"And it's only two-thirds empty," she declared. "Ward, why will you be such a boy?"

"Oh, well," he grumbled, and without more ado drank off the balance.

"Now I'll read to you if you have everything you want. Adler, I think you can open one of those windows; it's so warm out of doors."

While he ate his breakfast of toast, milk, and eggs Lloyd skimmed through the paper, reading aloud everything she thought would be of interest to him. Then, after a moment, her eye was caught and held by a half-column article expanded from an Associated Press despatch.

"Oh!" she cried, "listen to this!" and continued: "'Word has been received at this place of the safe arrival of the arctic steamship Curlew at Tasiusak, on the Greenland coast, bearing eighteen members of the Duane-Parsons expedition. Captain Duane reports all well and an uneventful voyage. It is his intention to pass the winter at Tasiusak, collecting dogs and also Esquimau sledges, which he believes superior to European manufacture for work in rubble-ice, and to push on with the Curlew in the spring as soon as Smith Sound shall be navigable. This may be later than Captain Duane supposes, as the whalers who have been working in the sound during the past months bring back news of an unusually early winter and extraordinary quantities of pack-ice both in the sound itself and in Kane Basin. This means a proportionately late open season next year, and the Curlew's departure from Tasiusak may be considerably later than anticipated. It is considered by the best arctic experts an unfortunate circumstance that Captain Duane elected to winter south of Cape Sabine, as the condition of the ice in Smith Sound can never be relied upon nor foretold. Should the entrance to the sound still be encumbered with ice as late as July, which is by no means impossible, Captain Duane will be obliged to spend another winter at Tasiusak or Upernvick, consuming alike his store of provisions and the patience of his men.'"

There was a silence when Lloyd finished reading. Bennett chipped at the end of his second egg.

"Well?" she said at length.

"Well," returned Bennett, "what's all that to me?"

"It's your work," she answered almost vehemently.

"No, indeed. It's Duane's work."

"What do you mean?"

"Let him try now."

"And you?" exclaimed Lloyd, looking intently at him.

"My dear girl, I had my chance and failed. Now—" he raised a shoulder indifferently—"now, I don't care much about it. I've lost interest."

"I don't believe you," she cried energetically; "you of all men." Behind Bennett's chair she had a momentary glimpse of Adler, who had tucked his tray under his arm and was silently applauding in elaborate pantomime. She saw his lips form the words "That's it; that's right. Go right ahead."

"Besides, I have my book to do, and, besides that, I'm an invalid—an invalid who drinks slop."

"And you intend to give it all up—your career?"

"Well—if I should, what then?" Suddenly he turned to her abruptly. "I should not think you would want me to go again. Do you urge me to go?"

Lloyd made a sudden little gasp, and her hand involuntarily closed upon his as it rested near her on the table.

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no, I don't! You are right. It's not your work now."

"Well, then," muttered Bennett as though the question was forever settled.

Lloyd turned to her mail, and one after another slit the envelopes, woman fashion, with a shell hairpin. But while she was glancing over the contents of her letters Bennett began to stir uneasily in his place. From time to time he stopped eating and shot a glance at Lloyd from under his frown, noting the crisp, white texture of her gown and waist, the white scarf with its high, tight bands about the neck, the tiny, golden buttons in her cuffs, the sombre, ruddy glow of her cheeks, her dull-blue eyes, and the piles and coils of her bronze-red hair. Then, abruptly, he said:

"Adler, you can go."

Adler saluted and withdrew.

"Whom are your letters from?" Bennett demanded by way of a beginning.

Lloyd replaced the hairpin in her hair, answering:

"From Dr. Street, from Louise Douglass, and from—Mr. Campbell."

"Hum! well, what do they say? Dr. Street and—Louise Douglass?"

"Dr. Street asks me to take a very important surgical case as soon as I get through here, 'one of the most important and delicate, as well as one of the most interesting, operations in his professional experience.' Those are his words. Louise writes four pages, but she says nothing; just chatters."

"And Campbell?" Bennett indicated with his chin the third rather voluminous letter at Lloyd's elbow. "He seems to have written rather more than four pages. What does he say? Does he 'chatter' too?"

Lloyd smoothed back her hair from one temple.

"H'm—no. He says—something. But never mind what he says. Ward, I must be going back to the City. You don't need a nurse any more."

"What's that?" Bennett's frown gathered on the instant, and with a sharp movement of the head that was habitual to him he brought his one good eye to bear upon her.

Lloyd repeated her statement, answering his remonstrance and expostulation with:

"You are almost perfectly well, and it would not be at all—discreet for me to stay here an hour longer than absolutely necessary. I shall go back to-morrow or next day."

"But, I tell you, I am still very sick. I'm a poor, miserable, shattered wreck."

He made a great show of coughing in hollow, lamentable tones.

"Listen to that, and last night I had a high fever, and this morning I had a queer sort of pain about here—" he vaguely indicated the region of his chest. "I think I am about to have a relapse."

"Nonsense! You can't frighten me at all."

"Oh, well," he answered easily, "I shall go with you—that is all. I suppose you want to see me venture out in such raw, bleak weather as this—with my weak lungs."

"Your weak lungs? How long since?"

"Well, I—I've sometimes thought my lungs were not very strong."

"Why, dear me, you poor thing; I suppose the climate at Kolyuchin Bay was a trifle too bracing—"

"What does Campbell say?"

"—and the diet too rich for your blood—"

"What does Campbell say?"

"—and perhaps you did overexert—"

"Lloyd Searight, what does Mr. Campbell say in that—"

"He asks me to marry him."

"To mum—mar—marry him? Well, damn his impudence!"

"Mr. Campbell is an eminently respectable and worthy gentleman."

"Oh, well, I don't care. Go! Go, marry Mr. Campbell. Be happy. I forgive you both. Go, leave me to die alone."

"Sir, I will go. Forget that you ever knew an unhappy wom—female, whose only fault was that she loved you."

"Go! and sometimes think of me far away on the billow and drop a silent tear—I say, how are you going to answer Campbell's letter?"

"Just one word—'Come.'"

"Lloyd, be serious. This is no joke."

"Joke!" she repeated hollowly. "It is, indeed, a sorry joke. Ah! had I but loved with a girlish love, it would have been better for me."

Then suddenly she caught him about the neck with both her arms, and kissed him on the cheek and on the lips, a little quiver running through her to her finger-tips, her mood changing abruptly to a deep, sweet earnestness.

"Oh, Ward, Ward!" she cried, "all our unhappiness and all our sorrow and trials and anxiety and cruel suspense are over now, and now we really have each other and love each other, dear, and all the years to come are only going to bring happiness to us, and draw us closer and nearer to each other."

"But here's a point, Lloyd," said Bennett after a few moments and when they had returned to coherent speech; "how about your work? You talk about my career; what about yours? We are to be married, but I know just how you have loved your work. It will be a hard wrench for you if you give that up. I am not sure that I should ask it of you. This letter of Street's, now. I know just how eager you must be to take charge of such operations—such important cases as he mentions. It would be very selfish of me to ask you to give up your work. It's your life-work, your profession, your career."

Lloyd took up Dr. Street's letter, and, holding it delicately at arm's length, tore it in two and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

"That, for my life-work," said Lloyd Searight.

As she drew back from him an instant later Bennett all at once and very earnestly demanded:

"Lloyd, do you love me?"

"With all my heart, Ward."

"And you will be my wife?"

"You know that I will."

"Then"—Bennett picked up the little volume of "Arctic Research" which he had received that morning, and tossed it from him upon the floor—"that, for my career," he answered.

For a moment they were silent, looking gladly into each other's eyes. Then Bennett drew her to him again and held her close to him, and once more she put her arms around his neck and nestled her head down upon his shoulder with a little comfortable sigh of contentment and relief and quiet joy, for that the long, fierce trial was over; that there were no more fights to be fought, no more grim, hard situations to face, no more relentless duties to be done. She had endured and she had prevailed; now her reward was come. Now for the long, calm years of happiness.

Later in the day, about an hour after noon, Bennett took his daily nap, carefully wrapped in shawls and stretched out in a wicker steamer-chair in the glass-room. Lloyd, in the meantime, was busy in the garden at the side of the house, gathering flowers which she intended to put in a huge china bowl in Bennett's room. While she was thus occupied Adler, followed by Kamiska, came up. Adler pulled off his cap.

