THE HUNGRY HEART (continued 4)

"No, dearest," he cried. "And it will not be. We will be happy. Trust me. I'm unstrung—and maybe you, too. But you know I love you—more than I ever thought. And really you ought to go in the morning—really, dearest! You need stay only two days. You can come home the second day. Don't you see we must—must—must be careful? Now that there's something to conceal, we can't act any longer as we did."

She laid her clasped hand on her breast, looked wistfully up at him. "We can't ever be free and unafraid again, can we?" said she. "It isn't just one act of—of concealment—is it?—and freedom and openness afterwards. I see lies—and lies—and yet more lies—stretching away—away—until—" She shuddered, hid her face in his shoulder. "Oh, my love!"

"I'd tell all the lies in the world to have you." He embraced her almost roughly. "All—all! And care not a rap. You—you are my god and my morality. To love you, to have you, to keep you—that's all. The rest is trash."

"Yes—yes," echoed she feverishly. "The rest is trash. We've got the best. Love!"

"And we'll hold on to it—always!"

"Must I go in the morning, when life has just begun? How can I? No—no—don't answer. I know you're right. I'll go—and ... Good by!"

She flung her arms about him. He caught up her small, warm body with its soft curves and its radiations of vivid, perfumed life. Their lips clung together. They separated, laughed dizzily. She waved her arm and darted up the path. From the shadows he watched her cross the lawn, like some creation of the summer and the moonlight. In the doorway she paused, waved to him once more; the door closed. Then he, like a thief, sneaked along the retaining walls at the lake shore—now stooping to keep in the deep shadow, out of sight of anyone who might be watching from the house—now advancing erect with stealthy swiftness—until he was able to strike into the darkness of the path to the Smoke House.

Midway in undressing his eyes chanced upon her picture, framed and hanging opposite the foot of the bed—a large photograph, with Winchie, a tiny baby, against her shoulder, his fat check pressing upon hers. Basil stood before the picture, his expression a very human and moving mingling of awe and adoration and passion. Suddenly he remembered to whom that picture belonged. "But not she!" he said aloud defiantly. Nevertheless, he flushed, hung his head, switched off the light, and sought his bed. "How can I ever face him?" he muttered. Then: "She is mine! She never was really his. I take nothing that belongs to him. I take nothing she could give, or ever did give, to him."

He fell immediately into a sound sleep—the exhaustion of nerves so long on fierce tension. But about two in the morning he started up, listened. Yes, some one was moving beneath the window. He went to it, looked down. There was Courtney, swathed in a long, dark cloak. He thrust his feet into slippers, drew on a big dressing gown, descended, and opened the door. He stretched out his arms.

She flung herself against his breast. "I couldn't go without seeing you again," she panted. "After I left you, and got into bed, I began to think all sorts of dreadful things about you. You acted so strangely. And then I felt ashamed of myself, felt I must come and beg your pardon. And—and—here I am. Are you glad?"

His laugh was answer enough. He took her in his arms, carried her up to the sitting room, set her down on the sofa. "How light you are!" he cried. "But how strong—I've seen you swing Winchie to your shoulder as if he were nothing at all. Now—please—won't you let your hair down? There never was such hair as yours."

She sat up, let the cloak fall away. The moon was flooding the room. As she sat there, with eyes sparkling and small, sensitive face shy-bold, she looked as if she had sprung to mortal life from an old folk song about loreleis and nymphs and enchanted princesses. "You floated in on the moonbeams," he declared. "I'm afraid, if I don't shut the window, you'll flit away."

"That'd not stop me," laughed she. And she began to take her hair down. Just as it was about to unroll, she paused. "Wouldn't you like to take it down yourself?"

He went round behind her, drew out the hairpins one by one, fumbling softly, lingeringly for them, keeping them carefully. Her hair loosened, uncoiled, fell about her in a shimmering veil. "Oh, my love!" he cried. "My beautiful Courtney!" And he took the soft, perfumed veil in his hands, kissed it again and again, buried his face in it, wrapped her head and his together in it.

She laughed delightedly, then drew away, looking at him with mock severity. "And where, sir, did you learn how to make a woman so happy?"

"What things you do say!" he laughed, just a little bit scandalized. "I might ask the same question of you."

"And I can answer it—" with a mocking smile—"without evasion. Imagination. I've so often thought—and thought—and thought—what I would be to a man I freely loved—one I wasn't afraid of scandalizing. Oh, I know I shock you—for there's a great deal you've yet to learn about women—that they're human, just like men. But you'll learn—and then I think you'll see I'm good—for I am. I couldn't be bad—hate anyone—play mean tricks, say or do mean things. Don't you wish I were tall—wish there were more of me?"

"I couldn't live through it."

"And you really—really—love me?"

He held her tightly by the shoulders, gazed into her eyes. "So much that, if you were untrue to me, I'd kill you."

"Now, what made you think of that?"

"I don't know."

Thoughtfully: "I guess it is because I'm giving myself to you when I am—am— Now, there you go, shocked again."

He laughed recklessly. "Give me time," said he, "and I'll get used to it. You say you'd rather I showed just how I felt than locked it away and pretended."

"Yes—yes—a thousand times! I don't mind your being shocked—not really." With a queer little laugh, "I'm shocked myself. Somehow I seem to delight in shocking myself—and you. Loving you is—all sorts of pleasures and pains. I want them all!"

"All!" he echoed. "Yes—all!"

Midway in her embrace she stopped him, pushed him laughingly away with, "But you weren't quite frank a while ago."

"When?"

"There at the lake."

"Why do you think so?"

"Did you ever see one of those little toy spaniels—how they quiver and shiver all the time? I'm just as sensitive as that. You mustn't try to deceive me—ever! You mustn't say or act any of those hypocrisies of what some people call good taste, either. They're not necessary with me. They'd make me feel deceived. I might not confess I knew—and then—'The little rift within the lute.'"

"I guess I'll tell you," he said for the moment deeply impressed. "Yes, I will."

"Tell me everything—everything. There mustn't be any concealment—anything to lie hid away in the depths of some dark closet to rot and rot and infect the whole house." She suddenly lowered her head; and, as the full meaning of her words, the meaning she had not foreseen, reached him, he, too, became ill at ease.

Presently he said: "I didn't want to frighten you needlessly. When I saw Nanny—she was—just going up the steps of the porch."

Courtney's eyes widened and her face blanched. "You think—" she began when she could find voice.

"I couldn't tell which direction she had come from," he replied. "But it's no matter. She couldn't know."

Courtney remembered the darkness—how grateful she had been for its friendly aid. "No," said she resolutely. "She couldn't know."

"Certainly not," echoed he, as if the idea that she could were absurd. "But it made me realize how careful we must be."

"Yes," replied she thoughtfully. "Yes." And she was clinging to him, was sobbing. "Oh, my love—my love—I don't care what comes, if only it does not separate us.... Look! Look!" she cried, pointing out into the sky. "Dawn! I must fly. Where are my slippers!"

He found them for her, put them on, bundled her into her cloak, picked her up, and hurried downstairs with her. "I'm not so little," said she. "It's because you're so big and strong. One kiss—quick!"

He kissed her—on the lips and, as she turned to go, again on the nape of the neck. "Day after to-morrow!" he cried.

"Yes, I'll come here at nine, rain or shine."

And she ran along the path. The moon had set; it was intensely dark. Arriving within sight of the house she stopped short. There were lights, upstairs and down, shadows of moving figures on the curtains. "God!" she ejaculated. "What shall I do!" And for the first time the great fear—the fear a woman has when she thinks she has lost her reputation—buried its talons in her throat and its beak in her heart. Do? Face it! She lifted her head high, gathered herself together, advanced boldly. As she entered the front door she ran into Nanny.

"What's the meaning of this?" she demanded. In the same instant her courage fled and she leaned faint against the wall. "Winchie!" she gasped. "Has something happened to him?"

Nanny was standing stiffly with eyes down—a sullen figure, accusing, contemptuous. But she answered respectfully enough if surlily: "Winchie missed you and came up and waked me and Mazie just now."

Down the stairs came the boy, sobbing, shouting, "Mamma! Mamma! I lost you."

Courtney caught him up, hugged him, kissed him. "You silly baby!" she cried, laughing. "What a fuss about nothing. Put out the lights, Nannie." Halfway up the stairs she hesitated. Would it be more natural to make an explanation or to say nothing? She decided it was best, more like her usual self, to say nothing. "Put out the lights and go to bed," she repeated.

XII

She had said nine o'clock, but it was not quite half past eight, the next evening but one, when she appeared at the edge of the clearing. He was seated in the entrance to the upper story, his gaze fixed on the opening in the trees where the path emerged. At first glimpse of her in the long dark cloak, he flung away his cigarette and rushed toward her. He embraced her, then held her off as if to reassure himself that it was really she. "Do you still love me?" he asked. "Are you sure?"

The emerald eyes flashed up at him. Her face, revealed in the starlight, was gravely earnest and sweet. But beneath her calm, as beneath his, there was evidently still raging the hysteria that had whirled both clean out of the realm of sanity and sense—the fever that keeps whirling the soul it seizes from pinnacle to abyss and back again. "Ever since we separated," said she, "I've been imagining I was struggling to give up our love. But as the time for me to come got nearer and nearer, I realized what a fraud I was."

"Do you love me?"

"I am here."

They sat side by side in the entrance. "May I smoke?" he asked.

"Do." As he opened his cigarette case, "Let me have one."

