THE HUNGRY HEART (continued 7)

Helen certainly had beauty, nearly as great beauty as she imagined in that heart of hearts where our vanity feels free to spread its tail to the last gaudy feather and to strut as no peacock or gobbler ever dared. Her skin was white as milk, her features were classically regular, and she was now a shade taller than Basil, could almost look level-eyed at Richard. Her dark hair was commonplace in color and texture, was rather short, did not grow especially well about her brow or behind the ears; but it was thick and abundant, and the brow and the ears were charming in themselves. Thanks to Courtney's skill in devising a corset, the defect of waist too close to bust was no longer conspicuous. She had sound teeth, good arms and legs, narrow hands and feet. Her large brown eyes were of the kind that has been regarded as ideal for woman from the days of Homer singing the ox-eyed Juno, down to our own day when intelligence is trying to get a place among feminine virtues and the look of intelligence among feminine beauties. She had learned from Courtney—who knew—a great deal about dress—dress that all women talk, but only the rare exceptional woman knows.

Also, she had from her a practical training for what she regarded as woman's only sphere, the home. Courtney had taught her how to keep house with comfort, order and system. As Courtney had none of the teacher's vanity but used the method of suggestion, she fancied she had learned and was learning from herself; the more so, since she in defiance of daily experience could not credit a woman of Courtney's lively and, because light, undoubtedly thoughtless and careless temperament, with enough seriousness to be a good housekeeper. Helen there showed herself about on a level with the human average; for all but incredible is the stupidity of our misjudgments and mismeasurements of our fellow beings. There was not in her the capacity to reflect who thought out the new ideas that were constantly being put into effect, who told her what to do and who quietly and tactfully saw that she did it.

The most obvious improvement in Helen was through her unconsciously acting on Courtney's advice of delicately veiled suggestion and dropping the culture pose. She was now patterning upon Courtney's naturalness so far as she could. She had the handicap of an ingrained and incurable passion for those innocuous little tricks of manner with the men; also, she was greatly hindered by a conventional assortment of the so-called "lofty ideals." Still, she was letting much of her own natural personality appear. She was only slightly exaggerating her bent toward sweetness and sympathy. She was not quite so strenuous in advocacy of fine old-fashioned womanliness—heart without mind, purity that is mere strait jacketed carnality; virtue that, when it yields, makes lofty pretense of yielding only in reluctant tolerance of man's coarseness and of nature's shameful way of reproducing. At Tecumseh, when Dr. Madelene Ranger delivered a course of lectures on the profession all young women are candidates for—that is, on matrimony—to the girls of the senior class of the college of liberal arts, Helen was one of those who refused to attend and signed the—unheeded—protest to the faculty. She was no longer so proud of this as she had been, although she still thought she had done what ought to be right though it rather seemed foolish.

But the greatest improvement of all in Helen was the subtlest. She had come there, expecting to be a dependent, feeling and, in a sweet refined way, acting like the poor relation, harbored on sufferance. Women, trained from the outset to be dependents, easily degenerate into sycophants, like men who have always looked to others for employment and have lost self-confidence if they ever had it. But lack of self-reliance, a vice in a man, is regarded as a virtue in a woman; so, women have absolutely no restraint upon their abandoning even the forms of self-respect, once they get in the way of degenerating. Thus, Helen's relations with Courtney might easily have become what is usually seen where there is intimacy between a poor woman and a woman of means. But Courtney—not deliberately but with the unconsciousness of large natures—made this degradation impossible. It was not merely that Helen had not been made to feel a dependent; it was more—far more. It was that she had been made to feel independent, more independent than Courtney herself felt. And this fine feeling, this erectness of spirit, permeated to every part of her character, would have made a full-statured human being of her, had she had the mentality to shake off her early training as mere conventional female.

Richard frankly declared her an ideal woman; Basil secretly agreed with him. Helen became the constant reminder of his lost honor, of the heaven he had given up for the forbidden delights. He reveled in Courtney the tempest; but during the lulls his eyes turned yearningly to Helen, the serene and pure calm. Courtney represented sinful excess, Helen righteous restraint. Courtney's was love the devastator; a love for Helen would be love the uplifter. He wanted Courtney; he felt that Helen was what he ought to want. And in the lulls, with passion exhausted and needing the stimulus of contrast—he sometimes fancied that, if he could somehow contrive to assert his manhood and escape from slavery to Courtney, he would be happy with Helen, and once more noble and good. Like many another, he flattered himself that he had an aspiration to a better life when in reality he was making pretense of virtuous longing merely to whet his appetite for vice. He shut his eyes to the obvious but rarely seen—or, rather, rarely admitted—truth that a man is as he does, not as he pretends or dreams.

Before finally and fully condemning Basil—or Courtney or anyone—for anything he or she may have done contrary to our views of propriety and morality, it would be well to reflect upon the true nature of conscience—to which Basil and Courtney and all of us habitually refer all moral questions for settlement. As we grow older we are awed or amused rather than shocked—and, unless we have lived as the moles and the earthworms, are not astonished at all—by the wondrous ways in which our conscience adjusts itself to necessity—or to what overwhelming inclination makes us believe to be necessity. But in unanalytic youth such adjustments take place unconsciously to ourselves; the mind, in the parts of itself hidden from us, concocts the proof positive that what we desire is necessary and right; all we are conscious of is that we suddenly have the mandate of necessity and the godspeed of conscience. Thus, conscience in youth can be as flexible as occasion may require, yet can, without hypocrisy, be for the conduct of others a very Draco of a lawgiver, a very Brutus of a judge. This, in youth only. But— How many of us ever do grow up?

The free-and-easy mode of life at the house made it impossible for any two to be alone, except by stealth, without everyone's knowing it. As a man who since early youth had led the "man sort of life" he was thoroughly used to associating the idea stealth with the relations of men and women. However, flexible though conventional "honor" is, he had misgivings about bending it to the requirements of desire in this particular case. But as his longing for such a moral invigorator as Helen's innocent purity grew in intensity, he began deliberately to revolve contriving to see her alone again, and by stealth. His first success was accidental—callers occupying Courtney when he came seeking her. As he turned away from the house he spied Helen, seated under a maple tree sewing near where Winchie and the older Donaldson boy were playing ball. She colored faintly when he dropped to the grass near her and lit a cigarette. He so placed himself that he commanded all approaches from the house and could not be taken by surprise. "Why is it," he began, "that I don't see you at all any more—except at the table?"

The fact that he did not pursue when she began to avoid had disappointed her keenly. But it had given her a better opinion of him. It showed—so she told herself, perhaps by way of consolation to vanity—that however bad he might be he yet had redeeming reverence for purity. But she had long been weary of the dutiful struggle against his charm of the worldly and the rich for her the unworldly and the poor. So, her manner was not wholly discouraging as she said, in reply to his respectfully regretful question, "I've been very much occupied."

He watched her swift white fingers a while, then stared gloomily out toward the lake. She stole a pitying glance at him. "Poor fellow!" thought she. "He's suffering terribly to-day. That dreadful woman! How could Courtney, generous though she is, defend a creature who is simply wrecking his life?" As she had kept close watch on him all these months, these signs of his sufferings were not new to her. But never had she seen them so movingly plain. "Poor fellow!" thought she.

Presently he said: "Won't you talk to me? I feel like a—a damned soul to-day."

Helen thrilled. He looked so distinguished, was so elegantly dressed in his simple manly way, had that gloss, that sheen, which marks all the kinds and conditions of anglers for the opposite sex. "What shall I talk about?" she asked.

Her sympathetic smile, showing her excellent teeth and lighting up her dark eyes, changed for him her common-place query into a stimulating exhibit of depth of soul. "Anything—anything," he said. "You've got such an honest, sweet voice that whatever you say makes one feel better."

"What is troubling you?"

"Oh, I don't want to talk about myself."

But her instinct told her he had brought his stained soul to confessional. "It might help you," she suggested, blushing at her own boldness.

He looked gratefully at her and away. "It seems to me," said he, "you've been avoiding me. Is it so?"

Helen bent her head low over her work.

"I suppose it was instinctive," he went on. "To you, I'd seem— Sometimes I feel that, if you and I had kept on with those talks we were having last spring, things would have been different with me. However, it's too late now."

Helen's eyes filled. "Oh, no. It's never too late," said she.

He sighed and rose—Courtney was coming toward them. Helen took no part in the conversation that followed. She was pondering the few meaningless and youthful phrases he had uttered as if they were freighted with wisdom and destiny. And she continued to ponder them after he and Courtney and Winchie went away for a drive to Wenona. The more meaningless a thing is, the more food for thought to those incapable of thinking. When it is clear, it is grasped at once and the incident closes; but let it have no meaning at all, and lives will be devoted to cogitating upon it, and library shelves will groan with tomes of exegesis. Helen found in Basil's words what she wished to find—found a plain mandate of duty to help him. He couldn't be so very bad—probably not so bad as Richard was in his bachelor days, before chemistry and Courtney calmed him. And look at Richard now!