"I beg pardon, Miss," he began, turning his cap about between his fingers. "I don't want to seem to intrude, and if I do I just guess you'd better tell me so first off. But what did he say—or did he say anything—the captain, I mean—this morning about going up again? I heard you talking to him at breakfast. That's it, that's the kind of talk he needs. I can't talk that talk to him. I'm so main scared of him. I wouldn't 'a' believed the captain would ever say he'd give up, would ever say he was beaten. But, Miss, I'm thinking as there's something wrong, main wrong with the captain these days besides fever. He's getting soft—that's what he is. If you'd only know the man that he was—before—while we was up there in the Ice! That's his work, that's what he's cut out for. There ain't nobody can do it but him, and to see him quit, to see him chuck up his chance to a third-rate ice-pilot like Duane—a coastwise college professor that don't know no more about Ice than—than you do—it regularly makes me sick. Why, what will become of the captain now if he quits? He'll just settle down to an ordinary stay-at-home, write-in-a-book professor, and write articles for the papers and magazines, and bye-and-bye, maybe, he'll get down to lecturing! Just fancy, Miss, him, the captain, lecturing! And while he stays at home and writes, and—oh, Lord!—lectures, somebody else, without a fifth of his ability, will do the work. It'll just naturally break my heart, it will!" exclaimed Adler, "if the captain chucks. I wouldn't be so main sorry that he won't reach the Pole as that he quit trying—as that a man like the captain—or like what I thought he was—gave up and chucked when he could win."

"But, Adler," returned Lloyd, "the captain—Mr. Bennett, it seems to me, has done his share. Think what he's been through. You can't have forgotten the march to Kolyuchin Bay?"

But Adler made an impatient gesture with the hand that held the cap. "The danger don't figure; what he'd have to go through with don't figure; the chances of life or death don't figure; nothing in the world don't figure. It's his work; God A'mighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it. Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to him? Don't let him chuck; don't let him get soft. Make him be a Man and not a professor."

When Adler had left her Lloyd sank into a little seat at the edge of the garden walk, and let the flowers drop into her lap, and leaned back in her place, wide-eyed and thoughtful, reviewing in her imagination the events of the past few months. What a change that summer had brought to both of them; how they had been shaped anew in the mould of circumstance!

Suddenly and without warning, they two, high-spirited, strong, determined, had clashed together, the man's force against the woman's strength; and the woman, inherently weaker, had been crushed and humbled. For a time it seemed to her that she had been broken beyond hope; so humbled that she could never rise again; as though a great crisis had developed in her life, and that, having failed once, she must fail again, and again, and again—as if her whole subsequent life must be one long failure. But a greater crisis had followed hard upon the heels of the first—the struggle with self, the greatest struggle of all. Against the abstract principle of evil the woman who had failed in the material conflict with a masculine, masterful will, had succeeded, had conquered self, had been true when it was easy to be false, had dared the judgment of her peers so only that she might not deceive.

Her momentary, perhaps fancied, hatred of Bennett, who had so cruelly misunderstood and humiliated her, had apparently, of its own accord, departed from her heart. Then had come the hour when the strange hazard of fortune had reversed their former positions, when she could be masterful while he was weak; when it was the man's turn to be broken, to be prevailed against. Her own discomfiture had been offset by his. She no longer need look to him as her conqueror, her master. And when she had seen him so weak, so pathetically unable to resist the lightest pressure of her hand; when it was given her not only to witness but to relieve his suffering, the great love for him that could not die had returned. With the mastery of self had come the forgetfulness of self; and her profession, her life-work, of which she had been so proud, had seemed to her of small concern. Now she was his, and his life was hers. She should—so she told herself—be henceforward happy in his happiness, and her only pride would be the pride in his achievements.

But now the unexpected had happened, and Bennett had given up his career. During the period of Bennett's convalescence Lloyd had often talked long and earnestly with him, and partly from what he had told her and partly from much that she inferred she had at last been able to trace out and follow the mental processes and changes through which Bennett had passed. He, too, had been proved by fire; he, too, had had his ordeal, his trial.

By nature, by training, and by virtue of the life he lived Bennett had been a man, harsh, somewhat brutal, inordinately selfish, and at all times magnificently arrogant. He had neither patience nor toleration for natural human weakness. While selfish, he was not self-conscious, and it never occurred to him, it was impossible for him to see that he was a giant among men. His heart was callous; his whole nature and character hard and flinty from the buffetings he gave rather than received.

Then had come misfortune. Ferriss had died, and Bennett's recognition and acknowledgment of the fact that he, Ward Bennett, who never failed, who never blundered, had made at last the great and terrible error of his life, had shaken his character to its very foundations. This was only the beginning; the breach once made, Humanity entered into the gloomy, waste places of his soul; remorse crowded hard upon his wonted arrogance; generosity and the impulse to make amends took the place of selfishness; kindness thrust out the native brutality; the old-time harshness and imperiousness gave way to a certain spirit of toleration.

It was the influence of these new emotions that had moved Bennett to make the statement to Adler that had so astonished and perplexed his old-time subordinate. He, Bennett, too, like Lloyd, was at that time endeavouring to free himself from a false position, and through the medium of confession stand in his true colours in the eyes of his associates. Unconsciously they were both working out their salvation along the same lines.

Then had come Bennett's resolve to give Ferriss the conspicuous and prominent place in his book, the account of the expedition. The more Bennett dwelt upon Ferriss's heroism, intelligence, and ability the more his task became a labour of love, and the more the idea of self dropped away from his thought and imagination. Then—and perhaps this was not the least important factor in Bennett's transformation—sickness had befallen; the strong and self-reliant man had been brought to the weakness of a child, whom the pressure of a finger could control. He suddenly changed places with the woman he believed he had, at such fearful cost, broken and subdued. His physical strength, once so enormous, was as a reed in the woman's hand; his will, so indomitable, was as powerless as an infant's before the woman's calm resolve, rising up there before him and overmastering him at a time he believed it to be forever weakened.

Bennett had come forth from the ordeal chastened, softened, and humbled. But he was shattered, broken, brought to the earth with sorrow and the load of unavailing regret. Ambition was numb and lifeless within him. Reaction from his former attitude of aggression and defiance had carried him far beyond the normal.

Here widened the difference between the man and the woman. Lloyd's discontinuance of her life-work had been in the nature of heroic subjugation of self. Bennett's abandonment of his career was hardly better than weakness. In the one it had been renunciation; in the other surrender. In the end, and after all was over, it was the woman who remained the stronger.

But for her, the woman, was it true that all was over? Had the last conflict been fought? Was it not rather to be believed that life was one long conflict? Was it not for her, Lloyd, to rouse that sluggard ambition? Was not this her career, after all, to be his inspiration, his incentive, to urge him to the accomplishment of a great work? Now, of the two, she was the stronger. In these new conditions what was her duty? Adler's clumsy phrases persisted in her mind. "That's his work," Adler had said. "God Almighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it. Don't let him chuck, don't let him get soft; make him be a man and not a professor."

Had she so much influence over Bennett? Could she rouse the restless, daring spirit again? Perhaps; but what would it mean for her—for her, who must be left behind to wait, and wait, and wait—for three years, for five years, for ten years—perhaps forever? And now, at this moment, when she believed that at last happiness had come to her; when the duty had been done, the grim problems solved; when sickness had been overcome; when love had come back, and the calm, untroubled days seemed lengthening out ahead, there came to her recollection the hideous lapse of time that had intervened between the departure of the Freja and the expedition's return; what sleepless nights, what days of unspeakable suspense, what dreadful alternations between hope and despair, what silent, repressed suffering, what haunting, ever-present dread of a thing she dared not name! Was the Fear to come into her life again; the Enemy that lurked and leered and forebore to strike, that hung upon her heels at every hour of the day, that sat down with her to her every occupation, that followed after when she stirred abroad, that came close to her in the still watches of the night, creeping, creeping to her bedside, looming over her in the darkness; the cold fingers reaching closer and closer, the awful face growing ever more distinct, till the suspense of waiting for the blow to fall, for the fingers to grip, became more than she could bear, and she sprang from her bed with a stifled sob of anguish, driven from her rest with quivering lips and streaming eyes?

Abruptly Lloyd rose to her feet, the flowers falling unheeded from her lap, her arms rigid at her side, her hands shut tight.

"No," she murmured, "I cannot. This, at last, is more than I can do."

Instantly Adler's halting words went ringing through her brain: "The danger don't figure; nothing in the world don't figure. It's his work."

Adler's words were the words of the world. She alone of the thousands whose eyes were turned toward Bennett was blinded. She was wrong. She belonged to him, but he did not belong to her. The world demanded him; the world called him from her side to do the terrible work that God had made him for. Was she, because she loved him, because of her own single anguish, to stand between him and the clamour of the world, between him and his work, between him and God?

