Front matter (continued 6)

"Can I be of assistance?" said a gentleman who had suddenly stopped on his way past her.

She saw a short, robust, handsome man with an auburn beard and somewhat darker hair faintly tinged with gray. He took off his hat and bowed.

"I can speak a little English," he said, fluently enough, though to Janet's ears the accent sounded rather German.

Then he and Cophetua rapidly exchanged a few sentences in French. From the latter's frigid manner, nothing was plainer than that he regarded the stranger's mediation with extreme distaste.

"He merely wishes to know whether you are seeking a position," said Janet's self-appointed interpreter.

"How could I be? I don't know a word of the language, as you can see," she said, with one of her fascinating gestures.

This reply was duly conveyed to the chief of the employment bureau who, with a thousand daggers in his parting smile, withdrew majestically into his shell.

"It is impossible to know the reason for a mistake so deplorable," said he of the auburn beard, apologizing for Cophetua.

He lifted his hat again, and made as if to go. But he did not go.

"Oh, I don't mind a bit," said Janet, laughing unaffectedly. "If only I knew French, I should like nothing better than to take some position or other."

For a second, they looked into each other's eyes with mutual approval. Then he said boldly:

"In that case—would you like to be—what do the English call it—tutor to my little girl?"

From Cophetua, looming in the background, came mesmeric waves of hostility. Sensing this, they walked away together. He gave her a card inscribed with the name of Anton St. Hilaire. He told her he was an Alsatian, a widower with one child of about fourteen years. His wife had died during his absence on service at the front. His daughter having sickened, he had been to Italy with her. Now he meant to make a long stay in Brussels in order to be near a famous specialist for children. Later he and Henriette would travel.

Henriette had a nurse who for many reasons was unsatisfactory. His wish had long been to place the child in charge of a cultivated woman who should be a friend to her rather than a mere attendant, and who should inspire him with entire confidence. After a few not very searching questions, he professed to have entire confidence in Janet. He waved aside as immaterial the objection in respect of Janet's ignorance of French. She would pick up French as quickly as Henriette picked up English. Henriette had already had some English instruction; and Janet, for her part, had no doubt of her ability to manage the child as far as the linguistic difficulty went. Had she not proved up to the hilt her genius for making foreigners understand her when such was her desire?

"I could get along with a Choctaw," she said to herself, exultantly.

They talked as they proceeded along the Boulevard Anspach. The long and the short of it was that Janet agreed to consider the offer. She promised to pay a visit next day to M. St. Hilaire's apartments in order to meet Henriette. She would then make up her mind whether to take the position or not.

Upon this understanding the Alsatian left her.

Janet, all agog with her adventure, gave up shopping for the day.

The encounter appeared to her to be a godsend.

She liked M. St. Hilaire. If she also liked his daughter, if she and Henriette took to each other enough to make the proffered place attractive, she would be in a position to part company with Claude immediately.

As she had a strong conviction (backed by plenty of experience) that she could get along with any halfway tolerable human being, she considered the step as good as taken.

True, she anticipated a bad quarter of an hour in having it out with Claude. But what a jolly thing it was to be in possession of a powerful weapon like economic independence. It was the last argument against tyrants, in this case against Claude and the special set of circumstances that made her absolutely dependent upon him.

She wished she could be candid with Claude and tell him all about the Alsatian. But this was impossible. Claude's capacity for candor was like some people's capacity for alcohol. A little of it went to his head and made him quarrelsome.

She was not like that! She could stand being told any amount of truth (or so she flattered herself). This was why so many people made her their confidante. Having an illusion stripped away might give acute pain, but it never outraged her. Witness her disenchantment with the theory of free love. But Claude, in common with most people, was like the famous prisoner who had spent years in a dungeon and who, when released, was quite overpowered by the fresh air. An unusual supply of truth all but killed the average man.

In this matter, the only one she had ever met like herself was Robert Lloyd. How she had underestimated Robert! Worse, how she had underestimated the strength of her attachment to him! Her partnership with Claude, a partnership of infatuation, had been a weak thing. A breath had made it, and a breath had blown it away. But her partnership with Robert, a partnership of work and mutual interests, had been a bond of adamant. Time could not wither it nor custom stale its precious memory.

She had a passionate longing to write Robert and pour out her heart to him as in the old days of the firm of Barr & Lloyd.

But no. This would never do. In questions of sex, Robert was as fanatic as any average American business man. The scene on the East River pier came back to her vividly. There he had stood like a reincarnation of Cato the Elder (Cornelia's nicknames certainly did hit the bull's-eye at times!) lecturing her and saying:

"I sha'n't have anything to do with free love or with a woman who has had a free lover."

The remembrance caused a wave of bitter feeling to surge through her.

By this time she had reached the Place Rogier. There she took a bus to the office of the American Express Company in order to inquire for mail. The one letter handed to her had been forwarded from Paris. The superscription was in Cornelia's handwriting, and Janet tore open the envelope without delay.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I

As was her custom, Cornelia had written in a decidedly lyrical vein, sounding in turn the strings of pathos, misgiving and melancholy sympathy. Without formal salutation the letter began:

My heart is torn for you, Araminta dearest, as I follow the story of your wanderings. It is a story that reopens old wounds, for in your sufferings I again experience my own. With what a different poignancy! Different as Claude Fontaine and Percival Houghton are different. I know that Claude possesses the supreme fascination that leads so many women to throw themselves recklessly into his arms. He turns their heads; but at least he does not rob them of their souls. This, Percival Houghton did. Thank your kind stars, my dear, that Claude is not as Percival, that he has not the latter's dominating will or piratical psychic personality. Your soul can still be called your own.

How I pray that your trials may turn out for the best! Araminta, every woman is fated to learn at the hands of some man how unscrupulous all men are in matters of sex. But is it not strange that men should outflag us at what is called our own game, and that women should let themselves be deceived by the fact that they are always credited with the victory? This indeed is man's greatest cleverness. He snatches the spoils even whilst loudly protesting that we have him completely at our mercy. Yes, men are our masters in the game of love, the game that is said to be our profession and their pastime. My dear, the amateur who gaily calls the tune has a much better time of it than the professional who is compelled to do the fiddling—unless the fiddler plays wholly and solely for love or is clever enough to exact a price insuring freedom after the dance is over. But this is an elementary principle which I need hardly point out to you, Araminta.

You say you do not mean to marry Claude, although you believe it lies within your power to do so. At the same time, you speak in harsh disparagement of free unions. To be candid, this mystifies me. I hope, however, that I'm wrong in detecting, beneath your criticism, a subtle reproach. If I'm right, you've done me a grievous injustice.

Didn't I consistently urge that free love is for daring and devoted spirits only? And what wonders have not the bold and brave done for our sex in the last thirty years! Look how the market value of men has fallen and how the market value of women has risen, if I may use the crude language of Mazie Ross. No longer do women live, as did our grandmothers, for the sole purpose of "charming" men or of sipping the nectar of their "homage."

Pray observe, dear child, that I never decried marriage in the case of the few women who are strong enough to command the legal tyrant instead of submitting to him, and who thus are in a position to straighten out the irrational knot from the inside. As for the common rule of females, if they will go on flocking to the altar in droves, if they will be infatuated with marriage after we have opened their eyes to man—why, let them rush in where angels fear to tread. And let them take the consequences, too. Small blame to the nuptial fire if it scorches the likes of them. Is the flame guilty because the moths dash in?

But now for the news, although there is precious little.

First, Lydia Dyson has produced a new novel—and a new baby. You know she lets this happen (I mean the baby) every once in so often because she says it is the only way to keep her complexion perfect. (It really is a perfect olive, in spite of the quantities of gold-tipped cigarettes she smokes.) The baby, like its predecessors, has been given out for adoption to a childless couple in good circumstances, Lydia contending (a la Rousseau) that an artist makes a very unsatisfactory parent. Lydia's other achievement, her novel, "The Mother Soul," has been running serially in the Good Householder. It's netting her the usual mint of money, ten thousand dollars down, to say nothing of copious extras in the shape of book and dramatic royalties.

There's Lydia for you, flourishing like the green bay tree! Not like your poor Cornelia, who'd be happy enough to take the child and let the royalties go.

Robert is rarely here nowadays. Charlotte Beecher, therefore, doesn't show up often, and so, what with you and Claude in Europe, I'd be monarch of all I surveyed, if Hercules didn't take pity on me and come in to drive the blue devils away. He spoils me almost as much as you did. A dear, dutiful boy he is, as fond of work as a camel. I feel conscience-stricken when I think how lightly I accept his devotion. Ought I to make him happy? Ah, well-a-day! I'm sometimes tempted—ah, how I'm tempted!

But a poor soulless thing like me mustn't think of such things.

Harry's prospects have improved wonderfully of late. You know his heart was never in professional wrestling. He deliberately gave up a promising career on the mat, as they call it, where he acquired that odious nickname of the "Harlem Gorilla." Poor Hercules is about as much like a gorilla as I am like an elephant. Refusing engagements to appear in public contests brought him down on his luck for a time. That's how he happened to land in the model tenements. He never was even the least bit of a radical. Among the Outlaws, our gorilla is quite a lamb.

Well, this repulsive part of his career is over for good. He is now the physical director of the Bankers' Club. (What think you of my prophetic nickname for Hercules? The bankers have their monster clubhouse on Fifth Avenue, almost next door to the Pillars of Hercules, as the Gotham and St. Regis hotels are called.) It's a good position. And an even better one is in sight. The Life Prolongation Institute (I say, Araminta, what a name!) has lately approached him in regard to a post at one of its European branches.

