"What is your name, child?" he asked in a gently curious voice.

"Athalie Greensleeve."

"You are not a trance-medium?"

"No. I am a stenographer."

"Then you are not psychical?"

"Yes, I am."

"What?"

"I am naturally clairvoyant."

He seemed surprised at first; but after he had looked at her for a moment or two he seemed less surprised.

"I believe you are," he said half to himself.

"I really am.... If you wish I could try. But—I don't know how to go about it," she said with flushed embarrassment.

He gazed at her it seemed rather solemnly and wistfully. "There is one thing very certain," he said; "you are honest. And few mediums are. I think Mrs. Del Garmo was. I believed in her. She was the means of giving me very great consolation."

Athalie's face flushed with the shame and pity of her knowledge of the late Mrs. Del Garmo; and the thought of the secret cupboard with its nest of wires made her blush again.

The old gentleman looked all around the room and then asked if he might seat himself.

Athalie also sat down in the stiff arm-chair by the table where her crystal stood on its tripod.

"I wonder," he ventured, "whether you could help me. Do you think so?"

"I don't know," replied the girl. "All I know about it is that I cannot help myself through crystal gazing. I never looked into a crystal but once. And what I searched for was not there."

The old gentleman considered her earnestly for a few moments. "Child," he said, "you are very honest. Perhaps you could help me. It would be a great consolation to me if you could. Would you try?"

"I don't know how," murmured Athalie.

"Maybe I can aid you to try by telling you a little about myself."

The girl lifted her flushed face from the crystal:

"Don't do that, please. If you wish me to try I will. But don't tell me anything."

"Why not?"

"Because—I am—intelligent and quick—imaginative—discerning. I might unconsciously—or otherwise—be unfair. So don't tell me anything. Let me see if there really is in me any ability."

He met her candid gaze mildly but unsmilingly; and she folded her slim hands in her lap and sat looking at him very intently.

"Is your name Symes?" she asked presently.

He nodded.

"Elisha Symes?"

"Yes."

"And—do you live in Brook—Brookfield—no!—Brookhollow?"

"Yes."

"That town is in Connecticut, is it not?"

"Yes."

His trustful gaze had altered, subtly. She noticed it.

"I suppose," she said, "you think I could have found out these things through dishonest methods."

"I was thinking so.... I am satisfied that you are honest, Miss Greensleeve."

"I really am—so far."

"Could you tell me how you learned my name and place of residence."

Her expression became even more serious: "I don't know, Mr. Symes.... I don't know how I knew it.... I think you wish me to help you find your little grandchildren, too. But I don't know why I think so."

When he spoke, controlled emotion made his voice sound almost feeble.

He said: "Yes; find my little grandchildren and tell me what they are doing." He passed a transparent hand unsteadily across his dim eyes: "They are not living," he added. "They were lost at sea."

She said: "Nothing dies. Nothing is really lost."

"Why do you think so, child?"

"Because the whole world is gay and animated and lovely with what we call 'the dead.' And, by the dead I mean all things great and small that have ever lived."

He sat listening with all the concentration and rapt attention of a child intent upon a fairy tale. She said, as though speaking to herself: "You should see and hear the myriads of birds that have 'died'! The sky is full of their voices and their wings.... Everywhere—everywhere the lesser children live,—those long dead of inhumanity or of that crude and temporary code which we call the law of nature. All has been made up to them—whatever of cruelty and pain they suffered—whatever rigour of the 'natural' law in that chain of destruction which we call the struggle for existence.... For there is only one real law, and it rules all of space that we can see, and more of it than we can even imagine.... It is the law of absolute justice."

The old man nodded: "Do you believe that?"

She looked up at him dreamily: "Yes; I believe it. Or I should not have said it."

"Has anybody ever told you this?"

"No.... I never even thought about it until this moment while listening to my own words."... She lifted one hand and rested it against her forehead: "I cannot seem to think of your grandchildren's names.... Don't tell me."

She remained so for a few moments, motionless, then with a graceful gesture and a shake of her pretty head: "No, I can't think of their names. Do you suppose I could find them in the crystal?"

"Try," he said tremulously. She bent forward, resting both elbows on the table and framing her lovely face in her hands.

Deep into the scintillating crystal her blue gaze plunged; and for a few moments she saw nothing. Then, almost imperceptibly, faint hues and rainbow tints grew in the brilliant and transparent sphere—gathered, took shape as she watched, became coherent and logical and clear and real.

She said in a low voice, still watching intently: "Blue sky, green trees, a snowy shore, and little azure wavelets.... Two children bare-legged, playing in the sand.... A little girl—so pretty!—with her brown eyes and brown curls.... And the boy is her brother I think.... Oh, certainly.... And what a splendid time they are having with their sand-fort!... There's a little dog, too. They are calling him, 'Snippy! Snippy! Snippy!' How he barks at the waves! And now he has seized the little girl's doll! They are running after him, chasing him along the sands! Oh, how funny they are!—and what a glorious time they are having.... The puppy has dropped the doll.... The doll's name is Augusta.... Now the little girl has seated herself cross-legged on the sand and she is cradling the doll and singing to it—such a sweet, clear, happy little voice.... She is singing something about cherry pie—Oh!—now I can hear every word:

"Cherry pie, Cherry pie, You shall have some bye and bye. Bye and Bye Bye and Bye You and I shall have a pie, Cherry pie Cherry pie—

"The boy is saying: 'Grandpa will have plenty for us when we get home. There's always cherry pie at Grandpa's house.'

"And the little girl answers, 'I think Grandpa will come here pretty soon and bring us all the cherry pie we want.'... Her name is Jessie.... Her brother calls her 'Jessie.' She calls him 'Jim.'

"Their other name is Colden, I think.... Yes, that is it—Colden.... They seem to be expecting their father and mother; but I don't see them—Oh, yes. I can see them now—in the distance, walking slowly along the sands—"

She hesitated, remained silent for a few moments; then: "The colours are blurring to a golden haze. I can't see clearly now; it is like looking into the blinding disk of the rising sun.... All splendour and dazzling glory—and a too fierce light—"

For a moment more she remained bent over above the sphere, then raising her head: "The crystal is transparent and empty," she said.



CHAPTER XVII

It was about five months later that Cecil Reeve wrote his long reply to a dozen letters from Clive Bailey which heretofore had remained unanswered and neglected:

"—For Heaven's sake, do you think I've nothing to do except to write you letters? I never write letters; and here's the exception to prove it. And if I were not at the Geyser Club, and if I had not dined incautiously, I would not write this!

"But first permit me the indiscretion of asking you why an engaged man is so charitably interested in the welfare of a young girl who is not engaged to him? And if he is interested, why doesn't he write to her himself and find out how she is? Or has she turned you down?

"But you need not incriminate and degrade yourself by answering this question.

"Seriously, Clive, you'd better get all thoughts of Athalie Greensleeve out of your head as long as you intend to get married. I knew, of course, that you'd been hard hit. Everybody was gossiping last winter. But this is rather raw, isn't it?—asking me to find out how Athalie is and what she is doing; and to write you in detail? Well anyway I'll tell you once for all what I hear and know about her and her family—her family first, as I happen to have had dealings with them. And hereafter you can do your own philanthropic news gathering.

"Doris and Catharine were in a rotten show I backed. And when I couldn't afford to back it any longer Doris was ungrateful enough to marry a man who cultivated dates, figs, and pecan nuts out in lower California, and Catharine has just written me a most impertinent letter saying that real men grew only west of the Mississippi, and that she is about to marry one of them who knows more in half a minute than anybody could ever learn during a lifetime in New York, meaning me and Hargrave. I guess she meant me; and I guess it's so—about Hargrave. Except for myself, we certainly are a bunch of boobs in this out-of-date old town.

"Now about Athalie,—she dropped out of sight after you went abroad. Nobody seemed to know where she was or what she was doing. Nobody ever saw her at restaurants or theatres except during the first few weeks after your departure. And then she was usually with that Dane chap—you know—the explorer. I wrote to her sisters making inquiries in behalf of myself and Francis Hargrave; but they either didn't know or wouldn't tell us where she was living. Neither would Dane. I didn't suppose he knew at the time; but he did.

"Well, what do you think has happened? Athalie Greensleeve is the most talked about girl in town! She has become the fashion, Clive. You hear her discussed at dinners, at dances, everywhere.

"Some bespectacled guy from Columbia University had an article about her in one of the recent magazines. Every paper has had something to say concerning her. They all disagree except on one point,—that Athalie Greensleeve is the most beautiful woman in New York. How does that hit you, Clive?

"Well, here's the key to the box of tricks. I'll hand it to you now. Athalie has turned into a regular, genuine, out and out clairvoyant, trade-marked patented. And society with a big S and science with a little s are fighting to take her up and make a plaything of her. And the girl is making all kinds of money.

"Of course her beauty and pretty manners are doing most of it for her, but here's another point: rumour has it that she's perfectly sincere and honest in her business.

"How can she be, Clive? I ask you. Also I hand it to her press-agent. He's got every simp in town on the run. He knows his public.

