THE HUNGRY HEART (continued 3)

"Go away!" cried Richard. Courtney could not have spoken.

"I'm afraid so."

"Not for good?"

"Probably—in fact, almost certainly."

"Why, man, you can't do that!" protested Dick. "You can't leave me in the lurch."

"Oh, I want to keep my interest. It's simply that I can't stay on, myself."

"But I need you now as much as I need the capital. Why, it'd upset everything for a year—perhaps longer. I couldn't easily find a competent man I could trust."

Basil repeated in a final, dogged way, "It's impossible for me to stay."

"Is there anything unsatisfactory in——"

"No—no indeed. My own affairs entirely, I assure you."

As he had finished supper, Vaughan took him out on the veranda, where Courtney heard them—or, rather, heard Dick—arguing and protesting. Presently she drifted into the sitting room, sat at the piano, let her fingers wander soundlessly over the keys. What should she do? What was best for him—for her—"and there's Richard, too, who needs him." Why should he go? How would it help matters? True, she had declared that to be the right course; but then she was merely theorizing, merely talking the conventional thing. This was no theory, but actuality, calling for good common sense. It was not the first time she had found the facts of life making mockery of the most convincing theories about it. Presently she felt that Basil was in the window farthest from her, was watching her—probably with the same loving, despairing expression she had often seen without a suspicion that it was for her.

"Where's Richard?" inquired she, not looking in his direction.

"In the library."

"You've upset him dreadfully."

"I'm sorry. But things will soon adjust themselves." He advanced a step, was visible now in the half darkness, looked pallidly handsome in his becoming dinner suit. "A few weeks at most," he went on, somewhat huskily, "and I'll be the vaguest sort of a memory here."

She was glad her back was toward him and that the twilight had darkened into dusk. Of course, he did not really love her. It was simply another case of a man's being isolated with a woman and his head getting full of sentimental fancies. Still— While his love was not real, and therefore its pain largely imaginary, the pain no doubt seemed real, and the love, too. So she was sad for him—very sad. As soon as she felt sure of her voice, she said: "Won't you please light the big lamp for me? I wore a négligée this evening because I wanted to sew. I'm making a suit for Winchie—like one I saw in a French magazine."

He lit the lamp beside the table where she worked in the evenings when she did not go to her own room. "Anything else?" he asked.

"Only sit and talk to me."

"I couldn't talk this evening."

"Then sit and smoke."

She began her work, he smoking in the deep shadow near the window. She could hardly see him; he could see every wave and ripple in her lovely hair, every shift of the sweeping dark lashes, every change in that sweet, small face, in the wide wistful mouth. Even better than playing on the piano, sewing brings out the charm of delicate, skillful fingers. She did not need to look at him to feel his gaze, its longing, its hopelessness. And never before had she thought of him in such a partial, personal way—the way a woman must feel toward the man she knows loves her, even though she only likes him.

She had made up her mind what to do, how to deal practically with this situation. But she had to struggle with her timidity before she could set about the audacious experiment she had planned and resolved. She had long had the frankness of thought that is inseparable from intelligence. The courage to speak her thoughts was as yet in the bud. "Do you mind my speaking again of what you were saying this afternoon?" said she as she sewed industriously.

"No," said he.

"I've been thinking about it. At first I was startled—very much startled. But I soon began to look at it sensibly. I want you to stay. Richard wants you to stay. There's no reason why you shouldn't stay and conquer your delusion."

"It's no delusion."

"Real love is always mutual. So yours must be delusion." She was pointing a thread for the eye of the needle. "You've led a very—very man sort of life, haven't you?"

He shifted uncomfortably, then confessed: "You know the standards for men are different from those for women."

She smiled, threaded the needle. "Yes, I know. I don't understand, but I know. You needn't explain. I don't want to understand. It doesn't interest me. As I was about to say—" Her courage failed her, and she sewed a while in silence. At last she dared. It was with no sign of inward disturbance, but the contrary, that she went on: "You've been shut in here too long. Go to your old haunts for a few days. You'll come back cured."

She had practiced saying it, this advice which she believed wise and necessary in the circumstances. She said it in calm, matter-of-fact fashion; and it was the less difficult for her to do so because, in thought at least, she had long since emancipated herself from what she regarded as the hypocrisies of modesty, and had taught herself to look at all things rationally and humanly. She knew her frankness would not please him; so she was not surprised when after a pause he said roughly, "I don't like to hear you say that sort of thing."

She laughed pleasantly, put quite at ease by his impertinence. "And I don't in the least care whether you approve of me or not. You men seem to think you've got a sort of general roving commission to superintend the propriety of women."

"I beg your pardon."

"Certainly. Give me that pair of scissors—on the stand in the corner."

He rose, issued from the deep shadow. She could now see into what confusion her words had thrown him. The hand that held out the scissors was trembling. He moved to go upon the veranda. "Please," said she. "I'm not nearly done. Won't you sit down?"

He seated himself.

"You see," she went on lightly, busy with her hem again, "I know your awful secret."

"You've no right to laugh at me," muttered he.

"I'm not laughing at you.... I'm only looking at it in a friendly, practical way.... I want to help you.... Why are you going away?"

She sewed on, feeling his emotion gather behind his self-control. The stillness was unbroken. A light breeze, cool and scented, came fluttering in at the open windows to play with the soft brilliant hair that grew so beautifully round her temples. In a low voice, so low that she scarcely heard, his answer at last came: "Because I love you. I love you and I am not a cur."

Her needle missed its way into the cloth, pierced her finger. She put the wounded finger in her mouth. When she looked toward him she was smiling. "Still you've not answered my question. Because you think you care for me—that's no reason why you should go.'

"I can't control myself. I—" He made a gesture of helplessness. "I can't think of you as—as married. You seem like a girl to me—free. I keep forgetting."

"It doesn't seem to occur to you that I might be trusted to remember."

"I know," said he humbly.

She held the garment at arms' length, eyeing the hem critically. "No, you don't. You're like all the men. You fancy weak woman can always be overborne by man, big and strong and superior."

"You wrong me."

"Why else should you talk of going away?"

"Because it's torment to me to be near you—to——"

She stopped sewing, looked at him with anger in her deep green eyes. "Then your feeling is just what I thought."

"It is not! It is love!"

Again she sewed a long time in silence. It was very calm there, in that quiet room with its flowers and tasteful, gracefully arranged furniture, and the single lamp like a jewel shedding all its radiances upon her small industrious figure. "Then tell me," she said in her sweet, gentle way, without looking up or pausing, "what do you want that you cannot have? You can see me as much as you like. You can talk as freely as you like. You can count on sympathy, on friendship. And, if you want to, you can keep right on loving me in that exalted way you profess. Nobody's going to hinder you."

She sewed on in silence, he motionless watching her, perplexity in his honest, rather boyish face. After a while her voice broke the silence. "Love!" She laughed with raillery that did not sting. "My dear friend, don't you see I was right? Go away for a few days and——"

"For God's sake, don't suggest that again."

"Then don't say it's love that makes you want to leave and upset everything." She put the needles, thread, and thimble into her workbox, rolled up the little suit, rose. "It's always the same story," she said, sad rather than bitter. "A woman means only one thing to a man. Yes, I think you had best go."

"You're too severe," he cried. "It's true there's such a thing as passion without love. And I'll admit that I, like all men have felt it often—have lied to myself as well as to the woman—and have called it love. But it's also true there's no love without some passion—at least, you couldn't hope to inspire it. And though in your innocence you may think so, you'd not want to have less than all love has to give—if you loved."

Her eyes, large and softly brilliant, were burning into the darkness beyond the open window. "I'm not innocent," she said. "And I try not to be a hypocrite. If I loved, I'd want all."

There was a long silence, she at the window gazing out into the gathering night. Then he said: "You were right. It was not love that made me feel like flight. I can conquer that feeling. Will you let me stay?"

She turned slowly. In the look she fixed on him there was doubt, hesitation. "You've made me a little uneasy—a little afraid."

In his eagerness he sprang up. "Don't!" he cried. "Don't send me away. I'll never speak of love again. You've taught me my lesson."

"I do want you to stay," said she. "It'd seem very lonely here with you gone. For I've come to depend on you as a friend. It hurts to find you seeking your own selfish pleasure under the pretense of a feeling for me."

He winced—not because he felt scandalized by her candor, but because he felt convicted by it. "How well you understand men!" he exclaimed. "Better than they understand themselves."

"In that one way I do," was her reply, an arresting hardness in the deep voice that was usually altogether sweet. These last few days she was understanding a great many things about the relations of men and women—or, perhaps, was letting herself realize that she understood them.

He lowered his eyes, that he might not read her thoughts, that she might not read the same thoughts in his own mind. "You often make me think of the lake out there," said he. "There's the surface one sees at a glance. Then there's a little distance below the surface, that one sees when he looks intently straight down. And then there's fathoms on fathoms where all sorts of strange things—strange thoughts and feelings—lie hid. Sometimes—for an instant—one of them shows or almost shows at the surface."

"When one lives alone a great deal, one gets the habit of living within oneself—don't you think?"

"I suppose that's it—partly. A brook couldn't hide very much—and most people are like brooks or ponds. The ones that seem to have depth seem so simply because the water's muddy."

She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of his originality and insight did not lessen when he added, "At least, so a friend of mine used to say." He returned to the subject. "Then—I may stay?"

