PART III (continued 2)

For days I had not seen her. Each consciously avoided the other. Yet a good deal of what Molly had said haunted me: I could not depart without some explanation. We left Sunday. Friday afternoon I called her up on the telephone, and asked if I might come over,—a strange conversation, full of long pauses and hesitations, where I could not see her face and could only wonder.

“I am going Sunday—you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I really would like to see you before then.”

“But, David, I’m leaving in an hour.”

Curiously enough, this upset me more than I would have thought.

“Leaving? Where?” I asked stupidly.

There was a long silence.

“Anne!”

“Yes?”

“And to-morrow?”

“But I am leaving in an hour for a week end.”

“Oh, then I shan’t see you. I’m sorry.”

“You should have let me know before.”

“Yes, yes, of course. My fault. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped.”

No answer.

“When do you leave?”

“In an hour.”

“Then I’m afraid it’s good-by over the telephone.”

“You haven’t been very friendly, you know.”

“I know.”

Another silence.

“Will you write to me once in a while?”

“Do you want me to, David?”

“Please.”

“Very well—once in a while.”

Now this was not the turn I had wished to give to my parting, but some sudden feeling of the blankness of her eyes caused me to relent.

“So, it’s good-by, Anne, and—I’m sorry it’s to be like this.”

“It is not my fault.”

“No.”

“Then—good-by, and good luck—Davy.”

The last was almost inaudible. I put up the receiver and went to my room and puttered around nervously with my packing, not at all quiet in my mind and frankly missing something out of my day.

In the middle of the afternoon, all at once, I determined to fling on my things and go out for a tramp, to calm my irritation. I had hardly passed the postern when who should come whirling up the road in her cutter, bells jangling, snow clouds flying, but Anne, with her cheeks aflame.

“Jump in.”

I clambered to the seat by her side and we were off so precipitately that I caught at her arm to save myself a tumble. Away we went, skipping over the crinkling snow, the sharp wind whipping at our cheeks, long minutes without a word, until Littledale and the outskirts were left behind in a whirling maze. At Muncie’s Woods she drew in suddenly and under the green canopy of the evergreens we slowed to a walk.

“There was no house party,” she said, staring ahead.

“Of course not.”

“How did you know?”

“I knew.”

“What a spiteful, irrational, idiotic person you must think me.”

“No—very human.”

She shook her head, and I thought her lip trembled a little.

“It’s always so, and I can’t help it. I’m always doing the wrong thing with you.”

I did not answer this, for I was afraid to.

“It’s been a miserably unsatisfactory time,” she said, flicking the horses suddenly with her whip, so that they pranced about for quite a moment before she could control them. “I had looked forward so much to your coming, to going back to the old days, Davy. They were the best—and instead, we have only been fencing with each other. We never say what we mean. And I—I show you my very worst self—my worst! Everything I say to you, you misunderstand.”

“There you are wrong.”

“You do, you do! You are always ascribing to me motives that aren’t there, and so, David, there are two things I can’t bear from you, ridicule, and—pity!”

“Good heavens, nothing is further from my mind.”

“That’s not true,” she said obstinately. “David, why can’t we say the things we think to each other? Is there any reason?”

“It is sometimes rather hard, Anne, isn’t it?”

“There you go! But if we don’t—don’t you see that we lose all that was so wonderful, so rare, so genuine that we once had. And this is what is happening.” Still she had not looked at me. Her mood changed and she drew the lash of her whip over the steaming flank of a horse. When she spoke it was gravely and with determination, the voice of a woman. “David, I do not think any harm can come from being absolutely honest, and sometimes, for not being so, a whole destiny may be changed. David, whatever you think I am—I am not in love with you—”

“But I never—”

“I am not in love with you, but I can imagine—some day—if I did—if I was—well, marrying you.”

The next moment the whip had struck across the glistening back and we shot out into a gallop.

“Stop!” I cried out, but she only shook her head, bending lower to hide her face that was aflame with confusion.

“Stop!”

I caught the reins from her and brought our perilous rocking flight to a halt. Then I turned to her. Poor child, I knew what the suspense of that moment meant to her! I could almost feel her heart stand still; even then, thank heaven, I did not abuse the situation—at least, I think not—and heaven knows how easy it would have been!

“Anne, dear little friend, I think more of you at this minute than I ever have, for saying that.”