She did not know the very particular dangers for Basil in drink. But she saw that he was taking a great deal more whisky and water than formerly, and she felt that it had to do with his obviously desperate depression. Her one chance to see him, she knew, was when Courtney was occupied; for, had she not led Courtney to think that she did not wish to be left alone with him ever? She decided it was best not to tell Courtney she had changed her mind—somewhat—about him; Courtney would misjudge, would think her careless about principle, weak, love-sick—worst of all, would probably advise against her talking with him. Thus it came to pass that when Courtney was safely occupied—with callers, with Winchie, at sewing or painting or dressing—Helen put herself oftener and oftener in such a position that Basil could find her if he chose. She did not dream that he also wished to be stealthy; she thought the stealth was all on her own side—and he, seeing this, soon pretended to himself that he thought so, too, and had not the slightest sense of guilt toward Courtney. It did not take him long to find a satisfying explanation for Helen's aversion to having it known that they met alone; here, decided he, was another evidence of her modesty, her delicate sensitiveness of the good woman who can't bear being talked about lightly—and, if they talked alone where others could see, there would surely be joking and teasing and gossiping.

Once more habit gave illustration of its subtle grasping of ever more and more power. Before either was aware of it, they were meeting clandestinely with clocklike regularity. And Helen's life filled with sunshine of the most delicious warmth and sparkle. And Basil, keeping steadily on at his drinking, and never relaxing in his devotion to the sweet sin of which Courtney was the scarlet altar, reveled in those agonies of a sense of utter depravity that are about the only charm of wickedness. "I am not fit to live," reflected he with comfortable gloom, as he sat in his apartment alone drinking after an afternoon with Helen and a late evening with Courtney. Here was excellent excuse for drinking and gloriously damning himself. He did not go to bed until he had finished the bottle and the last cigarette in the big silver box on his table. Also, between spasms of self-damning he had contrived to finish a novel of intrigue that had as its villain-hero just such a devil of a fellow as he felt he himself was—or was in delightful danger of becoming.

How it ever befell he never could remember. But the day came when he, sitting with Helen in the summerhouse—the summerhouse!—found himself holding her hand. He stared at the pretty white hand, large and capable yet feminine in every curve. He noted that it was lying contentedly, confidingly upon the brown of his palm. He lifted his dazed eyes. Her lashes were down, her cheeks overspread with delicate color; her bosom, like a young Juno's, rose and fell with agitated irregularity. It was not poisonous mock morality, it was the decent human man underneath, that sent an honestly horrified "Good God!" to his lips. He laid her hand gently in her lap, stood up, thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. His face was red with real shame.

"I've often told you," said he, "that I'm no fit companion for a pure woman—that my life's ruined past redeeming——"

"Don't say those things," she implored. "They hurt me—and they're not so. I know you."

"Past redeeming," he repeated. "It's the God's truth. I must keep away from you. I've no right to see you—to care for you—to tempt you to care for me. I can't tell you—but if you knew, you'd loathe me as I loathe myself."

"Do you—do you—" Her voice faltered. But she had wrought herself up to such a romantic pitch about him, and his earnestness was so terrifying and so real to her, that she dared to go on—"Do you care for some one else?" And she looked at him in all the beauty of her romance.

"I don't know—I don't know," he answered, in great agitation—physical, though he of course fancied it moral. "Not with the love I might have given a pure woman, if fate and my own vile weakness hadn't conspired to ruin me.... What am I saying? I can't talk to you about it. Think me as bad as your imagination can picture—and I'm worse still."

She gave a low wail that came straight from her honest romantic young heart and went straight to his heart. He sat beside her, took her hand. "Be merciful to me," he begged. "At least I'm not so bad that I don't know goodness when I see it. And you'll always be the ideal of goodness in my eyes—all I once sought in love—all I once deluded myself into believing I had won."

She thrilled. Those words made her feel that he belonged to her. She laid her other hand on his. "Basil," she appealed, "you are young, and brave, and noble. You can free yourself—save yourself——"

He drew away, went to the rail of the pavilion, seated himself there. "No," he said. "I'm past saving. And—we must not meet any more."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because—I am not free—and never shall be."

"Is that true?" Her eyes looked loving incredulity.

"I am more tightly bound—by honor and by—by habit—than if I were married."

She gave a long sigh—of despair, she thought, but in reality of hope, for, at least he was free. Marriage was the only real bond. As for honor—what honor could there be in any tie not sanctioned by religion and society?

"What a cur I am!" he exclaimed, put to shame by her sigh and her forlorn expression.

"Please don't!" she begged. "I understand—as far as a girl could understand such a thing. And I know it's not your fault. And—even if we can't be anything more to each other, still I'm not sorry we've had what we've had. I'm—I'm—glad!"

He felt the glory of her purity beaming upon him like heaven's light on the bleak, black-hot peaks of hell. He longed to linger, and talk on and on; but his sense of honor had reached the limit of its endurance for that day. Without touching her hand he said good-by as if they were never to see each other again and went as if his heart were broken.

Thenceforth Helen let her longing for romance centre in him without concealing the fact from herself—or from him. And her castle-building had an energy it would never have had, if she had not imagined she felt it was hopeless. Nothing so dynamic as the hopelessness that hopes. Believing that he loved her, that she was his one chance of redemption, she continued to give painstaking attention to her toilet, to refresh her memory of those of his favorite poets with whom she was acquainted, to learn lines from those she knew less well, and to put herself in his way—always without forwardness. And he continued to drift—held fast to Courtney with senses so enchained that he would have fought against release like an opium fiend for his drug; fascinated also by the woman he could dream he ought to have loved, and might have loved. Two restraints he laid sternly upon himself. Not to talk of love in a tête-à-tête with a woman—that would be impossible. But he would see that the talk was kept to the general, that it never adventured the particular. Also, he would never again so much as touch Helen's hand when they were alone. Were he bred to be as expert at moral truth as at moral sham, he might have found a key to his true state of soul in the tantalization this self-restraint caused him to suffer. There were times when her physical contrast to Courtney was as alluring to his keyed-up, supersensitized nerves as was her moral contrast to his morbid moral sense. If he had had the intelligence and concentration necessary to candid self-analysis, he would have been startled—perhaps benefited—by the discovery that he was in the way to become one of those libertines who in all sincerity teach prayers to the innocence they are plotting to debauch.

And all the time he was drinking more and more deeply—not for the moral reasons he fancied, but for the practical physical reason that a disordered nervous system craves the stimulants that will further aggravate its disorder. Helen's father had carried his liquor badly; a little was enough to upset him a great deal. Basil was one of those men who are able to drink heavily without showing it, even to the most watchful eyes. Often, when she had not the faintest suspicion he was in liquor, he was in fact so far gone that he had to keep his surface preternaturally solemn in order to conceal the disorder of his mind.

The day did not long delay when, under the influence of drink, he suddenly seized her and kissed her. She did not resist; but the shock of the contact, instead of inflaming him, instantly restored him to his senses. He was conscience-stricken; also he saw the impossible complications he was precipitating. In shame and fright—in fright more than shame—he fled from her presence.

So far as outward effect is concerned, the action is everything, the motive nothing. But so far as inward effect is concerned, the action is nothing, the motive everything. In action Basil and Courtney were essentially the same—equal partners in intrigue. But her motive of seeking strength through love availed to hold her steady, even to lift her up; while his motive of sensuality ever less and less refined and redeemed by love was thrusting him down and down.

XXIII

Richard and Courtney were walking up from the laboratory together. In his abrupt fashion Richard broke the silence with: "I wonder if it isn't Helen that's hanging back and not Gallatin. She's innocent as a baby, but her experience with her father must have taught her about that one thing."

"What one thing?" asked Courtney, startled out of her abstraction.

"Drinking. Helen must have noticed how Gallatin's mopping it up these days."

"Nonsense," said Courtney sharply. She was much irritated—as human beings are extremely apt to be, when some matter they are making determined efforts to ignore is forced on their attention.

"He was so drunk this morning that he had to go out and take the air. That's what made me think of it."

Drunk! She winced at that bald revolting word. She flamed at what she tried to think was an injustice. "This morning?" cried she. "Why, that's absurd. I'd have noticed it."

"You're another innocent. He carries a package well—always did." There Richard laughed at memories of his and Gallatin's "wild-oats" days of which he fancied Courtney knew nothing—and he would have been panic-stricken had he thought there was danger of her finding out about them. "Yes," he went on, "Gallatin's been going some for several weeks now. But this daytime drinking is a new development."

"I'm sure you're mistaken," said Courtney, her irritation showing in her color now. "You both drink at supper."

"He about six to my two. I never take more than two. And every once in a while I see Jimmie or Bill carrying a case of bottles to or from his apartments. I can understand a boy's doing that sort of thing. A boy wants to try everything. But how a grown man can keep on at it is beyond me. Still, he hasn't much mind. He never says or thinks anything he hasn't got from somebody else. But—women'd never notice that." This last sentence half to himself, not at all for her hearing.