"Well, the first time I met her she was dining with Dane again at the Arabesque. She seemed really glad to see me. There's a girl who remains unaffected and apparently unspoiled by her success. And she certainly has delightful manners. Dane glowered at me but Athalie made me sit down for a few minutes. Gad! I was that flattered to be seen with such a looker!

"She told me how it began—she couldn't secure a decent position, and all her money was gone, when in came an old guy who had patronised the medium whose rooms she was living in.

"That started it. The doddering old rube insisted that Athalie take a crack at the crystal business; she took one, and landed him. And when he went out he left a hundred bones in his wake and a puddle of tears on the rug.

"She didn't tell it to me like this: she really fell for the old gentleman. But I could size him up for a come-on. The rural districts crawl with that species. Now what gets me, Clive, is this: Athalie seems to me to be one of the straightest ever. Of course she has changed a lot. She's cleverer, livelier, gayer, more engaging and bewitching than ever—and believe me she's some flirt, in a sweet, bewildering sort of way—so that you'd give your head to know how much is innocence and how much is art of a most delicious—and, sometimes, malicious kind.

"That's the girl. And that's all she is, just a girl, with all the softness and freshness and fragrance of youth still clinging to her. She's some peach-blossom, take it from uncle! And she is straight; or I'm a million miles away in the lockup.

"And now, granted she's morally straight, how can she be square in business? Do you get me? It's past me. All I can think of is that, being straight, the girl feels herself that she's also square.

"Yet, if that is so, how can she fool others so neatly?

"Listen, Clive: I was at a dance at the Faithorn's; tremendous excitement among pin-heads and debutantes! Athalie was expected, professionally. And sure enough, just before supper, in strolls a radiant, wonderful young thing making them all look like badly faded guinea-hens—and somehow I get the impression that she is receiving her hostess instead of the contrary. Talk about self-possession and absolute simplicity! She had 'em all on the bench. Happening to catch my eye she held out her hand with one of those smiles she can be guilty of—just plain assassination, Clive!—and I stuck to her until the pin-heads crowded me out, and the rubbering women got my shoulders all over paint. And now here's where she gets 'em. There's no curtained corner, no pasteboard trophies, no gipsy shawls and bangles, no lowering of lights, no closed doors, no whispers.

"Whoever asks her anything spooky she answers in a sweet and natural voice, as though replying to an ordinary question. She makes no mystery of it. Sometimes she can't answer, and she says so without any excuse or embarrassment. Sometimes her replies are vague or involved or even apparently meaningless. She admits very frankly that she is not always able to understand what her reply means.

"However she says enough—tells, reveals, discovers, offers sound enough advice—to make her the plaything of the season.

"And it's a cinch that she scores more bull's eyes than blanks. I had a seance with her. Never mind what she told me. Anyway it was devilish clever,—and true as far as I knew. And I suppose the chances are good that the whole business will happen to me. Watch me.

"I think Athalie must have cleared a lot of money already. Mrs. Faithorn told me she gave her a cheque for five hundred that evening. And Athalie's private business must be pretty good because all the afternoon until five o'clock carriages and motors are coming and going. And you ought to see who's in 'em. Your prospective father-in-law was in one! Perhaps he wanted inside information about Dominion Fuel—that damn stock which has done a few things to me since I monkeyed with it.

"But you should see the old dragons and dowagers and death-heads, and frumps who go to see Athalie! And the younger married bunch, too. I understand one has to ask for an appointment a week ahead.

"So she must be making every sort of money. And yet she lives simply enough—sky floor of a new office-apartment building on Long Acre—hoisted way up in the air above everything. You look out and see nothing but city and river and bay and haze on every side as far as the horizon's circle. At night it's just an endless waste of electric lights. There's very little sound from the street roar below. It's still up there in the sky, and sunny; silent and snowy; quiet and rainy; noiseless and dark—according to the hours, seasons, and meteorological conditions, my son. And it's some joint, believe me, with the dark old mahogany trim and furniture and the dull rich effects in azure and gold; and the Beluch carpets full of sombre purple and dusky fire, and the white cat on the window-sill watching you put of its sapphire blue eyes.

"And Athalie! curled up on her deep, soft divan, nibbling sweetmeats and listening to a dozen men—for there are usually as many as that who drop in at one time or another after business is over, and during the evening, unless Athalie is dining out, which she often does, damn it!

"Business hours for her begin at two o'clock in the afternoon; and last until five. She could make a lot more money than she does if she opened earlier. I told her this, once, but she said that she was determined to educate herself.

"And it seems that she studies French, Italian, German, piano and vocal music; and has some down-and-out old hen read with her. I believe her ambition is to take the regular Harvard course as nearly as possible. Some nerve! What?

"Well, that's how her mornings go; and now I've given you, I think, a fair schedule of the life she leads. That fellow Dane hangs about a lot. So do Hargrave and Faithorn and young Allys and Arthur Ensart. And so do I, Clive; and a lot of others. Why, I don't know. I don't suppose we'd marry her; and yet it would not surprise me if any one of us asked her. My suspicions are that the majority of the men who go there have asked her. We're a fine lot, we men. So damn fastidious. And then we go to sentimental pieces when we at last get it into our bone-heads that there is no other way that leads to Athalie except by marrying her. And we ask her. And then we get turned down!

"Clive, that girl ought to be easy. To look at her you'd say she was made of wax, easily moulded, and fashioned to be loved, and to love. But, by God, I don't think it's in her to love.... For, if it were—good night. She'd have raised the devil in this world long ago. And some of us would have done murder before now.

"If I had not dined so copiously and so rashly I wouldn't write you all this. I'd write a page or two and lie to you, politely. And so I'll say this: I really do believe that it is in Athalie to love some man. And I believe, if she did love him, she'd love him in any way he asked her. He hasn't come along yet; that's all. But Oh! how he will be hated when he does—unless he is the marrying kind. And anyway he'll be hated. Because, however he does it, he'll get one of the loveliest girls this town ever set eyes on. And the rest of us will realise it then, and there will be some teeth-gnashing, believe me!—and some squirming. Because the worm that never dieth will continue to chew us one and all, and never, never let us forget that the girl no man of our sort could really condescend to marry, had been asked by every one of us in turn to marry him; and had declined.

"And I'll add this for my own satisfaction: the man who gets her, and doesn't marry her, will ultimately experience a biting from that same worm which will make our lacerations resemble the agreeable tickling of a feather.

"We're a rotten lot of cowards. And what hypocrites we are!

"I saw Fontaine sending flowers to his wife. He'd been at Athalie's all the evening. There are only two occasions on which a man sends flowers to his wife; one of them is when he's in love with her.

"Aren't we the last word in scuts? Custom-ridden, habit-cursed, afraid, eternally afraid of something—of our own sort always, and of their opinions. And that offering of flowers when the man who sends them hopes to do something of which he is ashamed, or has already done it!

"How I do run on! In vino veritas—there's some class to pickled truth! Here are olives for thought, red peppers for honesty, onions for logic—and cauliflower for constancy—and fifty-seven other varieties, Clive—all absent in the canned make-up of the modern man.

"'When you and I behind the veil have passed'—but they don't wear veils now; and now is our chance.

"We'll never take it. Hall-marks are our only guide. When absent we merely become vicious. We know what we want; we know what we ought to have; but we're too cowardly to go after it. And so are you. And so am I. "Yours— "REEVE."



CHAPTER XVIII

During that first year Athalie Greensleeve saw a great deal of New York society, professionally, and of many New York men, socially.

But the plaything which society attempted to make of her she gently but adroitly declined to become. She herself drew this line whenever it was necessary to draw it, never permitting herself to mistake the fundamental attitude of these agreeable and amicably demonstrative people toward her, or toward any girl who lived alone in New York and who practised such a profession.

Not among the people who employed her and who paid her lavishly for an evening's complacency; not among people who sought her at her own place during business hours for professional advice or for lighter amusement could she expect any other except professional recognition.

And after a few months of wistful loneliness she came, gradually, to desire from these people nothing except what they gave.

But there were some people she met during that first year's practice of her new profession who seemed to be unimpressed by the popular belief in such an awesome actuality as New York "society." And some of these, oddly enough, were the descendants of those who, perhaps, had formed part of the only real society the big, raw, sprawling city ever had. But that was long, long ago, in the day of the first President.

New York will always be spotted with the symptoms but will never again have it. Paris has gone the same way. London is still flushed with it, Berlin hectic, Vienna fevered. But the days of a "society" as a distinct ensemble, with a logical reason for being, with authority, with functions, with offensive and defensive powers and fixed boundaries, is over forever; possibly never existed, certainly never will exist in the series of gregarious aggregations and segregations known to a perplexed and slightly amused world as the city of New York.

For Athalie that first year of new interests and of unfamiliar successes passed more rapidly than had any single month ever before passed in her life since the strenuous and ragged days of childhood.

It was a year of novelty, of excitement, of self-development, and the development of interests as new as they had been unsuspected.

Like a gaily illuminated pageant the processional passed before her with its constantly changing surroundings, new faces, new voices, new ideas, new motives.

And the new faces were to be scanned and understood, the new voices listened to intently, the new ideas analysed, the new motives detected and dissected.