Wouldn't it be odd, if we all met some fine morning in Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysees?

As for Robert, he has become as mad as a March hare. His Guild League seems to have dropped through a hole in the ground. (I predicted that, too!) He says the Guildsman propaganda was too radical for the old-style Laborites and too conservative for the Bolsheviks. But I can't pretend to follow these distinctions.

At all events, he was very much at loose ends for a while. One or two excellent openings in the newspaper line he calmly turned down with the remark that a successful journalist would have to be as corrupt as Falstaff and Hutchins Burley rolled into one. He is really quite incorrigible. He never seems to be content until he has got himself thoroughly on the wrong side of everybody who might be of service to him.

There are any number of instances of this trait. His personal quarrel with Hutchins Burley was quite unnecessarily lengthened into a business feud. He never made the most of his friendship with Claude (think what a chance it was for a man in his circumstances to be intimate with a man in Claude's!). He got himself in the black books of the whole newspaper world because of his agitation for the Guildsmen. And he is always flinging off violently from his friends. To this day, he rebuffs Hercules and me whenever we try to help him.

But finally, on account of his mother and sister out West, he had to put his pride in his pocket. It was too late! Did Cato ever tell you that he had an uncle with bushels of money in California? Well, it seems there is such a relative, and Robert applied to him for temporary help. The uncle, a chip of Robert's block—for he evidently has little use for affection, family or otherwise—preserved a discreet silence. After cross-questioning our friend, I found out why. He had painstakingly sent the old gentleman (who made a fortune in real estate speculation) his own pamphlet on land profiteering! As I said before, Robert is incorrigible.

What does he do next but hit on the brilliant scheme of going to work as a clerk in an insurance company, downtown. Denman Page's insurance company, as it happens. Fancy our fastidious Cato with his quick ways and ideal enthusiasms sitting from nine till five at a poky desk in Wall Street. And is this fearful sacrifice made for the sake of turning over an honest penny (thirty dollars a week, to be exact)? Never believe it. Robert's little game is to help organize the mercantile employees into a radical labor union. Can you beat it?

He says that the clerk is the most abject boot-licker and willing slave of the ruling robber bankers to be found in the whole industrial system (I won't vouch for the accuracy of this description). He (the clerk, that is) needs redemption. But although plenty of rich people go a-slumming amongst the very poor and downtrodden, nobody is self-sacrificing enough to go on a mission of mercy amongst the benighted and degraded "clerkical" classes.—And so he raves on.

In retaliation, the big bankers and insurance chiefs have also formed a society to resist the inroads of Robert's infant union. Denman Page, Charlotte's indefatigable wooer, is one of the most aggressive leaders in the employers' society and is doing his utmost to persecute Robert and make his life as miserable as possible. Robert, loathing business, hangs on downtown, purely out of regard for his union.

He is simply throwing his natural talents away. All so unnecessarily, too. At any moment, he could marry Charlotte Beecher for the asking, and develop his executive ability—become a great public administrator or something like that. Charlotte isn't noted for her beauty; but she is young, she has several millions in her own right, and she is no mere society trifler either. She works almost as hard at her sculpture as if she had to earn her own living. Lots of men are after her, naturally enough. They say Denman Page would give his eyeteeth to add Charlotte's fortune to his bank account. But she seems to want Robert. Rumor has it that she has even proposed to him several times. To Cato! And leave it to him to fish up some silly scruple about not selling his independence to a rich wife!

Still, I saw him in Charlotte's studio in the Mews lately. He was quite lover-like (in his Catonic way). I hear he goes there pretty often. So perhaps there's hope.

What a picture I could draw of how your departure with Lothario set the Lorillard tenements by the ears! The headlines, the excitement among the Outlaws, Kips Bay in a buzz, buzz, buzz—but you can imagine it much better for yourself. Cato alone took it with stoical calm. Araminta, he astonished me! Hardly a syllable would he say about it. A stern sort of "make your bed and lie in it" expression was all we could get out of him. And he shut off questions with the remark that it was entirely your affair.

Yes, we all thought Big Hutch held the key to the leakage into the papers. He hates Claude with an undying hatred for some reason unknown to me, and he has an immortal tomahawk out for you because you so openly showed the disgust he filled you with. "Hell hath no fury like a Hutchins scorned."

The old villain was lately appointed a member of a newspaper mission to travel de luxe to Russia. Trust Hutchins to keep himself in clover. Mazie Ross, as bad, as pretty, and as syrupy as ever, is to be his traveling companion (all on the quiet, of course—the purpose of the mission being to report on the stability and morality of the Bolshevik regime). And they say that ethics is a humorless science!

Keep me informed, dear child, of your plans and movements. What shall I send to Lothario? Rosemary and rue, or poniards and poison? My fondest hopes and wishes—from my heart—wing their way to you.

Ever your devoted,

Cornelia.

Janet finished reading with a sigh. The letter changed none of her opinions or plans. It merely determined her all the more strongly to suppress her desire to write to Robert.

II

On returning to her room at the hotel she got rather a start, for Claude was there. Usually when he went away in anger, he returned late at night, and it was now only late in the afternoon. A glance showed her that he was in gay spirits and that he had communicated this mood to the apartment by filling it with the color and fragrance of flowers. It was a part of his peace offering.

Hardly had she entered, when he rushed forward, relieved her of her parcels and kissed her ardently.

"Darling," he exclaimed, "what a bad-tempered beast I've been! Can you forgive me once more?"

She fought desperately against the spell of his romantic personality.

"Why not?" she said, withdrawing from his caresses.

"You are an angel, dearest," he said, seizing her hands.

"Then I shall be an angel on the wing, Claude."

"Janet! Say anything but that. Prescribe any punishment you please. But do let's begin again, with a clean slate."

"You can't get the slate clean when the scratches are too deep, Claude. To forgive and act as though nothing had changed is hard; to forgive and act as though everything had changed is harder still. We must both be sensible and do the second, the harder thing."

"What do you mean?" said Claude, in alarm.

"I mean that we'll be much happier apart."

"Don't say that again, Janet dearest. You are taking my conduct of the last two weeks too seriously. It isn't fair. I've frequently behaved abominably. I don't try to excuse it. I admit it. But remember the constant worry I've had to put up with at this cursed Brussels office. That boor of a Walloon in charge has undoubtedly had orders from my father to be a thorn in my side. And he's doing his level best to please. Not a day passes but what he gives me a hundred lancet scratches ending in a good stiletto stab."

Worry had not made Claude less handsome. The ring and tang of his voice thrilled Janet almost as much as of old. His patrician manner and flashing blue eyes were almost as irresistible. Yet Janet put away his arm and said:

"Claude, I know you've had a very trying time. It's altogether on my account, isn't it? All the more reason for me to go away."

"But what on earth do you want to leave me for?"

"For a thousand reasons."

"You might deign to mention one."

"Well, when you frown, you want me to be sad; when you laugh, you want me to be gay. You never think that I may have moods of my own, moods that won't dance to your piping. You never think of any one but yourself."

"Oh, don't I? I've had you on my mind all day. I've thought of nothing else. And it's not the first day that I've spent in a torment of worry about your attitude towards me."

A great wave of self-pity swept through him and quite carried him off his feet. By precedent, it should have carried Janet off her feet, too.

She stood her ground in silence.

"For Heaven's sake, don't be obstinate," he said, his confidence beginning to desert him. "It isn't late yet," he added, in a more pleading tone. "We can still have an awfully good time this evening. Do be nice—"

"Nice!"

She stood up and looked at him. He mistook the mocking expression in her smiling gray eyes, and did not notice the faintly contracting brows above her long-lashed eyelids.

"Yes, nice and reasonable," he went on, pursuing what he thought an advantage.

"Reasonable!" The faint contraction was now a forbidding bar. "I'm trying hard to be reasonable, Claude."

After a pause, she smiled again. "You pull me one way, reason pulls me another," she said, with characteristic candor. "Now see if my plan doesn't follow reason. You left this morning, for a short while; I'm leaving tomorrow, for good and all. You left me in anger; I should like to leave you good friends. It isn't as easy as it sounds. Will you help me?"

He flung himself angrily into an armchair.

"You must be mad to think you can shift for yourself in a strange country."

"Mad or not, that is exactly what I think," she said, coldly. "And I shall begin to pack my things now."

She actually drew out a bag and suited the action to the words. Claude looked on, speechless. After a while he went over and, roughly taking hold of one of her arms, continued his remonstrance.

"You can't even read the language, let alone speak it. And you haven't a penny of your own. Or do you expect to earn money on the streets?"

"Not until I've exhausted the regular channels," she said, maddeningly calm.

Inwardly she was boiling. She looked at him steadily until he released her arm. Then she added:

"I feel perfectly capable of looking out for myself, even in a strange country. Here are some socks I bought for you at a counter where no English was spoken."

"The devil take the socks!" he said, hurling the package to the other end of the room.

She sat down on a tuffet beside her case.

"You know quite well that I had a little money of my own, which I brought with me," she said. "That will do me to begin on."

"To begin on!" he raged, pacing the floor violently. "What do you mean by begin on? Is this another secret? As for your money, I know nothing about that either. I'm continually being slapped in the face with something or other that you've kept in the dark. But what's a little deceit among lovers?"

"I've never deceived you," she said, growing bitter as she went on. "In any case, deceiving you would be a trifle compared with the crime of deceiving myself."