Her face brightened. In her eyes as they looked at a smile slowly dawned. Quickly all her features were responding, especially that wide, expressive fascinating mouth. "I hope you will. But—no more dreariness!"

"I hate gloom as much as you do." He glanced round the room—at the harmonies of woodwork and walls and furnishing, with here and there bright flowers always in the restraint of those of gentle hue. "As much as you do," repeated he. "And that's saying a great deal. How do you manage it!—house and garden, always gay yet never gaudy—and such variety! Is there no end to your variety?"

"Oh, one's a new person every day, isn't one?—and different."

"You certainly are. But no one else I ever saw." He colored furiously at his finding himself, without intending it, upon the forbidden ground. She had turned away, and was leaving the room—the safest course, since it enabled her to hide her pleasure in the compliment that peculiarly appealed to her, and also seemed to give him a sufficient yet not harsh rebuke.

Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is the average woman's—certainly had more courage. She had been too thoroughly trained in the conventionalities not to have the familiar timidity as to action, so strong in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over women. But the "unhand-me" spirit of her time was finding outlet in thought and feeling. Reflecting much in her aloneness, she had reached many audacious conclusions about life and the true meaning of its comedy drama—that meaning so different from what we pretend, from what usually passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based as they are upon man's cheap hankering for idealistic strut. The audacities of thought that occasionally showed at her surface in speech or commentary of smiling eyes and lips were conventional in comparison with whole schools of deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of aloneness from being hours of loneliness. Physically, her passion for freedom showed itself in her dislike of tight or stuffy garments. She could pass her hand round her waist inside her closest-fitting corset. Her liking for few clothes and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom allowed came not from the thought for the other sex that often explains this taste, but from aversion to restraint.

As usual, the first thing she did that night, when she was alone in her rooms, was to rid herself of all her clothing and put on the thinnest of thin white nightgowns, almost sleeveless, and cut out at the neck. She thrust her feet into bedroom slippers, braided her long hair with its strands of red almost brown, with its strands of brown almost gold. She turned out the light, threw open all the long shutters screening her windows, to let her bedroom fill with warm, perfumed freshness from lake and gardens. She stepped out on the balcony to take the breathing exercises that kept her body straight, her chest high, her bosom firm as a girl's, and her form slim and supple. The fireflies were floating and darting in the creepers and the near-hanging boughs. The slight agitations of the air stole among the folds of her gown and over her neck and arms like charmed fingers. There was no moon; but she did not miss it in the dim splendor of the thronging stars.

"Aren't you about ready to come in?"

She startled, suppressed a scream. She turned. Richard was standing in the window. Her blood which had rushed to her heart surged out again and into her brain in an angry wave. She hated to be taken by surprise. It was on the tip of her tongue to cry furiously, "I detest being spied upon." But she had resolved soon after Winchie was born never to speak angrily to him, never to let him hear her speak angrily. The habit restrained her now, as it had scores of times. Instead, she said: "Why, how did you get in? I'm sure I locked my door."

"So you did," replied Dick in the cheerful unconscious way that so irritated her in certain moods. Not always could she bear with composure his masculine assumption that whatever pleased him must delight his wife. "So you did," said he. "And it's still locked. But there was the window from the front balcony into your sitting room—and the door from your sitting room to this room. You see, I was determined to find you."

His tone of laughing tenderness helped her half to guess, half to make out his expression. Usually she accepted without a protesting thought the whole of the routine of married life. But to-night she grew hot with a burning blush of imperiled modesty as he advanced toward her. "Don't," she said; "I'm doing my exercises."

"No—you were dreaming. Of what?" Then, without waiting for an answer about a matter of so little importance, "Gallatin tells me he has decided to stay on—if he can arrange it—and he seems to think he can. So I'm feeling fine. You don't know what a jolt he gave me at supper. Did you talk with him about it?"

"Yes."

"Urged him to stay?"

"I tried to show him he ought to stay."

"Ever so much obliged."

She stopped in her exercises to say quickly: "Oh, I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself."

"Why, you dislike him."

"He's some one to talk with—some one that listens and answers. And—I don't dislike him."

Richard laughed. "That's right. Try to make the best of it. Well, if you're not coming in——"

"Not for an hour or longer."

"Then—good night. I must be up early. I think I'll sleep down at the Smoke House. I'm so glad about Gallatin—just as much obliged as if you'd done it for me. And I believe you did." He put his arms round her to kiss her good night. As soon as his lips touched her cheek she drew away, disengaged herself. "What's the matter, Courtney?" She had long since learned that for all his absent-mindedness and ignoring of things that didn't directly interest him, he became as sensitive—and as accurate—as photographic plate to light, the instant his attention happened to be caught. "What's the matter? Why do you draw away?"

"I don't know," replied she—truthfully, yet with a sense of being untruthful. "I seem not to like to be touched to-night."

"I don't remember you being that way before."

She went on with her exercises; he yawned and departed.

VIII

The morning after Courtney and Basil came to this clear and promising understanding, she got down to the seven-o'clock breakfast perhaps ten minutes late. She expected to find the two men and Winchie there, and was thinking of asking Gallatin to go to town with her and Winchie. When she entered the dining room, there was the table in its usual morning place, in the wide-flung door windows to the cast, and at it sat Winchie only, sunbeams sifting through the trellised morning glories to dance upon his shock of tawny hair.

"Where are the others?" she asked.

Winchie, forgetful of his teaching, had his mouth full, far too full for immediate speech—unless he gulped it empty, and that would have been breaking another rule. So Lizzie, who was just entering from the kitchen hall, answered: "Mr. Richard telephoned up at half past six, and made me wake Mr. Gallatin. They had breakfast down at the Smoke House long ago."

Winchie had climbed from his high chair and had come round to kiss his mother good morning. He was dressed for the trip to town—all white except dark blue edging round his wide collar, and a dark blue belt. His features suggested his father's and his mother's, yet were those of neither. That morning their usual suggestions of will and character were lost in a general expression of sweet good humor. He looked a sturdy bronzed cherub. After searching his mother's face with those inquiring, seeing eyes of his, he said: "Mamma's happy this morning," and resumed breakfast.

"Indeed she is!" exclaimed Courtney.

She drew the bowl of yellow daisies and pink-white mountain holly from the center of the table, and fell to rearranging them. Each blossom seemed to glide into just its right position, as if there were magic in her fingers. She could not remember when she had felt quite so content and hopeful. And her spirits rose as the day advanced. On the way to town she stopped at the Vaughan farm across the highroad to inquire into a slight falling off in quality of butter and milk. She had never seen the farm so fascinating. The very dock weed and dog fennel carpeting the barnyard had an air and a charm. And the road to town, as she and Winchie sped along in the runabout—what a shady lane through Paradise it was! In town everyone seemed so agreeable, so glad to see her. After lunch with Sarah Carpenter, she shopped, made several calls. They did not start home until late, and supper was on the table when they arrived. At the table—always in the middle of the room for the evening meal, and formally set—at the table was Richard, alone, eating and figuring on his everlasting yellow pad.

"Hello!" said he, with barely a glance away from his pencil point. "Glad to have company."

"Where's Mr. Gallatin?" asked Winchie.

"Gone," was Dick's curt answer in the tone of an interrupted man. "I sent him away."

Courtney, crossing the room, halted. A moment of horrible silence. "Gone!" she echoed hoarsely, her eyes wide, as if a monster had suddenly appeared open-jawed in her very face. "You—sent—him away!"

Vaughan, without looking up, said: "What did you say?"

With her hand on her heart, "I thought I understood you to say Mr. Gallatin had gone."

"So he has. For a few days."

"Oh!" Courtney drew a vast breath of relief. She felt a tugging at her skirt, glanced down. It was Winchie, looking up at her with an expression of terror; and she knew she must have revealed herself in her face. Her pale cheeks flooded with color. She sank into her chair opposite her husband. She could lie to herself, cheat herself, no longer. "How much Basil means to me!" she muttered. Then, in terror, she glanced round, for she felt as if she had shouted it. But Vaughan was at his unending calculations. Only Winchie saw. Only Winchie! There was a look in his great gray-green eyes, a look of the accusing angel, that made her hang her head while the dark red burned upon her whole body.

"He'll be back Thursday or Friday," continued Vaughan, tossing the pad into the window seat, a dozen feet away.

"You sent him on business?" inquired she, to make conversation.

"He wanted to go to Pittsburg, so he told me. I guess it's some girl. I suspect our 'dressy' friend of being a ladies' man. He takes too much trouble about his clothes—and silk underclothes! Anyhow, I let him go."

She sat there, the food untouched, her blood pounding at her temples, at her finger ends. For she was remembering her advice to Basil when she was trying both to persuade him to stay and to deceive herself as to why she intensely wished him to stay. And now, on her advice—on the advice of the woman who loved him—he was journeying—even as she sat quietly there at supper in respectable calm—he was journeying to his "old haunts"—to some woman—he who belonged to her! Such a wild tempest raged in her that she wondered how she could sit motionless, why she was not walking the floor and crying out. With another woman! Oh, the vileness of men! "And I was beginning to care for him!" she said to herself. "He's like the rest—worse than most. How many men are there who'd dare talk of love to a woman like me, and then go jauntily away to a low woman?"

