THE HUNGRY HEART (continued 5)

The sympathy between her and Winchie was so close that they were like one rather than like two. He had early discovered her sensitiveness to the weather, but never before had he seen her frankly downhearted. He did not annoy her. He watched her furtively, his little heart aching. He spent most of his time near the west windows of the upstairs sitting room. From them, now that the trees were almost bare, he could see part of the Donaldson's roof—the part topped by a weather vane. He knew that so long as the vane pointed east the rains would pour down, and his mother's low spirits would continue—that when it should veer to the west the rain would cease and the sky clear.

Day after day he watched, his hopes rising as the vane veered now toward the north, now toward the south, and falling again as, with a jerk, it flirted back into the eye of the east. That vane was the last thing he saw as the darkness closed down in the late afternoon; it was the first thing he looked at in the morning, dashing to the window the instant he awakened. The change came in the night, when it finally did come. As he awakened, the difference in the light, in the feel of the air told him that all was well once more. But he made sure; he hurried to one of his windows, turned the slats of a blind, looked at the vane. Then, with a shout, he darted to her door, beat upon it, crying: "Mamma! Mamma Courtney! The wind's west—the wind's west!"

She understood, opened the door. She had made her face bright. "Thank you—thank you," she said, with a catch in her voice, as she knelt and took him in her arms. He put one of his small hands on each of her cheeks, kissed her, then looked into her eyes. His face fell. She could not deceive him; it had not been the rain.

The wind was in the west; her mood veered—but to another futility. She watched for the postman. She startled and ran to the window at every crunch of wheels on the drive. She was agitated whenever the telephone bell rang. At night every suggestion of sound from the direction of the window made her lift her head from the pillow to listen; and often she would fly to open a shutter and lean out into the darkness. She would not go to Wenona, lest he should come while she was away. She never left the house for a walk without telling the servants just where she was going—"and if anyone comes, send for me."

Never before had she surrendered to the somber mood; she had always met it by taking up some one of the things at hand that interested her, and working at it until health and youth and hope reasserted themselves. But this time she could find nothing to build upon; it was all quicksand, slipping away and leaving her to sink. She no longer cared about her surroundings. She had always seen to it that the servants she had so thoroughly trained in a modern system she had carefully worked out did their duties, and did them well. Now she let the servants do as they pleased—and they soon pleased to do very poorly—as poorly as the average human being does, unless held rigidly from his natural tendencies to slovenliness and shirking. She had always done the buying for the kitchen, and had herself selected at the farm the things to be sent over. Now the good old days of Aunt Eudosia returned, with the farmer sending whatever gave him or one of "the hands" the least trouble, and with Nanny accepting from the storekeepers what they chose at their own price. The bills went up; yet the meat was often tough, the chickens and game inferior, the butter and eggs only fair, instead of the very best. Canned vegetables appeared on the table when fresh vegetables were still to be had. The coffee was capricious. The table itself was carelessly set; napkins were used several times, instead of only once; tablecloths did not always go into the wash with the first spot. Lizzie and Mazie lost no opportunity to cut down the amount of work they would have to do on wash and ironing days.

In the living rooms, upstairs as well as down, there was no longer the beautiful order that had made the interior a pleasure to the eye and so comfortable. A chair had only three casters; a door was losing its knob. A window curtain had broken away from its rod at one corner and was hanging down. Several cushions had rips in them that would soon be rents. Winchie's ravages remained unrepaired—and unrebuked. The flowers in the vases were not fresh every day, and were arranged by a servant's heavy hands. Window gardens and baskets and hothouse suffered from alterations of drought and deluge, and showed it. The red spider was rarely interrupted in his ruinous feasts. Where order has been perfect, brief neglect produces unsightly disorder. The house was becoming like most houses—indifferently looked after by women who know little about housekeeping as an art and feel "above" the endless petty details that must be attended to, no matter what the enterprise, if there is to be success. The work of changing the library to a winter conservatory had, like the vegetable greenhouse, been begun, and abandoned midway.

From the house the blight spread to herself. It is well-nigh impossible for a person who has been bred from birth in personal order and cleanliness to become really slovenly and dirty, unless beaten down into the hopeless wretchedness of extreme poverty. But Courtney had lost interest in herself, just as she had lost interest in the house. She got herself together "any old way" in the mornings, took to breakfasting in bed. Sometimes she dressed for supper, and sometimes she came in working or walking clothes or in the négligée she had been wearing all day. Sometimes her blouse was buttoned in the back, oftener it was partly open. Wrinkled stockings had been her especial abhorrence, as she was proud of her slim tapering legs; now she habitually went the whole day without garters. She read much, and always novels. Formerly their pandering to "spirituality," to "culture," to all the silly and enfeebling sentimentalisms had bored her. They had offended her sense of what was truly ideal—for, even thus early in her development, she had a strong suspicion that "idealism" was not a mode of life but a strut, and that "idealists" were not above but beneath usefulness. Now she took novels as a drug fiend his dope. Anything to escape reality—the ugly facts which her negligence was making uglier day by day.

She was in the way trod by so many women who, married and safe, cease to compete and deteriorate physically, morally, and mentally. And she knew it. She had too much intelligence to delude herself, as some women do. Instead of being angered when evidence of her plight thrust at her, she found bitter satisfaction in it. "I'll soon be down to the level of those 'good' women Dick regards as models," thought she. And she read on at her novels.

And still she continued to hope, though she constantly assured herself that hope was dead and buried. It was nearly Christmas; he had been gone more than four months—a hundred and thirty days. No word from him, no sign. "It's over," declared she. "It was just physical attraction, nothing more. And he got enough." This lash upon pride and vanity stung. But the pain seemed to ease another and fiercer pain, and she scourged on. "He got enough. In New York he found fresh attraction—not hard for a man with money and free." Yes, he had used her, despising her the while—how she writhed as she rubbed the coarse salt of these taunts into her wounds!—had used her, despising her the while, had cast her away, like the butt of a smoked cigarette. "And why shouldn't he use and despise and drop me? Could anyone have been 'easier' than I was—I, poor fool, with my dreams of love, and my loneliness and credulity? Well, anyhow he ought to be grateful to fate for having given him a distraction in this dull hole." ... What vanity had been hers, to imagine she could win and hold such a man as he—man of the world, experienced, clever. What colossal vanity! "Really, I deserve all I've got. I'm just like the rest of the women—a vanity box, a mirror and a powder puff, silly and empty—a fool for men to flatter and wheedle and laugh at.... What a poor, dependent thing a woman is! Dick's right; we're worthless except as pastimes. Don't we always despise and trample on a man who takes us seriously? We feel he has dropped down to our level."

She dissected, one by one, the "good" women over in the town and in the big houses along the south shore—their inane lives, their inane pastimes, their inane conversation. What animal grossness concealed by manners and a thin veneer of education, just as their costly clothes concealed the truth about their neglected bodies. What lazy ignorance beneath those pretentious fads for "culture" or religion or charity. And the men, too—through their passions dominated by these women. Not an idea—not an aspiration—just hunting and money-making and eating and drinking—catering to crude appetites. Slavish conformity to the soddening, mind-suffocating routine prescribed by custom for the comfortable classes. Fit associates, these men and their women. The nauseating hypocrisies and self-cheating about virtue and piety and "pure family life!" A pigsty of a world, if one looked at it as it was, instead of at its professions and pretenses. "I'd rather be the dupe of my own honest folly than the dupe of the world's cheap frauds. At least, I aspired. And now that I've fallen back into the muck, all bruised and broken, I don't lie to myself about its being muck.... And what can I do for Winchie? If I teach him what he ought to be, I'll unfit him for life in the world. If I fit him for life in the world, I must teach him to pretend, to cheat, to lie, to trample and cringe. If I teach him the truth about women, he'll become a rake. If I don't, he'll become their dupe. If I teach him the truth about men, he'll shun them. If I don't, they will debauch him."

A wound always constructs a cover, to protect itself while it is healing. The wounded heart of an intelligent man or woman usually protects itself with the scab of cynicism. For the last few years Courtney had shared with Wenona's few progressive, restless young married women that reputation for thinking and saying startling things which anyone at all free in thought and speech soon gets among conventional people. Now she became a mild scandal. Wenona appreciated that it was the fashion in these degenerate days, the mark of the "upper class," to indulge in audacities of every kind. Also, whatever a Benedict and a Vaughan did must be just about right. But sometimes, when she was in a particularly insurgent mood, her callers went away dazed.