"Deceiving yourself?"

"Yes. Do you suppose I could ever have lived with you, without first thoroughly deceiving myself?"

Claude's anger cooled at this bitter question. Janet was now worked up, and anything was better than the killing indifference she had so far maintained. He closed her valise and sat down on it, at her side.

"Janet," he pleaded, "you were never like this before. So unyielding, so cold. And I had planned that we'd make a gala night of it. Look at these lovely flowers. Don't you understand their symbolism? I'm going to do the right thing. I mean to marry you now, here in Brussels, at once!"

"You've offered to do that before."

"Yes, but I really mean it this time."

"And I really meant it Claude, every time I refused. You see, I always assumed that your offers were made in good faith."

"You are making a fool of me."

"No one can do that but yourself."

He got up abruptly and stood there nonplused, while she calmly went on packing. He hated her for it. She was rude, inflexible, callous. Her motives were unfathomable. She was never twice the same. Yet at this moment he believed he wanted her more passionately than he had ever wanted her before. He burst into suspicion.

"What's the real reason, Janet? Some one has written to you—Robert, I dare say?"

He took her silence for an affirmation.

"I thought so. Now I understand your change of attitude. He's been preaching at you. It's his specialty. His views, curse them, are like a drought. They dry up all one's spontaneity and natural affection. Long ago, in the tenements, I noticed his sinister effect on you. Whenever you went out with him, you came back with your heart hardened against me."

She laughed and said:

"What nonsense! You're quite wrong. Robert hasn't wasted any of his valuable sermons on me. He hasn't sent me so much as a scrap of paper."

"Then what has changed you, all of a sudden? Is it my father you're afraid of? That would be too absurd. He'll come around. He has got to come around. He can't help himself. I know too much about the business, its secrets and its weaknesses. So don't worry on that score."

"Claude, it's all very fine. But I don't see myself as your wife. I'd never do. You need a woman to manage you like a mother and to flatter you like a squaw. But—these jobs not being in my line—I'd criticize you like an equal. And you know you simply can't stand criticism."

Was she really rejecting his offer of marriage? Claude was appalled at the apathy of the feminine intellect in the face of a miracle. Didn't she know what his offer meant? (He tried to convey it to her—not in the exact words, but in euphemisms.) It meant a change of estate from mistress to wife. The wife of Claude Fontaine! The wife of a merchant prince of Paris, London, New York, etc. (the only sort of prince that counted in the twentieth century; no mere paper prince or petty Venetian dogeling, but a prince whose rank had an international validity and whose means could challenge the heart to name its wildest desire). It was not conceivable that she knew what she was about. Still, he had to face the possibility.

And this desertion on top of all he had endured in consequence of leaving America with her!

"Isn't there a shred of gratitude in you?" he cried out, aghast at her unyielding front.

"I'm not ungrateful, Claude," she said, gravely. "Living with you has been a liberal education. I've learned the truth about marriage without binding myself for life; I've also learned the difference between affection and infatuation without breaking either your heart or mine. Can I ever repay this? If every girl could have some experience in living with a man or two before she made a permanent choice, I believe marriage would be far more popular."

"Confound your opinions," he shouted, in an agony of rage.

With a wild movement, he seized both her arms and furiously lifted her to her feet.

"Look here. Do you think you can calmly turn your back on me after what I've put up with, after all I've suffered on your account? Exactly why do you want to go away at the very moment that I'm marooned in this infernal town? You've got to tell me straight! Is it sheer insanity, or a craze for romantic adventure?"

With cheeks glowing and lips quivering, she said:

"I'm leaving you because we have nothing in common except our physical attraction. And that is mostly physical repulsion now, as you see."

"Haven't you one spark of love for me left?"

"Claude, with all your faults I love you still," she replied, smiling, as she rallied her self-command.

He relapsed into his seat, utterly overwhelmed.

Deeply moved, she went over to his side, and looked at him with a pang of remorse. He edged away from her with a passionate sense of injury.

"Remember," he warned her, "if you leave me, that will end everything. Society may ostracize you, or toss you back into the gutter. Don't ask me to lift a finger."

The friendly words froze on her lips. She quietly resumed packing.

He sprang up, beside himself, his whole person vibrating with his fury.

"If you're going, you needn't wait until tomorrow!" he said, drawing in his breath. "You can go now, for all I care."

He walked to the window, his teeth clenched and his body set.

While she hastily assembled the rest of her most necessary things, he was saying to himself:

"This damned idea of independence! She thinks she can frighten me. She thinks I won't let her go. I'll call the bluff, and she'll come back flying."

All this on a horrible quicksand of doubt.

But she saw only his hostile back and heard only the echo of his savage tones.

How like her mother he was!

Without a word, she picked up her bag and went out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I

A sedan drove up to M. St. Hilaire's house in the Quartier Leopold. The young lady who got out was met at the door by a girl of fourteen who enfolded her in affectionate embraces.

"Oh, what a slow poke!" cried the girl reproachfully. "You were gone for ever and ever, Jeanette!"

"Two hours and ten minutes, Henrietta," said Janet looking at her wrist watch, "is pretty short measure for eternity. I'm glad you're not my butcher or baker."

Henriette grimaced. They went upstairs together, the girl's arm tightly clasping her companion's waist.

Henriette St. Hilaire was a lovely girl, lithe and slender. Her fair hair was bobbed and her eyes were the soft blue eyes of the North.

She complained again of the dull time she had had.

"Serve you right for having a headache when I left," said Janet. "According to Herbert Spencer, if I went out for a drive by myself every time you had one, your headaches would soon disappear."

"Mine has gone already. Show me all you bought, Janski. May I open the parcels?"

"Yes, one by one."

For Henriette was recklessly attacking strings and wrappers, to the great peril of the contents.

Among the parcels undid was one containing a book.

She read out the title: "Tom, Dick and Harry."

"What's this?"

"That's a book of light reading for a young lady well advanced in the English language."

Henriette had taken to English as a duck takes to water. After a year of continuous practice, she spoke it well; and read or wrote it passably.

"Oh, it isn't a girl's book, is it?" she said, dubiously, and scanning the title again in the light of Janet's words.

"No, it's a boy's book. Boys' books are the only ones I know about because they were the only ones I used to read. They were much jollier than the girls' books."

"Did your mother let you read boys' books? My mother wouldn't."

"Nor mine either. But I read them on the sly. That's what made them so enticing, I suppose."

"I can't imagine that you ever did anything on the sly, Janski," said the child, who still took idioms somewhat too literally.

"Oh, can't you? Then I'm not half such a fool as I look."

Henriette laid the book down and went over to make a demonstration of tenderness by way of intimating that she believed Janet to be the best and cleverest person in the whole world.

Janet skillfully cut this demonstration short. She believed that a child's affections, like its disaffections, should be kept well within bounds.

"Your enthusiasm for 'Tom, Dick and Harry,'" she said, in her musical voice, "leaves much to be desired. Let me tell you that it is not a book for study, but a book for light reading. If you really mean to make English your 'adopted tongue,' as you sometimes tell me, you must get used to light reading. The English-speaking nations read very little else."

Henriette gave her a look full of adoration.

"Oh, I don't need light reading while I have you. To be with you is like—it's as exciting as watching the loop-the-loop!"

"Look here, Miss, do you imply that I'm a sort of three-ringed circus or professional jumping-jack?"

"No. I don't mean anything horrid and jumpy like that. I mean you are never like other people. That's why it's such fun to try and guess what you will do or say next. And I hardly ever guess right."

"I see. I'm more like a Christmas stocking, full of surprises."

"There, you see what funny things you say! It's far more absorbing than a hundred books of light reading."

"Henriette, you are becoming highly skilled at flattery. It's a very useful accomplishment. If my absence brings out virtues like this, I think I shall make a point of deserting you for two hours every morning. You will become a paragon, and I shall be famous for my absent teaching."

"Oh, no, no, most dearest Jeanette. If need be, I'll say the most awful things about you. I'll do anything to keep you."

She gave a great sigh.

"You don't know how I worry about losing you. It's terrible! Why weren't you my sister or my aunt? Then I'd be sure of keeping you always!"

"Don't be too sure of that, darling. If we were close relations, everybody would expect us to be fond of each other. And this expectation would probably destroy most of the fondness, unless our attraction for each other happened to be overwhelming."

"Oh, it is overwhelming, isn't it? It must be, Jeanette. Why, I wouldn't mind even if you were my mother!"

"That's what I call crushing proof."

"Yes. And it's taking chances, too. I don't really want another mother, you know. Mothers are only truly nice to their sons. Now do you see how much I love you?"

"I do, you little philosopher. And I conclude, from so much undeserved affection, that, as a teacher, I have probably been far too easy-going. In future, I shall have to be much more severe."

"Oh, that has nothing to do with it," said Henriette, laughing. "It isn't the way you treat me. It's—well, I don't know what. Perhaps it's the deep, deep mystery about you. Papa has noticed it, too."

"Has he, indeed?"

"Yes. And speaking of mysteries, I forgot to tell you that some one called to see you while you were out. A gentleman—"

"A gentleman! Who could it be?"

"Well, he was a great big mountain of a man. Ugly, oh, like the ogre in a fairy tale. I didn't like him a bit."

"Oh, you saw him?"

"Yes. I peeked over the banisters. What a monster! Papa wasn't home. Berthe let him in because he said he was an old friend of yours. Here's his card."