“Oh, Davy, I shall want to kill myself to-night for—”

“No, don’t say that. Now, I am going to be just as honest with you.”

I saw her hand steal up to her throat and hurried on to end the suspense.

“I feel just as you do. I am not in love with you, and yet I can imagine, just as you said, that if some day I married you a great happiness would come into my life. Would to God I could say more!”

She turned for the first time as I began to speak and her eyes went to mine. I had a strange premonition there in the green light of the forest, in the stillness of the carpeted woods, the stillness that was in her listening face, that beyond the inscrutable future, through what twisted tormented ways I know not, in some final calm, just for the strange incongruous daring of that moment, Anne and I would end as husband and wife. Premonition or illusion,—I write it down as I felt it.

“Will you really believe me?” she said, and her glance went down, “when I say that I should never, never have said even this if—if it were not that you are going back, and everything else seems so little beside that. Will you understand that I can be like this, that without being in love I can look into the future and see what may come? David, it’s—it’s so hard to say—”

“I don’t think so. Say just what you feel, and then I shall be just as honest.”

“You have always been different in my life, David. Other men have just been shells. You I’ve known, and you’ve known me. It isn’t that, oh, since we are talking this way, it’s this: I know my weaknesses, Davy—oh, so well—and I know what I’ll become if I marry a certain type of man. It’s what you bring out in me, the thing I want to be when I’m with you. Of course, it sounds terribly—I’m ashamed to say it. No, don’t look at me; but David, I can say this—when you come back—some day, when it’s all over—I shan’t have changed.”

“Shan’t have what?”

“Changed,” she said, in a whisper.

I felt my eyes blurred. What wouldn’t I have given to have been able at that moment, in perfect honesty, to have taken her into my arms for her sake—and for mine!

“Anne,” I said, “let me tell you this,—for you will want to know this when you look back to-night: never regret what you have done. We have come closer together this afternoon than ever before, and you have done it.”

“Do you mean it, Davy?” she said, looking up, her eyes shining so that it was hard to resist them.

“I do. From now on I shall always know the strength of a woman—a very real woman—that is in you. You have left a memory that I shall hold in great reverence. Between us now there will be always absolute honesty; and that is something to build on. Hold what we have, dear friend, and let us both have some faith in the future.”

“Thank you, David,” she said, with a touch of wistfulness. Then, “And now, tell me—”

“Are you sure you want to hear? It will hurt you.”

“I only know that you are unhappy. And, David, I think that is the reason, the real reason I have come to you.”

It was hard to begin, for I, too, shrunk from the pain I knew I would give her. Presently, she said, looking up at my clouded face:

“There was some one else—”

I nodded.

“Of course, I knew there was.”

“There is.”

“Oh.”

“But it is quite hopeless,” I added hastily.

“Quite hopeless?” she said, looking at me, and so strange are the ways of the heart, that, I believe, that was the only thought she seized upon.

“I only knew her for ten days. I shall never see her again. I have promised.”

“It hurts?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked away. “Is—is it because she’s married, David?”

Strange to say, the suggestion came to me like a flash of lightning in the darkness of my perplexity. Never once had such an explanation occurred to me. I thought it over and wondered.

“You needn’t answer.”

“I do not think so,” I said, without thinking how strange this must sound. “I don’t know—I hardly know anything about her. We are entirely apart in everything,—race, tradition, faith.”

“And if it were not hopeless, David?”

“Don’t ask me.”

We drove on in silence, each to his own thoughts. In the end it was Anne who spoke.

“Just one question: is—is she there—in France?”

“No. She is here. That I said is true. She is gone utterly out of my life. It was her decision. Why? I don’t even know. It was all very beautiful and very tragic. It is over—all except the forgetting.” I drew a long breath and turned to her. “That is going to be a hard fight, but it must be done. I wonder if I should have told you this.”

“Oh, yes, yes! You should have told me.”

“Of course. Anne—I want you to know this, too. With what we have been to each other—we are now—I should never ask anything of you unless I did love you with my whole heart. That is your right. This is a strange conversation, but I think you know me well enough to believe that!”

“Of course, David.”

She looked at me, and her eyes suddenly were filled with tears.

“I wish I could feel that you needed me a little.”

“Good God! But have I the right!”