In drawing-rooms, in ballrooms, in boudoirs, new scenes constantly presented themselves; one house was never like the next, one hostess never resembled another; wealth itself was presented to her under innumerable aspects ranging all the way from that false modesty and smugness known as meekness, to fevered pretence, arrogance, and noisy aggressiveness.

Wonderful school for a girl to learn in!—the gilded halls of which were eternally vexed and swept by the winds and whirlwinds of every human passion.

For here, under her still, clear scrutiny, was huddled humanity itself, unconsciously bent on self-revelation. And Athalie's very presence amid assemblies ever shifting, ever renewed, was educating her eyes and ears and intellect to an insight and a comprehension she had never dreamed of.

In some the supreme necessity for self-ventilation interested her; in others, secretiveness hermetically sealed fascinated her. Motives interested or disinterested, sordid or noble; desires, aspirations, hopes, perplexities,—whatever a glance, a word, an attitude, a silence, suggested to her, fixed her attention, excited her intelligence to curiosity, and focussed her interest to a mental concentration.

Out of which emerged deductions—curious fruits of logic, experience, instinct, intuitiveness, and of some extraneous perception, outside of and independent of her own conscious and objective personality.

But in one radical particular Athalie differed from any individual of either sex ever recorded in the history of hypnotic therapeutics or of psychic phenomena.

For those two worlds in which we all dwell, the supraliminal or waking world, the transliminal, or sleeping world, were merged in this young girl.

The psychological fact that natural or induced sleep is necessary for extraneous or for auto-suggestion, did not exist for her. Her psychic qualities were natural and beautiful, as much a part of her objective as of her subjective life. Neither the trance induced by mesmerism or hypnotism, nor the less harmful slumber by induction, nor the sleep of nature itself was necessary for the girl to find herself in rapport with others or with her own higher personality—her superior spiritual self. Nor did her clairvoyance require trances; nor was sleep in others necessary before she ventured suggestion.

A celebrated physician who had been eager to meet her found her extremely interesting but rather beyond his ability to classify.

How much of her he believed to be fraud might be suspected by what he said to her that evening in a corner of a very grand house on Fifth Avenue:

"There is no such thing as a 'control'; there is no such thing as a 'medium.' No so-called medium has ever revealed anything that did not exist either in her own consciousness or in the consciousness of some other living human being.

"Self-delusion induced by auto-suggestion accounts for the more respectable victims of Spiritism. For Spiritism is a doctrine accepted by many people of education, intelligence, refinement, and of generally excellent judgment.

"And it is a pity, because Spiritism is a bar to all real intellectual, material, moral, and spiritual progress. It thrives only because it pretends to satisfy an intense human craving—the desire to re-establish personal relations with the dead. It never has done this; it never will, Miss Greensleeve. And if you really believe it has done this you are sadly and hopelessly mistaken."

"But," said Athalie, looking at him out of blue eyes the chiefest beauty of which was their fearless candour, "I do not concern myself with what is called Spiritism—with trances, table-tipping, table-rapping, slate-writing, apparitions, reincarnations—with cabinets, curtains, darkened rooms, psychic circles."

"You employ a crystal in your profession."

"Yes. I need not."

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Some clients ask for it."

"And you see things in it?"

"Yes," said the girl simply.

"And when your clients do not demand a crystal-reading?"

"I can see perfectly well without it—when I can see clearly at all."

"Into the future?"

"Sometimes."

"The past, too, of course."

"Not always."

She fascinated the non-scientific side of this famous physician; he interested her intensely.

"Do you know," she ventured with a faint smile, "that you are really quite as psychically endowed as I am?"

His handsome, sanguine features flushed deeply, but he smiled in appreciation.

"Not in the manner you so saucily imply, Miss Greensleeve," he said gaily. "My work is sound, logical, reasonable, and based on fundamental truths capable of being proven. I never saw an apparition in my life—and believed that it was really there!"

"Oh! So you have seen an apparition?"

"None that could have really existed independently of my own vision. In other words it wouldn't have been there at all if I hadn't supposed I had seen it."

"You did suppose so?"

"I knew perfectly well that I didn't see it. I didn't even think I saw it."

"But you saw it?"

"I imagined I did, and at the same time I knew I didn't."

"Yes," she said quietly, "you did see it, Dr. Westland. You have seen it more than once. You will see it again."

A heavier colour dyed his face; he started impatiently as though to check her—as though to speak; and did not.

She said: "If what I say is distasteful to you, please stop me." She waited a moment; then, as he evinced no desire to check or interrupt her: "I am very diffident about saying this to you—to a man so justly celebrated—pre-eminent in the greatest of all professions. I am so insignificant in comparison, so unimportant, so ignorant where you are experienced and learned.

"But may I say to you that nothing dies? I am not referring to a possible spiritual world inhabited perhaps by souls. I mean that here, on this earth, all around us, nothing that has ever lived really dies.... Is what I say distasteful to you?"

He offered no reply.

"Because," she said in a low voice, "if I say anything more it would concern you. And what you saw.... For what you saw was alive, and real—as truly living as you and I are. It is nothing to wonder at, nothing to trouble or perplex you, to see clearly—anybody—you have ever—loved."

He looked up at her in a silence so strained, so longing, so intense, that she felt the terrific tension.

"Yes," she said, "you saw clearly and truly when you saw—her."

"Who? in God's name!"

"Need I tell you, Dr. Westland?"

No, she had no need to tell him. His wife was dead. But it was not his wife he had seen so often in his latter years.

No, she had no need to tell him.

* * * * *

Athalie had never been inclined to care for companions of her own sex. As a child she had played with boys, preferring them. Few women appealed to her as qualified for her friendship—only one or two here and there and at rare intervals seemed to her sufficiently interesting to cultivate. And to the girl's sensitive and shy advances, here and there, some woman responded.

Thus she came to know and to exchange occasional social amenities with Adele Millis, a youthful actress, with Rosalie Faithorn, a handsome girl born to a formal social environment, but sufficiently independent to explore outside of it and snap her fingers at the opinions of those peeping over the bulwarks to see what she was doing.

Also there was Peggy Brooks, a fascinating, breezy, capable young creature who was Dr. Brooks to many, and Peggy to very few. And there were one or two others, like Nina Grey and Jeanne Delauny and Anne Randolph.

But of men there would have been no limit and no end had Athalie not learned very early in the game how to check them gently but firmly; how to test, pick, discriminate, sift, winnow, and choose those to be admitted to her rooms after the hours of business had ended.

Of these the standards differed, so that she herself scarcely knew why such and such a one had been chosen—men, for instance, like Cecil Reeve and Arthur Ensart—perhaps even such a man as James Allys, 3rd. Captain Dane, of course, had been a foregone conclusion, and John Lyndhurst was logical enough; also W. Grismer, and the jaunty, obese Mr. Welter, known in sporting circles as Helter Skelter Welter, and more briefly and profanely as Hel. His running mate, Harry Ferris had been included. And there was a number of others privileged to drift into the rooms of Athalie Greensleeve when she chose to be at home to anybody.

From Clive she heard nothing: and she wrote to him no more. Of him she did hear from time to time—mere scraps of conversation caught, a word or two volunteered, some careless reference, perhaps, perhaps some scrap of intentional information or some comment deliberate if not a trifle malicious.

But to all who mentioned him in her presence she turned a serene face and unclouded eyes. On the surface she was not to be read concerning what she thought of Clive Bailey—if indeed she thought about him at all.

Meanwhile he had married Winifred Stuart in London, where, it appeared, they had taken a house for the season. All sorts of honourables and notables and nobles as well as the resident and visiting specimens of a free and sovereign people had been bidden to the wedding. And had joyously repaired thither—the bride being fabulously wealthy and duly presented at Court.

The American Ambassador was there with the entire staff of the Embassy; also a king in exile, several famished but receptive dukes and counts and various warriors out of jobs—all magnetised by the subtle radiations from the world's most powerful loadstone, money.

They said that Mrs. Bailey, Sr., was very beautiful and impressive in a gown that hypnotised the peeresses—or infuriated them—nobody seemed to know exactly which.

Cecil Reeve, lounging on the balcony by the open window one May evening, said to Hargrave—and probably really unconscious that Athalie could hear him if she cared to: "Well, he got her all right—or rather his mother got her. When he wakes up he'll be sick enough of her millions."

Hargrave said: "She's a cold-blooded little proposition. I've known Winifred Stuart all my life, and I never knew her to have any impulse except a fishy one."

"Cold as a cod," nodded Cecil. "Merry times ahead for Clive."

And on another occasion, later in the summer, somebody said in the cool dusk of the room:

"It's true that the Bailey Juniors are living permanently in England. I saw Clive in Scotland when I was fishing out Banff way. He says they're remaining abroad indefinitely."

Some man's voice asked how Clive was looking.

"Not very fit; thin and old. I was with him several times that month and I never saw him crack a smile. That's not like him, you know."

"What is it? His wife?"

"Well, I fancy it lies somewhere between his mother and his wife—this pre-glacial freeze-up that's made a bally mummy of him."

And still again, and in the tobacco-scented dusk of Athalie's room, and once more from a man who had just returned from abroad:

"I kept running into Clive everywhere. He seems to haunt the continent, turning up like a ghost here and there; and believe me he looks the part of the lonely spook."

