CHAPTER XII

Athalie ventured to send some Madonna lilies with no card attached; but even the thought of her white flowers crossing the threshold of Clive's world—although it was because of her devotion to him alone that she dared salute his dead—left her sensitively concerned, wondering whether it had been a proper thing for her to do.

However, the day following she wrote him.

"CLIVE DEAR,

"I do not mean to intrude on your grief at such a time. This is merely a line to say that you are never absent from my mind.

"And Clive, nothing really dies. This is quite true. I am not speaking of what faith teaches us. Faith is faith. But those who 'see clearly' know. Nothing dies, Clive. Nothing. That is even more than faith teaches us. Yet it, also, is true.

"Dear little boy of my childhood, dear lad of my girlhood, and, of my womanhood, dearest of men, I pray that God will comfort you and yours.

"I was twelve years old the only time I ever saw your father. He spoke so sweetly to me—put his arm around my shoulders—asked me if I were Red Riding Hood or the Princess Far Away.

"And, to obey him, I went to find my father. And found him dead. Or what the world calls dead.

"Later, as I stood there outside the door, stunned by what had happened, back through the doorway came running a boy. Clive, if you have forgotten what you said to that child there by the darkened doorway of life, the girl who writes this has never forgotten.

"And now, since sorrow has come to you, in my turn I seek you where you stand by a darkened door alone, and I send to you my very soul in this poor, inky letter,—all I can offer—Clive—all that I believe—all that I am. "ATHALIE."

So much for tribute and condolence as far as she could be concerned where she remained among the other millions outside the sacred threshold across which her letter and her flowers had gone, across which the girl herself might never go.

After a few days he wrote and thanked her for her letter, not of course knowing about the lilies:

"It is the first time death has ever come very near me. I had been told and had always thought that we were a long-lived race.

"I am still dazed by it. I suppose the sharper grief will come when this dull, unreal sense of stupefaction wears away.

"We were very close together, my father and I. Oh, but we might have been closer, Athalie!—I might have been with him oftener, seen more of him, spent less time away from him.

"I did try to be a good son. I could have been far better. It's a bitter thing to realise at such a time.

"And I had so much to say to him. I cannot understand that I can never say it now.... Athalie dear, my mother wishes me to take her abroad. I made arrangements yesterday at the Cunard office. We sail Saturday. Could I see you for a moment before I go? "CLIVE."

To which she replied:

"I shall be here every evening."

He came Friday night looking very sallow and thin in his black clothes. Catharine, who was sewing by the centre table, rose to shake hands with him in sympathetic silence, then went away to her bedroom, where, once or twice she caught herself whistling some gay refrain of the moment, and was obliged to check herself.

He had taken Athalie's slender hands and was standing by the sofa, looking intently at her.

"That night," he said with an effort, "you sent me home—saying that I was needed."

"Yes, Clive."

"How did you know?"

"I knew."

"Did you see—anything?"

"Yes, dear," she said under her breath.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes."

"Tell me," he said, but his lips scarcely moved to form the words he uttered.

"I recognised him at once. I had never forgotten him.... It is difficult to explain how I knew that he was not—what we call living."

"But you knew?"

"Yes," she said gently.

"He—did he speak?" The young fellow turned away with a brusque, hopeless gesture.

"God," he muttered—"and I couldn't either see or hear him!"

"He did not speak, Clive." The boy looked up at her, his haggard features working.

She said: "When I first noticed him he was looking at you. Then he caught my eye. Clive—it was this time as it had been before—when I was twelve years old—his expression became so sweet and winning—like yours when I amuse you—and you laugh at me but—like me—"

"Oh, Athalie—I can't seem to endure it! I—I can't be reconciled—" His head fell forward; she put her arms around him and drew his face against her breast.

"I know," she whispered. "I also have passed that way."

After a few moments he lifted his head, looked around, almost fearfully.

"Where was it that he stood, Athalie?"

She hesitated, then took one of his hands in hers and he followed her until she stopped between the sofa and the fireplace.

"Here?"

"Yes, Clive."

"So near!" he said aloud to himself. "Couldn't he have spoken to me?—just one word—"

"Dearest—dearest!"

"God knows why you should see him and I shouldn't! I don't understand—when I was his son—"

"I do not understand either, Clive."

He seemed not to hear her, standing there with blank gaze shifting from object to object in the room. "I don't understand," he kept repeating in a dull, almost querulous voice,—"I don't understand why." And her heart responded in a passion of tenderness and grief. But she found no further words to say to him, no explanation that might comfort him.

"Will he ever come here—anywhere—again?" he asked suddenly.

"Oh, Clive, I don't know."

"Don't you know? Couldn't you find out?"

"How? I don't know how to find out. I never try to inquire."

"Isn't there some way?"

"I don't really know, Clive. How could I know?"

"But when you see such people—shadows—shapes—"

"Yes.... They are not shadows."

"Do they seem real?"

"Why, yes; as real as you are."

"Athalie, how can they be?"

"They are to me. There is nothing ghostly about them."

For a moment it almost seemed to her as though he resented her clear seeing; then he said: "Have you always been able to see—this way?"

"As long as I can remember."

"And you have never tried to cultivate the power?"

"I had rather you did not call it that."

"But it is a power.... Well, call it faculty, then. Have you?"

"No. I told you once that I did not wish to see more clearly than others. It is all involuntary with me."

"Would you try to cultivate it because I ask you to?"

"Clive!"

"Will you, Athalie?"

The painful colour mantled her face and neck and she turned and looked away from him as though he had said a shameful thing.

He continued, impatiently: "Why do you feel that way about it? Why should you not cultivate such a delicate and wonderful sense of perception? Why are you reluctant? What reason is there for you to be ashamed?"

"I don't know why."

"There is no reason! If in you there happen to be faculties sensitive beyond ours, senses more complex, more exquisitely attuned to what others are blind and deaf to, intuitions that to us seem miraculous, a spirituality, perhaps, more highly developed, what is there in that to cause you either embarrassment or concern? That in certain individualities such is the case is now generally understood and recognised. You happen to be one of them."

She looked up at him very quietly, but still flushed.

"Why do you wish me to try—make any effort to develop this—thing?"

"So that—if you could see him again—and if, perhaps, he had anything to say to me—"

"I understand."

"Will you try, Athalie?"

"I'll try—if you wish it. And if I can learn how to try."

Had he asked her to strip her gown from her shoulders under his steady gaze, it had been easier than the promise she gave him.

* * * * *

And now the hour had come for him to bid her good-bye. He said that he and his mother would not remain abroad for more than the summer. He said he would write often; spoke a little more vaguely of seeing her as soon as he returned; drew her cool, white hands together and kissed them, laid his cheek against them for a moment, eyes closed wearily.

The door remained ajar behind him after he had gone. Lingering, her hand heavy on the knob, she listened to the last echo of the elevator as it dropped into lighted depths below.

Then, very far away, an iron grille clanged. And that ended it.

But she still lingered. There was one more shape to pass through the door which she yet held open;—the phantom of her girlhood. And when at last, it had passed across the threshold, never to return, she shut the door softly, sinking to her knees there, her pale cheek resting against the closed panels, her eyes fixed on vacancy.

* * * * *

So departed those twain out of the room and out of her life, together—her lover by brevet, and her lingering girlhood,—leaving behind them a woman in a world of men suddenly strange and menacing and very still.

But Clive went back into a familiar world—marred, obscured, distorted for the moment by shock and sorrow—but still a familiar world. Because neither his grief nor his love—as he had termed it—had made of him more than he had been,—not yet a man, yet no longer a boy, but something with all the infirmities of both and the saving graces of neither.

In that borderland where he still lingered, morally and spiritually, the development of character ceases for a while until such time as the occult frontier be crossed. What is born in the cradle is lowered into the grave, but always either in nobler or less noble degrees. For none may linger in that borderland too long because the unseen boundary moves for him who will not stir when his time is up—moves slowly, inexorably nearer, nearer, passing beneath his feet, until it is lost far in the misty years behind him.

* * * * *

He wrote her from the steamer twice, the letters being mailed from Plymouth; then he wrote once from London, once from Paris; later again from Switzerland, where he had found it cooler, he said, than anywhere else during that torrid summer.



Winifred Stuart and her mother had joined them for a motor trip through Dalmatia. He mentioned it in a letter to Athalie, but after that he did not refer to them again. In fact he did not write again for a month or two.

It proved to be a scorching summer in New York. May ended in a blast of unseasonable weather, cooling off for a week or two in June, but the furnace heat of July was terrible for the poor and for the horses—both of which we have always with us.

Also, for Athalie, it seemed to be turning into one of those curious, threatening years which begin with every promise but which end without fulfilment, and in perplexity and care. She had known such years; she already recognised the symptoms of changing weather. She seemed to be conscious of premonitions in everybody and everything. Little vexations and slight disappointments increased; simple plans miscarried for no reason at all apparently.

