THE HUNGRY HEART (continued 9)

He began to recover from the stupefaction of the convincing tones of her denial of love. He was hastily donning the costume of pose that is correct for such occasions. She beamed genially upon him and said, "Now, don't work yourself up, my dear Basil. Sit down over there, and let's talk quite quietly—and naturally."

It is impossible for anyone with any sense of humor whatever to indulge alone in paroxysms of emotion before a tranquil spectator. Basil stopped rolling his eyes and dilating his nostrils, and seated himself, in no very good humor. Her tone was not pleasant. It would have been perfectly proper for a man to use to a woman. It was impertinent, in weaker sex to stronger. "Oh, I'm all right," said he, crossly, as he seated himself. "But you'd better look out about those ideas of yours. They have a terribly unfeminizing effect on women."

"Yes—I guess they do," replied she. A puzzling, alluring combination of seriousness and humor she looked as she sat there opposite him, her elbows on the arms of the chair, her chin resting upon the backs of her linked fingers, her eyes fixed gravely yet somehow quizzically upon him. "Have you ever thought of our life together?" asked she. "Of what we'd do—between times?"

"Between times?"

"No one—not even the most ardent lovers—can make love all the time. There haven't been any 'between times' in our life heretofore, because of the circumstances. But when we were together without interruption—with no excitement or interest of danger—with no stimulus—with just ourselves—what would we do 'between times'?—and there'd be more and more 'between times' as we got used to each other."

This uninviting but obviously truthful picture sobered and exasperated him. "Haven't thought about it," he confessed. "I haven't gone into details. But I know we'll be happy. You'll step into the position you are entitled to and I can see that you get."

"The social position, you mean?"

"Certainly. And we'll enjoy ourselves."

He could not possibly have said anything that would have shown more clearly the width and depth of the gap between them—how little he understood her, how little they had in common.

"You'll be tremendously popular," he said with enthusiasm.

She shook her head slowly. "I don't think I could be happy, wasting my life, scattering myself among a lot of inane pastimes." She laughed a little. "You'd be horribly disappointed in me, Basil."

"I'll risk it. They'll be crazy about you in the East." He nodded proud, confident, self-complacent encouragement. "I'll risk it!"

She met his look with a quiet final "But I'll not." In another mood his proposal, his manner, his very poor sort of pride in her would have amused her. But as she listened, she remembered all she had believed about this man, all her idealizing of his mind and character. And she grew sad and sick. This small man!

He planted himself firmly before her. "Now, look here, Courtney. It's useless for you to talk that sort of thing. You don't mean it. And I'm not going to give you up. You're my wife, Courtney. The only possible excuse for what you did was that you loved me."

"On the contrary," replied she, "my only excuse is that I was swept away by my craving for love—for what Richard in our brief honeymoon had taught me to need——"

"For God's sake!" he cried. "How can you say such things?"

"Because they are the truth," she answered with quiet dignity; and he felt ashamed of himself without knowing why. "Basil, you don't love me as I really am. You find me shocking. And I don't love you as you really are. I find you—" She hesitated.

"Go on. Say it."

But what would be the use? The truth, all of it, any literal part of it would only hurt him, would not awaken him. By birth and by breeding and by the impassable limitations of his mind he was incapable of learning or appreciating the truth, was wedded forever to the morality that makes truth a vice and lies a virtue. So, she evaded. "I find you are like your dress," answered she, her eyes and her light tone taking the sharp sting off her words. "A charming style of your own but strictly conventional withal."

He did not fully appreciate this faint hint of the truth, but he understood enough to be irritated. "You've been doing too much of what you women call thinking. And you've become like all women who try to think."

"All women think," said she. "But very few of them tell the man what they think—until they've got him safely married. You ought to thank me for being candid in advance."

He scowled at her smile. "I'm not going to give you up," he said sullenly. "I know you better than you know yourself. You'll come out of this mood. And—dearest—remember that, in spite of your disdain, the old-fashioned woman—tender, simple, loving—is far sweeter than these thinkers—gets more pleasure—gives more."

"A baby's sweeter than a grown person," replied she, refusing to be serious. "But, Basil, the time has about passed when even a woman can stay on a baby—though most of the men and women pretend it isn't so, and a good many of them—like you and Helen—get angry if the truth's forced on you. At any rate, I can't be a baby anymore.... Do you know what would happen if I married you?"

The look that accompanied her abrupt question was so penetrating, so significant that he paled. "I don't want to hear any more of your truths that aren't true at all," he cried.

"I see you know what would happen. The same thing again."

"Courtney!—Good God!"

"The same thing again. As long as my craving for real companionship was unsatisfied, I couldn't be content. The same delusion that made me fancy I loved you would trap me again—or, perhaps it wouldn't be delusion but really the man I needed—the man who needed me. A mirage isn't a delusion, you know. It's an actuality that we mislocate. I'd hunt on—and on—through the desert for my oasis—until I found it."

He had not taken his fascinated gaze from her dreamy face, her eyes of unfathomable emerald. "Do you mean that?" he said huskily. "No—you can't. But you must not say those things, Courtney—you really mustn't. You'll make me afraid of you. As it is, I fear I'll have a hard time making myself forget."

"I don't want you to forget. And I've told you the exact truth because I want you to realize how unsuited we are to each other."

He walked up and down in violent agitation. "I don't understand it," he muttered. "Has some one—Courtney, do you love some other man?"

"I do not. I've seen no one practically but Richard."

He halted with a jerk. "Richard!" His eyes narrowed with jealous suspicion. "Has he been trying to win you back?"

She smiled at the idea, so at variance with the facts. "He treats me like another man."

"Then you see him?"

"Every day. I work at the laboratory with him."

"What!" Basil stared, dropped to the nearest chair dumfounded.

"Why not? ... Don't be so pitifully conventional, Basil. This is the twentieth century, not the Dark Ages. He knows you're here now—asked me to see you here rather than where it might cause gossip."

As he recovered, his mind, seen clearly in his features, slowly took fire. "And you pretended you were telling me the truth!" he cried, starting up. Everything else—doubt of her—doubt of himself—all was forgotten in the torrent rush of jealousy. "And I, poor fool, believed you! But I'll tell you what the truth is. You've lost your nerve. You love me as you did. But you haven't the courage to break off here. And you're sinking back to what you were when I found you. I might have known! A woman always belongs to the nearest man." He was raging up and down the room. "I've come for you. I'll not go without you. You're mine—not his. I'll show you! I'll show you!" And he snatched his hat from the sofa and rushed out.

For the moment motion was beyond her power. She saw him dart along the veranda, past the windows, take the path to the Smoke House. Terror galvanized her. She flew to the private telephone, rang long and vigorously, put the receiver to her ear. A pause; she was about to ring again when Richard's voice came: "Yes—what is it?"

"He's coming to you, Richard," she gasped. "I angered him. He's wild with rage. Promise you won't let him in."

"I can't do that." Richard's voice was calm and natural.

"Your promise to me!"

"Don't be alarmed. He doesn't amount to much, if you'll pardon my saying so."

"I'm coming as quickly as I can. Don't see him, Richard. Remember Winchie!"

"Come if you like. But I suspect you'll only aggravate him. Believe me, I can take care of him. Here he is now——"

She dropped the receiver, ran out of the house and along the path.