She went upstairs immediately after supper, shut herself in. She moved calmly about; she took her exercises; she read for several hours before turning out her light. But beneath a surface that could have been no more tranquil had she been observed and on guard, chaos reigned. One tempest succeeded another—anger against Basil, against herself—disgust, scorn, jealousy—and, before she slept, she had seen that in reality all these moods were jealousy under different forms. The following morning, when the coast was clear, she slipped into his room, knelt by his untouched bed, cried upon its pillow. This humility soon wept itself out, however; she flung herself into her work. "Nonsense! I don't care for him. It's simply pique and outraged friendship. How coarse men are!"

"What's the matter, mamma?" said Winchie, who was following her about the garden, looking after insects and dead leaves. Than his there never was a keener eye for signs of the red spider.

"Why, dear?"

"You treat the flowers as if you wanted to hurt them."

"Your mamma is in a very naughty humor this morning."

"And you were so happy yesterday. Is it because Mr. Gallatin's gone away?"

Courtney, flushing deeply, looked hastily round. "Sh! You mustn't say those things!"

"Why not?"

Already she was teaching the boy to conceal! "I didn't mean that, Winchie," said she. "You are to say whatever you please—as always."

"I don't want you to like Mr. Gallatin. I don't like him."

"Why not?"

"Because he likes you."

"You wouldn't want anybody not to like your mamma, would you?"

"No." A long silence. Then: "But he looks at you exactly like papa does when he's really seeing you."

Courtney's skin burned. The same story—always the same! "Well—dear—I'll not like him."

"I hope he won't come back."

The suggestion set her heart to aching with loneliness. "I have no shame and no pride," she said to herself. "What a contemptible creature a woman is!" But these sneers availed her nothing. As she sat at table—dinner and supper—his vacant place gave her a sense of bereavement not unlike death itself.

Another night of wakefulness and of the subtle and varied torments known only to those blessed and cursed with vivid imagination. What if he should not come back! That was the final and crudest twist of the rack. Next day, it was all day long as if the silence and darkness of the night were still suffocating her. The house, the grounds seemed a desolation of despair. What if he should not come back! A drizzling rain fell, and she sat miserably by the window, unable to sew, unable to read. And at the first sound from the piano—the melancholy notes her fingers instinctively struck—she sprang away as if a hateful ghost had breathed on her. It was only Wednesday; he would not be home until the next day—probably not until Friday—perhaps not then.

She put fresh flowers in vases in all the rooms every day. That day she filled the vases in his sitting room with the best. And she lingered among his belongings, that promised his return. In the drawers, his fine tasteful shirts and ties; in the closets, those attractive suits, silk lined, agreeable to the touch, varied and always tasteful in pattern. She went back to his books—to the poetry, of which he was particularly fond. The volumes fell open naturally at poems that glorified the lofty, the spiritual side of love. Then, like a scorpion, scuttled across the page of Browning's "Last Ride" what Winchie had said—"He looks at you like papa does." She shuddered, was all dread and foreboding again. Was there no such thing in man as love for woman, but only its coarse and lying counterfeit?

She heard an outside door open noisily. She darted along the hall and down to the angle of the stairway, to the landing from which the drive-front entrance could be seen. She leaned over the balustrade, looked. She drew back, stopping the glad cry that rose to her lips; for it was Basil. With features composed she leaned forward again. His soft hat and his rain coat were dripping; evidently, in his eagerness to arrive, he had crossed the lake in an open boat, instead of coming round by the road in a closed carriage. He was gazing toward the sitting-room door with an expression that thrilled her—and at the same time gave her the courage to treat him as her self-respect and her ideas of decency in a man dictated.

"Back already?" said she in a pleasant, indifferent tone.

He turned, looked up at her, his face alight. "How are you?" he cried. "It seems an age."

"We didn't expect you for several days yet," she went on, descending. When she reached the hall, he was waiting with extended hand. "It is good to be here again!" said he. "It was worth going, for the pleasure of getting back."

She shook hands, smiled friendlily, continued on her way to the sitting room. He hesitated, an uneasy look in his eyes that did not escape her. He put his hat and coat on the rack, followed her. "I am glad to be back!" said he.

She laughed, friendlily enough, but her baffling manner only increased his uneasiness. "We're glad to have you," was her polite reply. "If you want to go to your room before supper, you'd better hurry."

"I've been doing a great deal of thinking while I was away."

"Really? That's good."

"I see you've changed your mind—as I felt you would, when I thought it over. Your first impulse was to be lenient. But when you fully realized what a dishonorable thing it was for me to do—to——"

"Don't you think you'd better go up before supper?"

"Not till I've said one thing," replied he doggedly.

"Well?"

"I want you to know that you can trust me never to repeat my offense. I'd go to Vaughan and tell him and apologize——"

"And, pray, what has Richard to do with it?" inquired she coldly.

"I understand," he hastened to protest. "I'm not going to speak of it to him. It might put unjust suspicion of you in his head——"

There she laughed outright at him. "You are making yourself perfectly absurd," she said, and turned away to go into the dining room.

When he came down, the others were at table. Dick, figuring on his yellow pad, glanced up, rose, greeted him with unprecedented cordiality. "Why, when did you blow in?" he exclaimed.

"A few minutes ago." Gallatin glanced at Courtney. The quiet mockery of her absent gaze made him red and awkward. "I—I—got through—so—I—came," he explained with stammering lameness.

"Naturally," said Dick. He had taken up his pencil. "Make yourself at home."

Gallatin's glance fell on Winchie frowning at him. "Howdy, Winchie?" said he.

The boy made a curt bow, resumed his supper. He was permitted—or, rather, under Courtney's system of training him to think and act for himself, he permitted himself to eat only certain simple things, and very little of them—and he was wonderfully sensible about it. When he finished he kissed his mother good night, made his salute to his father and, almost imperceptibly, to Gallatin, and went upstairs. Gallatin nerved himself to several efforts at beginning conversation with Courtney. Each time, as he glanced up, he was checked and flung back into embarrassed silence by seeing in her absent eyes the same disconcerting mockery. After supper, Richard hurried away to the library. When she showed that she was going upstairs, Gallatin detained her. "One moment, please," he pleaded humbly. "What have I done to offend you?"

Courtney flushed. But the raillery came back instantly. "I'm not offended. I'm amused."

"At what?"

"At you." The smile broadened charmingly. "So you've had a successful trip?"

"Yes—in a way."

"And have come back completely cured."

"I want you to be my friend—if you will. I repeat, you can trust me now."

Her eyes sparkled dangerously. "It's fortunate I understand men—and have a sense of humor."

"I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," said he. "And I'll take it. Only—I want to stay on here—and to have your friendship."

She studied him critically. Her expression would have been trying enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence for the least self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted Basil, bred in the fashionable world's incessant consciousness of self. But in his desperation he withstood her look, returned it with eyes that were appealing yet not abject. It pleased her that he was not abject. "After all, you went on my advice, didn't you?" said she in a friendlier tone. "And you've been most manlike—have shown yourself to be just what I thought you. So I'm really unreasonable." She gave him her hand. "Yes, let us be friends."

"And you forgive me?"

She smiled queerly. "That's asking too much. I may—in time. Just at present—you've made me feel horribly cheap and—common."

He hung his head. "If you knew how I've suffered for it," he said. "I was afraid you'd send me away—would never see me again."

"Let's not talk about it," cried she, angry at her own weakness in not meting out to him what he apparently expected and certainly deserved. But she was not so angry that she held to her purpose of going upstairs. Instead, she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest pieces she knew.

IX

The friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed flower bed. She had always been healthy; so she had not a touch of "temperament"—which is the misleading romantic name for internal physical conditions anything but romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also imperfect health through neglect of physical needs; and the somberer shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the more melancholy by imagination, usually canopy their lives. But with her it was not so. Always healthy in body and in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color like the rose that is getting just the right sun and rain.

Late in that summer there were several weeks when one perfect day followed another like a child's dream of fairy-land. Vaughan wished to work alone, dropped completely out of their life, was forgotten. Every day, all day long, she and Basil were together, he helping her at the pastime that kept house and grounds beautiful. She was one of those human beings who abhor disorder; if anything went wrong it was righted at once. If a knob came off a door or a plant withered, she could not rest until the imperfection was remedied. It kept her incessantly occupied, but the results were worth the pains they cost. Her imagination, stimulated by Basil, planned many changes in grounds and gardens, changes that would bring the place still nearer the landscape artist's three ideals—contrast, variety, bounds concealed. And she and Basil together carried out these alterations.

Then there were the leisure hours, as full as the hours of toil. They—with Winchie—strolled in the woods on the farm, across the highway, and picnicked under the trees beside the brook, or in the shadow of some gigantic fern-covered rock left on a hillside by the retreating glaciers of the ice age. Or, they went out on the lake, Winchie fishing, she and Gallatin talking in low tones or happy in sympathetic silence, with the boat moving languidly where the shadows of the great weeping willows were deepest, its keel troubling the dark clear waters hardly more than a floating leaf.

She was fond of talking, he of listening. And she had so many things to say—the things that had been accumulating in those five years when she had said little, had read and thought much. When Basil did talk it was usually of what he had experienced in his wanderings over Europe and Asia. And, as she had been everywhere in fancy through her reading, she drew him out with questions that made it hard for him to believe she had not actually viewed with her own eyes. He seemed a wonderful person to her, he who had lived in the world's half dozen great capitals, had wandered all over the earth and had seen everything. Her comments astonished him, made him ashamed, and privately reverent of her "woman's intuition. No wonder it's considered better than brains."

