THE HUNGRY HEART (continued 6)

She gave him a sad, pleading look. "Not to-night, dear. Not just yet. We must wait till things are going quietly in a routine."

"How easily you put us off!"

"Basil!—Please!"

He stared sulkily out of the window. "It does sting my pride that you care so much less than I. It does make me—almost doubt."

"Not so loud!"

"You don't realize how far away he is, and how absorbed.... I take back all I said." And he straightened himself coldly and went to his own part of the room.

A moment, and she followed him. "You are offended, Basil."

"No—hurt."

She sighed. "I will come to-night."

"You do not wish to come!"

"To be honest, no. I should feel—" She hesitated. She wished to be frank; but how could she be, when he was in that mood of doubt? How could she explain again that, in some respects, she loathed the memory of the times they had been stealthily together—the alarms, the narrow escapes from discovery—the commonness of it all—like those low intrigues that get into the newspapers, to make coarse mouths water and vulgar eyes sparkle? If she tried to tell him, he would misunderstand. "Not just yet," she went on. "I'm in a queer mood—not myself. You——"

She was so tender, so loving, so deeply distressed that, in shame and contrition, he embraced her. "I'm sorry I said anything. But you'll understand. How can I help longing for you? It's your own fault—you beautiful, wonderful woman!"

And their first clash ended in kisses, in serenity restored, with him saying—and thinking—"How much braver and better you are than I! Yours is the love that makes a man stronger and decenter."

Her look was eloquent of gratitude and happiness. But the happiness in it was forced, at least in part, was rather what she felt she ought to feel than what she actually did feel—as is so often the case. And she went back to work with a certain heaviness of heart—and a foreboding. The slightest alarm, however fanciful, was enough to call up the specter of those months of loneliness and despair after he left. That specter haunted her, was in her mind the fixed idea that becomes an obsession. She knew that to quiet it, she would if necessary stop at nothing. "I can never give him up again. I'd do anything—anything—rather than even risk it." Pride and self-respect were all very well, but those who could put such things before love had not loved. She hoped and prayed Basil would not force her to the test. But—if he did— She sighed, and bade herself wait until that situation arose before worrying over it.

XIX

Now that the throes of birth were over, their love bade fair to be like those robust infants that almost kill mothers in the bearing but thereafter give not a moment's anxiety. Outdoors it was rivalling the previous winter; indoors—at the house and at the laboratory—there reigned mid-summer serenity. Nanny—always a shadow, though very faint indeed latterly—had yielded before her arch enemy, rheumatism, had been pensioned off, had gone to her brother's, seventeen miles into the wilderness. She would shadow them no more. Richard had come to another crisis in his researches; and a mind in the act of gestation is like a hen on eggs—solitary, brooding, best left utterly alone. He was as unconscious of Courtney and Basil as of himself; all three were, for him, simply instruments to the strange and terrible marvels of chemical action that were unfolding. Soon Basil felt about him as did Courtney—that is, lost all sense of his being related to her or to the life of the household. As they held to their compact, they experienced none of passion's inevitable alternations of rapture and revulsion. Habit is equally the friend of virtue and of vice. It was not a matter of months but of weeks when they were looking on their love as not only moral but even exalted, since they were self-restrained.

The chief factor in the tranquillity was the work. Courtney began at the laboratory solely that she and Basil might be together. Soon she had another reason—love of the work itself. Everything worth while, whether for achievement or for amusement, involves drudgery at the outset—tennis or bridge no less than a trade or an art. Although Courtney had done at school the worst part of the drudgery in acquiring chemistry, it was nearly a month before she began to enjoy. Then came the first haunting alluring glimpses of the elusive mystery which makes chemistry the most fascinating of the sciences; and from that hour forth she forgot the difficulties in the delights. She often stole in to gaze longingly at Richard's work—for, he kept the main part of the great task of finding a new and universal fuel altogether in his own hands and used the other two as mere helpers. She would have liked to work with him; and, as she understood better and better what he was about, the temptation to try to bring her skill and her knowledge to his attention became strong at times. But she was afraid that if he began to think attentively about her being there, he would send her away. No, it was best to remain hidden behind Basil, to do nothing to remind Richard of her existence.

At first Basil assumed she was toiling like another Richard because she wished quickly to get knowledge enough to make plausible her necessary pretense of interest. But after a few weeks he saw she was in earnest, or thought she was—for, he could not believe one so pretty, so charming, so light of spirit and of mind, could be deeply in earnest about such a heavy, unwomanly matter as chemistry—or about anything else, except of course love. He was fond of chemistry; but it was in the fashion of most men's fondness for serious effort—to get excuse and appetite for idling. However, partly through pride, partly because her enthusiasm was contagious, he buckled to and worked as Richard had never been able to make him.

"Really, you needn't crowd yourself quite so hard," said he to Courtney, when his own energy began to flag.

"I've got to choose between being a drag and a help. Besides—" She glanced down with the shy, subtle smile he had learned to recognize as a cover for something she meant very much indeed—"don't you find that being occupied is a great aid?"

"I'd not have thought it possible to live as we're living—and be happy."

"You are happy?" As she asked this, she scrutinized his face in woman's familiar veiled fashion. She was always watching, watching, for the first faint dreaded sign of discontent.

"So much so," answered he, earnestly, "that I'd be afraid to change anything."

She saw that he meant it, that he felt it with all the intensity of the fine side of his nature. And she breathed a secret sigh of relief. She said: "Every day—time and again—I say to myself, 'If only this will last!'"

"It will!" declared he.

And, pessimist though she had been made by disappointment on disappointment in small things and large her whole life through, she began to hope that this would last, that the worst of her life was perhaps over, that her life problem was settling and settling right. The watchdogs of presentiment are like their much overrated animal prototypes. They bark at everything, that they may get credit for usefulness if by chance they once do happen to vent their nerve-racking warnings in advance of a real peril. Even presentiment called its dogs off duty.

She had been brought up among people who imagine they see the operations of natural law in the artificial conventions of morality that differ for every age and race and creed, really for every individual. She had long discarded as superstition the creed of her parents; but she had not been able wholly to uproot all the ramifications of beliefs dependent upon that creed for vitality. Thus, she vaguely felt a relationship of effect and cause between her sufferings in the autumn and early winter and those fear-shadowed, shame-alloyed but ecstatic moments of joy in the summer. And in the same vague way, there seemed to her some sort of connection between their present happiness and their self-restraint. She would have, quite honestly, denied, had she been accused of harboring such a "remnant of superstition." Nevertheless, it was the fact. However, she did not analyze or reason about her happiness. She simply accepted and enjoyed it—and forgot the foundations on which it rested.

And the days—the long, long days that only people who live in quiet places have—moved tranquilly and happily by, swift yet slow. The weeks seemed to be flying, and the days went very fast; but each hour presented its full quota of sixty minutes for enjoyment. In those dreadful days of the previous fall she had wished every hour that she was living in a city, because in the city a thousand resolute intrusions compel distraction, make the moments seem to fly, whether the heart is heavy or light. Now, she was glad with all her heart that she was living and loving where there were no distractions, where each moment could be lived as a connoisseur drinks his glass of rare old wine drop by drop.

One day late in April she and Richard, it so happened, were alone for a few minutes before supper. He abruptly emerged from his abstraction to say, "Basil and Helen are getting on famously."

She startled, then lapsed into her usual isolation when alone with him.

"I expect there'll be a marriage before the summer is out."

"Yes?" said Courtney, absently.

"Well, it's a good match. They're both comfortably shallow. They're fond of the same kind of harmless pretenses. They look well together.... I hope they'll stay on with us—at least until the first baby comes."

She shivered, rose abruptly. "Supper must certainly be ready," said she.

"Then," pursued Dick, intent upon his train of thought, "they might get the Donaldson place. The Donaldsons want to sell."

She smiled ironically. "I suppose you've spoken to Donaldson about it."

"Not yet. But next time I see him, I'll give him a hint. He might sell to some one else."

Basil now came in. "Sell what?" he asked, to join in the conversation.

"Oh, nothing," answered Dick. "Courtney and I were discussing the Donaldson place. Donaldson wants to sell, and we thought we might get neighbors we didn't like."

"Richard suggested," said Courtney, in her most innocent manner, "that you might buy it."

Dick looked alarmed. Basil, with his eyes on Courtney, promptly said: "Maybe I will. It's second only to this place. And I shall always live here."

"Richard thought it would be a good idea for you to settle there when you and Helen marry," said Courtney, with a smile only Basil could understand.

If anything, Basil looked more confused and nervous than did Richard; he laughed hysterically. "Really—really—that's very attractive—if—" he stammered.

Just then Helen, out of hearing on the lake-front veranda, happened to call, "Oh, Mr. Gallatin!"

"Yes," he answered, and hastened out to join her. Richard stared helplessly at his wife. "Now, why did you do that?" he demanded.

"What?"

"You certainly are the most thoughtless, frivolous person! I never knew you to be serious about anything—except something that was of not the least importance. I must remember to be always on guard when I speak before you."

"Yes, you ought to be careful. I'm not intellectual, like Helen. But I was forgetting; now you say she's shallow, too."

"All intellectual women are shallow," said Dick. He was ashamed of his heat of the moment before. "And I never said you were shallow. You ought to be glad you have no intellectual tendencies, but are a bundle of instincts and impulses, as a woman should be. I guess you didn't spill the milk, after all. If Gallatin loves Helen, a little break such as you made won't scare him off."

