Front matter (continued 4)

Surely there were not two people in New York with the aggressive waddle, the labored locomotion of Hutchins Burley? Pryor was in a holiday frame of mind; but here, as usual, was opportunity knocking at his door when he was in a mood to be "not at home."

"What must be, must be," he murmured, resigning himself to his fate.

He kept his eyes glued on Burley, and followed him slowly until he had watched him enter a cigar and stationery shop at the corner. Walking hurriedly past the shop window twice, he observed Burley, in a rather secretive manner, handing the proprietor a small bundle of letters.

Then Pryor acted with lightning speed.

In less time than it takes to tell, he had darted down the dark basement steps of the closed shop next to the tobacconist's and, after a brief disappearance, had emerged again.

The man who came trudging up the steps, however, was not the agile, immaculate gentleman who had descended a few seconds before. At least, to outward view, it was a middle-aged man with stooping shoulders, a painful limp, clothes that looked trampish and untidy, and a round hat rammed Klondike fashion far down over his forehead.

This ugly looking customer lurched past the tobacconist's shop a moment later, just brushing the sleeve of Hutchins Burley on his way out. Wholly absorbed in himself, Burley paid no attention to the incident or the cause of it. He plodded on up the street; but the man who had so nearly collided with him went into the shop, made a quick purchase—during which he took a good look at the shopkeeper—and then came back to the street again with a haste that was scarcely in keeping with his limp. By this time Burley had almost turned the corner of Third Avenue, and Mark Pryor was obliged to throw his limp to the winds and strike into a lively clip in order to keep his quarry within view.

Eventually, he contrived to be a passenger on the bus that carried Hutchins Burley downtown, and got off with him at Seventeenth Street. There he watched his man waddle heavily towards Irving Place and enter a dingy old house in the middle of the block.

Mark Pryor followed slowly. As soon as the coast was clear, he crept cautiously up the front stoop to look at the name plate on one side of the doorway. With the aid of a pocket flashlight, he read the words: "Japanese Consulate General."

"What in thunder has the Mikado got to do with Hutchins Burley's smuggling adventures?" he asked himself, greatly perplexed.

An hour or so later, he repeated this query to a brisk, florid-faced gentleman in the prime of life who was seated in what purported to be an actor's agency in the heart of Times Square. The florid gentleman, who looked much less like a theatrical agent than like a military man in mufti, offered no solution to the enigma.

"Major Blair, I think I'm on the trail of something big at last," volunteered Mr. Pryor, hopefully.

"Possibly, sir, possibly," replied the gentleman, briskly.

But he paid only a languid attention to his visitor's spirited account of how he had gradually wormed himself into the confidence of Hutchins Burley. When Pryor finished, he said:

"Somebody else will have to take up the trail of Burley. Orders came from headquarters this evening that you are to sail for France the day after tomorrow. You will report in Paris to Colonel Scott at the address in this letter."

"Foiled again," exclaimed Pryor, veiling his real feelings with assumed good humor. "Whenever I'm on the point of nailing a case down, headquarters steps in and calls a halt, as if I were the villain in the piece."

He added sardonically: "What is the use of information fairly breezing into my hands, so long as headquarters' notion of Secret Service is that the only conduct becoming an officer or a gentleman is to keep a secret dark."

"Mr. Pryor, orders are orders! The first duty of an officer of the Secret Service is never to ask questions."

"Quite so, sir," returned Pryor coolly. "And yet the first duty of a crack Secret Service officer is to ask questions all the time."

Major Blair stared at this independent, gifted member of his staff. Nothing daunted, Mark Pryor took his sealed orders, saluted and left.

PART III

JANET ON HER OWN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I

Earlier in the same day, a special messenger from Claude had brought two notes of regret to the Lorillard tenements, one for Cornelia and one for Janet. A little before evening, these notes were followed by quantities of flowers and fruit, which were for Janet alone. But Cornelia went into ecstasies over the presents and caused the rooms of Number Fifteen to ring with her arpeggio laughter.

The note to Janet read:

Darling Janet:

Business interests and a promise made long ago make it imperative for me to go to Long Island today. The worst of it is, I shall be away for three days, and how unhappy this makes me, you can't conceive. Six days without you will have loitered by when next we meet! Six endless days away from the miracle of your soft voice and the wonder of your heavenly smile.

I came back from Washington late last night, not knowing that I should be prevented from seeing you today. Even so, I had my car driven, far from its regular course, past the Lorillard houses. How I prayed that a light from your little corner room would invitingly tell me that you were still awake! But all was dark, and I had to be content to let my fancy play around a certain maze of curly bronze hair, two eyes as limpid gray as an Adirondack lake before dawn, and a pair of ruddy lips that smile divinely or talk with so much sense and charm.

You are not like any other girl I have ever known, dearest Janet! I think of you as a rare and delicate flower whose perfume holds my senses as your spirit engrosses my soul.

I want you to have a happy evening, dear girl, despite my absence. Only, every now and then, you are to give a passing thought to me—disconsolate, forlorn impatient to be with you again.

Ever your

Claude.

Of course, in Claude's absence the party was declared off, all but the supper in the pagoda.

Cornelia read the letter over twice. The second time, she uttered some of the more lyrical passages aloud, rendering them with a faintly exaggerated stress or mock-heroic inflection as the case might be.

"Exquisite!" she carolled, handing the note back to Janet. "A perfect love letter! By what an expert hand!"

Lydia Dyson came in just then and had to be told all about the disappointment. The author of "Brothers and Sisters," in an abbreviated accordion pleated frock, a necklace of jade beads, and very French shoes, looked as professionally Cleopatrish as ever.

"Janet," she said, knowingly, "Claude has gone to Huntington, to that Armstrong girl, Marjorie—the one that was hotfoot after the Earl of Dunbar. She didn't get the Earl, you know. Now they all say she'll marry Claude. I bet she will, too."

"He doesn't love her," protested Janet.

"As if that made any difference! Every man needs a woman to represent him in social life and to advertise the dignity and solidity of his own rooftree. Any woman who can do these things satisfactorily qualifies as a suitable wife. Men, you see, are more conventional than women. Or perhaps I should say, more businesslike."

"Businesslike!" Cornelia interposed. "Say disgusting, and you'll be much nearer the truth. Didn't I tell you, Janet," she continued, "that men think of women in only one way—and that a beastly one?"

"On the contrary, they think of women in two ways," contended Lydia in her drawling Southern tongue. "To a man, all womankind is divided into two groups: the woman who stands for his home, and all the others—the women who stand for his pleasure. The one woman is a necessity; all the others a luxury. Every man gets the first at any cost, and then bids for one or more of the second, if he has the price."

"Don't be bizarre and crude, Lydia," said Cornelia, not relishing this analysis in Janet's presence.

"Crude?" said Lydia, repelling the charge as melodramatically as it was made. "It is not I who am crude. It is man. It is man who divides our whole sex crassly into these two groups. It is man who sees in every woman either a housekeeper or a wanton. It is man who fixes a trade price for affairs of the heart and rates marriages by their market value. Call this crude, if you like! Or call it an incurable blindness to the differing blend of vital forces that makes each woman unique. In this respect, how unlike men are to us, who see in every man a new, mystic union of protector, lover and father of our children!"

"The new trinity!" chanted Cornelia, with a significant laugh. "But I'm sure, dear Lydia, that not every woman has your gift for discovering this mystic trinity in so many unique specimens of the other sex."

"Dear Cornelia, you flatter me. My only advantage over other women lies in the prudence which caused me to get a husband before I set out to make the discoveries you allude to."

"Don't let us talk about marriage as it exists today," said Cornelia, parrying the blow as best she could. "Marriage is so banal."

"Yes, and so convenient," drawled Lydia, who reluctantly supported her husband in idleness and luxury. "Also, so expensive. Husbands now come dearer than ever before in the history of family life, while lovers never were cheaper."

"Lydia is joking," said Janet, sending her clear, mollifying voice into the breach.

"No, I'm not joking," said Lydia, with the utmost gravity. She lit a cigarette, adding as she did so:

"I'm making hay while the sun shines."

"Does your husband agree with you on this point?" asked Janet, curiously.

"My dear, he's used to me. He takes my word for everything. Also my money. But I'm frank to say that I don't hold with Cornelia's notions about free love. They're too fantastic and impractical. I hold with the French system: Marry first and experiment afterwards. It's not logical, Janet, but it works well. If you experiment first, you are sure to be done out of marriage, and you may even be done out of love."

"Really, Lydia," said Cornelia, now thoroughly incensed. "You must know that Janet believes, as I do, that love is a surrender, not a sale. She isn't offering her affections to the highest bidder."

Janet, intervening, remarked that this was true; but, as she found Lydia's views very interesting, she begged Cornelia to let their visitor have her say.

"Oh, very well," said Cornelia, biting her lip.

"That's right, Janet," said Lydia Dyson, grateful for her support. "I'm sorry to disagree with Cornelia. But in this matter, she's all at sea. Believe it or not, in modern life, love is a commodity for sale, like any other commodity. What else can you expect? Do you know of any other gift in the possession of man, woman or child which is not sold to the highest bidder? Doesn't a playwright subdue his creative faculty to the requirements of the manager who offers the most royalties? Doesn't the novelist or the musician or the engineer do the same in his line? How indeed can they help it in a country where everything is bought and sold, where the greed and gluttony of men put everything under the hammer, from a glass of water to a draught of genius? Why marvel that women have to sell their bodies, when poets and artists have to sell their souls?"