"I wish I'd had some one like you along when I was chasing about," said he. "It was usually horribly dull, and I went on at it chiefly because I was always hoping something interesting would turn up. Now, I see it was turning up all the time. You have a light way of looking at things. A man sees only the serious side."

"Oh, it couldn't be dull—not anywhere on earth," insisted she.

"No—not with—that is, with somebody like you along." An awkward silence; then, "and I don't see how you ever learned so much without having experience."

"I don't really know things," confessed she. "I just seem to know. As a matter of fact, I'm frightfully innocent."

"That's the beautiful part of it," said he with enthusiasm.

"I hate it!" she cried.

"Oh, no," protested he.

"Yes, hate it," she insisted. The chief pleasure in this friendship with him was that it gave her freedom to be herself, to be frank. She would not let him spoil it for her, as Richard had in their early married days spoiled even the times of closest intimacy with formalism and restraint. "I want to know—I want to live," she went on, with glowing, eager face. "I've always felt proud it was the woman who had the sense to eat the apple. I detest innocence. I love life!"

"Oh, you don't mean exactly that."

"Just that."

"Even—sin?" This, not an inquiry, but an argument proving her beyond question in the wrong.

But she replied undauntedly: "It seems to me, the only way to learn is by doing things. And doesn't that mean making mistakes—sins, as you call it? Life's a good deal like gardening. You have to do it wrong first in order to learn how to do it right."

"That's all very well for a man. But——"

She was giving him one of those disconcerting eerie glances from the mysterious eyes. "I've got to live, and in the same world you have. Also, I've got to bring up a boy to live in it."

"I must say," confessed he, "I don't see just how to meet that." And she accepted the answer as evidence of his broad-minded sympathy. She did not realize that he was anything but convinced, but was simply admitting the "light cleverness" of her reply and was too eager about standing well with her to combat her "queer ideas."

The interruption to the delights of this friendship came before she had nearly exhausted his novelty, and while she was still as uncritical of him as a starving man of the cooking. However, in any circumstances it would have been long before she could have made any accurate judgment of him. She had become his partisan; and a generous nature takes the most favorable, the always too favorable, view of a personality to which it is attracted.

Until that summer Richard had been, for a young man, remarkably careful about regularity and exercise. At the very outset of his task, away back at Johns Hopkins, seven years before, he had realized that he was in for an investigation of all known elements in every possible combination—that is, for a long and hard struggle for about the most jealously guarded of nature's secrets—the origin of heat. And he knew that, if he was to win any victory worth while, he must resist the temptation to overwork, and must make health his first consideration. And although he had small liking for physical exercise and was as little fond of the grind of regularity as the next man, he had kept to his rules for himself with the same inflexible firmness that characterized him in all his serious purposes. But Basil's coming with the additional money he had needed, and the help, too, tempted him beyond his resistance. In exercise, as in everything else, there is system or there is nothing. Before Basil had been there a month Richard was breaking his rules; and soon the whole system went by the board. All summer he had not exercised, and he ate at any hours or not at all. Such a reversal of a long-established routine could not but create an immediate internal commotion. There were no physical surface signs; he looked the same as always; but his temper became uncertain. Where he had been simply absent-minded he was now irascible in it. Without reason—except the internal physical turmoil he himself did not feel or suspect—-he would burst from abstraction to attack Gallatin or Courtney or Winchie or one of the servants, or to rave against everything and everybody. And this new Richard appeared at just the time when it would stand out in sharpest, most odious relief—most dangerous contrast to the even temper of Basil Gallatin. Under the stimulus of her friendship with Gallatin, Courtney had got back much of her former gayety. Again she was overflowing with jest and laughter, with the joy she seemed to have absorbed from the bright things that grew or flitted and flew in her gardens.

The change in Richard came rapidly, yet was so gradual that its cause escaped them all. It is not in human nature to be inexhaustibly patient even with the vagaries of an obvious invalid. Where the illness is unsuspected, patience with its victim soon turns to gall. This new development in Richard's character—for Courtney and all the others assumed it was character—changed her passive, almost unsuspected resentment and indifference into dislike that could easily deepen into aversion.

He was disagreeably reminding her of his existence; he was saying in effect "Look at me!" She looked. She had bowed to fate, had accepted a loveless life of duty. She had done her part loyally. She had made a home, had kept it in order, had submitted whenever his physical necessities began to distract him from his work. Yes, she had accepted all the degradation without a murmur. And when love had come to her unsought, had tempted her, she had put the temptation aside. In order that his plans might not be upset, she had taken the hard instead of the easy way to combat this temptation, had let Basil Gallatin stay on. And what was her reward? Whenever Richard spoke, it was to say something disagreeable, to be as nearly insulting as a well-bred man could become.

"It's perhaps fortunate for Richard," reflected she, "that Basil showed the true nature of his love in that trip to Pittsburg. For what do I owe Richard Vaughan? Is there any woman anywhere who does not in her heart feel she'd be justified in doing anything, when her husband has treated her as mine has treated me?" And the obvious answer—that her husband was the normal husband, that it was she who, expecting what the conventional and customary marriage relation did not contemplate and did not provide, was in the wrong—this answer seemed to her no answer at all, but an insult to her intelligence and her self-respect.

Because of Vaughan's rages Gallatin got into the habit of rising from the table as soon as he finished and leaving the Vaughans to themselves. Courtney, with the sex charm subtly seducing her to seek and exaggerate merits in Basil, was deeply moved by this thoughtfulness; for it increased her humiliation to have him there when Richard lost control of himself. One evening, as they finished supper, Vaughan was suddenly infuriated by the stealthy fiend of indigestion that is the chief cause of humanity's faults of temperament, from morbidness to acute mania. He burst out at Gallatin—sprang from absent-mindedness with flaming eyes like a madman from ambush. "You messed everything to-day!" cried this unsuspected and unconscious invalid, sicker far than many a one in bed with doctors and nurses. "You simply raised the devil. Another day or so like it, and I'll not let you come into the shop."

Gallatin made no reply.

"I suppose you're cursing me," fumed Richard. "That's the way it always is. The whole world's mad on the subject of self-excuse. Somebody else is always to blame, and criticism is always an outrage."

"Not at all," said Gallatin, and Courtney knew his self-control was wholly for her sake. "I was stupid to-day, Vaughan. It was wholly my fault. I know I came near blowing up the shop and sending us both to kingdom come——"

An exclamation of terror from Courtney halted him. She was pale, was looking with frightened, questioning eyes from one man to the other.

Vaughan blazed again. "There you go!" cried he to Gallatin. "Now, she'll think I'm at something as dangerous as a powder factory—when, in fact——"

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Vaughan," interrupted Gallatin. "It was my stupidity that made all the danger. Really, we do nothing that ought to be dangerous."

"That's not true," said Courtney quietly. "I know the truth now. And I never thought of it before!" She could not understand how she had been so unthinking; it was another, an unexpected measure of the cleavage between Richard's life and hers.

"You'd better confine your attention to things you understand," said Vaughan. "It was all Gallatin's folly, I assure you."

"That's the truth, Mrs. Vaughan," said Gallatin earnestly. "The whole truth."

She said no more, but her face showed she did not believe him. Gallatin, depressed and remorseful, went out on the veranda, strolled down toward the lake. Vaughan sat on, pulling savagely at his cigar. He was enraged because his outburst had caused the disclosure of the secret he had intended to keep from her, had given her a false idea which, as she was a woman, a creature of notions and whims, nothing could ever correct. He forgot his fine philosophy about self-excuse, and turned his rage from himself to her. "It's really all your fault," he exclaimed, glowering at her.

Winchie, seated between his father and mother, took up his knife and raised it threateningly against his father, his gray-green eyes ablaze.

In another mood Vaughan would have been secretly delighted, would have gravely accepted the rebuke and made apology to the boy and to Courtney. But the devil—the realest devil that torments spirit through flesh—was in him that night, was on the prowl. He pointed his cigar at the infuriated child. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.

"Winchie," said Courtney, in a low, firm voice.

The boy's eyes shifted from father to mother.

"Put down that knife, go upstairs and go to bed."

Son and mother looked at each other fully ten seconds; the boy lowered the knife, laid it on the table, descended from his chair, marched haughtily from the room. When he was gone Vaughan said: "You should have made him apologize to me."

Courtney did not reply. She was pulling out the bows the flowing tie she was wearing under the loose collar of her shirt waist.

"I'll have Lizzie bring him back."

"No," said Courtney, and her eyes met his. "You will not interfere with Winchie. I do not interfere with your work."

"But you do!" Richard burst out. "It's your interfering that's making Gallatin so worthless."

She shrank back in her chair, hastily veiled her eyes. Now it was the cuffs of the shirt waist that were engaging her attention.

"You dislike him, I know," Vaughan went on. "But why do you treat him so badly?"

No answer. She could hardly believe that it had been so long since Richard had noted her and Basil. Besides, when had she ever treated him in a way that could be called badly?

"I am sure you treat him badly. Why?"

No answer.

"I asked you a question. Politeness would suggest——"

"Not in this family," said Courtney, cold and calm, her slim fingers touching her hair here and there.

"All I've got to say is, it's no wonder Gallatin's becoming useless at the shop. He must feel his position acutely. I can conceive of no reason why you should subject a gentleman—and my guest—to such indignity."

Courtney looked as if she were sitting quietly alone.

"Has he been making love to you?" demanded Vaughan.