"I didn't know you smoked."

"Oh—a little—at college. We girls used to do it, for the sensation of being devilish. Wouldn't you like me to smoke?"

"If you wish to."

"You don't approve?"

"Well—I don't exactly like for women to smoke or use slang. Those things seem sort of unsexing. Of course, it's only an idea."

She smiled indulgently, rolling the cigarette to loosen the tobacco, as Basil did, with a great air of being an old hand at it. "I'm afraid you're narrow."

"I guess I am."

"Gracious! What you must be thinking of me!"

As she said it, she gave that little audacious laugh of delight in her freedom to be frank. But he became grave, and it was with deep earnestness that he answered, "I love you."

She, too, was grave and thoughtful now. "What a difference that does make! Then everything—anything seems all right."

"And is!"

She put her arm through his. "Here, take your cigarette. I'll not distress you."

"No—do smoke."

"I'll confess the real reason. It makes such a nasty taste in my mouth."

He tossed his cigarette into the grass. His every gesture—and hers—betrayed what a strain they were undergoing, how deceptive was their appearance of sanity.

"Now, what did you do that for?" exclaimed she.

"I oughtn't to smoke when I'm going to kiss you."

She put her cigarette to his lips. "Please," she urged, "I like you to smoke. Don't you know a woman likes everything, even the unpleasant things, that make a man different from her? ... Smoke, and tell me what you've been doing. It's forty hours since we were together."

"I've been conscious of pretty nearly every one of them," said he. "I've done nothing but think of you."

"Sad thoughts?"

"Very. But I'll not do that again. What's the use, Courtney? We've got to have each other. What's the use of struggling against it?"

"I can't realize it—I can't," said she absently. "Last night—out at father's—I got up in the middle of the night and ran and looked at myself in the glass. And—" She paused.

"Yes?"

"I could look myself straight in the eyes and tell myself what I had been to you, and not feel like hiding. Is it that I'm not doing anything bad or that I'm so bad I don't know good from bad?"

"It's love," declared he gloomily.

"I can look back now and see that from the beginning—from the day I saw you cared—I've been coming straight to you. I was lying to myself."

"I, too," he confessed. "Courtney, we've been—and are—in the clutch of a force that's stronger than we."

"I—don't—know," said she slowly. Then, with her arms round his neck, "and I don't care. If conscience tolls its ugly bell, I'll shout 'Love! Love!' so loud that it'll be drowned. I must have love—I will have love. And how can I help loving you, who are so altogether wonderful in every way? You've only kissed me once since I came."

"Twice."

"And what's twice?"

For answer he gathered her into his arms, carried her up to the sitting room. With all of her within his arms, he sat in the big armchair. "Now!" he exclaimed. "We'll be happy!"

"Yes. Oh, what a scare when I was here before!"

She sat up and told him about Winchie's raising the hue and cry for her. He listened with a somber countenance. When she had, finished he said, "And where's Winchie now!"

"In bed—asleep."

"But—if he wakes!"

"Why, he'll lie perfectly quiet till he sleeps again. I told him never to repeat that escapade."

"But he may get frightened——"

"You forget, sir," said she smilingly, "he's my child. He could not be afraid.... What a mournful face!"

"I'm horribly jealous of him."

"If Winchie didn't keep us apart, he never could push us apart now."

"I'm very selfish," he said despondently. "I want all—all!"

"Here we are—sad again."

He sighed. "And in a few minutes you'll have to go."

"Why?"

"You can't stay away from the house. Something might happen."

"Croak! Croak!"

He passed his hand impatiently over his face. "I'm a fool!" he exclaimed. "I must learn to be content with what I have—when it's so much—so vastly more than I ever dared hope—or—" He stared out into the darkness. The ducks among the reeds close inshore were quacking discontented forebodings of rain. "I trifle with my good fortune."

"What's the matter, dear?" she asked, her cheek against his.

"Nothing. Nothing."

"What have you been thinking while I was away? ... Look at me, Basil."

"It seems to me I can't ever look—anyone in the face again."

She understood who "anyone" was. She pressed closer to him, said caressingly: "Except me. You can always look at me, and I at you. And what more do we want?"

He did not echo her tender reckless laugh, with its threat of a storm of hysterical tears. "You have good excuse for what you've done. But there's no excuse for me."

She seemed to be shrinking within herself. He gently put her on the arm of the chair, went to the window, stood there with his back to her. "The truth is, I've been in hell since you left, Courtney—a hell of remorse!"

"Remorse! Excuse!" Her bosom heaved; her eyes flashed. "Oh, you men! What hypocrites you are! ... Tell me, do you wish to give me up?"

He faced her. "I cannot give you up," was his inflexible reply.

"Then dismiss all these gloomy ideas," urged she. "Excuse? You think I have the excuse of—of his indifference, of his tyranny and bad temper—of his——"

"For God's sake, Courtney, don't say those things!"

"I think them—you think them. Why not say them?"

"Yes—you are right. I am a hypocrite."

"How easily we hurt each other," she sighed. Then, "But how easily it heals, too." She went on: "We were talking of excuses. Anyone can find an excuse for anything. Only weak people look for excuses." She elevated her head proudly. "I want no excuse for what I did, for what I'm doing. I need no excuse. Do I not own my heart, my self? I have the right of my youth, of my love. Isn't that enough?"

"The right of our love!" he exclaimed, as gay and confident as he had been depressed and doubtful. "We're wasting time. Let's talk and think only of love." And he drew her down into the chair, into his arms. "Courtney—when he does come—promise me you will not—will not——"

There he halted, for the wave that passed over her as she lay in his arms told him that she understood. "You know I will not," she said. "I belong to you, now."

"But he may——"

She laid her fingers on his lips. "Trust me," she said. "I've planned it all. Only, that's the one thing we mustn't ever talk about." She laughed, with desperate straining to be audacious. "There is honor, even in the dishonorable."

"You—dishonorable? I, perhaps—yes, certainly. But you—you belong to yourself. It is I who will play the part of dishonor. You can be as cold and distant as you like. I must smile and pretend to be a friend." He shrugged his shoulders, laughed unpleasantly.

"That's manly!" exclaimed she, nerves instantly unstrung.

"What can you expect of—of me?" he replied, so down that she straightway relented.

"Let's drop this subject, dear," she pleaded. "Let's never speak of it again—and think of it as little as possible. It's one of the conditions of our life. We will admit it—and ignore it."

"How can we drop a subject that crops out, comes to the tips of our tongues, every time we look at each other? But be patient, dear. I shall grow hardened——"

"Oh, but you must not, Basil!" she cried in dismay. "We must not. That's our danger, and we must fight it.... Isn't it pitiful! If we were two coarse people, mere animals, merely the ordinary man and woman, why, we'd be happy and never give remorse a thought."

"If we suffer more, we enjoy more," said he, clasping her as if some power had tried to snatch her away. "When I feel ashamed, Courtney, all I have to do is to remember your hair, to feel again its soft splendor on my face, between my fingers—and I am delirious."

"Love—always love!" she murmured. "No price too great to pay for it."

They heard steps—stealthy steps—upon the walk, just under the bedroom window. "Yes, yes, I hear," he whispered, as in the darkness she clutched his arm. He went to the open window, she sitting up, rigid, wide-eyed, with bated breath. Keeping in the shadow, he glanced down. He saw a man, half hidden in the shrubbery. A moment and his eyes focused so that he saw the outline of the man's face, the angle of his head—saw that the man was peering up toward that very window. He went softly back to her. "Go into the sitting room," he said. "I think it's one of those prowlers."

"Sh-h!" she warned. "Listen— On the stairs."

Both stopped breathing and listened. It was the faintest of sounds, but unmistakable. Yes, it was a robber. He was ascending the stairway—slowly, silently, steadily, up and up, step by step. Now they would miss the sound altogether; then it would come again—nearer, softer. Their hands were clasped—were like ice, but without a tremor.

"How did he get in?" she breathed.

"Don't you remember? I left the outside door unlocked—wide open."

"Sh-h!"

"Go back into the sitting room," he whispered.

"No—I stay here with you."

The awful sound, so faint, so relentless, was in the hall. "Go!" he commanded. "You'd be in my way, dear. If I need you, I'll call."

She saw that he was right—that at least he must not feel hampered. She pressed his hand, glided into the sitting room. Suddenly she almost cried out. "Is the bedroom door locked?" she called in a hoarse undertone.

He made a silent dash for it, to lock it. Too late. It opened. He could see nothing in the black hall. He made a forward leap, right hand clinched, left hand open and ready to inclose a throat. His fist thrust past the man's head, but his left fingers closed upon the throat, and his weight bore the man to the floor. But the prowler was not taken wholly by surprise. Basil instantly realized how fortunate it was that he had got the initial advantage. The two grappled; a short, sharp struggle and Gallatin felt the form under him relax. He took an even stronger hold on the throat, planted his knee squarely in the chest. "I've got him!" he cried to Courtney. "Go! Go!"

But he triumphed too soon. With a tremendous effort the prowler tore Gallatin's fingers from his throat. "Good God, Gallatin—is it you?" he gasped.

"Vaughan!"

Gallatin dropped all to pieces. But Courtney was instantly herself—and more. On went the lights, and she burst out laughing. Gallatin rose, staggered over to the window seat. Vaughan, not without difficulty, picked himself up from the floor, gazed savagely from Gallatin to his wife. She kept on laughing, more and more wildly, laughed until she fell into a chair, sat there laughing, with the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Was ever anything so ridiculous!" she gasped. And she looked from one to the other, and went off again.