"No indeed. When a man's in love, the sight of the net doesn't frighten him. He helps to hold it open so that he can jump in deep."

Courtney intended to tease Basil, the next time they were alone. But it slipped her mind until nearly a week later. Basil had got into the habit of going out for a stroll and a smoke every morning about ten. She never went with him, because she did not wish to interrupt her work to which she could give only the mornings, as the time for gardens and growing things was at hand. One morning it so chanced that her task of the moment was just finished when Basil moved toward the door. "I'll go with you," said she.

He hesitated, looked disconcerted.

"Oh, if you don't want me," laughed she.

"Indeed I do," he hastened to say. "Only—usually you don't."

They went out together, walked up and down the wide retaining wall of the lake, beyond the Smoke House. Presently Helen appeared, on her way to the apartment over the laboratory. Now that she had charge of the housekeeping, it was part of her duties to look at the apartment and see that Lizzie was keeping things clean and was making Gallatin comfortable. At sight of Basil and Courtney, she stopped short, colored painfully. She answered their greetings with embarrassment, went with awkward haste in at the apartment entrance.

"Helen's extremely shy," said Courtney.

"She is difficult to get acquainted with," replied Basil. His manner might have been either absent or constrained.

"I'm afraid I haven't given you much chance," said Courtney, merely by way of saying something.

"Oh, I know her pretty well," Basil hastened to protest. "There's a lot more to her than one sees at first."

"Indeed there is," said Courtney, warmly. "I've grown very fond of her—fonder than I ever thought I could be of another woman. I don't care much for women. They're so small toward each other—because they're all brought up to be cutthroat rivals in the same low business—husband-catching. But Helen isn't a bit small. She has a real heart."

"And real intellect, too."

Courtney's smile was absolutely free from malice. "That's just what she has not," she replied, for she talked with perfect frankness to him, her other self. "I suppose the man never lived who could judge a good-looking woman. Women don't always misjudge men. But men always fancy beauty means brains, if the woman's heavy and serious—and not downright imbecile."

"I shouldn't call Miss March imbecile," said he. "Or even heavy."

"Now don't be cross because I hinted that women could fool you," teased Courtney. "And I didn't mean to suggest that Helen is imbecile or heavy."

"She knows an awful lot," said Basil. "She often corrects me—in little slips about authors and poetry, and so on."

Courtney could hardly keep from showing her amusement that Basil should be impressed by what was really one of Helen's weaknesses. For Helen, like so many who have small or very imperfect knowledge, attached as great importance to trifles of worthless learning as a college professor; she became agitated if anyone showed lack of knowledge of some infinitesimal in etiquette or grammar or what not, just as fashionable people sweat with mortification or distend with vast inward derision if some one, however intelligent, however capable, appears among them in an out-of-style garment or uses an expression not in their tiny vocabulary. Courtney was striving tactfully to open out a less ignorant point of view to Helen. And here was Basil showing that Helen's weakness was in reality a strength, highly useful in dealing with men.

Courtney said: "Helen is a fine, sensible, capable girl—about the finest I ever knew. And she has genuine sweetness and good taste."

"She does dress well," said Basil warmly. "If she had the means, she'd be stunning."

"Could be, but wouldn't be," replied Courtney, perfectly just and good humored, but perhaps a little weary of hearing another young woman's praises in her lover's voice. "She'd 'settle down' if she married. She's resolutely old fashioned—hates to think or to exert herself. She'll make a fine, old-fashioned wife for some man who likes to be mildly bored at home and wants his fun elsewhere. This reminds me. Richard has you and her married—wedding in the fall—baby next spring."

Basil flushed at this teasing.

"You don't seem enthusiastic."

"I don't care to hear a good young girl spoken of so lightly," said he, with some stiffness.

And now Courtney colored. After a moment she said, apologetic without knowing why: "Perhaps I shouldn't have done it. But I always feel free to speak out to you any stray thought that drifts into my head—without choosing my words."

Helen now reappeared, cast a peculiar glance in their direction, blushed rosily, hastened away toward the house. "She'd better be careful how she blushes at sight of you," said Courtney smiling, "or you'll be thinking she's in love with you."

"Nonsense!" protested Basil, again unaccountably irritated.

"How solemn you are to-day, dear. And, why shouldn't she fall in love with you? I can see how a woman might."

He did not respond to her glance. He stared straight ahead, answered awkwardly, "Helen and I are simply good friends."

The phrase jarred upon her a little. "Simply good friends." As she repeated it, she remembered suddenly, vividly, the beginning of their own love. They too had been "simply good friends." The phrase kept recurring to her, dinning disagreeably in her ears. She frowned on herself; she laughed at herself. But it continued to ring and to jar. "I certainly have a nasty jealous streak hidden away in my disposition," she said to herself. "I mustn't encourage it."

During the next few days every time Helen and Basil were together, she caught herself watching them for signs—"Signs of what?" she demanded of herself. But in spite of herself she kept on watching. That specter of the dreadful days without him—that specter so easily called up—began to glide about in the background of her thoughts, rousing those fears before which she was abject coward.

Helen had the young girl's usual assortment of harmless little tricks. Her favorite was to note when a man made a remark which she thought he regarded as clever, to go back to it after a moment or so, and repeat it and laugh or admire according as it had been intended to be amusing or profound. She was constantly doing this—with Richard, with Basil, with every man she met. The time came when the overworked trick began to get upon Courtney's nerves, especially as Helen, being entirely without humor and a close-to-shore wader in the waters of thought, was not always happy in her selection of the remark. Still, her intentions being of the best, Courtney endured; and at times she got not a little secret amusement from seeing how Basil and even Richard were flattered by the trick, never suspecting, even after Helen had again and again laughed or admired effusively in quite the wrong place. As she watched Helen and Basil now, the only "sign" she saw was this clever-stupid subtlety of Helen's for flattering male vanity—Helen practicing it on Basil, Basil purring each time like a cat under the stroking of an agreeable hand. This certainly was not serious. She laughed at herself with a reproachful "You don't deserve happiness—trying to poison it with contemptible suspicion." And the specter faded, and she no longer heard the sound of rain beating, of rain drizzling, of rain dripping through days and nights of aloneness and despair.

Spring was smiling from every twig. The birds, impatient at winter's reluctant leave-taking, had arrived before the young leaves were far enough advanced to cover them. So, every tree was alive with them, plainly in view, boldly about their courting and nesting, like lovers who, despairing of finding a quiet place, march along the highway embracing in defiance of curious eyes. One morning, half an hour after Basil went out for his habitual stroll and cigarette, Courtney changed her mind and decided to join him. She looked along the retaining wall. No Basil. She walked up and down, noting, and feeling in her own blood, the agitations of the mightiest force in the universe—those agitations that in the springtime set all nature to quivering. Ten minutes passed—fifteen—half an hour—nearly three quarters of an hour. Still no Basil. She decided he must have gone up to his rooms and fallen asleep. She resisted the temptation to go and waken him, and went slowly toward the laboratory doors. Just as she was about to jump from the wall, out of the apartment entrance came Helen, her face aglow, her eyes sparkling, all the austerity gone from her regular features. "How pretty she looks," thought Courtney. "I wonder what's delighting her so. One'd think she was in love and was loved. There never lived a sweeter, more unselfish girl. Nothing petty in her. She even has a nice way of being prudent about money."

Helen did not see her, went quickly up the path and into the wood between the Smoke House and the lawns round the house. Courtney resisted the impulse to call because she had already been out of the laboratory too long. As Helen disappeared among the trees, Courtney was astounded to see appear at the apartment door—Basil! On his face a contented pleased expression, as if he were reflecting upon something highly agreeable—Helen's face—his face—Courtney stood for an instant like a flaming torch planted upon that wall—a torch with a white-hot flame of hate.

As Basil was taking a last puff at his cigarette, she darted into the laboratory and sat at her case. When he entered, she was just where she had been at his going out. "Still at work!" he cried.

"Still at work!" said she. She forced her lips to smile, but she did not dare lift her fluttering eyelids. She looked calm and, as always, sweet; but in those few minutes all the sweetness of her nature had transformed, as the thunderstorm changes milk from food to poison. And the remembered horror of those days of desolation goaded her toward a very insanity of fear and jealousy. That smile on Helen's face—then on his.

He stood behind her. If she had had a knife she would have whirled round and plunged it into his breast and then into her own. But she had not; also, this was twentieth-century and conventional life. She sat rigid, intent upon the flame of the blast tube she was using.

He bent and kissed her neck. "Sweetheart!" he murmured.

The fixed smile became a distortion, as she lowered her head.

"The spring—outdoors," he went on in the same low caressing voice. "It's hard to bear. It seems so long—so long—since—" His pause finished the sentence better than any words.

Long indeed, thought she; a singularly patient and restrained lover; strangely respectful.

"There are more kinds of happiness in love than I imagined," he went on. "But do you never—never——"

"Please," she interrupted. She found her voice could be trusted; she ventured to test her eyes. She looked up at him, taking pleasure in veiling her hate behind a smile. She strove to make the smile sweet and tender. She felt that she was succeeding. "How homely he is," she thought. "And I love him—ugly and a traitor. I love him, and I'll keep on loving him—for, he's all there is between me and misery."