XXIX

As Vaughan hung up the receiver and turned, Gallatin flung open the door on which he had just rapped a loud challenge. He scowled at Vaughan; Vaughan eyed him with the expression that simply looks and waits. It was evident Basil expected immediate combat, was ready for it—therefore altogether unready for the form of encounter less easy. Dick's tranquillity completely disconcerted him. He advanced a step, with an aggressive, "Well, here I am."

"So I see," replied Dick.

"You've been thinking it was cowardice that made me go away. But it wasn't. And I've come to face it out with you. You had your chance for her. You lost her. I purpose to keep her."

"Very well," said Dick. "She's free. Her affairs are none of my business." And he sat down at the long table under the windows, glanced at the electric furnace as if about to resume work.

"But she isn't free!" cried Gallatin. "You've not freed her, though she has the right to it. You're holding on to her through the boy."

Dick bent over the white crystals in the platinum tray on the shelf of the furnace.

Gallatin, exasperated, waved his fists. "I demand that you free her! If she were free, she'd come with me, for she loves me."

Dick took a metal rod from the case and began pushing the crystals this way and that carefully.

"She loves me, I tell you!"

Without pausing or looking round Dick said: "If you say that again—I'll begin to believe it isn't so. There's no accounting for tastes—especially for tastes feminine. But—" He did not finish; over his face drifted a slight smile more eloquent against Basil's deficiencies than the fiercest stream of epithet.

"I've won her," taunted Gallatin, in wild fury, yet as if restrained by an invisible leash. "I've got her heart. You might as well release the rest." As Dick seemed now quite absorbed and unconscious of his presence, he advanced still nearer. "By God, you shall!" he cried. "She belongs to me, and I'm here to maintain my rights at any cost."

Vaughan laid down the long rod with a gesture of deliberate precision and care, turned slowly toward him. His long handsome face was of a curious transparent pallor. His rather deep-set gray-blue eyes looked coldly and cruelly at his one-time guest and partner. "You evidently don't understand," said he. "There are times when one must either ignore—or kill."

Basil sneered, "Well?" said he, with intent to draw on.

"I have been choosing to ignore. At first it would have given me the greatest pleasure to kill you. Now—you are to me much like the cur that barks and snaps at passers by." He rose. "You've come here to try to make a vulgar scandal. You'll not succeed. You have nothing to lose. I can't give you your deserts without hurting my son. So—" Dick paused, seemed to be reflecting.

"You hide behind him—do you?" sneered Basil. In his frenzy he felt that one or the other must die then and there or he himself would be forever dishonored.

Dick apparently had not heard. In an abstracted way he said, to himself, not to Gallatin, "Yes, I think that will do." Again there was a pause, he thinking, Gallatin held silent and expectant by his expression. Suddenly Dick said sharply, "Yes—that will do." He moved the ladder to the south wall, mounted; he took from the high top shelf a jar of heavy glass, about one third full of dark red powder; he descended with it. "Close that door and lock it," he ordered.

Basil, from habit of association with him as assistant, moved to obey. Hand on knob and about to swing the door, he hesitated, turned. "What are you going to do?" he demanded.

"When you lock that door," replied Dick, "I shall empty what's in this jar into the bowl of water there, and in a few seconds we shall both be dead."

Basil shrank; a shudder ran visibly over his frame.

"I could kill you without killing myself," continued Dick, "and cover the scandal with the pretense of accident. It would serve you right, but—somehow it strikes me as cowardly. So—lock the door."

Basil was no coward; but he had grown yellow with fear. His hand now dropped nervously from the knob.

"Lock the door," said Dick sharply. "There's no time to lose. I think she's on the way here."

"She'll understand—and kill herself."

"Why not? Helen will take care of Winchie."

Basil's gaze wandered round, in search of another excuse. He braced himself, cried defiantly, "I refuse!"

"Very well." Dick set the jar on the table. "Then go."

"You think I'm a coward. But it's not that."

Dick shrugged his shoulders. "I know you're a coward. Everyone is. I'm as well pleased that you don't accept. I've no wish to die, particularly for such an absurd, stagy notion of honor. But I will not have a scandal——"

Just there Courtney dashed in, her expression so disheveled that it gave her the air of being disheveled in dress. Her glance darted from Richard leaning calmly against the table and, in blouse and cap, looking like a handsome workingman, to Basil in his fashionable English tweeds, standing shamefaced and irresolute near the door—so near that she had brushed him as she entered. On Basil her gaze rested like a withering blight. Her eyes flashed green fire; her every feature hurled at him the scorn that despises. "You shabby coward!" she said, her voice low and threatening to break under the weight of its burden of fury. "You who come here and try to ruin my child and me for your vanity!"

"Courtney!" he pleaded, not daring to lift his eyes. "I love you. I cannot give you up."

"Love! You don't know what it means! You weak vain thing! You found you couldn't have me on equal terms. So you thought you'd degrade me—compel me." She turned on Richard. "And you, too!" she blazed. "If you were a man you'd kill him—you'd kill us both—with some of your chemicals there—and protect Winchie by saying it was an accident."

"Absurd," said Vaughan with an indifferent shrug. His arms were folded upon his broad chest.

Trembling and blazing, she went up to him. "Look at me!" she cried, her hands on her surging bosom, her eyes glittering insanely up at him. Every instinct of prudence, the instinct of self-preservation itself had succumbed under the surge of elemental passion, of frenzied shame that she should have lowered herself to such a man as this Basil Gallatin. "This body of mine," she said in a voice of terrible calm, "it's been his—that thing's—do you hear? He has had me in his arms—me—your wife—the mother of your boy—he—that creature quaking there. And I have kissed him and caressed him and trembled with passion for him as I never did for you.... Now, will you kill us?"

He did not move. But slowly the veins and muscles of his face tightened, pushed up against, strained against the ghastly whiteness of his skin. And slowly his eyes lighted with the fires of a demoniac fury that made hers seem like a child's weak hysteria. She gazed at him, fascinated. Then, with a gasp, she braced herself and waited for the frightful death that look of his signaled. But she did not flinch, nor shift her gaze from his. To Gallatin, paralyzed, watching them with eyes starting and lips ajar, it seemed an eternity while they stood thus facing each other in silence. Then, as slowly as that expression on Richard's face had come it departed, like a fiend fighting inch by inch against being flung back into the hell from which it had issued at the call of her dreadful taunts. The face remained deathly white; but those were Richard Vaughan's own eyes that gazed down at the small, delicate face of the woman, in them a look that filled her with awe, made her ashamed, gave her the impulse to sink down at his feet and burst into tears.

"No, Courtney," Richard said, infinite gentleness in his tone. "I'm neither god nor devil. I—all three of us—will do to-day what to-morrow we'll be glad we did. One can always die. But living again, once one's dead—that's not so simple."

There fell silence. She stood before him, bosom still heaving but eyes down. Vaughan turned to Gallatin with a courtly politeness like his grandfather's. "Don't you think you'd better go—for the present at least?"

Gallatin, who had been awed also, hesitated. He looked at Courtney; his jaws clenched and he fixed sullen, devouring eyes on her. "I want to talk to her alone," said he aggressively.

"That's for her to decide," said Richard.

Courtney lifted her head to refuse. Then it occurred to her that, by talking with Basil, she might settle the whole business for good and all. With a curious deference she looked inquiringly at Richard. He shrugged his shoulders, began pushing the tray into the furnace. She let her eyes rest on Basil, said "Yes—that's best. Come on." She went out of the laboratory, Basil following her. Richard closed the door behind them. At the edge of the clearing she halted, wheeled upon him. "Well!" she began, her voice as merciless as her eyes.