Courtney was all a-quiver with anger. For, his shrewd observation on Basil's mentality compelled her to admit to herself another truth, indeed a whole swarm of truths, she had been hiding from herself—how Basil's conversation, when they were all together and the subject was necessarily other than love, no longer seemed brilliant or especially interesting even; how at the shop he made an extremely poor showing, was now pupil, and rather backward pupil, to her who almost daily had to cover up his blunders; how in helping her with the gardening he never went beyond either approving her ideas or offering suggestions already stated in the books; how she was constantly coming across things she had thought original with him only because she happened not to have read the books that contained them or to have known the phase of life in which they were familiar commonplaces. Angry though an untruth about anyone or anything we love makes us, that anger is as equanimity itself beside the anger roused by a disagreeable truth.

As they neared the house she quickened her pace, hurrying not so much from Richard as from her own thoughts—the thoughts his words had startled from unexpected lurking places as a sudden light sets bats to whirling. Courtney was loyal through and through; also, she clung to Basil like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft. The stronger the waves of adverse destiny or of doubt, the fiercer she clung to her life raft. In face of the clearest proof from without against Basil, she would have shut her eyes and held fast to him. Yet with devilish malice and merciless persistence circumstances were now constantly taking her blind resolute loyalty by surprise and forcing upon her exhibitions of him as a shallow and sensual person. A proud, intelligent woman's love could reconcile itself to either of these—to a shallow man whose passion was simply symbol of deep and sincere love; or, to a sensual man whose grossness was the coarse rich soil that sent up and nourished high intelligence, fascinating and compelling. But no woman worth while as a human being could continue to love a shallow man treating her as mere "symbol of the sensual side of life" because he was incapable of appreciating any but physical qualities, and then simply as physical qualities.

It was with a heart defiantly loving, defiantly loyal, that she met Basil at eleven that night to admit him. He had not appeared either at the house or at the laboratory during the afternoon or for supper or afterwards. So, she had not seen him since Richard's "attack on him behind his back"—for, she had succeeded in convincing herself that Richard's accusations were an outcropping of prejudice against him. She felt humble toward him because she had listened without bursting out in his defense—this, though to defend would have been the height of stupid imprudence. As he entered the door she softly opened, he lurched against her, stumbled over the rug, saved himself by catching hold of her and almost bringing her down. A wave of suspicion, of sickening fear and repulsion shuddered through her. But she frowned herself down, took him firmly by the arm.

"Be careful," she whispered. "The floor was polished only yesterday."

He mumbled something affectionate and without waiting for her to close the door, embraced her. From him exhaled the powerful odor of mixed tobacco and whisky that proclaims the drunken man to the most inexperienced, to those blindest of the blind—the blind who dare not see. She gently released herself. Several times of late he had come to her in almost this condition; she had forced herself to deny, to excuse, to minimize. Now, however, it was impossible for her to risk admitting him; and also, she suddenly realized she had reached the breaking point of her courage to keep up her self-deception. "You must go at once," she said.

"Why?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper. His befuddled mind reverted to Helen as if Courtney knew about her. "What right have you got to be jealous, if I'm not?"

She did not puzzle over this remark. "Basil, you must go at once because you've been drinking too much." The danger was too imminent to be trifled with in diplomatic phrases.

He stood, swaying unsteadily, his head hanging. "If you think so—" he muttered.

She urged him gently toward the door.

"I—I beg your pardon," he mumbled. "I—I guess you're right."

He backed two steps. As soon as he was clear of the door she closed and locked it. Slowly she went upstairs, dropped wearily into bed. She lay quiet a few minutes, staring at the arc of the night lamp. Then on an impulse from an instinct that could not be disobeyed, she rose, took a dark dressing gown, wrapped it round her. She glided along the hall, descended the stairs, opened the lake-front door. Closing it behind her, she stood at the edge of the veranda. The sky was black; a few drops of rain were falling. She made an effort, ran down the steps, hurried across the lawn and along the path to the Smoke House. The entrance door to the apartment stairway was open. She hesitated, slowly ascended. He did not appear at the sound of her steps. His bedroom door was open. She glanced in. His bed was turned down, his pajamas lay ready upon the folded-over covers. But he was not there. She went on to the door of his sitting room. It too was open. At the table desk and facing the door he sat, half-collapsed on the chair, one hand round a tall glass of whisky and water, the bottle and a carafe at his elbow. Though her mind was on him, her eyes took in and forced upon her every tiny detail of the room; she had made it over that his surroundings might always remind him of her. He lifted his heavy head, blinked stupidly at her. She noted his face with the same morbid acuteness to detail—his swollen eyes, his puffy lips, the veins in his forehead, his brows knitted in a foolishly solemn expression. Never had he seemed so homely, since her first glance at him when he came there a stranger.

After a moment of dazed sodden staring at her, he remembered his manners, rose not without difficulty and stood, stiff and unsteadily swaying. "Give me some of the whisky," said she, advancing. "I feel sort of queer." She dropped to the chair he had just left and took up his glass. "May I have your drink?" she asked, and without waiting for a reply drank eagerly. Color returned to her cheeks, and her eyes became less heavy and dull. "I'm better—very much better," she declared, as she set the glass down empty.

He had seated himself lumpishly on the sofa. They remained silent, gazing out through the open window into the darkness and hearing the soothing musical plash of rain on lake. In upon them poured a freshness rather than a breeze and the pleasant odor of drenching foliage. "As I lay there thinking," she said presently, "it came to me that I mustn't let this night pass without seeing you and making it smooth and straight between us."

The shock of her appearing had for the moment beaten down his intoxication. It was now boiling up again, heating his nerves and his imagination, though he seemed sober and self-possessed. "All right," said he. "I know you didn't mean to insult me, and I'll forget it."

She gazed quickly at him in amazement, started to speak, checked herself.

"But I want to tell you," he went on, his tone and gestures forcible-feeble, "I want to tell you this business of my being shut out has got to stop. You must arrange for Vaughan to come down here to live, and for me to take his rooms up at the house."

This demand seemed to her as utterly unlike him as the dictatorial tone in which it was made. To condemn him—no, more—not to love him the more tenderly—because he was in this mood of distracted desperation would be unworthy of the love she professed. She crushed down her sense of repulsion, went to him, laid her cheek against his hair. "My love," she murmured. "We mustn't ever forget that we have only each other. We'll never let any misunderstanding come between us, no matter how blue we get." And she turned his head and kissed him.

With an intoxicated man's fickleness, he switched abruptly from anger to sentiment. His eyes became moist and shiny. A sensual drunken smile played round his heavy mouth. She saw though she was trying hard not to see. He reached round and drew her toward his lap. She gently resisted, while she was nerving herself to submit—would it not be a very poor sort of love that would let itself be chilled by a mood—a mood in which all love's warmth, all love's gentleness were needed as they are not needed when everything is pleasant and easy?

The tears of self-pity welled into his eyes. "God, how low I've sunk!" He got himself on his uncertain legs, arranged his features into a caricature of an expression of dignified command. "I want you to send Helen—Miss March—away," he said, waving his finger at her. "She's a pure woman. She mustn't be contaminated."

She gazed at him in horror. "Basil!" she gasped.

"Yes—I mean it. Oh, you understand. I'm not fit to 'sociate with her—and neither are you."

With a wild cry, she turned to fly. He lurched forward, caught her by the arm. "But we're just about fit for each other," he said. "And that's the truth—if I am drunk." He nodded at her. "I should say, 'That's the truth because I am drunk.' It's giving me the courage to speak out a few things that've been gnawing at my insides for weeks." And his fingers clasped her arm like steel nippers.

"Basil! You're hurting me."

"That's what I feel like doing." And in his eyes as in his fingers there was revealed the sheer sensual ferocity that drink had freed of the shame which at other times held it in restraint.

She hung her head. In a low voice she stammered, "You're making me feel there isn't any love for me anywhere in your heart."

"Love?" he said, swaying to and fro and opening and closing his eyes stupidly. "Love. Oh, yes there is. Yes, indeed. Sometimes I think not, but it isn't so. It's because I love you that I go crazy at the thought that I'm sharing you."

"Sharing me!" She wrenched herself free, put her arm over her eyes as if she could thus hide from herself the sight of his soul which in drunken abandon he had completely unmasked.

"Don't be frightened," he maundered on. "I'm a man of honor—'honor rooted in dishonor' as Tennyson says. I'll not go. I'll submit to it—all right. Love gives a man a stomach for anything."

She wished to fly, but her legs would not carry her. She had to stay—and listen.

"How I've been dragged down! How a woman can drag a man down! Not Helen—no—she's an angel. But those good women never are as fascinating as you others.... Love?" He beamed upon her like a drunken satyr. "Let's love and be happy. To hell with everything but love."