Like one who still feels a fair wind blowing yet looking aloft, sees the uneasy weather-cock veer and veer in varying flaws, so she, sensitive and fine in mind and body, gradually became aware of the trend of things; felt the premonition of the distant change in the atmosphere—sensed it gathering vaguely, indefinitely disquieting.

One lovely morning in May she arose early in order to write to Clive. Then, her long letter accomplished and safely mailed, she went downtown to business, still delicately aglow, exhilarated as always by her hour of communion with him.

Mr. Wahlbaum, as usual, received her with the jolly and kindly humour which always characterised him, and they had their usual friendly, half bantering chat while she was arranging the papers which his secretary had laid on her desk.

All the morning she took dictation; the soft wind fluttered the curtains; sparrows chirped noisily; the sky was very blue; Mr. Wahlbaum smoked steadily.

And when the lunch hour arrived he did a thing which he had never before done; he asked Athalie to lunch with him.

Which so completely astonished her that she found herself going down in the private lift with him before she realised that she was going at all.

The luncheon proved to be very simple but very good. There were a number of other women in the ladies' annex of the Department Club,—nice looking people, quiet, and well dressed. Mr. Wahlbaum also was very quiet, very considerate, very attentive, and almost gravely courteous. Their conversation concerned business. He offered Athalie no cocktail and no wine, but a jug of chilled cider was set at her elbow and she found it delicious. Mr. Wahlbaum drank tea, very weak.

When they returned to the office, Athalie began to transcribe her stenographic notes. It occupied most of the afternoon although she was wonderfully rapid and accurate and her slim white fingers hovered mistily over the keys like the vibrating wings of a snowy moth.



Mr. Wahlbaum, always smoking, watched her toward the finish in placid silence. And for a few moments, also, after she had finished and had turned to him with a light smile and a lighter sigh of relief.

"Miss Greensleeve," he said quietly, "I have now been here in the same office with you, day after day—excepting our summer vacations—for more than five years."

A trifle surprised and sobered by his gravity and deliberation she nodded silent acquiescence and waited, wondering a little what else was to come.

It came without preamble: "I have the honour," he said, "to ask you to marry me."

Still as a stone she sat, gazing at him. And for a long while his keen eyes sustained her gaze. But presently a slow, deep colour began to gather on his face. And after a moment he said: "I am sorry that the verdict is against me."

Tears filled her eyes; she tried to speak, could not, turned on her pivot-chair, rested her arms on the back, and dropped her face in them.

It was a long while before she was able to efface the traces of emotion. She did all she could before she forced herself to look at him again and say what she must say.

"If I could—I would, Mr. Wahlbaum," she faltered. "No man has ever been kinder to me, none more courteous, none more gentle."

He looked at her wistfully for a moment, and she thought he was going to speak. But he was wise in the ways of the world. He had lost. He understood it. Speech was superfluous. He was a quaint combination of good sportsman and philosophic economist.

He held his peace.

When she left that evening after saying good night to him she paused at the door, irresolutely, and then came back to his desk where he was still standing. For he had never failed to rise when she entered in the morning or took her leave at night.

In silence, now, she offered him her hand, the quick tears springing to her eyes again; and he took it, bent, and touched the gloved fingers with his lips, gravely, in silence.

* * * * *

A few days later, for the first time in her experience there, Mr. Wahlbaum was not at the office.

Mr. Grossman came in, leered at her, said that Mr. Wahlbaum would be down next day, lingered furtively as long as he quite dared, then took himself off, still leering.

In the afternoon Athalie was notified that her salary had been raised. She went home, elated and deeply touched by the generosity of Mr. Wahlbaum, scarcely able to wait for the morrow to express her gratitude to this good, kind man.

But on the morrow Mr. Wahlbaum was not there; nor did he come the day after, nor the day after that.

The following Tuesday she was seated in the office and generally occupied with business provided for her by the thrifty Mr. Grossman, when that same gentleman came into the office on tiptoe.

"Mr. Wahlbaum has just died," he said.

In the sudden shock and consternation she had risen from her chair, and stood there, one hand resting on her desk top for support.

"Pneumonia," nodded Mr. Grossman. "Sam he smoked too much all the time. That is what done it, Miss Greensleeve."

Her hands crept to her eyes, covered them convulsively. "Oh!" she breathed—"Oh!"

And, for a moment was not aware of the arm of Mr. Grossman around her waist,—until it tightened unctuously.

"Dearie," he murmured, "don't you take on so hard. You ain't goin' to lose your job, because I'm a-goin' to be your best friend same like he was—"

With a shudder she stepped clear of him; he caught her by the waist again and kissed her; and she wrenched herself free and turned fiercely on him as he advanced again, smirking, watery of eye, arms outstretched.

Then in the overwhelming revulsion and horror of the act and of the moment chosen for it when death's shadow already lay dark upon this vast and busy monument to her dead friend, she turned on him her dark blue eyes ablaze; and to her twisted, outraged lips flew, unbidden, the furious anathema of her ragged childhood:

"Damn you!" she stammered,—"damn you!" And struck him across the face.

* * * * *

Which impulsive and unconsidered proceeding left two at home out of work, herself and Doris. Also there was very little more for Catharine to do, the dull season at Winton's having arrived.

"Any honest job," repeated Doris when she and Athalie and Catharine met at evening after an all-day's profitless search for that sort of work; but honest jobs did not seem to be very plentiful in June, although any number of the other sort were to be had almost without the asking.

Doris continued to haunt agencies and theatrical offices, dawdling all day from one to the next, sitting for hours in company with other aspirants to histrionic honours and wages, gossiping, listening to stage talk, professional patter, and theatrical scandal until her pretty ears were buzzing with everything that ought not to concern her and her moral fastidiousness gradually became less delicate. Repetition is the great leveller, the great persuader. The greatest power on earth, for good or evil, is incessant reiteration.

Catharine lost her position, worked at a cheap milliner's for a week, addressed envelopes for another week, and was again left unemployed.

Athalie accepted several offers; at one place they didn't pay her for two weeks and then suggested she take half the salary agreed upon; at another her employer became offensively familiar; at another the manager made her position unendurable.

By July the financial outlook in the Greensleeve family was becoming rather serious: Doris threatened gloomily to go into burlesque; Catharine at first tearful and discouraged, finally grew careless and made few real efforts to find employment. Also she began to go out almost every evening, admitting very frankly that the home larder had become too lean and unattractive to suit her.



Doris always went out more or less; and what troubled Athalie was not that the girl had opportunities for the decent nourishment she needed, but that her reticence concerning the people she dined with was steadily increasing.

"Oh, shut up! I can look out for myself," she always repeated sullenly. "Anyway, Athalie, you are not the one to bully me. Nobody ever presented me with a cosy flat and—"

"Doris!"

"Didn't your young man give you this flat?"

"Don't speak of him or of me in that manner," said Athalie, flushing scarlet.

"Why are you so particular? It's the truth. He's given you about everything a man can offer a girl, hasn't he?—jewellery, furniture, clothing—cats—"

"Will you please not say anything more!"

But Doris was still smarting under recent admonition, and she meant to make an end of Athalie's daily interference: "I will say what I like when it's the truth," she retorted. "You are very free with your unsolicited advice. And I'll say this, and it's true, that not one girl in a thousand who accepts what you have accepted from Clive Bailey, is straight!"

Athalie's tightening lips quivered: "Do you intimate that I am not straight?"

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

There was a silence; Catharine lounged on the sofa, watching and listening with interest. After a moment Doris shrugged her young shoulders.

"Does it matter so much, anyway?" she said with a short, unpleasant laugh.

"Does what matter—you little ninny!"

"Whether a girl is straight."

"Is that the philosophy you learn in your theatrical agencies?" demanded Athalie fiercely. "What nauseating rot you do talk, Doris!"

"Very well. It may be nauseating. But what is a girl to do in a world run entirely by men?"

"You know well enough what a girl is not to do, don't you? All right then,—leave that undone and do what's left."

"What is left?" demanded Doris with a mirthless laugh. "There's scarcely a job that a girl can hold unless she squares some man to keep it—and keep—her!"

"Shame on you! I held mine for over five years," said Athalie with hot contempt.

"Yes, and then along came the junior partner. You wouldn't square him: you lost your job! There's always a junior partner in every business—when there isn't a senior. There's nothing to it if you stand in with the firm. If you don't—good night!"

"You managed to remain at the Egyptian Garden during the entire season."

"But the fights I had, my dear, and the tricks I employed and the lies I told and the promises I made! Oh, it's sickening—sickening! But—" she shrugged—"what are you to do? Thousands of girls go queer because they're forced to by starvation—"

"Nonsense!" cried Athalie hotly, "that is all stage twaddle and exaggerated sentimentalism! I don't believe that one girl in a thousand is forced into a dishonourable life!"

"Then why do girls go queer?"

"Because they want to; that's why! When they don't want to they don't!"

Catharine, very wide-eyed, said solemnly: "But think of all the white slaves—"

"They'd be that if they had been born to millions!" retorted Athalie. "Ignorance and aptitude, that is white slavery. It's absolutely nothing else. And in cases where the ignorance is absent, the aptitude is there. If a girl has an aptitude for becoming some man's mistress she'll probably do it whether she's ignorant or educated."