He was a pitiful spectacle. His feature were working in a ferment of many unattractive emotions—jealousy, pique, fear that he was ridiculous, wounded vanity, desire to regain with her the ground he felt he must have lost. "You see now, Courtney," he said, aggressive yet pleading, too, "he doesn't care a rap about you."

"Well?" she repeated. Her tone was much softer; her nerves were calming, and her temper was yielding to her sense of proportions. Also, the man looked weak and shallow and ridiculous—not worth the while of a great emotion. Just small. "What of it?" she asked.

He scowled in angry embarrassment at her expression which neither suggested nor encouraged tragedy. "I never heard of people acting as we've acted to-day!" he cried.

"But no doubt they often do," replied she. "Everybody doesn't act—all the time—as if he were in a novel or a play, or thought he was."

"You can respect him after this?"

Her eyes had the expression a man least likes to see in a woman's when she is looking at him. "Don't you?" said she.

He reddened, and his eyes shifted. Presently he said humbly, "I—I am sorry for what I did. I was crazy with jealousy. I'm not myself—not at all."

She felt the truth of this at once. "And I'm sorry for the things I said to you and to him. I was crazy with rage."

He lifted his head eagerly. "I knew you didn't mean them, dear."

Her brow darkened. It was annoying that the man couldn't realize; for such as she now knew him to be to aspire to her seemed impertinence. "Basil," she said, "it's all over between us. Don't let your vanity deceive you. And don't force me to tell you what I think of you. Be content with knowing what I don't think."

"Be careful!" he cried angrily. "I'm not the man to stand and beg—even for you."

"That's good," said she pleasantly. "Then—we can part here and now." She glanced up at the windows of the apartment. "You've got your traps up there still. Hadn't you better let me send Jimmie to help you pack them?"

"Thank you," replied he, haughtily. "I'll be obliged if you will."

She put out her hand. "Good-by, Basil."

He clinched his fists in vanity's boyish anger. "You can think of that apartment, and have no feeling?" he exclaimed.

"None," declared she.

"I'll not believe it. You couldn't be so unwomanly."

Her look forecast a sarcasm. But before she spoke it changed to one that was soft and considerate. She felt that she was responsible. True he had posed as something far superior to his reality; but it was an honest fraud, deceiving himself first and most of all. She felt to blame for having been taken in—felt repentant and apologetic toward him. "Let's not quarrel," she urged. "Don't be harsh with me. I know you'll find love and make some woman very, very happy—one that is sympathetic and comes up to your ideals of womanhood." She put out her hand again, and friendly and winning was the smile round her wide mouth, in the eyes under the long, slender brows. "Please, Basil." He hesitated. "Don't be harsh. You know you don't love me any more than I love you. What's the use of pretenses? Why not part sincerely? ... Please, Basil."

His hand just touched hers and his angry eyes avoided her pleading glance. "If you'll send Jimmie," he said. And with a stiff bow he moved in great dignity along the path to the apartment entrance. He went even more slowly than dignity required, for he confidently expected she would come to her senses when she saw he had indeed reached the limit of endurance of her trifling. Richard had shown he wouldn't take her back—cared nothing for her. Where then could she turn but to him? And all that vaporing about independence was—just vaporing. A woman was a woman, and he knew women. So, he walked slowly to give her a good chance. But no call came—not though he lingered over opening the door and made a long pause elaborately to wipe his clean boots on the mat. He did not look until he could do so from the security of the sitting-room windows. She was not in sight. Had she followed him softly? He went into the hall, glanced down the stairs. Not there! She had gone! ... She meant what she said; she had cast him off. There was no room for doubt—she had cast him off.... He heard a step, rushed to the door. It was Jimmie, come bringing his overcoat and gloves, and prepared to do the packing. She had really cast him off.

"God!" he muttered. "What a contemptible position that puts me in!" And, for the moment at least, he hated her. If he could only revenge himself—in some perfectly gentlemanly way, of course. Once that day vanity had lured him clean over the line into most ungentlemanly conduct; his face burned from the sting of her remembered denunciations—the sting of truth in them. If he could devise a gentlemanly way—something that would convince her he had made all that agitation simply because he felt that, as a gentleman, he in the circumstances must go to any lengths to keep faith with her. Yes, that would be a handsome revenge—and would save his face, too.

He gave Jimmie the necessary directions and resumed his brooding. He searched his brain in vain. He could contrive no way of escape; he would have to leave that place like a whipped dog—yes, a whipped dog. Spurned by Vaughan—spurned by Courtney——

A step, and the rustle of a skirt. His eyes gleamed. "I thought not!" he muttered exultantly. "Well, I'll teach her a lesson she'll never forget."

He turned his back to the door, stood at the window, looking out and puffing nonchalantly at his cigarette. The step, the rustle were on the threshold. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Gallatin——"

He wheeled to face Helen. His confusion was equal to hers. "Ah—Miss Helen—I—I—" he stammered.

"Am I intruding?" she asked. There was a charming blush in her sweet, beautiful face, and her honest dark eyes showed how perturbed she was.

"No indeed—no indeed," he protested.

"Courtney sent me——"

"Courtney sent you!" he exclaimed in amazement.

"She told me all about it," Helen hastened on. "She asked me to let you know that she had told me—how you and Richard have had a bitter falling out over the work—and that you're going away, not to come back."

One look into those eyes was convincing; Helen believed what she was saying.

"She thought perhaps I might be able to help you about the packing. Can I?"

"No, but I'd be glad if you'd stop while Jimmie is doing it. I don't want to leave without saying good-by to you."

All the roses fled from Helen's cheeks. "Yes—certainly," she murmured.

"You'll excuse my being somewhat confused? The truth is I'm very much upset."

"I can't tell you how dreadfully I feel," said Helen. "Are you sure you and Richard—" She paused. Her glance stirred him like an angel face in a drunkard's dream—her face earnest, grieved, sympathetic, unable to credit anything so dreadful, so wicked as a parting in hate.

"Quite sure. It's—final. Please, let's not talk about it. It's all so—so revolting."

In presence of those clear, noble eyes of hers, the sordidness of his "romance" now once more began to stand out. What a mess! No wonder he had taken to drink. If it had been Helen and the kind of love she inspired— "But you and I will always be friends—won't we?" he said to her.

Her eyelids dropped and he saw her bosom fluttering. "I hope so," she said so low he scarcely heard. She was pale now, and drooping. "Though I'm afraid—when you get away off there, you'll forget me very soon."

His heart smote him as he looked at that tall, voluptuous figure, at that lovely face, so regular, so pure. Here was a woman, a real woman, and she would have loved him—perhaps did love him. "I know I'm unworthy of a thought from you who are so good and pure," he said. "But your kindness to me has helped me. And God knows, I shall need help." Oh, that it had been his lot to anchor to this strong, white soul! How much nobler than the finest passion was a love centering about the sweet, old-fashioned ideals. What a haven those arms, that bosom would be! He felt dissolute and sin-scarred as only a vain young man can feel those dread but delightful depravities.

"You must not despair, Basil," came in Helen's soft voice, like oil upon his wounds. And it touched him to see how, maidenly shy though she was, she yet could not resist the appeal of this opportunity to try to do good. She went on, "It's always darkest before dawn, and the more rain falls the less there is to fall."

These words seemed like heavenly wisdom delivered by a messenger of light. He sighed.

