perhaps since you've come away——" George hazarded.

He telephoned, while Lambert wandered about the room, or paused to slip through his fingers the tape that emerged like a long and listless serpent from the now silent ticker. After a question or two George replaced the receiver and glanced at Lambert.

"You're right. Sticks to the job, doesn't he?"

"He isn't exactly an ordinary clerk," Lambert offered.

George walked to a window. For a long time he gazed over the lower city, turned singularly unreal by the early dusk, while it outlined itself little by little in yellow points of light which gave to the clouds and the circling columns of steam a mauve quality as if the world, instead of night, faced the birth of a dawn, new, abnormal, frightening.

He had to make one more effort with Dalrymple before sending Lambert to Sylvia with his reasons why she shouldn't marry the man. In the singular, unreal light he glanced at his hands. He had to see Dalrymple once more first——

He turned and snapped on the lights.

"What are you going to do?" Lambert asked. "There's no likely way to catch him down town."

A clerk tip-toed in. George swung sharply.

"What is it, Carson?"

"Mr. Dalrymple's outside, sir. It's so late I hesitated to bother you, but he said it was very important he should see you, sir."

George sighed.

"Wait outside, Carson. I'll call you in a moment."

And when the door was closed he turned to Lambert.

"I'm going to see him here—alone."

"Why?" Lambert asked, uneasily. "I don't quite see what you're up to. No more battles of the ink pots!"

"Please get out, Lambert; but maybe you'd better hang about the office. I think Dicky's gone for the night. Wait in his room."

"All right," Lambert agreed.

George opened the door, and, as Lambert went through reluctantly, beckoned the clerk.

"Send Mr. Dalrymple in, Carson."

He stood behind his desk, facing the open door. Almost immediately the doorway was blocked by Dalrymple. George stared, trying to value the alteration in the man. The weak, rather handsome face was bold and contemptuous. Clearly he had come here for blows of his own choosing, and had just now borrowed courage from some illicit bar, but he had taken only enough, George gathered, to make him assured and not too calculating. He was clothed as if he had returned from an affair, with a flower in his buttonhole, and a top hat held in the hand with his stick and gloves.

"Come in!"

Dalrymple closed the door and advanced, smiling.

Not for a moment did George's glance leave the other. He felt taut, hard to the point of brittleness.

"It's fortunate you've come," he said, quietly. "I've just been trying to get hold of you."

"Oh! Then Lambert's been here!" Dalrymple answered, jauntily.

George nodded.

"You've been crooked, Dalrymple. Now we'll have an accounting."

Dalrymple laughed.

"It's what I've come for; but first I advise you to hold your temper. It's late, but there are plenty of people still outside. Any more rough stuff and you'll spend the night in a cell, or under bail."

"If you lived nine lives," George commented, "you'd never be able to intimidate me."

Yet the other's manner troubled, and George's doubtful curiosity grew as he watched Dalrymple commence to draw the strings of the mask.

Dalrymple put down his hat and cane, bent swiftly, placed the palms of his hands on the desk, stared at George, his face inflamed, his eyes choked with malicious exultation.

"Your blackmail," he cried, "is knocked into a cocked hat. I married Sylvia half an hour ago."

Before George's response he lost some of his colour, drew back warily; but George had no thought of attacking him; it was too late now. That was why he experienced a dreadful realization of defeat, for a moment let through a flickering impression of the need for violence, but—and Dalrymple couldn't be expected to understand that—violence against George Morton who had let this situation materialize, who experienced, tumbling about his head, the magnificent but incomplete efforts of many years. That sensation of boundless, imponderable wreckage crushing upon him sent him back to his chair where for a moment he sat, sunk down, stripped of his power and his will.

And Dalrymple laughed, enjoying it.

In George's overwhelmed brain that laughter started an awakening clamour.

"What difference does the money make now?" Dalrymple jibed. "And she'll believe nothing else you may tell her, and violence would only make a laughing stock of you. It's done."

"How was it done?" George whispered.

"No objections to amusing you," Dalrymple mocked. "Lambert interfered last night, and spoiled his own game by dragging you in. By gad, she has got it in for you! Don't see why you ever thought——Anyway, she agreed right enough then, and I didn't need to explain it was wiser, seeing how Lambert felt about it, and her father, and you, of all people, to get the thing over without any brass bands. Had a bit of luck ducking the reporters at the license bureau. Tied the knot half an hour ago. She's gone home to break the glad news."

He grinned.

"But I thought it only decent to jump the subway and tell you your filthy money's all right and that you can plant a tombstone on your pound of flesh."

He laughed again.

In George's brain the echoes of Dalrymple's triumph reverberated more and more intelligibly. Little by little during the recital his slumped attitude had altered.

"In a way! In a way! In a way!" had sung through his brain, deriding him.

Then, as he had listened, had flashed the question: "Is it really too late?" And he had recalled his old determination that nothing—not even this—should bar the road to his pursuit. So, at the close of Dalrymple's explanation, he was straight in his chair, his hands grasping the arms, every muscle, every nerve, stretched tight, and in his brain, overcoming the boisterous resonance of Dalrymple's mirth, rang his old purposeful refrain: "I will! I will! I will!"