A work there was for him to do. He must play the man's part. The battle must be fought again. That horrible, grisly Enemy far up there to the north, upon the high curve of the globe, the shoulder of the world, huge, remorseless, terrible in its vast, Titanic strength, guarding its secret through all the centuries in the innermost of a thousand gleaming coils, must be defied again. The monster that defended the great prize, the object of so many fruitless quests must be once more attacked.

His was the work, for him the shock of battle, the rigour of the fight, the fierce assault, the ceaseless onset, the unfailing and unflinching courage.

Hers was the woman's part. Already she had assumed it; steadfast unselfishness, renunciation, patience, the heroism greater than all others, that sits with folded hands, quiet, unshaken, and under fearful stress, endures, and endures, and endures. To be the inspiration of great deeds, high hopes, and firm resolves, and then, while the fight was dared, to wait in calmness for its issue—that was her duty, that, the woman's part in the world's great work.

Lloyd was dimly conscious of a certain sweet and subtle element in her love for Bennett that only of late she had begun to recognise and be aware of. This was a certain vague protective, almost maternal, instinct. Perhaps it was because of his present weakness both of body and character, or perhaps it was an element always to be found in the deep and earnest love of any noble-hearted woman. She felt that she, not as herself individually, but as a woman, was not only stronger than Bennett, but in a manner older, more mature. She was conscious of depths in her nature far greater than in his, and also that she was capable of attaining heights of heroism, devotion, and sacrifice which he, for all his masculine force, could not only never reach, but could not even conceive of. It was this consciousness of her larger, better nature that made her feel for Bennett somewhat as a mother feels for a son, a sister for her younger brother. A great tenderness mingled with her affection, a vast and almost divine magnanimity, a broad, womanly pity for his shortcomings, his errors, his faults. It was to her he must look for encouragement. It was for her to bind up and reshape the great energy that had been so rudely checked, and not only to call back his strength, but to guide it and direct into its appointed channels.

Lloyd returned toward the glass-enclosed veranda to find Bennett just arousing from his nap. She drew the shawls closer about him and rearranged the pillows under his head, and then sat down on the steps near at hand.

"Tell me about this Captain Duane," she began. "Where is he now?"

Bennett yawned and passed his hand across his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"What time is it? I must have slept over an hour. Duane? Why, you saw what the paper said. I presume he is at Tasiusak."

"Do you think he will succeed? Do you think he will reach the Pole? Adler thinks he won't."

"Oh, perhaps, if he has luck and an open season."

"But tell me, why does he take so many men? Isn't that contrary to the custom? I know a great deal about arctic work. While you were away I read every book I could get upon the subject. The best work has been done with small expeditions. If you should go again—when you go again, will you take so many? I saw you quoted somewhere as being in favour of only six or eight men."

"Ten should be the limit—but some one else will make the attempt now. I'm out of it. I tried and failed."

"Failed—you! The idea of you ever failing, of you ever giving up! Of course it was all very well to joke this morning about giving up your career; but I know you will be up and away again only too soon. I am trying to school myself to expect that."

"Lloyd, I tell you that I am out of it. I don't believe the Pole ever can be reached, and I don't much care whether it is reached or not."

Suddenly Lloyd turned to him, the unwonted light flashing in her eyes. "I do, though," she cried vehemently. "It can be done, and we—America—ought to do it."

Bennett stared at her, startled by her outburst.

"This English expedition," Lloyd continued, the colour flushing in her cheeks, "this Duane-Parsons expedition, they will have the start of everybody next year. Nearly every attempt that is made now establishes a new record for a high latitude. One nation after another is creeping nearer and nearer almost every year, and each expedition is profiting by the experiences and observations made by the one that preceded it. Some day, and not very long now, some nation is going to succeed and plant its flag there at last. Why should it not be us? Why shouldn't our flag be first at the Pole? We who have had so many heroes, such great sailors, such splendid leaders, such explorers—our Stanleys, our Farraguts, our Decaturs, our De Longs, our Lockwoods—how we would stand ashamed before the world if some other nation should succeed where we have all but succeeded—Norway, or France, or Russia, or England—profiting by our experiences, following where we have made the way!"

"That is very fine," admitted Bennett. "It would be a great honour, the greatest perhaps; and once—I—well, I had my ambitions, too. But it's all different now. Something in me died when—Dick—when—I—oh, let Duane try. Let him do his best. I know it can't be done, and if he should win, I would be the first to wire congratulations. Lloyd, I don't care. I've lost interest. I suppose it is my punishment. I'm out of the race. I'm a back number. I'm down."

Lloyd shook her head.

"I don't—I can't believe you."

"Do you want to see me go," demanded Bennett, "after this last experience? Do you urge me to it?"

Lloyd turned her head away, leaning it against one of the veranda pillars. A sudden dimness swam in her eyes, the choking ache she knew so well came to her throat. Ah, life was hard for her. The very greatness of her nature drove from her the happiness so constantly attained by little minds, by commonplace souls. When was it to end, this continual sacrifice of inclination to duty, this eternal abnegation, this yielding up of herself, her dearest, most cherished wishes to the demands of duty and the great world?

"I don't know what I want," she said faintly. "It don't seem as if one could be happy—very long."

All at once she moved close to him and laid her cheek upon the arm of his chair and clasped his hand in both her own, murmuring: "But I have you now, I have you now, no matter what is coming to us."

A sense of weakness overcame her. What did she care that Bennett should fulfil his destiny, should round out his career, should continue to be the Great Man? It was he, Bennett, that she loved—not his greatness, not his career. Let it all go, let ambition die, let others less worthy succeed in the mighty task. What were fame and honour and glory and the sense of a divinely appointed duty done at last to the clasp of his hand and the sound of his voice?

In November of that year Lloyd and Bennett were married. Two guests only assisted at the ceremony. These were Campbell and his little daughter Hattie.



X.

The months passed; Christmas came and went. Until then the winter had been unusually mild, but January set in with a succession of vicious cold snaps and great blustering winds out of the northeast. Lloyd and Bennett had elected to remain quietly in their new home at Medford. They had no desire to travel, and Bennett's forthcoming book demanded his attention. Adler stayed on about the house. He and the dog Kamiska were companions inseparable. At long intervals visitors presented themselves—Dr. Street, or Pitts, or certain friends of Bennett's. But the great rush of interviewers, editors, and projectors of marvellous schemes that had crowded Bennett's anterooms during the spring and early summer was conspicuously dwindling. The press ceased to speak of him; even his mail had fallen away. Now, whenever the journals of the day devoted space to arctic exploration, it was invariably in reference to the English expedition wintering on the Greenland coast. That world that had clamoured so loudly upon Bennett's return, while, perhaps, not yet forgetting him, was already ignoring him, was looking in other directions. Another man was in the public eye.

But in every sense these two—Lloyd and Bennett—were out of the world. They had freed themselves from the current of affairs. They stood aside while the great tide went careering past swift and turbulent, and one of them at least lacked even the interest to look on and watch its progress.

For a time Lloyd was supremely happy. Their life was unbroken, uneventful. The calm, monotonous days of undisturbed happiness to which she had looked forward were come at last. Thus it was always to be. Isolated and apart, she could shut her ears to the thunder of the world's great tide that somewhere, off beyond the hills in the direction of the City, went swirling through its channels. Hardly an hour went by that she and Bennett were not together. Lloyd had transferred her stable to her new home; Lewis was added to the number of their servants, and until Bennett's old-time vigour completely returned to him she drove out almost daily with her husband, covering the country for miles around.

Much of their time, however, they spent in Bennett's study. This was a great apartment in the rear of the house, scantily, almost meanly, furnished. Papers littered the floor; bundles of manuscripts, lists, charts, and observations, the worn and battered tin box of records, note-books, journals, tables of logarithms were piled upon Bennett's desk. A bookcase crammed with volumes of reference, statistical pamphlets, and the like stood between the windows, while one of the walls was nearly entirely occupied by a vast map of the arctic circle, upon which the course of the Freja, her drift in the pack, and the route of the expedition's southerly march were accurately plotted.

The room was bare of ornament; the desk and a couple of chairs were its only furniture. Pictures there were none. Their places were taken by photographs and a great blue print of the shipbuilder's plans and specifications of the Freja.