"You'll come out all right—and will escape from that—that—whatever it is—" Helen's cheeks modestly colored—"and be happy with some good woman who is worthy of you."

She looked so sad, so beautiful that before he knew it he, ever sympathetic with women, had said, "Some woman like you, Helen."

She turned away. He saw that her emotions were making her tremble. How she loved him! What a prize such a love would be—and how chagrined Courtney would feel—Courtney the vampire woman who had tried to destroy him, and thought she had succeeded—and was gloating over his misery. "If we'd had the chance, Helen, how happy we could have made each other! But I mustn't talk of that."

"Why not?" said she, with bold shyness. "I know that for some reason we can never be anything more to each other. But it's been a happiness—" earnestly, with tears in her eyes of the Homeric Juno and in her voice young and honest and sympathetic—"a real happiness to feel that the best of you—the part that's really you—found something to like in me."

He thrilled. Here was a woman! And a woman who appreciated him. He wondered how he could have lingered under a malign spell when such beauty of soul—and body, too—was his for the asking. "Helen!" he cried. And all his wounded heart's longing and all his wounded vanity's suffering gave energy to his cry. He took her hand; he put his arm round her. Her cheek touched his. How cool yet warm she was! How lovely and sweet! And the unsullied, untouched down! How fresh! Except her male relatives, no doubt no man but himself had ever kissed her— "Helen—Helen! God forgive me, but I can't refuse this moment of pure happiness."

She gently drew away. "Oh, Basil," she sobbed. "And I had said no man should ever kiss me until— But you—it seems different. You are so noble—so pure minded." Her eyes gazed into his with a trustful adoration that thrilled him.

"Helen—do you love me?" he cried.

Her honest eyes opened wider. "Would I have let you touch me if I didn't?"

"Yes—I know that!" he exclaimed. "How pure you are! It's like heaven after hell."

She gazed on into his eyes. A faint flush overspread her pale cheeks. She kissed him. "I love you, Basil," she said, gravely. Then all at once the color surged wave on wave over her brow, her cheeks, her neck. She hung her head, slowly drew away from his detaining vibrating arms. There is a time for lighting a fire; there is a time for leaving it to burn of itself. Helen had by the guidance of feminine instinct hit upon exactly the right instant for drawing back. She released herself, avoided his touch just when passion having captured his imagination swept on to the conquest of the flesh. At the edges of her lowered eyes appeared two tears to hang glistening in the lashes. From her bosom rose a sigh, soft, suppressed but heart-breaking.

The bright flame was leaping in his eyes. "You noble, splendid woman!" he cried, as his glance leaped from charm to charm—from delicate, regular features to sumptuous yet girlish figure. "What a jewel—in what a casket! You appeal to the best there is in me—only to the best. If I become a man again, it will be through you." And sincerity rang in his voice; for, the fire of high resolve to be a good man, to be worthy of this exalted womanhood, was burning in his blood. "Helen—will you help me? I've sinned—you never will know how dreadfully. But I love you."

Her answer was a beautiful shaft of the love light from her now wonderful eyes.

"Helen—will you marry me?"

From head to foot she trembled. All her color fled, leaving her face whiter than the milk-white skin of her voluptuous neck and shoulders. "I—love—you," she said simply.

"Then you will? Say you will, Helen. I cannot trust myself to go away without your strength to help me."

"I will, Basil."

There were tears in his eyes as in hers as he reverently kissed her hands. He had a sense of peace, of sin forgiven, of joyous return to the fold of honor and respectability. And her heart was overflowing with love, with gratitude to him and to God.

XXX

Returning to the house after full two hours, she burst excitedly in upon Courtney, who was at her easel in the upstairs sitting room. Courtney had by much experimenting found that of her several possible indoor occupations painting was far the best sedative for mind and nerves. The girl's face, exultant with pride, exalted with love, gave her a shock; for, only complete triumph could have so roused those regular, chastely cool features from their wonted repose. She had on impulse sent Helen to Basil in vague hope that they, admirably suited because each needed just what the other had to give, possibly might somehow get a start in the direction of making a match of it. She had the most convincing of reasons for believing that the heart in need of balm is the most susceptible to it. But she did not believe that Basil's heart was, at least latterly, involved; and, as she had not a glimmer of a suspicion of his stolen draughts of "moral tonic," she could not credit the story so clearly written upon those radiant features.

"You don't mean you got him!" she exclaimed, laying her brush on the rest and leaning back. And in her amazement and excitement over this sudden freakish prank of fate, out of her mind flew all the wretched thoughts over which she had been brooding—thoughts centering about her own ugly part in that scene at the laboratory.

Helen, undisturbed by this frankness of woman to woman friend, when there are no listeners, flung ecstatic arms about her and kissed her on either cheek. "I'm so happy!" she cried. "And I owe it all to you."

"Engaged?" inquired Courtney, the utter impossibility of the thing down-facing the clear evidence of its actuality.

Helen held up her left hand, displaying the old-fashioned diamond ring Basil had always worn on his little finger. "It was his mother's," she said, regarding it with an expression in the big brown eyes that would have thrilled him, had he seen. It thrilled Courtney; and no further proof of the absolute passing of Basil was needed than the unalloyed pleasure Helen's happiness gave her. "Engaged," said Helen, softly, dreamily. "And the day set—the second of June."

"Splendid!" Helen, she felt, was secure; for, Basil had the highest respect for his given word.

"And if you hadn't sent me down there, I do believe it'd never have happened. Just think!—though we've loved each other practically from the first meeting. He says it was his feeling about me that started him to struggling against that bad woman. Do you remember——"

"Yes, I remember," said Courtney. How dead it all was!—dead with the death that leaves no scar upon the heart, only a lesson in the memory. How could it ever have seemed living?—and immortal!

"Oh—of course you remember. You knew about her."

"Not much about her," replied Courtney. Pensively, "Really, nothing at all."

"I'm sure I don't want to know anything. The less a good woman knows about evil, the better.... I think recently he must have almost succeeded in breaking away; for, to-day I'm sure he was hesitating at the parting of the ways—whether to go back to her or not. And my coming there decided him. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Like a fairy tale," said Courtney, taking up her brush and eying critically the little landscape to which she was giving the finishing touches. "But, my dear, I don't think you ought to tell me these things."

She felt selfish in saying this; Helen had inexperienced youth's irresistible craving to confide, and was simply bursting with simple and innocent vanity over having achieved the double triumph of both spiritual and worldly advantage. But Helen was not to be suppressed or even discouraged. "Oh, yes," replied she. "He asked me to tell you we are engaged. I think he knows you've heard about that woman who was dragging him down, and thought you could advise me whether he was a fit man for me to marry. You see he feels he's been very bad."

"Men always like to think that," said Courtney. "But as long as they think so, they're not. No, he isn't bad, as men go. He wants to settle down. And he will settle down—with you." She was looking at the landscape but her quizzical eyes were seeing the pair of them a few years hence, contentedly yawning at each other, leading the conventional life of the well-to-do that swathes them body and mind in soft, indolent fat.

Helen had only half listened to Courtney, as she cared as little as the next woman about her lover's past, and knew for herself that he was high-minded and of the noblest instincts. She halted her own and Courtney's musings with an absent, "I feel that way about it, too." She moved nervously about the room, from time to time casting an appealing glance at her absorbed friend. Finally she burst out desperately: "There's something I want your advice about. I don't know whether I've done right or not."