Vaughan, straightening his collar and coat and waistcoat, appealed to Gallatin. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.

By way of reply Gallatin stared at him, as if debating whether or not to renew the attack.

"What does this mean, Courtney?" Vaughan said to her sharply.

"That's what we'd like to know," replied she.

"Why did Gallatin——"

"Serves you right," interrupted Courtney. "Why did you come prowling round here? Why didn't you go home?"

Vaughan looked sheepish. "Well, I wanted to make sure everything was all right here."

Courtney smiled with resentment in her raillery. "You were more anxious about your workshop than about your wife and child."

Vaughan reddened. "Oh, I knew everything was all right at the house," he stammered. His glance fell upon the tumbled bed. "Why!" he exclaimed. "Some one's living here!"

Gallatin, startled, was standing up with his hands clinched. But she had no fear. She did not feel guilty toward this man, who was nothing real to her; and she knew enough about him to know that his absolute belief that good women were good, and could not stray even in thought, made it impossible to tax his credulity. All that was necessary was boldness. "Mr. Gallatin is living here," said she composedly.

"Gallatin!" exclaimed Vaughan. "Why, I locked the whole place up." He wheeled on Basil. "How did you get in here?" he asked. "Didn't I make it plain to you from the outset—didn't we have a distinct understanding——"

"Richard!" interrupted Courtney sharply. "Mr. Gallatin is here because I sent him here."

Richard concentrated his angry attention upon her. "You! What right had you——"

"You will not address me in that tone," said she haughtily. "You come back home, like a thief in the night. You give me a fright. You half kill Mr. Gallatin, and then you begin to quarrel. I repeat, Mr. Gallatin is here because I sent him."

"I thought it best to live here while you were away," said Gallatin stiffly. He did not wish to throw upon Courtney the whole burden, yet he hardly dared speak, as he could not see how she hoped to extricate herself and him. In his guilt, in his ignorance of such a character as Richard's, he was amazed at her having hope. He thought her courage superhuman.

Vaughan glanced, half amused, half disdainful, from one to the other. "Are you two still disliking each other? I had forgotten that."

"You are mistaken," said Gallatin. "I do not dislike Mrs. Vaughan."

But Vaughan did not hear. "What on earth—" he suddenly ejaculated, staring at Gallatin, then at Courtney—"What on earth were you two doing here in the dark?"

Gallatin grew white as chalk. But Vaughan was looking at Courtney. "We weren't in the dark," said she, with never a tremor of eye or voice. "We were in the sitting room." As she spoke she threw open the door between the two rooms. Gallatin gazed into the sitting room like a man seeing a miracle. The lights there were all bright. The instant she had heard her husband's outcry, she had turned on the lights in both rooms, the buttons being on either side of the same wall just beyond the door frame; and she had closed the sitting-room door before the two rose from the floor.

"Come in here," she said, leading the way. "I kept getting more and more afraid at the house," she went on in rapid, easy explanation. "It was very lonesome—there were several robberies in the neighborhood—and Nanny and Lizzie and Mazie sleep so far away from my rooms. I took Winchie and went home for a couple of days, but it wasn't convenient for me to stay there—and so dull! I came back to-night, and strolled down here after dinner to make my peace with Basil—" Here she made a mocking bow to him—"and to ask him to please come up and guard the house. How well you're looking, Richard!"

"I do feel bang up," said Vaughan, "except here—" He touched his throat where Gallatin's fingers had closed in. "The trip was just what I needed. I went to a specialist in New York, and I serve notice on both of you that I've turned over a new leaf. I'll take regular exercise again—and stop grinding away all day and all evening. The great discovery of the fuel that will make it as cheap to be warm as to be cold can wait. Perhaps it'll come the sooner if I keep in condition."

"That's sensible," said Courtney. "And you must live at home, and let Mr. Gallatin stay on here."

"It's good advice. I'll take it," assented Vaughan promptly. "Being here tempts me to work when I ought to be resting." He threw a good-humored look at Gallatin. "I guess you're not likely to succumb to that temptation, old man."

"Not I," said Basil, with the first sickly hint of a smile.

"Gad, it's good to be home!" Vaughan was gazing at Courtney now, in his eyes the proprietorial look, bold, amorous. "She's looking well—eh—Gallatin?"

Basil did not answer. He was glowering at Vaughan, and biting his lip, and his fingers were twitching.

Courtney rose. "Let's all go up to the house," proposed she: "You'll come, won't you, Mr.—beg pardon—Basil?"

Gallatin stared coldly at her. Her "superhuman courage" now seemed sheer brazenness to him. "Thanks—no," said he in a suffocating voice.

"Hope I didn't damage you, Gallatin," said Vaughan with the rather careless solicitude of man for man.

"Not in the least," replied Gallatin curtly.

"Oh, come now, old man," cried Richard. "Look at my throat." He inspected it himself in the mirror ruefully. "If I can forgive you, you ought to forgive me. Come along, Courtney."

He took her by the arm, smiling at her, she mustering a return smile. Basil was looking intently at her, with an expression of cold fury. When he caught her eye he sneered. She, already at the breaking pitch, could not endure that contempt. She looked piteously at him, gave a low cry, sank upon the sofa, fell over in a dead faint.

Basil gazed stupidly at her. Vaughan dashed into the bath room, reappeared with a wet towel, rubbed her temples and her wrists with it. She opened her eyes, looked round—saw Basil. "Take me away!" she sobbed. "Take me away!"

Her husband gathered her into his arms as if she were a tired child. "Good night, Gallatin. See you in the morning," he said, and strode out with her.

Gallatin fell into one of those futile rages that are the steam of the strife between a man's desire and his courage. "It's my love for her," he assured himself, "that keeps me from following him and taking her from him." He found small comfort in this, however; for, he suspected it was only part—a minor part—of a truth, the rest of which was altogether to his discredit. He sat, he leaned, he stood at the bedroom window overlooking the path. Again and again he fancied he saw her, a new and deeper shadow in the shadows beneath the trees. Whenever the wind stirred a bush there, his fanciful hope made it her cloak. He knew it was impossible for her to return; but he could not give up. He did not leave the window until dawn. Then, he lay on the bed, exhausted, wretched, burning with hate for Richard, with rage against her, with contempt for himself.

XIII

Toward eight o'clock came Vaughan, in high spirits. Basil, stiff and sore, was still lying on the bed.

"Sure you don't want breakfast?" said Richard. Then, getting a view of his partner's face: "You are a sight! I beg pardon, old man. I've got a few marks, myself. But— You must have the doctor."

"No, thanks," was Basil's surly answer. "I'm all right."

"But you ought to do something for that eye—and that cheek. I sure did give you some hard punches." As this sounded as if it were—and was—not without a certain pride, he added: "The worst you gave me are hidden by my clothes—except these finger marks. What a stupid thing for me to do! And poor Courtney's quite done up this morning. Really, old man, you'd better let me send for the doctor."

"I'll telephone for him," said Basil. "I want to be left alone."

"Beg pardon. I've done nothing but apologize ever since I got home. Well, I'll go to work. Don't bother to come down to-day. I shan't need you."

Gallatin muttered "Selfish beast," as soon as Dick was clear of the room. And it was undeniable that Dick's pretense of sympathy had been rather more offhand than such pretenses usually are. He had never had to conciliate and cultivate his fellow beings in getting a living, and had been brought up indulgently by Colonel 'Kill and Eudosia. Thus he was candid in his selfishness, often appeared worse than would a man who was in reality more selfish, but was through fear or training, less self-revealing. However, Basil was not one with the right in any circumstances to be censorious of such undiplomatic conduct; for he, too, had been born and bred to wealth and security, and had been "spoiled" by a worshipful family.

Not for a week did he dare show his face. Dick called twice a day—did all the talking—always about the chemistry into which he had plunged with freshened energy and enthusiasm. Usually he apologized for Courtney's not coming—"She still feels weak and upset," he would say, "and wants me to make her excuses. I tell her you'd refuse to see her even if she could come."

When Basil's face and complexion were once more about normal, he waited until Richard was at work downstairs, then adventured the path to the house. He found Courtney in the sitting room, in a négligée, sewing; Winchie was building a lofty house of blocks on the veranda just outside for her to admire. He scowled at Winchie; Winchie scowled at him and, when his back was turned, made a face at him. "Good morning, Mrs. Vaughan," said he coldly. "I've come to pack my traps." In a lower tone that was menacing, he added, "I want to see you."

She laid aside her sewing, a strained expression in the eyes that shone wistfully in her pallid face. The boy dropped the block he was putting into place and stood up. "Go on with the house, Winchie," said she. Then to Basil, "You may come right upstairs."

She preceded him into the study on the left of the upper hall—the study that had been his, and was now Richard's. He, following, closed the door, advanced toward her with lowering brow and angry eyes.

"It's very imprudent to close the door," said she, calmly returning his gaze. "Nanny is at work across the hall."

"Did you break your promise to me that night?" he demanded.

"I'll answer no question—not even from you, Basil—when it's in that tone."

"First you want me to open the door, so that I can't speak out," sneered he. "Now you evade.... You admit your degradation. I knew why you were keeping away from me."

"That was not my reason," she stammered, with lowered head.

"You lie! You are doubly false. You have no shame. Now I understand why you said those bold things—why you acted so free—as no innocent woman could. You—expert!"