Richard called them into the front compartment, and the three worked together at the big retort the rest of the morning. It was a strange hour and a half. She seemed to be two distinct persons—no, three. One was hating Basil and Helen—a being that seemed to concentrate all that is venomous and malignant. One was watching with interest and excitement the awful processes by which calm liquids poured together suddenly became violent, colorless liquids a marvelous radiance of exquisite color, heat became infinite cold and cold became heat that consumed hard metals as if they were bits of fluff. The third personality within her was aloof and calm, and watched her other two and wondered at them.

At dinner time she and Richard walked to the house together, Basil stopping at the apartment to tidy himself, as usual. "Well, how do you think they are getting on?" she asked carelessly.

"I can't tell," replied Richard, "till I've got several other reactions."

"Helen and Basil, I mean."

"How should I know? All right, I suppose."

"Didn't you tell me, a week or so ago, you thought it was a match?"

"Of course it's a match," said he, as if there weren't a doubt about it.

She quivered at this pressure upon the thorn that was pricking and festering. "Why are you so positive?" she asked.

"You know as much as I do. He goes out to meet her every morning, doesn't he?"

Every morning! To smoke! In a series of internal explosions whose flames scorched her soul she traced the progress of that smoking habit of his. With an outer calmness that amazed her she pursued her inquiries. "Are they—affectionate when they're alone?" she asked.

"How?" Richard's mind was back at his experiments.

She repeated her question in a voice that was under still better control.

"I've never seen them but once—one day when he was helping her balance herself at the edge of the wall—she was pretending to look down into the water at something—the old trick."

Courtney laughed. "The old trick—yes." She laughed again.

"It's all settled, no doubt," declared Richard. "And good business!"

Courtney hurled a glance of fury at him. "Unless he's making a fool of her."

"Oh—absurd. He's a gentleman."

"Gentleman. That sounds as if it meant a lot, but does it?"

Richard wished to think of his work uninterrupted by this trifle of a love affair. "Why not ask her about it? She's no doubt dying to tell—if you give her the excuse of opening the subject."

Courtney went up to her balcony, seated herself in a rocking-chair. She rocked and thought, thought, thought—getting nowhere, motion without progress, like that of her chair. She did all the talking at dinner that day. She took the relations of men and women for her subject and shot arrows of wit at it. As Winchie was having dinner next door with the Donaldson children, she did not need to restrain herself. She was mocking, cynical, audacious. Basil stopped laughing and stared at his plate. Helen, all blushes, looked as if she would sink under the table. Richard remained calm—he was not hearing a word. Basil's gloom and Helen's shocked modesty delighted Courtney, edged her on to further audacities. She looked from one to the other, smiling, jeering at them—and she rattled on and on, because she felt that if she stopped scoffing and laughing, she would spring at him or at her. She had the longing to do physical violence, like one in the torment of a toothache.

Richard and Basil had not been gone many minutes before she began on the unconscious Helen. A sigh gave her the opening. "Unhappy?" she said.

"No, indeed," answered Helen. "If anything, too happy. You know what this life here means to me."

"But you must find it lonely."

"Lonely! Not for an instant."

"We've had almost no company this winter and spring. I must hunt up some young men for you."

"I don't want them, as I've often told you." Courtney remembered that she had, and muttered, "What a blind fool I've been." Helen went sweetly on: "Beside such men as Richard and Mr. Gallatin, the ordinary young man is anything but interesting."

"Still, you must marry. And you've got the looks to make a first-rate bargain."

Helen looked gently disapproving of this frank mode of stating the case. "I could never marry for anything but love."

"Of course. But, being a well-brought-up woman, you'll not have difficulty in loving any proper candidate."

"I'm well content."

Courtney bent low over the scarlet and pink and white tulips in one of the window boxes. Content! This woman who was stealing her lover—this woman who was thrusting her back into the despair of those loveless, hopeless days when Basil was gone and the icy rains poured on and on upon her desolate life! She controlled herself, repeated vaguely: "Content? Impossible unless you've got your eye on a likely man. No single woman ever was since the world began."

Helen blushed consciously.

"Who is he?" teased Courtney. She had seen the blush, and her nerves were twitching. "Who is it?" she repeated softly. "Basil?"

The blush deepened.

"I thought so!" exclaimed Courtney with laughing triumph. "You've yielded to his fascinations, have you?"

Helen paled and her lip trembled. "Please don't," she faltered. "Don't joke me about—about him."

Courtney turned hastily away to hide the devil that gleamed from her eyes; for she felt that her worst suspicions were confirmed. "Tell me," she said, as soon as she could find voice, and could make that voice gay with good-humored raillery, "how long has this—this idyll been going on?"

"Really—you're quite mistaken, dear," pleaded Helen.

"How long have you and he been keeping those trysts?"

"You're quite wrong. We've met by accident," protested Helen. "We just happen to meet." She hung her head. "I'll admit I—I arrange to go to look at the apartment about the time I know he comes out to smoke."

Courtney was all smiles. "And he arranges to come out to smoke about the time he knows you're going to the apartment. How—delicious!"

"Do you think he does it deliberately?" inquired Helen eagerly.

Courtney was amazed at the girl's skill in duplicity. She began to wonder how far they had gone. But her face was bright and innocent as a poison locust bloom when she said: "You sly child! What were you and he doing in his apartment to-day?"

"Oh!" cried Helen, covering her face with her hands.

Courtney's features were distorted with fear and fury; the specter was stalking and leering. But her voice sounded soft and seductive as she urged: "Go on, dear. You needn't be afraid to tell me—everything."

Helen lifted her flaming face. "There's nothing to tell," cried she. "When you asked me that question, something in your tone made me feel as if I had done a—a wickedly indiscreet thing. But it was all so harmless and accidental. I came earlier than usual, and he was getting the cigarette case he'd forgotten."

"Highly probable!" exclaimed Courtney, apparently much amused. "And so, you could make love to each other at your ease."

"Courtney!" Helen started up, horror-stricken. "Can you think I'd let him lay the weight of his finger on me?" And she burst into tears. "Oh, what have I done!" she sobbed. "And it seemed perfectly innocent."

Insane with jealousy though she was, Courtney could not but be convinced. "Don't take it so to heart, my dear," said she. "Tell me all about it."

"And you could suspect me! But I deserve it. If I'd been really a good woman, I'd not have thought of him until he had spoken to me."

"Dry your eyes," said Courtney, calm and practical. "How far has this gone?"

"Not at all," declared Helen. "We've never said a word of love to each other."

"Is that the truth?"

"As God is my judge."

"Not a kiss—no hand-holding?"

"Nothing."

"Only looks?"

"Sometimes—I've hoped—from the way he looked—" She sighed. "But I'm afraid he meant nothing."

Courtney studied her ingenuous face as a bank teller a note that is under suspicion of being counterfeit. Yes—Helen was telling the truth.

"Do you think he cares?" asked Helen wistfully. "He seems to like to talk with me. And he's very eloquent about sentimental things. He talks and he acts like a man in love. But—at times I feel as if it were with another woman."

Courtney buried her face in the urn of violets. And next to her feeling of enormous relief at the clearing of Basil from the worst charge against him was gratitude that she would not have to try to play the tyrant—try to send Helen away.

"It may be some bad woman's gotten hold of him," continued the girl reflectively. "He may be chained by a love he's ashamed of."

"That sounds like a weekly story paper."

"I know there's some weight on his conscience," maintained Helen.

Courtney looked strangely at her and laughed. "When people look and talk remorse, they're only boasting. He's trying to make himself interesting, my dear. He wants to thrill you with the story of his life—some commonplace adventure he exaggerates into an epic drama." She laughed again, most unpleasantly. "Heaven deliver me from these 'My God! How she loves me' men!"

"He's not like that—not at all," protested Helen. "But—oh, I wish I knew whether he cared for me. I don't know what to do! I've given him every opportunity—" She stopped short with such an expression of horror at her slip that Courtney laughed outright. "I don't mean I've done anything forward or unladylike—" stammered Helen.

"He's a man of the world." She pinched Helen's cheek. "He reads that innocent little mind of yours like an electric sign."

Helen was hysterical with dismay. "You think he's laughing at me?"

"And getting ready to—to amuse himself."

"Courtney!"

Courtney nodded and smiled.

"He never could think so lightly of me. Never!"

"Lightly? He sees you are in love with him. Why should he suspect you of being calculating?"

"Calculating? I don't understand."

"Unwilling to give except for an annuity—for life support."

Helen's honest brown eyes were big and round. "What do you mean?"

"What I say," was Courtney's reply. And in a, to Helen, appallingly matter-of-fact way, she went on to explain. "And what I say is simply the sense under all the nonsense about marrying. You want to marry, don't you? You're looking about for somebody to support you and your children, aren't you? You say you love our homely, fascinating, well-to-do friend Gallatin. But not enough to go very far unless he'd sign a life contract. Didn't I hear you say one day that you didn't think it proper for people even to kiss until the preacher had dropped the flag?"

Helen gazed at her with an expression of sheer horrified amazement that delighted her. "How can as sweet and pure a woman as you talk that way?"

Courtney laughed gayly. "Because she's neither sweet nor pure. Because she's got intelligence and experience. I just wanted to show you that while you were pretending to think about love—ideal, romantic, unselfish love, you were really planning for food, clothing and shelter."

"But I don't want to hear such talk!" cried Helen. "If I'm deluded, why, let me stay so. You are so frivolous, Courtney! Don't you believe in love at all?"

Courtney reflected. "I don't know whether I do or not," she finally said.

Helen looked at her with sad sympathy. "And I thought you were happy!" she sighed.

"I am," rejoined Courtney. "And I purpose to remain so."