Janet read the name of Hutchins Burley, and needed all her self-control not to show her dismay.

"Did he leave a message?"

Henriette prattled on, unaware of Janet's emotion.

"He asked Berthe to tell you that he would call again about five o'clock tomorrow afternoon. He said he especially wanted to see you. If you couldn't be in, he would be sure to see papa."

"Five o'clock, did he say?"

"Yes. Just when my riding lesson comes. I suppose we shall have to give up our ride," she added mournfully.

"Let's wait and see, dear."

II

Had Burley chanced upon her in the street and followed her home, or had he seen her in one of the shops or at one of the English tea rooms in Brussels? Janet did not pursue this fruitless inquiry. The question was how to meet the fact, the perilous fact. For she could hardly doubt that Hutchins Burley's visit boded her no good.

She passed the events of the last nine months in quick review. M. St. Hilaire had engaged her without references. True to his agreement, moreover, he had given her a free hand with Henriette's education and had been well pleased when a growing attachment between Janet and his daughter relieved him almost entirely of routine parental cares.

As the virtual guardian of Henriette, Janet had had little to complain of and much to be thankful for. Her pupil and her pupil's father had treated her from the first as one of themselves, so that she enjoyed all the advantages of membership in a family of wealth and refinement. These advantages were not to be scoffed at. M. St. Hilaire was not only a man of cultivated tastes; he possessed the means (derived from extensive realty holdings in Alsace and Switzerland) which permitted him to indulge his tastes on a very liberal scale.

All in all, Janet thanked her lucky stars, especially as the pose of chivalry, which M. St. Hilaire had contributed to their first meeting, had worn very well. True, at the outset, he had made a few advances ranging from the demonstrative to the amorous. But she had set these experiments down to the incorrigible habit of continental gallantry. He had not gone beyond them, had accepted her gentle rebuffs with a very good grace, and had not thenceforth encroached upon her intimacy further than she wished.

Of late, she had not been able to close her eyes to the fact that her employer was engaged in a mental debate as to whether or no he should propose marriage to her. She regretted this fact and dreaded its sequel. For reasons that seemed good and sufficient to her instincts if not to her intellect, she had no desire to marry M. St. Hilaire. Her present berth was very comfortable and altogether to her liking. It gave her the rest she needed after the strain of her adventure with Claude; it also gave her an opportunity to reflect on the past and get her bearings in the present, before she took another leap.

It was in the light of these relations with M. St. Hilaire and with Henriette that she wondered what she ought to do.

As regards Hutchins Burley, she was sure that he meant to play the heavy villain. Why not? Nature had cut him out for the part, patterning him magnificently upon the "heavies" that trod on the blood-and-thunder stage. After all, one had to give this stage its due. If the literary drama could create characters which nature copied (and sometimes improved on), so could melodrama. And certainly, in Hutchins Burley, melodrama had prompted nature to make her masterpiece.

Janet had rather settled it, then, that Hutchins would have the audacity to approach her with a repugnant offer (the same old offer), hoping that her recent experience might have left her less squeamish than in the days of the model tenements when she had repeatedly repulsed him with scorn. On being repulsed anew, he would proceed to inform M. St. Hilaire of her affair with Claude Fontaine in the expectation that the news would bring about her discharge. For it was unlikely that a father would wish his child to continue in the care of a young woman who had "gone wrong."

The mischief done, Hutchins would live in hopes of snatching from her weakness the gratification he had vainly striven to beg, borrow or steal from her strength.

Should she now, like a movie heroine, try to head Hutchins off, temporize with his expected offer, pay him blackmail, or what not? She laughed heartily at this idea, its execution was so foreign to her nature.

What would Robert advise her to do? At this point she repeated an act that had lately been a favorite part of her daydreams. She called up Robert, as Saul called up the Witch of Endor, and had a long, sensible talk with him one of those long, sensible talks so frequent in the days of Barr & Lloyd in the Lorillard tenements.

Robert advised her to obey her common sense unless her instinct kicked over the traces, in which case let her feel no compunction about obeying her instinct. She had better have as little direct dealing with Hutchins Burley as possible. You could no more put off a scoundrel than you could buy up a gentleman. The basest as well as the best of men were incorruptible. If Hutchins had it in mind to do something nasty, he would do it, no matter what course she took.

Of course, she might throw herself on M. St. Hilaire's mercy. But then, though M. St. Hilaire was a decent sort of man, was he not, like most cultivated men, a classicist? That is, were not his reactions towards matters of sex thoroughly traditional? If so, the only attitude of Janet's that he would comprehend would be that of a penitent Magdalene with uplifted hands and tearful eyes. Was she prepared to assume this role?

"Decidedly not," was Janet's hot reply to Robert's shade. "I may have been rash or worldly-unwise, but I won't admit that I was wicked. If I am asked to pay up for my folly, I shall not try to evade payment. But if I am asked to pay up for my wickedness (which I do not acknowledge), I shall fight payment to the last ditch.

"No doubt, M. St. Hilaire will think me wicked, but do you?"

"There are three kinds of people," solemnly responded Robert's astral spirit. "And they correspond roughly to three kinds of existence we recognize: animal, vegetable and mineral. The mineral people are the dead people. Not more dead than the so-called minerals. But, like rocks and stones, they are incarnations of law and custom petrified. Then there are the vegetable people, the people who fold their hands and piously accept such crumbs of life as are showered upon them from the lap of High Heaven. Lastly there are the animal people, the people who go out to find life instead of waiting for life to find them. If you intend to remain in the last-named class, you must cheerfully assume the risks of adventure."

"Dear me," ejaculated Janet, "if his very shade isn't lecturing me for old times' sake!"

It was a little humiliating to be so dependent on Robert, even in the spirit. She wouldn't have minded it so much if his terrestrial self hadn't, with desolating coldness, washed his hands of her fate.

Still, take it all in all, he had done what all sagacious ghostly advisers should do, he had told her to do exactly what she wanted to do.

Consequently, Henriette's riding lesson should not be interfered with tomorrow. When Hutchins Burley came at five o'clock, he would find her out. Tableau of a raging ogre! His fury would know no bounds, and he would surely embellish Janet's life history so that M. St. Hilaire should put the worst interpretation on everything. Well, let him do his vilest. Come what may, time and the hour would run through the roughest day.

Losing Henriette!—Ah, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. Still, it wasn't the first bitter pill and it wouldn't be the last.

In every other way, she felt ready for a change.

III

"Can I see you for a few minutes?" said M. St. Hilaire to Janet, intercepting her outside his study, a little after six o'clock next day.

She and Henriette were on their way upstairs to take off their riding clothes and to dress for dinner.

"If you two are going to chatterbox, I shall take a little nap," said Henriette, climbing drowsily up another flight of stairs to her room.

"Don't be too long, mon pere," she added, stopping half-way and looking down over the banisters. "I'm even more hungry than sleepy. Jeanette, please wake me when you come up."

Janet, from within the study, promised to do so.

Neither her voice nor her manner betrayed her apprehensiveness. Her sailor hat was set rather jauntily on her head. Her light-brown riding coat and breeches made a most becoming costume, one that showed the undulating grace of her movements to excellent advantage.

M. St. Hilaire followed her into the study and closed the door a shade too circumspectly.

His glances and the vibrant tones of his voice puzzled her considerably. She could guess the substance of what he meant to convey but not the form in which he meant to convey it.

"That man—" he began in a hesitant manner.

"Mr. Burley, the man I said was coming today?"

"He came. You didn't tell me what he was coming for."

"I knew he'd do it so much better."

"He treated me to a long, long story about you."

"Yes, I rather thought he would."

"Oh, so you knew that, too?"

"I had no cause to suspect him of amiable intentions," she said, swinging her sailor hat by the elastic band. "I suppose he told you that I lived with Claude Fontaine?"

"Yes, but of course, I—"

"Oh, it's quite true."

M. St. Hilaire, nonplused by her candor, stroked his auburn beard and feasted on the sight of her as she sat in an armchair not far away. The indefinable suggestion of a devil-may-care mood enhanced her vital charm until it stirred, thrilled, intoxicated him.

"Perhaps—at one time—you have loved this Burley?" he asked, nursing the suspicion.

"A beast like that? Never!"

He moved his chair very closely to hers.

"Just Monsieur Fontaine?"

"You don't expect me to go into details?" she said, coloring deeply.

"No, no, my dear. But—what has been, can be. Is it not so?"

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't quite know himself. Being in no condition to reason clearly, he had leaped rashly to the conclusion that she had wished him to learn of her love affair as an indirect way of encouraging him.

Janet could not know his thoughts precisely, but she had an inkling. She wondered that she could have been so blind as not to have seen that his studied chivalry towards women covered a strongly sensual nature.

Even then, she was not insensible to the fact that Anton St. Hilaire was a pleasing man to look upon. His bright blue eyes and clear, ruddy complexion testified to a sound physique. Perhaps he was a trifle too robust. But there was a feminine comeliness about him which was a foil to his surging virility. In many women, the first quality calmed the piquant fears which the second quality excited.

"Burley naturally told all sorts of lies about you," he added, for want of a better line to take.

"I expected he would."

"And of course I sent him about his business."

"I rather expected that, too," she said, smiling in spite of a growing sense of alarm.

For he had abruptly approached her and advanced as fast as she involuntarily withdrew. She retreated around the desk towards the closed door, on one side of which stood a wide leather couch. Against this she stumbled slightly, and he caught up with her.