Her eyes were milky like a tortured sea; her face became ghastly; she trembled so that she had to steady herself at the back of a chair. "Basil!" she exclaimed. "No, it's not you. What we've suffered since he came has driven you mad. It has almost crazed me."

"Answer me!" he commanded fiercely. "Did you or did you not break your promise to me?"

Suddenly she drew herself up, and with the sad dignity of guilt that has been expiated she said: "I ask you to pity me." And she stood there, pale and haggard, a statue of wretchedness.

His fury could not hold against that spectacle—and she, the proud, asking for pity! "It's I who should be ashamed," he cried. "How I have suffered! What a coward—what a cur I am!"

She rushed to him. "Oh, my love! What we've been suffering has only made you dearer to me, dearer than ever! There's no bond like suffering."

He was about to take her outstretched hands when suspicion flamed into his eyes again. "How easily you twist me round your finger!" he said roughly. "Now, there's your making me move down to the shop. Why should you want to get me out of the house when, if I were here, we could see each other all the time?"

She showed no resentment, felt none. "It's natural you should suspect me," said she. "I'd suspect you in the same circumstances. I see now how absurd it was to dream of happiness founded on lies. No happiness for us—not even joy now and then. If we didn't love each other, we might be happy. But we do love, and misery is all we can expect. I'll tell you why I wanted you down there." She paused, went on with veiled eyes and bright red in her cheeks. "As I said to you, even dishonor has its honor. I didn't want us meeting here—with my boy—and his—so near."

Basil looked as if he were about to sink down under his shame and self-contempt. "Forgive me. What a hound I am!" he muttered.

"As for my free actions and free speech——"

"Courtney!" he begged, seizing her hands. "Don't speak of that."

"I must explain," she insisted gently, freeing herself. "I'll always explain everything to you. As I told you, I wanted to be free with you, perfectly free. So I said and did the things any woman who loved would think and feel, but most women hold back for fear of spoiling a lover's ideal. I didn't want you to idealize me, but to love me just as I was, just for what I am."

"And I do—I do!" he cried, trying to draw her into his arms.

"Yes, you do, I believe," answered she, insistently drawing back. "I know you truly love, and you know I truly love. I know you are a man any woman would be proud to have love her, and you know I'm not a low or a bad woman. Yet, see how it turns out.... Basil, we must give it up!"

"Give it up!" He was bristling with suspicion at once.

"You must go away."

He laughed scornfully. "That is your kind, considerate way of dismissing me. What vanity! I shall suffer no more than you."

"Not so much," she answered sadly.

"I shall go away and marry."

"You can't make me jealous now, Basil. Not after what you've been to me. I mean just what I say. You must go, and I'll try to be to my husband all a wife should be. If you'd been through what I've been through—that night and since—you'd understand. Basil, do you remember how I lied, how I laughed and cheated—like an 'expert,' as you say. Oh, you must have despised me! If you had done what I did, had done it as fluently, I'd have loathed you."

"And what about me? Didn't I stand there, a contemptible coward, and let him take you away?"

"What else could you have done?"

"Shown myself a man!"

"And ruined me—and my child? Oh, no, dear. You love me too well for that." She startled, listened. "He's coming," she warned, flying to the door. She opened it softly to its full width, advanced composedly into the hall, saying in her usual voice, "Then Jimmie'll take your things down about four o'clock."

Richard, on his way up, had reached the head of the stairs. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Here you are! I asked Winchie where you were, and he said he didn't know. So I've been hunting all over the place for you. I want you to take a walk with me."

"Certainly," said she tranquilly. "I'm talking business with Basil. Go down and help Winchie finish his house, and we'll take him along. I'll come in a few minutes."

"All right!" said Dick cheerfully. He shouted out, "Hey, Gallatin, how's your grouch?" and descended the stairs, laughing as he went.

As she reëntered the sitting room, she said, with the quietness of the emotions that are too deep and too terrible for tumult, "Am I not 'expert'? How long do you think we could keep this sort of thing up without becoming—I tell you, Basil, looking within myself as I've lain in the dark, I've realized it takes decent people—people with nerves and imaginations and sense of right and wrong—to become frightful, if they once get on the down grade. Did you hear what he said about Winchie?"

"Yes," muttered Basil. He was at the desk, his elbows on it, his hands supporting his head.

"Winchie knew where I was. Why did he lie to his father? Already a liar!"

"I must go. You are right— But, Courtney—you must get a divorce."

"I've thought of that. On what ground? And how can I leave him alone—take Winchie away from him?"

"You must get a divorce."

"I think so, too," assented she. "But I will not lie to do it. I'm done with lies. I'll tell him."

"No—let's go to him together." Basil's face lighted up, his manner became enthusiastic. He thought he saw a way to redeem his manhood put in pawn for this sin so dear yet so detestable. "Together!" he exclaimed. "He is generous and broadminded."

She shook her head. "Men are not generous and broadminded where women are concerned—the women they look on as theirs."

He colored and glanced guiltily at her. But it was plain that she had not in mind his own exhibition of the male attitude toward the female. His memory of it helped him to appreciate the folly of his proposal. But he would not give in at once. "I'd not suggest it, if he really loved you. But——"

"If he really loved me, he'd have felt the truth long ago. If he really loved me, he'd wish me to be happy—would give me up. But then—if he had really loved me, none of this would ever have happened. No, Basil, it's because he doesn't love me, because it's only passion that takes and gives nothing, that uses and doesn't think or care about the feelings of its creature——"

Basil, horror-stricken by this bald candor, ashamed for her, stopped her. "Let's not talk about it," he pleaded. "As for the divorce, I leave it to you. You know best how to deal with him."

His manner and its cause had not escaped her, with nerves keyed up to the snapping point. Once again he had raised in her heart the dread lest their love would not mean the perfect frankness, the perfect oneness of which she had dreamed. Did a man always demand and compel concealment and pretense in the woman? But she thrust out the doubt. "I'll do what seems best," she said to him, avoiding his eyes and speaking with constraint. "I don't know Richard very well. You see, we never got acquainted. He's like most men. They don't want the woman, but only the outside.... He's so wrapped up in his work that I think I can free myself."

He took her hands, gazed into her eyes. "Yes," he said, "you do love me. You feel that we belong to each other, just as I do. So when I'm away I'll know you are coming—as soon as you can."

"As soon as I can," she replied. And the expression of her eyes, meeting his steadfastly, and the deep notes in her sweet voice thrilled him with a new sense of her love and of her constancy. This woman had not given in whim; she would not change in whim.

"I will go—to-morrow," he said. "The sooner I go, the sooner I shall have you. Will you come to-night to say good-by?"

"Don't ask it, dear. I mustn't ever again—until I'm free."

"In the summer house, then. For a few minutes. We can't part like this."

"Yes, I'll come."

Along the hall from the foot of the stairs sounded Richard's imperious, impatient voice. "I say, Courtney! Do hurry!"

"I can't go for a walk with him now," she said, half to herself. "I'll make some excuse." She looked at Basil, he at her. In their eyes was a sadness beyond words and tears. And what would it be when he was really gone? "I mustn't linger here—I mustn't!" she cried. "And don't come near me when he's around. I can't control myself."

They clung together for an instant, then she fled.

She made vague household matters her excuse for not taking the walk. She did not see Richard alone until late that afternoon. She was in her and Winchie's big bathroom, which she also used as a dressing room. As she sat at the dressing table there, in petticoat and corset cover, doing her finger nails, he walked in. "May I come?" said he, already in the middle of the room.

She glanced at him, or, rather, in his direction, by way of the mirror and went on with her polishing. But she was not resentful of the scant courtesy of this intrusion. In the beginning of their married life she, through love, had confirmed him in his life-long habit of considering only himself and of expecting himself to be considered first. Now, indifference was making her as compliant as love had made her. And it was just as well. An attempt to assert herself would have seemed to him a revolt which pride and duty made it imperative for him to put down. The man a woman has spoiled through love, or the woman a man has spoiled, must be born again to be got back within bounds.

"You don't ask how I happen to be home so early—nearly an hour before supper," said he.

"It is early," replied she absently.

"I've made up my mind not to kill myself with work and no exercise, and to give more time to my family. I had a chance to look at myself—at my way of life—from the outside while I was in the East. And I'm going to try to live a more human life, though it'll not be easy to work less, when Gallatin's leaving me."

Until he spoke Gallatin's name she had not heard a word. We are all surrounded at all times in our customary haunts by a multitude of unchanging objects, animate and inanimate. We become practically unconscious of them so long as they maintain the same relative position toward us. We notice only changes, only those changes that are radical. Richard had long been to Courtney a mere familiar part of her environment—as she of his. She could look at him without seeing him, could answer him without having really heard. She could submit to his caresses without any sense of them. This unconsciousness was not deliberate; it was far deeper, it was habitual. At Gallatin's name, however, she began to listen.

"Yes, he's going," said Richard.

She inspected the nail of her right little finger. "Is he?" she asked, head on one side critically and emery slip poised.

"For good. And I'm not sorry. He's of less and less use to me at the laboratory. His mind isn't on it." There Richard laughed.

"I thought you felt you couldn't get on without him," said she, searching in a box for an orange-wood stick.

"That was some time ago. I suppose you're glad he's going."

"Why?"

"I know you don't like him. You've been very good about it, and I appreciate your being polite to him. But I can see that you dislike him."

She glanced in the mirror, arranged a stray of hair. "You are mistaken."