"Where's his Missis?"

"They've chucked the domestic. Didn't you know?"

"Divorced?"

"No. But they don't get on. What man could with that girl? So poor old Clive is dawdling around the world all alone, and his wife's entertainments are the talk of London, and his mother has become pious and is building a chapel for herself to repose in some day when the cards go against her in the jolly game."

* * * * *

The cards went against her in the game that autumn.

Athalie had been writing to her sister Catharine, and had risen from her desk to find a stick of sealing-wax, when, as she turned to go toward her bedroom, she saw Clive's mother coming toward her.

Never but once before had she seen Mrs. Bailey—that night at the Regina—and, for the first time in her life, she recoiled before such a visitor. A hot, proud colour flared in her cheeks as she drew quietly aside and stood with averted head to let her pass.

But Clive's mother gazed at her gently, wistfully, lingering as she passed the girl in the passage-way. And Athalie, turning her head slowly to look after her, saw a quiet smile on her lips as she went her silent way; and presently was no longer there. Then the girl continued on her own way in search of the sealing-wax; but she was moving uncertainly now, one arm outstretched, feeling along the familiar walls and furniture, half-blinded with her tears.

* * * * *



So the chapel fulfilled its functions.

It was a very ornamental private chapel. Mrs. Bailey, Sr., had had it pretty well peppered with family crests and quarterings, authentic and imaginary.

Mrs. Bailey, Jr., looked pale and pretty sitting there, the English sunlight filtered through stained glass; the glass also was thoroughly peppered with insignia of the House of Bailey. Rich carving, rich colouring, rich people!—what more could sticklers demand for any exclusive sanctuary where only the best people received the Body of Christ, and where God would meet nobody socially unknown.

Clive arrived from Italy after the funeral. The meeting between him and his wife was faultless. He hung about the splendid country place for a while, and spent much time inside the chapel, and also outside, where he directed the planting of some American evergreens, hemlock, spruce, and white pine.

But the aromatic perfume of familiar trees was subtly tearing him to tatters; and there came a day when he could no longer endure it.

His young wife was playing billiards with Lord Innisbrae, known intimately as Cinders, such a languid and burnt out young man was he, with his hair already white, and every lineament seared with the fires of revels long since sunken into ashes.

He watched them for a while, his hands clenched where they rested in his coat pockets, the lean muscles in his cheeks twitching at intervals.

When Innisbrae took himself off, Winifred still lounged gracefully along the billiard table taking shots with any ball that lay for her. And Clive looked on, absent-eyed, the flat jaw muscles working at intervals.

"Well?" she asked carelessly, laying her cue across the table.

"Nothing.... I think I'll clear out to-morrow."

"Oh."

She did not even inquire where he was going. For that matter he did not know, except that there was one place he could not go—home; the only place he cared to go.

He had already offered her divorce—thinking of Innisbrae, or of some of the others. But she did not want it. It was, perhaps, not in her to care enough for any man to go through that amount of trouble. Besides, Their Majesties disapproved divorce. And for this reason alone nothing would have induced her to figure in proceedings certain to exclude her from one or two sets.

"Anything I can do for you before I leave?" he asked, dully.

It appeared that there was nothing he could do for his young wife before he wandered on in the jolly autumn sunshine.

So the next morning he cleared out. Which proceeding languidly interested Innisbrae that evening in the billiard-room.

* * * * *

That winter Clive got hurt while pig-sticking in Morocco, being but an indifferent spear. During convalescence he read "Under Two Flags," and approved the idea; but when he learned that the Spahi cavalry was not recruiting Americans, and when, a month later, he discovered how much romance did not exist in either the First or Second Foreign Legions, he no longer desired dangers incognito under the tri-colour or under the standard bearing the open hand.



Some casual wanderer through the purlieus of science whom he met in Brindisi, induced him to go to Sumatra where orchids and ornithoptera are the game. But he acquired only a perfectly new species of fever, which took six months to get over.

He convalesced at leisure all the way from Australia to Cape Town; and would have been all right; but somebody shot at somebody else one evening, and got Clive. So it was several months more before he arrived in India, and the next year before he had enough of China.

But Clive had seen many things in those two years and had learned fairly well the lesson of his own unimportance in a world which misses no man, neither king nor clown, after the dark curtain falls and satiated humanity shuffles home to bed.

He saw a massacre—or the remains of it—where fifteen thousand yellow men and one white priest lay dead. He saw Republican China, 40,000 strong, move out after the banditti, shouldering its modern rifles, while its regimental music played "Rosie O'Grady" in quick march time. He saw the railway between Hankow and Pekin swarming with White Wolf's bloody pack, limping westward from the Honan-Anhui border with dripping fangs. He peered into the stinking wells of Honan where women were cutting their own throats. He witnessed the levity of Lhasa priests and saw their grimy out-thrust hands clutching for tips beside their prayer-wheels.

In India he gazed upon the degradation of woman and the unspeakable bestiality of man till that vile and dusty hell had sickened him to the soul.

Back into Europe he drifted; and instantly and everywhere appeared the awful Yankee—shooting wells in Hungary, shooting craps in Monaco, digging antiques in Greece, digging tunnels in Servia,—everywhere the Yankee, drilling, bridging, constructing, exploring, pushing, arguing, quarrelling, insisting, telegraphing, gambling, touring, over-running older and better civilisations than his own crude Empire where he has nothing to learn from anybody but the Almighty—and then only when he condescends to ask for advice on Sunday.

And Clive, nevertheless, longed with a longing that made him sick, for "God's country" where all that is worst and best on earth still boils in the vast and seething cauldron of a continent in the making. There bubbles the elemental broth, dregs, scum, skimmings, residue, by-products, tailings, smoking corruption above the slowly forming and incorruptible matrix in its depths where lies imbedded, and ever growing, the Immam, the Hope of the World—gem indestructible, pearl beyond price. Difficilia quae pulchra.

And once, Clive had almost set out for home; and then, grimly, turned away toward the southern continent of the hemisphere.

In Lima he heard of an expedition fitting out to search for the lost Americans, Cromer and Page, and for the Hungarian Seljan. And that same evening he met Captain Dane.

They looked at each other very carefully, and then shook hands. Clive said: "If you want a handy man in camp, I'd like to go."

"Come on," said Dane, briefly.

Later, looking over together some maps in Dane's rooms, the big blond soldier of fortune glanced up at the younger man, and saw a lean, bronzed visage clamped mute by a lean bronzed jaw; but he also saw two dark eyes fixed on him in the fierce silence of unuttered inquiry. After a moment Dane said very quietly:

"Yes, she was well, and I think happy, when I left New York.... How long is it since you have heard from her?"

"Three years."

"Three years," mused Dane, gazing into space out of his slitted eyes of arctic blue; "yes, that's some little time. Bailey.... She is well—I think I said that.... And very prosperous, and greatly admired ... and happy—I believe."

The other waited.

Dane picked up a linen map, looked at it, fiddled with the corner. Then, carelessly: "She is not married," he said.... "Here's the Huallaga River as I located it four years ago. Seljan and O'Higgins were making for it, I believe.... That red crayon circle over there marks the habitat of the Uta fly. It's worse than the Tsetse. If anybody is hunting death—esta aqui!... Here is the Putumayo district. Hell lies up here, just above it.... Here's Iquitos, and here lies Para, three thousand miles away.... Were you going to say something?"

But if Clive had anything to say he seemed to find no words to say it. And he only folded his arms on the table's edge and looked down at the stained and crumpled map.

"It will take us about a year," remarked Dane.

Clive nodded, but his eye involuntarily sought the irregular red circle where trouble of all sorts might be conveniently ended by a perfectly respectable Act of God.

* * * * *

Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam.



CHAPTER XIX

There was a slight fragrance of tobacco in the room mingling with the fresh, spring-like scent of lilacs—great pale clusters of them decorated mantel and table, and the desk where Athalie sat writing to Captain Dane in the semi-dusk of a May evening.

Here and there dim figures loomed in the big square room; the graceful shape of a young girl at the piano detached itself from the gloom; a man or two dawdled by the window, vaguely silhouetted against the lilac-tinted sky.

Athalie wrote on: "I had not supposed you had landed until Cecil Reeve told me this evening. If you are not too tired to come, please do so. Do you realise that you have been away over a year? Do you realise that I am now twenty-four years old, and that I am growing older every minute? You had better hasten, then, because very soon I shall be too old to believe your magic fairy tales of field and flood and all your wonder lore of travel in those distant golden lands I dream of.

"Who was your white companion? Cecil tells me that you said you had one. Bring him with you this evening; you'll need corroboration, I fear. And mostly I desire to know if you are well, and next I wish to hear whether you did really find the lost city of Yhdunez."

A maid came to take the note to Dane's hotel, the Great Eastern, and Cecil Reeve looked up and laid aside his cigarette.

"Come on, Athalie," he said, "tell Peg to turn on one of those Peruvian dances."

Peggy Brooks at the piano struck a soft sensuous chord or two, but Francis Hargrave would not have it, and he pulled out the proper phonographic record and cranked the machine while Cecil rolled up the Beluch rugs.