Then, she did a thing I shall never forget,—that only comes to the intuition of the woman who loves. She drew off her glove and laid her bare hand in mine. And so, speaking little, we returned.

* * * * *

Is it possible, I wonder, that with one’s heart filled with the ache and anguish of a love that is denied any hope, the soul in its defensive instinct can look ahead and know what some future date may bring? For, to-day, I can say this with perfect honesty: I need to keep Anne in my life.

The last moments in the old home were harder than I had thought. Aunt Janie was the bravest of them all, not excepting the mater, but then, Aunt Janie, bless her heart, is of the heroic line. Molly has come on to see us off, though I begged her not to. The hardest was saying good-by to the Governor. During the weeks of my return he had seemed to pick up famously, until we had almost begun to hope. But, at the last, all the light went out of his face. And when I leaned down suddenly and kissed him, his fingers clung to my hand until I had gently to release them. I had left this till the last minute and hurried out into the hall, where Molly put her arms around me and took me to the sleigh. For one thing I am profoundly thankful: he remembered Alan, and I carry to him the old daguerreotype of the Governor as a young man.

At the station every one in the village waited. The Littledale Band played “The Marseillaise” and other patriotic airs, amid great waving of handkerchiefs and cheering. You would have thought I was a candidate for Governor. But I was too affected to do anything but wave back.

* * * * *

What Ben has said to Letty I do not know. He seldom speaks, but a certain grimness settles over him as he paces up and down. I’m afraid that it has cost him more than he thought to tear himself away from her. To-night everything seems confused and out of joint,—Anne, Bernoline, the Governor, Ben, Letty; myself most of all. Again, the close of another chapter—the wrench of old associations—new hazards, and what beyond?

If only I could see her once more!

X

New York

I have seen her, by some miracle of coincident, or by a destiny which never seems to leave me. It is midnight, and I have been sitting here, my head in my hands, my brain galloping, going over and over every word, every look. I have seen her, talked to her, held her in my arms! What is the trick destiny has played on me? What is my mood to-night? Exaltation, or the sense of having bound myself irrevocably to tragedy? At one moment the wildest hopes surge up in me: I live in fantastic daydreams with a belief in some miraculous, healing Providence. At the next I am dropped into bottomless despair, and I see no end but unfulfilled longing and the emptiness of denial. And so, what I have longed for, to see her once again, has come, and I don’t know which is the stronger,—the joy of hoping or the pain of certainty.

All day long I had sought her, aimlessly, without a plan, weary of spirit, without a hope, but with a prayer on my lips, as even men of no faith pray in a last hope, when all other means have failed them. Towards evening the thought came to me to seek her in the calm of vaulted spaces, and I went into the Cathedral, and, from there, into the Church of the Dominican Fathers. Then the inspiration came to me that if she were anywhere it would be in the little French Church of the Franciscans. No sooner had this idea come to me than a strange sense of certainty possessed me. I went there, absolutely convinced that I would find her.

Yet, at my entrance, as I stood with incredulous, blinded eyes, peering into the hollow obscurity, my heart sank. And then I saw her!

How I knew that the kneeling figure by the little altar of the Virgin was Bernoline, I do not know, but I knew. My heart seemed to stop. I leaned against a pillar and waited. The great vaulted supports rose up and closed above me somewhere in the night. Far off I heard a slipping step. Through the church a dozen tiny lights burned silently. At her altar the Mother of Sorrows looked down out of the shadow of the ages. She was on her knees, the mellow points of the votive candles lighting her uplifted face in a glow of serene radiance. So I saw her again, as I had imagined her a hundred times, when I knew she returned to me in her prayers.

There are pictures which remain in memory’s galleries. This will never fade.

* * * * *

Something of my presence she must have felt, for all at once her hand was arrested in mid-air, and she turned and met my look. Instantly I came forward and knelt at her side. I saw her lips open and over her face the wonder of a living miracle. I know now that my name was on her lips at that very moment, and that in her simple faith she saw the answer. Her great dark eyes met mine. I saw her breast rise. Her pale slender hand went to her throat, and in that first unwavering look I knew at last how I was loved.

“Bernoline, it is God’s will.”

“It is you. I prayed that I might see you once again.”