"No, I'm not. You've got the good woman's instinct to please her husband, and you think you've conquered your dislike. But you haven't."

"How you understand women," said she placidly. "But then there isn't much to understand about a woman—a good woman."

"Oh, you underestimate yourself," said he generously. "You're a very clever little lady—in your own charming feminine way. I often admire it."

A ghost of a smile flitted about her lips; but she seemed more intent upon her nails than upon his half-absent compliment.

"To confess the honest truth," he went on, "I've never liked Gallatin myself. I know he's a good sort— But— Well, he has no depth. He has a stock of education and a stock of manners, just as he has a stock of clothes. But it's all of some one else's make; nothing of his own, except a pleasant, amiable disposition. And he lacks purpose. However, all these things—especially lack of purpose—would only recommend him to a woman. Women are so frivolously constituted that purpose is a bore to them."

"Any more of a bore than it is to most men?" inquired Courtney.

Vaughan laughed acknowledgment. "Anyhow, I couldn't warm up to him. He's going, but he keeps his partnership—at least, for the present."

"Has he gone?"

"Of course not! He'd hardly be so rude as not to say good-by to you. Do you know why I think he's going?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"He says a business letter came at noon to-day. And no doubt it had something to do with it. But mere business would hardly take him off in such a rush. At first I thought it was a hurry call from some idle female for him to come and amuse her. All bachelors get them, and Gallatin's just the sort of gander to respond. But on second thought I suspected he's flying because he's in love with you."

Courtney, conscious that his eyes were on her face, smiled.

"It's natural that you, being a good woman, shouldn't notice it."

"Women sometimes think a man's in love with them when he isn't," said she. "But the woman never lived—good, bad, or both—who didn't know when a man was in love with her."

"Well, I may be mistaken. But he had a queer way of acting. Why, only this morning he was lowering at me like a demon." Vaughan laughed. "Poor Gallatin. But he'll pull through all right."

"No doubt," said Courtney.

"Sometimes—now and then—a man or woman in love, and staying in some dull place, where there's nothing to do but brood, does go under, with love one among the contributing causes," pursued Richard. "But not a city person. And Gallatin's going to New York." Something in her expression made him hasten to say: "Now, please don't get angry. I apologize. I admit my joking was somewhat coarse. Naturally it grated on your modesty. Really, I was only joking. I know he's going for business reasons. Then, too, he has a grouch for me because of the fearful punch I gave him. No, he—any man who has led a free life as long as he has—could no more appreciate a good woman—a woman like you than—than—a drunkard could appreciate a glass of pure, clear, sparkling spring water."

Courtney gathered her manicure set together, swept it noisily into the drawer. "Go out, and let me finish dressing," said she in a low voice between her set teeth.

And he departed, saying: "What a relief it'll be to have Gallatin off the place—to have it to ourselves again."

She sat motionless with her eyes down. Presently she lifted them, saw her reflection in the mirror. She gazed in horror. She had relaxed the instant he left her alone, and now all her anguish was in her features. "A little more of this," said she, "and I'd be an old woman." She passed her hands over her face, looked into her eyes. "Spring water" flashed to her mind. Her eyes wavered and sank; her skin burned. But her hungry heart clamored defiantly.

When she reached the dining room her husband and Basil and Winchie were already at the supper table. As they rose, Basil did not lift his eyes; her husband gave her a glance of greeting. But Richard, the married man of five years, did not really see her face as it then was, but the face that had long been fixed in his mind as hers. To have seen her as she was, he would have had to be startled out of matrimonial myopia by some shock. There was no arresting change flaunted in Courtney's features; youth has no wrinkles and hollows in which the shadows of emotion can gather thick and linger. She simply looked tired and not well. Her eyes were veiled; but in her skin there was a lack of the ruddy tinge beneath the bronze, and in her hair, which was with her an unfailing index to health or to spirits, there was a suggestion of the lifelessness that is in the last wan autumn leaves the dreary winds of November spurn. In tones that seemed to them more unnatural than they were, she and Basil exchanged the commonplaces necessary on such an occasion. Winchie watched her sympathetically. Presently he dropped down from his chair, came round to her. He put his arm about her neck, drew her head toward him, kissed her tenderly, and whispered, "Mamma is sick."

She kissed him, whispered: "Yes, dear, but you mustn't say anything."

Winchie went back to his place. The conversation was wholly between the two men, the subject being, of course, chemistry. After supper Courtney pleaded a headache and, having uttered the formulas prescribed for the parting and having heard from him the formulas embodying his part in such an exchange, withdrew. Instead of being agitated, she was in truth as calm as she seemed outwardly—and numb. She saw Winchie to bed, occupied herself mechanically for an hour, then sat at one of the windows of her front room looking out toward the lake. When she thought at all, it was of trifles; most of the time, during those two hours of waiting, she did not think, but listened to the beating of her blood as it made the ringing in the ears that climaxes the oppression of an intense silence.

At length Richard came up. He glanced in at her. "How's the headache?" he inquired, laying a caressing hand on her shoulder.

She moved; his hand fell away. "No better," replied she. "Good night."

"You'll feel all right in the morning," he said. He kissed her crown of hair and departed toward his own rooms—those that had been Basil's.

She heard him stirring about, first in his study just across the hall, then in his bedroom. Half an hour, and she went on the balcony, to the corner of the house, to see if his lights still showed. All his windows were dark. She returned, listened at his door. No sound. She stole down the stairs, unlatched the lake-front door, went out. She strolled across the lawn, in full view—for the moon was rising. At the edge of the shadows made by the bushes round the summer house, she halted.

"Basil!" she called softly.

He came from the summer house and stood before her. "It's safer to stay here," she said. "We can watch the house."

He made no protest. He took her hands, drew her to his breast. Never before had he touched her without feeling the glow and surge of passion; now he had no sense of her physical beauty, of her physical charm, only sense of the being he loved.

"Forgive me the horrible things I said, Courtney," he murmured. "It wasn't I that was speaking. It was the beginnings of what I was fast becoming."

"I know, I know," she answered. "Kiss me, dear."

Their lips met in a caress of tenderness. When she spoke again she said: "Dear love, I never felt before how much you care."

"I never realized before. I'm beginning to realize. You won't be long about arranging the divorce?"

"You must not get impatient—or misunderstand—if I'm longer than you expect."

"I'll not misunderstand."

"There's Winchie, you know. I must have Winchie."

"Yes, indeed. You'll accomplish it," he said confidently. "Be careful not to tell him too much. Even if he doesn't really love you, there's his vanity. And that's often stronger in a man than anything else."

"I'll not forget what's at stake.... He suspects that you love me."

"I was afraid so, and this evening I told him I was engaged. He looked astounded."

"I can tell him that I love you, and he will think— No—no—what am I saying? Lies, always lies! ... I'll do the best I can, Basil."

"I know you will."

"You see now I was right in feeling you must go?"

"I felt it, Courtney, the moment we three stood together there in my room—though I wouldn't admit it to myself. If I stayed, there'd be a crime, or a scandal that'd spatter you with mud and brand you with shame. It simply could not be otherwise."

"I haven't told you the real deep-down reason why I felt you must go."

"No," he said. "Your real reason was the same as mine."

"Because it was all so vulgar and—and cheap?"

"Cheap—that's it!" he exclaimed. "Cheap!"

"I could stand it," she went on, "to commit and to have you commit, big, bold sins, scarlet and black. I might even glory in it. I wasn't a bit ashamed that first night. I think I even got a sort of joy out of defying all I'd been brought up to believe was moral and right and lady-like. But— Not when we stood there, like two caught sneak thieves."

"That was it, Courtney," eagerly assented he. And he went on, in a tone in which a less love-blinded woman might have detected an accent of repentance for masculine thoughts of disrespect: "No wonder I love you! How happy we shall be, when you're free. How good and pure you are—and innocent. It needn't be long—in this State—need it?"

"I think not," she laughed. "Being a judge's daughter, I ought to know. But I don't."

"Look there!" he exclaimed, gazing toward the house.

She turned, saw a figure at the east corner of the house, apparently looking toward where they were standing. The figure moved. "Nanny," she said under her breath. "I must go."

He caught her to his breast; for an instant they clung together, then with a last lingering handclasp, she left him, to emerge from the deep shadow of the trees and stroll back across the lawn. Presently she pretended to catch sight of Nanny, halted, changed her course, went toward her. "What is it, Nanny?" she asked.

Nanny turned without a word, started to go back toward her kitchen.

"Nanny!" said she sharply.

The old woman stopped, turned.

"What do you mean by not answering me when I speak to you?"

"I didn't know as you expected an answer," replied Nanny, sullen and cowed, but insolent underneath.

"I asked you what you were doing here?"

The two women looked straight into each other's eyes. "I just came out to get a breath of air—like you," said Nanny. "I don't see as there's any harm in that."

"Certainly not," said Courtney. And she resumed her stroll, back and forth across the lawn for three quarters of an hour.

She did not come down to breakfast. About nine o'clock Richard, at the Smoke House, called her on the telephone.

"Gallatin cleared out on the midnight express," said he. "Now, what do you think of that?"

"Why?"

"He left a note saying good-by and explaining that he found he could make better time."

"Well?"

"Don't you think it a little queer?"

"No."

"Anyhow, he's gone. I feel better already. Don't you?"

"I can't say I do."

"Well—I'll see you at dinner."

"Yes—good-by."