"Janet," he said, in a low voice, thick with excitement, "the way he dared to talk about you, you—so sweet, so clean, so adorable. I could have strangled the brute."

"I wish you had."

"You must let me protect you—"

They were at cross-purposes. She thought she could still reach the door and make a dignified escape. He felt her withdrawal as an added incitement. He had so long dispensed with the anticipating, insinuating maneuvers in the technique of love-making that he had lost the knack of using them. Moreover, his muscular strength, a sanguine temperament, and past successes in sexual experiments had primed him with the belief that direct action was the shortest way with all women.

"You must let me protect you—"

With the words still on his lips, he took her violently in his arms.

The touch of his hand against her body filled her with an enormous, sexless anger. Making an almost superhuman effort, she struck back his head and succeeded in wrenching herself from his grasp.

He stumbled, but instantly picked himself up. As he tried to back her away from the door, she again raised her hand.

"I can protect myself," she said, with a passionate repugnance that chilled him to the soul.

"Don't go like that," he cried, springing forward and clutching at her arm.

She dragged it away, rang for the maid, and rapidly turned the door knob.

"Berthe," she called down the hall, in clear ringing tones, "please open the storeroom. I want to get at my trunk."

Then she turned and looked at him, cold, distinguished, unapproachable.

St. Hilaire plumped into the nearest seat.

"I meant no harm," he muttered, numb, and crestfallen as a dried pear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I

Ten days later. A large sitting room in exclusive lodgings near Picadilly, London. Two men in an animated conversation. The decidedly younger one, breezy and Times Squarish, and yet politely deferential to the experience of his senior; the latter, a tall, wiry man immaculately dressed in a suit of neutral coloring.

The young man was saying:

"Yes, Mr. Pryor, he's slowly warming to me. Slowly. I tell you, sir, a Japanese naval attache can give points to an icicle. Still, I think he's biting!"

"Did you tell him that the U.S. Army of Occupation had sent machine guns to the number of three thousand two hundred and fifty to the Ukraine?"

"No. I followed your instructions to the dot. I merely said I was in a position to tell him the number."

"Well?"

"He replied, with a sour smile, that he was in the same position as regards me. I ventured to question the correctness of his information. He volunteered the figure."

"And the figure he gave?"

"Was three thousand two hundred and fifty."

Mark Pryor's rather long neck collapsed telescopically down his high, straight collar.

"And you think he's biting!" he said, turning his roving gray eyes quizzically on his companion. "Take care, Smilo, my boy, or he'll have you 'biting' before you know it. And that will be a case of the biter bit."

"Have your little joke at the expense of the service, Mr. Pryor," said young Smilo, with an air of tactfully conveying a rebuke. "But is a mere Jap likely to come it over a real American like you or me? I don't think."

"Let's waive discussion on a point so personal. In temperament and disposition we are exact opposites. That's why we get on so well together, and why I'm going to take you into my confidence."

"Mr. Pryor, you mustn't think—"

"I know it, my boy, I know it. I must never think, and I ought never to take you into my confidence, either. Both acts are first-class infractions of the rules of the military secret service. I admit it shouldn't be done. It might result in important discoveries. It might even lead to the disentangling of one of the mysteries we're working on. Think of it! There'd be only one thousand two hundred and fifty-six mysteries left."

Young Smilo laughed good naturedly (to cheer the old boy up!).

"None the less," continued Pryor, gravely, "I shall now violate another inviolable rule. I shall give you four pieces of information. The first: Running across Hutchins Burley in Paris twelve days ago, I told him the number of machine guns sent by us to the Ukraine."

"So that was the dodge. I see! You told him the exact number?"

"Hardly. I told him three thousand two hundred and fifty. I thought that number would do as well as any. Much better than the real number for a variety of reasons which I won't stop to detail. Suffice it, the number agrees with the number which you, in your capacity of informer to the Japanese Secret Service, offered to reveal to the attache, and which he already knew."

"By George! With all the other dope you've got in the Burley case, you must be pretty nearly ready to close in on the man?"

"So I thought. But Headquarters didn't. You see, I had followed Burley along a devious route to Brussels. By the way, he nearly slipped through my fingers there. I muffed him, so to speak. But I picked him up again before he left Belgium and dogged him to Coblenz."

"Coblenz? In the thick of the American occupation?"

"Precisely. And bang under the noses of the American army, Mr. Hutchins walked into a tobacconist's shop and sent a letter to the Japanese embassy. At this tremendously exciting moment, Headquarters, in all the majesty of its omniscience, shunted me off to London and ordered me to take you in tow and mark time."

"We marked time all right," chuckled Smilo. "You might say we hall-marked it, what little we had. Linking Burley up with the Japs on the one hand and with the smuggled Fontaine diamonds on the other, wasn't such a bad week's work, even though we haven't got the goods on him yet."

"That's all very well, my boy. But what do I get today? Here is your second piece of information. I get word to quit the Japanese case."

"What for?"

"For a post of honor in the business of trailing certain dangerous American radicals who are temporarily in London. How do you like that?"

"I don't like it, Mr. Pryor. And I don't blame you for not liking it. It looks like a raw deal. But are you sure it hasn't some remote connection with Burley?"

"No, I'm not sure. The devil has many irons in the fire. So has Hutchins Burley. Most energetic gentlemen whether of the diabolic or the celestial brand can gobble up an astonishing number of miscellaneous jobs. For all I know, Hutchins may be the new Head Bolshevik Bomb Thrower; or he may be the old chief Agent Provocateur; or he may be merely somebody with a friend in Washington whose word can make Headquarters quail. It's a conundrum. A pretty, picture-puzzle, play-box conundrum, if you like. Still, a conundrum. And I'm heartily sick of conundrums. I'm done with them. I joined the Secret Service to become a detective, not a musical comedy magician."

"You don't mean to say you are going to resign?"

"I do. You have guessed my third item of news. As fast as a steamer can carry me, I mean to proceed to Washington, there to give my resignation and sundry pieces of my mind to the Chief in person."

"But keeping its agents in the dark is an old, cherished method of the Service, isn't it? Mr. Pryor, I feel sure you have another reason."

"I have. Item four: I'm being followed."

"Followed—I don't understand."

"I began to suspect something the moment I came to London. Well, I put my suspicions to the test yesterday. Before going out I folded a pair of trousers in a very particular way and left them on a chair. When I came back they had been refolded in a slightly different way."

"Did you question your landlady?"

"Yes. Naturally she denied that any stranger had entered, but her confusion was obvious. I quickly suggested that my tailor might have called, and she as quickly agreed that this was so. When, an hour later, I interviewed the tailor and he confirmed me in my belief that he had not been near the house, the inference was clear. I was being watched. And, mark you, Smilo, I have reason to believe that the watcher is one of our own colleagues."

"Lord, no!"

"Judging from the awkward way the pockets were crumpled in the act of refolding the trousers, I have further reason to believe that the watcher is a woman."

"Impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible in this best of impossible worlds."

"It's a low-down shame, Mr. Pryor. But, after all, it can't hurt you. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc.' You know the saying."

"My dear boy, being a detective you can't begin to realize that the knowledge that you are being carefully watched gives you a very jumpy feeling—especially when you know you're guilty."

"In heaven's name, guilty of what?"

"Of doing a good job in your own line; in my case, tracking down criminals."

"Surely you don't mean to imply that Headquarters would permit influences—"

"I imply nothing. I give you the benefit of the facts. But if you think it's a pleasure to surmise that your every movement has an unseen spectator—you don't know who, but you fear it's a young and beautiful woman—"

The sudden ring-a-ling of the telephone bell cut across the room.

Mark Pryor took up the instrument.

"Yes," he said. "It's Mr. Pryor speaking. A young woman? Indeed! Well, I'll see her up here."

He hung up the receiver.

"A young and beautiful woman," he repeated with a singularly straight face.

Young Smilo, whose way of life was still in the green, the callow leaf, was divided between admiration and bewilderment. In half a minute or so there was a knock at the door.

The young woman who came in was Janet Barr.

II

Smilo's parting look was one of stupefaction at the reception the visitor got, Pryor's enthusiasm being a startling abandonment of his neutral, self-contained manner.

Left to themselves, Janet informed Pryor of the troubles that had brought her to see him. The chief of these was Hutchins Burley.

Would Mr. Pryor advise her how to deal with him if he turned up again, as seemed highly probable?

There were other difficulties. She had nearly exhausted her funds. She didn't wish to return to the United States. Not at the moment, anyhow. Yet she couldn't get a position without a character.

This last she had learned recently, after several bitter experiences. Europeans seemed firmly persuaded that a character existed not in yourself but in the minds of other people, or rather in their handwriting. In the United States a good presence was worth a thousand good characters and your own opinion of yourself, expressed with imaginative brilliance, went much further than other people's opinion of you, expressed with dullness. In Europe, the reverse was true.

Would he make out a good character for her, and have it on tap within easy reach in case she referred employers to him?

She was sure that any testimonial coming from him—yes, from him—

"Oh, I know you're a mystery," she said, in answer to his deprecatory gesture. "But not an ordinary mystery. A mystery linked to the pink of propriety is a sublime mystery. Like Mrs. Grundy's husband, whom you remind me of. No one has ever identified that mysterious man. Yet who'd have the courage to turn down a character made out by Mr. Grundy?"

She told him of her break with Claude, of her situation as the companion of Henriette, and of her experience with M. St. Hilaire as a result of Burley's interference.

"I left Brussels the very next day."