"Take it from me, Lydia," Cornelia burst in, caustically, "when you apply the oratorical powers of Robert Lloyd to the moral principles of Mazie Ross, the product is hard to beat!"

"Cornelia, you wouldn't say spiteful things like that if you only knew the truth about sex relations. I forgive you because you don't."

"If I only knew!" said Cornelia. She gave a florid operatic laugh. "Do you really suppose I don't know?"

"No woman does who hasn't been married to a man. Not until she has been chained in wedlock for some time does she see the cloven hoof or feel the mark of the beast, or get her fanciful pictures about love put in a proper perspective. That's one thing marriage does for a woman."

"By your own admission, then," remarked Janet, "Cornelia is right in thinking that the game isn't worth the candle, isn't she?"

"Dearie," said Lydia, with unction, "ask the most wretched wife on earth, and she'll answer: 'Tis better to have wed and lost, than never to have wed at all.'"

II

Cornelia, observing that Janet took Claude's absence with surprising composure, wondered whether it was a case of still waters running deep. It was partly that, but there was another reason. The apparent ease with which Claude had yielded the preference to Marjorie's claim upon his time carried with it an unflattering implication as regards the value he set upon Janet's friendship. To be sure, there was the rapturous love letter. But fine words buttered no parsnips; they pleased the ear but they neither explained Claude's course nor justified it.

Thus Janet was as much nettled as disappointed by her lover's absence. Yet it was not her way to stew in misery. And her control of her feelings was made easier by the pressure of some secretarial work for which she had just been engaged by Howard Madison Grey, the playwright.

Immediately after supper, therefore, Janet left her friends in the Japanese pagoda on the roof, having arranged to spend the evening in Harry Kelly's office in flat Number Thirteen, where she proposed to practice on the athlete's typewriter.

Her object was to "increase her speed" so that her most recent position might be made securer.

Through the Collegiate Bureau, to which Cornelia had introduced her, she had already been given two opportunities in business offices downtown. She had lost them both within a week, her refinement and charm of manner having been voted poor substitutes for the experience that she still lacked.

The fault was not wholly Janet's. Before she left home, she had taken a course in shorthand and typewriting (in the teeth of her mother's opposition) at an Evening High School. It was one of those carefully pasteurized courses for which the American educational system is famous; it was showy, time consuming, and totally useless. But how could Janet have known that high-school stenography was as pitiably inadequate to the practical needs of a modern mercantile office as high-school French or German to the practical needs of a tourist on the Continent?

Not wanting to get into the bad books of the Collegiate Bureau, Janet was anxious to avert a third discharge. Moreover, her post with the playwright had the intrinsic merit of being more congenial, as well as more lucrative than any she had filled before.

Janet was thankful that Cornelia would be occupied with the party, for her efforts to make herself more competent invariably excited her friend to derision. Cornelia, like a true-blue Kipsite, was no devotee of good workmanship. Endowed with the makings of success in any one of half a dozen professions, she had achieved failure in all of them, her inveterate lack of industry and application having botched a promising career in turn as an author, singer, painter, dancer, decorator and dress designer.

A born worker, Janet stood in no danger of imitating Cornelia's business vagaries. She could not have afforded it, anyway. Unlike Cornelia, she had no private income, her only resources being a small bank deposit (a relative's bequest), which was dwindling with alarming rapidity. Thus, inclination and necessity were as one in spurring her on to making a success of her new post as typist and amanuensis for Howard Madison Grey.

III

The keys of the typewriter were going at a merry gallop when Robert Lloyd, who had a desk in Kelly's office, came in.

"What do you mean by breaking the commandments of the Lorillard Tenements?" he said, putting a sheaf of papers on his desk and getting ready to attack them.

"Which commandments, Robert?"

"All ten. The first five prohibit any useful work in the daytime on penalty of loss of caste. The second five prohibit the same at night on penalty of excommunication, if not expulsion."

She laughed and asked him why he hadn't joined Cornelia's supper party in the Japanese pagoda. He explained that he had been detained at a meeting of the Guildsmen's League, of which he was now the organizing secretary. He added that he had brought home a quantity of raw material to be hammered into a tract on Waste in Industry, a job which would take him all night.

They each buckled to the task in hand. Janet liked to work in the same room with Robert, who knew when to be silent as well as when to talk. He treated her like a fellow worker of his own sex, paying her none of that exaggerated show of consideration which most men give to women outside their own family circle. Thus his presence stimulated her and in no wise interfered with the concentration demanded by her typewriting practice. When she reached a good stopping point, she offered to help him. He accepted the offer eagerly and dictated several letters to her.

"A good job," he said, after she had handed him the typed sheets to be signed, "and a quick one, too. You're improving by leaps and bounds. Indeed, you might develop into a 'speed demon,' but for your un-American weakness for accuracy."

"I've got to be accurate. I do all sorts of work every morning, for Mr. Grey, the playwright."

"Grey? The author of 'The Love that Lies' isn't he? The play that ran for two seasons. Is he very exacting?"

"No, but his wife is. She keeps an eagle eye on all the typing that's done for him."

"Why?"

"Why? Well, she serves him as a sort of combination mother, nurse, watchdog, and general superintendent. Just as most wives do."

"And just as most wives will continue to do, until they choose an independent living in preference."

"Do you think that women are solely responsible for the social arrangement by which two distinct things like motherhood and housekeeping are tied indissolubly together?"

"No. And I don't believe that men are solely responsible, either."

"Aren't they?"

"No. Remember, marriage was not always what it is today. In the middle ages, the home was also the place of business, and the wife was her husband's business associate as well as his mate. Later, when business went out of the door, slavery came in through the window. This was not exclusively man's doing. Men and women muddled things up together. Honors are very nearly even on that score."

"Be fair, Robert! Hitherto, men have had all the power."

"Yes, and women have had all the glory. They were every bit as well satisfied to belong to the fair, privileged, and law-evading sex, as men were satisfied to belong to the coarse, responsible, and law-making sex. As soon as the majority of women follow the lead of Lady Cicely in 'Captain Brassbound's Conversion,' that is, as fast as they 'scorn death, spurn fate, and set their hopes above happiness and love,' they will be able to cope with man's supremacy as successfully outside the home as they have already done within it. What is more, they will work their will in public much more openly and honorably than they have so far worked it in private."

"Men are always declaring that women could easily get full independence if only they would go about it in the right way. Clearly, men know the right way and women don't. Cornelia says that if they are so very much cleverer than we are, it is a pity they don't set their wits to work so as to help instead of hindering us in the struggle for equality."

"Never mind what Cornelia says," exclaimed Robert, energetically. "She is crazy on the subject of men; that is why she keeps forever harping on it. One way of doing this is to accuse men of everything evil under the sun, from the creation of God to the invention of the cardboard kitchenette flat. Please don't join her in the vulgar senseless game of pitting one sex against the other."

"You do Cornelia an injustice. She doesn't maintain that all women are angels and all men devils. Nor do I. But suppose some men are angels. I shouldn't care to be a housekeeper for the archangel Gabriel."

Robert hoped that any lady who consented to share Gabriel's bed and board would find the archangel up-to-date and gentlemanly enough to excuse her from washing dishes and scrubbing floors. Why should an archangelic or any other sort of gentleman shortsightedly insist that a talented bride on her way to becoming an excellent banker, merchant, or politician, should transform herself into a mediocre woman-of-all-work? Why should he consider his own bargain bettered by such a questionable transformation?

"On the other hand, Janet," he added boldly, "why should an up-to-date young lady jump from the devil of housekeeping into the deep sea of free love, as I fear you will end by doing if you follow Cornelia's suggestions?"

She knew that he had Claude in mind. But she was unable to take offence at his uncandid candor and his disinterested interest.

"Robert, what a tantalizing mixture of the liberal and the conservative you are!" she exclaimed, refusing to take up his challenge.

"I am merely the child of my age, Janet. I was born with reactionary habits and nursed on radical ideas. All logic counsels me to become an enemy of existing institutions; all instinct drives me to conduct operations within the enemy's camp. I betray under two flags."

"You can't make me believe that. If you were all kinds of a traitor, you wouldn't be such a jolly companion to work with or to talk to. Do you know the most delightful thing about you, Robert?"

"Modesty forbids me to say—but not to hear. Tell me."

"It is the fact that you can behave towards a woman friend as frankly and decently and unsentimentally as you would towards a man friend. You can't imagine what a relief it is to a girl to know one man who'll always treat her man-to-man fashion."

"Will I? Janet, if you were perfectly sure of my future conduct you'd find me an insufferable bore. Besides, no fascinating woman ever wanted to be treated like a man—at least not for long at a time. You won't be the first exception."

"Don't be silly, Robert. If ever I should get married—which Heaven forbid!—it will be to a man like you, one who can work with me without constantly remembering my sex."

"Oh almost any man will be able to do that, as soon as being your husband loses its novelty for him. Still, I'm grateful to you for your well-meant opinion, Janet. I shall try to deserve it by offering you a small business partnership."

He rapidly sketched the plan he had in mind, pointing out that, as only her mornings were engaged by the playwright, Grey, she might help him afternoons with the Guild League's work. He was hard pressed for assistance; the League could just afford a part-time worker; there was a good deal of editing and typewriting which he was sure she could undertake.

Janet begged to be taken on trial. The bargain was struck amid the sounds of merrymaking that came, none too faintly, through the walls of flat Number Fifteen. She remarked that Cornelia's party appeared to have been a huge success after all.