Doris, who had taken to chewing-gum furtively and in private, discreetly rolled a morsel under her tongue.

"All I know is that your salary is advanced and you're given a part at the Egyptian Garden if you stand in with Lewenbein or go to supper with Shemsky. Of course," she added, "there are theatres where you don't have to be horrid in order to succeed."

"Then," said Athalie drily, "you'd better find work in those theatres."

Doris glanced sideways at Catharine, who silently returned her glance as though an understanding and sympathy existed between them not suspected or shared in by Athalie.

It was not very much of a secret. Some prowling genius of the agencies whom Doris had met had offered to write a vaudeville act for her and himself if she could find two other girls. And she had persuaded Catharine and Genevieve Hunting to try it; and Cecil Reeve and Francis Hargrave had gaily offered to back it. They were rehearsing in Reeve's apartments—between a continuous series of dinners and suppers.

And it had been her sister's going to Reeve's apartments to which Athalie had seriously objected,—not knowing why she went there.

* * * * *

This was one of many scenes that torrid summer in New York, when Athalie intuitively felt that the year which had begun so happily for her with the entrance of Clive into her life, was growing duller and greyer; and that each succeeding day seemed to be swinging her into a tide of anxiety and mischance,—a current as yet merely perceptible, but already increasing in speed toward something swifter and more stormy.

Already, to her, the future had become overcast, obscure, disquieting.

Steer as she might toward any promising harbour, always she seemed to be aware of some subtle resistance impeding her.

Every small economy attempted, every retrenchment planned, came to nothing. Always she was met at some corner by an unlooked-for necessity entailing further expense.

No money was coming in; her own and her sister's savings were going steadily, every day, every week.

There seemed no further way to check expenditure. Athalie had dismissed their servant as soon as she had lost her position at Wahlbaum and Grossman's. Table expenses were reduced to Spartan limits, much to the disgust of them all. No clothes were bought, no luxuries, no trifles. They did their own marketing, their own cooking, their own housework and laundry. And had it not been that the apartment entailed no outlay for light, heat, and rent, they would have been sorely perplexed that spring and summer in New York.

Athalie permitted herself only one luxury, Hafiz. And one necessity; stamps and letter paper for foreign correspondence.

The latter was costing her less and less recently. Clive wrote seldom now. And always very sensitive where he was concerned, she permitted herself the happiness of writing only after he had taken the initiative, and a reply from her was due him.

No, matters were not going very well with Athalie. Also she was frequently physically tired. Perhaps it was the lassitude consequent on the heat. But at times she had an odd idea that she lacked courage; and sometimes when lonely, she tried to reason with herself, tried to teach her heart bravery—particularly during the long interims which elapsed between Clive's letters.

As for her attitude toward him—whether or not she was in love with him—she was too busy thinking about him to bother her head about attitudes or degrees of affection. All the girl knew—when she permitted herself to think of herself—was that she missed him dreadfully. Otherwise her concern was chiefly for him, for his happiness and well-being. Also she was concerned regarding the promise she had made him—and to which he usually referred in his letters,—the promise to try to learn more about this faculty of hers for clear vision, and, if possible, to employ it for his sake and in his unhappy service.

This often preoccupied her, troubled her. She did not know how to go about it; she hesitated to seek those who advertised their alleged occult powers for sale,—trance-mediums, mind-readers, palmists—all the heterogeneous riffraff lurking always in metropolitan purlieus, and always with a sly weather-eye on the police.

As usual in her career since the time she could first remember, she continued to "see clearly" where others saw and heard nothing.

Faint voices in the dusk, a whisper in darkness; perhaps in her bedroom the subtle intuition of another presence. And sometimes a touch on her arm, a breath on her cheek, delicate, exquisite—sometimes the haunting sweetness of some distant harmony, half heard, half divined. And now and then a form, usually unknown, almost always smiling and friendly, visible for a few moments—the space of a fire-fly's incandescence—then fading—entering her orbit out of nothing and, going into nothing, out of it.

Of these episodes she had never entertained any fear. Sometimes they interested her, sometimes even slightly amused her. But they had never saddened her, not even when they had been the flash-lit harbingers of death. For only a sense of calmness and serenity accompanied them: and to her they had always been part of the world and of life, nothing to wonder at, nothing to fear, and certainly nothing to intrude on—merely incidents not concerning her, not remarkable, but natural and requiring no explanation.

But she herself did not know and could not explain why, even as a child, she had been always reticent regarding these occurrences,—why she had always been disinclined to discuss them. Unless it were a natural embarrassment and a hesitation to discuss strangers, as though comment were a species of indelicacy,—even of unwarranted intrusion.

One night while reading—she had been scanning a newspaper column of advertisements hoping to find a chance for herself or Catharine—glancing up she again saw Clive's father seated near her. At the same moment he lifted his head, which had been resting on one hand, and looked across the hearthstone at her, smiling faintly.

Entirely unembarrassed, conscious of that atmosphere of serenity which always was present when such visitors arrived, the girl sat looking at what her eyes told her she perceived, a slight and friendly smile curving her lips in silent response.

Presently she became aware that Hafiz, too, saw the visitor, and was watching him. But this fact she had noticed before, and it did not surprise her.

And that was all there was to the incident. He rose, walked to the window, stood there. And after a little while he was not there. That ended it. And Hafiz went to sleep again.



CHAPTER XIII

In September Athalie Greensleeve wrote her last letter to Clive Bailey. It began with a page or two of shyly solicitous inquiries concerning his well-being, his happiness, his plans; did not refer to his long silence; did refer to his anticipated return; did not mention her own accumulating domestic and financial embarrassments and the successive strokes of misfortune dealt her by those twin and formidable bravos, Fate and Chance; but did mention and enumerate everything that had occurred in her life which bore the slightest resemblance to a blessing.

Her letter continued:

"My sisters Doris and Catharine have gone into vaudeville with a very pretty act called 'April Rain.'

"That they had decided to do this and had been rehearsing it came as a complete surprise to me. Genevieve Hunting is also in it, and a man named Max Klepper who wrote the piece including lyrics and music.

"They opened at the Old Dominion Theatre, remained there a week, and then started West. Which makes it a trifle lonely for me; but I don't really mind if they only keep well and are successful and happy in their venture. Their idea and their desire, of course, is to return to New York at the earliest opportunity. But nobody seems to have any idea how soon that may happen. Meanwhile the weather is cooler and Hafiz remains well and adorable.

"I have been out very little except to look for a position. Mr. Wahlbaum is dead and I left the store. Sunday morning I took a few flowers to Mr. Wahlbaum's grave. He was very kind to me, Clive. In the afternoon I took a train to the Spring Pond Cemetery. Father's and mother's graves had been well cared for and were smoothly green. The four young oak trees I planted are growing nicely. Mother was fond of trees. I am sure she likes my little oaks.

"It was a beautiful, cool, sunny day; and after I left the Cemetery I walked along the well remembered road toward Spring Pond. It is not very far, but I had never been any nearer to it than the Cemetery since my sisters and I went away.

"Such odd sensations came over me as I walked alone there amid familiar scenes: and, curiously, everything seemed to have shrunk to miniature size—houses, fields, distances all seemed much less impressive. But the Bay was intensely blue; the grasses and reeds in the salt meadows were already tipped with a golden colour here and there; flocks of purple grackle and red-winged blackbirds rose, drifted, and settled, chattering and squealing among the cat-tails just as they used to do when I was a child; and the big, slow-sailing mouse-hawks drifted and glided over the pastures, and when they tipped sideways I could see the white moon-spot on their backs, just as I remembered to look for it when I was a little, little girl.

"And the odours, Clive! How the scent of the August fields, of the crisp salt hay, seemed to grip at my heart!—all the subtle, evanescent odours characteristic of that part of Long Island seemed to gather, blend, and exhale for my particular benefit that afternoon.

"The old tavern appeared to me so much smaller, so much more weather-beaten and shabby than my recollection of it. The sign still hung there—'Hotel Greensleeve'—and as I walked by it I looked up at the window of my mother's room. The blinds were closed; nobody appeared to be around. I don't know why, Clive, but it seemed to me that I must go in for a moment and take one more look at my mother's room.... I am glad I did. There was nobody to stop me. I went up the stairs on tiptoe and opened her door, and looked in. She was there, sewing.

"I went in very softly and sat down on the carpet by her chair.... It was the happiest moment I have known since she died.

"And when she was no longer there I rose and crept down the stairs and through the hallway to the bar; and peeped in. An old man sat there asleep by the empty stove. And after a moment I decided it was Mr. Ledlie. But he has grown old—old!—and I let him sleep on in the sunshine without disturbing him.

"It was the same stove where you and I sat and nibbled peach turnovers so many years ago. I wanted to see it again.