As she listened and looked she, for the first time since they had been lovers, felt that she had sinned—had sinned without justification. The judgment of guilt dazzled and stunned her as the sun's full light eyes from which the scales have just fallen. She stood paralyzed, yet wondering how she could remain erect under the weight of her vileness—for, her sin seemed as heavy and as vile as ever celibate fanatic asserted. When her lover moved to embrace her, she, with the motion of shrinking from him, found she had strength and power to fly. She rushed from the room, he stumbling after her, and crying "Courtney! Don't get jealous and go off mad——"

XXIV

She knew the truth at last—the whole truth—what he was in mind and in heart, what his love was, what he in his inmost soul thought about her, about himself. The man who could believe he was sharing her could not but be shallow indeed, stupid, and also incapable of understanding the meaning of the word love; the man who could keep on with a woman he believed he was "sharing," must be sunk in a wallow of sensuality—and as weak as low. She knew the truth. Hearing she might have disputed and in time denied. But there was, and would be, no evading the records stamped clear and indelible upon her memory by that sensual, maudlin face. To falsify those records was beyond even a proud, lonely, loving woman's all but limitless powers of self-deception in matters of the heart. The coarseness of that self-revelation of his was the liquor; but the revelation itself was the man. He did not love; he lusted. He did not love; he despised—her and himself. He did not love—and he never had loved.

There is in every one of us a chamber where vanity and hope live and ever conspire to deceive, and if possible, destroy us. From that secret chamber she now wrenched an amazing secret. She discovered that from the beginning—yes, from the beginning—she, determined to satisfy the craving of elemental flesh and blood, had been lying to herself about Basil Gallatin. Passion had taken sly advantage of her loneliness and her longing for sympathy and companionship; it had beguiled her imagination into creating out of the very ordinary materials of his true personality the lover she had been adoring. One by one she took out and reëxamined all her memory plates of him. Now, a memory plate is like any other photographic plate; it has a surface picture and it also yields to a close scrutiny a thousand details which do not appear upon the surface. Long before she finished, she was realizing that she had all along, with the deliberate craft of self-deception, been hiding from herself the trick her feelings were practicing upon her intelligence. Basil—pleasing manners and dress, amiable disposition, animalism agreeably disguised by education—Basil had been plausible enough to pass muster with her, ready and eager to be deluded because of her craving for love. True, he had posed to a certain extent. But he was not really responsible for the fraud. The blame was hers—all hers.

But disillusion no more destroys a love longing than lack of food and drink destroys hunger and thirst. High above moans of shame over the pitiful collapse of her romance rose the defiant clamors of hunger and thirst. They had been lovers, he and she; and that fact in itself was a bond which a woman, at least a woman of her temperament of fidelity, could not easily break. She feared when he, sober and a gentleman once more, sweet and winning, came to her and pleaded for forgiveness she would forgive—would in her loneliness and heart hunger take what she could get rather than have nothing and the ache of nothingness. It is—at least, it has been, up to and into the present time—second nature to woman to depend upon a man, to select some one man, the best available, and stake everything upon him. Basil Gallatin was that man for her. And—not in novels, but in life—before any woman, however high minded, goes away to utter aloneness from a man who cares for her, he must have disclosed some traits more abhorrent than any such human traits as those of Basil. Yes—human. Was it his fault that he had not given her the kind of love she wanted? Was it not probably her fault that he had not been inspired to that kind of love? Perhaps, too, the love of any man, could it be seen in the nakedness of drunkenness, would be much like Basil's. "I'm only a woman," she said. "I mustn't forget that. I've no right to expect much." And then she shuddered; for in her very ears was the sound of those cold rains falling day and night upon her loneliness and despair.

She saw herself accepting; for, a great deal less than half a loaf is better than no bread. And if she accepted, she must adapt herself—must force herself to acquire a liking for what she must eat or go altogether hungry. She saw herself wending down and down—to the level at which he had from the beginning thought her arrived. She looked all around. Nothing—no one—to save her. For, what could she hope from Richard?—from any man? Was not Basil giving about the best man had to offer woman in the way of association? There was the Richard sort of man—an abstraction—an impossibility. There was the Shirley Drummond sort of man—a human incarnation of Old Dog Tray—equally impossible. There was the third sort of man—the Basil sort, somewhere between the two impossibilities. Life must be lived, and with human beings. Of the three available kinds of associates, was not the Basil sort the most livable? Rather Basil than being frozen to death by a Richard or bored to death by a Shirley. The conclusion seemed cynical; but there was no cynicism in the sad woman who faced that conclusion.

She did not go down to breakfast; and Basil, she learned, kept away also. When he did not appear at dinner she knew he had determined to wait until he should surely see her alone. The emotion that stirred in her because his place at the table was vacant gave her more and sadder light upon how little the heart heeds the things that impress the mind and the self-respect. About the middle of the afternoon she was at the small antique desk in the corner of her sitting room, trying to write a letter. But the charm of the day, the beauty of full-foliaged trees, of lake and cloudless sky seen through the creeper-framed window, would not let her write. As she gazed, her unhappiness calmed and all her senses flooded with the joy that laughs in sunbeams, in light and shadow floating on the grass, in flight and song of birds, in grace and color and perfume of flowers, the joy that mocks at moral struggle and flutters alluringly the gay banner of the gospel of eat, drink and be merry.

As she took her pen to go on with the letter, Lizzie appeared in the hall doorway. "Mr. Vaughan asked me to tell you," she said, "that he'd gone out and might not be back for supper."

"Very well," said Courtney, not turning round. It flitted across her mind that this was an extraordinary message for Richard to send—Richard who came and went as he pleased and sent no word when he was not coming to dinner or supper. "Where's he gone?" she asked—an extraordinary question from her to match the extraordinary message from him.

"He was in a hurry and didn't say," replied Lizzie. "I'll find out."

"Oh, no. It doesn't matter."

Lizzie went, and in her dreaming and thinking Courtney soon forgot the incident. Again Lizzie's voice interrupted—"Mr. Vaughan's gone to see old Nanny."

"Nanny!" said Courtney. She never thought of the old woman except as the memorandum of her pension check appeared every three months in the household accounts.

"Yes. She's dying. She sent for him. Such dreadful roads too."

Courtney's pen halted on its way to the ink well. The room seemed to her to have become terribly still.

"She sent him word," Lizzie went carelessly on, and her voice seemed to come from a distance, through a profound hush, "that she had something on her conscience and couldn't go without clearing it. I reckon she's gone clean crazy."

It was not fear that made nerve and muscle tense. It was not self-control that held her motionless. The peril was upon her; there was no time to waste in emotion. All along, she had pretended to herself that Nanny knew nothing, had at worst a dim suspicion. Now, she realized that she had always feared the old woman had seen and had heard. And those words of Lizzie's made it impossible for her to doubt what was about to occur. No time for terror, for hysteria or fainting or futile moaning. Her whole being concentrated on the one idea, What shall I do? Calmly she said to Lizzie, "Has he gone?"

"Ten minutes ago—maybe fifteen."

"Did he take the motor?"

"Yes, ma'am. She's near dead. He went in a great hurry."

Idle then to think of overtaking him, of bringing him back with a story that Winchie was missing, was perhaps drowned in the lake. Her mind—it had never been clearer or steadier—gave Richard up for the moment, turned to another phase. "Where is Mr. Gallatin?" she asked.

"Out on the lake. Winchie's with him—fishing."

"When they come in, please tell him I wish to see him at once." The events of last night were as if they had not been. Wounds closed up like magic; once more it was she and Basil her lover united against the whole world.

"I can call him from the wall," suggested Lizzie.

"Yes—please do." She dipped the pen as if about to go on with the interrupted letter. Lizzie went. She laid the pen down, leaned back in the chair, clasped her hands behind her head, gazed unseeingly into the huge tree almost directly before the window. The irony of it! Through Nanny whom they had forgotten! The blow was about to fall—utter ruin—the end of love—of life probably. A few hours and there would be a convulsion of the most awful passions. She looked round. Everything calm, bright, beautiful. Reason told her what was about to occur; but there are calamities which the imagination cannot picture, and this was one of them.... Should she tell Basil? "Nanny may be dead before Richard gets to her. If I tell Basil—and Richard comes, only suspicious—Basil's manner may confirm him." It was still more significant that it did not enter her head as even a possibility that Basil might be able to help her devise some plan to avert or to mitigate the blow.... In the midst of her debate whether to tell him, she suddenly gave a terrible cry, sprang to the window, her expression wildly disheveled. The thought had flashed, "If Richard hears and believes, he will kill Basil!"

Before she reached the balcony rail, reason took her by the shoulder, drew her back to her chair. "I must keep my head!" she exclaimed aloud. And she fought down and triumphed over the terror that had all but mastered her. At Gallatin's step on the threshold she did not turn. "Shut the door," she said in her usual voice. Then, after the sound of its closing, "Nanny, on her deathbed, has sent for him—to confess something. He's gone to her."

She heard him slowly cross the room, knew he was standing at the window. After a while she stole a glance at him. His skin was gray, his profile set; there were deep lines round his mouth. She liked his face, it was so manly; a wave of love surged out from her heart. "How long shall we have to wait?" he asked. The voice, though wholly unlike his own, had no note of cowardice in it.

"He's been gone about half an hour."

"Only half an hour!"

She saw the sweat burst out upon his forehead. She saw the muscles of his face trembling. There was agony in his eyes—not fear, but that horror of suspense which makes the trapped soldier rush upon the bayonet, makes the man on the scaffold assist the leisurely hangman.