"Yes, it has given birth to the firm of Barr and Lloyd," said Robert, jestingly.

He was aware of the conflict in Janet between the temptations of the love chase and the attraction of the force that moves the sun and the stars. And he fondly believed that this conflict no longer existed in himself. The love of man for woman against the love of life! He had made his decision, she had not.

Two questions remained uppermost in his mind. One was: "Could he capture Janet's great natural talents for his own side, the side, not of the fires of sensuous gratification but of the flame that burns at the heart of the world?" The other was: "Did Janet really want him to act towards her precisely as towards a man?"

Curiously enough, the irrelevance of the second question to the first, did not strike him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I

In the days that followed, Janet's morning duty as Mr. Grey's secretary and her afternoon employment as assistant to Robert left her with very little leisure. Such time as remained on her hands she spent chiefly with Cornelia or with Claude.

Neither of these friends exhibited much enthusiasm over Janet's determined effort to earn her own living. Cornelia looked with ill-concealed disfavor on an exhibition of diligence which, besides being foreign to the atmosphere of Kips Bay, used up so much of her protegee's time that the burden of housekeeping in flat Number Fifteen was inevitably shifted to Cornelia's own shoulders. As for Claude, his reaction, equally cool, was governed partly by the scarcity value which now attached itself to Janet's leisure hours, partly also by another reason which he hardly dared to face.

Somewhat daunted by the lukewarm attitude of her friends, Janet nevertheless kept courageously on with the task of making her independence secure.

Howard Madison Grey, the playwright, was then composing his fourth play, "Cleopatra's Needle." His practise was to dictate rapidly to Janet for an hour and a half, after which she was expected to typewrite the sketchy dialogue, changes in grammar and syntax and even in diction being left, as time went on, more and more to her discretion. As the work appealed to her interest as well as to her skill, she despatched it with zest.

Bit by bit, two drawbacks emerged, however. One was Janet's liability to mistakes because of an absorption in the plot, an absorption so deep as to interfere seriously with quick mechanical transcription. The other was Mrs. Howard Madison Grey.

This lady had opened a correspondence with her future husband during the short run of his first play, "The Spice of Life," for the hero of which (a masterful but incorrigible polygamist) she had conceived an unbounded admiration. The correspondence ripened into matrimony, Mrs. Grey bringing her spouse the money and influence that lifted him swiftly to a solid place in the theatrical world.

When his second play, "The Love that Lies," financed by her father, scored a big hit, she noticed that he became the gratified recipient of a good deal of feminine attention. Mindful of the polygamous experiments of his two masterful heroes, she remembered that precaution is the better part of safety. Marriage had considerably modified her point of view, and she now had a conviction that there should be a yawning gulf between the pluralistic imaginings of the dramatist and the monogamic behavior of the husband.

To give this conviction shape, she enframed him in a watchful chaperonage. Chaperonage was not the name she used. She called it, "being a helpmeet."

The helpmeet's first official act was to place Mr. Grey's communications with the world beyond-the-home under a strict censorship. She looked after his correspondence, registered his engagements, and kept in telephonic touch with him when he went to a club or directed a rehearsal. Let the enemy idolaters capture him (if they could) through the barbed-wire entanglements of her devotion!

In the same spirit, she threw cold water on his business-like proposal to do his writing in an office building. Such an environment, she said, would kill the soul of his art. Her substitute was a study, comfortably fitted up in his own home; and there, accordingly, he and Janet were obliged to work.

Mrs. Howard Madison Grey was a woman of fixed opinions. She was firm in the belief that a transcendent artistic talent was lodged in her husband; she was equally firm in the belief that a transcendent executive talent was lodged in herself. On the principle that it pays to specialize she held it to be no more than right that any power or glory acquired by the name of Howard Madison Grey should be exercised by the executive branch of the family. About this opinion she was entirely frank.

"I've made him," she said to Janet, one day. "Why should I let others enjoy the fruit of my labors?"

This was said as much in warning as in confidence. Janet was greatly amused, inasmuch as her feelings toward her employer were unsentimental to the point of prosiness.

None the less, Mrs. Grey's never ending readiness to suspect Janet of a design on her vested interest in Mr. Grey soon became a great bore. It was also somewhat trying to the nerves. At the most unexpected moments, the good lady would shoot in upon her husband and his assistant like a cartridge from a noiseless gun, and explode into embarrassing explanations.

Until, at length, Mr. Grey's perfectly correct and unemotional attitude towards Janet underwent a dangerous change.

II

By the time Claude returned from his visit to Huntington, Janet had already settled down to her new routine. Claude did not seriously object to her morning engagement with Howard Madison Grey, but her afternoon work in Kelly's study—the work she did for Robert's league—this he viewed as an intolerable encroachment on his privileges.

Out of regard for Janet's warm espousal of the cause of woman's independence, he concealed his feelings as best he could. But he used his prodigal gifts without scruple to lay siege to Janet's hours of employment, especially to her afternoons. Four or five days out of seven, on one excuse or another, his imposing car would draw up to the Lorillard tenements, and its owner, handsome, dashing, persuasive, would tempt Janet away from laborious tasks to the delights of an excursion.

In vain did Janet upbraid herself each time she yielded, or school herself diligently against the next occasion. When the next occasion came, she found, as likely as not, that she was as helpless as ever to resist his thrilling voice, his ardent eye, and his magnetic wooing.

In Cornelia, Claude had a subtle and insidious agent on his side. If Janet gave a crushing refusal to one of Claude's incitements to truancy, Cornelia would flash a reason in his favor as unanswerable as a sword. Or if Janet, persuaded, but not convinced, gave signs of an uneasy conscience, Cornelia was always ready to annihilate doubt with some apt quotation (or misquotation) such as "Work no further, pretty sweeting—youth's a stuff will not endure."

Naturally, this spasmodic holiday making was the cause of frequent delays in the performance of the work for the Guildsmen's League. Janet tried to make up for lost time by working late at night, a practice that drew upon her the reproaches of Cornelia who alleged that it interfered with her sleep. Needless to say, Cornelia exhibited no compunction for the serious inconvenience that all this caused Robert. Far from it. She appeared to get a lively satisfaction from seeing his partnership bedeviled and his remonstrances ignored.

As a fact, she feared that Robert's influence over Janet was quietly undermining her own ascendancy. But what was there to justify this fear? Janet's enthusiasm for the free life of the model tenements had not yet abated and her admiration for Cornelia's talents was still very strong. But a straw showed Cornelia which way the wind was blowing.

Janet was gradually but steadily cutting down the amount of housework she did in Flat Number Fifteen!

The terms on which Cornelia chummed up with her successive companions always included an agreement to have the housework done, share and share alike. In practice, the adoring friend took over most of Cornelia's share, at least while the friendship was in its early stages. As time went on and illusions were shattered, the unequal burden was slowly whittled away by the active partner until Cornelia's shoulders stood in grave danger of having a full half of the cleaning and marketing thrust upon them. At this point, she generally unearthed a new adorer as well as excellent reasons for breaking with the old one; and then she started the whole cycle afresh.

Like her predecessor, Janet had begun by doing far more errands, dishes and cooking, than a strictly fair division called for. At first, the respective proportions had stood at about three-quarters for Janet and one-quarter for Cornelia. After a few days of this arrangement, however, Janet had begun so to manipulate matters that her allotment fell rapidly to one-half. And the pendulum had swung gaily on. In fine, within a few months of her arrival, this new convert to modernity had reversed the original proportions so that they now stood at about three-quarters for Cornelia and one-quarter for Janet.

If this was feminism—Cornelia confided to Hercules ("among the faithless, faithful only he")—it was feminism with a vengeance!

The situation was without precedent in the history of the Outlaws of Kips Bay. Even more unprecedented was Cornelia's acceptance of the situation. But this compliance of hers was in no wise dictated by generosity or affection, as some innocents conjectured. Cornelia was simply shrewd enough to see that Janet was the magnet which had drawn back to Number Fifteen its departed splendor and had restored to herself the position of the first lady of the Lorillard tenements, a position she greatly prized.

One question that Cornelia put to Hercules was: Had Janet's repugnance for housework merely kept pace with her growing appetite for women's rights, or was Robert Lloyd at the bottom of all the mischief? How should the mute and glorious Hercules reply to a purely rhetorical query?—Cornelia favored the second explanation, a fact which boded Robert no good.

III

Although Robert had in no sense entered the lists as one of Janet's suitors, Cornelia instituted comparisons between him and Claude, never to the former's advantage. She took occasion to contrast Claude's noble bearing and look of sovereign strength with Robert's simpler and frailer appearance. She dwelt on the cosmopolitan aura that clung to Claude, his subtle atmosphere of wealth, breeding and high social origin, the amalgam of gorgeous qualities that offered so much more than Robert's radical connections and straitened financial circumstances. Her trump card was to call attention to Claude's free and easy response to the Lorillard conception of the rights of women and to offset this picture with an allusion to Robert's prudent reservations on the same subject.

If these comparisons were of an offhand and haphazard sort, nothing was thereby lost in effectiveness. Far from it. They glorified Claude by what was carelessly said: they damaged Robert by what was carefully left unsaid.

Although unaware of the Machiavellian promptings of which she was the innocent cause, Janet became dimly conscious of the conflict already sensed by Robert, the conflict between her work (which was bound up with Robert) and her love affair (which was somehow bound up with Cornelia as well as with Claude). She felt the tug of Robert one way and the tug of Claude and Cornelia the other way, without fully grasping the difference in the two directions or the final significance of either goal.