* * * * *

"So I went back to New York in the late golden afternoon feeling very peaceful and dreamy,—and a trifle tired. And found Hafiz stretched on the lounge; and stretched myself out beside him, taking the drowsy, purring, spoiled thing into my arms. And went to sleep to dream of you who gave me Hafiz, my dear and beloved friend.

* * * * *

"Write me when you can; as often as you desire. Always your letters are welcome messengers. "ATHALIE."



CHAPTER XIV

In her letters Athalie never mentioned Captain Dane; not because she had anything to conceal regarding him or herself; but she seemed to be aware that any mention of that friendship might not evoke a sympathetic response from Clive.

So, in her last letter, as in the others, she had not spoken of Captain Dane. Yet, now, he was the only man with whom she ever went anywhere and whom she received at her own apartment.

He had a habit of striding in two or three evenings in a week,—a big, fair, broad-shouldered six-footer, with sun-narrowed eyes of arctic blue, a short blond moustache, and skin permanently burned by the unshadowed glare of many and tropic days.

They went about together on Sundays, usually; sometimes in hot weather to suburban restaurants for dinner and a breath of air, sometimes to roof gardens.

Why he lingered in town—for he seemed always to be at leisure—she did not know. And she wondered a little that he should elect to remain in the heat-cursed city whence everybody else she knew had fled.

Dane was a godsend to her. With him she went to the Bronx Zoological Park several times, intensely interested in what he had to say concerning the creatures housed there, and shyly proud and delighted to meet the curators of the various departments who all seemed to know Dane and to be on terms of excellent fellowship with him.

With him she visited the various museums and art galleries; and went with him to concerts, popular and otherwise; and took long trolley rides with him on suffocating evenings when the poor slept on the grass in the parks and the slums, east and west, presented endless vistas of panting nakedness prostrate under a smouldering red moon.

Every diversion he offered her helped to sustain her courage; every time she lunched or dined with him meant more to her than he dreamed it meant. Because her savings were ebbing fast, and she had not yet been able to find employment.

Some things she would not do—write to her sisters for any financial aid; nor would she go to the office of her late employers and ask for any recommendation from Mr. Grossman which might help her to secure a position. Never could she bring herself to do either of these things, although the ugly countenance of necessity now began to stare her persistently in the face.

Also she was sensitive lest Dane suspect her need and offer aid. But how could he suspect?—with her pretty apartment filled with pretty things, and the luxurious Hafiz pervading everything with his incessant purring and his snowy plume of a tail waving fastidious contentment. He fared better than did his mistress, who denied herself that Hafiz might flourish that same tail. And after a while the girl actually began to grow thinner from sheer lack of nourishment.

It never occurred to her to sell or pawn any of the furniture, silver, furs, rugs,—anything at all that Clive had given her. And there was one reason why she never would do it: she refused to consider anything he had given her as her own property to dispose of if she chose. For she had accepted these things from Clive only because it gave him pleasure to give. And what she possessed she regarded as his property held in trust. Nothing could have induced her to consider these things in any other light.

One souvenir, only, did she look upon as her own. It had no financial value; and, if it had, she would have starved before disposing of it. This was the first thing he ever gave her—his boy's offering—the gun-metal wrist-watch.

And her only recent extravagance had been a sentimental one; she had the watch cleaned and regulated, and a new leather strap adjusted. The evening it was returned to her she wore it; and that night she slept with the watch strapped to her wrist.

So much for a young girl's sentiment!—for no letter came from him on the morrow although the European mail was in. None came the next day; nor the next.

Toward the end of the week, one sultry evening, when Athalie returned from an unsuccessful tour of job-hunting, and nearer depression than ever she had yet been, Captain Dane came stalking in, shook hands with his usual decision, picked up Hafiz who adored him, and took the chair nearest to the lounge where Athalie lay.



"Suppose we dine somewhere?" he suggested, fondling the purring Angora and rubbing its ears.

"Would you mind," she said, "if I didn't?"

"You're very tired, aren't you, Miss Greensleeve?"

"A little. I don't believe I have the energy to go out with you."

Still fondling the willing cat he said: "What's wrong? Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"No indeed."

He turned and gave her a square look: "You're quite sure?"

"Quite."

"Oh; all right. Will you let me have dinner here with you?"

She said without embarrassment: "I neglected my marketing: there's very little in the pantry."

"Well," he said, "I'm hungry and I'm going to call up the Hotel Trebizond and have them send us some dinner."

She seemed inclined to demur, but he had his way, went to the telephone and gave his orders.

The dinner arrived in due time and was excellent. And when the remains of the dinner and the waiter who served it had been cleared out, Athalie felt better.

"You ought to go to the country for two or three weeks," he remarked.

"Why don't you go?" she asked, smilingly.

"Don't need it."

"Neither do I, Captain Dane. Besides I have to continue my search for a position."

"No luck yet?"

"Not yet."

He mused over his cigar for a few moments, lifted his blond head as though about to speak, but evidently decided not to.

She had taken up her sewing and was now busy with it. From moment to moment Hafiz took liberties with her spool of thread where he sprawled beside her, patting it this way and that until it fell upon the floor and Dane was obliged to rescue it.

It had grown cooler. A breeze from the open windows occasionally stirred her soft hair and the smoke of Dane's cigar. They had been silent for a few moments. Threading her needle she happened to glance up at him, and saw somebody else standing just behind him—a tall man, olive-skinned and black-bearded—and knew instantly that he was not alive.

Serenely incurious, she looked at the visitor, aware that the clothes he wore were foreign, and that his features, too, were not American.

And the next moment she gazed at him more attentively, for he had laid one hand on Dane's shoulder and was looking very earnestly across at her.

He said distinctly but with a foreign accent: "Would you please say to him that the greatest of all the ancient cities is hidden by the jungle near the source of the middle fork. It was called Yhdunez."

"Yes," she said, unconscious that she had spoken aloud.

Dane lifted his head, and remained motionless, gazing at her intently. The visitor was already moving across the room. Halfway across he looked back at Athalie in a pleasant, questioning manner; and she nodded her reassurance with a smile. Then her visitor was there no longer; and she found herself, a trifle confused, looking into the keen eyes of Captain Dane.

Neither spoke for a moment or two; then he said, quietly: "I did not know you were clairvoyant."

"I—see clearly—now and then."

"I understand. It is nothing new to me."

"You do understand then?"

"I understand that some few people see more clearly than the great majority."

"Do you?"

"No.... There was a comrade of mine—a Frenchman—Jacques Renouf. He was like you; he saw."

"Is he living?—I mean as we are?"

"No."

"Was he tall, olive-skinned, black-bearded—"

"Yes," said Dane coolly; "did you see him just now?"

"Yes."

"I wondered.... There are moments when I seem to feel his presence. I was thinking of him just now. We were on the upper Amazon together last winter."

"How did he die?"

"He'd been off by himself all day. About five o'clock he came into camp with a poisoned arrow broken off behind his shoulder-blade. He seemed dazed and stupefied; but at moments I had an idea that he was trying to tell us something."

Dane hesitated, shrugged: "It was no use. We left our fire as usual and went into the forest about two miles to sleep. Jacques died that night, still dazed by the poison, still making feeble signs at me as though he were trying to tell me something.... I believe that he has been near me very often since, trying to speak to me."

"He laid his hand on your shoulder, Captain Dane."

Dane's stern lips quivered for a second, then self-command resumed control. He said: "He usually did that when he had something to tell me.... Did he speak to me, Miss Greensleeve?"

"He spoke to me."

"Clearly?"

"Yes. He said: 'Would you please say to him that the greatest of all the ancient cities is hidden by the jungle near the source of the middle fork. It was called Yhdunez.'"

For a long while Dane sat silent, his chin resting on his clenched hand, looking down at the rug at his feet. After a while he said, still looking down: "He must have found it all alone. And got an arrow in him for his reward.... They're a dirty lot, those cannibals along the middle fork of the Amazon. Nobody knows much about them yet except that they are cannibals and their arrows are poisoned.... I brought back the arrow that I pulled out of Jacques.... There's no analysis that can determine what the poison is—except that it's vegetable."

He leaned forward, as though weary, resting his face between both hands.

"Yhdunez? Is that what it was called? Well, it and everything in it was not worth the life of my friend Renouf.... Nor is anything I've ever seen worth a single life sacrificed to the Red God of Discovery.... Those accursed cities full of vile and monstrous carvings—they belong to the jaguars now. Let them keep them. Let the world's jungles keep their own—if only they'd give me back my friend—"

He rested a moment as he was, then straightened up impatiently as though ashamed.

"Death is death," he said in matter-of-fact tones.

Athalie slowly shook her head: "There is no death."

He nodded almost gratefully: "I know what you mean. I dare say you are right.... Well—I think I'll go back to Yhdunez."

"Not this evening?" she protested, smilingly.

He smiled, too: "No, not this evening, Miss Greensleeve. I shall never care to go anywhere again—"... His face altered.... "Unless you care to go—with me."

What he had said she would have taken gaily, lightly, had not the gravity of his face forbidden it. She saw the lean muscles tighten along his clean-cut cheek, saw the keen eyes grow wistful, then steady themselves for her answer.