"For Coblenz?"

"Via Coblenz, for Munich, to see you, if possible. It was a Munich address you gave me, on board the 'Baronia'."

"I left Munich some time ago."

"So I learned. You see, I followed you here. But how do you know I went to Coblenz?"

"On the seventh of October?"

"On the seventh of October. How did you know it?"

"I didn't know it. The information just drifted my way."

"You are a detective then, Sherlock Holmes and M. Gaboriau rolled into one."

"Janet, disabuse yourself of that idea. If I were a detective I'd be a very sorry one. Let me prove it to you. In the course of my duties (whatever they are), I had occasion to look up Mr. Burley. I located him in Brussels on the sixth of October. I had scarcely found him before he slipped through my fingers."

"Slipped through your fingers?"

"Yes. Slipped through my fingers. You see, I'm trying to live up to the detective role to oblige you. Well, I got on to Mr. Burley's movements again on the seventh of October, just in time to follow him to Coblenz. Why Coblenz? I asked myself again and again. By the way, did you ever hear of a real, live detective asking himself a question?"

"No. But what is the answer?"

"You are the answer, of course. And I've only just discovered the fact. Fancy Sherlock Holmes following Hutchins Burley all the way from Brussels to Coblenz and from Coblenz to London and not discovering a quintessential answer, until the answer had crossed the Channel and stationed itself under his very nose."

"Do you mean to tell me that that odious Hutchins Burley is also in London at this very minute?"

"Don't be alarmed; I give you my word he sha'n't molest you again. I was about to res—I was about to transfer my valuable services to another sphere. What you have told me determines me to hang on a little longer, for the sole satisfaction of bringing Hutchins Burley to book."

"Oh, you mustn't injure your prospects on my account."

"No fear. There's pleasure in checkmating a fellow like Burley, and profit, too. You know, Janet, the real old-fashioned heavy-weight villains are deplorably scarce. Goodness, routine goodness, is so easy nowadays, it is so much in fashion, it is so thoroughly rammed down our throats by compulsory education, that very few people are inclined to be wicked and fewer still are energetic enough to carry out the inclination. Mr. Hutchins Burley is a rare beast. He does not identify his wickedness with our goodness. Not he. He believes in himself from top to bottom. Unlike the usual criminal of today, he doesn't suffer from the cowardice of his convictions."

They discussed Janet's plans. Ways and means, and how to get her off the rocks, were the first considerations.

"Do you know what?" said Pryor, reflectively; "your old friend Cornelia Covert could give you a lift."

"Oh, no; I can't go back to America—not yet, anyhow," said Janet resolutely.

"But she isn't in America. She's in Paris. You didn't know it? Then I've a big piece of news for you. She's married!"

"Cornelia married!"

"Yes. Benedick, the married man, isn't in it with Diana, the married woman."

"It's Harry Kelly, of course. Give me a moment to catch my breath. Mrs. Harry Kelly!"

"Not a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"You've heard of Paulette crepe, haven't you?"

"The crepe that's all the rage this year. Mr. Pryor, when I see a Paulette crepe blouse in a London shop, the cells of my great-great-grandmother rise enviously within me and turn the clock back to Noah."

"The curse of Eve," said Mr. Pryor, in his driest vein. "Well, everybody knows that Paulette crepe is named after Madame Paulette, one of the first dressmakers of Paris. Not everybody knows that Madame Paulette's real name is—"

"Cornelia!"

"Precisely."

Prior briefly narrated the curious story of Cornelia's migration to Paris, her marriage to Harry Kelly, her transformation into a fashionable dressmaker. Through a convergence of happy events, in which Pryor had had a hand, Cornelia had been able to enter the old and famous house of Paulette, then noticeably on the decline. Her artistic gifts and Kelly's industry had rejuvenated the management and revived the glories of the Paulette tradition. In a little less than a year Cornelia and Kelly had bought out the aged proprietors of the firm.

"No wonder I didn't hear from her," said Janet. "All my letters came back unopened. I began to think she had turned her back on me."

"Marriage has not changed her as much as that," said Pryor, smiling. "But I warn you that it has changed her a good deal."

"For the better or for the worse?"

"For the better and for the worse. But wait and judge for yourself."

"Perhaps Cornelia will think me in the way, now that she has a husband to look after."

"Cornelia lose sleep over Harry? No, dear girl; don't worry on that score. And don't forget that she'll be glad to do me a favor as well as you. More than one tony customer has come to her shop at my instance. When I tell you that I brought Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the mother of the Duchess of Keswick, to her, you'll admit that I'm a crack barker."

"Mr. Pryor, you are my deus ex machina. I believe you are every one else's, too. It must be a hobby with you to help people out of difficulties."

"Quite the contrary. It's a hobby with me to get people into difficulties. The worst of it is, I rarely succeed. I rarely get anybody into difficulties except myself."

"Is that true?"

"Well, it's as true of me as it is of certain other people. Sensitive people. People like you, or Charlotte Beecher, or Robert Lloyd."

"Oh, Robert never gets himself into difficulties," said Janet, with a trace of bitterness. "He's too efficient, too perfect."

"You do him an injustice, I'm sure. Lloyd merely puts up an exceptionally good front. He stands the strain of existence with skill and courage. So do you, for that matter."

"Thanks. But I really haven't had much to stand."

"It seems ample to me."

"Not half what I expected. When I went away with Claude I thought the universe would be arrayed against me. I dare say that in the margin of my thoughts there was a dim picture of Janet flinging a glove in the face of a decadent, despotic world."

They both smiled.

"What happened?"

Janet went on, sub-ironically: "A geyser of slander and mockery that spurted up from the newspapers. Nothing else. Nothing diabolic on the world's side. Nothing heroic on mine."

"That's the rule in these cases, Janet. The Flatbush suburb idea that all the world loves a lover is about as true as the Greenwich Village or Kips Bay idea that all the world hates a free union."

"You think both ideas are fictions?"

"Not entirely. Modern society has its own way of giving a pat of approval to a regular marriage and a kick of disapproval to a free union. Apart from these casual demonstrations it doesn't get tremendously excited over what its men and women do as males and females, so long as they pay their rent regularly, refrain from incurring bad debts with tradesmen, and bow the knee (at least in public) to the seventh commandment."

"Yes, I soon found that out. Nobody cared a pin whether I was married or not, or whether I was more to be pitied than scorned, provided I wore the proper clothes and told the proper lies."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody, except Hutchins Burley."

"Ah, there's sure to be a Nemesis!"

"Yes. But why Hutchins Burley? What am I to Burley, or Burley to me? Why should that horrible wretch be commissioned to persecute me? Why was he destined to snap the bond of comradeship between Henriette and me? He isn't exactly one's notion of a social censor, is he?"

"A scavenger isn't a popular notion of a sweet and clean man. Yet he serves a public purpose."

"What an extraordinary analogy!"

"Not at all. You see, Janet, we moderns are too squeamish or too lazy to do our necessary dirty work ourselves, dirty work like punishment, for instance. The result is that when some one rashly assails the majesty of one of our institutions, we punish him by proxy. We kill by the hand of the public executioner. We get revenge by the hand of the judge. We dispense poetic justice by the hand of a Hutchins Burley."

"Well, Hutchins Burley as society's Nemesis is a brand new idea to me. I shall need time to let it sink in. But what have I done to deserve so mighty a thing as poetic justice? I haven't even stolen another woman's husband. Haven't I been my own worst enemy, as Laura Jean Libby used to say? Isn't that vice its own reward?"

"Janet, your question is fair. But your voice and your eyes are not. Now I come to think of it, there may after all be a teeny weeny bit to say—no, not on Hutchins Burley's side—but on Monsieur Anton St. Hilaire's side."

"Mr. Pryor!"

"I don't mean a twentieth part of what I say. But let me say it. You are strong enough to take it straight. To begin with, the enigma of Hutchins Burley: answer me this. Didn't you of your own free will settle down amongst the Outlaws?"

"Yes."

"Well, you can't touch pitch without a little of it sticking to your fingers. But let us consider what you are to do next. It's a safer topic. We've talked unguardedly enough, considering that there's a dictagraph in the room, put there by no friends of mine."

"A dictagraph! Then you're not a great detective," said Janet, seriously disappointed. Hopefully, she added: "If you are not Sherlock Holmes, perhaps you are Raffles?"

"Well, it takes a thief to catch a thief," was the enigmatic reply.

He did not tell her that the hiding place of the dictagraph had been located and that Smilo had received instructions to tamper with the instrument as soon as the coast was clear.

III

They took a bus to Janet's lodgings.

Several plans were agreed upon. Chiefly, they were both to write to Cornelia asking her to find a position for Janet in the Paulette establishment.

Fashionable dressmaking was not precisely the work that Janet's heart was in. But she was prepared to take any position as a means to an end. Her real goal was active participation in the later phases of the women's movement. Recent happenings had revived in her the old longing to enter the thick of the battle, to pitch into the struggle for equal pay in every sort of occupation and for an equal title to legislative and administrative power.

"But I shall have to get an income of my own before I can be a factor in this struggle," she said.

"One must get an income of one's own before one can be a factor in any struggle," said Pryor, dryly.

"Yes, I've learned that, too. Feminists say that a woman must have an independent income in order to enter marriage with self-respect. They could go further and say that a woman must have an independent income in order to enter a free union with self-respect."

Pryor told her that he expected to return to the United States in a few weeks. Should he, in case he ran across Robert Lloyd, inform him of her altered views?