"But you are worried about me? You think Bas—Mr. Gallatin is not a fit man for me to marry?" The tone betrayed her anxiety, the importance she attached to Courtney's judgment; for, while Helen's conventional mind told her that Courtney was a "light-weight," like all lively, laughing persons, her instinct made her always consult her before acting in any matter from a man to what hat to wear with what dress. "You think he's—not nice?"

Courtney felt Helen's nearly breathless expectation; she did not answer immediately. When she did it was from the farther side of the room, with her attention apparently on a window garden of hyacinths. "Be careful, my dear. Remember, your primness is your chief asset. If he thought—or hoped—you were—loose——"

"Loose!" Helen trembled, looked as if she were about to faint.

"It's ridiculous the way we women exaggerate the value of our favors," philosophized Courtney.

"I wish you wouldn't make that kind of—of jests, dear," pleaded Helen. "I know you don't mean a word of it. You feel just as I do—that a man couldn't do enough to repay any good woman for giving herself to him."

"Or a woman do enough to repay a man for giving himself to her," retorted Courtney. "The account's even, or the whole thing's too low to talk about. Still—you don't understand—you can't. And so long as men think a woman the grander the more conceited and selfish she is, you're as well off, believing as you do.... As to Gallatin——"

"I don't care anything about him!" cried Helen. "What you've been saying has given me such a shock." She paused, then went on in a low, awful tone, "Courtney, I must tell you that I was alone with him in his sitting room for over an hour!"

"When?" asked Courtney, sharply.

"To-day—what we were talking about."

"Only to-day?"

"Never before!" exclaimed Helen. "And never again."

"Then—perhaps—only perhaps, mind you," mocked Courtney, "I'll put off speaking to Richard about it—and writing Mrs. Torrey."

Helen could not see any humor in the situation. "Do you honestly believe, Courtney," she asked in deep distress, "that he could have thought of me as if I were—were a—a—bad woman?"

Courtney's eyes were most unpleasant.

"I see you're disgusted and angry with me, dear," said Helen, in tears again. "I know it was unwomanly of me to think of him when he'd said nothing. But I—I couldn't help it. I will help it, though!"

"You think you can?"

Helen showed she was astonished and hurt. "Do you imagine I could care for a man whose way of caring for me was an insult?"

Courtney counseled with a vase of jonquils. "No, I suppose you couldn't," she replied. "You don't know about wild, free—fierce—love— Do you?"

Helen's expression was of one appalled. "How can you talk that way?" she asked. "You're very strange to-day. You're not at all yourself."

"Self!" exclaimed Courtney, scornfully. "What is my self? What is your self? What is anybody's self?"

She no longer had the delusion of free will that makes us talk about bettering the race by "changing human nature from within"—the delusion that the individual is responsible, though obviously the social system and the other compelling external conditions move the individual as the showman his puppet. She, helpless in the whirl of strong emotions, was beginning to understand why, at the outset of her married life, instinct had bade her arrange all the circumstances round her and Richard so that they would be compelled to live the life in common, the life of the single common interest that holds love captive as the cage the bird. She was beginning to realize how like water self is in the grip of circumstances—how self is mill pond or torrent, pure or foul, or mixture of the two, according as circumstance commands. These demon impulses—they were not her self. Self was amazed onlooker at its own strange doings—was like helpless occupant of the carriage behind the runaway team.

When Helen spoke again, she showed that her thoughts were still lingering longingly where they must not, if Courtney was to be rid of the demons. "But if a man loves a woman," said Helen, "why shouldn't he be glad to give her honorable marriage?"

Courtney hesitated, dared. "She might be already married."

"Courtney!" And her horrified eyes told Courtney she had caught the intended hint that Basil was in love with some married woman. "It isn't possible!"

"Haven't such things happened?"

"Yes—but— No married woman a nice man would notice would ever think of another man than her husband."

"I don't know about a 'nice' woman," said Courtney, slowly. "But I can imagine that a human woman—if her husband neglected her, and chilled and killed her love——"

Helen was not listening, was not aware that she had interrupted as she said, "Do you think Mr. Gallatin could be in love with some married woman—of—of our class?"

"I suspect so," replied Courtney, gazing calmly into her eyes.

"I'll not believe it!" cried Helen. "I'll not believe it!"

"You're like all girls. Because your own head's full of marriage, you think every man who's polite to you, or flirts a little to make the time pass more agreeably, is about to send for the preacher. Now, frankly, has Basil ever made love to you?"

"No," admitted Helen. "But—" She halted.

"But what?" came from Courtney sharp and arresting as a shot.

"I feel he is fond of me," confessed Helen.

Courtney laughed harshly. "All men are fond of all good-looking women—especially in the spring. Don't be a fool, Helen."

"But a married woman has no right to him!"

Courtney flushed, and her eyes flashed. "And how do you know? And what right have you to judge? Are you God?"

"No, but——"

"No!" cried Courtney. "How do you know what he—his love may mean to her? How do you know but what it may be the one thing between her and despair and ruin? You, with your timid, proper calculating little love! Why, if the woman cared enough for him—needed him so—that she sacrificed self-respect—honor—truth—all—all—for love—what could you give him to replace it? And what are your needs beside hers?"

Helen's face grew hard as these words that outraged every principle of her training poured recklessly from Courtney's lips. "I'm astounded at your defending a bad woman," she said. "You're too generous, Courtney. You'd feel differently if she were taking Richard away from you. But, I'm not in love with Basil. I see you know things about him. I—I—despise him. I pity him, of course, for he might have been a nice man. But I couldn't love him. I'm glad you told me. I might have engaged myself to him."

Courtney's far from sane eyes twinkled at that last ingenuous bit of maidenly vanity. Helen went about her work, and she departed to the greenhouse. "She'll stop loving him as easily as she began," said she to herself. "What does her sort of women know about love? They're faithful to whatever man they marry, as a dog's faithful to whoever feeds and kennels it.... Basil Gallatin is mine! And no man—nor no woman—shall come between us."

She had not forgotten Basil's expression as he stood in the apartment entrance, after his tête-à-tête with Helen. "Now—for what's in his heart," she said. "I must know just where I stand." She recalled how she had used to say, and to think, that if a man was not freely a woman's—freely—inevitably—without any need of being held by feminine artifice—no self-respecting woman could for an instant wish to detain him. And here she was, ready to make any sacrifice to hold this man. Truly, fate seemed determined to compel her to give the lie to everything she had ever believed, to abase every instinct of pride that had plumed or still plumed the haughty front of her soul.

Richard asked Helen up to his study after supper, to take dictation of an article he was doing for a scientific magazine; thus, Courtney had a chance to explore Basil. She was seated beneath the tall lamp, a big hat frame on her lap, ribbon and feathers on the small table. She knew he was watching her over the top of a newspaper; and she was not insensible to his extremely flattering expression—nor, perhaps, to the advantages her occupation gave her in the way of graceful gestures, effective posings of the head and arms as she studied the effect of different arrangements of ribbon and feathers. She glanced directly at him; he glanced away, confused—the frightened zigzag of a flushed partridge.

"Well?" said she. She felt more lenient toward him, now that she had discovered his innocence of overt treachery, at least; and the way he was looking at her when he fancied her quite unaware was certainly reassuring. Also, she realized now that she herself was largely responsible for these errant springtime thoughts of his—she with her struggling to keep both love and self-respect. "Well?" she repeated, when he did not speak. "What guilty thought did I almost surprise?"

"No guilty thought," replied he. "I was loving you—terribly—just then. I was thinking—how impossible it would be for a man who loved you ever to wander."

"That's very nice," said she, with a mocking smile. "So you have been—looking over the fence?" And she went on with bending the brim of the hat frame to a more graceful curve. She was placid to all appearances; but once more the great dread was obsessing her.

"Not at all," protested he. "What fence? At whom?"

"The fence of our compact—perhaps."

He sighed impatiently.

"Ah—well—" She laughed, eying the result of her shaping, the hat frame at one angle, her head at the opposite angle—"there's Helen."

He looked grave reproach at her, altogether absorbed in trying a long plume against the frame in different positions. "Do you think, dear, it's quite respectful to Helen——"

"Your thoughts couldn't harm her," interrupted she—that is, she interrupted him, but not her work. "If men's thoughts smirched women, what an unsightly lot the attractive ones would be!"

"Where did you get such ideas?" he exclaimed, trying to conceal how her frankness had scandalized him.

She worked on calmly. "By observing and reading and thinking—and feeling."

He drummed uneasily upon the arm of his chair with the tips of his fingers. At length he said with some embarrassment, "It's hardly necessary for me to say that I have the highest respect for Helen."

"Yes—and I also know she's very—very pretty."

"Yes, she is pretty."

"You respect her. You like to talk with her. You think she is physically attractive."

Stiffly, "I have never thought about her in that last way."

"Then, that's probably her chief charm for you," observed Courtney, placid and reflective and industrious. "When we think we don't think about things that are worth thinking about, the chances are we really haven't been thinking about anything else." With a smile and a shake of the head that might have been for the plumes which refused to please her, "I'm afraid you're falling in love with Helen."

"No," replied he judicially—and how he would have been startled if he had seen her veiled eyes!—shiny green and cruel as those of a puma stretched in graceful ferocity along the leafy limb that overhangs the path. "No, I'm not the least in love with her. But I do like her. Her seriousness is very pleasant, now and then. If I did not love you, I perhaps might have grown to care for her, in a way. But—beside you, Helen is—tame."