She could not misunderstand him; she disdained to, honouring the simplicity and truth of this man to whom she was so truly devoted.

Her abandoned sewing lay on her lap. Hafiz slept with one velvet paw entangled in her thread. She looked down, absently freeing thread and fabric, and remained so for a moment, thinking. After a while she looked up, a trifle pale:

"Thank you, Captain Dane," she said in a low voice.

He waited.

"I—am afraid that I am—in love—already—with another man."

He bent his head, quietly; there was no pleading, no asking for a chance, no whining of any species to which the monarch man is so constitutionally predisposed when soft, young lips pronounce the death warrant of his sentimental hopes.

All he said was: "It need not alter anything between us—what I have asked of you."

"It only makes me care the more for our friendship, Captain Dane."

He nodded, studying the pattern in the Shirvan rug under his feet. A procession of symbols representing scorpions and tarantulas embellished one of the rug's many border stripes. His grave eyes followed the procession entirely around the five-by-three bit of weaving. Then he rose, bent over her, took her slim hand in silence, saluted it, and asking if he might call again very soon, went out about his business, whatever it was. Probably the most important business he had on hand just then was to get over his love for Athalie Greensleeve.

For a long while Athalie sat there beside Hafiz considering the world and what it was threatening to do to her; considering man and what he had offered and what he had not offered to do to her.

Distressed because of the pain she had inflicted on Captain Dane, yet proud of the honour done her, she sat thinking, sometimes of Clive, sometimes of Mr. Wahlbaum, sometimes of Doris and Catharine, and of her brother who had gone out to the coast years ago, and from whom she had never heard.

But mostly she thought of Clive—and of his long silence.

Presently Hafiz woke up, stretched his fluffy, snowy limbs, yawned, pink-mouthed, then looked up out of gem-clear eyes, blinking inquiringly at his young mistress.

"Hafiz," she said, "if I don't find employment very soon, what is to become of you?"

The evening paper, as yet unread, lay on the sofa beside her. She picked it up, listlessly, glancing at the headings of the front page columns. There seemed to be trouble in Mexico; trouble in Japan; trouble in Hayti. Another column recorded last night's heat and gave the list of deaths and prostrations in the city. Another column—the last on the front page—announced by cable the news of a fashionable engagement—a Miss Winifred Stuart to a Mr. Clive Bailey; both at present in Paris—

She read it again, slowly; and even yet it meant nothing to her, conveyed nothing she seemed able to comprehend.

But halfway down the column her eyes blurred, the paper slipped from her hands to the floor, and she dropped back into the hollow of the sofa, and lay there, unstirring. And Hafiz, momentarily disturbed, curled up on her lap again and went peacefully to sleep.



CHAPTER XV

To her sisters Athalie wrote:

"For reasons of economy, and other reasons, I have moved to 1006 West Fifty-fifth Street where I have the top floor. I think that you both can find accommodations in this house when you return to New York.

"So far I have not secured a position. Please don't think I am discouraged. I do hope that you are well and successful."

Their address, at that time, was Vancouver, B. C.

* * * * *

To Clive Bailey, Jr., his agent wrote:

"Miss Athalie Greensleeve called at the office this morning and returned the keys to the apartment which she has occupied.

"Miss Greensleeve explained to me a fact of which I had not been aware, viz.: that the furniture, books, hangings, pictures, porcelains, rugs, clothing, furs, bed and table linen, silver, etc., etc., belong to you and not to her as I had supposed.

"I have compared the contents of the apartment with the minute inventory given me by Miss Greensleeve. Everything is accounted for; all is in excellent order.

"I have, therefore, locked up the apartment, pending orders from you regarding its disposition,"—etc., etc.

* * * * *

The tall shabby house in Fifty-fourth Street was one of a five-storied row built by a speculator to attract fashion many years before. Fashion ignored the bait.

A small square of paper which had once been white was pasted on the brick front just over the tarnished door-bell. On it was written in ink: "Furnished Rooms."

Answering in person the first advertisement she had turned to in the morning paper Athalie had found this place. There was nothing attractive about it except the price; but that was sufficient in this emergency. For the girl would not permit herself to remain another night in the pretty apartment furnished for her by the man whose engagement had been announced to her through the daily papers.

And nothing of his would she take with her except the old gun-metal wrist-watch, and Hafiz, and the barred basket in which Hafiz had arrived. Everything else she left, her toilet silver, desk-set, her evening gowns and wraps, gloves, negligees, boudoir caps, slippers, silk stockings, all her bath linen, everything that she herself had not purchased out of her own salary—even the little silver cupid holding aloft his torch, which had been her night-light.



Never again could she illuminate that torch. The other woman must do that.

* * * * *

She went about quietly from room to room, lowering the shades and drawing the curtains. There was brilliant colour in her cheeks, an undimmed beauty in her eyes; pride crowned the golden head held steady and high on its slender, snowy neck. Only the lips threatened betrayal; and were bitten as punishment into immobility.

Her small steamer trunk went by a rickety private express for fifty cents: with the basket containing Hafiz, her suit-case, and a furled umbrella she started for her new lodgings.

Michael, opening the lower grille for her, stammered: "God knows why ye do this, Miss! Th' young Masther'll be afther givin' me the sack av ye lave the house unbeknowns't him!"

"I can't stay, Michael. He knows I can't. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye Miss! God be good to ye—an' th' pusheen—!" laying a huge but gentle paw on Hafiz's basket whence a gentle plaint arose.

And so Athalie and Hafiz departed into the world together; and presently bivouacked; their first etape on life's long journey ending on the top floor of 1006 West Fifty-fifth Street.

The landlady was a thin, anxious, and very common woman with false hair and teeth; and evidently determined to secure Athalie for a lodger.

But the terms she offered the girl for the entire top floor were so absurdly small that Athalie hesitated, astonished and perplexed.

"Oh, there's a jinx in the place," said the landlady; "I ain't aiming to deceive nobody, and I'll tell you the God-awful truth. If I don't," she added naively, "somebody else is sure to hand it to you and you'll get sore on me and quit."

"What is the matter with the apartment?" inquired the girl uneasily.

"I'll tell you: the lady that had it went dead on me last August."

"Is that all?"

"No, dearie. It was chloral. And of course, the papers got hold of it and nobody wants the apartment. That's why you get it cheap—if you'll take it and chase out the jinx that's been wished on me. Will you, dearie?"

"I don't know," said the girl, looking around at the newly decorated and cheerful rooms.

The landlady sniffed: "It certainly was one on me when I let that jinx into my house—to have her go dead on me and all like that."

"Poor thing," murmured Athalie, partly to herself.

"No, she wasn't poor. You ought to have seen her rings! Them's what got her into trouble, dearie;—and the roll she flashed."

"Wasn't it suicide?" asked Athalie.



"I gotta tell you the truth. No, it wasn't. She was feeling fine and dandy. Business had went good.... There was a young man to visit her that evening. I seen him go up the stairs.... But I was that sleepy I went to bed. So I didn't see him come down. And next day at noon when I went up to do the room she lay dead onto the floor, and her rings gone, and the roll missing out of her stocking."

"Did the man kill her?"

"Yes, dearie. And the papers had it. That's what put me in Dutch. I gotta be honest with you. You'd hear it, anyway."

"But how could he give her chloral—"

The anxious, excited little woman's volubility could suffer restraint no longer:

"Oh, he could dope her easy in the dark!" she burst out. "Not that the house ain't thur'ly respectable as far as I can help it, and all my lodgers is refined. No, Miss Greensleeve, I won't stand for nothing that ain't refined and genteel. Only what can a honest woman do when she's abed and asleep, what with all the latch keys and entertainin', and things like that? No, Miss Greensleeve, I ain't got myself to blame, being decent and law-abiding and all like that, what with the police keeping tabs and the neighbourhood not being Fifth Avenoo either!—and this jinx wished on me—"

"Please—"

"Oh, I suppose you ain't a-goin' to stay here now that you've learned all about these goin's on and all like that—"

"Please wait!"—for the voluble landlady was already beginning to sniffle;—"I am perfectly willing to stay, Mrs. Meehan,—if you will promise to be a little patient about my rent until I secure a position—"

"Oh, I will, Miss Greensleeve! I ain't plannin' to press you none! I know how it is with money and with young ladies. Easy come, easy go! Just give me what you can. I ain't fixed any too good myself, what with butchers and bakers and rent owed me and all like that. I guess I can trust you to act fair and square—"

"Yes; I am square—so far."

Mrs. Meehan began to sob, partly with relief, partly with a general tendency to sentimental hysteria: "I can see that, dearie. And say—if you're quiet, I ain't peekin' around corners and through key-holes. No, Miss Greensleeve; that ain't my style! Quiet behaved young ladies can have their company without me saying nothing to nobody. All I ask is that no lady will cut up flossy in any shape, form, or manner, but behave genteel and refined to one and all. I don't want no policeman in the area. That ain't much to ask, is it?" she gasped, fairly out of breath between eloquence and tears.