She said that Robert wouldn't thank him for any information about her.

"But you were such exceptionally good friends," expostulated Pryor. "Your little firm of Barr & Lloyd—what a pity you couldn't pick that thread up again, instead of joining Cornelia. If Robert weren't as poor as a church mouse, or if you both weren't too proud to borrow a little cash from me—"

Janet interrupted to veto all suggestions along that line. Pride had nothing to do with the question. It was true that she and Robert had been very good friends and excellent working partners. But Robert had emphatically said that he had no use for a woman who had damaged her social and businesss value by indulging in an adventure such as hers [Transcriber's note: several words missing from source book]

"Hm!" said Pryor. "When the shoe pinches his own foot, what astoundingly conservative exclamations even a radical fellow will make."

Janet went on to say that, although she had changed her views, she had every reason to believe that Robert had not changed his. Thus, he had taken no step whatever to communicate with her, despite the fact that she had indirectly, in her first letter to Cornelia, asked him to do so.

"Besides," she added, "didn't you know that he was about to marry Charlotte Beecher?"

"Oh, ho, so that's how the wind blows?"

Pryor, standing in front of Janet's house, gave the curb a sharp whack with his cane.

"That marriage has no place in the scheme of your deus ex machina," he said, with a quizzical frown. "We'll have to take it out on Burley—give the devil an extra twist of the tail to relieve our feelings."

"Yes, when you catch him. Meanwhile, what am I to do about him?"

"Forget him, forget him serenely for half a dozen weeks or so. Then you'll hear from him again."

"Hear from him again," she said, with a shade of alarm.

"Not from him in person," corrected Pryor, straightening up till he looked like a hickory stick. "About him, through me. Good news for us, bad news for him. Until then good-bye."

PART V

HEARTS AND TREASURES

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I

On a cool February morning a private office in the Maison Paulette, Boulevard Houssman, was occupied by five persons of the feminine sex. Four of the five, gorgeous as to clothes and cosmetics, moved busily about in comet-like orbits that brought them periodically near the desk.

The fifth, seated at the desk itself, dominated the room. She was a striking blonde, whose handsome dull-green dress challenged the glint of gold alike in her pupils and her hair.

Seemingly occupied with a book of accounts, this lady was really engaged in inventing petty tasks for the four young women dancing attendance upon her. (Mariette, ou est le livre bleu? Mon dieu, Gabrielle! les ciseaux; quelqu'un a enleve mes petites ciseaux. Toinette, apportez-moi le boite aux lettres. Tiens, Amelie! Prends ce mouchoir, etc., etc.) These requests for service continued in a fairly steady stream, amidst much hurrying and scurrying, sharp cries of tout de suite, Madame, and a general atmosphere of sulky obsequiousness.

In the thick of the confusion the door was opened by a young woman in a soft suit of brown heather. She stood on the threshold for a moment and, as she looked questioningly towards the lady in command, a slight frown brought a bar of hazel brown over her beautiful gray eyes.

The lady at the desk, who saw everything, affected not to see the figure on the threshold and went on languidly issuing orders.

Thereupon the newcomer, in clear, agreeable English, called out:

"Evidently you don't want me, Cornelia. Good, I'll go back upstairs. I've stacks and stacks of work to do—"

"Araminta, wait! Of course I want you. I want you most particularly."

"You've got an army here, already. What do you want me for? If you keep on calling me away from the manikins whenever Harry is explaining matters, he'll never be able to train me into taking charge of them."

"My dear!" trilled Cornelia, bringing her most musical arpeggio into play. "When you've been married as long as I have, you'll understand that no sensible woman ever interferes with her husband's work except for a positively overwhelming reason."

"Really, the reasons here in Paris are as bad as the seasons," said Janet with a smile. "I wish they'd calm down and not overwhelm us quite so often."

"Ah, Janet, you well may jest. Little do you know of the heavy responsibilities involved in managing both a business and a husband. If I had only myself to think of the worries and risks would be as a whisper in the wind. But I think of Hercules sharing my anxieties, working himself thin and gray—"

While she went on in this theatrical vein, Janet was thinking to herself: "She makes as great a virtue of being married as she formerly made of not being married. Whatever her condition, there's a terrible to-do about it."

Aloud she said:

"Look here, Cornelia, if you want to talk privately to me, hadn't we better get rid of this retinue?"

Without awaiting a reply, she calmly released Marie and the other manikins from service and sent them out of the room. This done, she took a chair opposite the desk where Cornelia sat staring at her in speechless indignation.

Cornelia cherished a sort of mental chromo of herself as the active ruler of the Paulette community, a ruler at once imperious, genial, and adored. In point of fact, her insatiable appetite for attention, reinforced by a sharp tongue, spread an atmosphere of dread and anxiety around her. Janet was the only person who had ever succeeded in weakening Cornelia's illusion about herself by bringing it into occasional juxtaposition with reality.

"You'll greatly oblige me, Janet, by not ordering my servants about under my very nose."

"Your manikins are not your servants, Cornelia. They're your employees. You slave-drive them outrageously. If you don't look out, you'll have a strike on your hands before long."

"With you as the strike leader, I dare say?"

"Why not? Your inability to respect other people's time is simply appalling. The moment some whim pops into your head, one of us is called upon to gratify it. You quite forget that when you arbitrarily take us from our jobs, bang goes continuity, a most important factor in good workmanship. Mazie, who came here grovelling in the dust, is now up in arms; the manikins are unitedly rebellious; Harry is almost a nervous wreck. This, with business simply deluging the establishment. I tell you, unless you stop, we all will."

Cornelia quailed under these words, although she kept her face admirably. She was in some respects like a wrongly bound volume: half Becky Sharp and half Hedda Gabler. And it was the Hedda Gabler pages she always turned up to Janet.

"Well, what next?" she exclaimed, on the defensive in spite of her brave words. "I've rescued Mazie Ross out of the gutter where Hutchins Burley flung her; I've sacrificed my own creature comforts to make those of the manikins secure; I've given you a very tidy berth and no questions asked; and I've worked myself to skin and bones for Harry's sake. Now you all turn on me and call me an interfering busybody, or worse. That's human gratitude."

Janet, giving the faintest ironical shrug, merely looked at her.

Cornelia smothered a sob of rage. After a pause, she informed Janet that Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, her most valued customer, had made an appointment that morning to look at some frocks and gowns. This lady had a single hobby, clothes; and she spent an appreciable fraction of her untold millions ("she's divorced two multimillionaires, Araminta, and driven a third into the diplomatic service!") on this hobby. She had expressed profound dissatisfaction with Paulette's offerings on her last visit two weeks ago. It was therefore of prime importance to please her this time.

"I want you to be in the salon with me when she looks at the models," said Cornelia. "She's extremely susceptible to flattery. As the head of the house, I can't very well lay it on too thick, can I? I have a feeling that your presence will make the sales go smoothly."

"You'd better leave me out of it, Cornelia. I never sold a thing in my life. Why, I couldn't sell a sandwich to a starving man."

"I'll do the selling, my dear. I simply ask you to be on hand. The fact is, you have a peculiar influence over people. When they get to talking with you, they suddenly forget about things—the earth-earthy things by which we are all so obsessed nowadays—they appear to forget about things and begin to occupy themselves with thoughts and dreams. In that condition, a man or woman will buy anything."

"Cornelia, you'll admit that I've done all sorts of odd jobs for you without a murmur. But I really don't like to bamboozle anybody into—"

"Bamboozle! Araminta! No one who buys a Paulette frock is bamboozled. Be quite clear about that."

She added, less belligerently, that Mrs. Jerome, though so very rich, had no taste in clothes. Or, more bluntly, had a most execrable taste. She went in for suffrage, feminism, woman's rights, and all that sort of thing. (Here Janet pricked up her ears.) So you might know what to expect. She was, in short, faddy and temperamental. Her purchases were made or not made, as the case might be, because the seller pleased or displeased her. The articles themselves were of quite secondary importance.

"Forgive my curiosity, Cornelia. But you have regiments of customers. Why are you so anxious about just this one?"

"What a question, you babe in the wood! Don't you know who Mrs. Jerome is?"

"I know she's rich and that Mr. Pryor had something to do with her coming here."

"That's not it, child. She's the American mother of the Duchess of Keswick. And the Duchess— Well, it's Madge and Mary between her and the Queen of England. Think, Araminta, what a feather in our cap, if we get the patronage of the Duchess of Keswick, and a Paulette frock is worn at the Court of St. James! It's the chance of a lifetime. You won't disappoint me, dear?"

"No. We'll make it Madge and Paulette and Mary. When is this dowager Mrs. Jerome expected?"

"That's her carriage now, or I'm very much mistaken," said Cornelia, all agog. "She hardly ever uses a motor. It's so ordinary."

In some amazement Janet watched her old friend going out to do the honors in the reception room. What a transformation a short year had effected in the Cornelia of the Lorillard tenements! Bohemianism, outlawry, and the one-piece dresses of Kips Bay seemed remoter than Mars. Cornelia was attired in the height of fashion, her cheeks were delicately touched up, her hair was elaborately coiffured.

Even her congenital languor had evaporated, for the moment, as the thrills of social snobbery electrified her.

II

Entering the salon, Janet saw that Mrs. Jerome was a podgy little tub of a woman, the symbol of the fortune which her father, Theodore Casey, had made in wash-tubs. She took a chair beside the visitor, who sleepily watched the crack Paulette manikins whilst they exhibited a variety of frocks and Cornelia nervously courted the favor of her outspoken customer.