"Yes?" said Courtney, encouragingly.

"I hadn't told you but—the fact is—while I was on that visit to Saint X, I—I became engaged to Will Arbuthnot."

Courtney looked laughingly at her over the suspended brush. "Oh, Helen—Helen!"

"But let me explain, dear," begged Helen, cheeks scarlet and eyes down. "When I went up there—and until just a few minutes ago—I thought—" Her faltering voice died away altogether.

"Thought there was no hope of getting Basil," said Courtney, with no censure, with only sympathy. She resumed touching up the picture to ease Helen's embarrassment. "Go on."

"I thought he was hopelessly in the power of that bad woman. So, I put my feeling for him out of my heart.... I know you're laughing at me. You're so cynical, Courtney. But a girl has got to do the best she can. And it's getting harder and harder for a poor girl to marry—that is, to marry a man with anything. And brought up as I've been I have to have nice surroundings. I want a good home—and—and—children—and they must be educated properly—and able to keep their place in our station of life."

"Certainly," reassured Courtney. "You did the practical, sensible thing."

"I know, what I did seems to bear out your ideas. You're always teasing me about my ideals being mostly pretense. Well, perhaps they are. It does look like it—doesn't it?"

"Everybody's are," said Courtney, squinting at the picture. "Ideals are paste pearls. One can wear much bigger and finer ones than of the real—and nobody knows they're paste—or need ever know if one's careful to avoid their being tested. I'm glad, dear, you weren't so foolish as you always insisted you'd be."

Helen looked as if her soul were freed of a huge weight. "I will say, Courtney, that I'd never think of confiding in any person who believes like me, while I always feel safe in confiding in you."

"Thank you," said Courtney with genuine gratitude. "You don't know what a flattering compliment that is.... So, you're engaged to Will Arbuthnot?"

"Yes—that is, up at Saint X Will asked me to marry him. He's a nice, clean, thoroughly good fellow. And when Basil went away I supposed he'd gone to that bad——"

"I understand," interrupted Courtney. "Never mind about her."

"I felt I could grow to like Will, and I put Basil out of my heart." There she fluttered a guiltily uneasy glance at Courtney.

"And now," teased Courtney, "you give the naughty man the preference over the nice one."

"That's just it!" exclaimed Helen in triumph. "Basil needs me. I did hesitate—at least, I tried to—until he begged me to strengthen him by saying yes. Then I felt it was clearly my duty." Helen took Courtney's amused nod at her landscape as approval. "And while I hated to do a thing that in a way might seem deceitful—still, Basil has such an exalted opinion of me—and it helps him, to feel that way—and if he had found out that I hadn't loved him all along—or if I'd asked him to wait—I might have lost all chance to help him to be the noble, good man— Don't smile that way. Courtney."

And Courtney instantly changed her smile to one of tenderness. "I know you're good and sweet, dear—and beautifully sincere," said she, with perfect honesty; for, experience had left in her little of the familiar self-complacence that condemns human beings for human traits. "Much too good for Basil."

"Of course," said Helen, beaming, "a woman who has kept herself pure is superior to a man who has not been clean and nice."

"Always make Basil feel that," advised Courtney. "He's the kind of man that can behave only when he's on his knees—and you're the kind of woman that prefers worship to love.... I suppose you'll live in the East."

"In New York, I think," replied Helen, reflectively. "He talks of the country. But I've had enough of that. I'm sure he'd be better contented in a city."

Courtney laughed gayly. "What a dear you are!" she exclaimed, looking at her friend tenderly. "And so absolutely unconscious of it."

Helen returned her gaze in unaffected surprise. "I don't know what you mean. Why do you laugh?"

"Nothing." Courtney was painting again. "What are you going to do about Will Arbuthnot?"

"Why, be perfectly honest with him," cried Helen, injured and reproachful. "I simply couldn't be deceitful."

"Tell him you've found you can make a better match? Oh, you mustn't do that."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Helen, horrified. "That wouldn't be the truth. No, I'll tell him I find I don't love him as a woman should love the man she's to give herself to. You know I've got the old-fashioned ideals—that is, ideas—of the sacredness of womanhood. He'll understand."

"Yes," said Courtney gravely, though her eyes were dancing, "he'll have a deeper reverence for true womanhood.... Well, the men deserve it. They're responsible for our not daring to be our natural human selves."

"But I am natural, dear," remonstrated Helen warmly.

Courtney was busily trying for a shade of brown on her palette. "You're sure Basil won't hear of your other engagement? Remember, he knows several Saint X people."

"I made an agreement with Will that we'd keep it a secret until we got ready to marry." Courtney laughed again; it was so obvious what lingering longing and hope had prompted this precaution. "What are you laughing at now?" asked Helen.

"I wouldn't spoil your innocence by telling you," replied Courtney. And she rose and, palette in one hand, brush in the other, kissed her affectionately. "I'm glad you're happy—and I'm sure you'll always be happy."

"Indeed I shall. And he'll be happy too. As he said, he's lived in an atmosphere of deceit and falsehood, and he needs to be lifted up into purity and love and—and—all that makes a good home and life on a high plane."

Courtney was smiling strangely into her color box. "You'll be married in Saint X at Mrs. Torrey's, I suppose?"

Helen began her answer in a place so remote that Courtney, used as she was to the complexities of feminine thought, was completely baffled. Said Helen: "Will Cousin Richard think me disloyal, marrying a man he's at outs with?"

Courtney reflected. "I don't know what he'll think." she said. "But you've got to consider yourself first—and Basil."

"Yes, certainly—" Again Helen was only half listening. "About the wedding," she presently said. "I was thinking it out, while Basil and I were talking——"

"Helen—Helen!" And the small head with its auburn crown shook in mock disapproval. "Not while he was making his first love to you?"

Helen reddened. "I had to think about things. You know, a woman can't afford to let herself loose like a man. And I decided it'd be best for us not to announce the engagement, but just to marry. And not at Saint X. I'll go up to Aunt Lida's in Laporte. What is it, dear? Why do you look so queer?"

"Nothing—nothing." Courtney had no desire—indeed, what would have been the use?—to tell her thoughts as she viewed the swamp of deceit and double dealing into which Helen and Basil were dragging each other in pursuit of those will-o'-the-wisp ideals. Ideals! But Courtney's lip did not curl in scorn as it would have curled a few months before. She had learned that supreme lesson of tolerance—even when you are sure you are right, not to fancy that what is right for you is right for anyone else.

"No," Helen was saying, "I'll not tell Richard. It would annoy him and do no good. Oh, I ought to be ashamed of myself, to be so happy when you are unhappy."

"I—unhappy?"

"I know you conceal it, dear. You're brave and self-reliant. But— Isn't there anything I could do to bring you and Dick together again? You're a woman, dear. You simply have to be taken care of, and——"

"Don't shadow your romance with worry about me," said Courtney nervously. She was all confusion and restlessness.