It was Claude, however, and not Cornelia, that gave Janet's friendship with Robert an importance that none of those concerned attached to it. Claude simply could not understand why Janet should refuse to neglect Robert's League, whenever the work of the League stood in the way of their outings together. Economic independence, the reason advanced by Janet, was a reason he laughed at. The words meant hardly anything to one who from birth had been glutted with the thing itself. Surely a few beggarly dollars, more or less, did not adequately account for Janet's readiness to cloister herself in Kelly's bare and sunless study! Yet what other motive could there be, if not one of tender feeling on Robert's part, or soft pity on hers?

Still, the rivalry that actually sprang up between the two young men was not a rivalry in love, at least not in Robert's sense of the word.

For Robert was no fool. He was soon convinced that Claude and Janet had surrendered unconditionally to a mutual infatuation which he was in no position to challenge. Yet he had a magnetism of his own, a magnetism of the spirit rather than of the flesh. To this magnetism Janet responded. Why should he not claim the same title to Janet's response in the one sphere that Claude laid claim to in the other?

At all events, he meant to fight for what he considered his rights, regardless of Claude's frowns or vanishing friendship.

Between the two, Janet had a hard time of it. Claude professed to accept free love as a new and improved social principle, and praised her for holding it; yet he grew unmanageable the moment she gave the least hint of exercising this freedom in connection with any other man than himself. On the other hand, Robert rejected free love as a pernicious Greenwich Village or Lorillard tenement eccentricity, and even severely scolded her for entertaining it; yet his actions showed that she might love as many different men as madly as she pleased, without causing his friendship for her to undergo any really radical change.

To cap the oddity of this contrast, she found that Robert's unlimited tolerance, though socially much the more agreeable attitude, was not without its suggestion of tepidity of sentiment, a suggestion which piqued her not a little.

The rivalry, such as it was, followed a very human course. Robert, as an outgrowth of his work with Janet took to promoting her education in contemporary thought and political theory. Claude, not to be behindhand, made the most of his special knowledge of art as well as of his wide first-hand acquaintance with the men and events that figured picturesquely in the ruling social and political rings of Washington and New York. In the matter of books, Claude generally took the cue from Robert. The latter would lend her works by Shaw, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Bertrand Russell, Anatole France, Barbusse, Romaine Rolland; Claude would follow suit with the latest fiction by Robert W. Chambers or Rupert Hughes, his authors ranging as high as Rudyard Kipling, Maeterlinck or Barrie. One would take her to a symphony concert in Carnegie Hall, the other to a Sunday Pop in the Hippodrome. Robert held out invitations to a Theater Guild's play by Masefield or Andreyev, Claude would counter with an evening at a revival of Florodora or San Toy. If Janet accompanied Robert to a Labor Mass Meeting at Cooper Union or to a radical Cameraderie at the Civic Club, she was sure, soon after, to be escorted by Claude to a Titta Ruffo recital in Aeolian Hall or to a midnight cabaret in Moloch's Den off Sheridan Square.

To Janet, who had broken with the Barrs of Brooklyn and who was as much on pleasure as on emancipation bent, it was not Robert's offer that usually seemed the happier one.

Not the least of Claude's advantages was the fact that he moved in Kips Bay as a representative of the great forces of finance and fashion. He reflected the high lights of that glittering social system of which he was a favorite child. Direct and intimate was his contact with the celebrities of the day—the bankers and politicians, the diplomats and society leaders, the cabinet set in Washington, and the inner opera box set in New York. These were his real people; the Lorillarders were merely the people among whom he was sowing his radical wild oats.

In short, Claude was one of the persons "in the know." He knew a good deal more about the personages whose names were on everybody's tongues than the public knew or the newspapers thought fit to print. He could tell about the opera soprano of the first magnitude whose attacks of hysterical jealousy would cause the curtain to be held down between the acts for forty minutes, while the poor director tore his hair in desperation. He could laugh at the "mystery" of the appointment of a certain mediocre woman teacher to a superintendency in the city's schools, the mystery vanishing upon his inside story of how the lady in question "had been good" to Big Jim Connolly, a local political boss. And he could explain the connection between the failure to float a certain foreign loan and the omission of a well-known financier's wife from the group of guests invited to meet the Prince of Wales.

Thus Claude Fontaine, whose handsome face and dashing airs would have made him an idol in almost any society, enchanted his fellow Outlaws with the aroma clinging to him from the world of fashion and the glimpses he afforded into the secret workings of the world of power. Small wonder that to Janet, as to the others, Claude was bathed in a romantic glamor.

By contrast with Claude, Robert seemed to lead a decidedly work-a-day or humdrum life. Especially so, since his newspaper employment had been cut off and his active time given up to the League of Guildsmen. As far as Janet could see, Robert's entire thought and energy were absorbed by an overwhelming interest in the Labor movement. For though he had plenty of esthetic diversions, she noticed that the books he read, the music he delighted in, and the pictures he admired were all in some way expressive of souls in bondage, aspiring to freedom.

Now for the time being, Janet wanted to forget about the lowly and the oppressed. She had the same feeling towards "causes" and "reforms" that a released convict has towards societies for Improving the Condition of Prisoners on Parole.

It must not be supposed that Janet took an unsympathetic view of the movements for human freedom which were convulsing society after the Great War. She was a sincere convert to the principle of woman's equality and she made an honest effort to be open-minded to the theories that Robert expounded. But her heart was not in theories. Her pulse refused to quicken when Robert told her of the new social cleavage which was fast ranging the useful active people on one side, and the parasitic profiteering people on the other. In common with a great many of her contemporaries, she sat heedlessly on a volcano, enchanted by the twinkle of the stars.

What if Robert did prove up to the hilt that the world was in the birth throes of a new social order! Youth must have its glamor. And there is no glamor about birth throes, not even about the birth throes of a new world.

Besides, the old social alignment in which princes of the purple and masters of the gold ruled in pomp or circumstance over the toilers of the factory, the office and the soil—this old alignment was much more familiar to poor Janet (and to everybody else) than the new one predicted. Literature and legend, the school room, the pulpit and the press—all the regular organs of education, in fact—had mesmerized her into viewing the practical politics and the dominant economics of the day as splendors and glories without parallel. Was the psychology of a lifetime to be uprooted or transformed by a few weeks of unconventional conduct in a Kips Bay tenement, or even by a brief high-tension course of reading in the works of Samuel Butler, Bernard Shaw, Romaine Rolland and other prophets of the life to come?

Clearly not. And so when Claude came with his many-colored news from the seats of the mighty, he found it easy to engross and transport Janet. But when Robert talked to her of strikes, trade unions and labor congresses, he left her bewildered or mystified, though seldom cold. In short, the rivalry even for the mind of Janet was a rather one-sided affair, Claude, the darling of the gods, holding an immense initial advantage over Robert, the advocate of rebel causes.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I

On an afternoon late in May, Claude took Janet to see the boat race between Yale and Pennsylvania over the so-called American Henley course on the Schuylkill. Nature was in one of her soft and sober moods. The weather was mild, the sky lightly overcast, and the colors of the landscape as well as of the living things upon it were toned down to various shades of slate, dove or lavender, all blending into the serious beauty of a dominant pearl gray.

After the race, while the crowds were melting away, the two lovers walked into the pathway along the river. Perhaps in response to the pallid coloring around, Claude became a prey to melancholy thoughts; and the day, the mood and the girl impelled him to confidences about the marriage with Marjorie Armstrong into which he felt himself being forced.

Janet made an ideal confidante. The exercise of putting herself sympathetically into other people's shoes was a joy to her. Not only did she see herself as others saw her; she had the rarer gift of seeing others as she saw herself. In doing so, she could leave her own desires and feelings entirely out of the prospect. Thus, the story of Claude and Marjorie, like any other human drama, appealed to her judgment on its merits. Nor did she disturb Claude with the intrusion of any vulgar jealousy because the lover was her own lover and the woman was a rival woman.

The narrative began with the tenderness Claude had conceived for Marjorie some two years before. He told Janet how the proud beauty had first encouraged him and then, with unexampled coolness, had allowed the Earl of Dunbar to displace him in her favor. Later the Earl in his turn had jilted Marjorie. Could he be asked to care for her after such an ill-starred episode?

Unluckily, he was by now far the most desirable match among the young men whose names she consented to put on her list of eligibles. In this preference she had her father's hearty support. Naturally. For Mr. Armstrong was a slave of every wish she framed. Meanwhile, his own father had the most urgent private reasons for promoting the Armstrong project.

"You see my horrible position," he said. "I'm expected to marry a girl I don't love in order to get my father out of a bad box. It's like a story of the eighteenth century; only, in those happy days, it was the daughter, not the son, who had to pull the chestnuts out of the fire."

"But surely, Claude, not all the king's horses nor all the king's men can compel you to marry if you don't want to."

"No, but compulsion isn't the only form of coercion in the world, Janet. Nor even the worst. Can you think what it means to have everybody in your set expecting you to do a certain thing?"

"Expecting you?"

"Yes, it sounds fantastic. But it would sound real enough if once you had a taste of it. They show their expectations by word and deed, by sign and innuendo. They show it constantly, mercilessly, in a hundred small and super-subtle ways. I tell you, Janet, concerted expectation is the strongest form of pressure that can be brought to bear upon a man. It can bring about miracles. It can move mountains. Only a hero or a coward can resist it."