The photographs were some of those that Dennison had made of the expedition—the Freja nipped in the ice, a group of the officers and crew upon the forward deck, the coast of Wrangel Island, Cape Kammeni, peculiar ice formations, views of the pack under different conditions and temperatures, pressure-ridges and scenes of the expedition's daily life in the arctic, bear-hunts, the manufacture of sledges, dog-teams, Bennett taking soundings and reading the wind-gauge, and one, the last view of the Freja, taken just as the ship—her ice-sheathed dripping bows heaved high in the air, the flag still at the peak—sank from sight.

However, on the wall over the blue-print plans of the Freja, one of the boat's flags, that had been used by the expedition throughout all the time of its stay in the ice, hung suspended—a faded, tattered square of stars and bars.

As the new life settled quietly and evenly to its grooves a routine began to develop. About an hour after breakfast Lloyd and Bennett shut themselves in Bennett's "workroom," as he called it, Lloyd taking her place at the desk. She had become his amanuensis, had insisted upon writing to his dictation.

"Look at that manuscript," she had exclaimed one day, turning the sheets that Bennett had written; "literally the very worst handwriting I have ever seen. What do you suppose a printer would make out of your 'thes' and 'ands'? It's hieroglyphics, you know," she informed him gravely, nodding her head at him.

It was quite true. Bennett wrote with amazing rapidity and with ragged, vigorous strokes of the pen, not unfrequently driving the point through the paper itself; his script was pothooks, clumsy, slanting in all directions, all but illegible. In the end Lloyd had almost pushed him from his place at the desk, taking the pen from between his fingers, exclaiming:

"Get up! Give me your chair—and that pen. Handwriting like that is nothing else but a sin."

Bennett allowed her to bully him, protesting merely for the enjoyment of squabbling with her.

"Come, I like this. What are you doing in my workroom anyhow, Mrs. Bennett? I think you had better go to your housework."

"Don't talk," she answered. "Here are your notes and journal. Now tell me what to write."

In the end matters adjusted themselves. Daily Lloyd took her place at the desk, pen in hand, the sleeve of her right arm rolled back to the elbow (a habit of hers whenever writing, and which Bennett found to be charming beyond words), her pen travelling steadily from line to line. He on his part paced the floor, a cigar between his teeth, his notes and note-books in his hand, dictating comments of his own, or quoting from the pages, stained, frayed, and crumpled, written by the light of the auroras, the midnight suns, or the unsteady, flickering of train-oil lanterns and blubber-lamps.

What long, delicious hours they spent thus, as the winter drew on, in the absolute quiet of that country house, ignored and lost in the brown, bare fields and leafless orchards of the open country! No one troubled them. No one came near them. They asked nothing better than that the world wherein they once had lived, whose hurtling activity and febrile unrest they both had known so well, should leave them alone.

Only one jarring note, and that none too resonant, broke the long harmony of Lloyd's happiness during these days. Bennett was deaf to it; but for Lloyd it vibrated continuously and, as time passed, with increasing insistence and distinctness. But for one person in the world Lloyd could have told herself that her life was without a single element of discontent.

This was Adler. It was not that his presence about the house was a reproach to Bennett's wife, for the man was scrupulously unobtrusive. He had the instinctive delicacy that one sometimes discovers in simple, undeveloped natures—seafaring folk especially—and though he could not bring himself to leave his former chief, he had withdrawn himself more than ever from notice since the time of Bennett's marriage. He rarely even waited on the table these days, for Lloyd and Bennett often chose to breakfast and dine quite to themselves.

But, for all that, Lloyd saw Adler from time to time, Kamiska invariably at his heels. She came upon him polishing the brasses upon the door of the house, or binding strips of burlaps and sacking about the rose-bushes in the garden, or returning from the village post-office with the mail, invariably wearing the same woollen cap, the old pea-jacket, and the jersey with the name "Freja" upon the breast. He rarely spoke to her unless she first addressed him, and then always with a precise salute, bringing his heels sharply together, standing stiffly at attention.

But the man, though all unwittingly, radiated gloom. Lloyd readily saw that Adler was labouring under a certain cloud of disappointment and deferred hope. Naturally she understood the cause. Lloyd was too large-hearted to feel any irritation at the sight of Adler. But she could not regard him with indifference. To her mind he stood for all that Bennett had given up, for the great career that had stopped half-way, for the work half done, the task only half completed. In a way was not Adler now superior to Bennett? His one thought and aim and hope was to "try again." His ambition was yet alive and alight; the soldier was willing where the chief lost heart. Never again had Adler addressed himself to Lloyd on the subject of Bennett's inactivity. Now he seemed to understand—to realise that once married—and to Lloyd—he must no longer expect Bennett to continue the work. All this Lloyd interpreted from Adler's attitude, and again and again told herself that she could read the man's thoughts aright. She even fancied she caught a mute appeal in his eyes upon those rare occasions when they met, as though he looked to her as the only hope, the only means to wake Bennett from his lethargy. She imagined that she heard him say:

"Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to him? Don't let him chuck. Make him be a man, and not a professor. Nothing else in the world don't figure. It's his work. God A'mighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it."

His work, his work, God made him for that; appointed the task, made the man, and now she came between. God, Man, and the Work,—the three vast elements of an entire system, the whole universe epitomised in the tremendous trinity. Again and again such thoughts assailed her. Duty once more stirred and awoke. It seemed to her as if some great engine ordained of Heaven to run its appointed course had come to a standstill, was rusting to its ruin, and that she alone of all the world had power to grasp its lever, to send it on its way; whither, she did not know; why, she could not tell. She knew only that it was right that she should act. By degrees her resolution hardened. Bennett must try again. But at first it seemed to her as though her heart would break, and more than once she wavered.

As Bennett continued to dictate to her the story of the expedition he arrived at the account of the march toward Kolyuchin Bay, and, finally, at the description of the last week, with its terrors, its sufferings, its starvation, its despair, when, one by one, the men died in their sleeping-bags, to be buried under slabs of ice. When this point in the narrative was reached Bennett inserted no comment of his own; but while Lloyd wrote, read simply and with grim directness from the entries in his journal precisely as they had been written.

Lloyd had known in a vague way that the expedition had suffered abominably, but hitherto Bennett had never consented to tell her the story in detail. "It was a hard week," he informed her, "a rather bad grind."

Now, for the first time, she was to know just what had happened, just what he had endured.

As usual, Bennett paced the floor from wall to wall, his cigar in his teeth, his tattered, grimy ice-journal in his hand. At the desk Lloyd's round, bare arm, the sleeve turned up to the elbow, moved evenly back and forth as she wrote. In the intervals of Bennett's dictation the scratching of Lloyd's pen made itself heard. A little fire snapped and crackled on the hearth. The morning's sun came flooding in at the windows.

"... Gale of wind from the northeast," prompted Lloyd, raising her head from her writing. Bennett continued:

"Impossible to march against it in our weakened condition."

He paused for her to complete the sentence.

"... Must camp here till it abates...."

"Have you got that?" Lloyd nodded.

"... Made soup of the last of the dog-meat this afternoon.... Our last pemmican gone."

There was a pause; then Bennett resumed:

"December 1st, Wednesday—Everybody getting weaker.... Metz breaking down.... Sent Adler to the shore to gather shrimps ... we had about a mouthful apiece at noon ... supper, a spoonful of glycerine and hot water."

Lloyd put her hand to her temple, smoothing back her hair, her face turned away. As before, in the park, on that warm and glowing summer afternoon, a swift, clear vision of the Ice was vouchsafed to her. She saw the coast of Kolyuchin Bay—primordial desolation, whirling dust-like snow, the unleashed wind yelling like a sabbath of witches, leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, folly-stricken and insensate in its hideous dance of death. Bennett continued. His voice insensibly lowered itself, a certain gravity of manner came upon him. At times he looked at the written pages in his hand with vague, unseeing eyes. No doubt he, too, was remembering.

He resumed:

"December 2d, Thursday—Metz died during the night.... Hansen dying. Still blowing a gale from the northeast.... A hard night."

Lloyd's pen moved slower and slower as she wrote. The lines of the manuscript began to blur and swim before her eyes.

And it was to this that she must send him. To this inhuman, horrible region; to this life of prolonged suffering, where death came slowly through days of starvation, exhaustion, and agony hourly renewed. He must dare it all again. She must force him to it. Her decision had been taken; her duty was plain to her. Now it was irrevocable.

"... Hansen died during early morning.... Dennison breaking down....

"... December 5th—Sunday—Dennison found dead this morning between Adler and myself...."