"But I can't help it," pleaded Helen. "I know Richard was neglectful. And he's not an attractive man to a woman, as Basil is—isn't livable and lovable like Basil——"

Helen went on and on contrasting the two men, to Richard's disadvantage at every point. In former days she had been too much "afraid Richard'll find out how foolish I am and how little I know" to get in the least acquainted with him; since the divorce they had talked only constrained commonplaces, when she took Winchie to him. Thus, the comparison was grotesque distortion of Richard. But Courtney was not tempted to try to set her right. Helen, of small mentality and in love with Basil, would not appreciate, would not be convinced, would simply be irritated—would probably misunderstand and be encouraged to pursue her absurd scheme for bringing them together. But parallel with Helen's talk there was in Courtney's mind a juster contrasting of the two men—the one strong, the other weak; the one real, the other idealist; the one simple, the other a poseur; the one intelligent, the other merely conceited; the one master of his emotions, the other their slave; the one an original, the other a pattern, an identical sample of thousands turned out by the "best families" and the "best colleges" and the "best society." And then it came to her why she had estimated Basil quickly and accurately, once she began it—that it was because in Richard she for the first time had a measure to do her measuring with. The mists of his abstraction had completely hid his personality from her, as from everybody. Those mists had blown away in the cyclone of the disruption of their marriage, and he had stood revealed—and Basil also—Basil, the dwarf beside the giant. She could see how the lesser man had made what was, in the circumstances, irresistible appeal to the imperious craving that must be satisfied before the need of heart for sympathy and of mind for comradeship could gain a hearing, the craving that in gaining its ends will compel the imagination to play any necessary sorry trick upon the intelligence. She could see this; and she could also see how sorry the trick upon intelligence had been—how absurd was her dream of founding a life-long content and happiness upon what Basil could give her and she Basil.

"I'm sure," Helen was saying, "with a little management you could get Richard back."

These words fell upon Courtney's ears just as into her mind again came that scene between her and Richard at the laboratory—the childish, the coarse taunts she had hurled at him, and how he had met them. She was hot with the shame of it when Helen spoke. The suggestion that Richard could be got back overwhelmed her with a crushing, stinging sense of how in contempt he must hold her now. The red of her skin flamed up into scarlet. "Don't speak of those things," she commanded harshly. Then, instantly ashamed of this misdirected outburst of temper, she put on her most careless, frivolous air—put it on well enough to deceive Helen. "Let's talk trousseau," said she. "You haven't much time, you know. June's very near."

But Helen was too curious about the trouble that had so abruptly changed a friendship into hatred. "It must have been exciting—that quarrel between them," she hinted encouragingly. "You were there, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Tell me, Courtney."

"It cured my cold," said Courtney. "I'd been feeling queer in the nose and eyes——"

"How can you be so light!" exclaimed Helen. "Well—let's talk trousseau." She felt that she had done her duty, that it was a waste of time to try to induce Courtney to be serious— "She never will have any sense of responsibility—or of the graver side of life." And with a clear conscience she took up trousseau and thought and talked dress steadily the rest of the afternoon, straight through until the supper gong sounded. And she asked so many questions, so much minute advice about every little detail that Courtney's attention could not wander.

At supper Courtney got a real pleasure from Helen's rapt, tenderly smiling countenance—they could not talk before Lizzie as the engagement was to be kept secret. Also, she got pleasure mingled with amusement out of Helen's delightful swift assumption of the ways of a married woman, and out of her immense satisfaction—as shown in a certain sweet and loving condescension to Courtney—over Basil's superiority as a catch. Helen was in fancy already married and installed in grandeur. But after supper, when Helen went up to write her first love letter—(those to Will Arbuthnot didn't count)—Courtney made no attempt to save herself from the attack of the blues that had been threatening ever since she calmed sufficiently to recall what she had said to Dick at the laboratory. She sat at the piano playing softly. Helen's face was haunting her—that expression telling of dreams she understood so well—so well! Would Helen's dream fade too? Probably—yes, certainly—for, the Helen sort of woman soon discouraged love in a man, and the Basil sort of man looked askance at love as tainted of that devil whom no one believed in any more yet everyone feared. Fade—wither—die. And she herself—would she seek on and on, deceived always by hopes and longings—as she had been twice already—the second time worse deceived than the first——

Into her thoughts came an image of Richard. The image grew stronger. Very gradually she realized that he was actually before her, was the tall figure in the doorway of the sitting room——

"I didn't dare interrupt," he said. "It would have been like disturbing a funeral."

"Not quite so bad as that," replied she with an attempt to smile. Though her rose-bronze coloring enabled her to blush deeply without detection, had the corner where she was sitting been less dim he must have seen into what shamefaced confusion his coming threw her.

She went on playing; he seated himself at some distance from her to gaze into the fire and smoke. She was on the grill of humiliating thoughts about herself—what she had said and done that afternoon. She did not lift her eyes until she had made sure by several furtive glances that she could look at him in safety. She watched him—the cigarette gracefully between the long first and second fingers of his hand of the aristocrat and the artist—the poise of his curiously long head so well proportioned—the long, sensitive, mobile features—that indescribable look which proclaims at a glance the man of high intelligence—the man of the finely organized nervous system. Then she observed that he was in evening half dress—one more reason for his looking unusually handsome and distinguished. But all the time she was seeing those two expressions which had transformed him that afternoon—had transformed him and had made her feel mean and poor beside him. A man who could be such a wild hot blast of primeval passion; the man who could be stronger than passion, even such passion—there was indeed a man! And what must he think of her! "But no worse than I deserve."

To break the current of her own thoughts, she interrupted his with a trivial "You are dressed this evening."

"Because I've come to call," he replied, rousing himself from his reverie.

"I'll tell Helen."

"I want to talk to you—if you'll listen." She stopped the soft wandering of her fingers over the keys. "No, go on playing, please."

She resumed. Now her eyes were on the keyboard, and she was having no easy task of it finding the right keys and striking the right chords, all the time conscious of his steady penetrating gaze. "It's nearing the time you fixed for going East," he began.

She nodded slowly in time to the music. He was so seated that the piano prevented his seeing any of her but her bare shoulders and graceful head with its masses of auburn hair, against a background of palms and ferns. "I'm glad the spring is so backward this year," she said; for, she had learned not to fear his misunderstanding, if she spoke out her thoughts. "If it were really spring with the grounds all in bloom and the windows wide— It makes me sad to think of that."

She had thought she might perhaps soften his contempt by reminding him that there was another and a less repellant side to her character. But as soon as the words were out, she wished she had not spoken; it was useless to try to make him think well of her. He was probably regretting that he had let her have Winchie. She looked appealingly toward him, hoping he would speak—say anything—no matter what, so long as it broke that silence of painful suspense. When she could endure it no longer, she suddenly burst out: "You've come to ask me to leave at once. You are right, I'll go as soon as I can pack."

"On the contrary," said he, eyes still intent upon the tall shafts of flame leaping toward the cavernous blackness of the chimney. "I've come to ask you not to go at all."

His tone was calm and self-controlled. It contained no suggestion of ominous meaning; nor did his face.

"I—I don't understand," she ventured, nervously.

"I want to propose," explained he, in the same deliberate way, "that we give each other another trial."

There was no mistaking his meaning. In the sudden reversal from all she had been expecting and fearing, her thoughts became mere chaos. Hands resting upon the keys, she sat silent, rigid—waiting.

He turned his chair, leaned toward her, his elbows on his knees. "Is the idea—is it—distasteful to you?" he asked.

Carefully, with her tapering fingers she measured chords without striking them. "Not distasteful," said she.

"You do not dislike me—now?"

"I never have, except for a few minutes now and then—when you said or did tyrannical things." Painfully embarrassed, she was trying to regain control of herself under cover of arranging the chiffon round the edge of the bosom of her dress.

"Courtney, I'm a different man from what I was."