Silence, except the chirping of the birds. A bumblebee buzzed almost into his face; he did not wince. A black-and-gold butterfly fluttered in at the window on the other side of the desk, hovered, settled upon the lid of the stationery box, rested with wings together as one. She turned her eyes from him to watch it, said absently:

"You will have to go at once."

She heard him turn full toward her. She was expecting that quick movement, but she could not help shrinking a little. However she went on evenly: "You can cross in the motor boat, take a trap at Wenona, catch the four-o'clock express at Fenton."

"I deserve that," he said, and she knew he was referring to last night.

She hesitated, went straight at it. "I'd forgotten last night since Lizzie told me about Nanny. It's wiped out. So, you need think only of going."

"What are you talking about?" he exclaimed. "I—go?"

She was ready. She turned upon him a look of well-simulated surprise. Then— "Oh!" she cried. "I've been thinking it out, and you haven't. At first glance it does look as if we ought to face it together. But as you consider it you'll see you've simply got to go."

He seated himself, took out his cigarette case, lighted a cigarette. "If I go anywhere it will be in his direction, to shorten the wait."

"Listen," said she, leaning toward him, her forearms on the desk, her hands clasped. "He'll have but one idea—to kill you. If you're here, the very sight of you will set him wild. He'll kill you—how can you defend yourself?"

"I can't. Vaughan has the right to my life."

She winced at this unconscious ugly reminder of what he really thought of their romance. She waved her hand as if brushing something away. "No matter about that," said she. "I'm thinking how to save Winchie from disgrace—and my own life. If you're here, there's no hope. If you're gone, he'll have the chance to reflect. And I shall know what to say and how to say it."

"I don't believe she knew anything."

"Basil!" His eyes shifted. "Don't you remember?"

Both were hearing the mad flapping of that frightened bird in the copse round the summerhouse. She shivered; he moved uneasily. "Even if she knew," he objected, "she may be dead or in the stupor of death before he gets to her."

"Then he'll hear nothing, and there's no reason why you shouldn't go. I'll say you got a telegram from your mother——"

"If he comes merely suspecting and uneasy, and I'm gone——"

"Still he'd not be sure," she interrupted. "And if he were, he'd not have the sight of you to inflame him." She rose. "There's no time to waste."

He settled himself. "I shall not go. We face him together."

The clock on the chimney-piece struck. She gave a cry, rushed to him. "Basil—my love!" she implored. "If you love me, go—go!"

He pressed his hands to her cheeks tenderly, smiled at her with the gentle tolerance of superior male for female. "I understand, dear. This is like you. But my honor will not let me go."

She released his hand, stood gazing at him. In the beginning she had urged only because she had wished to save him. But she had been convinced by her own arguments; and it amazed her that he was refusing to see what was so clear. "You—will—not—go?" she said.

"No, Courtney. I cannot."

She brushed the strays of hair from her brow. She laughed scornfully, with a contemptuous shrug. "Whether you two men kill each other or are only wounded, still Winchie and I will be disgraced. You may be only wounded—may get over it in a week or so—or you two may only have a vulgar fight—with the servants looking on. In any case I am done for."

He was like a horse when the spur is bidding it advance and the curb is bidding it halt. "If I stay," he cried, "you'll despise me. If I go, you'll despise me."

"If you stay you destroy me. If you go, I can save myself. Will you go or not? Oh, after last night—this on top of that— And, after last night, you can debate whether or not I'll despise you! Go, I tell you! You couldn't sink any lower than you have—and you may redeem yourself." They were facing each other, he white before her scorn and fury. "But not," she went on, "if to what you said and did then you add debating a point of cheap pose when I and my child are at stake. What a shallow, vain creature you are!"

"Do you mean these things? Or are you only pretending, to make me fly and save myself?"

"I mean every word. In spite of last night, of all it taught me, I was still hoping—or, trying to hope. But now— Thank God I had Winchie when I met you, and wasn't free to make an utter fool of myself. A man who could betray his friend for lust, and then betray his mistress for vanity!"

His eyes blazed mingled hate and passion at her. "But you'll go with me now!" he cried, in triumphant fury. "Yes, we'll take that train together. The jig's up, and, damn you, you witch, you've got to go with me."

She was shaking with fright. For the moment she could think of no answer. She was under the spell of the terrible expression of his eyes.

"If he comes looking for some one to kill, he'll kill you if he can't get us both. So—we go together, or die together, as you please."

"Very well," said she, seating herself. "Oh, how like you this is! You know that if we fly, my boy is smirched for life—and I too. You know that if I stay, I may save everything—even your life. If we went, Richard would never rest till he'd hunted us down and killed us."

"I've lost you," said he sullenly. "I don't care what happens. I feel like killing you myself." He straightened up. "Why not?" he cried. "Kill you, then myself—get it all over with."

The silence was broken by a shout from Winchie playing with the neighbor's children on the lawn. That sound compelled her to another effort. She went to Basil, laid her hands gently on his shoulders. "Basil," she pleaded, tears in her eyes, in her voice, "for my boy's sake—for my sake—go! Now that you think about it you can't but see it's the decent, the honorable thing to do. Let's not quarrel—we who have been so much to each other. Go and let us save everything."

He looked into her eyes, and she knew that if he had drunk as much that day as he did the day before, he would have killed her and himself. But she saw that he, sober, was hesitating, was moved by her appeal to his generous, kind nature, overflowing with sentimentality. "Dear," she said, "you can row out on the lake. And if everything's all right I'll hang something white on this shutter here. Then you can come back. Even if he comes home suspicious he'll not think it strange that you're on the lake late."

"But he may come to kill, and before I could get back——"

"But he will not kill me, I tell you. I'm 'only a woman.' I know him. You know, too. And if he would, how could you save me? Would I want to live disgraced?" The clock struck again. She gave a scream, flung her arms round his neck. "Save me, Basil! Go—quick!—quick!"

After the frightful things she had said to him and he to her, there was left him only the choice between going and killing her and himself. On the threshold he, with tears in his eyes, embraced her and kissed her. "God help me, I don't know what to do," he said. "I'll go. If it turns out wrong, remember how you perplexed me—and try to forgive me, dear."

He was so genuine, so manly and loving and she felt so grateful to him that her own eyes filled and she gave him her lips with her heart in them.

She stood at the window; she walked up and down the balcony. But she watched the lake in vain. Five minutes ten—fifteen, and no Basil—Winchie came with his usual rush, flung himself into the hammock. "What is it, mamma?" he asked presently.

She startled, turned on him with eyes wild. "Oh!" she gasped, her hand on her heart. "I didn't know you were there."

"Are you watching for Mr. Gallatin?"

"Why, dear?"

"Because, if you are, he came in with me a long time ago and isn't out there any more."

A silence, she trying to keep her gaze off the lake.

"I like him," the boy went on. "At least, some better than I did. He knows a lot about fishing. When papa blows himself up and never comes down any more, as Jimmie says he will some day, I think I'll let Mr. Gallatin stay on with us."

Courtney scarcely heard. She was grinding her palms together and muttering incoherently when at last she saw his boat pushing leisurely in the direction of Wenona. She drew a long breath. But as the boat glided farther and farther away, her sick heart failed her. She felt abandoned—and afraid. For, she had not told the truth when she said she knew Richard would not kill her.

Winchie stayed on, talking incessantly and no more disturbed by her inattention than babbling brook or trilling bird by lack of audience. His chatter fretted her like the rapping of a branch on the window of an invalid. But she would not send him away. If Richard should come, Winchie's being there would halt him—perhaps, just long enough. After an hour Winchie grew tired of talking and ran off to play. She did not detain him—why, she did not know—probably, because to detain him would have been to encourage a fear that must be defied if the coming battle for Winchie and reputation and life was not to be lost before it began. She must not seem to be afraid. That would be fatal. And the sure way to seem unafraid was to be unafraid.

She paced the floor. She watched the distant boat with its single occupant. She sat and tried to finish her letter. She roamed through the house. "I'll meet him in the grounds," decided she—and, compelling herself to walk slowly, she paced the road between gates and house—up and down, up and down. Back to the house again, to her room. "Yes, we'll not wait supper," she said, in answer to Lizzie's inquiry. At supper, the sound of Helen's and Winchie's voices rasped on her nerves. "Will he never come?" she muttered. And without explanation, she left the table, went again to her sitting room.

"Are you ill, dear?" asked Helen, putting her head in at the door.

"No," replied she, curtly.

Helen went, but Winchie came. "You must hear my prayer, mamma."

"Helen taught it to you. Let her hear it."

"No. She's busy downstairs, and I'm in a hurry to go to sleep."

"Then—just say it by yourself."

"It seems foolish to say it, with nobody to listen."

"Very well."

She sat on the floor beside his bed. He knelt before her, eyes closed, hands folded as Helen had taught him. She was listening—listening—listening. "If he came now—" thought she—one of those sardonic fancies that leer even from a coffin. She stayed on with the boy, getting him to tell her stories, she the while listening, listening for sounds on the drive, on the stairs—and hearing only the sound of the seconds splashing one by one into eternity. Winchie fell asleep. She kissed him, fled from his room with a choke in her throat. She composed herself, descended to the kitchen. Lizzie and Mazie were there, and as she opened one door Jimmie entered by the other.