"No," said Athalie with a faint smile, "it isn't much to ask."

And so the agreement was concluded; Mrs. Meehan brought in fresh linen for bed and bathroom, pulled out the new bureau drawers and dusted them, carried away a few anaemic geraniums in pots, and swept the new hardwood floor with a dry mop, explaining that the entire apartment had been renovated and redecorated since the tragic episode of last August, and that all the furniture was brand new.

"Her trunks and clothes and all like that was took by the police," explained Mrs. Meehan, "but she left some rubbish behind a sliding panel which they didn't find. I found it and I put it on the top shelf in the closet—"

She dragged a chair thither, mounted it, and presently came trotting back to the front room, carrying in both arms a bulky box of green morocco and a large paper parcel bursting with odds and ends of tinsel and silk. These she dumped on the centre table, saying: "She had a cabinet-maker fix up a cupboard in the baseboard, and that's where she kept gimcracks. The police done me damage enough without my showin' them her hidin' place and the things she kept there. Here—I'll show it to you! It's full of keys and electric wires and switches—"

She took Athalie by the arm and drew her over to the west side of the room.

"You can't see nothing there, can you?" she demanded, pointing at the high wainscoting of dull wood polished by age.

Athalie confessed she could not.

"Look!"

Mrs. Meehan passed her bony hand along the panels until her work-worn forefinger rested on a polished knot in the richly grained wood. Then she pushed; and the entire square of panels swung outward, lowering like a drawbridge, and presently rested flat on the floor.

"How odd!" exclaimed Athalie, kneeling to see better.

What she saw was a cupboard lined with asbestos, and an elaborate electric switchboard set with keys from which innumerable insulated wires radiated, entering tubes that disappeared in every direction.

"What are all these for?" she asked, rising to her feet.

"Dearie, I've got to be honest with you. This here lady was a meejum."

"A—what?"

"A meejum."

"What is that?"

"Why don't you know, dearie? She threw trances for twenty per. She seen things. She done stunts with tables and tambourines and accordions. Why this here place is all wired and fixed up between the walls and the ceiling and roof and the flooring, too. There is chimes and bells and harmonicas and mechanical banjos under the flooring and in the walls and ceiling. There's a whispering phonograph, too, and something that sighs and sobs. Also a machine that is full of singing birds that pipe up just as sweet and soft and natural as can be.

"On rainy days you can amuse yourself with them keys; I don't like to fool with them myself, being nervous with a weak back and my vittles not setting right and all like that—" Again she ran down from sheer lack of breath.

Athalie gazed curiously at the secret cupboard. After a few moments she bent over, lifted and replaced the panelling and passed her slim hand over the wainscot, thoughtfully.

"So the woman was a trance-medium," she said, half to herself.

"Yes, Miss Greensleeve. She read the stars, too, and she done cards on the side; you know—all about a blond gentleman that wants to meet you and a dark lady comin' over the water to do something mean to you. She charged high, but she had customers enough—swell ladies, too, in their automobiles, and old gentlemen and young and all like that.... Here's part of her outfit"—leading Athalie to the centre table and opening the green morocco box.

In the box was a slim bronze tripod and a big sphere of crystal. Mrs. Meehan placed the tripod on the table and set the crystal sphere upon it, saying dubiously: "She claimed that she could see things in that. I guess it was part of her game. I ain't never seen nothing into that glass ball, and I've looked, too. You can have it if you want it. It's kind of cute to set on the mantel."

She began to paw and grub and rummage in the big paper parcel, scratching about in the glittering mess of silk and embroidery with a pertinacity entirely gallinaceous.

"You can have these, too," she said to Athalie—"if you want 'em. They're heathen I guess—" holding up some tawdry Japanese and home-made Chinese finery.

But Athalie declined the dead woman's robes of office and Mrs. Meehan rolled them up in the wrapping paper and took them and herself off, very profuse in her gratitude to Athalie for consenting to occupy the apartment and thereby remove the "jinx" that had inhabited it since the tragedy of the month before.

A very soft and melancholy mew from the basket informed the girl that Hafiz desired his liberty. So she let him out and he trotted at her heels as she walked about inspecting the apartment. Also he did considerable inspecting on his own account, sniffing at every door-sill and crack, jumping up on chairs to look out of windows, prowling in and out of closets, his plumy tail jerking with dubiousness and indecision.

The apartment was certainly clean. Evidently the house had been a good one in its day, for the trim was dark old mahogany, rich and beautiful in colour; and the fireplace was rather pretty with its acanthus leaves and roses deeply carved in marble which time had toned to an ivory tint.

The darkly stained floor of hardwood was, of course, modern. So were the new and very hideous oriental rugs made in Hoboken, and the aniline pink wall-paper, and the brand new furniture still smelling of department store varnish. Hideous, too, were the electric fixtures, the gas-log in the old-time fireplace, and the bargain counter bric-a-brac geometrically spaced upon the handsome old mantel.

But there were possibilities in the big, square room facing south and in the two smaller bed chambers fronting the north. A modern bathroom connected these.

To find an entire top floor in New York at such a price was as amazing as it was comfortable to the girl who had not expected to be able to afford more than a small bedroom.

* * * * *

She had a little money left, enough to purchase food and a few pots and pans to cook it over the gas range in one of the smaller rooms.

And here she and Hafiz had their first meal on the long world-trail stretching away before her. After which she sat for a while by the window in a stiff arm-chair, thinking of Clive and of his silence, and of the young girl he was one day to marry.

Southward, the lights of the city began to break out and sparkle through the autumn haze; tall towers, hitherto invisible, suddenly glimmered against the sky-line. A double vista of lighted street lamps stretched east and west below her.

The dusty-violet light of evening softened the shabby street below, veiling ugliness and squalor and subtly transmuting meanness and poverty to picturesqueness—as artists, using only the flattering simplicity of essentials, show us in etching and aquarelle the romance of the commonplace. And so the rusty iron balconies of a chop suey across the street became quaint and curious: dragon and swinging gilded sign, banner and garish fretwork grew mellow and mysterious under the ruddy Hunter's Moon sailing aloft out of the city's haze like a great Chinese lantern.

From an unseen steeple or two chimes sounded the hour. Farther away in the city a bell answered. It is not a city of belfries and chimes; only locally and by hazard are bell notes distinguishable above the interminable rolling monotone of the streets.

And now, the haze thickening, distant reverberations, deep, mellow, melancholy, grew in the night air: fog horns from the two rivers and the bay.

Leaning both elbows on the sill of the opened window Athalie gazed wearily into the street where noisy children shrilled at one another and dodged vehicles like those quick tiny creatures whirling on ponds.

Here and there, the flare of petroleum torches lighted push-carts piled with fruit or laden with bowls of lemonade and hokey-pokey. Sidewalks were crowded with shabby people gossiping in groups or passing east and west—about what squalid business only they could know.

On the stoops of all the dwellings, brick or brownstone, people sat; the men in shirt-sleeves, the young girls bare-headed, and in light summer gowns. Pianos sounded through open parlour windows; there was dancing going on somewhere in the block.

Eastward where the street intersected the glare of the dingy avenue, a policeman stood on fixed post, the electric lights guttering on his metal-work when he turned. Athalie had laid her cheek on her arms and closed her eyes, from fatigue, perhaps; perhaps to force back the tears which, nevertheless, glimmered on her lashes where they lay close to the curved white cheeks.

Little by little the girl was taking degree after degree in her post-graduate course, the study of which was man.

And for the first time in her life a new reaction in the laboratory of experience had revealed to her a new element in her analysis; bitterness.

Which is akin to resentment. And to these it is easy to ally recklessness.

* * * * *

There came to her a moment, as she sat huddled there at the window, when endurance suddenly flashed into a white anger; and she found herself on her feet, pacing the room as caged things pace, with a sort of blindly fixed purpose, seeing everything yet looking at nothing that she passed.

But after this had lasted long enough she halted, gazing about her as though for something that might aid her. But there was only the room and the furniture, and Hafiz asleep on a chair; only these and the crystal sphere on its slim bronze tripod. And suddenly she found herself on her knees beside it, staring into its dusky transparent depths, fixing her mind, concentrating every thought, straining every faculty, every nerve in the one desperate and imperative desire.

But through the crystal's depths there is no aid for those who "see clearly," no comfort, no answer. She could not find there the man she searched for—the man for whom her soul cried out in fear, in anger, in despair. As in a glass, darkly, only her own face she saw, fire-edged with a light like that which burns deep in black opals.

Prone on the floor at last, her white face framed by her hands, her eyes wide open in the dark, she finally understood that her clear vision was of no avail where she herself was concerned; that they who see clearly can never use that vision to help themselves.

Fiercely she resented it,—the more bitterly because for the first time in her life she had condescended to any voluntary effort toward clairvoyance.

Wearily she sat up on the floor and gathered her knees into her arms, staring at nothing there in the darkness while the slow tears fell.

Never before had she known loneliness. A man had made her understand it. Never before had she known bitterness. A man had taught it to her. Never again should any man do what this man had done to her! She was learning resentment.