"I suppose it's like the pressure of public opinion or of one's family," she said, her soft clarinet tones pouring balm on his feelings. "I know what family pressure means. I am so sorry for you, Claude, sorry from my heart."

"I love you for saying that, Janet! I love you for your adorable pity. I love you for being so unlike Marjorie. She has her good points; but fellow feeling is not one of them. You see, her social ambition and the ease with which she can gratify her every wish have quite dried up the tender places in her heart. She has no pity left in her nature. And pity is always the essential thing in a woman's soul."

They sat down on a grassy slope in a secluded corner of the park. In a lyrical mood, Claude pointed to the sun just then flaring out and splashing a thousand colors on the livid sky.

"Look, Janet," he said, "how the whole earth thrills to its warm radiance! Just as everyone thrills to your divine gift of sympathy."

He was lying on the ground with his head in her lap, while her hand was gently stroking his curly hair.

"I am so happy to be in this spot with you, Claude, and to hear from your lips the things that only you can say. When you make love to me, I feel as though I were in some Enchanted Valley with a prince from the Arabian Nights."

"Yes, and he a miracle of discretion, too!"

"A miracle of indiscretion, rather!" said Janet, as he drew her head down to his, kissed her once and kissed her again.

He soon became pensive, however. Pursuing his former train of thought, he declared that if he remained in New York, "public expectation" would certainly drive him into the dreaded marriage with Marjorie. There was only one avenue of escape. That was to go abroad and stay out of harm's way until Marjorie should choose some one else as in due time she was bound to do.

"But the force that holds me back," he said, "is far stronger than the one that bids me go. I can't live without you, Janet, darling."

"Then I suppose you'll have to take me along," she said, bending low over him.

Their lips met in a sustained and ardent kiss.

"No," he said. "I dare not assume a responsibility so great."

"If I go with you," she said quietly, "I shall go on my own responsibility."

"Janet, it would be too wonderful. Don't let me think of it, or my good resolutions will stand no firmer than a flag in a strong wind. But you are an angel to offer to come. You do love me then, very, very much?"

"What a question, Claude!"

"Well, you keep a pretty tight rein on your feelings, darling," he said, with the least trace of reproach. "Tender and true you are, I know," he added. "But you don't say any of the things that girls say when their hearts are in the grip of a wild, extravagant passion. Do you know that you have never even asked me once whether I really and truly and madly love you?"

"Whether you love me?"

"Yes, that is the question girls ask their lovers over and over again."

"Well, Claude, the important thing to me is that I love you."

"Do you mean to say, Janet, that you don't care whether I love you or not?"

"I don't mean that. But what I care about most is that you are the sort of man whom I can love. That is the thing that makes me happy. It's delightful, of course, to know that you love me in return. Still, if you didn't love me, I don't think I should be in hopeless misery. If you turned out to be different from what I dreamed you were, so different that I could no longer love you, then I should be heart-broken."

To Claude, this seemed a bitter-sweet reply. More sweet than bitter, however, and so he did not contest it.

What a puzzling girl she was, he thought. So sensible and yet so imprudent. And totally devoid of the instinct that induces most women to exploit the amorous moment. Claude could not get over it. Any other girl would have made the most of his present mood, the mood in which he was ready to think the world well lost for love. When the blood is hot, the tongue is prodigal of vows. Claude, at all events, was willing to promise anything, especially as he was still in pursuit, and as his promises were not to mature until he was in possession.

Yet Janet asked absolutely nothing! This surrender, as open-handed as it was confiding, moved him to compunction. He sat up and put his arms around her. Her head buried in his shoulder had the effect of seeking refuge there. And she looked so trusting, so helpless, so innocent, that a great love for her welled up in his heart. Ought he not to do the noble, the chivalrous thing?

"Look here, Janet," he said, with the air of Sir Philip Sidney offering his last drink of water to another wounded soldier on the battle field, "why couldn't we be married? My father would get over it in time."

"Yes, your father might. But we might not."

"No, no, dearest. You mustn't say that. My love is not a thing of whims and fancies. I shall love you till life itself has passed away."

"Then what difference does it make whether we get married or not," she said.

With infinite tact, she refrained from accepting his lofty pledge of eternal constancy. She also refrained from a similar commitment of her own affections.

"Don't misunderstand me, Janet," he said, as sadly as if her disagreement cut him to the soul. "I merely felt in honor bound to offer to marry you. I know better than you do what an unconventional step means.

"All the more reason why I should learn by experience, then. No, Claude. If I married you, I'm sure I should soon stop loving you. The thought that you had a legal claim on my affection would be enough to kill it."

"Oh, you mustn't take the law so seriously, darling. Nobody does, nowadays."

"I know nothing about the law, Claude," she said, repudiating all jurisprudence with one of her eloquent gestures. "Do you want us to become a careworn, broken-spirited, isolated married couple, hating all the other careworn, broken-spirited, isolated married couples of the western world? Do you want me to grow to hate and despise you as my mother hates and despises my father, as so many wives appear secretly to hate and despise their husbands?"

"How can you say such monstrous things, Janet?"

"How can you pretend to believe that love should be free?" she retorted.

"Well," he replied, "I admit there's a lot in what you say. I suppose," he added with a fine masculine irrelevance, "that we can always change our minds and get married later on if we choose to."

He could not fully persuade himself that Janet really believed in free love. Nevertheless, he was hugely relieved to learn that, whatever her motive might be, she had no ulterior matrimonial designs on him. If only he could have suppressed a sneaking fear that he was "taking advantage" of Janet, as he called it, or satisfied himself that he was legitimately taking the good the gods provided, as the Outlaws boldly called a step of this sort!

But Claude's Bohemianism was only skin-deep. Like a good many Bohemians, he discarded traditional forms, costly conventions and social restrictions, chiefly in order to extract from social intercourse and philandering, the greatest amount of pleasure with the smallest amount of risk. Being a Bohemian was merely a sybaritic pastime for him.

In short, Claude lacked the courage of his experiments. The only morality he genuinely believed in was the current morality (and immorality) of his peers. Thus loose love could be allowed to have a certain place in the scheme of things, but free love, as an avowed principle, was incontestably wrong. Claude might humor the model tenementers to the extent of using their free-love propaganda for his own ends. At heart, however, he was profoundly shocked by Janet's stubborn contention that her views of marriage, though glaringly heterodox, were morally sound.

As Claude had worked it out, there were two ways of getting past the limitations of a social institution. One was to support the institution while sneaking over the fences and enjoying the secret breach of law as a delightful bit of "living in sin." The other way was to defy the institution by boldly climbing over the fences and asserting the sin to be a virtue. Surely, the first was the pleasanter, the wiser, nay, the more ethical proceeding!

Of course Claude did not reason the distinction out as clearly as this. But he felt its force and, for his part, was resolved to act upon it. However, he did not attempt to convert Janet to his way of thinking. That would have been fraught with peril to the smoothness of their future relations. Besides, a long didactic argument would have spoiled the tender passages in the journey home. And Claude never encouraged his conscience to make a martyr of him.

II

When they got back to Kips Bay, they found Cornelia and her Hercules in Number Fifteen. Harry Kelly, silent and worshipful, was washing the accumulated dishes of the day, in a supreme exhibition of devotion. His inamorata, ensconced in state in her favorite armchair, was tacking a blue denim smock together with bits of fancy colored worsteds.

She announced her intention of marching in the parade of the Overalls Economy Club, an organization recently formed to protest against the high cost of living.

Robert, it appeared, had greeted this announcement with gibes and with an ironic contrast between her expenditure of time and her economy of money. Nor had he confined his sarcasm to her.

"What do you suppose Cato said when I told him about the parade?" Cornelia retailed vindictively. "He said, 'I suppose Claude will march, too? He will have no difficulty in getting the right kind of uniform. In the Times this morning, a Fifth Avenue store advertises overalls with solid gold buckles from fifty dollars up.'"

"There's a typical reformer for you," said Claude, bitterly. "Always shying bricks at the very people that want to build with them."

Hereupon, Cornelia, in the role of a loyal though long-suffering friend of Robert's, undertook to extenuate his conduct. She observed that he had doubtless been made angry because his work was retarded by Janet's absences. The best proof of his state of mind was a threat he had made to engage another secretary.

"I wish he would," said Claude, compressing his lips, while Janet tried not to look conscience-stricken.

"Of course he doesn't in the least mean to part with Araminta," continued Cornelia, wallowing in the emotional effect of her news. "Not he. Cato knows a good thing when he sees it. But he doesn't approve of Janet's parties with you, Lothario. The principle is wrong, he claims."

"The principle is wrong!" cried both Claude and Janet with very different inflections.

Cornelia laughed musically up and down the scale.

"Just fancy what he said: 'A friendship which doesn't grow spontaneously out of joint partnership in work is built on quicksands.'"

"He's a fanatic," said Harry Kelly, breaking his silence and one of Cornelia's saucers in the violence of his feelings.

"Nonsense, Hercules," she said, in a tone that poured contempt on his vehemence. "He has simply let all the soft places grow in his head and all the hard places in his heart."

Janet went into the next room to hang up her hat and coat. Claude followed her.

"I think Robert's ideas are getting more and more unbalanced," he said, dictatorially. "If I were you, Janet, I'd finish up my work with him at once."

"It takes two to break a bargain, Claude."

"Well, you might at least keep your relations with him on a strictly business footing—and as little of that as possible."