The vision became plainer, more distinct. She fancied she saw the interior of the tent and the dwindling number of the Freja's survivors moving about on their hands and knees in its gloomy half-light. Their hair and beards were long, their faces black with dirt, monstrously distended and fat with the bloated irony of starvation. They were no longer men. After that unspeakable stress of misery nothing but the animal remained.

"... Too weak to bury him, or even carry him out of the tent.... He must lie where he is.... Last spoonful of glycerine and hot water.... Divine service at 5:30 P.M...."

Once more Lloyd faltered in her writing; her hand moved slower. Shut her teeth though she might, the sobs would come; swiftly the tears brimmed her eyes, but she tried to wink them back, lest Bennett should see. Heroically she wrote to the end of the sentence. A pause followed:

"Yes—' divine services at'—I—I—"

The pen dropped from her fingers and she sank down upon her desk, her head bowed in the hollow of her bare arm, shaken from head to foot with the violence of the crudest grief she had ever known. Bennett threw his journal from him, and came to her, taking her in his arms, putting her head upon his shoulder.

"Why, Lloyd, what is it—why, old chap, what the devil! I was a beast to read that to you. It wasn't really as bad as that, you know, and besides, look here, look at me. It all happened three years ago. It's all over with now."

Without raising her head, and clinging to him all the closer, Lloyd answered brokenly:

"No, no; it's not all over. It never, never will be."

"Pshaw, nonsense!" Bennett blustered, "you must not take it to heart like this. We're going to forget all about it now. Here, damn the book, anyhow! We've had enough of it to-day. Put your hat on. We'll have the ponies out and drive somewhere. And to-night we'll go into town and see a show at a theatre."

"No," protested Lloyd, pushing back from him, drying her eyes. "You shall not think I'm so weak. We will go on with what we have to do—with our work. I'm all right now."

Bennett marched her out of the room without more ado, and, following her, closed and locked the door behind them. "We'll not write another word of that stuff to-day. Get your hat and things. I'm going out to tell Lewis to put the ponies in."

But that day marked a beginning. From that time on Lloyd never faltered, and if there were moments when the iron bit deeper than usual into her heart, Bennett never knew her pain. By degrees a course of action planned itself for her. A direct appeal to Bennett she believed would not only be useless, but beyond even her heroic courage. She must influence him indirectly. The initiative must appear to come from him. It must seem to him that he, of his own accord, roused his dormant resolution. It was a situation that called for all her feminine tact, all her delicacy, all her instinctive diplomacy.

The round of their daily life was renewed, but now there was a change. It was subtle, illusive, a vague, indefinite trouble in the air. Lloyd had addressed herself to her task, and from day to day, from hour to hour, she held to it, unseen, unnoticed. Now it was a remark dropped as if by chance in the course of conversation; now an extract cut from a newspaper or scientific journal, and left where Bennett would find it; now merely a look in her eyes, an instant's significant glance when her gaze met her husband's, or a moment's enthusiasm over the news of some discovery. Insensibly and with infinite caution she directed his attention to the world he believed he had abjured; she called into being his interest in his own field of action, reading to him by the hour from the writings of other men, or advancing and championing theories which she knew to be false and ridiculous, but which she goaded him to deny and refute.

One morning she even feigned an exclamation of unbounded astonishment as she opened the newspaper while the two were at breakfast, pretending to read from imaginary headlines.

"Ward, listen! 'The Pole at Last. A Norwegian Expedition Solves the Mystery of the Arctic. The Goal Reached After—'"

"What!" cried Bennett sharply, his frown lowering.

"'—After Centuries of Failure.'" Lloyd put down the paper with a note of laughter.

"Suppose you should read it some day."

Bennett subsided with a good-humoured growl.

"You did scare me for a moment. I thought—I thought—"

"I did scare you? Why were you scared? What did you think?" She leaned toward him eagerly.

"I thought—well—oh—that some other chap, Duane, perhaps—"

"He's still at Tasiusak. But he will succeed, I do believe. I've read a great deal about him. He has energy and determination. If anybody succeeds it will be Duane."

"He? Never!"

"Somebody, then."

"You said once that if your husband couldn't nobody could."

"Yes, yes, I know," she answered cheerfully. "But you—you are out of it now."

"Huh!" he grumbled. "It's not because I don't think I could if I wanted to."

"No, you could not, Ward. Nobody can."

"But you just said you thought somebody would some day."

"Did I? Oh, suppose you really should one of these days!"

"And suppose I never came back?"

"Nonsense! Of course you would come back. They all do nowadays."

"De Long didn't."

"But you are not De Long."

And for the rest of the day Lloyd noted with a sinking heart that Bennett was unusually thoughtful and preoccupied. She said nothing, and was studious to avoid breaking in upon his reflections, whatever they might be. She kept out of his way as much as possible, but left upon his desk, as if by accident, a copy of a pamphlet issued by a geographical society, open at an article upon the future of exploration within the arctic circle. At supper that night Bennett suddenly broke in upon a rather prolonged silence with:

"It's all in the ship. Build a ship strong enough to withstand lateral pressure of the ice and the whole thing becomes easy."

Lloyd yawned and stirred her tea indifferently as she answered:

"Yes, but you know that can't be done."

Bennett frowned thoughtfully, drumming upon the table.

"I'll wager I could build one."

"But it's not the ship alone. It's the man. Whom would you get to command your ship?"

Bennett stared.

"Why, I would take her, of course."

"You? You have had your share—your chance. Now you can afford to stay home and finish your book—and—well, you might deliver lectures."

"What rot, Lloyd! Can you see me posing on a lecture platform?"

"I would rather see you doing that than trying to beat Duane, than getting into the ice again. I would rather see you doing that than to know that you were away up there—in the north, in the ice, at your work again, fighting your way toward the Pole, leading your men and overcoming every obstacle that stood in your way, never giving up, never losing heart, trying to do the great, splendid, impossible thing; risking your life to reach merely a point on a chart. Yes, I would rather see you on a lecture platform than on the deck of an arctic steamship. You know that, Ward."

He shot a glance at her.

"I would like to know what you mean," he muttered.

The winter went by, then the spring, and by June all the country around Medford was royal with summer. During the last days of May, Bennett practically had completed the body of his book and now occupied himself with its appendix. There was little variation in their daily life. Adler became more and more of a fixture about the place. In the first week of June, Lloyd and Bennett had a visitor, a guest; this was Hattie Campbell. Mr. Campbell was away upon a business trip, and Lloyd had arranged to have the little girl spend the fortnight of his absence with her at Medford.

The summer was delightful. A vast, pervading warmth lay close over all the world. The trees, the orchards, the rose-bushes in the garden about the house, all the teeming life of trees and plants hung motionless and poised in the still, tideless ocean of the air. It was very quiet; all distant noises, the crowing of cocks, the persistent calling of robins and jays, the sound of wheels upon the road, the rumble of the trains passing the station down in the town, seemed muffled and subdued. The long, calm summer days succeeded one another in an unbroken, glimmering procession. From dawn to twilight one heard the faint, innumerable murmurs of the summer, the dull bourdon of bees in the rose and lilac bushes, the prolonged, strident buzzing of blue-bottle-flies, the harsh, dry scrape of grasshoppers, the stridulating of an occasional cricket. In the twilight and all through the night itself the frogs shrilled from the hedgerows and in the damp, north corners of the fields, while from the direction of the hills toward the east the whippoorwills called incessantly. During the day the air was full of odours, distilled as it were by the heat of high noon—the sweet smell of ripening apples, the fragrance of warm sap and leaves and growing grass, the smell of cows from the nearby pastures, the pungent, ammoniacal suggestion of the stable back of the house, and the odour of scorching paint blistering on the southern walls.

July was very hot. No breath of wind stirred the vast, invisible sea of air, quivering and oily under the vertical sun. The landscape was deserted of animated life; there was little stirring abroad. In the house one kept within the cool, darkened rooms with matting on the floors and comfortable, deep wicker chairs, the windows wide to the least stirring of the breeze. Adler dozed in his canvas hammock slung between a hitching-post and a crab-apple tree in the shade behind the stable. Kamiska sprawled at full length underneath the water-trough, her tongue lolling, panting incessantly. An immeasurable Sunday stillness seemed to hang suspended in the atmosphere—a drowsy, numbing hush. There was no thought of the passing of time. The day of the week was always a matter of conjecture. It seemed as though this life of heat and quiet and unbroken silence was to last forever.