She became suddenly weak, but contrived to say to him, "Didn't you bring Mr. Vaughan back?"

"Yes, ma'am—an hour ago—most. He got down at the gate and went to the Smoke House. He wanted to see Mr. Gallatin—said for me to send him if he was up here. But Mr. Gallatin's went out in a boat and ain't in yet. Guess he's spending the evening over to Wenona."

She closed the door, leaned weak and sick against the wall of the passageway. Richard knew! Back to her room. She walked, she sat, she lay down. She watched the clock. The moments were aging her like years. Each second was dropping into eternity with a boom that echoed in her shuddering heart. She looked at herself in the mirror. Skin ashen; lines round her mouth—the gauntness of age peering ghastlily through her youth like a skeleton with a fresh young mask over its face bones. A black band all round each eye, the eyes blazing out feverishly. "He must not see me like this," she cried. She went down to the dining room, trembling and listening at every step, like a thief. She drank a glass of brandy at the sideboard, fled to her rooms again. She took the pitcher of ice water into the bath room, emptied it into the bowl of the stationary stand, bathed her face. She pressed a lump of ice against her blue-black burning lids. "Why don't I wake?" she said, for throughout she had the sense of unreality that attends but does not lessen an impending horror.

Twelve o'clock—"I'll go to bed. I'll take Winchie into bed with me. Not because I'm afraid but because I'm lonely." She felt a great longing to live. She felt young and strong, and the look and the odor of life were delicious. If only this crisis could be passed! No matter how—no matter how! "I've the right to live!" She lifted Winchie gently from his bed, carried him to hers. The warmth of his vivid young body stole sweet and sad through her thin nightgown, through her flesh into her heart. He half awakened, half put out his arms to embrace her, murmured "Mamma"—was asleep again. She sobbed a little in self-pity, dried her tears for shame, lay down beside her boy, nestled one hand under his body.

For a moment she felt better. Then up she rose, bore him back to his own bed, returned. But as she was closing the door, she hesitated—"It's not hiding behind him. If I have him with me, it may save him from disgrace." She was about to open the door, when she turned away abruptly. "No! If I did that, I'd deserve to die. Why should I hide behind Winchie? Why should I hide, at all? I may have done wrong, but I wronged myself, not Richard. I may have done wrong. But I had the right to do wrong." She put out the light, lay down again, somewhat calmer. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in the darkness. She had forgotten all about Basil! Had he rowed back, had he and Richard met——

The hall door of her bedroom opened softly—she had intentionally left it unlocked. She sank back against the pillows. Her heart stooped beating as she listened. No further sound. When she could endure no longer, she said, "Who is it?"

Dick's voice, saying, "Oh, you aren't asleep."

"What time is it?"

"About half past one." It was Richard's voice, yet not his.

A long silence. She could hear her heart beating—the ticking of the little clock on the night stand—the murmur of the breeze among the boughs—and another sound—she thought it must be the beating of his heart.

Then he: "May I turn up the light—just for a minute?"

"I'll turn it up." She did so, and as she lay down again saw with a swift furtive glance that his face was haggard, that his eyes seemed deep sunk in black pits, and that he was gazing at the floor. And still she had the sense of unreality, of the dream that will pass.

He advanced a step or two. She felt him intently looking at her. Again that breathless silence. Then he gave a great sigh, bent over her, gently kissed her hair. "What glorious hair you have," he said. "And what a pure, innocent face. It's only necessary to see your face, to know you are good."

She wondered why her skin was not burning, why her lips did not open and her voice cry out. "But when this is past," she said to herself, "no more lies—never again!"

"Good night," he was saying.

"Good night," she murmured, the sense of unreality, of the passing dream, stronger than ever.

She heard him cross the room, heard the door close behind him. She leaped from her bed to lock it. As she was halfway across the room, the door opened. Mechanically she snatched from the sofa a dark kimona, drew it round her. "I forgot to turn out your light," he said. "Oh—it was the night-stand light, wasn't it?" Then she had the sense of impending disaster and— His whole expression, body as well as face, changed. His eyes seemed starting from his head. "You—you"—he stammered—"That night when I came home unexpectedly—" He flung out his arms, dropped heavily to the chair behind him. "It's true!" he gasped. "It's true!"

The kimona that had helped to remind him and to betray her had dropped from her listless shoulders to the floor. She seated herself on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. She looked calmly at him. She now felt as much her normal self as she had up to the moment when Lizzie brought her the news that he had gone to Nanny. She was glad the crisis had come. More—she was glad he knew the truth. "Now," she said to herself, with dizzy elation, "I'll either die or begin to live. 'Nothing is settled, till it's settled right.' My life will be settled right, at last."

He made several attempts to look at her, could not lift his eyes. As they sat there she seemed innocence and he guilt. "Nanny told me," he said, as if feeling round for a beginning. Then, after a long wait, "She said she couldn't die with it on her conscience. I thought her mind was wandering—but—somehow—I couldn't—" He broke off. Another long wait. He ended it with the question she had been expecting: "Where's—he?"

"Gone."

Another pause, longer. "I'm stunned—stunned." He stared at the floor, his head between his hands, his elbows on his knees. "So—he ran away."

"I sent him."

"I am glad. I might have—" He did not finish. "I'm stunned," he muttered.

She clasped her hands round one knee—a favorite attitude of hers—and waited. It was a time for her to be silent, to watch, to wait. A word, any word, from her might cause the explosion.

"Why did you send him away?" he asked. It was as if he were talking with a stranger about an indifferent matter.

"Because he has nothing to do with this. It's between you and me."

Their eyes met. "Nothing to do with this?" he repeated, as if trying to understand.

"It's between you and me," she repeated.

His eyes turned away, as if he were reflecting upon this. Silence again. Then he: "I don't know what to do. I know it's so, but I can't believe it. It's not like you—not at all." He looked at her. She met his gaze steadily. His eyes shifted. "Not at all," he repeated. He was still talking as if to a stranger. She understood why; it would have been impossible for any force, even such a discovery as this, to galvanize into a living personality, with a mind to think and to will, the woman who had for six years been mere incident in his busy life, "Not at all like you," he again repeated. "Yet—why did I feel it was true as soon as Nanny told me?"

She remained silent and motionless.

"Why don't you speak?" he demanded, trying to rouse himself to reality. "Why don't you defend yourself?"

So long as she did not defend, he could not attack. She did not answer.

"You do not deny. You admit?"

She was silent.

"He is safe, so long as he keeps away. You need not be afraid to confess that he took advantage of a moment of weakness." It was an offer of a defense he would accept.

She refused it instantly. "That is not true," she said.

"Yes, it is," he insisted. "He took advantage of my absence——"

"What I did," she interrupted, "was of my own free will—was what I felt I had the right to do."

His eyes lifted to hers in amazement. Again they found her gaze steady and direct. "Don't you realize what you've done?" he exclaimed. Such an expression as hers must mean either innocence or a shamelessness beyond belief.

"Yes, I realize," she answered in the same calm colorless tone in which she had spoken all her few words.

"How like a child you are," said he gently—and child-like she certainty looked, sitting there all in white, so small and lovely and sweet, with her heavy braids twisted round her little head, giving her appearance a touch of quaintness, of precocious gravity. "A mere child. You don't even understand what you're accused of. It simply can't be true—it—" He started up. "My God—if only I hadn't seen that room that night!" And she knew he was seeing what she was seeing—Basil's disheveled room—and she in it, like it. "Courtney! Courtney! How could you—how could you!" And down he sank with face buried in his hands and shoulders heaving.

She hung her head in shame. In vain she reminded herself how he had refused to treat her as a human being, how he had spurned all her appeals, how he had refused to let her live either with him or without him—would give her neither marriage nor divorce. All in vain. Before his grief she could feel only her own deceit. It might be true that he had not allowed her to be honest; it was also true that she had not been honest.

When she looked at him again, she was fascinated by the expression of his long aristocratic profile—stern, inscrutable. "I realize," he presently said, "that I don't know or understand you at all. But of one thing I'm certain—that you are not a bad woman. I've been recalling you from the beginning—from our childhood even. You never were bad. I can remember only sweet and beautiful things about you."

She covered her face with her arm. "Don't!" she murmured.

"I wasn't saying that to make you ashamed," he hastened to explain. "I can't help feeling that somehow or other I am more to blame than you. But that's aside. The main thing is, we must both do the best we can to straighten things out. Isn't it so?"

To straighten things out! Not to rave and curse and kill—not scandal on scandal, disgrace on disgrace—but—"to straighten things out." She pressed both hands to her face, flung herself upon the pillow and sobbed into it—an outburst like a long-pent volcano relieving itself of the fiery monsters that have been tormenting its vitals.

"We'll not talk of it," he went on, as the storm was subsiding, "until we're both of us calmer."

A long pause, the silence broken by the sound of her sobs which she strove in vain to suppress. Then she heard his voice gently saying "Good night." And she was alone, dazed and shamed before this incredible anticlimax to her forebodings.