"Yes," she assented, without reserve. "Very different. But——"

"Don't, please," he said, before she could begin to explain. "When you've heard my reasons for asking you to stay, you may think well of them. If not, why you at least can refuse more intelligently. This afternoon, when Gallatin was down at the laboratory making an ass of himself, you whirled upon me with some very vivid reminders of what you had been to him."

"I was insane with rage—not that it wasn't all true—only—I—it was—" She hung her head—"Oh, I'm so ashamed!—so ashamed!" she cried.

"I'm glad you did," interrupted he, heartily. "You thought to infuriate me. And you did, for a moment. Then—I was astonished to find myself quite calm. Do you know why?"

"Yes. Because you care nothing about me."

"Because I care nothing about him. Because I know you've ceased to think you care about him—care, you never did. Since I've come to my senses, I've been getting acquainted with you. And I know you do not and never did and never could love Basil Gallatin. That is, the woman you are now—the only one that interests either of us—never did and never could."

The deep green eyes glanced gratefully toward him. "That's true."

"It was simply what you and I went through with when we first met—and became engaged—and got married."

"Yes," said she. "Much the same. But—" Her eyes met his fully. "It wouldn't be honest if I didn't say too that I do not regret—about him. I suppose there's something wrong with me, but somehow I don't seem able to regret anything I do—even the things I'm ashamed of—like what I said this afternoon. It all seems part of experience. It seems necessary. That experience with him—it helped me toward learning to live."

She expected that he would be offended by her frankness. But he was not. "It helped you toward learning to live," he assented, like one stating an indisputable truth. "And it helped me. No, more than that. It taught me.... I wish the lesson could have been got in some—some other way. Perhaps you do, too." She nodded, gazing thoughtfully across the piano into the fire. "But," he went on, "fate doesn't let us choose our way—or, perhaps, there's no nice, refined way of getting one's full growth, any more than there is for a tree. It's simply got to stand outdoors in all weathers, and learn to survive and grow strong, no matter what comes."

"And the things that seem to hinder, often help most—and those that look like helps are enemies."

She saw his understanding, appreciative look, though her eyes were gazing past him; and she liked it. "We've both learned," said he. "And we've both been put in the way of learning more. Now why shouldn't you and I use our experience to the best advantage?"

"I intend to try," said she.

"Then it's simply a question of what is the best advantage. Isn't it for us both to stay on here?"

"I don't think so," was her slow reply. "Not for either of us."

"But you'll listen to my reasons? Really listen, I mean. You know, you caught my bad habit of not listening."

"Yes," she said with a forced, uneasy smile. "I'll listen."

"Well—first, there's this place. You like it, don't you? You must, since you made it. I've found that out, too."

"I love it," she answered. "But—" She shook her head.

"Now, do try to be patient with me. You must consider all three of my reasons together. That was only number one. Number two is Winchie."

She searched his face with swift terrified eyes. He smiled a frank and winning reassurance that instantly convinced her. "Please put that kind of thoughts about me out of your mind forever," he urged. "I've learned my lesson—that the beginning of fear is the end of trust. The boy's yours. You've got the right to him; he's got the right to you. Even if I could do for him, it'd be my duty— But I didn't come here this evening to talk about duty. That's a rotten hypocrisy."

"Is this Richard Vaughan?" she cried laughingly.

"The same—minus his grandfather," replied he, eyes and voice echoing her laugh. "No more duty for me. When anybody talks about doing his duty, he'd better be watched. If he boasts of having done his duty he'd better be locked up while they find out what mischief he's been at. No, I'm out for honest, selfish inclination only. That brings me to my third reason. I want you to stay. But—for very selfish sensible reasons I want you to want to stay. I've gotten acquainted with you. I need you. There's nobody who could take your place."

She smiled at what seemed to her the extravagant kindness of this.

"I mean just that," he went on. It wasn't the words he was saying; it never is a matter of words. It was the way he said it—the force behind the words, like the force behind the projectile. "I need you. Don't you think you could learn to need me? A man needs a woman. A woman needs a man. We've never given each other a fair trial. Why shouldn't we? Now that you've taught me, I don't want you to abandon me. And why should you begin all over again with another man?"

She sat motionless, hardly breathing, it seemed, from the stillness of her bosom. He waited long but no answer came. He went to the big old-fashioned chimneypiece, stood with his back to the logs; a look of somberness came into his face. "Well," he said, "I've said my say." There was silence in the room. He drew a long breath. "What do you think?"

She lifted her head. With flushed face and reproachful, almost resentful eyes she cried: "You've no right to come at me that way. You make it hard for me to do as I wish."

"You wish to go? Then it's settled." He turned his face to the fire, and she could not see it. "We'll not speak of this again." His voice seemed natural; but there must have been some subtle quality in it that set her nerves to vibrating.

"And you," she cried, "are thinking 'How mean and ungrateful she is—after my generosity to refuse to——'"

"Not so!" he protested sharply, wheeling round. "I've not been generous. When I told you the fault was chiefly mine, I meant it."

"When a man treats a woman as if she were a human being, it's generosity, as the world goes," insisted she. And then the words began to pour from her as if they had suddenly found an outlet. "You make me feel small and mean in refusing. Oh, I'm grateful for the way you've treated me—but I hate myself for being grateful—and I'm ashamed that it is hateful. But I can't be different. Your generosity—your forgiveness hurt my pride. They make me feel I'm your inferior—and I am. But I mustn't stay where I'd feel humble. You make me ashamed to go, but I know I've the right to go—and that I ought to go. I must!"

"Then—you are going," was his unhesitating reply. "I don't want you to stay. I see you don't believe me—don't understand me—and no wonder. It'd be useless to try again, unless we were both determined with all our hearts to make a success if success was at all possible."

"And it couldn't be a success," said she, a touching melancholy in her voice, in her deep, mysterious eyes. "For, a man doesn't want an equal woman but a dependent—wants his woman to be like his dog. Oh, what a world it is!—where everybody cants about self-respect, and everybody prefers cringers to friends, fear to love!"

"Not I," said Vaughan, in the quiet forceful manner that fitted so well his air of reserve power, of strength without strenuosity. "And that's why I want you. Courtney, don't you see that you're free and independent here, now? Don't you see it'd be a waste of time, a waste of energy, for you to go away? You may not need me, but I need you—in every way. You can get along without me. But how can I get along without you? Where would I find a woman who could take your place?"

Her bosom was rising and falling stormily. Her eyes wandered, as if she were desperately seeking a way of escape and had scant hope of finding it.

"Can't you give 'us' another trial?" he asked, with proud humility.

"I cannot," she cried, starting up in her agitation. "I cannot! I must go. There's everything here but the one thing I must have—what you never could give me, after all that's happened—and then, there's what I said to you this afternoon. We never could look at each other without my feeling that you— Oh, let's not talk about it. I must go—I must! I cannot live without love—equal love. I must seek until I find it—find some one who needs me—all of me—all I have to give—and must give."

He left the hearth and faced her with the length of the piano between them. "Could you love me?" he asked.

His voice set to vibrating nerves she had thought would never again respond to him. She trembled, and her eyes sank. "Even if I could—you couldn't love me. You could forgive—could be generous and kind. But you couldn't love."

"But I do love you," he said. And she, looking at him in wonder, thought there had never shone eyes so near to being the very soul itself. "I began to love you when you sent Gallatin away and faced me alone and did not lie. I came back because— You were like the air to me, Courtney. One isn't conscious of the air unless he hasn't it, and can't breathe. I've loved you more and more, day by day, ever since. And I shall love you more and more—need you more and more—every day until I die. Courtney—can't you forgive me? I am sorry for what I did—and—I love you."