All men should be the same to her hereafter. All men should stand already condemned. Never again should one among them betray her mind to reveal itself, persuade her heart to response, her lips to sacrifice their sweetness and their pride, her soul to stir in its sleep, awake, and answer. And for what the minds and hearts of men might bring upon themselves, let men be responsible. Their inclinations, offers, protests, promises as far as they regarded herself could never again affect her. Let man look to himself; his desires no longer concerned her. Let him keep his distance—or take his chances. And there were no chances.

Athalie was learning resentment.

* * * * *

Somebody was knocking. Athalie rose from the floor, turned on the lights, dried her eyes, went slowly to the door, and opened it.

A large, fat, pallid woman stood in the hallway. Her eyes were as washed out as her faded, yellowish hair; and her kimono needed washing.

"Good evening," she said cordially, coming in without any encouragement from Athalie and settling her uncorseted bulk in the arm-chair. "My name is Grace Bellmore,—Mrs. Grace Bellmore. I have the rear rooms under yours. If you're ever lonely come down and talk it over. Neighbours are not what they might be in this house. Look out for the Meehan, too. I'd call her a cat only I like cats. Say, that's a fine one on your bed there. Persian? Oh, Angora—" here she fished out a cigarette from the pocket of her wrapper, found a match, scratched it on the sole of her ample slipper, and lighted her cigarette.

"Have one?" she inquired. "No? Don't like them? Oh, well, you'll come to 'em. Everything comes easy when you're lonely. I know. You don't have to tell me. God! I get so sick of my own company sometimes—"

She turned her head to gaze about her, twisting her heavy, creased neck as far as the folds of fat permitted: "You had your nerve with you when you took this place. I knew Mrs. Del Garmo. I warned her, too. But she was a bone-head. A woman can't be careless in this town. And when it comes to men—say, Miss Greensleeve, I want to know their names before they ask me to dinner and start in calling me Grace. It's Grace after meat with me!" And she laughed and laughed, slapping her fat knee with a pudgy, ring-laden hand.

Athalie, secretly dismayed, forced a polite smile. Mrs. Bellmore blew a few smoke rings toward the ceiling.

"Are you in business, Miss Greensleeve?"

"Yes.... I am looking for a position."

"What a pretty voice—and refined way of speaking!" exclaimed Mrs. Bellmore frankly. "I guess you've seen better days. Most people have. Tell you the truth, though, I haven't. I'm better off than I ever was before. Of course this is the dull season, but things are picking up. What is your line, Miss Greensleeve?"

"Stenographer."

"Oh! Well, I don't suppose I could do anything for you, could I?"

"I don't know what your business is," ventured Athalie, who, heretofore had not dared even to surmise what might be the vocation of this very large and faded woman who wore a pink kimono and a dozen rings on her nicotine-stained fingers, and who smoked incessantly.

The woman seemed to be a trifle surprised: "Haven't you ever heard of Grace Bellmore?" she asked.

"I don't think so," said Athalie with increasing diffidence.

"Well, maybe you wouldn't, not being in the profession. The managers all know me. I run an Emergency Agency on Broadway."

"I don't think I understand," said the girl.

"No? Then it's like this: a show gets stuck and needs a quick study. They call me up and I throw them what they want at an hour's notice. They can always count on me for anything from wardrobe mistress to prima donna. That's how I get mine," she concluded with a jolly laugh.

Athalie, feeling a little more confidence in her visitor, smiled at her.

"Say—you're a beauty!" exclaimed Mrs. Bellmore, gazing at her. "You're all there, too. I could place you easy if you ever need it. You don't sing, do you?"

"No."

"Ever had your voice tried?"

"No."

"Dance?"

"I dance—whatever is being danced—rather easily."

"No stage experience?"

"No."

"Well—what do you say, Miss Greensleeve?"

Athalie coloured and laughed: "Thank you, but I had rather work at stenography."

Mrs. Bellmore said: "I certainly hate to admit it, and knock my own profession, but any good stenographer in a year makes more than many a star you read about.... Unless there's men putting up for her."

Athalie nodded gravely.

"All the same you'd make a peach of a show-girl," added Mrs. Bellmore regretfully. And, after a rather intent interval of silent scrutiny: "You're a good girl, too.... Say, you do get pretty lonely sometimes, don't you, dear?"

Athalie flushed and shook her head. Mrs. Bellmore lighted another cigarette from the smouldering remnant of the previous one, and flung the gilt-tipped remains through the window.

"Ten to one it hits a crook if it hits anybody," she remarked. "This is a fierce neighbourhood,—all sorts of joints, and then some. But I like my rooms. I don't guess you'll be bothered. A girl is more likely to get spoken to in the swell part of town. Well,—" she struggled to her fat feet—"I'll be going. If you're lonely, drop in during the evening. I'm at the office all day except Sundays and holidays."

They stood, confronted, looking at each other for a moment. Then, impulsively the fat woman offered her hand:

"Don't be afraid of me," she said. "I may look crooked, but I'm not. Your mother wouldn't mind my knowing you."

She held Athalie's narrow hand for a moment, and the girl looked into the faded eyes.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I was lonely."

"Good girls usually are. It's a hell of an alternative, isn't it? I don't mean to be profane; hell is the word. It's hell either way for a girl alone."

Athalie nodded silently. Mrs. Bellmore looked at her, then glanced around the room, curiously.

"Hello," she said abruptly, "what's that?"

Athalie's eyes followed hers: "Do you mean the crystal?"

"Yes.... Say—" she turned to Athalie, nodding profound emphasis on every word she uttered:—"Say, I thought there was something else to you—something I couldn't quite get next to. Now I know what's been bothering me about you. You're clairvoyant!"

Athalie's cheeks grew warm: "I am not a medium," she said. "That crystal is not my own."

"That may be. Maybe you don't think you are a medium. But you are, Miss Greensleeve. I know. I'm a little that way, too,—just a very little. Oh, I could go into the business and fake it of course,—like all the others—or most of them. But you are the real thing. Why," she exclaimed in vexation, "didn't I know it as soon as I laid eyes on you? I certainly was subconscious of something. Why you could do anything you pleased with the power you have if you'd care to learn the business. There's money in it—take it from me!"

Athalie said, after a few moments of silence: "I don't think I understand. Is there a way of—of developing clear vision?"

"Haven't you ever tried?"

"Never.... Except when a little while ago I went over to the crystal and—and tried to find—somebody."

"Did you find—that person?"

"No."

Mrs. Bellmore shook her fat head: "You needn't tell me any more. You can't ever do yourself any good by crystal gazing—you poor child."

Athalie's head dropped.

"No, it's no use," said the other. "If you go into the business and play square you can sometimes help others. But I guess the crystal is mostly fake. Mrs. Del Garmo had one like yours. She admitted to me that she never saw anything in it until she hypnotised herself. And she could do that by looking steadily at a brass knob on a bed-post; and see as much in it as in her crystal."

The fat woman lighted another cigarette and blew a contemplative whiff toward the crystal: "No: at best the game is a crooked one, even for the few who have really any occult power."

"Why?" asked the girl, surprised.

"Because they are usually clever, nimble-witted, full of intuition. Deduction is an instinct with them. And it is very easy to elaborate from a basis of truth;—it's more than a temptation to intelligence to complete a story desired and already paid for by a client. Because almost invariably the client is as stupid as the medium is intelligent. And, take it from me, it's impossible not to use your intelligence when a partly finished business deal requires it."

Athalie was silent.

"I'd do it," laughed Mrs. Bellmore.

Athalie said nothing.

"Say, on the level," said the older woman, "do you see a lot that we others can't see, Miss Greensleeve?"

"I have seen—some things."

"Plenty, too, I'll bet! Oh, it's in your pretty face, in your eyes!—it's in you, all about you. I'm not much in that line but I can feel it in the air. Why I felt it as soon as I came into your room, but I was that stupid—thinking of Mrs. Del Garmo—and never associating it with you!... Do you do any trance work?"

"No.... I have never cultivated—anything of that sort."

"I know. The really gifted don't cultivate the power as a rule. Only one now and then, and here and there. The others are pure frauds—almost every one of them. But—" she looked searchingly at the girl,—"you're no fraud! Why you're full of it!—full—saturated—alive with—with vitality—psychical and physical!—You're a glorious thing—half spiritual, half human—a superb combination of vitality, sacred and profane!"—She checked herself and turned on the girl almost savagely: "Who was the fool of a man you were looking for in the crystal?... Very well; don't tell then. I didn't suppose you would. Only—God help him for the fool he is—and forgive him for what he has done to you!... And may I never enter this room again and find you with the tears freshly scrubbed out of the most honest eyes God ever gave a woman!... Good night, Miss Greensleeve!"

"Good night," said Athalie.

After she had closed the door and locked it she turned back into the empty room, moving uncertainly as though scarcely knowing what she was about. And then, suddenly, the terror of utter desolation seized her, and for the first time she realised what Clive had been to her, and what he had not been—understood for the first time in her life the complex miracle called love, its synthesis, its every element, every molecule, every atom, and flung herself across the bed, half strangled, sobbing out her passion and her grief.