The somewhat muffled air that exuded from the machine was the lovely Miraflores, gay, lively, languorous, sad by turns—and much danced at the moment in New York.

A new spring moon looked into the room from the west where like elegant and graceful phantoms the dancers moved, swayed, glided, swung back again with sinuous grace into the suavely delicate courtship of the dance.

The slender feet and swaying figure of Athalie seemed presently to bewitch the other couple, for they drew aside and stood together watching that exquisite incarnation of youth itself, gliding, bending, floating in the lilac-scented, lilac-tinted dusk under the young moon.

The machine ran down in the course of time, and Hargrave went over to re-wind it, but Peggy Brooks waved him aside and seated herself at the piano, saying she had enough of Hargrave.

She was still playing the quaint, sweet dance called "The Orchid," and Hargrave was leaning on the piano beside her watching Cecil and Athalie drifting through the dusk to the music's rhythm, when the door opened and somebody came in.

Athalie, in Cecil's arms, turned her head, looking back over her shoulder. Dane loomed tall in the twilight.

"Oh!" she exclaimed; "I am so glad!"—slipping out of Cecil's arms and wheeling on Dane, both hands outstretched.

The others came up, also, with quick, gay greetings, and after a moment or two of general and animated chatter Athalie drew Dane into a corner and made room for him beside her on the sofa. Peggy had turned on the music machine again and, snubbing Hargrave, was already beginning the Miraflores with Cecil Reeve.

Athalie said: "Are you well? That's the first question."

He said he was well.

"And did you find your lost city?"

He said, quietly: "We found Yhdunez."

"We?"

"I and my white companion."

"Why didn't you bring him with you this evening?" she asked. "Did you tell him I invited him?"

"Yes."

"Oh.... Couldn't he come?"

And, as he made no answer: "Couldn't he?" she repeated. "Who is he, anyway—"

"Clive Bailey."

She sat motionless, looking at him, the question still parting her lips. Dully in her ears the music sounded. The pallor which had stricken her face faded, grew again, then waned in the faint return of colour.

Dane, who was looking away from her rather fixedly, spoke first, still not looking at her: "Yes," he said in even, agreeable tones, "Clive was my white companion.... I gave him your note to read.... He did not seem to think that he ought to come."

"Why?" Her lips scarcely formed the word.

"—As long as you were not aware of whom you were inviting.... There had been some misunderstanding between you and him—or so I gathered—from his attitude."

A few moments more of silence; then she was fairly prepared.

"Is he well?" she asked coolly.

"Yes. He had one of those nameless fevers, down there. He's coming out of it all right."

"Is he—his appearance—changed?"

"He's changed a lot, judging from the photographs he showed me taken three or four years ago. He's changed in other ways, too, I fancy."

"How?"

"Oh, I only surmise it. One hears about people—and their characteristics.... Clive is a good deal of a man.... I never had a better companion.... There were hardships—tight corners—we had a bad time of it for a while, along the Andes.... And the natives are treacherous—every one of them.... He was a good comrade. No man can say more than that, Miss Greensleeve. That includes about everything I ever heard of—when a man proves to be a good comrade. And there is no place on earth where a man can be so thoroughly tried out as in that sunless wilderness."

"Is he stopping at the Great Eastern?"

"Yes. I believe he's going back on Saturday."

She looked up sharply: "Back? Where?"

"Oh, not to Peru. Only to England," said Dane, forcing a laugh.

After a moment she said: "And he wouldn't come.... It is only three blocks, isn't it?"

"It wasn't the distance, of course—"

"No; I remember. He thought I might not have cared to see him."

"That was it."

Another silence; then in a lower voice which sounded a little hard: "His wife is living in England, I suppose."

"She is living—I don't know where."

"Have they—children?"

"I believe not."

She remained silent for a while, then, coolly enough:

"I suppose he is sailing on Saturday to see his wife."

"I think not," said Dane, gravely.

"You say he is sailing for England."

"Yes, but I imagine it's because he has nowhere else to go."

"Why doesn't he stay here?"

"I don't know."

"He is American. His friends live here. Why doesn't he remain here?"

Dane shook his head: "He's a restless man, Miss Greensleeve. That kind of man can't stay anywhere. He's got to go on—somewhere."

"I see."

There came a pause; then they talked of other things for a while until other people began to drop in, Arthur Ensart, Anne Randolph, and young Welter—Helter Skelter Welter, always, metaphorically speaking, redolent of saddle leather and reeking of sport. His theme happened to be his own wonderful trap record, that evening; and the fat, good-humoured, ardent young man prattled on about "unknown angles," and "incomers," until Dane, who had been hunting jaguars and cannibals along the unknown Andes, concealed his yawns with difficulty.

Ensart insisted on turning on the lights and starting the machine; and presently Anne Randolph and Peggy were dancing the Miraflores with Cecil and Ensart.

Welter had cornered Hargrave and Dane and was telling them all about it, and Athalie went slowly through the passage-way and into her own bedroom, where she stood quite motionless for a while, looking at the floor. Hafiz, dozing on the bed, awoke, gazed at his mistress gravely, yawned, and went to sleep again.



Presently she dropped onto a chair by her little ivory-tinted Louis XVI desk. There was a telephone there and a directory.

When she had decided to open the latter, and had found the number she wanted, she unhooked the receiver and called for it.

After a few minutes somebody said that he was not in his room, but that he was being paged.

She waited, dully attentive to the far noises which sounded over the wire; then came a voice:

"Yes; who is it?"

She said: "I wished to speak to Mr. Bailey—Mr. Clive Bailey."

"I am Mr. Bailey."

For a moment the fact that she had not recognised his voice seemed to strike her speechless. And it was only when he spoke again, inquiringly, that she said in a low voice: "Clive!"

"Yes.... Is—is it you!"

"Yes."

And in the next heavily pulsating moment her breath came back with her self-control:

"Why didn't you come, Clive?"

"I didn't imagine you wanted me."

"I asked Captain Dane to invite you."

"Did you know whom you were inviting?"

"No.... But I do now. Will you come?"

"Yes. When?"

"When you like. Come now if you like—unless you were engaged—"

"No—"

"What were you doing when I called you?"

"Nothing.... Walking about the lobby."

"Did you find it interesting?"

She heard him laugh—such a curious, strange, shaken laugh.

She said: "I shall be very glad to see you, Clive. There are some of your friends here, too, who will be glad to see you."

"Then I'll wait until—"

"No; I had rather meet you for the first time when others are here—if you don't mind. Do you?"

"No," he said, coolly; "I'll come."

"Now?"

"Yes, immediately."

Her heart was going at a terrific pace when she hung up the receiver. She went to her mirror, turned on the side-lights, and looked at herself. From the front room came the sound of the dance music, a ripple or two of laughter. Welter's eager voice singing still of arms and the man.

Long she stood there, motionless, studying herself, so that, when the moment came that was coming now so swiftly upon her, she might know what she appeared like in his eyes.

All, so far, was sheer, fresh youth with her; her eyes had not lost their dewy beauty; the splendour of her hair remained unchanged. There were no lines, nothing lost, nothing hardened in contour. Clear and smooth her snowy chin; perfect, so far, the lovely throat: nothing of blemish was visible, no souvenirs of grief, of pain.

And, as she looked, and all the time she was looking, she felt, subtly, that the ordered routine of her thoughts was changing; that a transformation was beginning somewhere deep within her—a new character emerging—a personality unfamiliar, disturbing, as though not entirely to be depended on.

And in the mirror she saw her lips, scarcely parted, more vivid than she had ever seen them, and her eyes two wells of azure splendour; saw the smooth young bosom rise and fall; felt her heart, rapid, imperious, beating the "colours" into her cheeks.

Suddenly, as she stood there, she heard him come in;—heard the astonished and joyous exclamations—Cecil's bantering, cynical voice, Welter's loud welcome. She pressed both hands to her hot cheeks, stared at herself a moment, then turned and walked leisurely toward the living-room.

In her heart a voice was crying, crying: "Let the world see so that there may be no mistake! This man who was friendless is my friend. Let there be no mistake that he is more or less than that." But she only said with a quick smile, and offering her hand: "I am so glad to see you, Clive. I am so glad you came." And stood, still smiling, looking into the lean, sun-tanned face, under the concentrated eyes of her friends around them both.

For a second it was difficult for him to speak; but only she saw the slight quiver of the mouth.

"You are—quite the same," he said; "no more beautiful, no less. Time is not the essence of your contract with Venus."

"Oh, Clive! And I am twenty-four! Tell me—are you a trifle grey!—just above the temples?—or is it the light?"

"He's grey," said Cecil; "don't flatter him, Athalie. And Oh, Lord, what a thinness!"

Peggy Brooks, professionally curious, said naively: "Are you still rather full of bacilli, Mr. Bailey? And would you mind if I took a drop of blood from you some day?"

"Not at all," said Clive, laughing away the strain that still fettered his speech a little. "You may have quarts if you like, Dr. Brooks."

"How was the shooting?" inquired Welter, bustling up like a judge at a bench-show when the awards are applauded.

"Oh—there was shooting—of course," said Clive with an involuntary and half-humorous glance at Captain Dane.