She sank upon the piano seat, flung her slim white arms along the keyboard, buried her face in them. "I've found it!" she sobbed. "I've found it!"

Several discoveries in chemistry give Richard Vaughan fame, and Courtney shares it. But they value it all at nothing beside the discovery which gives them happiness: That the wise make of their mistakes a ladder, the foolish a grave.

THE END

* * * * * * * *

OTHER BOOKS BY

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

Mr. Phillips does not follow the usual fashion in novels. He has a fashion of his own. His readers are now numbered by the scores of thousands. In at least one of our cities, at the public library where they take ten copies of each of Mr. Phillips's new books, there is usually a waiting-list five to seven months long for a chance at it, which shows one of two things, or perhaps both: to how much trouble some people will go to save the trifling expenditure of the price of a book, or how extremely popular Mr. Phillips is—so popular that he has a multitude of eager readers among those who cannot afford to buy books.

It is no small triumph to win all kinds of readers, as Mr. Phillips has. The reason he has achieved it is because he writes about life as we live it ourselves, in our hearts and in our homes and in our dealings with each other—the familiar yet startling and always fascinating truth about life.

Mr. Phillips is an Indiana man in the early forties. He graduated from De Pauw University and then from Princeton. He has had a career giving him unusual opportunities to observe the life of all kinds of people, high and low, rich and poor, town and country, here and abroad. As he watched the struggle of humanity to live—the concealment and subterfuge, the extraordinary mixture of good and bad in everyone—all the conflict in the jungle which we call life impressed itself on him, and he gradually found that fiction—the novel—was presenting to him the best medium for him to express to everyone what he had found in his work so far. The result has been that in the last few years Mr. Phillips has gathered together an audience of thousands, who watch each book as it appears. It is interesting to see what he has produced.

Mr. Phillips's novel just preceding the present work is

The Fashionable Adventures of

JOSHUA CRAIG

Concerning this story, the London Times said: "Until the modern Balzac actually arrives, perhaps Mr. David Graham Phillips may be permitted to fill the gap"; and of the hero it said: "Joshua Craig, a Lincoln adapted for the use of latter-day Americans."

It is the story of a strong, virile personality set among the frothy superficialities of society life in Washington. Joshua Craig, a young Western lawyer, is striving to make a name for himself in national politics, and carries everything before him by his cyclonic forcefulness. In spite of his bourgeois birth, he tears down the barriers of society, and his utter disregard of conventionalities makes him the sensation of the season. And yet, for all his frank contempt of the methods of Aristocracy, their plots and littleness, he finds among them one "woman," Margaret Severance. He lays siege to her with all his impulsiveness and the assurance of success, and makes her own honest self do battle with the scheming smallnesses of her aristocratic bringing up. He carries her away with a masterfulness that is characteristic of him, and marries her before she can get her breath. Big and rough and crude, repelling and yet compelling, he fights for the supremacy of his fundamental ideas, and step by step the "lady" in her gives way to the "woman," always struggling, always battling. She finally yields to his will—to become the quiescent wife of a candidate for governor.

Just preceding this book, Mr. Phillips published

OLD WIVES FOR NEW

Many, many critics have called this novel immoral and gross. It is not so. It tells the naked truth—not brutally, but frankly. It is not romance. It is real life. It deals with a wife who cannot keep pace with her husband, and who becomes slothful and unclean and low-minded because she does not realize that to live and move forward she must keep herself physically and mentally clean and fresh. It is the truth. It hits many a woman to-day hard. Women do not like this truth. It bites too deep and so they called it disgusting and immoral. And yet more than 200,000 people have read it. Of this novel it is said: "If the husband reads it he gives it to his wife. If the wife reads it first, she is very likely to hide it from her husband." A woman said of it: "While I was reading it, I stopped one night just after the train wreck. It was so vivid that as I took up my morning paper, the next day, I glanced at the head-lines for news of Murdock's condition, and to find whether the scandal had come out." "Old Wives for New" is a picture of married life—when the blinds are drawn and the servants out of the way, and the husband and wife become their real selves. The St. Paul Pioneer Press says: "It contains things about women that have never seen the light of day before." It might have added: and things about men also. The book teems with good characters, each with a haunting resemblance to ourselves. There are women of respectability and women of the other world, wise men and fools, people that are more good than bad, people that are more bad than good, but nobody that is unhuman enough to be either all good or all bad. The keynote is that of a good story which searches for the truth.

Another of the remarkable novels is

THE SECOND GENERATION

It has been called a problem novel. But it is so only in the sense that every story that lives and breathes and is clothed in flesh and blood presents a problem. You will read this book without laying it down, if you can. And afterward you will think about it for many a day. You will laugh; you will come very near to crying, if you don't quite cry. You will love old Hiram Ranger and Ellen, his wife. You will envy Dory Hargrave his fascinating Adelaide. You will laugh over the soulful Janet, and will sympathize with Arthur Ranger. And as for Madelene—well, you will certainly find her thrilling! And the adventures of all these people will keep you intensely interested. Doctor Schulze must not go without a mention. He is as amusing here as when he appears again in "Old Wives for New," and his advice on medicine and other things may save you some bad health and a deal of money. As its title suggests, the story is a picture of our American life that may be found in any city or any town the country over—the story of the strong, hard-working father, who carved his way through life; and then the story of the next generation—the son and daughter who had apparently no fight to make.

The fourth novel is

LIGHT-FINGERED GENTRY

Here is another novel of present-day life, and at present as true, as interesting, from the romantic point of view, as either of the other two. When it was appearing serially, one of the foremost men in America became so excitedly interested that he asked, and as a special favor got, an advance set of the proofs of the whole story. He couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen about Neva Carlin and her divorced husband, Horace Armstrong; about the handsome, rakish great artist, Boris; about sensible Narcisse, the architect, and her nice weak brother; and the pert, pretty heiress, Amy Fosdick. As in Mr. Phillips's other novels, here we have again those startling, intimate views of men and women. Much more interesting, much more amusing is this sort of thing than the slush you so often take into your system with a box of chocolates, to the detriment of your brain as well as of your stomach. It may be said right here that if you are weak or without ambition, or if you have no desire to be a clean, clean-cut, up-to-date, attractive human being, "in the know," you had better not read Mr. Phillips's novels. His pictures of people are too true to make people of the running-to-seed sort comfortable. The story gives again a true, unvarnished picture of the situation as it has and does exist among the great and unprincipled financiers of this country. It tells in straightforward, direct language of the sacrifice of friendships and family ties for the advancement of moneyed interest and the pursuit of power, while all through the story runs the influence of a woman toward human and sane living and thinking.

A year ago Mr. Phillips published a play called

THE WORTH OF A WOMAN

This little volume illustrates the possibility of making an actual acting play that is also interesting to read. It is a remarkable love story—very "daring," as the critics say when they are afraid to say "literally true." If you read this play, you will go about posing its central idea—the dilemma of Diana and her lover—to all your friends, and arguing over whether Diana or Julian was right—or both, or neither.

THE WORKS OF DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

The Hungry Heart The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig Old Wives for New Light-fingered Gentry The Second Generation The Worth of a Woman The Deluge The Social Secretary The Plum Tree The Cost The Master Rogue Golden Fleece A Woman Ventures The Great God Success