She laid her hand on mine, bidding me wait, and went off into the stony vastness. Presently I heard the step I knew from all others returning. A pervading sense of happiness such as I had never known filled my whole being at the knowledge that she was drawing near, that she whom I loved was coming back to me. When I raised my eyes she was at my side, tenderness and pride in her face, and in her hand a thin white taper. She knelt again.

“Mother, I thank thee,” she said.

She rose and, lighting the wick at the wavering crown of tiered tapers, placed it so that it dominated all the rest.

“Your light, mon ami,—above the crowd, always; strong, proud and true.”

Then kneeling, she made the sign of the cross, and as a smile of thankfulness touched her lips, I knew that she prayed for me.

I forgot all the complex world of realities: actions and reactions of our mortal nature; doubts, questionings, logic and tradition. There, in the silence and the shadows, purity at my side, mystery above me, my spirit took wings with the faith that was hers. I do not think that I uttered a prayer, yet it was a prayer, for at that moment I believed as a child believes.

When she touched my arm I rose and followed her. At the end of the aisle, a mutual impulse made us turn. The candle, my candle, shone out bravely above the rest.

“You will remember?”

“Always.”

* * * * *

When we emerged into the strange, jarring world, the healing dusk was stealing over the hard outlines. For a moment we walked silently, our hearts too full, unable to speak to each other.

“To-morrow I sail for France.”

“To-morrow?” she cried, with a little catch in her voice.

“You will walk a little way with me? A last time?”

“How could I help it, mon ami?”

She looked at me and smiled her sad little smile, and I saw in her eyes the weariness of the struggling against the call of her heart. A great hope came to me.

“I thought you would wait for America,” she said, and now her eyes no longer avoided mine but seemed never to leave my face.

“I’m going back to the Legion and, of course, the moment we go in, and that can’t be long, I shall be transferred.”

“You are well?”

“Entirely.”

What did it matter what we said? I think neither of us really knew. I saw only the light that shone in her eyes, and in the joy of being together neither the past nor the future nor the things about us existed. I took her arm and slowed my pace to the meditative step I knew so well, and together, heads bowed and still too happily oppressed by all we had to say to each other, we went silently towards the Park, each content with the knowledge of the other’s presence. It was the hour when the city, like another Cinderella, steps out of the drab and homespun of the day into the beaded fairy raiment of the twilight; when through the hard and hazy battlements something soft and gentle tempers the air; when the clamor of strident sounds lingers faintly in the drowsy distance and polyglot ugliness masks itself behind half-shadows and fleeting forms.

“Ah, Davy, I did want to see you again,” she said, without subterfuge, in the honesty of her nature, as only her nature could be honest. “I wanted to see you strong—yourself. I wanted to know that I had not brought you weakness and sorrow. Mon ami, tell me that it is so.”

We had wandered into the Park, through obscure winding paths, the argus-eyed city receding against the darkling sky, the lake at our feet, and only an occasional passer-by hurrying on his way. At the bridge we stopped, leaning over, shoulder to shoulder, each of us under the spell of the silence which visited us, and afraid of the test that words would bring.

“I cannot tell you anything that is not true,—even for your sake,” I said at last.

“No, David.”

“But first, you. How has it gone with you? It has been hard, Bernoline?”

“No, no.”

“That is the truth?”

“Yes, mon ami. It has not been hard. I have found great kindness. I am companion in the family of a true gentlewoman.”

“Bernoline, I cannot bear to think of you—”

“Hush; it is so little when you think of what has come to other women.”

“Bernoline, you do not know how I have fought to keep my promise. I’ve gone by St. Rosa’s Convent a dozen times, and twice I wrote you letters,—only to tear them up.”

“But you won out, mon ami. I knew you would.”

“Yes, but there is no happiness in it.”

“Must I always hurt you, Davy?” she said sadly, “I who only long to protect you? Dear friend, all I have done—believe me, though you cannot understand it—has been done for you.”

“Yes, Bernoline.”

I felt that the moment had come when the happiness of my whole life was there in my hands to fight for. We were no longer man and woman, but two atoms in the wavering sea of multitudes,—atoms gravitating towards each other, cleaving together despite opposition and circumstance, despite all the forces of society that laboriously and fruitlessly lay their inhibitions against the great sweeping instincts of race.