"Good nigger hunting," nodded Dane. "Unknown angles, Welter. You ought to run down there."

"Any incomparable Indian maidens wearing nothing but ornaments of gold?" inquired Cecil.

"That is partly true," said Clive, laughing.

"If you put a period after 'nothing,' I suppose," suggested Peggy.

"About that."

He turned to Athalie; but her silent, smiling gaze confused him so that he forgot what he had meant to say, and stood without a word amid the chatter that rose and ebbed about him.

Anne Randolph and Arthur Ensart had joined hands, their restless feet sketching the first steps of the Miraflores; and presently somebody cranked the machine.

"Come on!" said Peggy imperiously to Dane; "you've been too long in the jungle dancing with Indian maidens!"

Other people dropped in—Adele Millis, young Grismer, John Lyndhurst, Jeanne Delauny.

When Clive saw Rosalie Faithorn saunter in with James Allys he stared, but that young seceder from his own set greeted him without embarrassment and lighted a cigarette.

"Where's Winifred?" she asked nonchalantly. "Still on the outs? Yes? Why not shuffle and draw again? Winifred was always a pig."

Clive flushed at the girl's frankness although he could have expected nothing less from her.

Rosalie continued to smoke and to inspect him critically: "You're a bit seedy and a bit weedy, Clive, but you'll come around with feeding. You're really all right. I'd have you myself if I was marrying young men these days."

"That's nice of you, Rosalie.... But I'm full of rare bacilli."

"The rarer the better—if you must have them. Give me the unusual, whether it's a disease or a gown. I believe I will take you, Clive—if you are not expected to live long."

"That's the trouble. Nothing seems to be able to get me."

Dane said as he passed with Peggy: "He's immune, Miss Faithorn. The prettiest woman I ever saw, he side-stepped in Lima. And even then every man wanted to shoot him up because she made eyes at him."

"I think I'll go there," said Cecil. "Her name and quality if you please, Dane."

"Ask Clive," he called back.

Athalie, still smiling, said: "Shall I ask you, Clive?"

"Don't ask that South American adventurer anything," interrupted Cecil, "but come and dance this Miraflores with me, Athalie—"

"No, I don't wish to—"

"Come on! You must!"

"Oh, Cecil—please—"

But he had his way; and, as usual, everybody watched her while the charming music lasted,—Clive among the others, standing a little apart, lean, erect, his dark gaze fixed.

She came back to him after the dance, delicately flushed and a trifle breathless.

"Do you dance that in England?" she asked.

"It's danced—not at Court functions, I believe."

"You never did care to dance, did you?"

"No—" he shrugged, "I used to mess about some."

"And what do you do to amuse yourself in these days?"

"Nothing—much."

"You must do something, Clive!"

"Oh, yes ... I travel,—go about."

"Is that all?"

"That's about all."

She had stepped aside to let the dancers pass; he moved with her.

She said in a low, even voice: "Is it pleasant to be back, Clive?"

He nodded in silence.

"Nothing has changed very much since you went away. There's a new administration at the City Hall, a number of new sky-scrapers in town; people danced the Tango day before yesterday, the Maxixe yesterday, the Miraflores to-day, the Orchid to-morrow. That's about all, Clive."

And as he merely acquiesced in silence, she glanced up sideways at him, and remained watching this new, sun-browned, lean-visaged version of the boy she had first known and the boyish man who had gone out of her life four years before.

"Would you like to see Hafiz?" she asked.

He turned quickly toward her: "Yes," he said, the ghost of a smile lining the corners of his eyes.

"He's on my bed, asleep. Will you come?"

Slipping along the edges of the dancing floor and stepping daintily over the rolled rugs, she led the way through the passage to her rose and ivory bedroom, Clive following.

Hafiz opened his eyes and looked across at them from the pillow, stood up, his back rounding into a furry arch; yawned, stretched first one hind leg and then the other, and finally stood, flexing his forepaws and uttering soft little mews of recognition and greeting.

"I wonder," she said, smilingly, "if you have any idea how much Hafiz has meant to me?"

He made no reply; but his face grew sombre and he laid a lean, muscular hand on the cat's head.

Neither spoke again for a little while. Finally his hand fell from the appreciative head of Hafiz, dropping inert by his side, and he stood looking at the floor. Then there was the slightest touch on his arm, and he turned to go; but she did not move; and they confronted each other, alone, and after many years.

Suddenly she stretched out both hands, looking him full in the eyes, her own brilliant with tears:

"I've got you back—haven't I?" she said unsteadily. But he could not speak, and stood savagely controlling his quivering lip with his teeth.

"I just want you as I had you, Clive—my first boy friend—who turned aside from the bright highway of life to speak to a ragged child.... I have had the boy; I have had the youth; I want the man, Clive,—honestly, in perfect innocence.

"Would you care what might be said of us—as long as we know our friendship is blameless? I am not taking you from her, am I? I am not taking anything away from her, am I?

"I have not always played squarely with men. I don't think it is possible. They have hoped for—various eventualities. I have not encouraged them; I have merely let them hope. Which is not square.

"But I wish always to play square with women. Unless a woman does, nobody will.... And that is why I ask you, Clive—am I robbing her—if you come back to me—as you were?—nothing more—nothing less, Clive, but just exactly as you were."

It was impossible for him to control his voice or his words or even his thoughts just yet; he stood with his lean head turned partly from her, motionless as a rock, in the desperate grip of self-mastery, crushing the slender hands that alternately yielded and clasped his own.

"Oh, Clive," she said, "Clive! You don't know—you never can know what loneliness means to such a woman as I am.... I thought once—many times—that I could never again speak to you—that I never again could care to hear about you.... But I was wrong, pitifully wrong.

"It was not jealousy of her, Clive; you know that, don't you? There had never been any question of such sentiment between you and me—excepting once—one night—that last night when you said good-bye—and you were very much overwrought.

"So it was not jealousy.... It was loneliness. I wanted you, even if you had fallen in love. That sort of love had nothing to do with us!

"There was nothing in it that ought to have come between you and me?... Besides, if such an ephemeral thought ever drifted through my idle mind, I knew on reflection that you and I could never be destined to marry, even if such sentiment ever inclined us. I knew it and accepted it without troubling to analyse the reasons. I had no desire to invade your world—less desire now that I have penetrated it professionally and know a little about it.

"It was not jealousy, Clive."

He swung around, bent swiftly and pressed his lips to her hands. And she abandoned them to him with all her heart and soul in an overwhelming passion of purest emotion.

"I couldn't stand it, Clive," she said, "when I heard you were at your hotel alone.... And all the unhappiness I had heard of—your married life—I—I couldn't stand it; I couldn't let you remain there all alone!

"And when you came here to-night, and I saw in your face how these four years had altered you—how it had been with you—I wanted you back—to let you know I am sorry—to let you know I care for the man who has known unhappiness, as I cared for the boy who had known only happiness.

"Do you understand, Clive? Do you, dear? Don't you see what I see?—a man standing all alone by a closed door behind which his hopes lie dead.

"Clive, that is where you came to me, offering sympathy and friendship. That is where I come to you in my turn, offering whatever you care to take of me—if there is in me anything that may comfort you."

He bent and laid his lips to her hands again, remaining so, curbed before her; and she looked down at his lean and powerful head and shoulders, and saw the hint of grey edging the crisp, dark hair, and the dark stain of tropic suns, that never could be effaced.

So far no passion, other than innocent, had she ever known for any man,—nothing of lesser emotion, nothing physical. And, had she thought of it at all she must have believed that it was that way with her still. For no thought concerning it disturbed her tender, tremulous happiness with this man beside her who still held her hands imprisoned against his breast.

And presently they were seated on the couch at the foot of her bed, excited, garrulous, exchanging gossip, confidences, ideas long unuttered, desires long unexpressed.

Under the sweeping flashlight of her intelligence the four years of his absence were illuminated, and passed swiftly in review for his inspection. Of loneliness, perplexity, grief, deprivation, she made light, laughingly, shrugging her smooth young shoulders.

"All that was yesterday," she said. "There is only to-day, now—until to-morrow becomes to-day. You won't go away, will you, Clive?"

"No."

"There is no need of your going, is there?—no reason for you to go—no duty—moral obligation—is there, Clive?"

"None."

"You wouldn't say so just because I wish you to, would you?"

"I wouldn't be here at all if there were any reason for me to be—there."

"Then I am not robbing her of you?—I am not depriving her of the tiniest atom of anything that you owe to her? Am I, Clive?"

"I can't see how. There is only one thing I can do for—my wife. And that is to keep away from her."

"Oh, Clive! How desperately sad! And, she is young and beautiful, isn't she? Oh, I am so sorry for you—for you both. Don't you see, dear, that I am not jealous? If you could be happy with her, and if she could understand me and let me be your friend,—that would be wonderful, Clive!"

He remained silent, thinking of Winifred and of her quality of "understanding"; and of the miserable matter of business which had made her his wife—and of his own complacent and smug indifference, and his contemptible weakness under pressure.

Always in the still and secret depths of him he had remained conscious that he had never cared for any woman except Athalie. All else had been but a vague realisation of axioms and theorems,—of premises that had rusted into his mind,—of facts which he accepted as self-evident,—such as the immutable fact that he couldn't marry Athalie, couldn't mortify his family, couldn't defy his friends, couldn't affront his circle with impunity.