Her eyelids fluttered, but it was the only sign she gave.

"Some time ago I observed he had a way of looking at you that was most loverlike."

Still no answer, and no sign.

"Even so, you could deal with him tactfully. He is a gentleman."

"You said that before," observed she, elbows on the table, her chin on the backs of her intertwined fingers, her gaze upon the bowl of old-fashioned yellow roses in the center of the table.

He glowered at her. "So I did," said he. "Now I say it again, and perhaps you will be able to grasp it. And I want you to treat him as a gentleman should be treated. So long as he is my guest, so long as he conducts himself like a gentleman, you must be courteous to him."

No answer; no change.

"Do you hear, Courtney?"

"Yes."

"What do you intend to do?"

Up went the long lashes and the deep green eyes burned coldly at him. "As I choose," said she. "And I may add, I will not put up with your bad temper any longer. At the next outburst from you, Winchie and I leave this house. I will not be insulted, and will not have my boy ruined by his father's bad example."

Richard's eyes softened; he lowered them, the red mounted. After a silence he said "Excuse me" without looking at her, rose and went to the veranda. When she finished giving directions for the next day to Nanny and was going upstairs, he was still walking up and down, head bent, hands behind his back, sternness in that long aristocratic profile. An hour later, as she sat at her desk in her own sitting room upstairs, she heard his voice at the door into the hall.

"May I come in?" he asked.

"Certainly," replied she. Her back was toward the door.

"I want to beg your pardon."

"Very well," said she, her voice cold and even. She did not realize how much this meant from a man who had not the apologizing spirit or habit. And if she had realized, she would have been no more appreciative.

"You do not accept it?" said he, ruffled at once, and feeling that she was now the one in the wrong.

"I do not care any thing about it, one way or the other."

He was silent for a moment, then: "I hardly blame you," said he, with a great air of generous concession. "I've been out of temper, rude—disgracefully so—for some time. I'm sorry." And he stood looking at her expectantly, more complacent than penitent.

"I see you think a few words are enough to make up for all you've done."

"What more can I do? It's not a bit like you, Courtney, to——"

"And what do you know about me?" inquired she, turning half round and looking calmly at him over her shoulder. "It's quite true," she went on, "that I have no means of support but what I earn here as your housekeeper and—wife. But, I——"

"Courtney!" he cried in a tone of imperative rebuke.

"A few plain words—of truth—seem to shock you more than your own conduct."

"Such language from you! But you did not realize what you were saying."

"I did. I meant just what I said."

"That is not language for a wife to use to a husband."

She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

She was working in the garden beneath the west windows. She moved among the flowers, as restless and graceful as any other of the elves always hovering about blooming things—bees, humming birds, butterflies. It was a rare chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human body is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; bending forward, backward, to one side; or, erect and stretching upward, to relieve a tall rosebush of a dead leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure, ever changing, were ever alluring. Her arms, too—and her neck—how smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive! Her whole skin seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, magnetic waves. She was wearing a big pale-green garden hat; her hair was perfectly done, as always—as if it had taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a delightful frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and reflected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the brim. Her short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and small feet. There are feet that are merely short; then there are feet such as hers—exquisitely small—not useless looking, but the reverse. The same quality of the exquisite was in her figure. She was small, but she was not short. Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in the long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarseness. Women of her form send thrilling through their lovers the feeling of being able completely to enfold and to possess.

All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered one of the narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She stretched upward to re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms were extended, her head thrown back, the rosy bronze face upturned—pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, eyes of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a profound sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil Gallatin were gazing into each other's eyes with only the trellised creeper between. And his look made her heart leap. She straightened herself, colored, paled, stood trembling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she was working.

"How you startled me!" she said, in a careless, casual tone.

As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was standing with eyes down. And his look made her vaguely afraid.

"Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, resolved to brave it through.

"I can't stand it!" he cried, his voice trembling with passion. "I love you. I must go. I shall go as soon as Vaughan comes back. Until then I'll keep to the other part of the grounds."

"Why not just do it, and not talk so much?" she demanded, suddenly angry.

"If you had ever loved," said he humbly, "you'd understand. But I didn't intend to say these things. I came to tell you Vaughan's away. They telegraphed for him to hurry to Washington—something about the duties on a lot of new instruments."

"How long will he be?"

"Several weeks, perhaps. He's going afterwards to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia and New York. He left word with Jimmie about sending a trunk after him. He had just time to catch the express. He asked me to explain to you."

Nanny appeared at the drive-front corner of the house. He said to her: "Oh—Nanny. I've been upstairs packing a few of my belongings. Will you have them taken to Mr. Vaughan's apartment at the shop?"

"Jimmie says Mr. Vaughan locked everything up down there, and took the keys, and said no one was to go near it while he was away."

Basil hesitated, but only for an instant. "How forgetful he is!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Of course I've got to sleep there—as watchman. Well, I'll force the stairway door. You can telephone over for a locksmith this afternoon or to-morrow. He'll make a new lock and key."

Nanny departed, muttering. She did not like disobedience to the head of the house of Vaughan; but, on the other hand, she would have liked it much less had Gallatin stayed on at the house with Mr. Richard not there. Gallatin turned to Courtney. "Would it be too much trouble to send my meals to the shop?" he asked, in a constrained, formal tone that deeply offended her.

"Nanny will attend to that," replied she, eyes cold as winter seas.

"Thank you. If you should need anyone—there's the telephone to the shop. I'll re-connect it."

"You needn't bother."

"There have been several robberies round here of late, and——"

"As you please.... Thank you."

He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields of freedom beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient to resume work; he went reluctantly away. She stood gazing after him until he disappeared in the shrubbery at the far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was clouding.

Three uneasy, tedious days and two wakeful nights. In the third night, toward one o'clock, she tossed away her book, put out her light, and opened all her shutters as usual, to air the rooms. "If I opened his door and window, I might get a breeze," she said to herself. "It's terribly close." She crossed the hall, entered the room Gallatin had occupied, raised a window, and leaned upon the sill—it was the small window beyond the end of the balcony, and so did not extend to the floor. The sky was clear; the moon was hidden by the house. Stillness—peace—beauty—beauty of view and of odor—the lake with its dark banks, trees tossing up into the blue-black sky and shimmering with moonlight—perfumes of foliage and flowers and of the fresh-cut grass in the meadows beyond the highroad.

"It's as if everybody in the world were dead except me," she murmured. She listened again to get the weird effect of utter absence of sound. This time she heard the faint plaint of a cricket, appealing for company in its blindness and solitude. Then—her nerves became tense. From the balcony, which ended just a few feet to her left, came a stealthy sound—like a step. Softly she crossed the room—the hall—her own room, to the high-boy. She took from its top drawer her pistol. She returned to Gallatin's bedroom—noiselessly unlocked the shutters over one pair of the long windows opening on the balcony—unbolted one of them and held it ajar. Yes, there was some one on that balcony. Several of the neighbors had been robbed; now, it was their turn. The pistol was self-cocking. Taking it in her right hand, she drew back the window with her left, stepped out. She thrust the pistol into the very face of the man.

He sprang back. She saw what looked like a knife in one hand—nothing, apparently, in the other. At the same instant she heard him cry "Courtney!"

The pistol dropped from her nerveless hand to the balcony floor.

"It's I!" Gallatin exclaimed. "I heard a second-story window go up very softly—I was walking and smoking in the path. I came—climbed a pillar—and——"

"O God! God!" she sobbed. Down she sank to the floor, her face buried in her hands. "My love! My love! And I almost killed you!"

He knelt beside her. "Dearest—" He put his arm round her. Instantly he drew away and sprang to his feet. Up she started, gazing wildly round. "What is it?" she exclaimed. "Where?"

"Nothing—nothing," was his confused answer. But already she had felt a thrill from where his arm, his hand had been, and understood.

A stifling silence. He said: "I must go now. I'm sorry to have disturbed you." And with his conventionality that was of instinct he lifted his hat and made a dignified bow. In her hysterical state, she did not miss the grotesque humor of this; she burst out laughing. She leaned against the window frame and laughed until she had to wipe away the flowing tears. He stood staring blankly at her, with rising offense, as he, always sensitive about himself, suspected she was laughing at him. For his sense of humor was not nearly so keen as she had been deceived into thinking by his store of jokes and songs, of odds and ends of amusing cleverness, all entirely new to her, and therefore seeming practically original with him.

"What is it?" he said stiffly, when she was somewhat calm. "I should like to laugh, too." It seemed to him characteristic indeed, but most untimely, this display of her utter incapacity for seriousness.

"Hysteria—reaction—and your everlasting good manners," replied she. "Is there anything on earth that would make you forget you are a gentleman from Philadelphia?"

"Nothing but you," answered he bitterly. "Good night."

"Wait a second—please," she pleaded. And—why, she could not have told—she went on, to her own surprise, "The other day you said you had changed your mind and were going."

"Yes."

"Isn't that—cruel? I've learned to—to depend on your friendship."

He did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice betrayed his agitation. "I'm going because my manhood demands it. It may be weakness, but if I stayed I should—should go all to pieces."

"I can't argue against that. But there's one thing: As you're going, I want to be able to feel that there's no blot on our friendship. I've been condemning you unheard. Tell me——"

She paused. He felt how embarrassed she was. "What?" he asked gently. "Anything you wish to know?"

"Did you go to—to Pittsburg because—because—I sent you?"