They wondered what her husband thought of such disbelief in everything that men, themselves disbelieving, held it imperative for women to believe—women and children and preachers. The fact was he knew nothing about it. Conversation between him and his wife was confined to the necessary routine matters, and never extended beyond a few sentences. They saw each other at table only; then Winchie did most of the talking, or it grew out of and centered round things he had inquired about. Richard and Courtney neither acted nor felt like strangers. That would have meant strain. They ignored each other with the easy unconsciousness that characterizes an intimate life in which there is no sympathy, no common interest. When Richard talked about his work, as he did occasionally, merely the better to arrange his thoughts, Courtney did not listen. When Courtney and Winchie talked together, Richard did not listen.

"You saw the news in to-day's paper?" said Richard at supper a few days after Christmas.

As he continued to look expectantly at her, she roused herself from her reverie, slowly grasped his question. "I didn't read to-day's papers," answered she.

"Well, Gallatin's engagement's announced—from Philadelphia."

She nerved herself for the reaction of inward turmoil which would, she felt, certainly follow such a blow. To her amazement no reaction came. She felt as calm as if the news had been about some one of whom she had never heard.

"Why, you seem not to be interested."

"Oh, yes," replied she indifferently.

"I remember, you didn't like him."

It almost seemed true to her. Or, rather, that she had never cared about him one way or the other.

"And he so mad about you," continued Richard with raillery. "I'll never forget the looks he used to give you—or the ones he gave me, either. Well, it's all over now. He's evidently cured."

"Evidently," said Courtney. She looked calmly at him, shifted her gaze. It happened to fall upon Winchie. The boy was frowning jealously into his plate. She colored. She never had the slightest self-consciousness about Basil with Richard, but only with the boy. However, the reminder soon passed in marvel at her amazing tranquillity. How could she be thus calm in face of such a blow? Had she really conquered her love? Had this sudden, unexpected news of his perfidy killed it all in an instant? Had she never loved him?

Richard had been talking, and she had been so absorbed she had not heard. Now he was holding a letter across the table toward her. Mechanically she reached out, took it, fixed her eyes upon it. "And Mrs. Torrey says," Richard was explaining, "that we ought to ask Cousin Helen here—for a few months at least—until she gets over her father's death."

"Wenona's no place for a girl in search of a husband."

"A husband!" exclaimed Richard. "Who said anything about a husband?"

"Now that her father's dead, with nothing but a small life insurance, she's got to marry."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"That's what Mrs. Torrey's saying between these lines." And she handed the letter back.

"Mrs. Torrey's a fine, noble old lady. Such sordid ideas never'd enter her head."

"Mrs. Torrey's a woman."

"And a good one—and so is Helen," maintained Richard. "Marrying's about the last idea in her head at present."

"I believe that is the theory—among men who know nothing about women."

"She's doubtless almost prostrated with grief."

"With anxiety, perhaps. Not with grief. Not for a worthless old drunkard."

"You forget, Courtney. He was her father."

Courtney lifted her eyebrows. "So much the more certain she detested him. She had to live right up against him."

Richard leaned forward slightly, to add emphasis to his rebuke. "I repeat, Helen is a good woman—a woman with a sense of duty. She must have loved him."

"Why repeat such twaddle?" inquired Courtney, unimpressed. "What has duty to do with hearts?"

Dick looked strong disapproval. "What is the matter, my dear? You're not talking in the least like yourself."

"You always make that same remark," observed Courtney, "whenever I say anything that does not suit you."

"Are you irritated by the prospect of Helen's coming? If you don't want her——"

"I am not irritated about anything. As for Helen, I care not a rap one way or the other."

Winchie had finished. He kissed his father, then his mother good night, and went upstairs. Richard came out of a deep study to say, "It's a pity Gallatin isn't free and here—if Helen comes."

"It would have made a good match," said Courtney judiciously. "A splendid living for Helen."

"I wasn't thinking of Gallatin's wealth," protested Richard, reddening. Then he laughed, "At least, not altogether."

"The living's the main point in marriage."

"What an unpleasant mood you're in."

"I? I never felt more amiable."

"Have I said anything to offend you?"

"Not a thing." She rose languidly. "You're still the model—not a single redeeming fault."

She stretched herself with slow, lazy grace. "But you," said he, "are a bundle of redeeming faults and vagaries—a bouquet of them." And he was about to kiss her.

She flung away from him with flashing eyes. He stared, amazed. "How you startled me!" she exclaimed, quickly changing her expression from fury to half-laughing irritation.

"Miss Caprice!" And his gaze was soft and brilliant.

There was a virgin coldness in her manner that puzzled and abashed him. "How I hate this body of mine, sometimes!" said she. "An admiring look makes me angry, and a kiss seems an insult. Come to me with your love when I'm old and ugly. Then, perhaps, I'll believe it."

And she strolled out of the room and upstairs. The instant she had her bedroom door locked, she knew why she had come away—knew she had been obeying an instinct warning her secret self that she could not many minutes longer endure the strain. "But really I am calm," she insisted. In the same second her wound opened and was aching and bleeding and throbbing, unhealed. "I can never forget—never!" she cried. "Was it only this body of mine he cared for? What does it matter? Even the little he gave was more than I had to give. I ought to have been more humble about giving—I who had so little. And what happiness he gave me in exchange! No—not happiness, but more than happiness." Her eyes strained into the night. It was so dreary—so lonely. "Basil!—Basil! I'm dying for you—dying from the core out!"

She flung her windows wide. The snow came whirling in. The wind was moaning among the branches. Somewhere, far away, a bell tolled. Silence, utter solitude, a stretch of white snow under a black sky, and the chilling cold. "Come to me!" she cried. "I am so cold—so lonely—so hungry! And I love you."

Even where a woman cannot doubt that her lover has forgotten, there are times when memory—of his vows so convincing, of his caresses that seemed the inspiration of her charms alone—makes her defy certainty and believe. And Courtney had no real reason to think him either false or forgetful. They had been torn apart when their love was still hungry and thirsty, when even the long calm that precedes satiety was still far in the future, when they were so absorbed in loving that they had not yet had time to begin to get acquainted with each other's real self. It was doubt of him that was forced, belief in him that was natural. "If he were not so strong, so honorable!" she cried. "Ah, if he were only where I could tempt him!"

Even the thought of Winchie now lost all power to check her; he was too much like part of herself. She seemed as placid in her slender youthfulness as those handsome matronly women who suggest extinct volcanoes covered with flowers and smiling fields. Beneath her manner of monotonous, emotionless calm she was battling with the temptation to take her boy and fly from that cold desolation of loveless loneliness, to fly to him. If Richard had not been absolutely apart from her life, absolutely out of her thoughts she would have hated him. As it was her rage fretted at the impersonal barriers and bonds that held her—not Richard, but conventionality and, above all, lack of money. "If only I had money!" she cried again and again.

But she had nothing—her clothes, a few dollars that must be paid out for expenses already incurred. "If I went to him, it would be to become his dependent, just as I am Richard's. Oh, the horror of being a woman! Bred to dependence; bred for the market; bred to tease some man into undertaking her support for life. There is the rotten spot in my whole life. If Richard had ever deigned to speculate as to what was going on in my head, he'd never have dared touch me. He'd have feared I was his only for hire. But would he care? Doesn't he expect me to be true because he supports me? Isn't that what marriage means, beneath the cant and pretense? Yes, I'm simply part of his property, and the pretenses that gloze it over only make it the more revolting. Oh, if men had sensibilities, and if they knew what women thought!—why we smile and flatter and stay on, in spite of neglect and insult!"

She felt that, if she should go to Basil, the day would come when their love would die of this poison exuding from the basic fact of their relations—his sense of his rights because of her dependence; or, her fear of losing or impairing her living; or, her feeling that since she took bread she must give body—all she had to pay with. Richard thought he could afford to be neglectful; and when it suited him to give passing attention to his property again—to walk in his garden and eat a little fruit from his tree—he thought he had a perfect right to do so. If Richard was thus, if all men believed thus, why fancy Basil an exception? Basil, in time, when passion cooled, would hold her in the same light disesteem. If a man lost his virtue, even hypocrisy did not go beyond a half smiling shake of the head; if a woman lost her virtue, she was "ruined." Ruined—that is, a worthless wreck. "No, I shall not go to Basil. No doubt, he still cares—in a man's way of caring. But he holds me, the unfaithful wife, cheap enough. If I were to lose reputation also, were to be unable to give him the pleasure of trespassing on another's property, were to be merely a ruined woman, living off him, he'd soon treat me like the slave that I am. No, I'll not change owners.... If only I had money!"

What, then? She had seen all along that she was like one sinking in the ooze of a marsh—softly, inevitably toward suffocation. "If I stay on here, I'll become like the rest of the settled, disillusioned married women. I'll become a chronic sloven and—as my disposition isn't toward fat, squatted good nature—a shrew. A slovenly shrew!" Why not? What had she left to live for? In a few years Winchie would be away at school—then in some city at profession or business—and married and out of her life. "I might as well give up. Why not?"