To invite disaster would be to bring an avalanche upon himself which, if it wounded, isolated, even marooned him, would certainly bury Athalie out of sight forever.

His parents had so reasoned with him; his mother continued the inculcation after his father's death. And then Winifred and her mother came floating into his cosmic ken like two familiar planets.

For a while, far away in interstellar space, Athalie glimmered like a fading comet. Then orbits narrowed; adhesion and cohesion followed collision; the bi-maternal pressure never lessened. And he gave up.

Of this he was thinking now as he sat there in her rose and ivory room, gazing at the grey silk carpet underfoot; and all the while exquisitely, vitally conscious of Athalie—of her nearness to him—to tears at moments—to that happiness akin to tears.

"Clive, do you remember—" and she breathlessly recalled some gay and long forgotten incident of that never to be forgotten winter together when the theatres and restaurants knew them so well, and the day-world and night-world both credited them with being to each other everything that they had never been.

"Where will you live?" she asked.

He said: "You know I have sold our old house.... I don't know—" He looked at her gravely and ashamed: "I think I will take your old apartment."

She blushed to her hair: "Were you annoyed with me because I left it?"

"It hurt."

"But Clive!—I couldn't remain,—after you had become engaged to marry."

"Did you need to leave everything you owned?"

"They were not mine," she said in a low, embarrassed voice.

"Whose then?"

"Yours. I never considered them mine.... As though I were a girl of little consideration ... who paid herself, philosophically, for what she had lost.... Like a man's mistress after the inevitable break has come—"

"Don't say that!"

She shrugged her pretty shoulders: "I am a woman old enough to know what the world is, and what women do in it sometimes; and what men do.... And I am this sort of woman, Clive: I can give, I can receive, too, but only because of the happiness it bestows on the giver. And when the sympathy which must exist between giver and receiver ends, then also possession ends, for me.... Why do you look at me so seriously?"

But he dared not say. And presently she went on, happily, and at random: "Of course I kept Hafiz and the first thing you ever gave me—the gun-metal wrist-watch. Here it is—" leaning across him and pulling out a drawer in her dresser. "I wear it every day when I am out. It keeps excellent time. Isn't it a darling, Clive?"

He examined it in silence, nodded, and returned it to her. And she laid it away again, saying:

"So you think of taking my old apartment? How odd! And how very sentimental of you, Clive."

He said, forcing a light tone: "Nothing has ever been disturbed there. It's all as it was when you left. Even your gowns are hanging in the closets—"

"Clive!"

"We'll go around if you like. Would you care to see it again?"

"Y—yes."

"Then we'll go together, and you can investigate closets and bureaus and dressers—"

"Clive! Why did you let those things remain?"

"I didn't care to have anybody else take that place."

"Do you know that what you have done is absurdly and frightfully sentimental?"

"Is it?" he said, trying to laugh. "Well that snivelling and false sort of sentiment is about the best that such men as I know how to comfort themselves with—when it's too late for the real thing."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I am saying. Cheap minds are fed with false sentiment; and are comforted.... I made out of that place a smug little monument to you—while you were living alone and almost penniless in a shabby rooming house on—"

"Oh, Clive! You didn't know that! And anyway it would not have altered things for me."

"I suppose not.... Well, Athalie; you are very wonderful to me—merciful, forgiving, nobly blind—God!" he muttered under his breath, "I don't understand how you can be so generous and gentle with me,—I don't, indeed."

"If you only knew how easy it is to care for you," she said with that sweet fearlessness so characteristic of her.

He bit his lips in silence.

Presently she said: "I suppose there'll be gossip in the other room. Rosalie and Cecil will be cynical and they also will try to be witty at our expense. But I don't care. Do you?"

"Shall we go in?"

"No.... I haven't had you for four years. If you don't care what is said about us, I don't." And she looked up at him with the most engaging candour.

"I'm only thinking about you, Athalie—"

"Don't bother to, Clive. Pretty nearly everything has been said about me, I fancy. And, unless it might damage you I'll go anywhere with you, do anything with you. I know that I'm all right; and I care no longer what others say or think."

"But you know," he said, "that is a theory which will not work—"

"You are wrong, Clive. Nobody cares what sort of character a popular actress may have. Her friends are not disturbed by her reputation; the public crowds to see her. And it's about that way with me, I imagine. Because I don't suppose many people believe me to be respectable. Only—there is no man alive who can say of his own knowledge that I am not,—whatever he and his brothers and sisters may imagine."

"So why should I care?—as long as the public affords me an honest living! I know what I am, and have been. And the knowledge, so far, does not keep me awake at night."

She laughed—the sweet, fresh, unembarrassed laugh of innocence,—not that ignorance and stupidity which is called innocence, but innocence based on a worldly wisdom which neither her intelligence nor her experience permitted her to escape.

After a short silence he bent forward and laid one hand on a crystal which stood clasped by a tiny silver tripod on the table beside her bed.

"So you did develop your—qualities—after all, Athalie."

"Yes.... It happened accidentally." And she told him about the old gentleman who had come to her rooms when she stood absolutely penniless and at bay before the world.

After she had ended he asked her whether she had ever again seen his father. She told him. She told him also about seeing his mother.

"Have they anything to say to me, Athalie?" he asked wistfully.

"I don't know, Clive. Some day—when you feel like it—if you will come to me—"

"Thank you, dear ... you are wonderful—wonderfully good—"

"Oh, Clive, I'm not! I'm careless, pleasure-loving, inclined to laziness—and even to dissipation—"

"You!"

"Within certain limits," she added demurely. "I dance a lot: I know I smoke too much and drink too much champagne. I'm no angel, Clive. I won altogether too much at auction last night; ask Jim Allys. And really, if I didn't have a mind and feel a desire to cultivate it, I'd be the limit I suppose." She laughed and tossed her chin; and the pure loveliness of her child-like throat was suddenly and exquisitely revealed.

"I'm too intelligent to go wrong I suppose," she said. "I adore cultivating my mental faculties even more than I like to misbehave." She added a trifle shyly. "I speak French and Italian and German very nicely. And I sing a little and play acceptably. Please compliment me, Clive."

But her quick smile died out as she looked into his eyes—eyes haunted by the vision of all that he had denied his manhood and this girl's young womanhood—all that he had lost, irretrievably and forever on that day he married another woman.

"What is the matter, Clive?" she asked with sweet concern.

He answered: "Nothing, I guess ... except—you are very—wonderful—to me."



CHAPTER XX

A May afternoon was drawing to a close; the last appointment had been made for the morrow, and the last client for the day still lingered with Athalie where she sat with her head propped thoughtfully on one slim hand, her gaze concentrated on the depths of the crystal sphere.

After a long silence she said: "You need not be anxious. Her wireless apparatus is out of order. They are repairing it.... It was a bad storm."

"Is there any ice near her?"

After a pause: "I can see none."

"Any ships?"

"One of her own line, hull down. They have been exchanging signals.... There seems to be no necessity for her to stand by. The worst is over.... Yes, the Empress of Borneo proceeds. The Empress of Formosa will be reported this evening. You need not be anxious: she'll dock on Monday."

"Are you sure?" said the man as Athalie lifted her eyes from the crystal and smiled reassuringly at him. He was a stocky, red-faced, trim, middle-aged man; but his sanguine visage bore the haggard imprint of sleepless nights, and the edges of his teeth had bitten his under lip raw.

Athalie glanced carelessly at the crystal, then nodded.

"Yes," she said patiently. "I am sure of it, Mr. Clements. The Empress of Formosa will dock on Monday—about—nine in the morning. She will be reported by wireless from the Empress of Borneo this evening.... They have been relaying it from the Delaware Capes.... There will be an extra edition of the evening papers. You may dismiss all anxiety."

The man rose, stood a moment, his features working with emotion.

"I'm not a praying man," he said. "But if this is so—I'll pray for you.... It can't hurt you anyway—" he checked himself, stammering, and the deep colour stained him from his brow to his thick, powerful neck as he stood fumbling with his portfolio.

But Athalie smilingly put aside the recompense he offered: "It is too much, Mr. Clements."

"It is worth it to the Company—if the news is true—"

"Then wait until your steamer docks."

"But you say you are certain—"

"Yes, I am: but you are not. My refusal of payment will encourage you to confidence in me. You have been ill with anxiety, Mr. Clements. I know what that means. And now your bruised mind cannot realise that the trouble is ended—that there is no reason now for the deadly fear that has racked you. But everything will help you now—what I have told you—and my refusal of payment until your own eyes corroborate everything I have said."

"I believe you now," he said, staring at her. "I wish to offer you in behalf of the Company—"

A swift gesture conjured him to silence. She rose, listening intently. Presently his ears too caught the faint sound, and he turned and walked swiftly and silently to the open window.

"There is your extra," she said pleasantly. "The Empress of Borneo has been reported."

* * * * *

She was still lying on the couch beside the crystal, idly watching what scenes were drifting, mist-like, through its depths—scenes vague, and faded in colour, and of indefinite outline; for, like the monotone of a half-heard conversation which does not concern a listener these passing phantoms concerned not her.