Then suddenly there was an alerte. One morning, a day or so after Hattie Campbell had returned to the City, just as Lloyd and Bennett were finishing their breakfast in the now heavily awninged glass-room, they were surprised to see Adler running down the road toward the house, Kamiska racing on ahead, barking excitedly. Adler had gone into the town for the mail and morning's paper. This latter he held wide open in his hand, and as soon as he caught sight of Lloyd and Bennett waved it about him, shouting as he ran.

Lloyd's heart began to beat. There was only one thing that could excite Adler to this degree—the English expedition; Adler had news of it; it was in the paper. Duane had succeeded; had been working steadily northward during all these past months, while Bennett—

"Stuck in the ice! stuck in the ice!" shouted Adler as he swung wide the front gate and came hastening toward the veranda across the lawn. "What did we say! Hooray! He's stuck. I knew it; any galoot might 'a' known it. Duane's stuck tighter'n a wedge off Bache Island, in Kane Basin. Here it all is; read it for yourself."

Bennett took the paper from him and read aloud to the effect that the Curlew, accompanied by her collier, which was to follow her to the southerly limit of Kane Basin, had attempted the passage of Smith Sound late in June. But the season, as had been feared, was late. The enormous quantities of ice reported by the whalers the previous year had not debouched from the narrow channel, and on the last day of June the Curlew had found her further progress effectually blocked. In essaying to force her way into a lead the ice had closed in behind her, and, while not as yet nipped, the vessel was immobilised. There was no hope that she would advance northward until the following summer. The collier, which had not been beset, had returned to Tasiusak with the news of the failure.

"What a galoot! What a—a professor!" exclaimed Adler with a vast disdain. "Him loafing at Tasiusak waiting for open water, when the Alert wintered in eighty-two-twenty-four! Well, he's shelved for another year, anyhow."

Later on, after breakfast, Lloyd and Bennett shut themselves in Bennett's workroom, and for upward of three hours addressed themselves to the unfinished work of the previous day, compiling from Bennett's notes a table of temperatures of the sea-water taken at different soundings. Alternating with the scratching of Lloyd's pen, Bennett's voice continued monotonously:

"August 15th—2,000 meters or 1,093 fathoms—minus .66 degrees centigrade or 30.81 Fahrenheit."

"Fahrenheit," repeated Lloyd as she wrote the last word.

"August 16th—1,600 meters or 874 fathoms—"

"Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms," repeated Lloyd as Bennett paused abstractedly.

"Or ... he's in a bad way, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"It's a bad bit of navigation along there. The Proteus was nipped and crushed to kindling in about that same latitude ... h'm" ... Bennett tugged at his mustache. Then, suddenly, as if coming to himself: "Well—these temperatures now. Where were we? 'Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms, minus forty-six hundredths degrees centigrade.'"

On the afternoon of the next day, just as they were finishing this table, there was a knock at the door. It was Adler, and as Bennett opened the door he saluted and handed him three calling-cards. Bennett uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Lloyd turned about from the desk, her pen poised in the air over the half-written sheet.

"They might have let me know they were coming," she heard Bennett mutter. "What do they want?"

"Guess they came on that noon train, sir," hazarded Adler. "They didn't say what they wanted, just inquired for you."

"Who is it?" asked Lloyd, coming forward.

Bennett read off the names on the cards.

"Well, it's Tremlidge—that's the Tremlidge of the Times; he's the editor and proprietor—and Hamilton Garlock—has something to do with that new geographical society—president, I believe—and this one"—he handed her the third card—"is a friend of yours, Craig V. Campbell, of the Hercules Wrought Steel Company."

Lloyd stared. "What can they want?" she murmured, looking up to him from the card in some perplexity. Bennett shook his head.

"Tell them to come up here," he said to Adler.

Lloyd hastily drew down her sleeve over her bare arm.

"Why up here, Ward?" she inquired abruptly.

"Should we have seen them downstairs?" he demanded with a frown. "I suppose so; I didn't think. Don't go," he added, putting a hand on her arm as she started for the door. "You might as well hear what they have to say."

The visitors entered, Adler holding open the door—Campbell, well groomed, clean-shaven, and gloved even in that warm weather; Tremlidge, the editor of one of the greater daily papers of the City (and of the country for the matter of that), who wore a monocle and carried a straw hat under his arm; and Garlock, the vice-president of an international geographical society, an old man, with beautiful white hair curling about his ears, a great bow of black silk knotted about his old-fashioned collar. The group presented, all unconsciously, three great and highly developed phases of nineteenth-century intelligence—science, manufactures, and journalism—each man of them a master in his calling.

When the introductions and preliminaries were over, Bennett took up his position again in front of the fireplace, leaning against the mantle, his hands in his pockets. Lloyd sat opposite to him at the desk, resting her elbow on the edge. Hanging against the wall behind her was the vast chart of the arctic circle. Tremlidge, the editor, sat on the bamboo sofa near the end of the room, his elbows on his knees, gently tapping the floor with the ferrule of his slim walking-stick; Garlock, the scientist, had dropped into the depths of a huge leather chair and leaned back in it comfortably, his legs crossed, one boot swinging gently; Campbell stood behind this chair, drumming on the back occasionally with the fingers of one hand, speaking to Bennett over Garlock's shoulder, and from time to time turning to Tremlidge for corroboration and support of what he was saying.

Abruptly the conference began.

"Well, Mr. Bennett, you got our wire?" Campbell said by way of commencement.

Bennett shook his head.

"No," he returned in some surprise; "no, I got no wire."

"That's strange," said Tremlidge. "I wired three days ago asking for this interview. The address was right, I think. I wired: 'Care of Dr. Pitts.' Isn't that right?"

"That probably accounts for it," answered Bennett. "This is Pitts's house, but he does not live here now. Your despatch, no doubt, went to his office in the City, and was forwarded to him. He's away just now, travelling, I believe. But—you're here. That's the essential."

"Yes," murmured Garlock, looking to Campbell. "We're here, and we want to have a talk with you."

Campbell, who had evidently been chosen spokesman, cleared his throat.

"Well, Mr. Bennett, I don't know just how to begin, so suppose I begin at the beginning. Tremlidge and I belong to the same club in the City, and in some way or other we have managed to see a good deal of each other during the last half-dozen years. We find that we have a good deal in common. I don't think his editorial columns are for sale, and he doesn't believe there are blow-holes in my steel plates. I really do believe we have certain convictions. Tremlidge seems to have an idea that journalism can be clean and yet enterprising, and tries to run his sheet accordingly, and I am afraid that I would not make a bid for bridge girders below what it would cost to manufacture them honestly. Tremlidge and I differ in politics; we hold conflicting views as to municipal government; we attend different churches; we are at variance in the matter of public education, of the tariff, of emigration, and, heaven save the mark! of capital and labour, but we tell ourselves that we are public-spirited and are a little proud that God allowed us to be born in the United States; also it appears that we have more money than Henry George believes to be right. Now," continued Mr. Campbell, straightening himself as though he were about to touch upon the real subject of his talk, "when the news of your return, Mr. Bennett, was received, it was, as of course you understand, the one topic of conversation in the streets, the clubs, the newspaper offices—everywhere. Tremlidge and I met at our club at luncheon the next week, and I remember perfectly well how long and how very earnestly we talked of your work and of arctic exploration in general.

"We found out all of a sudden that here at last was a subject we were agreed upon, a subject in which we took an extraordinary mutual interest. We discovered that we had read almost every explorer's book from Sir John Franklin down. We knew all about the different theories and plans of reaching the Pole. We knew how and why they had all failed; but, for all that, we were both of the opinion" (Campbell leaned forward, speaking with considerable energy) "that it can be done, and that America ought to do it. That would be something better than even a World's Fair.

"We give out a good deal of money, Tremlidge and I, every year to public works and one thing or another. We buy pictures by American artists—pictures that we don't want; we found a scholarship now and then; we contribute money to build groups of statuary in the park; we give checks to the finance committees of libraries and museums and all the rest of it, but, for the lives of us, we can feel only a mild interest in the pictures and statues, and museums and colleges, though we go on buying the one and supporting the other, because we think that somehow it is right for us to do it. I'm afraid we are men more of action than of art, literature, and the like. Tremlidge is, I know. He wants facts, accomplished results. When he gives out his money he wants to see the concrete, substantial return—and I'm not sure that I am not of the same way of thinking.