She returned to her sitting room, all in a glow. Basil had gone because he, sensitive and honorable, wished to spare himself the hypocrisy of a farewell handshake with Richard—"and to end the suspense," she added. "The suspense!" And she struck her hands against her throbbing temples.

A few days and there came from New York a crate of orchids, with only his card. "That's what I call decent and very handsome," declared Vaughan, roused to enthusiasm by this attention. "I must say I rather miss Basil, now that he's really gone. Don't you?"

"Yes," said Courtney.

"Which means no. Don't even these orchids soften your heart? Think how he used to let you work him. Oh, women! women! Orchids cost a lot of money, don't they?"

"Some kinds."

"When you write thanking him, do put cordiality and friendliness into the note."

"Very well."

She sent eighteen closely written pages—a line about the orchids, the rest an outpouring of love and longing—a sad letter, yet hopeful—and ending with the injunction that it be left unanswered. "You must not write until you hear from me," she said. "And that will be soon—soon, my love, my Basil!"

Next day Dick asked, "Have you thanked Basil for those flowers?"

"Certainly."

"I wish you had let me see the letter. I'll bet you made it all frost. You don't know how cold you are, Courtney. Sometimes you chill even me, well as I know you.... I guess I'll write Basil a note, too—and let him see that we did appreciate his thoughtfulness."

"As you please."

XIV

Five days since the letter to Basil, a fortnight since he went, and the first move toward freedom not yet made. Each day added its strength of loneliness and longing to the resolve that became the guiding purpose of her life when she sent him away. But she must restrain her eagerness, must compel herself to wait upon opportunity—upon the favorable gust of event or emotion. To be tactless and abrupt would mean defeat; for, hard though it was to realize, she must keep ever in mind that Richard had legal right over Winchie. Moral right she denied not only because he was as much a stranger to Winchie as to herself, but chiefly because a child belonged to its mother. Indeed, if she had not been brought up in a legal family it would not have occurred to her that in any circumstances she need disturb herself about having Winchie. There was nothing of pose or effusiveness about her love for him; it was that deep and utter love which is not conscious of itself, but simply is. She and the boy were as much part of each other as when his being was still hidden within hers. She knew that she and Winchie were one; but she also knew the man-made law. So in seeking her freedom she must move carefully. Sometimes she felt she must be dreaming; it simply could not be possible that in arranging her life she must take into account a person so utterly alien and apart as this nominal husband of hers.

She had rarely seen him since Basil left. He was exercising—walking or rowing on the lake—very early in the mornings. But he spent the whole day at his work. When he occasionally came to dinner or supper, he was deep in his problems, was as unconscious of his wife and child as his child was of him. Courtney was no longer unconscious of him. As before, she did not see him when she looked at him, did not listen when he talked, answered, if answer was necessary, by a sort of reflex mental action that never involved her real mind. But she had the sense of his presence—as keen when he was out of sight as when he sat working or in a deep abstraction before her eyes. And she was constantly revolving how to begin the revolt—for she saw more and more clearly that it would be regarded by him as a revolt against womanliness, against duty, against honor, against decency, would burst upon him like thunder from clear sky, no matter how adroitly she might begin. Until then his ideas of woman had impressed her only in a vague, general way. She had avoided thinking them out or hearing them from his own lips because she knew definite knowledge would only make the struggle to be a wife to him as far as she might the more painful, the more humiliating. But now, piece by piece, his conception of womanhood and woman's place fitted itself together in her mind from stray sentences dropped by him from time to time in their five years. Every day she recalled some forgotten or ignored remark that added to the completeness of the record—and to its discouragement. As to the position of woman in the scheme of things, he was untouched of any modern idea. He was just where his grandfather had been; and Colonel Achilles Vaughan had been where the whole world had been since the Oriental contempt for women reconquered Europe under the banner of the Cross.

In one of the last warm days she half sat, half lay in the hammock on the lake-front veranda, apparently idle, really with a brain as industrious as a beehive. Gradually, however, the beauty of the scene—summer dying like a lovely woman whose mortal disease only enhances loveliness—stole in upon her and won her for the moment. She looked at the wonderful colors far and near, she drank in the last potent draughts of summer's perfume. And suddenly she thought, "I would be divorcing all this, too!" These gardens that she had created; the house that she had made over. Why, these things were part of her very soul. The same life throbbed in them that throbbed in her boy and in herself—her own life blood! The place was in Richard Vaughan's name just as she herself was, just as Winchie was. But it was not his; it—all that made it individual—was hers!

Most of us pass through the world, leaving little more trace of our individuality than a traveler leaves in a hotel room. But Courtney had the creative instinct powerfully developed. She even never dressed in exactly the same way, no matter how simple her costume or how often she wore it; and her clothes were so individual that Richard the absent spoke of hats and dresses she had worn several years back. And this place—it was like the picture the artist keeps by him and touches and retouches. Also, she now realized for the first time how profoundly domestic she was by nature. Not by chance had she avoided the life of the gadabout and meddler which is chosen by so many women when they find themselves mismated, and so, without hope of the normal life. She had always classed herself with the flyabout sort of women rather than with the domestic sort; she had fallen into the common error of taking as representative of the domestic type those dreary rotters who sit at home inert and slovenly simply because it requires less effort to stay at home than to dress and issue forth. Now she saw that she was domestic, was a home-maker and a home-lover; and she understood a deeper depth of her unhappiness—the unhappiness that comes from being cheated out of one's dearest desires; for how incomplete must be any home without love of husband and wife. And she understood why, as she made her surroundings more and more like her dreams, her longing for love had grown apace; she was like the bird that builds its nest, and has nothing to put in it.

She had built this nest; now she must abandon it. Heavier and heavier grew her heart, as she thought of the years of thought and toil she had invested, as she looked about at the results. She rebuked herself almost fiercely—in terror of the weakness to which these lamentings might tempt her; in shame at the disloyalty to Basil. "I'm utterly selfish," she said to herself. "I'm shrinking from making any sacrifice at all." There she stopped short in a kind of terror. "Sacrifice"—what a strange word to use—what an ominous word—and how clearly it warned her that delay was eating out courage, was strengthening her natural woman's inertia. Sacrifice! She began to picture what the new life would be—perfect sympathy, companionship ever closer and closer, how she would grow and expand, how Winchie would thrive in an atmosphere of ideal love—and Basil and she would together create a place, a home which would be incomparably lovelier than this.... "Yes, I must establish my life on its permanent basis." Her life must be straightened out, must be settled right. Until it was based right, nothing could be right; mind and heart would always be uneasy, and from time to time in a turmoil. "Nothing is settled," her father often used to quote, "until it's settled right." He was thinking of large affairs, but the thing was just as true of the affairs of private life. Her and Richard's relations, her and Basil's relations, and therefore her and Winchie's relations, were awry, all awry. There had been successive adjustments; they had one after the other fallen to pieces—because "nothing is settled until it's settled right."

That very evening, it so happened, for the first time Richard made a remark that gave her an opening. "Why don't you stay down in the evenings?" said he. "It doesn't disturb me for you to play and sing in the sitting room when I'm in the library."

"The last few times I did it," replied she, "you slipped away to the shop."

He reddened, laughed guiltily. "Did I? Well—perhaps in certain moods——"

"Oh, I'm not complaining," she assured him. "I've got used to our leading separate lives—long ago.... I like it as much as you do."

"Separate lives," said he reflectively. "It's true, we don't see much of each other. Husbands and wives rarely do, when the man amounts to anything, or is trying to amount to anything."

"Unless they work together."

"And that's impossible where people are of our station."

Our station! Her lip curled and her heart protested. How could a human being with a human heart talk of a station too high for love—love that was the soul of life.

"Also," continued he, reflective and absent, "it's out of the question where the husband is pursuing an intellectual occupation." Even had he not been merely thinking aloud, it would not have occurred to him that there was any slur in a statement of an elementary axiom as to the different spheres of the two sexes. "And," he went on, "it's unnecessary to married happiness, as we've proved. You had an idea once—do you remember?—"

"Yes—I remember."

"If I'd let you have your foolish, impulsive, romantic way, and you'd been at my elbow down at the shop, where I get irritable and cranky—we'd not have made our present record—would we?"

She shivered. "No," she said faintly.

"Five years with hardly a misunderstanding, and not one quarrel."

His words, his manner—complacent, content—calmly possessive—dried up her courage and her hope. But she held to her purpose. She said, "We're not interested enough in each other to quarrel."

He laughed, assuming she was jesting. "That's it! That's exactly it."

"I was speaking seriously. It's the truth. We care nothing about each other."

"Courtney!" he admonished. "Aren't you carrying the joke too far? I don't think you realize how that sounds."

"I realize how it is."

He looked at her curiously. "Why, I thought you were joking."

"Not in the least."

"How pale your face is. And what a strange expression round the mouth—and your eyes are circled. Are you ill, dear?"

"Absolutely well. It's the strain of getting ready to say these things to you." She saw he was observing her like a physician studying a patient. "No, I'm not insane, either," said she good-humoredly.

"What's happened to upset you?"

She put one knee in a chair, leaned toward him over its back, her elbows upon it. Said she, "It isn't a matter of to-day, but of five years—or, rather, of four years."

He straightened up in his chair. She imagined that his grandfather, old Colonel Achilles, must have looked like that at the same age. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"About our failure as a married couple," replied she, meeting his gaze with calm courage.

"Failure!" exclaimed he. "Why, our married life is ideal. I wouldn't have it changed in the least particular." He nodded his handsome, powerful head. "Not in the least particular."