He ignored her slight mutinous gesture.

"He's a difficult man to get along with," he went on. "Look how even Hutchins Burley had to fire him. And as if his dismissal from the Chronicle were not bad enough, he joins these Guildsmen people who are trying to wreck the very basis of modern society. That has just about dished him, as far as the Outlaws are concerned. They all cut him now."

A new imperiousness crept into his voice as he added:

"I wish that, for my sake, you would not be seen going about with him, ever."

He accepted her silence as an evidence of tacit consent.

III

The very next afternoon, before a full hour's writing and typing had been done, Robert amazed Janet by proposing that they suspend work and take a walk.

"I want particularly to talk to you," he said.

"About what?"

"About love," said Robert, gravely.

What girl could resist an invitation like that? Despite Claude's stern admonition, Janet did not wait to be urged.

They walked near the East River towards the gas-house district, and presently turned into a recreation pier which was almost deserted. Clearly, Robert was looking for a very private and sequestered corner.

On the way, every topic was broached except the one that Robert had advanced as an excuse for truancy. Did suspense sharpen Janet's anticipation? No. Janet was curious, but not consumedly so. She had a marvelous power of attracting confidences and was quite used to having young men, who had known her only a few days, confide in her their love affairs, their religious or financial troubles, and indeed the whole history of their lives. True, Robert might be in love, not with another girl but with herself. Having no false modesty, Janet entertained the suspicion for a moment. Only for a moment, however. For the presumption against it seemed conclusive.

Meanwhile, they walked happily along, until Robert found the spot that suited him. This was at the end of the pier farthest from the street. No watchman being in sight, they sat down on a great terminal beam and let their legs swing over the green and choppy water.

The Janet who laughed and chatted with Robert was a very different girl from the Janet who was accustomed to hang romantically on Claude's lips. Nothing, of course, could equal the magnetism of Claude or match the fire and glory of their mutual passion. Still, in Claude's presence she seemed constantly to be playing up to some magnificent part; she felt like a cross between, say, the Lady of Shalott and the ecstatic lady in the Song of Songs. Without denying that it was a rapturous game, a game well worth the candle, she found it a trifle exhausting.

With Robert, on the other hand, the high-tension, party-dress Janet could be put away (so to speak) and the simple, work-a-day, blouse-and-skirt Janet substituted. Now Janet was the kind of girl who always looked her worst in her best things and was most herself when least dressed up. Naturally, she did not apply this symbol to her two friendships. Being a young, rebellious, and infatuated young lady, how could she? Besides, had she done so, she might have reasoned the matter out to a disturbing conclusion.

"Well, Robert," she said, cheerily. "Begin, and tell me all that's in your heart of hearts."

"It's not my heart I mean to talk about. It's yours."

"Mine! What an idea! Why, my heart's in the pink of condition. Positively no inspection needed.

'Oh my heart is a free and a fetterless thing,

A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing.'

I don't mean to say that it's a flighty object, though," she added, with a smile.

"No, if it were, it would be much easier to talk to you about it," said Robert.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, a whole century separates the Janet I first knew—the Janet who hesitated to go to a picture play on the Sabbath—from the Janet who reads Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, attends labor meetings on Sundays, and catches each newest whiff of radical opinion. The change takes one's breath away."

"You admit it's a change for the better, don't you?"

"In every way but one."

"Which one?"

"You have taken Cornelia too seriously. Her views on sex are morbid and totally unsuited for adoption by a healthy, inexperienced girl."

"Now, Robert, please don't begin that over again. You've said it all before."

"I shall say it and say it again until I've convinced you. Even you must admit that Cornelia has a chronic grudge against men."

"Well, it isn't so unnatural, after her unhappy love affair, is it?"

"Precisely. As a result of that love affair, all her sex emotions are inverted. She sublimates her sex into acts of spite, usually unconscious acts. For instance, she is subtly encouraging you to run off with Claude as she ran off with Percival Houghton. Forgive me for mentioning it, Janet. But I can't bear to see you duped. Believe me, if you followed her example, with an equally unhappy result, she would like nothing better."

"Claude is not in the least like Percival Houghton," said Janet coldly. "Whatever else he may be, he isn't a cad."

"Of course he isn't," Robert hastened to say.

"Then stop making horrid comparisons. It is such an easy thing to do. Suppose I were to say that you are like an X-ray machine, finding out all that is bad in people, while Claude is like a magnet drawing out all that is good in them. What would you say to that comparison?"

"I should accept it," replied Robert, with a smile. "The superiority of the X-ray in point of social usefulness is, I think, beyond dispute."

"Oh, with you social usefulness is everything, and personal happiness nothing!"

"Suppose Claude is a magnet," he went on, unheeding her exclamation. "Is that a good reason for flying into his arms, like a willless iron filing, on his terms instead of on your own?"

"On my terms! What do you mean?"

"Janet, my friendship will be worse than useless to you unless I can tell you exactly what is in my mind. I either do that or hold my peace forever. Will you let me speak frankly?"

"Will I let the rain fall or the sun shine? I'd like to see the person who could stop you from speaking frankly. But please don't attack Claude."

"Have no fear. I don't intend to play the part of the heroine's second friend confidentially warning her against the first. What I want to urge, with all the force I can, is this: if you mean to live with Claude, why not marry him?"

"Quite apart from my own preferences in the matter, Robert, how do you know that Claude wants to marry?"

"Oh, no doubt he doesn't want to. In the eyes of the modern man, marriages made in Heaven are as popular as canned beef made in America. But what of that? Claude is young, self-willed, accustomed to get his own way, and—he worships you. And you—well, I have no superlatives to do justice to the case. You are you. You could marry him in a twinkling if you played your cards right."

Janet laughed.

"Oh, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing—" she sang, saucily.

"Stop coquetting like Cornelia," he remonstrated. "You are making it totally impossible for me to talk rationally. Are you a butterfly or a woman? Am I discussing your glorious voice or your precarious future? Be serious."

"How can I be serious when you ask me to be a bargain hunter in hearts and coronets?"

"Now you're acting like one of Marie Corelli's heroines, Janet!"

"Thank you. Why are you so anxious to have me get married?"

"Because I think that your fine spirit of independence and your divine gift of imagination ought not lightly to be wasted. Because I think, in short, that you have a nobler purpose in the world than mere loving or being loved."

"Than mere loving!"

"Yes. The world was not made for the gratification of our own feelings."

"So you are fond of saying, Robert. But, as a matter of fact, I'm not trying to gratify my feelings. I'm trying to carry out my principles."

"The world isn't a grindstone to sharpen our principles on, either," said Robert, with prompt conclusiveness.

"From watching you, I rather thought it was," said Janet, stung into sudden irony.

There was a pause. He tried to take her hand, but she drew it sharply away, with difficulty repressing her tears. After a while, he began again, with impetuous candor:

"Janet, don't go into this adventure with your eyes shut. Remember, you can't give yourself up to an experiment in free love without giving up everything else. That is the strongest argument against the step. All your gifts, all your energy, all your purpose will be consumed in explaining, defending, evading. Your whole life will be one long course of swallowing the consequences and warding off criticism. Do you wish to be a life-long martyr to free love, like Cornelia?"

"I've never posed as a martyr to anything—not even to drink," said Janet, recovering her good humor.

"Then why become one? Martyrdom is all very well for fanatics like your mother who enjoy it, or for idlers like Cornelia who have nothing better to do. But you are neither a fanatic nor an idler; you are a worker."

"But when one believes that an institution has served its turn, isn't it one's duty to destroy it?"

"Institutions are never destroyed. They are sometimes transformed, as tadpoles are into frogs."

"Are you sure? Cornelia says that every free union is a mine exploded beneath marriage. I think she's right."

"A mine! Better call it a squib, Janet. And all the trouble you invite will be like laying a long and elaborate fuse to ignite the squib."

"Oh, you have no ideals left!" she cried, revolted at this demolition of her romantic conceptions.

"I have a little common sense left," he answered. "We can't escape the customs or the institutions of our time, however much we may disbelieve in them. Flying in the face of a decadent institution does not destroy it. It only gives it a new lease of life by putting the props of public sympathy and traditional morality at the disposal of its defenders. Look at the case of George Eliot. Did her entirely justifiable free union help the cause of marriage reform? No. It actually turned her into a defender of the very institution she had set out to challenge."

"What a very wise young man; this wise young man must be," she said, parodying a line of Gilbert's.

"No side-tracking! Promise me you'll turn the matter over in your mind."

"In my mind? Yes. But what about my heart?" she said. And with dancing eyes she sang:

"'Oh, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing,

A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing.'"

Her voice turned his blood to paradisaical currents.

"If you sing that again, I shall kiss you on the spot, in public or out of it," said the tormented young man.

"Why, Robert, what abysses of passion lurk hidden in you!" she exclaimed mockingly. "I believe you said you'd always treat me just like a man. Do you talk like this to your male chums?" Then demurely: "We'd better go home at once."

On the way home, she resumed the discussion. In a more earnest tone than before, she thanked him for taking so much trouble over her and promised to think about his point of view very carefully. She insisted, however, that his reasoning had not convinced her. She and Claude appeared very well suited to each other now, but who could tell what changes a few years might not bring forth?

"True," said Robert. "But the future is dark to us in other matters besides marriage. As things stand now, Claude couldn't do better, and you might do worse. And if the very worst happened, you could get a divorce."