"Well, with this and with that, and after talking it all over a dozen times—twenty times—we came to the conclusion that what we would most like to aid financially would be a successful attempt by an American-built ship, manned by American seamen, led by an American commander, to reach the North Pole. We came to be very enthusiastic about our idea; but we want it American from start to finish. We will start the subscription, and want to head the list with our checks; but we want every bolt in that ship forged in American foundries from metal dug out of American soil. We want every plank in her hull shaped from American trees, every sail of her woven by American looms, every man of her born of American parents, and we want it this way because we believe in American manufactures, because we believe in American shipbuilding, because we believe in American sailmakers, and because we believe in the intelligence and pluck and endurance and courage of the American sailor.

"Well," Campbell continued, changing his position and speaking in a quieter voice, "we did not say much to anybody, and, in fact, we never really planned any expedition at all. We merely talked about its practical nature and the desirability of having it distinctively American. This was all last summer. What we wanted to do was to make the scheme a popular one. It would not be hard to raise a hundred thousand dollars from among a dozen or so men whom we both know, and we found that we could count upon the financial support of Mr. Garlock's society. That was all very well, but we wanted the people to back this enterprise. We would rather get a thousand five-dollar subscriptions than five of a thousand dollars each. When our ship went out we wanted her commander to feel, not that there were merely a few millionaires, who had paid for his equipment and his vessel, behind him, but that he had seventy millions of people, a whole nation, at his back.

"So Tremlidge went to work and telegraphed instructions to the Washington correspondents of his paper to sound quietly the temper of as many Congressmen as possible in the matter of making an appropriation toward such an expedition. It was not so much the money we wanted as the sanction of the United States. Anything that has to do with the Navy is popular just at present. We had got a Congressman to introduce and father an appropriation bill, and we could count upon the support of enough members of both houses to put it through. We wanted Congress to appropriate twenty thousand dollars. We hoped to raise another ten thousand dollars by popular subscription. Mr. Garlock could assure us two thousand dollars; Tremlidge would contribute twenty thousand dollars in the name of the Times, and I pledged myself to ten thousand dollars, and promised to build the ship's engines and fittings. We kept our intentions to ourselves, as Tremlidge did not want the other papers to get hold of the story before the Times printed it. But we continued to lay our wires at Washington. Everything was going as smooth as oil; we seemed sure of the success of our appropriation bill, and it was even to be introduced next week, when the news came of the collapse of the English expedition—the Duane-Parsons affair.

"You would have expected precisely an opposite effect, but it has knocked our chances with Congress into a cocked hat. Our member, who was to father the bill, declared to us that so sure as it was brought up now it would be killed in committee. I went to Washington at once; it was this, and not, as you supposed, private business that has taken me away. I saw our member and Tremlidge's head correspondent. It was absolutely no use. These men who have their finger upon the Congressional pulse were all of the same opinion. It would be useless to try to put through our bill at present. Our member said 'Wait;' all Tremlidge's men said 'Wait—wait for another year, until this English expedition and its failure are forgotten, and then try again.' But we don't want to wait. Suppose Duane is blocked for the present. He has a tremendous start. He's on the ground. By next summer the chances are the ice will have so broken up as to permit him to push ahead, and by the time our bill gets through and our ship built and launched he may be—heaven knows where, right up to the Pole, perhaps. No, we can't afford to give England such long odds. We want to lay the keel of our ship as soon as we can—next week, if possible; we've got the balance of the summer and all the winter to prepare in, and a year from this month we want our American expedition to be inside the polar circle, to be up with Duane, and at least to break even with England. If we can do that we're not afraid of the result, provided," continued Mr. Campbell, "provided you, Mr. Bennett, are in command. If you consent to make the attempt, only one point remains to be settled. Congress has failed us. We will give up the idea of an appropriation. Now, then, and this is particularly what we want to consult you about, how are we going to raise the twenty thousand dollars?"

Lloyd rose to her feet.

"You may draw on me for the amount," she said quietly.

Garlock uncrossed his legs and sat up abruptly in the deep-seated chair. Tremlidge screwed his monocle into his eye and stared, while Campbell turned about sharply at the sound of Lloyd's voice with a murmur of astonishment. Bennett alone did not move. As before, he leaned heavily against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets, his head and his huge shoulders a little bent. Only from under his thick, knotted frown he shot a swift glance toward his wife. Lloyd paid no attention to the others. After that one quiet movement that had brought her to her feet she remained motionless and erect, her hands hanging straight at her sides, the colour slowly mounting to her cheeks. She met Bennett's glance and held it steadily, calmly, looking straight into his eyes. She said no word, but all her love for him, all her hopes of him, all the fine, strong resolve that, come what would, his career should not be broken, his ambition should not faint through any weakness of hers, all her eager sympathy for his great work, all her strong, womanly encouragement for him to accomplish his destiny spoke to him, and called to him in that long, earnest look of her dull-blue eyes. Now she was no longer weak; now she could face the dreary consequences that, for her, must follow the rousing of his dormant energy; now was no longer the time for indirect appeal; the screen was down between them. More eloquent than any spoken words was the calm, steady gaze in which she held his own.

There was a long silence while husband and wife stood looking deep into each other's eyes. And then, as a certain slow kindling took place in his look, Lloyd saw that at last Bennett understood.

After that the conference broke up rapidly. Campbell, as the head and spokesman of the committee, noted the long, significant glance that had passed between Bennett and Lloyd, and, perhaps, vaguely divined that he had touched upon a matter of a particularly delicate and intimate nature. Something was in the air, something was passing between husband and wife in which the outside world had no concern—something not meant for him to see. He brought the interview to an end as quickly as possible. He begged of Bennett to consider this talk as a mere preliminary—a breaking of the ground. He would give Bennett time to think it over. Speaking for himself and the others, he was deeply impressed with that generous offer to meet the unexpected deficiency, but it had been made upon the spur of the moment. No doubt Mr. Bennett and his wife would wish to talk it over between themselves, to consider the whole matter. The committee temporarily had its headquarters in his (Campbell's) offices. He left Bennett the address. He would await his decision and answer there.

When the conference ended Bennett accompanied the members of the committee downstairs and to the front door of the house. The three had, with thanks and excuses, declined all invitations to dine at Medford with Bennett and his wife. They could conveniently catch the next train back to the City; Campbell and Tremlidge were in a hurry to return to their respective businesses.

The front gate closed. Bennett was left alone. He shut the front door of the house, and for an instant stood leaning against it, his small eyes twinkling under his frown, his glance straying aimlessly about amid the familiar objects of the hallway and adjoining rooms. He was thoughtful, perturbed, tugging slowly at the ends of his mustache. Slowly he ascended the stairs, gaining the landing on the second floor and going on toward the half-open door of the "workroom" he had just quitted. Lloyd was uppermost in his mind. He wanted her, his wife, and that at once. He was conscious that a great thing had suddenly transpired; that all the calm and infinitely happy life of the last year was ruthlessly broken up; but in his mind there was nothing more definite, nothing stronger than the thought of his wife and the desire for her companionship and advice.

He came into the "workroom," closing the door behind him with his heel, his hands deep in his pockets. Lloyd was still there, standing opposite him as he entered. She hardly seemed to have moved while he had been gone. They did not immediately speak. Once more their eyes met. Then at length:

"Well, Lloyd?"

"Well, my husband?"

Bennett was about to answer—what, he hardly knew; but at that moment there was a diversion.

The old boat's flag, the tattered little square of faded stars and bars that had been used to mark the line of many a weary march, had been hanging, as usual, over the blue-print plans of the Freja on the wail opposite the window. Inadequately fixed in its place, the jar of the closing door as Bennett shut it behind him dislodged it, and it fell to the floor close beside him.

He stooped and picked it up, and, holding it in his hand, turned toward the spot whence it had fallen. He cast a glance at the wall above the plans of the Freja, about to replace it, willing for the instant to defer the momentous words he felt must soon be spoken, willing to put off the inevitable a few seconds longer.

"I don't know," he muttered, looking from the flag to the empty wall-spaces about the room; "I don't know just where to put this. Do you—"

"Don't you know?" interrupted Lloyd suddenly, her blue eyes all alight.

"No," said Bennett; "I—"

Lloyd caught the flag from his hands and, with one great sweep of her arm, drove its steel-shod shaft full into the centre of the great chart of the polar region, into the innermost concentric circle where the Pole was marked.

"Put that flag there!" she cried.



XI.

That particular day in the last week in April was sombre and somewhat chilly, but there was little wind. The water of the harbour lay smooth as a sheet of tightly stretched gray silk. Overhead the sea-fog drifted gradually landward, descending, as it drifted, till the outlines of the City grew blurred and indistinct, resolving to a dim, vast mass, rugged with high-shouldered office buildings and bulging, balloon-like domes, confused and mysterious under the cloak of the fog. In the nearer foreground, along the lines of the wharves and docks, a wilderness of masts and spars of a tone just darker than the gray of the mist stood away from the blur of the background with the distinctness and delicacy of frost-work.