He did not answer; it was too dark to make out his expression.

"I told you," she went on, speaking rapidly, as soldiers advance at a double quick, where if they advanced at ordinary pace they would have time to think, to be afraid, to turn and fly, "I told you to go back to your old haunts and cure yourself of—of your fancy for me.... You went?"

"You could suspect that!"

"If you did, don't lie to me. Say so, and I'll never think of it again. I'd understand. I'd—I'd—forgive."

"There is no woman for me but you," he answered, drawing a step farther from her and putting his hands behind his back. "I went because my aunt telegraphed for me. I came as soon as I could get away."

She clasped her hands and pressed them against her bosom. She leaned toward him, eyes like two of the few large stars in that summer night sky. "I am so glad," she murmured.

"Why did you suspect? How could you? Why did you care?"

"I was—jealous." The confession was almost inaudible.

"Courtney!" His arms impulsively extended.

She waved him back. "Go—go! I am upset—hysterical. Forget what I said. We are friends again. There is jealousy in friendship, too. Good night."

He hesitated. There she stood, all in that flimsy white—her coils of soft fine hair about her small head—her arms, her throat, her face tantalizingly half revealed in the dimness. "Courtney—do you love me?"

"No—no—not that," answered she, softly, hurriedly, pleadingly. "But I like you—and I'm a woman—and—and that tells the whole story. Good night, Mr. Basil." She held out her hand.

He did not take it. "I dare not touch you—to-night," he said. "I can't be trusted—nor can you."

"No," she assented, letting her hand drop. She drew a long, deep breath, and he also—a draught of that intoxicating air, surcharged with perfume and moonbeams and the freedom of the midnight outdoors.

"We are friends—through and through?"

"Yes." His reply was in the same low, hushed voice as her question.

"That is so much—so much." Their nerves like their voices were tense from the restraint of the passionate emotions damming up higher and higher within.

"And I'll see you at breakfast—and thank you for coming.... Good night, Mr. Basil."

He bared his head. She did not feel like laughing now at his "everlasting good manners," but was shivering, with hot tears in her eyes. He said "Good night, Mrs. Courtney."

Slowly she went in at the window of his room. Just as she was about to push the bolt, she opened it again. "You must come in this way," she said. "I'll let you out at the front door."

"No, I'll go as I came."

"Nonsense!"

"If any of the servants——"

"You make me feel guilty—when I'm not. Come!"

He entered the room. Both began to close the window. Their hands touched, hesitated, clasped. She was in his arms, his lips were upon hers. A long kiss. Her form relaxed; she drew her lips away to murmur, "Hold me. I'm—faint." Again their lips met, and he clasped her to him until he could feel the wild pulsing of her blood against his face, against his chest, against his arms—could feel it in every part of that small form, so utterly within his embrace. "Don't," she gasped. "It is too much—too much."

"I love you—I love you. You are mine—yes, you are, Courtney! There is nothing but love."

She gently released herself, swayed, leaned against the casement, looked up into the summer starlight. Again he seized her, and again his lips found hers. Her head dropped upon his shoulder. A sound—one of those creakings that haunt the stillness of a house in the night hours. She startled, stiffened, shut her teeth upon a scream.

"It was nothing," he said. He, too, was rigid, with every sense alert for danger.

"What have we done!" she exclaimed. They stood silent, facing each other, overcome with shame, burning with longing. "Oh—Basil!"

He took her in his arms. But she pushed him resolutely away. "No—not again," she said. He looked at her; she gazed up into the sky. "Love!" she murmured. "Love! And I—must not."

"I forgot—forgot!" he cried. "O God—Courtney—I love you more than honor." And he opened the other the door windows, rushed past her, vanished round the corner of the house. She sighed, shivered, stepped out upon the balcony, stood at the rail until she saw a dark form rapidly cross the lawns toward the shrubbery densely inclosing the Smoke House. She looked all round—sky—lake—woods. "It is so lonely," she sobbed. "So lonely!"

X

Ten minutes before breakfast time a knock at the hall door into her bedroom. She knew who it was that could not reach above the lower panels. "Come in!" she cried. Winchie entered—stopped short on the threshold.

"Good morning, Mr. Benedict Vaughan," said she, nodding at him by way of the mirror before which she was arranging her blouse at the neck. And he knew she was in a particularly fine humor.

"Have we got company? Who?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

"Aren't you going to take me for a walk after breakfast?"

"Of course. Don't we always go?"

"But it's raining."

"I know."

"Wouldn't it spoil that dress?"

"One'd think you had a sloven for a mother. Don't I always dress?"

"But that's a long skirt. And you're not putting on a shirt waist."

"I'll change after breakfast."

"Oh." This, however, contented him for a moment only. He eyed her critically as she made one insignificant little change after another, displaying a fussiness quite unusual. "I guess we're to have company—maybe."

"Not at all. We never have people to breakfast. What are you puzzling about?"

"Why didn't you put on the rain dress?"

Courtney's delicate skin was showing more than its normal color. She shook her head laughingly at him—this child whose questions were forcing her to see a truth she was striving might and main to hide from herself. "You don't like this dress?"

"Yes, I like 'em all. It isn't the dress, exactly."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know. It's—something. It made me think company right away." The bar of music from the gong came floating up from below. "There's breakfast!" he exclaimed. "Are you 'most ready?"

"Quite," replied she, with a last look at profile, back hair and back of skirt with the aid of a hand glass.

"Maybe there'll be company," said Winchie as they started.

"I'm sure there'll be corn muffins," said she. "I smell them."

"If there's hash, may I have a little?"

"A little."

The descent was slow as Winchie's legs were short. She listened at every step, but could hear no sound of the kind she hoped. At the sitting-room door she glanced round. He was not there. "He's in the dining room," she said half to herself.

"Who, mamma?"

Courtney startled, flushed. "What is it, dear?" she stammered guiltily.

"Has papa come?"

"No, I was thinking of Mr. Gallatin."

Winchie drew his hand from hers. But she did not note it; for they were at the threshold of the dining room, and no one was there but Lizzie. She and Winchie sat, but she did not begin. A moment and she went to the telephone in the hall, took down the receiver of the private wire. Soon she heard in Basil's voice, "Hello. What is it?"

"It's—I."

"Oh." Then silence.

"Did you hurt yourself last night?"

"No, not at all—thank you."

In a constrained voice: "I thought you were coming to breakfast."

"I felt it was better not to."

"Oh!—good-by." And she hung up the receiver.

Back in the dining room, uneasy under Winchie's serious steady gaze, she winced at his first remark: "Mr. Gallatin's company. There's you—and me—and the rest's company." After a pause, doubtfully: "Except papa. He's not quite company, I guess."

"Do you want some of the hash?"

"You said there wasn't to be company."

"Please! Please!" she cried. "You'll give me the headache."

"You said I was always to say what I had in my brains."

She bent over and kissed his hand. "And so you must."

"Do you say everything that's in your brains?"

She reddened again. "Everything Winchie'd understand," replied she. "After a while, when you grow up, you'll find a lot of things in your mind that it'd be of no use to say because nobody would understand—a lot of things you won't understand yourself."

"There is those in, already," said he solemnly.

She laughed. "No doubt."

As she did not encourage him, he addressed himself to the hash, which was the kind he liked—brown and not too dry, and with the potatoes in little cubes. She poured her coffee, just touched one of Mazie's famous corn muffins as she slowly drank it, and gave herself up to the clear and calm daylight reflections that make comment so cynical and so severe upon what we do and say and think under the spell of night. She put on a waterproof hat and suit, leggings and boots, and issued forth for a two-hours' tramp with Winchie, who was dressed in the same fashion. When they got back at ten, she felt she was not the same woman as the one who had the adventure with the burglar on the balcony. She saw Winchie into dry clothes and settled at his rainy-day games—then out she went again. She walked rapidly along the path to the Smoke House; was soon rapping at the heavy iron door of the laboratory. She rapped again and again, turned away angry, was almost back at the edge of the shrubbery when she remembered that Richard had locked the laboratory, that Basil could not possibly be there.

She hesitated, returned to the Smoke House, knocked at the door of the stairway leading up to the suite. No answer. She opened it, went upstairs. At the top she paused, called, "Anybody here?"

Basil appeared in the doorway of the sitting room. He was in a dark-blue summer house suit, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His face was very red; his eyes did not meet hers. "Lizzie straightened up and left about half an hour ago," said he.

"I came for a look round," explained she, admiring, without seeming to do so, his elegant and fashionable suit, the harmony of its color with his soft négligée shirt and flowing artist's tie. But then she always liked the way he dressed, the way he wore his clothes. "I come once a week in the morning to keep Lizzie up to the mark," she went on. "You're down in the laboratory at that time, so you haven't known what a model housekeeper I am."

He did not stand aside for her to enter.

"I also had another reason," pursued she. "Please don't choke up the doorway. I'm coming in."

He bowed, stood aside. She entered, glanced round the sober but not somber room with its walls, ceilings, floor, and furniture of walnut. It was a comfortable place and beautifully clean. "Jimmie attends to the floors?"

"Every week."

She glanced into the adjoining room—kalsomined walls and ceiling, a white oak floor, a big chest of drawers, a big mirror, a big table and chair, a roomy brass bedstead. "Any complaints?"

"Everything perfectly satisfactory," he assured her.

"Now for my other business—my real business," said she, disposing herself in one of the window seats. "You may continue to stand, if you prefer; but it would please me better if you sat."