She replied by reminding him that she and Claude were not the kind of people who lightly repudiated their ties or the responsibilities that grew out of them. Consequently, once married, they would probably remain so for life. In any event, if she changed her mind, it would be infinitely simpler to do so under the other plan.

"Say I grew tired of Claude, for instance, and quite suddenly wanted you," she said with a mischievous look.

"Well, it couldn't be done," said Robert, decisively, her complacent assumption jarring his pride.

"Oh, couldn't it?" She flashed him a challenging glance.

"Not in my case," he returned, in clipped tones. "Free love is the most expensive luxury in the world. Only the very rich or the unambitious can pay for it. As for me, I never can have anything to do either with free love or with a woman who has had a free lover. It would ruin all my plans."

Janet replied with the faintest shrug, whereat all his self-assertion promptly went bang. Neither yielded a point; but they divined each other's feelings and, as they walked on, steered the conversation into lighter channels until they got back to the Lorillard tenements.

Standing in the dark hallway at the foot of the stairs, Janet told him with a touch of impishness that his logic had been irresistible.

"Has it? It hasn't touched your heart," he said, somewhat dolefully.

"Ah, well, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing—"

As Janet darted up the stairs, the door of an apartment opened overhead, and she fancied she heard Claude's voice.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I

On her own floor, she halted and, with Robert's kiss still burning on her lips, waited until he had turned into Kelly's flat. Then she opened the door of Number Fifteen.

Sure enough, Claude was there, full of resentment at her absence on a jaunt with Robert. She thanked her stars that Robert's visible presence could not fan the flame. Even so, Claude acted badly enough. He was in a vertigo of jealousy, and at small pains to hide the fact.

At first, Janet tried to carry the matter off lightly, and strove to mollify him by saying that Robert had asked her to consider a very serious problem. She was a little conscience-stricken over this fib, but believed it the best thing to say. She pointed out that while it was with Robert that she worked, it was with Claude, after all, that she played.

At this Cornelia executed an unnecessarily tuneful laugh.

"There's nothing like a man's problem for disarranging a girl's hair," she observed, dropping the inevitable dress she was busy with. "Araminta, your hat's a sight! Do look at yourself in the glass."

Naturally, Claude was more furious than ever. He sulked in silence whilst rebuffing the advances that Janet made. Finally, maddened by Cornelia's pin-prick innuendoes, he strode out, flashing a terrible look at Janet as he did so.

II

When will the play of Othello be absolutely unintelligible? Perhaps five hundred years from now or, let us hope, sooner. Surely, at some distant date, the private ownership of a woman by a man or of a man by a woman will seem as barbarous as the rings our ancestors stuck through their noses or as unfashionable as the three hundred concubines of Solomon. And the jealous passions arising from this ownership will be classed with rage, hysteria and other forms of emotional disease or pathological bad manners.

Indeed, do not the best people already look upon a pronounced fit of jealousy as an exhibition of arrested development or mental inferiority? If the jealous man is not destroyed, root and branch, by the refuse-reduction plant of ridicule, he will be rendered obsolete and perhaps extinct by the spread of the conviction that, after a human being has discharged his obligations to himself and his obligations to the community, he owes no other personal allegiance whatever.

Herself singularly free from jealousy, Janet was in direct touch with three persons whom the malady afflicted sorely. Besides the case of Claude, she had on her hands the case of Mrs. Howard Madison Grey in business, and the case of Cornelia at home.

Cornelia, who was no believer in keeping her emotions hermetically sealed, made her frame of mind patent to Janet on an unforgetable occasion. It was not the first, nor was it to be the last, of a series of blows, which were fast converting Janet to the belief that her own opinion of Cornelia was founded on an illusion, whilst Robert's opinion was the correct one.

For some time past it had been Harry Kelly's practice to come into Number Fifteen before breakfast and put the two girls "through their paces," as he called the light drill he prescribed for them. Always on the lookout for some new outlet for his tremendous supply of energy, the physical culture expert had hit on the scheme of improving Cornelia's bad health by reforming her bodily habits. Cornelia, who considered early rising bad form and breathing exercises a superstition, was for a prompt veto of the scheme, but Janet's cordial support of it saved the day.

So, early in the morning of the day after Claude's wrathful departure, Kelly, in gymnasium garb, made his entrance as usual. The athlete was not a man of many words. Words, after all, were not needed in his case, since, as he strode along with the nervous muscularity of a Rodin statue, his lithe, powerful body proclaimed his mission to all the world.

"Wake up, girls," he called out, "and fill your bellies with the good south wind."

The unvarnished word always moved Cornelia to a protesting shriek and a well-trilled "How do you do!" Kelly enjoyed both immensely.

After throwing the windows in the sitting room wide open, he paced the floor like a panther in his den. Janet was the first to appear. She was still drowsy, and her short dark hair, in tight somnolent curls, hung down her back. She wore a short-skirted bathing suit, a custom Kelly held in high regard for the business in hand.

As she toddled sleepily towards the athlete, the energy pent up in his frame unbottled itself on the impulse of the moment. Catching her at the waist, he lifted her high up in the air and spun her around three times as if she were a featherweight. Then, clasping her lightly by shoulder and leg, he set her tenderly down again.

"Do it again, Hercules, do!" articulated Cornelia, coming in just at the close of this maneuver, whilst Janet, still laughing and protesting, was in the act of resuming control of her well-shaped limbs.

But as there was that in Cornelia's eye which belied her command, Kelly was careful to make no move to execute it.

Cornelia's golden hair was done up on her head in a makeshift coil, she herself being enveloped in a long kimono that trailed to the ground. Kelly looked at this garment without ecstasy, a fact that did not escape the wearer's observation.

"Hercules," she commanded peevishly, "you might close this window near me. I've got a very bad headache from too little sleep. Do you want me to catch my death of cold, too?"

He complied with all haste, and then pitched into his calisthenics, Janet joining him with gusto. Cornelia followed suit, though in a very languid spirit; and soon she stopped altogether, on the pretext of unusual weakness.

Her chilly aloofness cut the period short. It was now time to prepare breakfast, a task theoretically shared by all four, including Robert, who was unaccountably late this morning. Habitually, three of them did the actual work while Cornelia "directed," a process which, she firmly believed, enabled the others to save time. But, as Robert sardonically put it, "Cornelia's method of showing us a short cut is to send us round Robin Hood's barn."

It was Kelly's special business to convert a part of the kitchen into a dining room, and thereafter to make the toast. He had just reached this stage, when Cornelia took another hand in the proceedings.

"Go down and get the letters for me, Hercules," she said suddenly, relieving him of the toaster.

"Why, what's the hurry? Rob always gets them after breakfast."

"Oh, do let Harry make the toast," said Janet, chiming in with him. She, too, had thought of the letters, and was in no hurry to bid the devil good morning. "Nobody can eat toast the way you make it, Cornelia. And Robert is sure to—"

"No doubt Robert will do exactly as you tell him," said Cornelia, interrupting her sweetly. "Please let Harry do as I tell him. Hercules, go now, please. I have a notion there'll be some famous news for me this morning."

Kelly, having been her devoted (and despised) slave since the day he ejected Hutchins Burley, obeyed submissively by mere force of habit. He ran down the three flights of stairs and in a very short time came back again with a single letter.

It was for Janet from Claude, and sarcasm was its prevailing tone.

The writer began by deploring his fatuous inability to remain away from her side. He pointed out that, as his chance visits might take her by surprise or catch her off guard, not to say worry her into thinking of promises she had no mind to keep, he should take steps to rid her of his manifestly superfluous attentions. He had accordingly arranged to spend some time with his friends the Armstrongs, in Huntington. By doing so he should at least please his father, which was better than nothing, certainly better than not pleasing either himself or her.

In short, it was just such a petulant note as a spoiled woman's darling like Claude might be expected to write. Having always received complete submission from women, he regarded the least opposition to his self-indulgence as outrageous and even wicked or perhaps blasphemous.

The depth and passion of Janet's nature were not easily stirred, but this letter startled her out of her usual lightheartedness. She sat down in a chair by the window and looked out fixedly, in an effort to repress her feelings. Kelly, sympathetic and bewildered, gave vent to sundry heartening murmurs and exclamations; and, as these accomplished little, he moved dishes attractively and hopefully around Janet's empty place.

From her point of vantage at the table, Cornelia surveyed her handiwork with a pious simulation of sadness, surveyed it, and found that it was not so bad.

Janet blue and still, Kelly heavily anxious, Cornelia sweetly sanctimonious, such was the curious tableau that Robert saw when he came in, his slender frame and vigorous movements forming a direct contrast to the static spectacle before him.

"Now, see what you've done, Cato!" declaimed Cornelia, in one of those complacent greetings which only she could make sublime.

She fluttered Claude's note aloft and called out the sender's name for Robert's information.

Ignoring her, but grasping the import of the scene, Robert went over to Janet's side and asked her in all simplicity whether he could be of any service whatever.

But she, to hide her tears, turned decisively away from him. Robert gave her movement a totally different interpretation, drew back, and walked quickly out of the room.

III

The alarums and excursions for which Claude and Cornelia were responsible might well have monopolized Janet's mind. But her thoughts were kept in flux by a thunderstorm which threatened her peace from another quarter.

The new cloud on her horizon came from no less a person than Mrs. Howard Madison Grey, the wife of her employer.

Mrs. Grey served Janet as a symbol, a symbol opposed to the Outlaws. The Outlaws were a convenient symbol of the world within Kips Bay. Mrs. Grey was an equally pat symbol of the world without.