There seemed to be no reason. But our conduct in its main lines is not governed by reason, but by instincts that impel us even against will. When Richard had failed her at the outset of their married life, she had sunk; then her temperament of hope and energy had forced her up again in face of deepest discouragements. So now, while there was no reason why she should cease to sink, should begin to struggle, while Basil's announced engagement assuring a speedy marriage seemed just the thing to make her sink on, she began to rouse herself and to look about her. For the second time her longings and energies had lost their stimulus, their inspiration, their vitalizing center. And that center is to an unselfish nature as necessary as queen bee to swarm which clusters about her, labors for her, and renews through her. With human beings such as Courtney Vaughan longings and energies rarely die upon the corpse of their inspiration. After a while they fly upward, as did hers, and begin to circle in search of a new clustering center, a new reason for living and working on. "I can't stay here," she kept repeating. "I must go somewhere. I must do something. Where? What?" How settle her life problem so that it would be "settled right," and she could have peace and happiness? She found no answer. But she kept on thrusting the question at herself. It was as significant of her character as of her trend of thought that her cry "If only I had money!" changed to "If only I could make money!"

XVI

They were at supper, Dick reading the paper, Winchie busy with bowl of rice and milk, Courtney listening to the storm that shrieked in baffled rage after each vain assault upon the house. Her whole being was quivering with the pain that never pierced her more acutely than when she was in the presence of Basil's vacant place at the table. Winchie, without looking up, broke the silence: "We shan't go, mamma, shall we, unless it clears up?"

Dick, turning the paper, happened to hear. "Go where?" he asked.

"To grandfather's."

"When?"

Courtney said: "Winchie and I are going to-morrow."

"Impossible," said Dick. "They'd think you were crazy."

"Perhaps I am," Courtney replied. "Anyhow, we're going."

"Why?"

"I need a change."

"Put it off till spring." And he resumed the newspaper as if the matter were disposed of.

"No. To-morrow," said she, not in the least aggressively; but her tone was of unalterable determination.

"Or, if you must go somewhere, why not Saint X? You can visit Pauline Scarborough or the Hargraves—and bring Helen March back with you."

"I prefer the farm."

He laid the paper down. "You're not serious?"

"Quite."

"Now, my dear—" he began. His tone was one he had unconsciously adopted from his grandfather. He used it whenever he, as head of the family, confronted an "irrational, feminine caprice."

"What's the use of reasoning with me?" interrupted she. "Didn't your grandfather teach you that women can't reason?"

"I'm willing for you to go to Saint X. But——"

She looked significantly toward Winchie. Dick took the hint, went back to his reading until they were alone. Then he resumed: "I'm sure you'll not persist now that I've pointed out to you——"

"If you wish me to keep my temper," interrupted she, "you'll not use that wheedling tone. I'd feel I was degrading Winchie by speaking to him in a way that belittled his intelligence."

Dick looked astonished. "I had no intention——"

"I know—I know," said she appealingly. "It doesn't matter. I really don't care anything about it.

"But you'll not go when it's so clearly a folly to——"

"I am going," said she. "You ought to be grateful that I have such inexpensive whims. Most of us silly women—" She paused, with a lift of the long, slender eyebrows. How absurd to gird at him whose opinions interested her as little as hers interested him!

He revolved what she had been saying, presently reddened. "I thought I had explained to you," said he, "that the laboratory is very expensive. I know I don't give you much. I've had to cut down the household allowance because I feel sure Gallatin will be withdrawing his capital. But just as soon as I——"

She was even of temper again. "You remind me of old Hendricks," interrupted she pleasantly. "You know, he made three people toil for him all their lives, with no pay and mighty poor board and clothes—on the promise of a legacy—and they died before he did."

But Dick was offended. "It seems to me," said he, "in view of what I'm doing at the shop——"

"Please don't," she cried. "You're trying to make me out an ingrate, who doesn't appreciate how you're toiling just for wife and child. Now, what's the fact? Isn't your work your amusement?"

"Of course, I like it, but——"

"Weren't you doing the same thing before you had a family? Wouldn't you be doing it if you should lose them? Isn't it your pride that you work solely for love of science?"

He looked disconcerted assent.

"Then the fact is, you spend most of your income on your own amusement, as much as if you drank it."

He reflected. "That never occurred to me before," said he. "Possibly I have viewed it too one-sidedly. I must think it over and see."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Pray don't, on my account."

He made no reply, put forward no further objections to her going, though the next morning developed a driving sleet. As she and Winchie were about to get into the carriage he asked; "How long will you be gone?"

"Until I feel better."

"If you are ill, you must not go in this weather."

She looked at him strangely. "If I were dying I should go," was her slow reply.

He hesitated, studied her small, resolute face, her fever-bright eyes, with a puzzled expression. "I suppose it's best to give a woman her way in her whims, so long as they're harmless," said he aloud, but to himself rather than to her. She finished wrapping up the boy, went out to the carriage, and got in. He lifted Winchie in, tucked them both carefully, bade them a last good-by, his expression grave and constrained.

In those fifteen miles through the searching cold, over roads like fields deep plowed and frozen hard, she debated how best to carry out her main purpose in going to that dreary farm—how to take her father partly, perhaps wholly, into her confidence so that she might get his help—for help she must have. Her mother was now impossible—quite demented on the subject of religion latterly through the long steeping of mind and heart in a theology whose heaven was hardly less formidable as an eternal prospect than its hell, and whose hell was a fiery sea canopied by shriek and stench of burning multitude. The old maid sisters had neither experience nor judgment, only bitterness. To them it would be inconceivable that a married woman, with a husband who supported her in comfort, could be other than blissfully happy. But her father— He had been a man of affairs, judge. He had lived and read and thought. She had heard her mother rebuke him for expressing "loose" opinions; probably he was concealing opinions even more liberal and enlightened and humane. Perhaps he could give her practical advice—or at least sympathy.

But, arrived at the farmhouse, she had only to look into those four countenances to see that she was among people who knew no more of the life of the present day—or indeed of the real life of any day, even of what they themselves actually believed and felt—than deep-sea oysters in their bed know of Alpine flowers. Even her father— In this remote desert he had lost what knowledge of life he formerly possessed. She was now developed enough to realize that he in fact never did know much about life, that his was a book education only. She had journeyed for help in vain; she was still alone, dependent wholly upon her own courage and resource.

"Don't you wish we hadn't come, mamma?" said Winchie when they were in the room assigned them.

"No," she replied truthfully. She was watching the hickory flames in a calmer mood than she had known for weeks; at least she had got away where she could think, could get an outside point of view upon the posture of her affairs. "No, indeed," she went on to Winchie leaning against her knee and looking up at her. "No, I feel better already."

"Then I guess I can stand it," said the boy with a sigh.

"You don't know about the hill where we can coast."

As he had never coasted, this did not lighten the impression made on him by the gloomy farmhouse sitting room, its walls and ceilings covered with somber paper, by the shriveled grandparents, with deep-sunk, lack-luster eyes, by the sharp, sour faces of the two old maids. But next day, when the sun came out and the farmhands beat down a track on the long hill, Winchie found the situation vastly improved. Flat on her breast on a sled, with the boy breathless and happy upon her back, she initiated him into the raptures of "belly-buster."

"Why, mamma, you look like a little girl, not a bit grown up," cried he after they had been at it all morning and were tugging up the hill for one last, magnificent rush down before going home to dinner. And she did indeed seem to be a sister of Winchie's, one hardly in her teens. Of course, the short skirt and her smallness of stature helped. But it was in her cheeks, in her eyes, in the curve of her lips as she showed her white teeth in the happiest of smiles.

"I am a little girl," declared she. And before starting out with him after dinner she did her hair in two long braids that hung below her waistline.

They coasted every day; they took long sleigh rides, long romping walks; they hunted rabbits, went fishing through the ice, were uproarious outside the house and in—the latter to the scandal of the three women of the family, who regarded such goings-on as clearly forbidden in the Scriptures. Even Sunday wasn't so bad as might have been expected; for it snowed too violently for Mrs. Benedict to take them to the church where her favorite doctrines were expounded, and they slipped away to the glorious outdoors. In a sheltered hollow under a shelf of rock they built an enormous snow man, with a top hat of bark. They ate what Winchie regarded as the most wonderful meal of his life at the cottage of one of the farmhands. Never before had he seen such brown brownbread or such molassessy molasses or eaten off such big, strong dishes that there wasn't the least danger of breaking, no matter what you did to them. And he was fascinated by the farmhand's wife and daughter, both acting their company best and eating with the little finger of each hand stuck straight out. And in a box in the corner of the room where they ate was a most exciting brood of little chickens, chirping and squeaking. And in the midst of dinner a huge, hairy, black dog suddenly snatched a piece of meat from the farmhand's plate and retired to the kitchen with it. "Ain't he a caution?" said the farmhand, and Winchie thought he certainly was.