"I shouldn't call her tame—" encouragingly.

"Well—perhaps not. She sometimes suggests a person who could be waked up."

"That's a temptation, isn't it?" she asked. And she looked straight at him over the top of the plumes. She wished to see all.

"No," said he, positively. "To be quite frank I'd never give her as a woman a thought—if I weren't—" He stirred uneasily, burst out in confession. "You were right a while ago. Men often don't understand themselves. But we'll not talk about that."

There was such love and tenderness in the gaze meeting hers that all the squalid thoughts her mind had been fouled with the whole day washed away like the dust and dirt on the leaves and petals of her flowers in a sudden rain.

He said with a gentle, manly earnestness that thrilled her: "There's only the one woman for me. And—I want our love to be what you wish. And it shall be!"

She lowered her head, the tears welling. The others interrupted, and Helen sat beside her advising about the hat. When it was finished, she made Helen try it on. They all admired, and it certainly was becoming. "Now, you try it on, dear," said Helen.

"No, don't take it off," Courtney answered. "It's for you, of course." And she kissed her and, laughing away her thanks, went upstairs. She sat down at her dressing table and, with elbows resting on it and face supported by her hands, gazed into her own eyes. "If you do not wish to lose him," she said slowly aloud to her grave face imaged in the glass, "you must take away from him temptation to wander. A door is either open or shut. A man—a man worth while—won't stand at the threshold long. He comes in or he goes away. Basil does not realize it, but that other side of his nature will compel him to go away—unless—" Compel him to go away? She was hearing again the monotonous fall of those icy rains, was feeling again the monotonous misery of those days without love and without hope. She must choose. Choose? "The woman doesn't live—doesn't deserve to live—who'd hesitate. There's no choice. There's simply the one way."

Well—since it must be so—what would be the event? Would she lose him anyhow? Would she merely be putting off his going? Would her complete yielding end in disaster of some kind, as she had feared? Or, wasn't it possible that, while most people were tangled and finally strangled by the web of their own deceit, a skillful few could use it dextrously to snare the bright birds of joy? ... She stood up, stretched her arms, swayed her slim supple figure gently. "He shall have no reason for letting one single thought wander. He shall be mine—all mine! I'll take no more risks." She continued to sway gently, her eyes closed. A look of scorn, of disgust came into her face. She shuddered. "How hideous it is to be a woman! Always slave to some man! Gold fetters cut as deep as iron, and they're heavier." She stopped swaying. "I can see how I might come to hate my master in trying to hold his love.... Love! To keep our love warm, we have to bury it in the mire."

XX

Because of the light the tables in the inner laboratory were so placed that Courtney and Basil worked at opposite sides of the room with their backs toward each other. As ten o'clock approached her agitation increased; but the only outward sign was frequent stolen glances at the clock on the wall between the windows. When the hands pointed to ten, her heart fluttered; for, she heard him push back his chair and knew he was rising from his case. He stood at the window toward her side of the room. As he was gazing out over the high sill, she was free to look at him—at his back, at the back of his head. She felt the struggle raging in his mind. Her hand, blundering among the burettes and bottles on the glass shelves before her, tilted a test tube from its support. It fell, broke with a crash on the porcelain surface of the table. She gave a low scream it would have been loud had she not, swifter than thought, clenched her teeth and compressed her lips. He startled violently.

"Good God!" he cried and his tone showed that his nerves were in the same state as hers.

"Beg your pardon," she murmured, mechanically apologetic.

If he heard, he gave no indication of it. He continued to stand motionless at the window, staring out over the lake. She tried furtively to get a glimpse of his profile, but could not. At ten minutes past ten he moved. When she saw him about to turn, she bent over her work—pouring calcium lactophosphate into a small agate mortar as if any relaxing of attention would be calamitous. He was standing at the end of her table, was looking down at her. It took all her self-control to refrain from looking up to see what was in his eyes. He was bending over her; his lips touched her hair—the crownlike coil of auburn on top of her head. She tingled to her finger tips; she knew she had won, knew he had thought it all out and had seen that his meetings with Helen were in the direction of disloyalty to the woman he loved. She looked up at him now. At first his expression was guilty and embarrassed, but the radiance of love and trust in her eyes soon changed that. He became very pale as his glance burned into hers; he turned away, and she felt that it was because he feared lest in the rush of penitent passion he would confess things it was unnecessary and unwise to put into words.

"Why, it's ten o'clock," said she carelessly. "Aren't you going out to smoke?"

A pause, then he answered "Not to-day" in a boyishly ill-at-ease way that brought a secret tender smile to her lips. She liked these evidences that it was impossible for him to conceal himself from her because any attempt to do so made him feel dishonorable.

"It's beautiful outdoors. I'll go with you."

"No, not just now, Courtney. I—I—that is, I think I'd best finish. Vaughan may need all four of the sulphates any moment." And he sat down before his case and began to fuss with evaporating dishes and crucibles.

"This is the first day you've missed in I don't know when," said she. It was just as well he should know she had begun to take note of his habit; that knowledge would strengthen his resolve to avoid in the future appearance of of evil and temptation thereto. "You've been very regular for weeks."

"It's a waste of time," he replied, after a pause. "You're right, uninterrupted effort's the only kind that counts." And both went to work.

But Courtney did not overestimate her triumph. Often day completely reverses the night view of things. But now, in the fancy-dispelling day more clearly than in the fancy-breeding night, she saw she must remove the temptation. If she had been a small or a stupid woman—or both, for the two qualities usually go together—she would have laid all the blame upon Helen and would have sent her away—and in vanity as to her power over him would have imagined herself once more perfectly secure. But the impulse to blame Helen and to get rid of her did not survive the second thought. It was not Helen's fault, or Basil's; it was nature's.

Looking back on those months under the compact she saw how she had let foolish vanity and still more foolish hope befog and mislead her intelligence. To remove Helen would avail her nothing. The law of his nature would continue to press him on; and sooner or later, in spite of love for her, in spite of loyalty, in spite of constancy, he would be swept away from her. The compact was a beautiful ideal, but it was not life—and, so, it must yield. "I must be all to him, or I shall soon be nothing to him." And that afternoon she fixed her resolution—after thinking the situation out sanely—as sanely as she could think in those days. For she, completely possessed by her need of Basil, was like all the infatuated. That is, she was in a state not unlike those demented persons who seem to be, and are, quite sane and logical and self-possessed, once you get beyond the fixed delusion which determines the posture and outlook of their entire being.

On the way to dress for supper she glanced in at Helen's open door. The girl was sitting near a window giving upon the small west balcony, her attitude so disconsolate that Courtney was at once striving with a rising wave of pity and self-reproach. "Helen will soon get over it," she reassured herself; and good sense reminded her that a young girl has not the experience of love which teaches the experienced woman to value it and makes her unable to do without it. "The love-sickness of a young girl, especially prim, unimaginative girls like Helen, isn't really personal; it's little more than a longing to be flattered and to get married and settled." But such small progress as head was making against heart was lost when Helen looked at her with a pathetic attempt to smile.

"Where have you been all day?" asked Courtney, eyes sinking before Helen's. She felt a most uncomfortable contempt for herself.

"In Wenona—lunching and shopping with Bertha Watrous."

Courtney entered, seated herself on the bed. Despite her lovelorn condition, Helen winced. "You old maid, you," laughed Courtney, rising. "I never saw any woman anywhere, not even old Nanny, not even my sister Ann, so opposed to sitting on the bed."

"I've been brought up to think it was—wasn't right," apologized Helen.

"Wasn't ladylike, you mean," said Courtney. She disposed herself in the window seat. "What are you blue about, dear?" She knew she was not intruding; Helen liked to confide her troubles—and people of that fortunate temperament were cured by confiding.

"I'm not blue," declared Helen. "I've simply been thinking of what you said, and if anything I'm angry."

"Oh—Basil? Did you see him to-day?"

"I did not." Helen tossed her head. "I went about my work as usual—went to the apartment. If he'd been lying in wait I was ready for him. But he wasn't."

Courtney understood what this really meant, though Helen didn't. Probably Helen would not have believed she had in fact lain in wait for Basil, even had Courtney pointed out to her the obvious meaning of her action. She was of the large majority—who do not know their own minds, who cannot explore them with a guide however competent, who when shown their own motives hotly and honestly deny. "Basil was busy to-day," Courtney explained. "Some sulphates Richard was in a hurry for."

Helen looked relieved. But, still not in the least aware of her own state of mind, she went on, with a toss of the head: "Well—whenever I do see him alone, I'll make him realize I'm not the sort he thinks. The more I look at it, Courtney, the more convinced I am that he was simply leading me on."

"Now, Helen!" laughed Courtney.

Helen colored. "I admit," she said, shamefacedly, "I got what I deserved for being so—so forward."

"That's the truth—you were forward." Courtney's tone made this necessary thrusting home of the painful truth gentle but not the less insistent. "We must never fool ourselves, dear. We women can't afford to."

Studying Helen, so clearly fascinated still by the idea of winning the young eligible from the East and redeeming him, Courtney realized that if the girl was to stay on there in peace she must be made to see the absolute uselessness of angling. So long as she thought of Basil as a possibility, however remote, so long would she be in danger of falling utterly and miserably in love with him. Yes, Helen must be cured—but how? There was no way. Not until Basil was married would Helen cease to hope. "For her own sake, I ought to send her away," Courtney was thinking as the two sat there in silence. But Helen had no other place to go. True, she could go out and make her own living as a teacher—Courtney envied her the training and the certificate that were practically a guaranty of independence. But Helen abhorred independence, looked on a woman's working, away from the shelter of domesticity, as the Hindu looks on loss of caste. No, Helen must stay on, might as well stay on.... An impossible situation. And from this unanticipated quarter came one more imperative reason for making Basil wholly her own. He must be in such a state of mind that he would do nothing to encourage Helen's hope to put forth even the feeblest of its ready sprouts.