She had expected him to say something like this. But the actual words, spoken with sincerity and conviction, stopped her. Her road had ended against the face of a cliff with a precipice on either side.

"I want to be free," she said desperately. "I must be free!"

"Free? You are free."

"I mean free from marriage," explained she gently, "free to make my own life."

He reflected, looked at her, reflected again. She saw, as plainly as if his thoughts were print before her eyes, that he had decided she was a spoiled child in a pet, that he was trying to find some kindly, effective way of humoring her. But to take her words seriously, to meet her on a plane of equality—the idea had not occurred to the grandson of Achilles Vaughan, and could not occur to him. Anger boiled up in her, evaporated. She laughed.

He glanced at her quickly. "Oh, you were joking!" said he in a relieved tone.

"That wasn't why I laughed. It was to save myself from doing something ridiculous—shouting out, or upsetting the table, or running amuck."

"No matter. It's clear to me that you're not yourself this evening—not at all."

"Richard," said she slowly, "I know it's hard for you to believe a woman's not a fool. I don't expect you to credit me with intelligence. Perhaps you might if I were a big, fat woman with a loud voice. But I'm not. So, assume I'm as silly a fool as—as most women pretend to be, to catch husbands and to use them after they're caught. But please assume also that, whatever I am or am not, I want my freedom. And try to realize that we women are living in the twentieth century as well as you men—and not in the tenth or fifteenth."

His expression was serious and respectful; he was not one to fail in polite consideration for the feminine—the wayward, capricious, irrational feminine with which stronger and rational man should ever be patient and gentle. But she saw that he was in reality about as much impressed as he would have been by a demand for the open cage door from a canary born and bred to captivity and helplessness. He came round the table, put his hands tenderly on her shoulders, pressed his lips in a husbandly caress upon the coil of auburn hair that crowned her small head. "You're tired and nervous to-night, dear," said he with grave kindness. "So we'll not talk about it any more. Go to bed, and get a good night's sleep. Then——"

She rose, found herself at a disadvantage standing before one so much taller, sat down in another chair. "Yes, I am tired and I am nervous. But I'm also in earnest. Why, if we weren't strangers, you'd realize. You'd have felt it long ago. Can't you see I'm nothing to you or you to me that is, nothing especial—nothing that ought to satisfy either of us?" She was trying to speak with serious calmness; the very effort overstrained her. And his face—its expression was so hopeless! She was speaking a language he did not understand, was speaking of matters of which he had not the faintest glimmer of knowledge. Her voice broke; she steadied it. It broke again. She began to sob. "This life of ours is a degradation. It's like a stagnant pool—it's death in life. I can't stand it. I want love—want to give love and get it! My whole being cries out for love! I'm dying here of the empty heart. I must go. I ask you to be just—to give me my right—my freedom——"

It was his expression that stopped her. He was not listening to her words at all. He was simply waiting for her to talk out her hysteria, as he thought it, so that he could begin to soothe the agitated child. She threw out her arms in despair.

"Go on, dear," he urged. "Say all you want. You'll feel better for it."

The cliff, with choice between turning back and leaping over one of the precipices on either side—the precipice of flight to Basil in secrecy and dishonor, with Winchie, or the precipice of a divorce with Winchie taken away from her. She buried her face in her arms and burst into wild sobs. With Winchie taken away from her! If she fled, he would follow, would take Winchie. If she divorced him, he would take Winchie. It was hopeless—hopeless. There was no escape. Sobbing, she ran round and round her prison's outer court to which she had penetrated. It had no gates—none! He waited until she was quiet, except that her shoulders heaved occasionally. "Poor dear!" he said tenderly. "Poor child!" And he took her in his arms. She felt physically and morally too weak for the least struggle. She lay passive against his breast, her heartache throbbing dully. He carried her upstairs, laid her gently on the sofa at the foot of her bed. "Now you feel better, don't you?" said he, bending over her and smiling sympathetically down.

She gazed at him with forlorn, hopeless eyes, then rested her head weakly against the cushions in the corner of the sofa.

"Of course, I understood that what you were saying a while ago was only a nervous mood. But it gave me a shock, too. I know now what was the matter."

She grew cold, rigid. Did he suspect? Would he take Winchie?

"I admit I've been neglecting you lately. Gallatin's leaving put a lot of work on me. And, too, I read an article that gave me a silly scare—made me afraid I'd be anticipated in one of my discoveries if I didn't push things. But even if I was negligent, I can't see how you could get the notion in your head that you weren't loved any more." He sat down by her on the sofa, kissed the nape of her neck. "I'll make up for it," he murmured. "Why, it'd be as impossible for me to stop loving you as for you, a good woman, to stop loving your husband. The idea of you talking divorce!" He laughed boyishly. "You and I—divorced! What a naughty child it was! It seems dreadful that those pure lips could be sullied by such a word. But it never was in your heart. A woman like you, a woman I trust my honor to, and trust my boy to, couldn't think such things."

His words and manner, all tenderness, were for her reminders of the Vaughan prejudice and the Vaughan will and the Vaughan pride that lay behind; the clang of iron doors, the grate of brass keys in steel locks. She, back in her cell and prostrate on its floor, felt she must indeed have been driven out of her senses by heart hunger to imagine she could get freedom and Winchie from Richard Vaughan. How love and hope had tricked her!

"Asleep, dear?"

"No."

"You don't doubt my love any longer, do you?"

She moved restlessly.

"Still cross?" He took her in his arms in spite of her struggles, began to caress her. And she who had never resisted did not know how to resist now—did not dare to resist, so cowed was she by fear of losing Winchie, so utterly was she despising herself—"nothing but a woman." She endured till reaction stung her into crying out in anguish: "For God's sake, Richard! I am so miserable!"

"I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I thought you wanted it." He rose at once. "Would you like to be left alone?"

"Please."

"You forgive me for neglecting you?

"Anything!" she cried. "Only go. If you don't, I shall—" She pressed her lips together tightly and drew all her nerves and muscles tense to keep back the avowal that was fighting for exit.

"I'll give up my work until you feel better."

"No—no. I don't want— Go—please go! For Winchie's sake—for mine—for your own."

He did not attach enough importance to her words to note them and inquire. When the door closed behind him, she drew a long breath—not so much relief that she was alone, as relief that, before seeing how useless it was to try to escape, she had not burst out with the whole truth. A turn of the wind of emotion before he spoke of Winchie, and she would have told all! Even after he had reminded her—yes, even until the door closed between them, she might still have been goaded by her despair or by his manner into precipitating the cataclysm——

"For he'd never have let me see Winchie again!" And—what else would he have done?—what would he not have done? She put out her lights and, without drawing aside the portière, softly opened Winchie's door and entered. She dropped down by his bed, slipped her hand under the cover, delicately warm from his healthy young body. Her fingers rested upon his breast over his heart. That calm, regular throb of young life beat upon her spirit like the soft, insistent rain that soothes the storm-racked sea.

Winchie! If she had lost him! If she had brought disgrace upon him! She drew her hand away lest its trembling should waken him. The room was pitch dark, but she could see him lying there, his tumbled fair hair against the white pillow, his round cheeks flushed with healthy sleep. She sat on the floor beside the bed, listening to his breathing. She had gone down to the gates of the world and had led him through them into life. Claim upon him she had none—for he owed her nothing, and if his lot were not happy he would have the right to blame her. No, he owed her nothing; but his claim upon her was for the last moment of her time, for the last thought of her brain, for the last drop of her blood.

"If it were not for Winchie," she said to herself, "I'd go to Basil. I'd leave here to-night. I owe nothing to Dick. While his way of looking at life is not his fault, neither is it mine. And as it's his way, not mine, he should suffer for it, not I. But for Winchie I must stay—and live and make this house a home."

Never again would there be the least danger of her being goaded into telling Richard and defying and compelling him. No delirium, not even a fever like a maniac loose in the brain and hurling all its tenant thoughts helter-skelter through the lips, could dislodge that secret. It was sealed with the great seal of a mother's love.

When she came down to breakfast, Dick was at one of the long windows, back to the room, hands deep in trousers' pockets. At her "Good morning," he turned quickly. Before he answered, he noted her expression, and his face brightened. He kissed the cheek she turned for him as usual, and they seated themselves. In came Mazie with the coffee; it had the delicious fragrance that proclaims fine coffee well made, the fragrance that will put the grouchiest riser into an amiable frame of mind. Then she brought the spoon bread and an omelette—not the heavy, solid, yellow-brown substantiality that passes for omelette with the general, but a light and airy, delicately colored thing of beauty such as a skilled cook can beat up from eggs the hens have laid within the hour.

"Feeling all right this morning?" asked Dick when Mazie had gone out.

"Perfectly," replied Courtney, her smiling eyes like the dark green of moss round where the spring bubbles up. She was rearranging the flowers in the bowl.

"Sleep well?"

She had not slept at all. She evaded his question by saying: "I was very much upset last night, wasn't I?"

Dick made a gesture of generous dismissal. "Oh, I knew it was only a passing mood," said he, helping himself liberally to the omelette. "Everybody has moods. Do give me some of that coffee."

Strange indeed was the expression of that small, quiet face. What a chaos a few blundering words from her a few hours ago would have put in place of this domestic content of his! "I want to say one thing more," said she, "and then we'll never speak of last night—or what led up to it."

"Yes, dear?"

"We talked a lot about ourselves—and I was thinking altogether of myself, I find. But the truth is, Winchie's the only important fact in our lives. We don't belong to ourselves. We belong to him."