Courtney was like those who put out to sea, leaving their troubles at the one shore, not to think of them until they touch the other. All around were the white hills, and there seemed to be no beyond. She abandoned her plan of studying her situation. She stopped thinking; she ate and slept, and played with the boy, and pretended that she was the little girl she looked, home from school for the holidays, and half hoping somehow something would happen so that there wouldn't be any school any more. She did not think, but she hoped. How? What? Where? She did not know; simply hope, that can burst the strongest grave despair ever buried it in.

Well along in the second week, toward the middle of the afternoon, she and Winchie were on the long hill, rounding out one more happy day. She was as happy as he. When all is lost save youth and health, what is really lost? She on her breast on the sled and he sprawled along her back, his arms round her neck, they shot down the steep with shouts and screams. They stopped, all covered with flying snow, in a soft bank beneath which the zigzag fence was deep buried. They rolled in the snow, washed each other's faces, stood up—were within a few feet of a man in a fur-lined coat almost to his heels. They stared, astounded. Then Winchie's face darkened and hers grew more radiant still as the tears sprang to her eyes.

"Basil!" she murmured, Winchie forgotten. "Oh—Basil!" And all in that instant the misery of those months of despair was gloriously transformed into joy.

"Courtney!" he cried. "How beautiful you are!"

He was extraordinarily handsome himself at that moment. Love is a matchless beautifier; and if ever love shone from a human countenance, it was shining, irradiating from his just then. With Winchie jealously watchful they shook hands. "Aren't you and Winchie going to speak to each other?" she asked. And Basil, with reluctance and some confusion held out a hand which the boy very hesitatingly touched.

"I'll pull your sled to the top for you," Basil offered. "Get on, Winchie."

The boy planted his feet more firmly in the snow. "We were going home," said Courtney.

"Get on, Winchie," cried Basil friendlily. "I'll haul you."

"I'm going to walk," replied the boy sullenly.

Courtney understood. "Get on, Winchie," said she. "I'll pull it."

The boy obeyed. The rope was long, so Basil felt free to speak in a lowered voice. "Seeing you—hearing you—touching you— O my darling! my Courtney!"

She forgot where she was, who she was, everything but love. Love! The road danced before her. The cry of the chickadees, the twitter of the snowbirds, the call of Bob White from the fence sounded like supernal music in her ears. The blood tingled and dizzied her nerves. Love again! "You care—still?" she murmured.

"Care? There's only you for me in all the world."

She caught her breath, like the swinger at the long swing's dizziest height when it halts to begin the delirious descent. "Love!" she murmured. "Love!"

"And I know you love me," he went on. "I've never doubted—not once. I've tried to doubt, but I couldn't. Up before me would come those dear eyes of yours, and—Courtney, there isn't a kiss—or a caress—hardly a touch of the hands you and I have ever lived that I haven't felt again and again."

"Don't!" she pleaded, her eyes swimming. "Don't, or I'll break down. My love—my love!"

"I don't know what would have become of me," he went on, "if I hadn't known you'd send for me—yes—in spite of your note. I expected it, for I knew you wouldn't be able to come. The more I thought, the clearer I saw. Not to go any further, there was the boy." He glanced round at Winchie; the angry gray-green eyes were fixed upon him. He glanced away, disconcerted. But he forgot Winchie when his eyes returned to her. "Beautiful! Beautiful—little girl," he murmured, his look sweeping her small, perfect figure to the edge of her short skirt. "I like your new way of wearing your hair."

She blushed. "I did it to make me feel young. I've been feeling so old—old and tired and lonely."

"Thank God, you sent for me."

"Sent for you! A hundred times a day in thought." She laughed aloud, sparkling like the ice-cased boughs in the late afternoon sun. "A thousand thousand times in longing—every time my heart beat."

"Oh, it is so good to be with you!" He drew in a huge draught of the clean, cold, vital air. "Does the sun anywhere else shine on such happiness as this? But I've been mad with happiness ever since the word came."

"The word? What word?"

"Vaughan's letter. I knew you got him to write it."

Courtney stopped short. "I!" she exclaimed. "I don't know what you mean."

"I got a letter from him three days ago. He asked me to take another quarter interest in his work—said he needed the money, as he found he'd been using more of his own in it than he could afford with justice to his family——"

"Oh!" cried Courtney sharply.

"What is it?" asked Basil.

She was looking straight ahead. "Nothing—nothing. Go on." And she started to walk again.

"Your cry sounded like pain."

"Did it? Go on."

"I assumed you had at last succeeded in making the chance for me to come back. So, I telegraphed I'd accept, provided he'd let me work with him again—and that I'd be on at once to talk things over. I took the first train—and here I am."

"Yes, here. That's another mystery to explain."

"Nothing simpler. The station man at Wenona told me you were visiting your father. I jumped at the chance. I can say I thought you all were here. Anything more?"

"I saw the announcement of your engagement."

"It's broken. I couldn't marry her—couldn't have done it in any circumstances. So, I gave her what she was losing by our not marrying. And I'm free. You want me to stay?"

He spoke indifferently about the money he had given up, and he evidently felt indifferent. She would have been hurt had he acted otherwise. At the same time it was a measure of his generosity and of his love, a sordid but certain measure. She regarded that payment as a sort of ransom—his ransom for the right to come to her. "That was his price for the right," thought she. "He paid it without a second thought—would have paid any price. My price for the right to be his may be harder. But I must pay, too—as generously as he."

He was watching her anxiously. "Courtney, I can't go away!"

"You mustn't," replied she. Then a reason—the reason—the solution of her life problem—came to her as if by inspiration. "It's my only chance to be a good woman. That sounds strange, doesn't it?"

"Not to me. I understand. If you hadn't sent for me soon—" he checked himself.

"What?"

"You didn't know that my coming here last spring—and loving you—cured me of the drinking habit. I know, it's stupid and disgusting. I used to loathe myself when I gave way. But it's the only resort in loneliness. And if I realized that you were lost to me, what would I care?"

She nodded sympathetically. "I was going all to pieces, in another way. I was sliding down as fast as Winchie and I were coasting the hill back there. I was going the way of all women who have no love—grown-up love—in their lives. I know now, the reason I used to keep myself together and built myself up and looked after things was because I was waiting and hoping for love, and was expecting it. Love is all of a woman's life, as things are run in this world—at present."

"And quite enough it is, too," said he.

"No," disagreed she. "But let that pass. If I went back to—to that life—alone, I'd be going to ruin. And I'd probably drag him and Winchie down with me. A woman of that unburied-dead sort drags down everybody about her.... You've only to look round, in any station of life, to see those women by the scores. Some few are saved by children—not many and they are of a different nature from me—from most women, I think.... If I don't go back, I either go to you disgraced, a shame to my family, a lifelong stain on my boy here, a miserable, afraid dependent of yours.... No, don't interrupt; I've thought it all out.... Or, I'd plunge into a life of social dissipation. If possible, that sort of woman is worse for herself and for her husband and children than the domestic rotter. A chattering, card-playing gadabout. Possibly I might remain true to my husband, but— If the world weren't the fool it is, it would have discovered long ago that there are worse vices than—" As always when she forced herself to say frank, merciless things, she looked straight into his eyes with defiant audacity—"worse vices than ours."

"But—" he began, shifting his gaze and coloring.

"Oh, yes, it is. Don't make any mistake about it. But I know lots of 'good' women—liars, gossips, naggers, petty swindlers of their husbands, envious, malicious, spiteful—lots and lots of so-called good women beside whom I'd feel white as this snow."

"Rather!" exclaimed Basil.

"So—if you'll go with me—I'm going home—to make it a home—to be a good mother—to give Richard at least his money's worth in care and comfort and—" She looked at him with eyes suddenly solemn—"and that is all, Basil—all. It's all I can give him, all he has the right to.... I'm going home to be a good woman, if you'll come and be there too."

"There's only one life for me—to be as near you as you'll let me."

A long silence. Then she again, sadly: "I don't know how it will work out. But—what else is there for us? We're not heroes. We're human. We must do the best we can. Together we may survive. Apart, I at least will perish—and destroy those near me. I suppose I'm all wrong. But"—with a sigh—"I'm doing the best I can."

Silence again. Then he, deeply moved: "I'll try to be worthy of you, dear."

"Worthy of me? For God's sake, don't say those things. There isn't any pedestal I wouldn't fall off of and break to bits.... Basil—" wistfully—"you don't care for me in just a physical way—do you, dear?"