Courtney rose and moved toward the door. "I must dress." She leaned against the jamb, her cheek upon her crossed hands. "Well, my dear, remember the rhyme about the lady who went for a ride on a tiger, and how, when they came back, he had the lady inside."

"You're laughing at me," reproached Helen.

Courtney's eyes were fixed dreamily upon vacancy, a strange sad smile about her lips. "I am not laughing," she said slowly. "Or, if I am, it is not at you.... Not at you, but at—" She could not tell Helen that she was drearily mocking her own entrapped and helpless self. "Take my advice, child. Don't ever lead a tiger out for an airing."

Yes, Helen should stay on, as long as she wished to stay. "And hasn't she as much right here as I—just the same right?"

At two o'clock that night, as Basil was leaving, he said—"You've hardly spoken since I came. Is it the darkness?"

"Yes—the darkness," she replied in the same undertone—the doors were very thick, but instinct made them careful about speech.

"I never knew you to be so silent—or so strange, now that I think of it." He held her by the shoulders. "Courtney, did you want me to come to-night?"

She clung to him. "Do you love me, my Basil?"

"How queer your voice sounds. Are you frightened?"

"No—no, indeed."

"Dear, you're not telling me——"

"It's nothing. Just a—a notion. There won't be so much of it next time. And still less the next time. And soon I'll be quite accustomed."

"Yes, I'm sure there's not the least danger," said he, wholly misunderstanding.

XXI

One afternoon she was reading in the hammock on the balcony before the upper sitting-room windows—the sitting room she shared with Helen and Winchie. She heard some one in the room, glanced up—Richard was before her. "Glad to find you alone," said he. "Do you realize it's several weeks since we've exchanged so much as a single word in private?"

"Something wrong at the shop?"

"No. I came especially to talk with you. How'd you like to go away for a week or so—to the sea or the mountains? We might take that trip through the Great Lakes."

"I'll see."

"You've been working very hard down at the shop. And by the way, you've caused an amazing improvement in Basil's work. He doesn't make those stupid mistakes any more. He used to make them every day. Yes—you've worked hard—and well."

She had no pleasure in these incredible compliments from Richard the difficult to please in chemistry. It was too disquieting to have him thus watchful and interested.

"Let's start at once," he proposed.

"Oh, I couldn't do that. I hesitate to leave here—when everything's at its best. In the fall—or next winter——"

"I see you don't want to go—with me."

His tone compelled her to look at him. His eyes—grave, searching—were fixed upon her. Instinct suddenly warned her of danger—what danger or where she could not see, but the warning was imperative. "Indeed I do," protested she, with a deceptive show of interest, though her skin burned as her fundamental and incurable honesty cried shame upon her—as it always did when she, compelled by her circumstances, could not avoid the lie direct. "But," she went on, "you can't expect a woman, with a household like this on her mind, to drop everything and fly at a few hours' notice."

He reflected, nodded. "That's true. Though, really, the servants are so experienced they'd go on just as well. My dear old aunt was thorough."

There was a little bitterness of hurt vanity in her smile of recognition at this ancient notion of Richard's about her part in that household. She felt that the tête-à-tête had already lasted too long. "Was Winchie in there?" she asked.

"I didn't see him," replied Dick.

She moved toward the nearest sitting-room window.

"What's the matter?" he cried, irritated. "Where are you going?"

"After Winchie. I haven't thought of him for an hour. Helen's away—at the Foster picnic——"

"The boy's all right. Sit down here and——"

But she was gone. She did not slacken her speed until she was safely clear of him. This new development of his threatened to become an annoyance, thought she; however, it couldn't last much longer; she would continue to keep out of his way; the laboratory would take hold of him and she would be once more forgotten and free. Meanwhile, she would avoid him.

And soon he did become once more absorbed, and resumed his accustomed shadowy place in her life—seen yet not seen, heard yet not heard, present yet absent; neither liked nor disliked, but unknown and unheeded—the place of many and many a husband in a marriage that seems happy and successful to the very servants in the household, to the husband and wife themselves. One evening he abruptly left the table. She saw, but did not note, his departure. When supper was over and she and Helen and Basil strolled into the sitting room, Basil took advantage of Helen's being apart to say to Courtney, "What's wrong with him?"

"I'm sure I don't know," replied she. "Nothing, I guess."

"Didn't you notice? He was staring furiously at you, and left in a rage."

She shrugged her shoulders. That night she was in one of her reckless moods, was nervous, excited, with eyes the more brilliant for the circles round them. Richard appeared in the farthest of the long open windows. He frowned at Basil, said sharply to his wife, "Courtney, I'd like to speak to you out here a moment."

"It's chilly there," objected she. "Come in." And she went toward the piano.

Dick entered. His long aristocratic face was stern and his eyes glowed somberly. "Then let's go into the library," said he, in a tone so positive that from him it sounded like a command.

She hesitated, reflectively caressing one slim tapering arm. "Very well," said she, and passed into the hall, he standing formally aside at the doorway. In the library, she faced him with eyes half closed and chin thrust up and a little out. "Well?" she inquired.

As he looked at his sweet frivolous little child of a wife, his manner softened toward that of one rebuking a child's trespass. "I want you to go upstairs and wrap up your shoulders—or change your dress."

She glanced down. The bodice did not cover the upper curve of her bosom, had no straps across the shoulders or on the arms. In the back, it dipped almost to the waist line. She looked at him with a quizzical expression. "I'm quite warm enough, thanks."

"You understand me," said he, more severely.

She gazed straight into his eyes before answering. "Yes, I do. But I prefer to pretend not to."

"I've spoken to you about my wishes in this matter before. Do you know what made me notice your—your nakedness? Pardon me for putting it that way, but I see I must speak plainly."

Her face expressed faint, contemptuous indifference. "I cannot talk with you. Your ideas of women ought to be buried in the grave with your grandfather. I do not dictate the cut of your clothes. You will not dictate mine." And she moved toward the door.

He put himself between. "I saw Gallatin looking at you with an expression—" He made a gesture of rage—a quiet gesture but significant. "I don't blame him. It's your fault. You've no right to tease a man who can be nothing to you. I speak frankly because——"

"Gallatin has seen thousands of women in just such dress as this," interrupted she. It enraged her to hear her lover's feelings for her, in which flesh was mere medium between spirit and spirit, thus leveled to the carnality of his own passion. "You," she continued icily, "read your own poisonous, provincial primness and—and vulgarity into his look, no doubt."

"You are an innocent, pure-minded woman, Courtney," said Richard, with more gentleness. "You follow a fashion, thinking of it only as a fashion. I assure you, that sort of fashion is devised in Paris by cocottes for the one purpose. If you knew men better, you'd appreciate it."

She appreciated the penetration of this remark, puncturing the pretentious haughtiness of her protest. She was surprised at his reasoning so shrewdly about a matter she would not have suspected him of having given a thought. But she must not let him interfere in her personal affairs. "Whatever its origin," said she, "it's the conventional fashion for women. I shall continue to wear it." And she looked into his eyes pleasantly. Now, it struck her as amusing, the anger of this alien, about the exhibition to others of what he regarded as his own private and personal treasure. Just one stage removed from the harem, such an idea as his. "And," she went on, aloud, "if your satrapship commands me to wear a veil over my face and muffle my figure in a loose black bag, I shall make the same reply. You can't realize it, but the old-fashioned ideal of good, pure woman was really something to be handled with tongs and disinfected."

"You're talking of things you, being a good woman, know nothing about."

"At any rate I know a mind that ought to be quarantined—when I smell it." And she made a wry face and started to leave the room. When she had got as far as the threshold, he cried, "Courtney!" and his tone told her that he had caught sight of the reverse view of her costume—the unimpeded display of slender dimpled shoulders and straight smooth back almost to the waist line. She pretended not to hear, went on to the sitting room. Yielding altogether now to the imp of the perverse, she displaced Helen at the piano and sang the maddest, most melting love songs she knew. Basil tried to keep to the far part of the room; but gradually the enchantment compelled. Forgetting Richard—though he had seen him glowering and fuming from the darkness of the veranda—he leaned upon the end of the grand piano. His eyes were down, but his burning face and his trembling fingers as he raised or lowered his cigarette proclaimed how the deep passionate notes of her voice were vibrating through him.

It was somewhat later than usual when she went upstairs. As she pressed the button just inside her bedroom door and the light came on—a soft pale violet light that seemed to permeate rather than to shine—she saw Richard in the window. His back was toward her and he was smoking so that the odor and the smoke would not come into the room. He threw the cigarette over the balcony rail and turned. The instant she looked at him, little as she knew of his character or noted his moods she saw she had gone too far. But she held a calm, undaunted front. "How you frightened me," said she, in a tone that had no fright in it. "I'm horribly tired. I must stop eating desserts. They wear one out." She stifled a yawn, took the small diamond sunburst from the front of her waist and laid it on the bureau. She seemed all but unconscious of his presence; in reality, by way of the bureau mirror, she was watching him as a duelist an adversary. "I shall fall asleep before I can get into bed."