Dawn found her lying there; but the ravage of that night had stripped her of much that she had been, and never again would be. And what had been taken from her was slowly being replaced by what she had never yet been. Night stripped her; the red dawn clothed her.

She sat up, dry-eyed, unbound her hair, flung from her the crumpled negligee. Presently the first golden-pink ray of the rising sun fell across her snowy body, and she flung out her lovely arms to it as though to draw it into her empty heart.

Hafiz, blinking his jewelled eyes, watched her lazily from his pillow.



CHAPTER XVI

As she came, pensively, from her morning bath into the sunny front room Athalie noticed the corner of an envelope projecting from beneath her door.

For one heavenly moment the old delight surprised her at sight of Clive's handwriting,—for one moment only, before an overwhelming reaction scoured her heart of tenderness and joy; and the terrible resurgence of pain and grief wrung a low cry from her: "Why couldn't he let me alone!" And she crumpled the letter fiercely in her clenched hand.

Minute after minute she stood there, her white hand tightening as though to strangle the speech written there on those crushed sheets—perhaps to throttle and silence the faint, persistent cry of her own heart pleading a hearing for the man who had written to her at last.

And after a while her nerveless hand relaxed; she looked down at the crushed thing in her palm for a long time before she smoothed it out and finally opened it.

He wrote:

"It is too long a story to go into in detail. I couldn't, anyway. My mother had desired it for a long time. I have nothing to say about it except this: I would not for all the world have had you receive the first information from the columns of a newspaper. Of that part of it I have a right to speak, because the announcement was made without my knowledge or consent. And I'll say more: it was made even before I myself was aware that an engagement existed.

"Don't mistake what I write you, Athalie. I am not trying to escape any responsibility excepting that of premature publicity. Whatever else has happened I am fully responsible for.

"And so—what can I have to say to you, Athalie? Silence were decenter perhaps—God knows!—and He knows, too, that in me he fashioned but an irresolute character, void of the initial courage of conviction, without deep and sturdy belief, unsteady to a true course set, and lacking in rugged purpose.

"It is not stupidity: in the bottom of my own heart I know! Custom, habit, acquired and inculcated acquiescence in unanalysed beliefs—these require more than irresolution and a negative disposition to fight them and overcome them.

"Athalie, the news you must have read in the newspapers should first have come from me. Among many, many debts I must ever owe you, that one at least was due you. And I defaulted; but not through any fault of mine.

"I could not rest until you knew this. Whatever you may think about me now—however lightly you weigh me—remember this—if you ever remember me at all in the years to come: I was aware of my paramount debt: I should have paid it had the opportunity not been taken out of my own hands. And that debt paramount was to inform you first of anybody concerning what you read in a public newspaper.

"Now there remains nothing more for me to say that you would care to hear. You would no longer care to know,—would probably not believe me if I should tell you what you have been to me—and still are—and still are, Athalie! Athalie!—"

The letter ended there with her name. She kept it all day; but that night she destroyed it. And it was a week before she wrote him:

"—Thank you for your letter, Clive. I hope all is well with you and yours. I wish you happiness; I desire for you all things good. And also—for her. Surely I may say this much without offence—when I am saying good-bye forever. "ATHALIE."

In due time, to this came his answer, tragic in its brevity, terrible in its attempt to say nothing—so that its stiff cerement of formality seemed to crack with every written word and its platitudes split open under the fierce straining of the living and unwritten words beneath them.

And to this she made no answer. And destroyed it after the sun had set.

* * * * *

Her money was now about gone. Indian summer brought no prospect of employment. Never had she believed that so many stenographers existed in the world; never had she supposed that vacant positions could be so pitifully few.

During October her means had not afforded her proper nourishment.

The vigour of young womanhood demands more than milk and crackers and a rare slab from some delicatessen shop.

As for Hafiz, to his astonishment he had been introduced to chuck-steak; and the pleasure was anything but unmitigated. But chuck-steak was more than his mistress had.

Mrs. Bellmore was inclined to eat largely of late suppers prepared on an oil stove by her own fair and very fat hands.

Athalie accepted one or two invitations, and then accepted no more, being unable to return anybody's hospitality.

Captain Dane called persistently without being received, until she wrote him not to come again until she sent for him.

Nobody else knew where she was except her sisters. Doris wrote from Los Angeles complaining of slack business. Later Catharine wrote asking for money. And Athalie was obliged to answer that she had none.

Now "none" means not any at all. And the time had now arrived when that was the truth. The chuck-steak cut up on Hafiz's plate in the bathroom had been purchased with postage stamps—the last of a sheet bought by Athalie in days of affluence for foreign correspondence.

There was no more foreign correspondence. Hence the chuck-steak, and a bottle of milk in the sink and a packet of biscuits on the shelf. And a rather pale, young girl lying flat on the lounge in the front room, her blue eyes wide, staring up at the fading sun-beams on the ceiling.

If she was desperate she was quiet about it—perhaps even at moments a little incredulous that there actually could be nothing left for her to live on. It was one of those grotesque episodes that did not seem to belong in her life—something which ought not—that could not happen to her. At moments, however, she realised that it had happened—realised that part of the nightmare had been happening for some time—that for a good while now, she had always been more or less hungry, even after a rather reckless orgy on crackers and milk.

Except that she felt a little fatigued there was in her no tendency to accept the chose arrivee, no acquiescence in the fait accompli, nothing resembling any bowing of the head, any meek desire to kiss the rod; only a still resentment, a quiet but steady anger, the new and cool opportunism that hatches recklessness.

What channel should she choose? That was all that chance had left for her to decide,—merely what form her recklessness should take.

Whatever of morality had been instinct in the girl now seemed to be in absolute abeyance. In the extremity of dire necessity, cornered at last, face to face with a world that threatened her, and watching it now out of cool, intelligent eyes, she had, without realising it, slipped back into her ragged childhood.

There was nothing else to slip back to, no training, no discipline, no foundation other than her companionship with a mother whom she had loved but who had scarcely done more for her than to respond vaguely to the frankness of inquiring childhood.

Her childhood had been always a battle—a happy series of conflicts as she remembered—always a fight among strenuous children to maintain her feet in her little tattered shoes against rough aggression and ruthless competition.

And now, under savage pressure, she slipped back again in spirit to the school-yard, and became a watchful, agile, unmoral thing again—a creature bent on its own salvation, dedicated to its own survival, atrociously ready for any emergency, undismayed by anything that might offer itself, and ready to consider, weigh, and determine any chance for existence.

Almost every classic alternative in turn presented itself to her as she lay there considering. She could go out and sell herself. But, oddly enough, the "easiest way" was not easy for her. And, as a child, also, a fastidious purity had been instinctive in her, both in body and mind.

There were other and easier alternatives; she could go on the stage, or into domestic service, or she could call up Captain Dane and tell him she was hungry. Or she could let any one of several young men understand that she was now permanently receptive to dinner invitations. And she could, if she chose, live on her personal popularity,—be to one man or to several une maitresse vierge—manage, contrive, accept, give nothing of consequence.

For she was a girl to flatter the vanity of men; and she knew that if ever she coolly addressed her mind to it she could rule them, entangle them, hold them sufficiently long, and flourish without the ultimate concession, because there were so many, many men in the world, and it took each man a long, long time to relinquish hope; and always there was another ready to try his fortune, happy in his vanity to attempt where all so far had failed.

Something she had to do; that was certain. And it happened, while she was pondering the problem, that the only thing she had not considered,—had not even thought of—was now abruptly presented to her.

For, as she lay there thinking, there came the sound of footsteps outside her door, and presently somebody knocked. And Athalie rose in the dusk of the room, switched on a single light, went to the door and opened it. And opportunity walked in wearing the shape of an elderly gentleman of substance, clothed as befitted a respectable dweller in any American city except New York.

"Good evening," he said, looking at her pleasantly but inquiringly. "Is Mrs. Del Garmo in?"

"Mrs. Del Garmo?" repeated Athalie, surprised. "Why, Mrs. Del Garmo is dead!"

"God bless us!" he exclaimed in a shocked voice. "Is that so? Well, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Well—well—well! Mrs. Del Garmo! I certainly am sorry."

He looked curiously about him, shaking his head, and an absent expression came into his white-bearded face—which changed to lively interest when his eyes fell on the table where the crystal stood mounted between the prongs of the bronze tripod.

"No doubt," he said, looking at Athalie, "you are Mrs. Del Garmo's successor in the occult profession. I notice a crystal on the table."

And in that instant the inspiration came to the girl, and she took it with the coolness and ruthlessness of last resort.

"What is it you wish?" she asked calmly, "a reading?"

He hesitated, looking at her out of aged but very honest eyes; and in a moment she was at his mercy, and the game had gone against her. She said, while the hot colour slowly stained her face: "I have never read a crystal. I had not thought of succeeding Mrs. Del Garmo until now—this moment."