"I care for you in every way," he answered. "Courtney, I never believed I could respect a woman as I respect you. You know, men aren't brought up really to respect women—or themselves, for that matter."

"Then—couldn't we try to—" She lowered her head, faltered—"couldn't we live as if we were engaged only?"

"Why should we?" he cried.

"I know it's only a fancy. But fancies count more than facts.... I'd feel less the—" She faltered—paused.

"Yes—yes—I understand. And— Well, it doesn't do a man any good to be pretending friendship and smiling in another fellow's face, when all the time— I'll try, Courtney— But—it won't be exactly easy."

Her gaze burned for an instant on his, then dropped. "I should hope not!" murmured she.

They, absorbed in each other, moved so slowly along the road that Winchie, silent, motionless, sullen, upon the sled they were trailing as far as the rope permitted, was stiff with cold. But he did not murmur. By the time they reached the door of the farmhouse, Courtney and Basil had it all planned. He was to leave immediately after supper, was to go at once to Vaughan, make the arrangements, reinstall himself. She was to come home in three or four days—unless Vaughan sent, asking her to come sooner. He dined with the family at the farmhouse, made himself so agreeable that they were all pleased with him—even sister Ann whose bitterness over her failure at what she secretly regarded as woman's only excuse for being alive, took the unoriginal disguise of aggressive man-hating. At six o'clock he drove away in the starlight with a merry jingling of sleigh bells that echoed in Courtney's happy heart. The cold was intense; but she felt only warmth—that delicious warmth that comes from within. She stood on the little front porch, with the stars brilliant above and the snow white and smooth over hill and valley. She watched the swift dark sleigh—listened to those laughing bells, their music growing fainter and fainter—but not in her heart. She was so happy that the tears were in her eyes and the sobs in her throat. It was for her one of those moments in life when she asked nothing more, could imagine nothing that would add to joy. Love again!—and oh, what exalted love, to warm the heart and fill it with light and joy, to brighten every moment of life, to guide her up and ever up.

Winchie, standing beside her and looking up at her rapt face, tugged angrily at her skirts.

XVII

When the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to bring a letter from Richard, she decided that prudence had been satisfied, that she need wait no longer. Toward four she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in furs and straw in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were perfect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth and firm by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The big horses, steaming as if they were engines, flew as if they were a wind. But her impatient heart was always far ahead, fretting at their laggard pace.

They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The journey was ended except the mile and a half round the curve of the lake. She became all at once serenely calm. Life her real life—was now about to begin. It was far from the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging her own fate. However—who could live an ideal life in such a topsy-turvy world? Nature and conventionality ever at war; right and wrong, not two straight paths, one up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a labyrinth. One must often travel the path of the wrong in order to reach the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right often meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys of the wrong. She was in the confused state about right and wrong characteristic of this era of transition that has seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma, and has not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace it. "Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and miserably and uselessly," thought she. "My life's to be a thistle with fig grafts. I'll do the best I can with it—Basil and I. With him to help me—his strength and character and self-denying love—with him to help, all may go well. Is my compromise—Basil's and mine—worse than those almost everyone has to make? If so, then they ought to educate women differently, and change marriage."

And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, making a dashing and musical arrival, she was in a mood of moral exaltation that might have stirred the enthusiasm of a saint—that is, a saint ignorant of the foundations of that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity do not interrogate too closely the glitter and lift of moral temples; they know humanity has only humble materials with which to build.

The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm air, redolent of the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to welcome them. "I am glad!" cried he. Because of the peculiar relations long established between them—relations such as must exist in some degree between a husband and a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten—because of these peculiar relations, she had not anticipated and did not feel the least embarrassment. She was not defying or ignoring her husband; she had no husband. After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do the same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged herself from the robes and was standing beside him. He looked into her face, fully revealed by the pour of soft light from the hall. "Your trip certainly has done you good," said he.

"Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left cheek for the necessary formality of the occasion. Her attention was wholly elsewhere.

In the hall before her there had appeared two people, hanging back discreetly, so that they would not intrude upon the family reunion. Basil, she expected. The woman beside him so astonished her that she forgot to be glad to see him. Who was she? This tall, slender girl with the proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, the big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, standing beside this lovely girl and making a laughing remark; her feminine sight instantly noted how the remark was received by the girl—the flattering glance and smile a marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one of her own sex or from an ineligible man. And through Courtney shot a pang that dissolved her structure of moral uplift as a needle thrust collapses a toy balloon. Who was this woman?—this young woman—this tall woman—this handsome woman—so pleased with Basil Gallatin?

"Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here?" Dick was now saying.

Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all freckles and pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, the Helen March she had seen three years before and had not seen since—so, that prim and homely gawk had developed into this stately creature! Prim, still—unless that expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract wife hunters. But certainly neither homely nor awkward. She even dressed her hair well, and wore her clothes with quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt and thought in a few twinklings of an eye—for in such circumstances a woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and with genius's grasp of essential detail. Helen was advancing.

"Don't you recognize me, Courtney?" she asked. The voice was one of those honest, pleasant voices that disarm the most cynical pessimists about human nature—the voice that makes the blasé city man fall to dreaming of taking a country girl to wife.

"Now I do, of course," said Courtney sweetly. And the two embraced and kissed.

To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than a head the taller. She bent with not a suggestion of condescension in manner or in thought. Nevertheless Courtney, for the first time in her life painfully sensitive about her stature, flamed and was resentful—and in her scorn of her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, Helen's figure was commonplace, the bust too high and ominously large for her age, the hips already faintly menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too short for the great length of leg. True, her own figure was—certainly better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height—could look at Basil level-eyed, could make her seem—short! And this Helen here to stay indefinitely!

There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney gave Basil as their trembling hands met in what seemed to the others a formal greeting. She turned away with a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound, was all ready to rush forward and drink—the mirage vanished. Was it to be always so? Was life to be ever a succession of mirages, vanishing at approach, only to reappear and revive hope—and cheat again? Through her mind flashed the memory of the first one—an indelible memory, always for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July when she was a very small child—how she awakened at sunrise, rushed to the window to find sky clear and world radiant and ready for the picnic that was to be her first great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best, in wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes and white bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash of pale green, and bows of pale green on her braids; how, just as she descended in all her glory to issue forth, down came the rain—in floods—and no picnic, nothing but stay at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. "It was my horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the hall too sad for bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. "Is it fate? Or, is it somehow my fault? My fault, I suppose. I must be asking of life something no one—at least, no woman—has the right to expect."

She was near the library door, with Winchie on its threshold staring round big-eyed and crying, "Oh, mamma Courtney. Look!" His eyes were no more wondering than her own. She had been too disheartened to make the library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it was transformed into a conservatory—the carpet up from the hardwood floor, plants beautiful for bloom or for foliage or for both in boxes, in jars, in pots—everywhere. A conservatory like that of former years, but more elaborate.

The others were laughing and watching her face. So she exclaimed "I am surprised!" in the indefinite tone the listener can easily adapt to his expectations. But she was not pleased—far from it. Another fierce pang of jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not realize that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her exquisite taste. To her it seemed better far than she could have done. Why, she hadn't been needed, or missed even! Things went on as well in her absence as when she was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and Helen—how she could feel them!—so well matched physically—and he fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that self-complacent, satisfied vanity which shelters so many of us from any and all misgivings and doubts.

"Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. "She's a trump, you'll find. Look out, Helen, or we'll make you do all the work."

"Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," protested Helen in her school-teacherish or collegiate speech and manner. "And Mr. Gallatin was invaluable in showing us how you had it last winter. We wanted to get it exactly the same."

Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. "So, you remembered, did you?" she ventured to say, sure her meaning and her tone would pass the others safely.

Basil flushed. "You can judge for yourself," said he.

"I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their smiling, friendly faces, all bent upon her, made her natural generosity burst forth like April's unending green at the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled. "Thank you—thank you all!" she cried. "I am so—so—happy!" And she kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean impulses toward one whose aloneness and poverty commanded kindness and consideration and help from another woman, especially from a woman who had known the bitterness of dependence and aloneness.

Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jealousy, held the field—not without occasional alarms and excursions, but still decisively. It was the merriest party that had gathered about the mahogany dining-room table since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond the mountains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that early day—carpets and curtains and window glass, wall paper and carved beds and crystal chandeliers. In Colonel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had been genial but austere; Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between his death and her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though bravely and resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered on after all her brightening changes. But that night, the spell was broken. Dick put aside his chemistry; Basil and Courtney forgot him and their burden of deceit. Helen belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, even jealous little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, determined to make her love him. And Courtney was gayest of all; was not that vacant place at the table filled once more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction and saw—him! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, listening sourly to the merriment that came through door and hall into kitchen and sounded like a burst from a ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. "Poor young man!" muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. "If he only knowed the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, what a holocaust there'd be." She did not know what holocaust meant, having got merely its vague sense from a sermon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos far beyond the scope of words she understood.

Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though they were, scrutinized Basil. Not that she really suspected him; she simply wished to fortify herself against the folly and the unhappiness of suspicion—as women look under a bed before getting into it. Having fortified herself, she concentrated on Helen—Helen, the homeless, the unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her scrutiny were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called Helen's manner mere civility; and perhaps, in strict justice, it was nothing more. But Courtney the woman, judging Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth beneath the surface truth—saw that Helen was not without an instinct for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured against the coming of an opportunity for it to expand in the garden of matrimony with the flower and leaf and fruit of wife and mother. Courtney judged fairly, conceded that Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no arts, no subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in her charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward the young man. The danger which Courtney foresaw and feared lay in the fact that Basil and Helen were both attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a very brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, Helen must fall in love with him. What then? A well-bred, pretty woman in love is always more and ever more attractive to the man she centers upon. And Helen was free—and could be honorable throughout!

As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so forbidding of aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. "I like Helen," she thought, "and it's decent and right to give her a home. If I were what I ought to be—ought to try to be—I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil. She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided for. It's mean of me to stand in her way." She found some cheer in the reflection that, while most women would straight off hate Helen and look on her as an impudent interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just in thought at least. "But I'm human," said she. "Helen has got to go. She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't need him. I do. She's got to go!"

It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her sitting room, and do her hair for the night; then she would sometimes stretch herself out flat upon her breast and read by the fire light or watch it and dream or think. She was lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and face toward the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. So absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the room until he spoke.

"It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, isn't it?" said he, seating himself on the sofa parallel to the fireplace but well back from it. He had a long dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a last cigarette.

"Special providence? What?" inquired she without turning her head. His entrance had not interrupted her train of thought. Her answer was, as usual, a reflex action from her surface mind.

"Why, Basil's coming back."

No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement of Basil's return as coming from him but as if she had herself begun to revolve it of her own accord.

"And Helen's being here."

A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here.

"It's just as we wanted it," he went on.

The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she said curtly.

Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil," said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at college——"

There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be nice to him, Courtney?—and help him and Helen along? They were intended for each other—height—contrast of coloring——"

Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His expression— That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room.

"You are—beautiful!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of——"

Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not locking her doors into the hall.

"Of charm—aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most girls, I imagine."

She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new life!

"And you're so well now—so alive——"

"I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. "I must go to bed." She sprang lightly up. "Good night," she said. And to take away the sting—for, his slight wince showed her there was sting—she stood on tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned.

His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the contact, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not draw away; an instinct of prudence, not a deliberate thought, restrained her. She flushed from head to foot, her modesty wounded, her pride abased. "Good night," said he, lingeringly.

"Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the fire.

Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. She had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat up, gazed eagerly toward the window giving on the small veranda. It was open for the night; the shutters were latched, however, and through them came intensely cold air and some faint light. She thought she heard a tapping at the shutter—that shutter she had so often thrown wide in the hope that Basil had secretly returned. She listened. After a long wait, again the tapping—so soft that only the attention of an expectant listener would have been attracted.

"Basil!" she murmured. "I must have been expecting him."

She was about to dart to the window when there came a thought like a blow in the face flinging her back and making her cover her head. First the one man; now the other. "God!" she muttered. "How they will degrade me, between them."

No, it should not be! She grew angry with Basil. At the first opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt her to become what he could not but despise. That was what he called love! And how poorly he must think of her! ... She uncovered her head, listened. No repetition of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the shutter. No one! Yes—the snow on the rail had been disturbed. She leaned out. Snow—the black boughs—the biting midnight air—stars—the crescent moon with a pendant planet—the distant muffled sound of a horse stamping in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering back to bed—heartsick with disappointment.

XVIII

When she at last went to sleep it was like a ship going down in a storm. But she slept nine hours without a dream; and she awakened in that buoyant mood with which perfect health of body will triumph over whatever heaviness of soul. Her troubles seemed largely fanciful, were certainly anticipatory; she would push steadily forward, and all would be well.

When she descended, the two men had breakfasted and gone, and Winchie was out on the lawn playing at snow man with the Donaldson children and their governess. Helen, still at table with coffee and newspaper, greeted her so honest of eye and of voice that she was altogether ashamed of her thoughts of evening and night before. Also, Helen did not look especially well in the mornings. Sleep swelled her face, her eyelids; her skin inclined to be cloudy; her hair hung rather stringily about her brow. And in négligée the defect of too much bust and too short waist seemed worse than it was. "I must see that she gets a proper corset," thought Courtney. "Like so many women, she doesn't realize that corset is three fourths of the battle for figure." She studied Helen with an artist's eye and an artist's enthusiasm for bringing out the best, the beautiful. "Yes," she said to herself, "Helen can be made a perfect wonder for looks. I must try it." And then she knew she had never really intended to send Helen away. She who had suffered so much from the tyranny of dependence—it would be impossible for her to exercise that tyranny over another. "I don't want to send her away. But if I did want to, I couldn't, no matter what happened. I might think I would, and try to compel myself to do it. But when it came to the pinch, I'd remember—and I couldn't. No other human being shall ever know through me the sort of humiliation I bear."

She was ashamed of her fears about Basil, too. "As if he hadn't known lots of women. As if our love were just the ordinary thing that passes for love. And Helen'll help brighten things up—this house must not and shall not be gloomy." Then too—and this idea she did not definitely express to herself—Helen would give her and Basil more freedom by pairing off with Richard when they were all together.

Still more cheering were the thoughts that came from her mail. From the bank's monthly statement she learned that Richard had for the first time fixed an allowance sufficient for the position she was expected to maintain. There is a minimum amount on which a family can live in a certain style; every dollar below that means pinch, every dollar above it luxury. Courtney had at times been hard put to keep from going into debt. Many a woman, bred as she had been, as most American women are—with small practical knowledge, with only the silly useless "education" the usual school and college give, with no notion of values or mistaken notions, with contempt for realities and reverence for inanities—has in the same circumstances become hopelessly involved. But whatever the shortcomings in Mrs. Benedict's system of bringing up her children, she had certainly inculcated a horror of debt. And as human life and character are grounded upon material things if they have any substantial foundation at all, this dread of debt had been and continued to be one of the main factors in Courtney's development. It is amazing how far a single cardinal real principle, such as a fixed aversion to debt, will go toward keeping any human being straight, toward bringing them back to sense of the just and the right, when they have been swerved by emotion or irresistible gale of circumstance. But in human affairs all the truly great powers are forces so quiet and move so close to the ground that their existence is unsuspected; or if pointed out, it is denied and scouted, and some windy fake of philosophy or politics or superstition is hailed as the god in the machine. Instead of going into debt and playing the "refined, cultured lady," Courtney had set about learning to economize without privation or meanness or tawdry pretense, acquiring the supreme art of living—the getting of its full value for every dollar. It had been a hard schooling; she began to realize how valuable, how invaluable. With this additional allowance Richard was now making, she saw what wonders of improvement she could work—she who had been getting out of the smaller income what many women in Wenona, spending four and five times as much, had not got. Certainly, the sky was brightening.

"If you haven't taken a dislike to me," Helen was saying, "and are going to let me stay a while, I'll make myself useful. In fact, I'll not stay if I don't. I must pay my way, and I can't pay in money."

"Whatever you like," said Courtney, "if you'll only stay. We want you. We need you."

Helen never forgot the warmth that cordial genuine tone sent through her. She didn't try to put her thanks into words, for there are no words for such real and deep feeling. She simply looked at Courtney—a look that more than rewarded her. After a moment she went on in an unsteady voice, "I could help—with Winchie. I took a course in kindergarten work at Tecumseh—and in housekeeping, too. They really teach things—real things—there. Then, I sew beautifully—the finest kind of sewing."

"So I see," said Courtney, looking at the sacque Helen was wearing. She did not like the sacque, because she did not like flummery and elaboration—and Helen had the poor girl's weakness for both. But she did admire the quality of the work that had been put into it.

"You must let me do some sewing for you. Do you like fine underclothes?"

"Crazy about them."

"I knew you were," said Helen who, judging by Courtney's dress and light way of talking, had already clearly and finally made up her mind that the verdict of "serious people" as to her cousin was just—a sweet, light, pretty creature, fond of dress and all the frivolities. "Just you wait! Mrs. Hargrave up at our town brought back some things from Paris—perfectly wonderful! All the women were excited about them. Well, I know how to make them—and where the goods can be got. Not expensive, either."