Mrs. Jerome examined one of the manikins at close quarters.

"I don't think much of your dresses today," she said bluntly. "The lines are all wrong."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Jerome," said Cornelia with dignity. "But they ought to be at that angle. A Paulette frock is a work of art. It is designed to produce a definite effect from a definite point of view. The lines are like those of a Phidias statue, perfectly right at the proper distance."

"I don't care if they do look like a Fiddlesticks statue. Look at that charmeuse gown there. Can't anybody tell that girl a mile away for what she is?"

"I fear I don't understand."

"Well, if the gown don't hide the fact that she's a manikin, it won't hide the fact that my figure's no Fiddlesticks statue, or whatever you call it."

This opinion, delivered in an unmistakable New York voice and accent, made Janet laugh. Not disrespectfully. She discerned at once that Mrs. Jerome, like Shakespeare, had far more native wit than college learning. Her judgment was confirmed when the visitor, turning abruptly towards her, said:

"What do you think of these Paulette dresses, young lady. I don't expect you to say that they're pretty rotten. But do they satisfy the eye?"

"I think, Mrs. Jerome, that if they don't satisfy the eye, they'll at least astound it."

Mrs. Jerome brightened up at once.

"Well, child," she said, "when I want to astound people, I'll do it on less money than a Paulette gown costs. I'll walk around Columbus Circle in my bathing suit."

"Oh, I'll bet you do it, too," said Janet, at the top of her exuberance.

"Do what?" said Mrs. Jerome, now totally oblivious of the manikins on exhibition and of Cornelia on pins and needles.

"Wear a bathing suit around the house. I used to, regularly. In the tenements in Kips Bay I always did the dishes in my bathing suit. Annette Kellerman tights, a skirt to the knees, no sleeves, no stockings. A dandy rig-out for quick action."

"Permit me to say, Janet—" began Cornelia, in frigid, authoritative tones.

Mrs. Jerome impatiently waved her away, an indignity so astounding that Madame Paulette could scarcely trust her eyes. Janet, fearing she had been indiscreet, hastened to add:

"Of course, Cornelia—Madame Paulette—doesn't allow it in Paris. She requires us to be perfectly proper here."

"She would!" said Mrs. Jerome significantly, her back still turned to Cornelia. "But what good does it do you? Nine-tenths of the people in Paris are perfectly proper; but they don't look it. The other tenth are perfectly improper; but they, as often as not, don't look it either."

The manikins received another inning. A brief one, though, for Mrs. Jerome inspected and dismissed them in quick succession.

"Well, well," she said, half aloud, "to think that you came from the tenements."

She gave Janet a quick, sceptical glance.

"I can scarcely believe it."

"I can scarcely believe it myself," said Janet, with a perfectly straight face.

Cornelia bit her lips and, flashing an angry look at her friend, went out of the salon, unable to trust her feelings any longer.

"If the Duchess got wind of it," Mrs. Jerome mused on, "that would finish Paulette's for me. She don't think a shop is a classy shop unless the proprietor has a classy pedigree."

"Oh, our pedigree will seem classy enough to the Duchess," said Janet, "if you don't give us away. And you can't do that, you know. I only told you in the strictest confidence."

"Don't you go shifting your responsibilities on me, young woman. If you want your secrets kept, you just keep them to yourself. I'm no safe deposit vault for anyone else's hidden thoughts. For your comfort I'll tell you this, though. I've never given my daughter food or information that I knew she couldn't digest. I'm too old to begin doing it now."

"You're quite right, Mrs. Jerome. Things slip off my tongue that oughtn't to. Personally, I don't care a straw. But other people—"

"Don't worry about other people, my dear," said Mrs. Jerome, who had enjoyed the tit-for-tat immensely. "I'm not likely to desert Madame Paulette. At least not while she keeps anyone with your healthy face and fascinating eyes here to talk to me. Mind, I'm not gone on these Paulette frocks. I guess the Madame knows that pretty well. But this establishment is run by a woman, a woman from my own country. That means a good deal to me. For although our sex is coming into its own, the pace isn't a dizzy one. The men see to that. And so I say, this is a time for all good women to stand by one another."

The little lady sank back in her seat and, as though exhausted by her long speech, closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Cornelia had returned and the parade of the manikins was resumed.

This spectacle always started Janet on a series of curious reflections. As a result of the training in rhythmics which the girls received at the hands of Harry Kelly, they were free from those grotesque mannerisms of gait, posture, and demeanor which manikins cultivated and which were accepted by the trade as superlative expressions of esthetic correctness. Yet Harry's talent yoked to the service of fashion seemed as wasteful a thing as an artist's genius drafted in the service of futility. It reminded Janet of the story of the Medici prince who compelled Michelangelo to mould a statue out of snow.

But to Mrs. Jerome the Paulette manikins were a sight to see. She made Janet sit on the lounge beside her and coaxed her to give an opinion on every frock subsequently shown. She purchased all those that Janet praised and several that she made fun of.

It was one of the best day's work that the sales department of Paulette's had ever done.

In spite of which, Madame Paulette considered it her duty to take Mrs. Jerome to one side and apologize for Janet and her artless indiscretions.

"She means well, Mrs. Jerome," said Cornelia, deferentially. "She's—well, I might say, she's naive, incredibly naive in matters of social position. It's only lack of training, I assure you."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, she's absolutely ignorant of distinctions of rank. Absolutely. Why, she would talk to a Duchess with no more ceremony than to a scrubwoman."

"Then I'll bring the Duchess here to be talked to. It might do her good."

"Oh, do bring the Duchess. I shall be charmed to display for her inspection the best that the Maison has."

"No doubt. But let me give you a tip. Don't waste your time training that dear little Janet girl. She'll learn the deceitful ways of the world fast enough, and no correspondence course needed either."

Janet came up to them as they reached the outer door.

"My dear," said Mrs. Jerome, putting her arm around Janet's waist, "you've given me the best quarter of an hour I've had in Paris these two months. It's been a treat, a royal treat."

As Cornelia beheld these two, standing there intertwined, a strange expression formed on her face, an expression that bespoke an agonizing doubt of the sanity of the universe.

Unheeding her, Mrs. Jerome continued to say to Janet:

"The people I meet everywhere! In Europe they pick my pockets while they lick my boots; in America they rifle my purse with barefaced assurance. You are the first one I've met in a very long time who has talked to me as though I were a human being and not a walking cash box."

III

The conquest of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome produced a sensation in the Paulette establishment. It also gave an element of security to Janet's precarious tenure of office there.

Janet knew full well that Madame Paulette had received her in the Boulevard Haussman with nothing like the enthusiasm that Cornelia had welcomed her in the Lorillard tenements. In the interval between these events the two friends had burned several bridges behind them.

It was obvious that Cornelia was now glutted with hands to wait on her, ears to pay heed to her, and tongues to flatter her. Her natural taste for dependents being completely gratified, she felt less need than ever for friends of an independent turn of mind like Janet.

Moreover, in a year and a half of compact adventure, Janet had matured more rapidly than many young people do in ten years of tame drifting. Time, which had whittled away some of her imprudence, had robbed her of none of her daring; it had left her with her almost naive freedom of utterance intact. Her candor was a trait to which Cornelia had formerly been much drawn. But that was in the days of her first arrival in Kips Bay, the days when the young girl had all but worshipped the experienced woman. Now that blind devotion had given way to challenging criticism, Janet's candor seemed far less attractive.

That is, far less attractive to Cornelia. As regards Paulette's in general, Janet was a great favorite. Her official duties were chiefly those of an assistant to Harry Kelly in the physical training of the manikins, (a branch of their professional instruction on which Kelly laid great stress). She bore somewhat the same relation to her chief that the concert master of an orchestra does to the conductor. This arrangement was Cornelia's doing. In one and the same bold stroke she had thought to cut down the time that Kelly spent with the manikins (this being the time in which his heart lay most); and to shift to Janet's shoulders the odium that frequently devolves on the deputy chief (who exercises authority without possessing power).

But Cornelia's spirit of negation, active as ever, accomplished only one-half of its object.

Janet discharged her duties with so much vivacity and with such invincible good-will that she was idolized by everybody in the Paulette firm from Kelly and the manikins down to the work girls and the magnificent porter who daily consented to guard the street door.

In short, she was the life of the house; than which, Cornelia could have brought no stronger indictment against her of unimaginable lese majeste.

The two had a long private conversation in Cornelia's office the day after Mrs. Jerome's visit.

"Araminta, you've certainly made a hit with the old lady. Just as I predicted. It's a fine thing for us both. Paulette's prestige will go up and up. And it should mean a great deal to you."

"How, I wonder?"

"You can make her friendship a stepping stone."

"Easy stepping stones for little feet—so to speak?"

"You know quite well what I mean. Some day you'll go back to America—"

"Is this a hint or a prediction, or both—"

"Don't be silly, Janet. I'm thinking of your future. Your future in your own country, naturally. Mrs. Jerome is a woman of enormous influence. You know how it is over there. Much gold will wash all guilt away."

"You mean my chequered past?" asked Janet, with a smile.

"Yes," said Cornelia, adding handsomely, "although your affair with Claude Fontaine will probably be quite forgotten by that time. Nobody will remember it."

"Robert Lloyd will!"

Cornelia was up in arms at once. She always was, when Janet mentioned Robert's name.

"What difference does that make? You aren't going to marry him, I suppose?"