He seated himself stiffly at the table desk. Her eyes were dancing with amusement at his overelaborated formality. It made him seem such a boy, made her feel vastly wiser and stronger and older than he.

"Why didn't you come to breakfast?" she inquired in a most businesslike tone.

"I made up my mind not to see you again until Vaughan returned."

"And then, to go away?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I prefer not to answer that."

"Why not?"

"It's true Vaughan and I are not exactly friends. Still, I've been disloyal. I shall be so no more."

She clasped her hands round one knee, looked at him with half closed eyes. "I do not like to be regarded as part of some one's else belongings," said she. "I belong to myself."

"I wish to God you did!"

"You attach too much importance to what a woman says and does on impulse. I was much upset last night. I said and did things that seem absurd to me in daylight."

"I am just as absurd, as you call it, in daylight as I was in moonlight."

She flinched, controlled herself, made an impatient gesture. "Don't say those things, or you'll spoil everything," she half pleaded, half commanded.

He strode to a window across the room from that in which she was sitting. "Everything is spoiled. I've simply got to go."

"No." She shook her head slowly. "You will stay, and we'll be friends again, as before."

"If I could only wipe out last night!" he cried, and he wheeled upon her.

She caught her breath. "Do you mean that?" she asked impulsively.

He stopped short, faced her, but his eyes were down. "No, I don't," replied he. "And that's the devil of it."

"Why?"

"If I honestly regretted last night, I could stay."

"Why do you lie to yourself?" she asked, crossing the room toward him. "You have no real intention of going."

His gaze sank. "I shall try to go," he muttered.

She laughed—after she had returned to the safer distance of the window seat. "What a passion for hypocrisy you men have. 'I shall try.' You hope that last tiny rag of a remnant will cover your real purpose."

"You think I am a dishonorable dog. I don't wonder at it."

"No, I don't. But I do think you are taking yourself entirely too seriously. You don't want to go, do you? And I don't wish you to go. And Richard doesn't want you to go."

"He'd compel it if he knew."

"But he doesn't know. Maybe, if I knew some things about you, I'd want you to go. Maybe, if you knew me thoroughly, you'd be eager to go. As it is, we all want things to stay as they are."

"Last night was a warning."

"Yes," she hastened to assent. "Let's heed it. Let's go back to friendship and not wander. My friend, you're letting your mind hang over just one subject, just one side of the relations of men and women. Isn't there more to me than—that?"

"Courtney!" he protested.

"Then let's be friends. Let's put aside what we can't have. Let's take and enjoy what we can. Let's not talk or think about—about love—any more than one frets about not being able to visit the moon. We've been finding life happy these last few weeks, with that subject never mentioned. Why not again? Are you too weak? Am I too uninteresting?"

"I tried once before and failed."

"But now that we've looked the situation straight in the face—now that we're both on guard—don't you think we can do better?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "I'm afraid to try—aren't you?"

Her eyes held him, they were so mysterious. "Not so much as I'm afraid not to try," replied she slowly.

He dropped into his chair again, sat staring at the blotting pad on the desk.

"Had you thought," she went on, "what would happen if we owned ourselves beaten and fled from each other?"

He presently lifted his eyes, looked at her in wonder. "And that never occurred to me!" he cried. "Why, our only chance now is to stay here and fight it out. If we shirked and tried to escape—" He paused.

She nodded gravely.

"If I went away, it'd only be to come back—desperate. And you——"

He did not finish his sentence. They sat silent a long time. "It would be horribly lonely with you gone," said she in an absent, impersonal way. "And loneliness breeds such wild longings."

A long silence. Then she rose. "Come up to the house and help me with those plans for a kitchen garden under glass," she suggested.

He nodded without looking at her, as if to show her that he understood all and accepted what was beyond question the less dangerous of their alternatives. "As soon as I dress, I'll be there," said he.

"I forgot. I must change, too. In an hour?"

"Less."

They shook hands in an emphatically comradely fashion, and she went. The former conditions were restored. They would not permit them to be interrupted again. They would demonstrate that, with a thousand, thousand other things, interesting, amusing, to talk and to think about, they could bar out love and keep it out.

An hour over the plans, then they had dinner, laughing and joking together like two children. They did not heed or even note the gloom of Winchie and old Nanny—she was waiting, as it was Lizzie's day out. Winchie sat mum and glum, eating in the deliberate way Courtney had taught him and never lifting his jealous eyes from his plate. Nanny—middle-aged, homely, prim with the added sourness of those who have never had the least temptation to be otherwise—Nanny glowered at Gallatin every time she came into the room. She had disapproved of him from the outset and had made no secret of it. This gayety of his, in the absence of the head of the house of Vaughan, changed that dinner for her into a Babylonish revel. She was shocked at Courtney's taking part, but was not surprised. What was to be expected of the weak and frivolous younger generation of her own sex, mad about adorning the body, scornful of the idea of "settling," and incredulous as to hell fire? Her anger concentrated on Gallatin. He was a man; he seemed a serious, moral man. Yet here he was, leading on the vain, weak woman—he a guest of Mr. Vaughan's—trusted by him—put upon his honor. "It's enough to bring Colonel 'Kill back a-harntin'," muttered she into the oven.... Early in the afternoon it cleared gloriously. Outdoors, the two trespassers upon ancient propriety giddied into still higher spirits. And after supper! They banged on the piano and sang "coon" songs and became so hilarious "that you'd think the settin' room was full," said Jimmie to his aunt.

Nanny scowled at the blue yarn sock she was knitting with wrinkled, rheumatism-knotted fingers. "Such goings-on!" she growled.

"Why not?" demanded Jimmie. "Where's the harm? And I reckon Mrs. V. knows how to take care of herself."

"Who said she didn't?" snapped Nanny.

Toward nine Courtney and Basil went out on the veranda. It was a perfect August night. The honeysuckle in great masses upon the rail was giving forth an odor that quieted them like pensive music. Under the trees and among the bushes the now pale, now bright lamps of the "lightning bugs" shone by scores and hundreds. There was a moon, sailing high and almost full. She thought she had never been so happy in her life. At former happy times there was in her no such capacity to appreciate and enjoy as experience had now given her. And what an ideal companion Basil was—so much the man of the world, wise, experienced, yet simple and amazingly modest. And how marvelously they fitted into each other's moods! She had never thought to find a human being with just the right combination of qualities—one who could be serious—always in an interesting way—and also as light as the lightest.

"Look at those elder blossoms," said Basil in a low voice, as if louder tones might break the spell and dissolve the beauty, delicate, fragile, unreal.

Elder bushes were the outer wall of the eastern shrubbery; their flowers, soft, feathery mats, deliciously sweet to smell, looked at that distance and in that light like a wall of snow. Courtney and Basil descended from the veranda, strolled across the lawn. She lifted her head, seemed to drink in the beauty with her whole face, and to exhale it in a newer, subtler loveliness and perfume.

"How sweet the boxwood hedge is after to-day's rain."

As they neared the water's edge, all other perfumes yielded to the powerful, heavy, sensuous odor of the locust blossoms, in white clusters above the bench on which they presently sat. They were silent, gazing across the lake where, in contrast to the darkness and silence of their shore, lay the town, a shimmer of light, a murmur of confused sounds mingling pleasantly. Down the lake, far out beyond the edge of the heavy shadow flung by the trees, a boat was coming, the man rowing, the girl playing the mandolin and singing. The tinkling of the mandolin and the fresh young voice floated over the waters to Courtney and Basil. She drew in her breath sharply, with a sense of alluring danger hovering. The boat drew nearer; the sounds were clearer—clearer, more tender, more moving. The mandolin tinkled. The free, sweet young voice sang: "I want you—ma honey!—yes I do! I want you—I want you——"

She clasped, clinched her hands in her lap. Basil started up. "I can't bear it!" he cried. "I can't!"

"No—no!" she exclaimed, and her strange look suggested a soul drowning. "Go—go quickly!" And drawing her white shawl about her shoulders, she fled into the house.

XI

"Where's Mr. Gallatin?" asked Winchie, as he and his mother were finishing breakfast next morning.

"At the Smoke House, I guess," replied she. There was a far-away look in her eyes, and their lids were heavy. Although Lizzie had been unusually unsuccessful in arranging the flowers, she left the bowl untouched in the center of the table—a solid mass of carnations which she could have changed into a miracle of lightness and grace.

"Is he coming to breakfast?" asked Winchie.

"No—at least, I suppose not. How'd you like to go to grandpa's?"

"Will Mr. Gallatin go?"

Courtney's cheeks flushed. "No," she said.

"Then I'd like it—for a while."

"We are going to-morrow," said Courtney. "To-morrow morning."

"Is grandpa sick?"

"No. Nobody is sick."

"Then why?"

Courtney's face wore a queer smile. "We'll help grandma and Aunt Lal and Aunt Ann put up fruit and jam and preserves."

"Will we stay long?" inquired the boy anxiously.

"Until—until your father—gets back."

Winchie looked much downcast. "Why?" he asked.

"Why not?" said Courtney. "And now, you'll help me pack and I'll help you."