"I'll get the material," said Courtney, "and you can make some for both of us."

"Then I took a course in fitting. Don't judge by the things I wear. I somehow can't fit myself."

"It's the corset," said Courtney.

"I suppose so. I could never afford to have them made—or to buy the best ready-made kind. But I can do well for others. I can teach your dressmaker how to behave herself. That'll save you a lot of time and worry, won't it?"

"And work. Now, I have to remake most of my things."

Courtney began to respect Helen. The evening before, the girl, bent upon making a favorable impression, had been a wholly different person. She had seemed to Courtney stuffed to bursting with the familiar, everywhere admired and nowhere admirable "idealism" that chokes thought with cant and cumbers action with pretense. She had displayed a disquieting fondness for the "cultured" drivel about art and literature, about morals and manners, that destroys sincerity and simplicity's strength, and creates the doleful dreary lack of individuality characteristic of the so-called educated classes throughout the world. Courtney had always had the courage to confess that these honored frauds seemed to her ridiculous and wearisome. She assumed that Richard's and Basil's admiring attention, as Helen "showed off" after the manner of young girls, was politeness—or tribute to Helen's good looks. Now that she had discovered real virtues in Helen, she was not alarmed; for, she had learned that men are not interested in such virtues in young women but only in surface charms that stimulate their sex illusions. "It'd take a man who had been married at least once to appreciate Helen," thought she.

By the time Courtney finished breakfast, she had explained her plans and Helen had made many intelligent suggestions. They lost no time in getting to work. The morning flew, dinner was ready before they had given it a thought. Yes, Helen was a genuine addition, was just what she needed. "Yet I've no doubt Basil'll think her stupid once he gets used to her beauty and her sweetly pretty romantic pose for the matrimonal game."

Dick and Basil came, and the merry party of the night before was repeated. Courtney noted with pleasure that Dick and Helen had taken a fancy to each other. Without her realizing it, this was a thorough test of her absolute apartness from him; for, many a woman who is not in love with her husband, who actively dislikes him, will yet be furiously jealous of him—and by no means entirely from the sordid motive of fear lest his being attracted elsewhere will end in lessening her own portion of the income. Dick showed that he thought Helen, tall of stature and serious looking, an appreciative listener to his discourses on chemistry; and Helen's manner was indeed well calculated to deceive—a man. After dinner Dick led her up to his study further to explain some things they had been discussing. Winchie hurried away to resume play with the Donaldsons, their governess having come for him—and Courtney and Basil were free.

"It seems too good to be true," said Basil. "How much better this is—in every way—than what we've been condemning each other to.... Courtney, I did a very indiscreet thing last night. I came to your window—climbed up by a ladder Jimmie had forgotten to lock up in the woodshed."

Courtney, rosy red, lowered her head.

"I don't wonder you're angry. I'll never do it again. When we have such happiness as this, we must do nothing—nothing—to endanger it. And I want to say, you were right about—about what's best for us. The very resolve to try has made everything seem entirely different. I'm not ashamed when I look at Richard. I can meet his eyes. And with your help I think I can wait patiently—and hope! ... Don't you think it possible those two might fall in love?"

She was startled, then fascinated by the idea. "Why not? If they only would!"

"It's just possible—barely possible." They sat silent, reflecting on this new hope. Presently Basil went on, "They're both very serious minded. And Miss March would be a real companion for him. She's thoroughly intellectual, has quite a remarkable mind—more like a man's."

At "intellectual" Courtney thought he was joking. She began to smile, rather reluctantly—for, she did not like to laugh at so sweet and honest a girl as Helen, even with one so near to her, so like another self. Then his expression warned her that he was in earnest, that he really regarded Helen's "cultured" conversation as an indication of intelligence, did not see that it was merely education of an elementary and commonplace sort—the sort the colleges, those wholesale dealers in ready-made mental clothes, dressed out all minds in, so that usually one could tell a college man just as one could tell a ready-made suit. It was at her face to laugh at him. What an instance of woman's good looks blinding susceptible man to the truth about her internal furnishing, as different from the real thing as a hotel parlor from the drawing-room of a person of taste and individuality. But she did not laugh; that would have seemed meanness toward Helen—and Courtney, no lenient critic of her own character, rather suspected herself of a sly ungenerous envy of Helen's stature.

"Yes," pursued Basil, "Miss March has a remarkable mind. But I'm afraid there's no hope—about her and him. You see, she's not at all that sort of girl. She'd rather die than commit any impropriety—that is, I mean of course," he stammered, "she's horribly prim."

Courtney would have thought nothing of it, had he not stumbled and hastened on to explain. But that agitated, apologetic embarrassment changed "she'd rather die than commit any impropriety" from a commonplace into a tribute to Helen which was a slur upon herself. For her love's sake she resisted the temptation to pretend not to have heard or felt. "You like that sort of thing in a woman, don't you?" said she, with a lift of the eyebrows, those deep notes in her voice ominous.

"In Miss March—yes," blundered he. "That is, in a young girl." He halted, burst out desperately, "You're always suspecting me of not respecting you."

There began to gather in Courtney an emotion that terrified her. It was not anger; it was not shame. It seemed, rather, a sort of dread—though of what she did not know—did not wish to know. "Please, no protests," she said hurriedly. "Let's drop the subject."

"I do respect you," he said, doggedly. "But if I didn't"—there, he looked at her—"I feel for you something that's so much more than respect—I love you."

She drew in her breath sharply, and her eyes gleamed and glistened as they opened wide. She had a way of opening her eyes upon him that made him feel as if he were standing on a high place and about to plunge dizzily into the sea at the call of a mermaid. The silence that followed was interrupted—rudely it seemed to them—by the return of Helen and Dick.

"I need somebody in addition to you, Gallatin, to help out down at the shop," said Dick, "and Helen is going to try."

"If Cousin Courtney is willing," said Helen. "She may need me here, as I told you."

Courtney had been standing with her fingers on the edge of the chimney-piece, gazing between her arms into the fire. She slowly turned and regarded Richard. Basil and Helen working together!

"Oh, no, she doesn't need you here," asserted Vaughan. And catching Courtney's eye, he glanced from Basil to Helen and winked.

Courtney seemed not to see. "Helen doesn't want to go down there," said she. "Richard imagines, if people listen politely to his talk about chemistry, that they're as interested as he."

"Really I'd like it," said Helen, a good deal of nervousness in her enthusiasm.

"She could try it anyhow," urged Vaughan. "We need some one—don't we, Basil?"

"Yes," said Basil. "You remember, I suggested you ought to ask Mrs. Courtney to take a hand."

"Courtney!" Vaughan laughed gayly. "She has no fancy for anything serious. Now, Helen is masculine minded."

"Not a bit," declared Helen, much agitated by such an accusation, in presence of an eligible young man. "I'm so much a woman that I'm what's called a woman's woman."

"Helen prefers to stay here," said Courtney. "So, I think I'll try."

Richard stared and frowned.

She smiled at Basil. "Richard is getting broad minded," she went on slowly, selecting her words. "A short time ago the idea of a woman in that laboratory of his would have upset him quite. I remember, when we were first married, I made the most desperate efforts to get him to let me help. He was finally quite rude about it." She spoke with no suggestion of resentment; and, indeed, that time seemed so remote, so like a part of another life or another person's life that she felt no resentment.

"I'm sure—we'll—both—be glad to have you," stammered Basil. He was confused before the instinct-born thought that those few apparently simple words of hers, so quietly and so good-humoredly spoken, were in fact the story of the matrimonial ruin he had found when he came—and was profiting by.

"I'll come down to-morrow," Courtney went on. "Helen can look after things here."

Helen could not conceal her relief; when the men were gone she said: "I'm so glad you got me out of that. Dick would have discovered what a stupid I am in about one hour, and he'd have despised me. I'd hate that, as I think he's wonderful. How proud you must be of him. Of course, Basil is very sweet—and such a gentleman—and how well he does dress! But Dick— They're not in the same class."

"No," said Courtney.

Just then Vaughan came hurrying in. "I forgot something I wanted to say to you, my dear," he began. "Come in here——"

Helen took the hint and hastened away. Vaughan went on, "Why on earth didn't you help me?"

Courtney looked interrogative. She felt a curious impersonal anger against him for having blunderingly interfered in her affairs.

"Didn't you see," explained Richard somewhat irritably, "I had it all fixed to bring those two together?"

"How dull of me!"

"It's not too late. All you have to do is back out and send her."

"And have her exhibit herself before him at her worst. And get him sick of the very sight of her." Richard began to look foolish. Courtney went on in the same tone of light mockery: "If you want a girl to marry a man, or a man a girl, you mustn't let them see too much of each other. If possible, make it hard for them to get at each other." The emerald eyes were mockingly mirthful now. "No such love-inducer in the world as holding two people apart. And when two can see each other freely—to their heart's content—and satiation—why—" She finished with a shrug, her eyes looking straight into his.