“Night and day, David, I have had you in my prayers. I have prayed that our meeting—our knowing each other—would leave no wound in you. Ah, mon ami, if I do this strange thing, to be here alone with you, it is because I must know that I am not to carry that remorse through all my life.” She stopped, as though dreading what she might be led to say, and then, staring down at the stars that swam in the dark waters below us, she added slowly: “I shall never be sure—never—until I know that you are in your own home, married and happy.”

Then I broke out.

“Bernoline, are you quite honest with yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that is not the true reason. Bernoline, if you are here, to-night, alone at my side, it is because you cannot help it—because you love me. Oh, why hide from ourselves what is?”

“No, no! Don’t say that!”

“Bernoline, Bernoline, why deny it?” I cried, bending over her. “You don’t deceive me; you don’t deceive yourself! What stands between us? What can stand? What do we care? What else counts but this thing we feel, here, now, at this very moment! We know. You know, as I know. Happiness, Bernoline? Do you think in the whole world there is any happiness for me away from you—from the longing for you, day and night! Bernoline, I tell you, you have never been an hour away from me. I have had you before my eyes; I have talked with you; lived over a thousand times each moment spent with you. Bernoline, turn to me, look at me, tell me—”

Do I know what I said, there in the deep pool of the night! It is not words, but accents, that we hear at such times. I don’t know that she heard me any more than I can remember the torrent of pleading that surged to my lips, but I know that she, too, felt the snapping of cords, the longing of my arms to reach out and draw her up to me, the wild triumphant force beating down all our little struggling, closing about us and confounding us in one impulse, one desire, for, all at once, she swayed from me and began to tremble, crying: “Don’t touch me, David. I can’t stand it—don’t!”

“But why, in heaven’s name, why?” Her voice stirred all my compassion, but the thought that I was fighting for my happiness, her happiness, was stronger. I came closer. “Bernoline, what is it? Pride? Is that all? Do you think I care who you are, what you are, what was your family, or anything else? You are you. And now, listen to me, Bernoline. To-morrow, I go back. Marry me to-night; be my wife. Let me take that with me in my heart!”

“If I could, if I only could!” she burst out suddenly.

“You can, you will,” I said, with a sudden sense of triumphant victory, pitiless, as in love we are driven to show no mercy. “Bernoline, whatever it is, I have the right to share it. Yes, the right. Nothing else matters but you in my life. Do you understand? You are life!”

She turned to me, struggling against herself, her hands clasped, and again the terror in her eyes.

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“But why, why?”

Suddenly, like a flash, I remembered the first instinctive question of Anne’s. My heart contracted so sharply that for a moment I could not voice the terrible doubt.

“Bernoline—is there—any one else—who has a right?”

She stood, staring at me. Twice her lips moved, parted, trembled, and refused to utter the answer. Her hands gripped the coping, and I saw her arms stiffen.

“Bernoline, you are—married!” I said, in a whisper. “Is it that?”

Still she did not answer.

“Bernoline, for God’s sake, say it is not that.”

“Yes, yes—it is—that!”

I should not have known her voice.

“Good God! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

I was stunned; yet it seemed as though I had always known—that it could have been nothing else. The world went black before me.

“He is alive?” I said, at last.

“Yes.”

“You must go back to him, some day?”

“Never.”

“Ah, Bernoline, why—why didn’t you tell me?”

She waited a moment.

“It is not my secret alone. It is terrible that I cannot tell you any more than that. Yes, yes, I have done wrong: I have been weak. But don’t you reproach me, David; that would break my heart!”

“Oh, no, I don’t reproach you!” I blurted out. “I don’t know your reasons. I know if you’ve done what you’ve done, there is a reason, and—it will always be right. Never, dear, could I have any other feeling towards you but of reverence for the loveliest and purest thing I have known.”

“You can still think so, David?” she cried with a little sob.

“Always. Nothing that you or I can do will ever change that—and nothing that has gone before.”

She looked up at me so swiftly, with her sad, sweet smile, that before I knew it she was in my arms, trembling against my heart, her head buried against my shoulder. I knew nothing more, what I did or said, only this: that we were united—that this soft, gentle body in my arms was the woman who, whatever intervened, loved me now and irrevocably.

“Ah, mon bien aimé—ayez de la force pour moi—je n’en peux plus—non—non—je n’en peux plus!”

But even as she cried to me to be strong for her, she clung to me, her arms strained about me, and her body collapsed in my grip.

“Bernoline, look into my eyes, dear!”