"That's not exactly the way I'd put it," said he hesitatingly. "Do try this spoon bread. Mazie's a wonder at making it. Do try it."

"Not just now," said she. "No, I know you wouldn't put it that way. Put it any way you like. But it must be Winchie first, last, and all the time. We must see to it that he has the right sort of example—from you—from me—from us both."

Dick nodded approvingly, and when his mouth was said: "There's no disputing that. Where is he, by the way?"

"He'll be down in a minute," replied Courtney; then went on unruffled: "If you and I had had love before our eyes in our homes when we were children——"

"But I did. And I'm sure your father and mother were an equally fine example——"

"No matter," interrupted Courtney. Then she said, in a tone that revealed for the first time how profoundly moved she was: "The point is I want you to help me make a home—of love for Winchie."

"By all means!" exclaimed Dick heartily.

He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, looked at her with puzzled eyes; and she saw that his keen, analytic mind, usually reserved wholly for his work, was curiously inspecting her words and her manner for the meaning that must be beneath so much earnestness about a passing anger over a few days of neglect. She said no more—and was glad when Winchie came rushing in to turn the current of his thoughts. As he was leaving for the shop, he hunted her out in the library to kiss her good-by—a thing he had not done in several years.

She colored, made an effort, kissed him.

"I'm sorry for my negligence since Basil left me in the lurch," said he cheerfully. "And you're sorry you flew into such a fury about it. And it's all settled—and forgotten?"

"We—make a fresh start," replied she.

"I'll come and take a walk with you before dinner."

"No—no. Please don't. You mustn't change abruptly." She stopped, confused to find herself already shrinking from the new course she had so highly resolved. "Yes—do come," said she.

"Oh—I forgot. There's one thing I simply must attend to to-day."

"Then—to-morrow."

"Yes—to-morrow we'll make the start—the fresh start."

"Very well," said she, relieved—for she felt she had done her duty.

Instead of going out immediately for a walk with Winchie, as was the habit, she lingered about the house, keeping herself busily occupied. She must write Basil. What she said must be final, for she owed him the truth. And she must not say much; a long letter would give him hope, no matter what words she used, and would harrow him in the reading and her in the writing. At last she put on hat and even gloves for the walk, sat hastily down at her desk, wrote: "I cannot. I belong to my boy, not to myself." She wished to add, "I shall try to forget. So must you, for my sake—" and also some word of love. But with the two sentence she halted her pen. She read what she had written—"I cannot. I belong to my boy—not to myself." She folded the sheet, sealed it in an envelope, addressed it. As she reached for the stamp she called Winchie. They went out together, and she mailed the letter in the box at the edge of town. Well, it was settled—once more. Was this final? "Nothing is settled until it's settled right." And she said to herself that this settlement was undoubtedly right—that is, as nearly right as anything ever is. Yes, it was settled—but her father's uncompromising axiom continued to reiterate its clear-cut, unqualified assertion.

"Why did you sigh, mamma?" asked the boy.

"Did I sigh?" said she, trying to smile as she looked down at him.

"Yes—and you haven't been listening as we came along. You didn't hear what I said about the dead whip-poor-will I found on the lawn—did you?"

"No," she confessed. "But I'll listen now."

She found herself wondering at her calmness. "Perhaps," reflected she, "my fright about Winchie conquered my love. And how deep the roots of my life are sunk into the soil of this place! Still—I don't understand it. It doesn't seem natural I should be calm." There flashed before her mind a picture—herself flying disheveled—coming forward with laughter and jest—and lie—with the sting of forbidden kisses still upon her face—the thrill of forbidden caresses— And she flushed crimson as the autumnal maples above her head, and glanced guiltily down at Winchie—and saw that he was trying to pretend not to see.

XV

Long before Dick got caught up with the particular piece of work that postponed their "fresh start," Courtney's "queer mood" and his own resolution were shelved in one of those back closets of his memory where reposed in darkness and dust matters relating to his family. He forgot nothing; his was not the forgetting kind of mind. Everything was stored away somewhere, under its proper heading, ready for him if he should happen to need it. But for that especial matter there came no demand. His happy married life had resumed its unrippled course. He worked, with allowance for exercise—usually a long walk or a row on the lake in the very early morning, before breakfast. Courtney occupied herself with house and garden. She was building a vegetable greenhouse with a small legacy from an aunt; also, there was the household routine of a multitude of time-filling, thought-filling, not to be neglected details for keeping things smooth and orderly—and there were reading and painting and music—and there were callers and visits. She even began to be philosophical about the almost daily evidences that her husband regarded her as an inferior. All men felt that way toward women. The very men who never made a move without consulting their wives thought themselves superior intelligences, and their wives mere possessors of a crafty instinct, in common with the lower animals, an instinct that was worth availing themselves of, as long as it was right there in the house. No, she was a silly supersensitive, she told herself, to be disturbed by such a ridiculous universal masculine weakness of vanity. As husbands went, Richard was about as good as any—better than most.

The evenings they spent together. A charming picture of family life they made each evening during that rare, exquisite September. The big log fire in the sitting room; he at the desk, she reading or sewing, or, less frequently, playing and singing softly. She had never been lovelier. The slightly haggard look was becoming to her young face, and the weariness of the eyelids also, and the pathos of her mouth so eager to smile, and the milky emerald of the eyes, like seas troubled so deep down that the surface was only clouded, but not ruffled. Sometimes she let Winchie stay with them an hour or so. Then the picture was complete—the boy playing on the floor before the fire, making what he called drawings at the table, always between his father and his mother, always nearer his mother, near enough to put out his hand and touch her and make quite sure of the reality of her lovely presence. Yes, she assured herself many times each day, the struggle was over; the pain would grow less and less, would pass—for the question of her life relations was settled—"and settled right."

This until mid-October, when the bleak rains inaugurated what promised to be a worse than the previous winter. On the fourth successive day indoors, as she sat at a drawing table in the upstairs sitting room, she suddenly lifted her head, thrust back the table, flung down the pencil, and rushed to the window. The lawns were flooded. Bushes and trees were drearily fluttering the last wet faded tatters of autumnal finery. Decay—desolation—death— "Will he never come! Will he never write!" And the secret of her calm, so carefully guarded from herself, was a secret from her no longer.

It had been a farce—the six weeks of resignation. One of self-deception's familiar farces; those farces that finally make old people cynical in spite of themselves about the reality of disinterested goodness, of self-sacrifice, of anything except selfishness. A farce—nothing more. That was why she could write a brief farewell and send it off with merely a pang and a sigh. And ever since she had been confidently waiting for something to happen. Something? What but his coming—coming to give her again the love that was life and light to her, the love she could no more refuse than a drowning man can withhold his hand from clutching the rope though the devil himself toss it. And once more her father's maxim, "Nothing is settled until it's settled right," began to thrust itself at her—mockingly now, as if deriding her self-deceiving attempts to found her life upon conditions to which mind and conscience had agreed, but not heart. And heart, the most powerful of the trinity that must harmonize within a human being or there is no peace—heart had suddenly torn up the treaty of peace and declared war. And war there was.

About seven that evening Dick knocked at her bedroom door. "May I come?" he called.

"Yes—if you won't stay long," was her reply in a listless tone.

He entered, looked surprised when he saw her propped up in bed with her supper tray in her lap. "Are you ill?"

"No."

"You didn't come down to supper."

"No."

"I don't think I ever knew you to do this before."

"No."

"Your voice sounds—strange—tired."

"I am."

"You don't exercise enough, I guess. And there's little for you to do about the house—with Lizzie looking after the flowers and Nanny such a good housekeeper and Mazie such a splendid cook. We're getting the benefit of my aunt's toil. She built up such a splendid system that it runs itself—and there's really not enough for you to do. You ought to——"

"Won't you take this tray—take it down with you?"

"Don't you want me to sit a while?"

"Don't let me interfere with your work."

"Oh, there's no hurry."

"I'm sure you want to be at it."

He took the tray from her lap, put it on the floor beside his chair. She reached for the book on the stand at her elbow, opened it, seemed to be waiting for him to go. He glanced round uncertainly. "What a charming room this is," said he. "That pale brown paper with the panels made by broad violet stripes— Let me see—was this one of the rooms you did over?"

She was reading.

"Yes of course. In my aunt's time— You'd have admired her, and she'd have been invaluable as a teacher. But then she taught Nanny; and Nanny's been very good about teaching you, hasn't she?"

No answer.

He laughed. "We've got a rather bad habit of not listening—haven't we?"

"Oh—I don't mind."

He glanced at the tray. "Why, you didn't eat anything!"

"No."

"Are you quite sure you're not ill?"

"Quite."

"Well, if there's anything I can——"

"Nothing, thanks."

He went to the bed, bent over and kissed her. "Good night."

"Good night." She was reading again; and his thoughts returned to his work as he closed her bedroom door behind him. If he had looked in on her an hour later, he might have seen that she had not yet turned the page she pretended to begin, to get rid of him—or, rather, to help him go where he really wished to be. And he would have distrusted her assurance that she was not ill. For her eyes, wide and circled and wretched, were staring into space. She was indeed ill—ill of loneliness, of heart-emptiness, of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. And the rain streamed on and on. The sight of it by day filled her with the despair that lowers and rages. The sound of it monotonously pattering upon the balcony at night changed her despair from active to passive, from vain revolt to lying inert in the wash of inky waves under inky sky.