"I shall detain you only a moment." His grave, exaggerated politeness did not decrease her inward agitation. "I simply wish to tell you," he went on, "that, as you seem determined to persist in your own mistaken way, I shall be compelled to ask Gallatin to stay away from the house in the evenings."

Her impulse was to smile disdain at the infantile futility of this. And the smile did come to her lips, and lingered there to mask the feelings that came surging with the second thought. For she instantly realized how helpless she was. This man had no part in her life nor she in his; yet he could impose his will upon her absolutely because he could take Basil away from her—not merely for the unimportant evenings, but altogether. He could make it impossible for Basil to remain—could do it by a mere word to him. And she who fancied she had provided against every possible contingency had never even thought of this, the most obvious peril, and the greatest! Faint, she leaned upon the bureau, spreading her arms so that she seemed to be merely at ease. "But why tell me about it?" said she to him. "Why didn't you simply say it to him?" She smiled contemptuously. "And what will he think?"

Dick's calm vanished. "I don't care a damn what he thinks," he cried. "At least, he'll not be sitting round watching you half dressed."

She drew herself up haughtily. "Good night," said she.

"I was out on the veranda," Dick rushed on. "I saw him. He forgot Helen—forgot decency—honor—everything—and leaned there, giving himself up to a debauch. Yes, to a debauch! And you are responsible. Not he—not at all. You, alone. At least, anger doesn't make me unjust. And I will say too, you were innocent in the matter—like a willful child. Good pure women don't appreciate——"

"But I do," interrupted she. "I'm not the imbecile Aunt Eudosia sort you admire so much."

"I tell you, the man's in love with you," cried Richard.

She all but staggered before the shock.

"Yes, in love with you. That's why he came back here."

As steadily and indifferently as she could contrive she went to the sofa, seated herself. "Why, you yourself told me he was in love with Helen."

"I was mistaken. How could he be in love with her, when you're about? A man always takes to the best-looking woman."

She laughed with friendly conciliating coquetry. "I'm afraid you're prejudiced."

"I saw it this evening. The way he was listening to those love songs!"

"Are you sure he was thinking of me?"

Richard did not answer.

"Perhaps Helen's equally sure he was thinking of her."

Under cover of the talk she—hardly knowing what she, or he, was saying—darted this way and that, seeking an escape from the horror closing in upon her. She felt like a hiding slave, hearing the distant bay of the bloodhounds. How escape? How throw him off the scent? Was there only the one way?

"No, he cares nothing about Helen," Richard was saying. And clear and soft in his voice now was the note she dreaded. "At least, he didn't this evening. How could he when you were there? Courtney, you simply can't understand. You're modest and pure minded and innocent——"

"Then it was only this evening?" she interrupted. "I was hoping you had real reason for flattering me."

"Flattering you!"

"Certainly. Wouldn't it flatter you if I were to tell you Helen was in love with you? She's in love with somebody, by the way. It must be you—how could she think of any other man when you were about?"

Dick half smiled.

"And I must begin to tear my hair and foam at the mouth, I suppose," continued she. She rose, stamped her foot, in melodramatic imitation of jealous fury. "Helen shall keep to her room in the evenings! Do you hear, sir? When I think of the times I've let you take her up to your study—alone!—under pretense of working! You—with your shirt sleeves rolled up and your collar open!"

"You silly child!" Dick was amused now.

"But I don't blame Helen. How could she help it—with you leading her on——"

Dick laughed. "That's very shrewd," said he. "I own up. I guess I was having a jealous fit. But you'd understand if you could see yourself as I see you." And he clasped her.

"No—no!" she gasped.

Completely possessed by his mood he was too much the man to have the power to see that her mood was different. Holding her tightly, he said: "I do believe you acted that way this evening just to make me jealous. I admit I seem neglectful. But I love you, just as I always did."

She was struggling to escape as strongly as she dared—more strongly than her instinct of prudence approved—more strongly than her physical self desired, for she realized with horror that his mood was hypnotizing her will.

"Listen, dear," he said. "I've got a confession to make. While I was raging up and down on the veranda, all sorts of devilish thoughts came to me—suspicious——"

She ceased struggling.

"I got to thinking how long we've been living apart—and how, every time I made advances, you seemed to evade——"

She felt herself growing cold. He must have felt it, too, for he hastened on: "Please, little girl, don't get cross. I didn't really suspect. I'm not so ridiculous. I know a good woman could no more be false even in thought to her husband—than a nightingale could change into a snake."

It was pounding, pounding at the walls of her brain that he was on the very verge of the discovery; that unconsciously he was fighting against a suspicion which too long-pent passion was thrusting at him ever more pointedly. Another repulse, another jealous fit, and—five lives overwhelmed in ruin.

She lay quiet in his arms.

In those next few days she was whimsical, capricious, fantastic. Richard, once more wholly the man of science, was as unconscious as mountain peak of storms in the valleys far below. Basil and the others, but particularly Basil, watched her with a kind of dread. "I need a change—in fact, I must have it," she announced at the supper table. "Helen, let's go to Chicago and shop. The things in Wenona are hideous this spring."

"I need a change too," Richard startled them all by saying, "I'll go with you—and Helen can take care of the house and Basil—and Winchie, if you'll leave him."

"I don't want to be left!" cried Winchie. "You wouldn't leave me, mamma?"

Courtney did not hear. She was looking at Richard as if his words jarred upon her savagely, goaded her to the verge of outburst. She had been feeling toward her husband as she would have felt toward an inanimate object which had bruised her when she by accident stumbled heavily against it. She did not seek the source of this feeling, or let it disclose itself to her. She simply felt so; and when he spoke of going, it seemed as unthinkable that she should let him go as that she should leave Winchie behind. When she had herself in hand, she said: "This is a shopping trip. No men wanted or allowed."

"Not even me, mamma?" pleaded Winchie.

"Except you," said she.

And the two women and Winchie went the following day, to spend a busy fortnight in the Chicago shops buying for all three and for the house. As Courtney had limited means and exacting taste, the labor of shopping was hard and tedious, especially in those vast modern stores. For there the satisfaction of having everything under one roof is balanced by the vexation of the search for the needle of just what one wants and can afford through the mountainous haystack of what one does not want or cannot afford. The toil almost prostrated the two women—and poor Winchie who had to drag along since there was no one at the hotel to whom Courtney would trust him. But she felt more than repaid, not so much by her purchases, though she was on the whole content with them, as by the complete change in her point of view.

The atmosphere of the city is wholly different from that of such a place as Wenona. In Wenonas, the individual is important; the sky seems near, and its awful problems of the eternal verities—life and death, right and wrong—thrust at every one every moment of day and night. In a city, the sky yields to brick and stone; men see each other, not the universe; the eternal verities seem eternal bores, and life, of the day, of the hour, tempts with its—"Since you are mere maggot in rotten cheese—tiny maggot, one of billions—tremendous cheese—since you are to die to-morrow and decay and be forgotten—since you can fret and fritter all your years away over life and death, over right and wrong, without getting a hair's width nearer solving them—why not perk up—amuse yourself—do as little harm as is consistent with getting what you need, and have all the fun there is going? Don't take yourself solemnly!" The city's egotism is showy, but shallow; the country's, hidden but profound.

Viewed from Chicago, all the beauty, all the possibilities of happiness in her life in that lovely place on the shore of Wenona Lake stood out as in the landscape of a master painter; and all that fretted and shamed her and shot her joys with black thread of foreboding seemed the work of her own tainted imagination. "I'm harming no one," she now argued. "I'm free—Richard freed me when he made me realize I was to him not a wife but simply a carnal incident. And I am helping to make life there peaceful and even happy. The trouble with me is I'm still under the blight of my early training—a training in how to die, not in how to live. True, I do lead a double life. But how few human beings do not lead double lives of one kind or another? And where am I worse than thousands who long but have not courage or chance? Isn't it better to live in deceit with a man one loves than to live in deceit with a man one loathes?" If she and Basil were found out, they would be classed with the rest of the vulgar intriguers. But that did not make them thus low; it was not their fault that the world saw only coarseness for the same sort of reason that a man in green spectacles saw everything green.

She came back as much improved in mental health as in dress—and certainly the new clothes were a triumph. Also, her sense of self-respect seemed to be restored—"and whether I'm right in my way of looking at things or am deceiving myself, I'm certainly much the better for feeling I'm right."

They brought part of the spoils of the city with them, but most of it came by freight a week after their return. Courtney and Helen were almost as excited as Winchie—and Winchie was quite beside himself—when the great packing cases and crates were opened, and the treasures of dresses and underclothes and "stunning" hats and fascinating shoes and slippers and parasols and blouses, and the furniture and pictures came into view from endless wrappings of paper and bagging and excelsior, of boxes round and square, boxes small and large, boxes fancy and plain. Everything, with not an exception, looked better than it had in the shop when it was bought. "You are a wonderful shopper, Courtney. These things seem as if they were made especially for us," Helen asserted. And Winchie, literally pale with emotion, screamed, "Mamma Courtney, let's go back and buy some more!"