She raised her head, her eyes met mine, all struggling at an end. Another moment, and our impending lips would have closed in the first kiss. Yet, by some inexplicable miracle, it was I who was the stronger. For what I saw in her dear eyes was so innocent and so full of trust that I could not tarnish the ideal. My arms loosed and slowly I put her from me.

She caught her breath, and her hands went to my shoulders.

“Yes, you are as I knew you were,” she said proudly. “Never shall I forget, David mon ami, mon ami adoré.”

“Thank God!” I said, drawing a deep breath.

“And now, believe me, a last time—if I could—if I only had the right to say what you want to hear, how gladly my heart would go to you! But David, I can say this: in all my life, I have never for one instant loved any other man—and I never will. That is a promise.”

“Bernoline, I have done everything as you wished, more than I would have believed I could do. This I ask: during those months of loneliness and trial, write to me, and let me write to you!”

“Is that wise, I wonder?” she said, yet already wishing to be convinced.

“You cannot leave me utterly. I am not strong enough for that! Anything else—but not that!”

“Nor I.” Her eyes filled with tears and then, at last, through the tears, the smile came bravely forth. “Until the end of the war, then. And now—” She stopped, looked at me, and shook her head slowly.

“So soon?”

“It is best not to try ourselves beyond our strength,” she said. “But—we will not go too fast.”

I do not remember much what she said. For I was silent, once the great test passed, all at once weak and rebellious. She spoke to me, recalling our first meeting, speaking of the home she had found. My head was turning. All the complications, all the tragic incidents of our meeting and parting, the fatality that lay between us; all was nothing to the knowledge of the love that had looked at me out of the great dark eyes. My instincts revolted. I could not believe, I would not believe that this was the end. Somewhere, somehow, the future would be ours, if we had to wait—for twenty years!

We came to the end and, as I stood, all choked up, she took my hand and laid it against her heart—a moment.

“Mon ami, you will be there, always.”

The light in her eyes is still before me as I write and the dear face, transformed with all the pure happiness of a child.

“And now—” she began reluctantly.

“No—no! Not that word!” I blurted out.

“As you wish,” she said gravely. “Courage, and God keep you, my dear.”

She went up the steps slowly, looking back, and her eyes for a moment lingered, smiling down on me, before she could find courage to end a look that might be the last. The door closed and shut her out from me.

* * * * *

And from these moments, sanctified in my memory, by the perverse turns of my fate, that seems to entangle all the skeins of my life, the good and the evil, I came back to meet—Letty.

She was in the salon that separated our rooms when I entered, and from the look on Ben’s face I saw that his soul was being torn to its foundations. At my entrance they stopped, in a sudden telltale silence.

“You here, Letty?” I said, stupidly enough. God knows that no more unwelcome figure could have come before me at that moment.

She nodded curtly, but did not speak. She looked quite worn despite her artifice, and in her cold face the eyes burned forth as they did only when she was roused to some fury of obstinate determination. The conversation had been at a high tension, as I could see by Ben’s ugly frown. I went into my bedroom and closed the door and, overcome by the moral nausea of this malignant intrusion across the clean memory of the evening’s exaltation, I sank on the bed and, taking my head in my hands, cursed her from the bitterness of my heart as I have never cursed another human being.

Not that she had come to see me. I knew too well the only genuine impulse of which in her tired experience she was capable. It was only the prey which was escaping her that could rouse the female in her. I did not know how far Ben had gone in his revolt,—though I suspected that he had given an ultimatum. But I knew this, that Letty would never let him go without a struggle. What to do? My lips were sealed: the slightest false move might precipitate a tragedy. An hour passed, while I listened to the falling and rise of their contending voices, when, suddenly, the door opened and banged, and Ben came into the room.

“For God’s sake, David, get her away!”

I sprang up, half expecting Letty to rush in—but she did not—and after a moment I went over to my brother and laid my hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“Ben, do you mean that?”

“Get her away—quick!”

“That’s a big responsibility to take,” I said slowly. “Your mind’s made up?”

He dug his fingers into his arms and, in the breath that went through him, I felt a sudden vacillation.

“Ben,” I said, sternly. “Stick to your guns. Care for you? All she cares is to know she can make you suffer. Sit down.”