But amid all this grayness of sky and water and fog one distinguished certain black and shifting masses. They outlined every wharf, they banked every dock, every quay. Every small and inconsequent jetty had its fringe of black. Even the roofs of the buildings along the water-front were crested with the same dull-coloured mass.

It was the People, the crowd, rank upon rank, close-packed, expectant, thronging there upon the City's edge, swelling in size with the lapse of every minute, vast, conglomerate, restless, and throwing off into the stillness of the quiet gray air a prolonged, indefinite murmur, a monotonous minor note.

The surface of the bay was dotted over with all manner of craft black with people. Rowboats, perilously overcrowded, were everywhere. Ferryboats and excursion steamers, chartered for that day, heeled over almost to the water's edge with the unsteady weight of their passengers. Tugboats passed up and down similarly crowded and displaying the flags of various journals and news organisations—the News, the Press, the Times, and the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful and gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic, solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from her turrets, a great, white battleship rode motionless to her anchor.

An hour passed; noon came. At long intervals a faint seaward breeze compressed the fog, and high, sad-coloured clouds and a fine and penetrating rain came drizzling down. The crowds along the wharves grew denser and blacker. The numbers of yachts, boats, and steamers increased; even the yards and masts of the merchant-ships were dotted over with watchers.

Then, at length, from far up the bay there came a faint, a barely perceptible, droning sound, the sound of distant shouting. Instantly the crowds were alert, and a quick, surging movement rippled from end to end of the throng along the water-front. Its subdued murmur rose in pitch upon the second. Like a flock of agitated gulls, the boats in the harbour stirred nimbly from place to place; a belated newspaper tug tore by, headed for the upper bay, smoking fiercely, the water boiling from her bows. From the battleship came the tap of a drum. The excursion steamers and chartered ferryboats moved to points of vantage and took position, occasionally feeling the water with their paddles.

The distant, droning sound drew gradually nearer, swelling in volume, and by degrees splitting into innumerable component parts. One began to distinguish the various notes that contributed to its volume—a sharp, quick volley of inarticulate shouts or a cadenced cheer or a hoarse salvo of steam whistles. Bells began to ring in different quarters of the City.

Then all at once the advancing wave of sound swept down like the rush of a great storm. A roar as of the unchained wind leaped upward from those banked and crowding masses. It swelled louder and louder, deafening, inarticulate. A vast bellow of exultation split the gray, low-hanging heavens. Erect plumes of steam shot upward from the ferry and excursion boats, but the noise of their whistles was lost and drowned in the reverberation of that mighty and prolonged clamour. But suddenly the indeterminate thunder was pierced and dominated by a sharp and deep-toned report, and a jet of white smoke shot out from the flanks of the battleship. Her guns had spoken. Instantly and from another quarter of her hull came another jet of white smoke, stabbed through with its thin, yellow flash, and another abrupt clap of thunder shook the windows of the City.

The boats that all the morning had been moving toward the upper bay were returning. They came slowly, a veritable fleet, steaming down the bay, headed for the open sea, beyond the entrance of the harbour, each crowded and careening to the very gunwales, each whistling with might and main.

And in their midst—the storm-centre round which this tempest of acclamation surged, the object on which so many eyes were focussed, the hope of an entire nation—one ship.

She was small and seemingly pitifully inadequate for the great adventure on which she was bound; her lines were short and ungraceful. From her clumsy iron-shod bow to her high, round stern, from her bulging sides to the summit of her short, powerful masts there was scant beauty in her. She was broad, blunt, evidently slow in her movements, and in the smooth waters of the bay seemed out of her element. But, for all that, she imparted an impression of compactness, the compactness of things dwarfed and stunted. Vast, indeed, would be the force that would crush those bulging flanks, so cunningly built, moreover, that the ship must slip and rise to any too great lateral pressure. Far above her waist rose her smokestack. Overhead upon the mainmast was affixed the crow's nest. Whaleboats and cutters swung from her davits, while all her decks were cumbered with barrels, with crates, with boxes and strangely shaped bales and cases.

She drew nearer, continuing that slow, proud progress down the bay, honoured as no visiting sovereign had ever been. The great white man-of-war dressed ship as she passed, and the ensign at her fighting-top dipped and rose again. At once there was a movement aboard the little outbound ship; one of her crew ran aft and hauled sharply at the halyards, and then at her peak there was broken out not the brilliant tri-coloured banner, gay and brave and clean, but a little length of bunting, tattered and soiled, a faded breadth of stars and bars, a veritable battle-flag, eloquent of strenuous endeavour, of fighting without quarter, and of hardship borne without flinching and without complaining.

The ship with her crowding escorts held onward. By degrees the City was passed; the bay narrowed oceanwards little by little. The throng of people, the boom of cannon, and the noise of shouting dropped astern. One by one the boats of the escorting squadron halted, drew off, and, turning with a parting blast of their whistles, headed back to the City. Only the larger, heavier steamers and the sea-going tugs still kept on their way. On either shore of the bay the houses began to dwindle, giving place to open fields, brown and sear under the scudding sea-fog, for now a wind was building up from out the east, and the surface of the bay had begun to ruffle.

Half a mile farther on the slow, huge, groundswells began to come in; a lighthouse was passed. Full in view, on ahead, stretched the open, empty waste of ocean. Another steamer turned back, then another, then another, then the last of the newspaper tugs. The fleet, reduced now to half a dozen craft, ploughed on through and over the groundswells, the ship they were escorting leading the way, her ragged little ensign straining stiff in the ocean wind. At the entrance of the bay, where the enclosing shores drew together and trailed off to surf-beaten sand-spits, three more of the escort halted, and, unwilling to face the tumbling expanse of the ocean, bleak and gray, turned homeward. Then just beyond the bar two more of the remaining boats fell off and headed Cityward; a third immediately did likewise. The outbound ship was left with only one companion.

But that one, a sturdy little sea-going tug, held close, close to the flank of the departing vessel, keeping even pace with her and lying alongside as nearly as she dared, for the fog had begun to thicken, and distant objects were shut from sight by occasional drifting patches.

On board the tug there was but one passenger—a woman. She stood upon the forward deck, holding to a stanchion with one strong, white hand, the strands of her bronze-red hair whipping across her face, the salt spray damp upon her cheeks. She was dressed in a long, brown ulster, its cape flying from her shoulders as the wind lifted it. Small as was the outgoing ship, the tug was still smaller, and its single passenger had to raise her eyes above her to see the figure of a man upon the bridge of the ship, a tall, heavily built figure, buttoned from heel to chin in a greatcoat, who stood there gripping the rail of the bridge with one hand, and from time to time giving an order to his sailing-master, who stood in the centre of the bridge before the compass and electric indicator.

Between the man upon the bridge and the woman on the forward deck of the tug there was from time to time a little conversation. They called to one another above the throbbing of the engines and the wash of the sea alongside, and in the sound of their voices there was a note of attempted cheerfulness. Practically they were alone, with the exception of the sailing-master on the bridge. The crew of the ship were nowhere in sight. On the tug no one but the woman was to be seen. All around them stretched the fog-ridden sea.

Then at last, in answer to a question from the man on the bridge, the woman said:

"Yes—I think I had better."

An order was given. The tug's bell rang in her engine-room, and the engine slowed and stopped. For some time the tug continued her headway, ranging alongside the ship as before. Then she began to fall behind, at first slowly, then with increasing swiftness. The outbound ship continued on her way, and between the two the water widened and widened. But the fog was thick; in another moment the two would be shut out from each other's sight. The moment of separation was come.

Then Lloyd, standing alone on that heaving deck, drew herself up to her full height, her head a little back, her blue eyes all alight, a smile upon her lips. She spoke no word. She made no gesture, but stood there, the smile yet upon her lips, erect, firm, motionless; looking steadily, calmly, proudly into Bennett's eyes as his ship carried him farther and farther away.

Suddenly the fog shut down. The two vessels were shut from each other's sight.

As Bennett stood leaning upon the rail of the bridge behind him, his hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, his eyes fixed on the visible strip of water just ahead of his ship's prow, the sailing-master, Adler, approached and saluted.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "we're just clear of the last buoy; what's our course now, sir?"

Bennett glanced at the chart that Adler held and then at the compass affixed to the rail of the bridge close at hand. Quietly he answered:

"Due north."

THE END