It was a busy day, as there were many things to arrange besides the packing. Gallatin did not appear at the house all day, and Courtney did not expect him. Toward ten that night the packing was finished and everything ready for an early departure. Courtney went downstairs and out across the moonlit lawn. Slowly, with gaze straight ahead, she strolled toward the lake, toward the summer house in the copse at the western edge of the grounds. She entered, curled herself up on the broad seat, her elbow upon the rail, her hand supporting her chin. She watched the moonlight in the ripples along the middle of the lake. From time to time, she lifted her head, strained her eyes into the encircling shadows, then resumed her attitude, mental as well as physical, of forlorn abstraction. Something less than half an hour, and when she lifted herself to glance round for the third or fourth time, she did not sink back, but slowly straightened, her breath coming quickly.

"Who's there?" she called softly, addressing the deep shadows over the path by which she had come.

No answer but the chorus of tiny creatures murmuring excitedly in every crevice and beneath every blade and leaf.

"Who is it?" she demanded, but not loudly or nervously. She stood up.

"Only I," came in Basil's voice, and he advanced and stood between the entrance pillars of the open rustic pavilion.

"Oh!" said she. And she resumed gazing over the water, but did not resume her seat.

"I saw you cross the lawn," he explained. "And I was afraid some one might intrude."

"Thank you," said she gratefully.

"You knew it was I—didn't you?" he went on.

A brief silence, then—"Yes," she admitted, and gave a little laugh.

"Why do you laugh?"

"Because I just realized that I was expecting you—that I came here hoping to see you. How one does lie to oneself!"

"Do you wish me to leave you?"

"No.... What a beautiful night it is!"

"The loveliest I ever saw."

"These locust blossoms— The perfume makes me feel languid—but not sleepy."

"I guess it is the locusts," he said. "I feel that way, too."

"I'm taking Winchie to my father's for a visit—in the morning."

"So Jimmie said."

"We'll stay until Richard comes back."

"I supposed so."

A silence. Then she: "I must go in soon," and an instant later, without realizing it, seated herself.

"I wrote to Starky—Estelle—to-day.... To ask her to fix the date for the marriage."

She shivered.

"I decided it was best for me to commit myself."

She buried her face in her hands.

"And," he went on, "you know I shall always love you—always! ... I say that because—in a few minutes now we'll part, and never see each other again."

With her face between her hands, she gazed at the dancing surface of the watery highway of moonlight, and repeated monotonously—"never see each other again." Then, after a moment, "How heavy the perfume of the locusts is."

"Yes," replied he, "but so sweet."

Then the thin film of surface over their emotions suddenly burst. "Never again—oh, my Courtney!" he cried between set teeth. Both had thought all day that they were calm and resigned. They knew now how they had been deceiving themselves. He flung away from her. Both knew what was coming, knew it was too late to save themselves, felt the wild reckless thrill of terror and rapture that precedes the breaking down of all barriers, the breaking up of all foundations, the free sweep of unfettered passion. So young—so young—with such a long stretch of empty years—and they never to see each other again!

"How can I live on, without you to help me?" she said.

"It'll be easier for you than for me. You have—your boy. I have—nothing." He sat down, away from her, stared into the blackness of the copse. "Nothing," he repeated. He was holding his breath and waiting for the inevitable storm to break.

"Basil!" she cried, and in impulsive sympathy reached out and touched him. "Won't it be something—to know that you have my heart—my—love?"

She felt him trembling, and there was a sob in his voice as he answered: "But when your arms ache with emptiness, you can put them round Winchie. While I—Courtney, how can I touch another woman, when it's you—you—you—" And his groping hand met hers, clasped it. He bent his head, kissed her hand—the back, the palm, then the fingers one by one. And they softly touched his cheek. "Basil!" she sighed.

The faint wind agitated the clusters of locust blooms; their perfume descended in heavy voluptuous waves. He pressed his hands one against each of her cheeks. "Courtney," he murmured. "My love—my dear love!" Their lips met.

"We must not!" she pleaded, her arms about his neck.

"After to-night," he reminded her, "we, who love, will never see each other again."

"Never again!" she moaned.

It was the signal both were unconsciously, yet deliberately, awaiting. He gave an inarticulate cry, caught her up as a strong wind a flower. "I've had enough of right and wrong," cried he. "You are mine! I will not let you go. I love you—I love you—I love you!" And he showered kisses upon her until she, dizzy and fainting, yet never so alive, was clinging to him, was calling him endearing names, was laughing and sobbing. And in that darkness and mad frenzy of longing and despair they could pretend to themselves that it was all as unreal as a dream—was, in fact, a dream, or at worst, impulse—irresistible, irresponsible.

He felt her heart flutter, halt in its steady, strong beat within her breast close against his. She raised her head from his shoulder, listened. "What is it?" he whispered.

"Listen."

A bird broke from the copse and with a great noise of wings against leaves blundered away to another and higher place. "A bird—that was all," said he.

"Sh—h! No. They never stir so suddenly at night without cause." She was cold, was shivering. They looked at each other, tingling with guilty alarm.

"I'll go see."

"Yes—do."

He disengaged himself lingeringly, with a parting caress of his lips along her cheek. "It's cold," she murmured. "And I'm—I'm afraid." Never before in all her life had she been afraid.

He went softly along the path until the shadows hid him. After a moment he returned to the entrance. "I see nothing," said he.

"And I hear nothing—any more," replied she. "You don't know what a queer, creepy sensation I had. It was—was—as if some one were near us."

He did not seat himself by her again. "Isn't it—very—very late?" he said hesitatingly.

"Perhaps. But come, dear. Let's forget. It was nothing. Oh, I was so happy—and now—Basil, I'm cold."

Instead of sitting and taking her in his arms he drew her to her feet. "I saw your front door open," he said. "I think you'd better go."

She flung herself into his arms. "No—no!" she cried. "Not yet."

He held her closely, but soon released her. "You had better go," urged he, and she felt nervousness and constraint in his tone, in his touch.

She laughed quietly. "What are you afraid of?"

"Nothing!" he retorted stoutly. "Still, the door is open, and some one might——"

"Why, you're quite cold! ... Basil, what is it?"

"Nothing—nothing at all," replied he, his arms round her again, his lips upon hers.

Presently she said: "I thought you were neglecting me rather long. It's a habit men have after—after a woman is entirely theirs."

"Don't say those things, even in joke," he begged, so seriously that it jarred on her overwrought nerves.

"If you take that sort of remarks in earnest," said she, a trace of resentment in her tone, "I'll be likely to believe there's something in it."

"It was so—so frank," apologized he.

"Why not speak frankly?" said she. "One of the joys of loving you is that we'll be entirely frank with each other. I'll never be afraid to show you how much I love you, or to say whatever thought comes into my mind. And you must feel that you can be your natural self always, can speak out any thought you may have, no matter what it is. All that doesn't mean much to you. But to me—" She drew a long, deep breath. "You—a man—couldn't possibly know how delicious it is to a woman to be able to be her—her naked self! ... You're not listening. You don't hold me tightly. Are you shocked?"

"No," answered he with constraint. "I keep thinking of—of—that door."

She was silent, offended.

"I wasn't quite frank with you a moment ago."

"Already!" she sighed. Then, repentantly: "I know I'm silly. But it means so much to me to feel that we—you and I—can stand before each other, just as we are. Oh, I've hidden myself so long, Basil. Your love—the great temptation of it was that it meant freedom. If I were your wife, you'd expect all sorts of conventional things of me. If you were my husband, I'd feel and you'd feel we had to live up to standards and do customary things. As it is, our love's free—free!"

He was silent.

"Basil, don't you feel that way?"

"Yes, dear," he answered absently. "But—I must tell you. When I went out—a while ago to look, I saw Nanny on the porch."

Even in that dimness he saw the terror in her face. "On the porch!" she gasped. She sprang up. "Why didn't you tell me before?" she cried angrily.

"I—I thought it might alarm you foolishly."

"I'm not a hysterical fool. Please don't forget that—again."

"Courtney!"

"Oh, forgive me—my love." When they had embraced: "Yes—I must go—at once.... Why can't you come with me? Start as soon as you see I'm at the door. But you mustn't cross the lawn. You must go round by the shadows. It would be quite safe. You needn't go back to the shop."

"Impossible!"

She was silent, waiting for him to feel how hurt she was and to reassure her. But he stood aloof, and presently asked in a constrained voice, "How long will you be at your father's?"

"At my father's!" she exclaimed. "Why, I shall not go!"

"You must," he insisted. "You've made all the arrangements."

"You can send me away—now?"

"Please—dear. Don't be unreasonable. If you changed your plan everybody'd think it strange."

"Everybody—who?"

"Nanny, for instance."

"Nanny? Why should I care what Nanny thinks? My first scare was only—guilty conscience. Basil, why are you so queer—so absent and—distant? Tell me—just what it is in your mind?"

She rested her hands pleadingly on his shoulders and looked up at him. In her eyes, as in his, shone the fever of their delirium. He took her hands, kissed her. "Don't be foolish," he said, trying to laugh. "I guess I am a little bit unnerved."

But she was not satisfied. "Basil—do you regret?"

"Courtney! Courtney!" he pleaded. "That's the way to tear our happiness down, stone by stone, till nothing's left but ruins. You must not be suspicious." He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder with an air of possession. "Of course I love you, more than ever."

"You say it in a tone that—that sounds like superior to inferior." She sighed. "Is nothing in the world up to its promise? Here, I thought we'd be perfectly happy—two pariahs together—two lost souls—but accepting our punishment of secret shame and hypocrisy—accepting it gladly, as it was the price we had to pay for freedom and each other. And already, in the first hour, we're almost quarreling. It must not be, Basil."