I went on tiptoe to the door and flung it open. As I had known, she was there, listening. But it is dangerous to try such a woman as Letty too far, and the blind rage I saw in her face at this exposure so frightened me that, closing the door behind me, I clapped my hand over her mouth and picked her up bodily.

“The scene is over, and out you go,” I said, savagely. She did not struggle but suddenly became quiet and inert and, with the devilish instinct that was in her to wound me, her arms closed softly about my neck. I wrenched myself free, loathing the hated perfume of her body, and set her down in the hall.

“So, you have told him?” she said quickly, keen for the pretense at dramatics.

“If I had, you wouldn’t be alive now,” I said, and closed and locked the door and, for further security, slipped the key into my pocket.

* * * * *

It is four o’clock in the morning now, as I finish these lines. I can hear Ben in the next room, walking up and down.

XI

At Sea

We sailed at noon. Molly and Anne were on the deck to see us off,—Letty, to plant a final sting. Anne came in after breakfast with her father and with Molly we went down to the boat. I do not know when I have been so sorry for any one as for Anne. What fatality ever impelled her to come into my life at just that moment? She came in so happily that immediately my heart fell, for I saw that our last interview in Littledale had left the way to the future open to her. Yet she had not been ten minutes with me before her woman’s intuitions had warned her. I saw the light manner change to a sudden meditation and always when I turned my head her eyes were on me in anxious interrogation. Poor child—I would have spared her the pain, but it was not to be. The moment we were left alone together on the dark and pungent wharf, she turned to me and said:

“David, you have seen her?”

“Yes.”

I took her arm and led her a little apart, to a nook where we were hidden from the crowd.

“Anne, for God’s sake, put me out of your life,” I said, taking her hand. “There is only misery and unhappiness if you don’t. This is honest, because I must be honest with you.”

“I can’t put you out of my life,” she said, shaking her head, “and if you are unhappy—all the more reason for me to stay in yours.”

“Anne, it is not fair to you, to what your life may be.”

“Let me be the judge of that, David,” she said soberly, her hand on my arm. “Have I the right to know this? Is it—the other—still quite hopeless?”

“Quite,” I said gloomily.

“David, my heart goes out to you. If I could only help. No, no—Wait a moment, I can’t go back yet.”

“All right now?”

“All right, David.”

And when we went back, there was Letty, her arm through Molly’s, as pretty and as enticing as could be, coquetting with Mr. Brinsmade. From her face one would never have had the slightest suspicion that there was the least flaw in the serene content of her day. I held myself on my guard, fearing her purpose, but at the last she caught me as, of course, she had intended. The whistle blew and with it the time to say good-by. Molly, little trump, held up with forced gayety and so did Anne, though I saw such suffering in her eyes that it was all I could do not to take her impulsively in my arms: for, no matter what I had protested for her sake, to know that she cared was a great consolation.

When it came Letty’s turn, quite as the most natural thing in the world (as, of course, to the others it was), she flung her arms about me and kissed me; there—before Ben. Then she went off, protesting it was bad luck to see a ship out of port, thoroughly pleased with having planted a last dart. And Ben and I, with that kiss between us, went up the gangway.

“I hope to God I never lay eyes on her again!” he said, with an oath.

If only that may be true!

We went to the promenade deck and stood over the stern, gazing back at the shores that began to recede. The waters rushed in between the wharf and us. I saw Molly and Anne in the crowd and raised my hat, swinging it slowly back and forth. And as I looked into that fading throng, my heart leaped a little at the thought that perhaps she, Bernoline, might be standing there, come down for a last look—a quite irrational thought—yet I did feel her there, in that human mass, unrecognizable, now nothing more than a spotted shadow against the pier. Then the pier ran back into the oblivion of the city and the city faded into the sky.

I do not remember since boyhood to have felt the utter empty loneliness of life as at that moment. But a few months before I had been self-sufficient, a curious traveler, emerging from one experience, eager for others, satisfied and interested with the contact of my kind. Now, for what had come into my life in one short week, for an hour in the twilight, for a look given and taken, a voice remembered, I felt at once rudely lifted out of the companionship of men, doomed to carry with me a solitude from which there could be no escape.