XXV

At nine the next morning she appeared at the laboratory as usual. As she was passing through Dick's room, he glanced up. Their eyes did not meet. "Good morning," she said without pausing. She was in the rear room and out of view when his cold answering "Good morning" came. She went about her work, and several times she carried in to him the things she finished. He was absorbed, seemed as unconscious of his surroundings as had been his wont. It was the rule there never to interrupt; she did not break the rule. Toward noon the quiet was disturbed by the telephone buzzer. She answered. In Lizzie's voice came, "The grocery over to Wenona wants to speak to you." She knew at once that it was Basil. "Ask them to call up again about four," replied she and went back to her table. At noon she stopped work and left for the house. At the usual time Richard appeared, had dinner with them all, sat calm and silent and aloof, acting much as he always did.

In the warm part of the year, with the gardens to look after, it was her habit to spend only the mornings at the laboratory. She sent Helen to the Donaldsons with Winchie about three. When the telephone bell rang she herself answered. First came the voice of some clerk, then Basil's—"Is that you?"

"Yes," replied she.

"I'm at Fenton."

"Go to New York."

"Are you—well?"

"Never better. Some one may be listening along the wire."

"I understand. You are sure all's well?"

"Sure. Wait in New York."

"I understand. Good-by."

"Good-by."

As she hung up the receiver and turned round, she startled guiltily. There was Richard, just stepping from lawn to veranda, his eyes upon her. She felt as if she had been caught violating in stealth an implied compact not to communicate with Basil. Dick's expression told her that he was reading in her eyes with whom she had been talking. When they were face to face, he on the veranda, she one step up in the doorway, she said: "He wanted to reassure himself before starting East."

Dick's lips curled slightly.

"It isn't fair for me to let you think him a coward. I made him see so clearly that——"

"You were right," he interrupted. "I wish to hear no more about it."

Her eyes flashed at his peremptory tone, reminiscent of his habit of brushing her aside as merely woman. But the thought of Winchie was a talisman against any attack of temper.

"You said last night," he went on, "that this is between you and me only. You were right. So—I've wiped him off the slate."

As they crossed the lawn toward the water's edge, she felt a fear of him deeper than any that physical force could inspire. If he had threatened—had reviled—had done her physical violence, she would have met him with contempt, with a sense of her own superiority. But how deal with this intelligence? She had always known it was an intelligence; she was realizing that it was an intelligence she did not understand, was therefore superior to her own. When they reached the benches near the landing and sat, she was so weak that she could not have walked many steps farther.

"I think," he began, a quiet sarcasm in his tone that did not lessen her uneasiness, "you rather misunderstood me last night. In such circumstances, I believe, a man is expected to tear his hair and paw the ground and do violent things. I confess—" He hesitated an instant before going on—"I've had that inclination several times since I recovered from my stupor. Tradition and instinct and—vanity—are strong. I'll have to ask you to be a little careful what you say to me—not for your own sake but for mine. I have some emotional dynamite in my nature. I don't wish it to be set off. To mention only one thing, there's Winchie to be thought of. I have no desire to punish you. I feel too human myself, to play the part of judge or executioner. But, most of all, I'm determined that Winchie shall never know—which means that the world must never know."

Her clenched hands relaxed as she drew the first free breath since Lizzie told her where he had gone. Now, she felt she could face him for the struggle for Winchie on less unequal terms—not on equal terms, for he had the power to take Winchie away from her—had the power and— How could she prevent his using it?

"But when you came into the laboratory this morning as if nothing had happened," he proceeded, "you showed that you misunderstood me." He looked away reflectively. "I don't know just how I restrained myself."

"You were mistaken," said she. "I went because it's been my habit to go. I went just as you did."

He fixed his gaze upon her, danger in it. "You count too much on your success in deceiving me thus far," he said. "I must ask you not to do so—not to try to deceive me. Do you suppose I don't know now why you've been coming to the laboratory?"

His menacing gaze did not daunt her. She met it fearlessly. "That was the reason for a while—at first. But for a long time I've been going because I liked the work."

He studied her with those eyes that saw into everything, once they were focused properly. "I beg your pardon," he said with formal courtesy. "It's true you couldn't have worked so well if you hadn't liked the work."

"I've loved it." And her tone put her sincerity beyond question.

He glanced away. After a pause he said, "To go to the point—the future. I thought at first that I'd decide alone what should be done. Then it seemed to me I hadn't the right to act—about Winchie—without at least finding out what your ideas were."

He waited long; she did not speak.

"You feel, I suppose," he said gently, "that you've forfeited the right to speak."

She did not venture to contradict him. Anything she would say, however guarded, might anger him—and Winchie was at stake.

"As I told you last night, I know you are somehow not a bad woman. Until yesterday, I'd have said there were just two classes of women—the good and the bad. But I'd also have said that I'd have killed both you and him. I find I've got to revise many ideas I had. Just how, I don't know. I'm realizing in regard to my grandfather what I've long realized about everything else—that nothing from the past is trustworthy. The wisdom of yesterday is the folly of to-day." He roused himself from his half abstraction, said, "So—you need not be afraid to speak out whatever is in your mind."

On impulse of response to this breadth—an impulse that was yet, perhaps, not without quick feminine wit to see and seize advantage—she said, "You make me feel that I can trust to your sense of justice."

He smiled satirically. "I see you still don't understand. You fancy I'm more than human because I don't act as if I were less than human. I know you are a woman, but women have been given mind enough to distinguish between right and wrong, between honor and dishonor. And— Is it necessary that I give its plain name to what you've done—to what you are?"

"No," she said in a suffocating voice. Only her boy was saving her from bursting out.

"Then—don't try to cajole me with talk about my sense of justice. What do you ask?"

All in an instant—whether because her natural bent was for the frank and courageous or because instinct told her it was the only hopeful course with him—she resolved to act as she felt, to speak her thoughts. "What do I ask?" she repeated. "First, that you stop posing."

He flushed.

"If you really mean," she hastened on, "that you're acting as you have thus far because it's the right way to act, because the way men usually act is wrong and degrades them, why, you'll stop trying to convince me that you're giving a wonderful exhibition of gracious generosity."

"I had no such intention."

"Then why do you treat me as if I were an object of charity?"

"You can hardly expect me to treat you as if you had done something noble."

"You say I'm not a bad woman."

They looked at each other in silence. "No, you are not," he said. "You have acted like a bad woman, but you are not a bad woman."

"Then," she went on slowly, never taking her grave, earnest eyes from his, "I want you to ask yourself how it happens that the girl who, you said last night, was good, the girl who loved you when she married you, has become the woman you are condemning?"

A long silence. He looked away, looked again—and his gaze remained fixed upon her face. Then, in a low, hesitating voice: "Well—how did it happen?"

"Because you did not love me."

"You know better than that," he cried. "I've never given any woman but you a thought. I've never—" He broke off abruptly, grew angry. "But you're simply trying to improve your position by putting me on the defensive. And I ask you again not to goad me——"

"Because you did not love me," she repeated. "Your anger shows that you are trying to deny the truth to yourself. You married me on an impulse of passion. Oh, you had the usual romantic deceptive names for it—the words that make the man feel spiritual and tickle the girl's vanity. But you've shown what it really was by giving me only an incidental—carnal thought now and then. That's been our married life."

"Why did you not tell me you had these false, unjust ideas?"

"But they're not false, not unjust," she rejoined. "What do you know of me except my outside? What's my mind like? What's my heart like? What do I, a human being like yourself, think and feel? You don't know. You've lived on your grandfather's pompous old-fashioned ideal—that lust is love, if the preacher has christened it—that a woman's whole life is the good pleasure of her husband's various appetites."

She paused for breath. She was not so carried away by the tempest of her emotions that she did not note that he was listening and thinking. He presently said: "Even so, how does that excuse you?—you, the mother of Winchie."

She paled, and her hands clasped convulsively in her lap. But she went boldly on. "I had a heart and a mind, like you. How could a human being live the life you assigned me? When I pleaded for a share in your life you refused. When I begged for freedom you refused. What I did was my compromise between the woman and the mother. A mother isn't less a woman, Richard, but more."

He rose in his excitement; for, his keen mind penetrated to her purpose. "You want your freedom and you want my son!" he cried.

Her gaze was steady but her deep voice trembled as she answered, "I want my freedom and I want my child—the child I brought into the world—the child I've watched over from birth. Be fair—be just, Richard. What have you done for him except provide the home the law would have compelled? You've amused yourself playing with him a few minutes now and then. You've asked me to buy him a present now and then. And never even inquired whether I'd done it. Do you know his birthday? Do you know how old he is? Do you know anything about him? Why then do you call him your son?"

He had been in such struggle with his fury that he was unable to check her torrent of half-defiant half-piteous appeal. He now mastered himself sufficiently to say, "How dare you talk to me like this?"

"Because," replied she, quick as a flash, "I respect your intelligence, even if you don't respect mine. You asked me to speak freely. I've done it. Would you have preferred me to lie to you?"