Dalrymple had married her, but it wasn't too late yet.

"Jealous old fellow!" Dalrymple chaffed. "No congratulations for Dolly. Blow up about your notes any time you please. I'll see they're paid."

He took up his hat and stick.

"Want to run along now and break the news to brother-in-law. Sure to find him. He's a late bird."

George stood up.

"Wait a minute," he said, quietly. "Got to say you've put one over, Dalrymple. It was crooked, but it's done. You've settled it, haven't you?"

"Glad you take it reasonably," Dalrymple laughed, turning for the door.

"Wait a minute," George repeated.

Dalrymple paused, apparently surprised at the tone, even and colourless.

"Lambert's somewheres about the place," George explained. "Just stay here, and I'll find him and send him in."

"Good business!" Dalrymple agreed, sitting down. "Through all the sooner."

He smiled.

"A little anxious to get home to my wife."

George tried to close his ears. He didn't dare look at the other. He hurried out, closed the door, and went to Goodhue's office. At sight of him Lambert sprang from his chair as if startled by an unforeseen record of catastrophe.

"What's happened?"

"Dalrymple's in my room," George answered without any expression. "He wants to see you. He'll tell you all about it."

He raised his hands, putting a stop to Lambert's alarmed questions.

"Can't wait. Do just one thing for me. Give me half an hour. Keep Dalrymple here for half an hour."

Still Lambert cried for reasons.

"Never mind why. You ought to interest each other for that long."

But Lambert tried to detain him.

"Where are you going? Why do you want me to keep him here? You look as if you'd been struck in the face! George! What goes on?"

George turned impatiently.

"Ask Dalrymple. Then do that one thing for me."

He ran out of the room, picked up his hat and coat, and hastened to the elevators.

He was caught by the high tide of the homeward rush, but his only thought was of the quickest way, so he let himself be swept into the maelstrom of the subway and was pounded aboard a Lexington Avenue express. All these people struggling frantically to get somewhere! The pleasures awaiting them at their journey's end should be colourful and compelling; yet it was clear to him sordid discontent lurked for some, and for others unavoidable sorrows. It was beyond belief that their self-centred haste should let creep in no knowledge of the destination and the purpose of this companion, even more eager than themselves, intimately crushed among them.

He managed to free his arm so he could glance at his watch, and he peered between bobbing heads through the windows at the station signs. At Eighty-sixth Street he escaped and tore, limping, up the stairs while people stared at him, or, if in his haste he had brushed unthinkingly against them, called out remarks angry or sarcastic. His leg commenced to ache, but he ran across to Fifth Avenue and down it to the Planter house. While he waited before the huge, heavy glass and iron doors he caught his breath, counting the seconds.

It was Simpson who opened.

"I'm not sure Miss Planter has returned, sir. If so, she would be upstairs. When she went out she said something about not being disturbed this evening. Yes, sir. She left with Mr. Dalrymple less than two hours ago."

George walked into the vast hall.

"I must see her, Simpson, at once."

He started toward hangings, half-drawn, through which he could see only partially a dimly lighted room.

"I will tell her, sir."

George swung.

"But not my name, Simpson. Tell her it is a message from her brother, of the greatest importance."

George held his breath.

"What is it, Simpson?"

The clear contralto voice steadied him. If she was alone in there he would have a better chance than he had hoped for, and he heard no other voice; but why should she be alone at this exciting hour in a dimly lighted room? Was it possible that she hadn't told any one yet what she had done, had returned to the house and chosen solitude, instead, in a dim light? Then why? Why?

He dismissed Simpson with a nod and entered between the hangings.

She was alone. She stood before a cold fireplace at the end of the room as if she had just risen from a chair near by. She was straight and motionless, but she projected an air of fright, as if she had been caught at an indiscretion; and, as George advanced, he thought her colour was too deep, and he believed she had been crying alone in the dusk of the room which was scarcely disturbed by one shaded lamp.

He paused and stared at her—no longer Sylvia Planter—Dalrymple's wife. All at once the appearance of modelled stone left her. Her entire body seemed in motion, surrendered to a neurotic and undirected energy. She started forward, paused, drew away. Her eyes turned from him to the door, then questioningly back again. She pulled at the gloves which she had kept in her hand. Her voice, when she spoke, was unsteady:

"What do you mean—coming in here—unannounced?"

His eyes held her.

"I've had enough of that," he said, harshly. "All I can think of is the vile name your husband would have called you once if I hadn't choked him half to death."

For a second her eyes blazed, then her shoulders drooped, and she covered her face with her hands. With a sharp regret it occurred to him that he could throw the broken crop away, for at last he had struck her—hard enough to hurt.

Her voice from behind her hands was uncertain and muffled.

"Who told you?"

"He did—naturally, that—that——"

He broke off, choking.

"By God, Sylvia! It isn't too late. You've got to understand that. Now. This minute. I tell you it isn't too late."

She lowered her hands. Her fear was sufficiently visible. Her attempt at a laugh was pitiful, resembled an escaping grief.