"All right. You women know each other best," said he, uncomfortable, without being able to locate the cause.

"Helen will stay at home, like the homebody she is," pursued Courtney. "And I'll come to help you. I've had it in mind for several days."

"You're not in earnest about that!" cried Vaughan in alarm. "Why, what'd you do there? You'd be in the way."

"More than Helen?"

"Frankly—yes," said Richard bluntly. "As I said before, serious things interest her. You know, I dislike that sort of thing in a woman—am glad to see that you've gotten entirely over it, as I knew you would. But I could have put up with it—for a while—to help Helen to a good husband and Basil to a fine wife. It wouldn't have taken long—at least, I thought not. I admit I was probably wrong, and you right."

"Well—now that I've said I'd come, I'll come," said Courtney. "Helen'll take most of the detail here off my hands."

"If you really want to come—" said Dick, reluctant. "I suppose—after what I've said— Well, you can come for a few days."

Courtney was looking into the fire. Not for a "few days" but for as long as Basil worked with those dangerous chemicals. If anything happened—they would be together. Richard was looking at her; but he thought it was the fire light that was giving her the strange, somehow terrible expression which yet enhanced her beauty and her charm.

"How serious you look," said he. "Really, quite tragic—in that light."

"Yes, it must be the way the light falls," replied she. "Or is it because I've mislaid my pet powder rag?"

Next morning as soon as Courtney dispatched her household routine she went down to the Smoke House and appeared before Richard in his laboratory for the first time since that morning after the homecoming, long, long ago in that other life. With a platinum rod he was slowly stirring some fiery mixture of a dark purple color in a big iron crucible. She saw that the fumes were poisonous, as his nose and mouth were protected by a respirator. As on the previous visit she stood silent in the doorway watching him. She had long since passed the stage of comparisons and contrasts; and her mind was altogether upon the present and the future, as an intelligent young mind is extremely apt to be. So, she was not thinking of that previous visit, but was simply interested in what he was doing—in his work, which she had now resolved, with an experienced woman's determination, to make her own work also, no matter what opposition she might encounter. Her achievements in house and gardens, in bringing up Winchie, in breaking through the barriers of moral convention so powerful round a woman born and bred as she had been—these feats had wonderfully developed her will, had replaced shyness and timidity with quiet self-confidence.

When the contents of the crucible cooled and he took off the respirator, she spoke. "I see you've run up a partition."

He glanced at her with a frown—not severe but irritated, as at the persistent naughtiness of a sweet and charming child. "Oh, you've come—have you? ... Yes—the partition gives Basil and me each his own shop. I like to work alone, whenever it's possible."

She advanced calmly, indifferent to his unfriendliness. "Then you don't want me to help you?" She put all her diplomacy of tone and manner into that little speech. She knew how much depended upon this "entering wedge"—this getting tolerated within those walls.

"What a whimsical creature you are!" Dick was still vexed, but half laughing, too. She was so delicate and graceful, so fascinating to the eye; and she seemed to him absurdly, quaintly out of place there. "Basil!" he called. "Gallatin!"

Gallatin, in a blouse, rubber apron and gloves appeared from the other part of the shop.

"Well—here's the—the 'prentice," said Dick. "You're not busy nowadays. Take charge of her."

"It'll be a great pleasure, I'm sure," he stammered. He looked about as uncomfortable at sight of her as had Richard. Demurely she followed him into his compartment. As the partition did not extend to the ceiling, they had to content themselves with an exchange of eloquent glances. Then, taking the tone of gentleman chemist to not overbright and densely ignorant lady visitor at a laboratory, he began to explain to her the names and uses of things, and to demonstrate how to use them.

For the entire morning he talked and illustrated, thoroughly enjoying himself at making a fine impression with his display of superior knowledge. He told her little she did not already know. But she was not so tactless as to spoil his pleasure or hurt his vanity. She listened and tried; and when he complimented her on her quickness in learning, she showed delight at being praised. In the afternoon he allowed her to practice his teachings unassisted—set her at weighing a little nitrate of potassium precipitate in the gold and ivory and aluminum balances. She had done this sort of things a hundred times, but was meek under his elaborations of cautioning and explaining.

"I worked a lot in laboratories at school," said she ingenuously, when his guidance became a little tiresome. "It's beginning to come back to me."

He smiled in a way that reminded her of Richard. "All right. Do the best you can," said he. "We'll not expect much of you for the present. I'm afraid you'll soon give up."

She looked at him. "I'm here to stay," said she, "You'll not get rid of me."

"But the work's very hard—not at all feminine."

"That suits me. For, I'm not at all feminine, myself—what men mean by feminine."

He laughed, went about his own business. As she sat at the balances, her whole mind on the needle she was watching through the reading glass, she felt herself caught from behind. She turned her laughing face upward and backward, and they kissed. "Isn't it splendid!" he exclaimed under his breath. "Yes—you must stay." It had been part of her plan of life that they should never caress. Suddenly she realized how impossible this rule was—and how foolish. On occasions—such occasions as this joy in the unexpected kindness of fate—the rule must be suspended.

"How long it's been!" he said in a low voice. "Not since early September have I kissed you—and this is almost February."

She glanced warningly toward the top of the partition.

"Away at the other end," Basil assured her, "and doing something that can't be left an instant for an hour or more."

"Well then—" She blushed, hesitated, gave him a passionate, longing look. "One more kiss—and we go to work."

He seated himself and drew her to his lap. With their heads close together, they talked—of anything, of everything, of nothing—and hardly knew what they were saying—and cared not at all. "Oh, the happiness of it," she murmured. "And we are to work side by side, too. It seems a dream. I can't believe it."

"And soon it will be spring again, and we shall be a little freer."

"Be patient until I get everything settled," she answered, "and we shall be free almost all the time. I have thought it out."

"You think of everything."

"I think of nothing but you—always you," she answered. "What have I but our love? I want to make the house comfortable, your apartment comfortable, myself attractive—all, so that love will never begin to think of taking flight."

"Flight!" He laughed softly. "How absurd! Can't you feel that I'm just wrapped up in you?"

She touched his tight encircling arms. "I can feel that I'm just wrapped up in you," she retorted. "Now, let me go. I am not to keep you from the work—or you me."

"Not just yet."

"Yes"—firmly. "You don't take me any more seriously than Richard does. But I don't in the least care. If I am serious, what does it matter whether anyone thinks so or not?" She laughed a little. "And I'm feminine enough, I'll admit, to want to be what the man who wants me wants me to be."

He was not listening. He held her more tightly, and she knew what was coming before he began to speak. "Let me come to-night, Courtney. Just this once. I simply want to be alone with you——"

"Not yet," she replied. "Don't let's tempt each other to risk years of happiness for a frightened moment." And, afraid she would yield if he kept on urging, she abruptly freed herself and sent him back to his seat.

An hour, and he came to her again. "I've been doing nothing but watch you, and you haven't looked round once."

"This work is interesting," replied she—and it was the simple truth.

"No—not once!"

"What a good example I'm setting you. I always used to like chemistry. And I was a harum-scarum girl then. Now, I see I'm going to be tremendously fond of it."

"Courtney—I can't stand—our—our compact. I simply can't. I feel as if you had thrust me out of your life. And— Have you no memory, sweetheart? Courtney, we're only human beings, after all. And we've the right. Aren't you my wife?"

"Don't tempt me, Basil," she answered with a sigh. "Do you suppose I don't feel it? Sometimes I get to thinking what might be— But I will not! You do not wish it." And she glanced meaningly at the partition.

"You are mine!" he whispered, moved by the reminder but not abashed. "If I had never known love in its fullness, I might be able to endure this cold, repellent pretense of virtue—for, it's nothing but a flimsy pretense. Courtney, if you love me——"

"Is your love only—that!"

"If you loved me," he repeated, "you'd not calculate so puritanically. If I weren't seeing you, dear, I could bear it. But seeing you all the time—touching you—kissing you—Courtney, Courtney, how can you make me, and yourself too, suffer so needlessly? If you really love, how can you keep me out of your inmost life—as if I were not everything to you?"

"I explained to you——"

"Explained! Explained!" he said, impatiently. "We explain and explain, but it's all sophistry. The truth is—what? That we are lovers. And, if our love is a sin, why not take all its reward since we'll have to take all its punishment?"

"Don't harass me now," she begged, agitated and trembling.

"Harass you!" He drew away offendedly. "I thought I was pleading for you, as well as for myself. If I am not, please forget what I said."

"I didn't mean that!"

"Then I may come to-night—or you to me?"