It amused Janet to study her own reactions to these two symbols and to analyze her experiences with the moral codes symbolized.

According to one of the primary conventions of the Outlaws, sex was anybody's to have and nobody's to hold; there was no recognized private property in sex. In Kips Bay, Janet had acted in the spirit (though not in the letter) of this convention. And the results had been disastrous.

On the other hand, in the world beyond the model tenements, the right of private property in sex was absolute. In Mrs. Grey's world, Janet had acted in the spirit and even in the letter of this convention. And again the results had been disastrous.

The second disaster materialized slowly. Its point of departure was the visit paid by an ex-President of the United States to a performance of Mr. Grey's third play, "The Great Reprieve."

As originally written, this was a drama in which a Vermont Yankee resigns to a younger brother the girl he madly loves, after which lofty sacrifice he starts life anew in the Klondike, makes a fortune there, and later turns up for a brief visit to the old homestead. To his dismay he learns that the girl of his dreams has been left a widow and that, with poverty and distress staring her in the face, she has no choice but to take up the lot of an actress in the great Subway Circuit. Nothing but his hand in marriage can save her from the doom in store for her! And the curtain falls on the Great Reprieve.

The play was a triumph of mediocrity in conception, construction, and style; yet for some unaccountable reason it fell flat. The producer was reluctant to accept the verdict of the playgoers for a fact, but a second footing-up of the box-office revenues conquered his reluctance completely.

Half a dozen play-surgeons—writers of Broadway successes, high-priced, fifth-rate super-hacks, before whose names the public prostrated itself—were hastily called into consultation and an immediate and drastic operation was advised.

No time was wasted in thinking. All six consultants took a hand, so did the producer, so did the favorite chauffeur of the producer's second best mistress. Three days and three nights of heroic writing, drinking, and rehearsing followed. At the end of this furious interlude, "The Great Reprieve" had been whipped, or as the favorite chauffeur said, "Goulasht" into shape.

The chief character in the revised version was a typical American boy of fifteen (erstwhile the heroine's brother), and upon his pranks, antics, impudence, and callowness, the play now pivoted. The lad's capacity for noisy pertness and imbecile clownage was represented as inexhaustible, yet even so, the producer expressed a fear that the audience might not be equal to the intellectual pressure of the dialogue. Relaxing incidents were introduced—a woman purring over a poodle dog, a chorus girl spouting the real American language invented by George Ade, a squawking parrot, and a Southern mammy (out of "Uncle Tom's Cabin") worshipping the ground the leading juvenile treads on.

These features were warranted to give the play its "universal appeal"!

Dramatic action there was none. Why cast pearls? After all, there was plenty of movement, plenty of "pep" and "kick" as the producer said. All the characters made their entrances and exits with frenzied vehemence and, whilst on the stage, jerked arms and body and legs ceaselessly to and fro, as if in the last throes of St. Vitus' Dance. The audience would get its money's worth of "speed"—so much was provided for, if nothing else was. The dialogue was spoken with a short, sharp, pop-gun explosiveness, except in the maudlin sentimental scenes in which it was drawled out into one world-without-end whine. Apart from these details, nothing in particular was to happen in the play; for nothing in particular mattered. However, a squealing child was kept in reserve, ready to be trotted out for "sure-fire" applause, if the "action" should chance to flag.

In its renovated form, Mr. Grey hardly recognized "The Great Reprieve." It seemed to him that his comedy had become an exact replica of each of the other ten American comedies then playing in Times Square. This, though Mr. Grey was no intellectual giant, made a difference to his artist's pride. It made no difference to the Broadway theatregoers. They fairly devoured the play. They swallowed all the old wheezes and all the old slush and all the George Ade lingo and all the Southern mammy stuff. They swallowed it all without winking. Despite the fears of the producer, they proved themselves to be almost fully up to the intellectual level of the fifteen-year-old leading juvenile. They greeted his every act of clownage and horseplay with salvos of applause. They laughed themselves sick over him. And when the poodle dog and the baby appeared, the applause brought down the rafters.

To put it mildly, Mr. Howard Madison Grey was stupefied. However, the success of "The Great Reprieve" became the talk of the town. An ex-President of the United States went to see it and drenched his box with the tears of hilarity and contentment. Next day, he described the play as "a clean, wholesome play of American life, manners and thought!—every one hundred per cent American will be satisfied with it."

This description was henceforth underscored in every advertisement of "The Great Reprieve." Seats were sold ten weeks in advance. The producer and his crew of play-salvagers added another feather to their caps. And Mrs. Howard Madison Grey began to look for an apartment on upper Park Avenue.

IV

The ensuing increase in the volume of engagements and correspondence threw Janet together with Mr. Grey for uninterrupted stretches, oftener than Mrs. Grey thought wise.

Before long, the author's wife noted significant alterations in her husband's behavior.

Mrs. Howard Madison Grey was nothing if not scientific. She believed religiously in the scientific method and applied it to all her activities, even to her excursions in jealousy. As she hadn't read "Science and Power" by Fitzfield Tyler, the efficiency engineer, for nothing, she understood thoroughly that the proper method for scientific research proceeds by three stages, namely:

One: Observing facts, without any preconceived notion.

Two: Imagining a general explanation or hypothesis that establishes the relation of cause and effect between two groups of facts.

Three: Verifying this hypothesis, a process of determining by means of personally conducted observations, whether the hypothesis fits the facts it proposes to explain.

Observing, imagining, verifying—these were the three stages the trained investigator had to grasp. And Mrs. Howard Madison Grey grasped them with considerable kinetic energy.

In the first place, observation of the library during work time ceased to reveal Mr. Grey in the careless act of dictating in shirt sleeves and suspenders or of puffing cigarette smoke unconcernedly towards Janet's innocent lungs. Instead, it disclosed him in a handsome velvet smoking jacket and betrayed the astonishing fact that from the very moment the smoking jacket was exhibited the smoking habit was suppressed. Clearly, Mr. Grey's behavior in the past and his behavior in the present showed the existence of two utterly different groups of facts.

To imagine a general explanation which should connect these two groups of facts was the second and by long odds the easiest step. Mrs. Howard Madison Grey formulated the hypothesis that some perverse piece of femininity had lost her head over Mr. Grey's resplendent fame and fortune, and had set out to tempt him into the primrose path of dalliance.

The third step was to verify this hypothesis with a series of experiments.

Mrs. Grey began by putting Janet through a systematic cross-examination. Didn't she think men looked revolting in shirt sleeves and suspenders? Quite so. Frankly, hadn't she simply longed to know a great literary genius intimately? Naturally! And what might be her views on the subject of nicotine? She thought smoking a disgusting habit? Ah, well!

These answers were supplemented by scraps of information obtained, it must be confessed, by experiments that might have daunted any but a most dispassionate investigator. Disregarding ethics, it is an open question whether a personally conducted observation is better served by studying truth face to face or by studying her through a keyhole. Mrs. Grey's contribution to the answer was to adopt the latter plan on the principle that all is fair in love and science.

She ratified the somewhat precarious keyhole method by the surer method of sudden sallies into the library. She heard Mr. Grey addressing his secretary in musically resonant tones, and saw him showing undue solicitude for her comfort. Nay more, she surprised them in animated, unworkmanlike conversations. True, she did not get the precise drift of these talks, but she was morally certain that the talkers were discussing six of the deadly sins and wishing the seventh. Though further proof was scarcely needed, she found the straw that topped the climax. Mr. Grey offered to double Janet's salary without request. The conclusion forced itself on Mrs. Grey that her hypothesis was incontestably established. It brought light out of darkness and order out of chaos, besides fitting all the facts it proposed to explain.

She lost no time in acting on the verified conclusion.

One Monday morning before Howard Madison Grey returned from a week-end on the New Jersey coast, she intercepted Janet.

"The new play," she said accusingly, "isn't progressing very fast."

"No," admitted Janet, "it isn't. So many topical matters have had to be disposed of lately that the final copy of the play has been held back."

Janet could scarcely dwell on her employer's growing penchant for conversation with her when his wife was presumed to be securely occupied.

"Mr. Grey," said his wife, half reflectively, "Mr. Grey has the creative temperament."

She frequently aired this phrase; it had, she believed, the ring and tang of distinction. Privately, she thought that the artistic temperament incapacitated a man from the sane discharge of his most elementary duties.

"The creative temperament," she went on, "is too fine to cope with the details of business."

She gave Janet to understand that it was imperative that the success of "The Great Reprieve" should be followed up without delay.

"Mr. Sarsfield, the manager," continued Mrs. Grey, "has just telephoned anxiously for the next manuscript."

"Mr. Grey is still working on the revision of the third act," said Janet. "As soon as he finishes it, I shall rush the whole play through. Of course, I can type the first two acts at once."

"Yes, do. But can you work uninterruptedly here? Perhaps you could finish it faster at home—instead of coming here?"

Janet jumped at the chance. "Certainly," she said, "I can finish it at home in half the time."

Mrs. Grey was taken aback. On second thoughts, she put Janet's eagerness down to the new feminist strategy.

"There's the risk," she said, uneasily picturing the precious pages at the mercy of the New York transit services.

Anxious to escape the assiduities of the wife, if not of the husband, Janet gave reckless assurances of her devotion to the manuscript.

Mrs. Grey finally assented to the arrangement. Janet was to take the manuscript in sections and, if the scheme worked well, she might do all future typewriting for the playwright in the same way. She need come to the Greys' house only for the dictation.