For several days the agitation continued. Indeed, it was a month or longer before the last ripples died away, and the normal calm was restored. Helen had new clothes as well as Courtney—and never had she looked so lovely. Winchie was the most stylish person of his age in all that region. The Donaldson children had theretofore been disposed to feel somewhat superior because they had a real imported French governess; they now paid court to him and accepted his decisions about games as reverently as a company of New York men accept the judgments of any man with millions. And the new furniture and dishes, the new wall paper, the new cooking utensils, the new contrivances for plants and for cut flowers, some of which Courtney had had made from her own designs, were as successful as the clothes. Also, Courtney—and Helen too—had, through the stimulus of the city, a multitude of new ideas for house and grounds and gardens. These they proceeded to carry out, Basil assisting whenever he could get an afternoon away from the laboratory where Richard had now buried himself, oblivious of her, of them all. Altogether, May and June of that year made a new high-water mark of happiness. And when Helen, going to Saint X to visit and display her finery, returned in a self-complacent state of mind that indicated a complete cure, a complete restoration of her old-time content, Courtney felt as if the last cloud had disappeared from her horizon. Again and again during those tranquil, sparkling days she told herself—and almost believed—that at last her life was "settled right"—as nearly "right" as a human life could be.

One night when she had an appointment with Basil she found Helen still up as she was about to descend and admit him. Helen did not put out her light until nearly three quarters of an hour after the time. When she opened the lake-front door no one entered; not a sound. She looked out. The veranda empty; the lawns dreaming undisturbed in the moonlight; wave on wave of the heavy perfume of summer's flowers. But not anywhere Basil. Her trembling ceased; she darted to the edge of the veranda, everything forgotten but the supreme fact—he was gone. Gone! Why, she could not doubt; for, from time to time she had seen in his eyes the suspicion which, unjust though it was, she dared not discuss with him. Where had he gone? She must know, must know at once.

She gave not a thought to leaving the house—the dangers that made it impossible for them to meet at his apartment. She sped across the lawn, along the path through the pale splendor of the east flower garden and blossoming shrubbery, into the dark wood. And with her sped her old enemy—the specter dread of losing him—the ghost so easily started from its unquiet grave. She flitted on until she stood at the edge of the clearing, with wildly beating heart, looking up at the solitary building, gloomy in its creeper draperies. There was light from his bedroom window. She gave a quick gasp of relief. At least he was still within reach. The phantom beat of icy rains falling, falling ceased to freeze her heart.

Panting from the tumult of her thoughts rather than from the run, she knocked on the entrance door—knocked again, loudly—a third time—a fourth. She was shaking from head to foot. No answer—none. She tried the door; it yielded. She darted up the stairway, her body now fire and now ice. He was in his bedroom door, was watching her. As the light came from behind him she could not immediately see his expression; but she felt it was dark and angry. She flung herself on his breast—"My love—my love!" she sobbed.

His arms hung at his sides. He stood rigid.

"Basil! Put your arms round me. I'm cold—and so frightened."

He pushed her away.

She leaned against the door frame sobbing into her hands. Her long plaits hung one over either shoulder. She looked like a child, a broken-hearted child. "And you've been pretending to love me!"

"I do love you. That's the worst of it."

"Love!" She turned upon him passionately. "You call that—love? No matter what I did, wouldn't you know I'd done it for our love's sake? Yes, you know all that's I is yours—every thought—every heart throb." She was sobbing again, her arm on the door frame, her face against it. She was thinking how unsympathetic he was, how selfish and cruel—was asking herself why she did not hate him, cast him out of her life. But the very suggestion made her heartsick. Cast out him who was her life!

"I didn't mean it," he pleaded. "I was crazed with jealousy."

"Jealousy! Basil—Basil!"

"I can't help it. I'm human."

"But don't you know me? Oh, sweetheart—don't take from me all the self-respect I've got."

He seated himself, stared doggedly at the floor. There was a long, a heavy silence which he finally broke. "Courtney," he said, "we're both going straight to hell." He looked sternly at her. "We've got to get away from here."

She saw the resolve in his eyes, trembled, grew still. Then she remonstrated gently, "You'd forbid me to treat Winchie so, if I wanted to."

He continued to look straight and stern at her. "Either you go with me or I go alone."

Her knees grew weak. The room swam before her eyes. The big wave in the picture on the opposite wall swelled, lowered, seemed swooping down on her. "Oh, no—you wouldn't do that," she murmured. "No—you couldn't do that."

"I'll leave in the morning, unless you say you'll leave with me the day after."

She watched him, relentless and utterly inconsiderate, and her anger rose. "You've no right to go!" she cried.

"I must," he replied. "Do you mean to say you'll let me leave without you?"

"Yes—if you'd do it," replied she. "But you wouldn't. You'd not leave me to bear the whole burden alone. You'd not be a coward."

His florid face became crimson. He fought for self-control, gave up the hopeless struggle, flung himself down beside her. "I can't go—I can't," he cried. "But—how can I stay? It's dragging us down—down." He was almost weeping. "Courtney, you must see it's dragging us down."

For the first time she had the sense of strength in herself greater than his, of weakness in him. She caressed his fair hair tenderly. "It's only a mood, dearest—only a mood. It'll pass—and we'll help each other, and be strong. We'll look forward to the end of this. For, in a few years Winchie'll be off to school. Then—I shall be free to make my own life. I'll go away to visit—stay on and on—and gradually——"

"You must promise you will not live with him."

"I will do my best. But—I must protect Winchie—and us."

He grew red, then pale, was silent for a time. Then he said irritatedly, weakly, "But don't you see what a position it puts me in!"

"And me?" She said it very quietly, with a certain restrained pathos. But he sat glum and moody, thinking of his own plight.

He roused himself. "All right," he cried, in a tone of contempt—for himself and for her. He embraced her with a kind of insolent familiarity. "Then I'll stay. If I went, I'd only come sneaking back. I'm no longer a man. I'm a slave to you." And he held her at arms length and eyed her with an expression that told her he was making inventory of her charms.

"Please don't talk that way," she begged, offended and wounded by that expression in his eyes more than she dared admit to herself. "I know you don't mean it. I know you—love. I know——"

"Love—let's only talk of love," he interrupted.

She fell to wondering whether, when they were together in the dark, his unseen eyes had this look—and why it made his words and his caresses seem so different from the words and caresses of the darkness. She had never thought of it before; she hated to learn it then—just then; but she could not push away the monstrous truth that love and lust have the same vocabulary, the same gestures, the same tones, differ only in their eyes.

"What are you thinking about so solemnly?" he asked.

"I wasn't thinking solemnly," she protested with a hastily forced smile. "I was simply remembering how rarely we've been together alone—really alone—except in the dark, for a long long time."

"It's good to be able to see you," said he, and she felt like hiding in shame from his eyes. "You streamer of flame that's burning up my soul."

Her lips echoed his laugh. "What nonsense," she said.

"It's the truth," declared he. "But—burn on! I can't live without it."

The smile left her lips—it had not been in her eyes. "If I thought you——"

He stopped her mouth with a kiss. "Only love!" he commanded. "No thought."

"That's right," she cried eagerly. "No thought! Just feeling—just love. We must not think. It's the cause of our unhappiness."

And she tried to be as good as her word. "I do love him, and he loves me," she rebuked herself. "I'm unstrung—hysterical—full of crazy fancies. I mustn't—mustn't—fret at his way of loving. I must always think, 'What would become of me if I lost him?'" And she pretended to be in his mood; for the sake of a passion that had been, she simulated a passion that was not.

XXII

Masculine moral struggle is usually noisier than feminine—unless the woman is seeking to impress some man, before yielding of her own free will what she wishes him to fancy his superior charm and force and subtlety are conquering. Thus, woman being by nature freer from the footless kinds of hypocrisy than man, it was only in the regular order that while Courtney quietly accepted the situation and conformed to it, Basil should accept it with much moral bluster. He accused now his own wickedness, now the wickedness of destiny, and again woman's sinful charms. Still, the masculine conscience no less than the feminine is bred to be an ultimately accommodating chaperon; and Basil's conscience would soon have gone to sleep had it not been kept awake and feverish by a contrasting presence. That contrast was Helen's virginal beauty and virginal purity—both of which fascinated his overstimulated and degenerating imagination.

Helen was, as Courtney had said, a girl of the old-fashioned type. This does not mean that she was a rare survival of an extinct type, but simply that she was the girl of yesterday as distinguished from the girl of to-morrow, and from the girl that is partly of yesterday, partly of to-morrow—all three of whom we have with us in this transitional to-day. Helen had by inheritance and training all woman's ancient instincts to be a possessed and protected property. These instincts originated in the necessities and the ignorance of former societies; but they are cultivated and clung to because masculine vanity dotes on the superior attitude, and because the female very humanly finds it more comfortable to be looked after than to look after herself, to have her thinking done for her than to think for herself, to be supported than to support herself, to be strong through weakness than to be strong through strength. The male wants to pose as master. The female yields, since the usual cost to her is merely putting up with airs of superiority at which she can secretly laugh; at worst, the cost is only that intangible thing, self-respect. So, why not? Self-respect is purely subjective, unseen. It provides no comforts or luxuries. Lack of it attracts no attention in a world that sees only surfaces. So, why not sacrifice it, when it becomes inconvenient? Men do. Why shouldn't women?

Helen had no desire to be of full human stature—to be free. She wished to be a "true woman," meek servant of a lord and master, and never under the painful necessity of taking responsible thought for herself. Having no capacity or desire for comradeship with men, she denounced it as unwomanly. Her physical virtue—"purity," she called it—she regarded as her chief glory. She was glad it was still woman's chief asset in the struggle for existence; for, she could not help knowing she had beauty, and it is beauty that makes virtue valuable, though of course beauty adds nothing to its glory.