In this weakness of the spirit I even rebelled against the call which took me back; the inexorable call of duty and honor which, after all, is only our yielding to what others may think of us: at least, in this moment of rebellion, this is what I feel! For, now that life has grown so precious to me, even though I but cling to ashes of hope, I wonder how in the coming days of battle I shall stand the test? Yet now that I write with a clearer discipline, a new feeling of reverence comes to me as I think on the men of France who fought beside me, with memories and hopes in their hearts. What others have done, I can do. All our vaunted courage is sometimes no more than that.

* * * * *

New York was but a haze in the distance as I stood by my brother’s side, with the dread feeling of the irrevocable in life closing down on me, wondering when—where—and how, again?

* * * * *

As we stood there, a cabin boy hailed us: “Mr. Littledale? Special delivery for you, sir.”

We both turned hastily.

“Which Mr. Littledale?”

“David Littledale, sir.”

“That’s right. It’s for me.”

I took the letter and at the first glance, though I had never seen her handwriting, I knew it was from Bernoline.

“David?”

Ben’s hand closed over my wrist, and I looked up to see his eyes ablaze with jealousy and suspicion.

“David, show me that letter!”

I held it before him, and he gave it one wild look and turned away.

“Ben, old fellow, get hold of yourself!”

“I feel like jumping over and swimming for it,” he said miserably.

“To-morrow you’ll be thanking God from the bottom of your heart,” I said, linking my arm under his. “Do you remember once when you came between me and making a fool of myself, and how we fought and rolled on the ground? Well, my turn, now. It’s a queer world, and we’ve both got to grin and bear things. But it isn’t a question of love, Ben. It’s just been slavery, weak, unnatural, humiliating slavery. Better now than later!”

“Right! Sorry I made such an ass of myself. It’s over, and, David, that’s the last I’ll ever see of her.”

But I am not so sure of that.

* * * * *

The letter was crumpled in my hand. To have given courage to Ben gave me a sort of courage, which I sadly needed. I did not at once open and read it. I was afraid. I was afraid of a hundred nameless imagined fears, but most of all of the sure reaction I knew must come in her woman’s heart, once the irresistible spell of our coming together had been broken. I went below, into the saloon, and laid her letter before me on the desk. Then, with a sudden inspiration, I found a sheet of paper and wrote:

Sailing down the Harbor

Bernoline, dear:

Your letter is here, before my eyes: and I am still afraid to open it. I shall not read it until I have written this. For I feel already what you will say. Bernoline, no matter what the obstacle which stands between us, it can alter nothing. While you live and I live, we are powerless to change what fate has laid upon us. As for me, just to know your love is to me so great a thing that if I had to choose again with open eyes, I would choose all I have suffered and all that may come to me, all the heart-burnings and all the daily, hourly longing, the cruelty of separation,—all just to have seen your eyes at parting. Be to each other what is right that we should be,—the rest is beyond our knowledge. I have strength for everything but one thing,—not to hear from you again.

David.

Then I took up her letter, and read:

Midnight

Mon seul ami:

I have prayed on my knees for hours to see my way clear. For I no longer know myself. I, who thought myself so strong, have had so little strength. All that I have determined not to do, I have done. And yet, when you were at my side I could not do otherwise. When you are near me all my courage leaves me and I do not know what I do or say. And it is I who am so much older than you in experience and suffering who ought to protect you. But you,—is it not your whole life I am wrecking? Would it not be better to have you hate me than to do what I am doing? Is it not a great crime I am committing? For David, my dear David,—it cannot be. There is no hope for us, now, or ever. What shall I do? To-night, my heart is torn—I cannot think. I have given my promise, and yet—Oh, David, I want to do what is best for you, and what seems cruel now may be the kindest later. I cannot decide. What shall I do? Have courage for us both. Be strong for me.

B.

I read this through once, with heavy heart,—then many times. To give her up was beyond my strength, though something within me admitted the truth of what she wrote. I took up my letter again, and added this postscript:

P. S.—I have read your letter, and I would not change a word of this. You leave the decision to me. I make it, and I take on my shoulders all that may come. I cannot do otherwise. I need your strength. I shall always need it. The fate that has sent us to each other is more mysterious than our little reason can fathom. Yet in it there must be some purpose. We can never harm each other. One thing is life; the other, worse than death. Write to me, dear little friend. Give me only what it is right for you to give me. I shall ask no more.

David.

I put the letter into the bag myself and watched the pilot go over the side of the ship. Then, I went down to my cabin and got out my poilu’s uniform. Another milestone passed.