He walked away from her to the edge of the lake, immediately returned and sat again at the other end of the bench. He eyed her passive figure—hands quiet in her lap, gaze upon the town across the lake. Her face was quiet, but all the intelligence and character which her gayety and small stature and young loveliness veiled from unobservant eyes were clearly revealed now. "It's a succession of blows, these discoveries that you are so different from what I imagined," said he. With bitter reproach, "When I think how I exalted, how I idealized you!"

"Did I ask you to do it? Did I tempt you by hypocrisy? ... Whenever I'd try to show you what I was, didn't you stop me or refuse to listen? And—is it true that you idealized me? Is woman as mere female—mere flesh an ideal?"

"I have told you——"

"But," she interrupted appealingly, suddenly all animation, "you spoke without thinking. Think of me as you'd think of one of your problems of chemistry. Don't let your grandfather do your thinking—or the hypocritical world—or the shallow people round us."

He was silent. Presently he rose to pace the retaining wall. As she watched him there was no outward sign of the dread that was licking at her heart like a flame at living flesh. "And what of me?" he said, wheeling abruptly upon her. "You say it was my fault that you did what you've done. Do you mean to tell me you think you're not to blame at all?"

"No, I don't think that," she answered. "If I'd been brought up brave and independent, instead of to be a cowardly dependent— Oh, the crime of it! To take a being with a mind and a heart and, simply because it's female instead of male, to bring it up so that it's unfit really to live—to forbid it to live—to make it afraid to live! If I'd been brave I'd have spoken out frankly. I'd have demanded my freedom—I'd have taken it. As it was—I broke my marriage promises—as you broke yours. It was chiefly your fault." And she went on, with flushed cheeks and accusing eyes: "I don't say it because I wish to shirk, but because I must tell the whole truth so that you won't do a cruel injustice. You promised me love and care and you gave me lust and neglect. We were joined in equal marriage. You treated me much as if I were a slave you'd bought. And I had to submit. For, I really was a kind of slave, and I hadn't the courage and the skill to go out and make my own living—and anyhow, you could and would have taken Winchie away from me, if I'd tried to do it. Isn't that so?"

She saw that he was impressed. Again he reflected a long time pacing up and down the wall. When he turned toward her once more he said: "But listen while I state plainly what you ask. You ask me to reward your treachery by letting you marry the man who betrayed me—and you cap it by asking me to let you make my son his!"

"No, Richard," she protested. "I simply ask you to let me keep my child on any condition you make. I'll promise not to see—him. I'll take Winchie and live on the farm with my people until he's old enough to go away to school. I know the law puts me at your mercy. But I don't believe you'll use your power to crush me." She was choking, was fighting back the tears.

He turned to the retaining wall, gazed into the water until she should fight down the evidences of weakness which he could not but see she was ashamed of. When he joined her again, it was to say in a voice that reassured her: "I want to do what's best for us all—especially for Winchie. It's very difficult.... When I think of the misery I might have caused, if I had believed Nanny and hadn't had time to reflect—I must not act until I've seen every side—Winchie's—yours—mine——"

The sound of the supper gong came floating across the lawn. Courtney rose mechanically and in silence they returned to the house. Helen and Winchie had enjoyed themselves at the Donaldsons, and told all about it. The strain between Dick and Courtney passed unnoticed. When Winchie went up, Courtney accompanied him. Toward ten she left the book she had been pretending to read and sat in the hammock on the balcony. The moon, huge and ruddy through an opening among the boughs, poured its flood of elfin light over lake and lawns and gardens. The soft shadows, the vague vistas, the overpowering perfume of honeysuckle and jasmine and rose combined to beguile her out of all sense of reality. "I've been dreaming—dreaming," she murmured. And what an incredible dream! No man—least of all Richard, the prejudiced, the domineering—would have acted so in real life. "A dream—a dream." It was impossible, this experience of hers that belied all she had read, all she had been taught, about the relations of men and women. She, a married woman, had taken a lover—and, instead of its degrading her, it had made her better than she had been when she thrust love out of her life and tried to live by rule of duty to husband. And now—instead of her husband's killing her or of her killing herself or of any of the various kinds of violence prescribed for such situations, her husband had acted like a civilized human being, gently, considerately, at the dictates of humanity and not at the dictates of vanity. And instead of abysm below abysm of disaster and death in punishment for religion's scarlet sin of sins for woman, there was prospect of a life in which she could profit by the experience she had gained. "A dream—a dream." Or, was a new world dawning?—a new way of living that made the old way seem a grotesque carnival of the beast in man?

As she was dressing next morning, in came Winchie. "Has papa gone away?" he asked at the threshold.

She paused with the eye of her belt at the prong of its buckle. "Why?" said she.

"I don't know whether I dreamed it. I thought it was so. I thought I waked up and there was papa kissing me. And I thought it made me sad. And he said, 'Good-by, Winchie. Take care of your mother and do what she says, and don't forget me.' And I kissed him and said, 'Can't Mamma Courtney and I go too?' And he said, 'No, dear.' And I said, 'All right. Bring me a gun, like Charlie Donaldson's.' And then I fell asleep again."

In the mirror she saw him run to the door into the hall, pick up a letter which had evidently been thrust through the crack. She turned and held out her hand. He brought it to her, spelling out the "Courtney" written on it as he came. "Go take Aunt Helen down to breakfast," she said. When he was gone, she opened the envelope and read:

"The important point is Winchie. I am going away to try to think it out. However, one thing is certain. There must be a divorce. In a few days I shall send you a formal notice of abandonment, and you will begin an action at once. Until we are free—perhaps so long as you are alone—it is best that Winchie stay with you. I leave him on one condition—that you keep him here, carrying on everything exactly as usual. He must see no sign of change.

"Please let me know whether you accept. A line, in care of my lawyers, James & Vandegrift, will reach me.

"R.V."

"So long as you are alone." Courtney felt as if the air had suddenly changed from the leaden oppressiveness of before the storm to the buoyant freshness afterwards. With the paralyzing dread about Winchie removed, she could think of the rest of the situation. She read the letter again and again. The regularity of line and word, the precision of phrasing indicated a carefully copied final draft. There was not the faintest clue to the feelings of the writer. She recalled those last two talks with him. At both she was in no condition to observe him, so absorbed was she in the things immediately at issue. But now, as she went over his words, looks, manner, she saw a personality wholly different from the Richard Vaughan she had known—or had fancied she knew. That Richard Vaughan really had no personality beyond a chemical intelligence, was an abstraction like an algebraic formula. This Richard Vaughan was a flesh-and-blood man; but—what sort of a man? And his conduct toward her, did it not mean that he had eliminated her as one empties out a test tube when the experiment ends—in failure? Did it not mean supreme indifference? Yes—it must be so. Still, no ordinary man, however indifferent to wife and child, could act in such circumstances so absolutely without personal vanity, with such obvious determination to do nothing small or revengeful. On any theory, there must be behind those curiously unemotional lines a character big, generous, incapable of meanness.

She looked at this newly revealed large personality, with a depressing sense of her own contrasting smallness. In the last few years of widening intelligence her sex vanity, so diligently fostered throughout her childhood and girlhood, had received many a rude shock from within as well as from without. But none so rude, so demolishing as this. "He's a man really worth while," thought she. "And women are too insignificant either to be loved by such a man or to love him."

She had been bred in and to the American feminine ideal—the woman graciously deigning to permit some man to support her in idleness; the man more than repaid by the honor of being allowed to support her; whatever further he might get, a voluntary largess from his royal guest, to be given or withdrawn at her good pleasure. This delusion was a distorted tradition from a bygone era—an era of conditions around the relations of the sexes that are forever past. In that "woman's paradise" women were scarce and men plenty; and there was the constancy that is natural in a narrow life of severe toil, with the intelligence too little developed to be restless or critical, with the passions undisputedly in the ascendant. This feminine tradition had been dying hard, as delusions flattering to vanity, encouraging to laziness, ever do. She had tried to keep on believing the lies she heard and read everywhere—especially novelists and preachers dependent on unthinking women for a living—the romantic exaltation of woman's love as of value star spaces beyond the value of man's love. She had tried to suppress her sense of humor and to be impressed when she heard women speak of kissing a man in reward for some service as if one of their kisses made an archangel's diadem, in comparison, a cheap bauble. She had tried not to see how intelligent men scarcely restrained the grin of insincerity as they poured out extravagances to some woman whom their whimsical passions chanced to covet. She had struggled against the disillusionizing thoughts about her own sex's private opinion of itself that would arise as she noted how often women treated lightly the man who took them seriously and all but offered themselves to him who winked as he bought or passed on untempted or cynically inquired for the inside price.

Step by step she had been thrust out into the truth that the whole feminist cult was a colossal fiction, that in the actualities of the life of this new era woman's value was precisely like man's—the usefulness of the particular combination of mind and heart, intellect and character, that made up the personality. She began to suspect that woman's ability to sway man through his passion was more often a handicap to her, and to him, than a help to either. She began to realize that learning how to use that ability wisely was the supreme hard problem the life of to-day set for woman to solve or perish. While passion sometimes had made one man for a moment slave to some one woman, or a few men slaves to any woman, it had through all time made womankind slave to mankind. And in the new era, while the slave was still willing, the master was becoming weary, was demanding something less burdensome, more companionable.