Under her indifferent eyes they moved; pale-tinted scenes grew, waxed, and waned, and a ghostly processional flowed through them without end under her dark blue dreaming eyes.

She had turned and dropped her head back upon the silken pillows when his signal sounded in telegraphic sequence on the tiny concealed bell.

The still air of the room was yet tremulous with the silvery vibration when he entered, looked around, caught sight of her, and came swiftly toward her.

She looked up at him in her sweet, idly humorous way, unstirring.

"This is becoming a habit with you, Clive."

"Didn't you care to see me this afternoon?" he asked so seriously that the girl laughed outright and stretched out one hand to him.

"Clive, you're becoming ponderous! Do you know it? Suppose I didn't care to see you this particular afternoon. Is there any reason why you should take it so seriously?"

"Plenty of reasons," he said, saluting her smooth, cool hand,—"with all these people at your heels every minute—"

"Please don't pretend—"

"I'm not jealous. But all these men—Cecil and Jimmy Allys—they're beginning to be a trifle annoying to me."

She laughed in unfeigned and malicious delight:

"They don't annoy me! No girl ever was annoyed by overattention from her suitors—except Penelope—and I don't believe she had such a horrid time of it either, until her husband came home and shot up the whole the dansant."

He was still standing beside her couch without offering to seat himself; and she let him remain standing a few minutes longer before she condescended to move aside on her pillows and nod a tardy invitation.

"Has it been an interesting day, Clive?"

"Rather."

"And you have really gone back into business again?"

"Yes."

"And will the real estate market rally at the news of your august reappearance?" she inquired mischievously.

"I haven't a doubt of it," he said with gravity.



"Wonderful, Clive! And I think I'd better get in on the ground floor before values go sky-rocketing. Do you want a commission from me?"

"Of course."

"Very well. Buy me the old Hotel Greensleeve."

He smiled; but she said with pretty seriousness: "I really have been thinking about it. Do you suppose it could be bought reasonably? It's really a pretty place. And there's a hundred acres—or there was.... I would like to have a modest house somewhere in the country."

"Are you in earnest, Athalie?"

"Really I am.... Couldn't that old house be fixed over inexpensively? You know it's nearly two hundred years old, and the lines are good if the gingerbread verandas and modern bay windows are done away with."

He nodded; and she went on with shy enthusiasm: "I don't really know anything about gardens, except I know that I should adore them.... I thought of a garden—just a simple one.... And some cows and chickens. And one nice old horse.... It is really very pretty there in spring and summer. And the bay is so blue, and the salt meadows are so sweet.... And the cemetery is near.... I should not wish to alter mother's room very much.... I'd turn the bar into a sun parlour.... But I'd keep the stove ... where you and I sat that evening and ate peach turnovers.... About how much do you suppose the place could be bought for?"

"I haven't the least idea, Athalie. But I'll see what can be done to-morrow.... It ought to be a good purchase. You can scarcely go wrong on Long Island property if you buy it right."

"Will you see about it, Clive?"

"Of course I will, you dear girl!" he said, dropping his hand over hers where it lay between them.

She smiled up at him. Then, distrait, turned her blue eyes toward the window, and remained gazing out at the late afternoon sky where a few white clouds were sailing.

"'Clouds and ships on sky, and sea,'" she murmured to herself.... "'And God always at the helm.' Why do men worry? All sail into the same port at last."

He bent over her: "What are you murmuring all to yourself down there?" he asked, smilingly.

"Nothing much,—I'm just watching the driftsam and flotsam borne on the currents flowing through my mind—flowing through it and out again—away, somewhere—back to the source of thought, perhaps."

He was still bending above her, and she looked up dreamily into his eyes.

"Do you think I shall ever have my garden?" she asked.

"All things good must come to you, Athalie."

She laughed, looking up into his eyes: "You meant that, didn't you? 'All things good'—yes—and other things, too.... They come to all I suppose.... Tell me, do you think my profession disreputable?"

"You have made it otherwise, haven't you?"

"I don't know. I'm eternally tempted. My intelligence bothers me. And where to draw the line between what I really see and what I divine by deduction—or by intuition—I scarcely know sometimes.... I try to be honest.... When you came in just now, were they calling an extra?"

"Yes."

"Did you hear what they were calling?"

"Something about the Empress of Borneo being reported safe."

She nodded. Then: "That is the hopeless part of it. I can sometimes help others; never myself.... I suppose you have no idea how many, many hours I have spent looking for you.... I never could find you. I have never found you in my crystal, or in my clearer vision, or in my dreams; ... never heard your voice, never had news of you except by common report in everyday life.... Why is it, I wonder?"

His expression was inscrutable. She said, her eyes still lingering on his: "You know it makes me indignant to see so much that neither concerns nor interests me—so much that passes—in this!—" laying one hand on the crystal beside the couch ... "and never, never in the dull monotony of the drifting multitude to catch a glimpse of you.... I wonder, were I lost somewhere in the world, if you could find me, Clive?"

"I'd die, trying," he said unsmilingly.

"Oh! How romantic! I wasn't fishing for a pretty speech, dear. I meant, could you find me in the crystal. Look into it, Clive."

He turned and went over to the clear, transparent sphere, and she, resting her chin on both arms, lay gazing into it, too.

After a silence he shook his head: "I see nothing, Athalie."

"Can you not see that great yellow river, Clive? And the snow peaks on the horizon?... Palms, tall reeds, endless forests—everything so still—except birds flying—and a broad river rolling between forests.... And a mud-bar, swarming with crocodiles.... And a dead tree stranded there, on which large birds are sitting.... There is a big cat-shaped animal on the bank; but the forest is dark and sunless,—too dusky to see into.... I think the animal is a jaguar.... He's drinking now.... Yes, he's a jaguar—a heavy, squarely built, spotted creature with a broad, blunt head.... He's been eating a pheasant; there are feathers everywhere—bright feathers, brilliant as jewels.... Hark! You didn't hear that, did you, Clive? Somebody has shot the jaguar. They've shot him again. He's whirling 'round and 'round—and now he's down, biting at sticks and leaves.... There goes another shot. The jaguar lies very still. His jaws are partly open. He has big, yellow cat-teeth.... I can't seem to see who shot him.... There are some black men coming. One has a small American flag furled around the shaft of his spear. He's waving it over the dead jaguar. They're all dancing now.... But I can't see the man who shot him."

"I shot him," said Clive.

"I thought so." She turned and dropped back among her pillows.

"You see," she said, listlessly, "I can never seem to find you, Clive. Sometimes I suspect your presence. But I am never certain.... Why is it that a girl can't find the man she cares for most in the whole world?"

"Do you care for me as much as that?"

"Why, yes," she said, a trifle surprised.

"And do you think I return your—regard—in measure?"

She looked at him curiously, then, with her engaging and fearless smile: "Quantum suff," she said. "You know you oughtn't to care too much for me, Clive."

"How much is too much?"

"You know," she said, watching his face, the smile still lingering on her lips.

"No, I don't. Tell me."

"I'll inform you when it's necessary."

"It's necessary now."

"No, it isn't."

"I'm afraid it is."

There was a silence. She lay watching him for a moment longer while the smile in her eyes slowly died out. Then, all in a moment, a swift change altered her expression; and she sat up on the couch, supporting herself on both hands.

"What is happening to you, Clive!" she said almost breathlessly.

"Nothing new."

"What do you mean?"

"Shall I tell you?"

"Of course."

"Then,"—but he could not say it. He had no business to, and he knew it. It was the one thing he could refrain from saying, for her sake; the one service he could now render her.

He sat staring into space, the iron grimness of self-control locking every fetter that he wore—must always wear now.

She waited, her eyes intent on his face, her colour high, heart rapid.

"What had you to say to me?" she asked, breaking the silence.

He forced a laugh: "Nothing—except that sometimes being with you again makes me—very contented—"

"Is that what you had to say?"

"Yes. I told you it was nothing new."

She lowered her gaze and remained silent for a moment, apparently considering what he had said. Then the uplifted candour of her eyes questioned him again:

"You don't imagine yourself in love with me again, do you, Clive?"

"No."

"Nothing like that could happen to you again, could it?... Because it has not yet happened to me. It couldn't.... And it would be too—too ghastly if you—if anything—"

"Don't talk about it that way!" he said sharply. "If it did happen—what of it?"... He forced a smile. "But it won't happen.... Things like that don't happen to people like you and me. We care too much for each other, don't we, Athalie?"

"Yes.... It would be terrible.... I don't know why I put such ideas into your head—or into my own. But you—there was something in your expression.... Oh, Clive, dear, it couldn't happen to you, could it?"

She leaned forward impulsively and put both hands on his shoulders, gazing into his eyes, searching them fearfully for any trace of what she thought for a moment she had seen in them.

He said gaily enough: "No fear, dear. I'm exactly what I always have been. I'll always be what you want me to be, Athalie."

"I know.... But if ever—"

"No, no! Nothing can ever happen to worry you—"

"But if—"

"Nothing shall happen!"

"I know. But if ever it does—"

"It won't."

"Oh, Clive, listen! If it does happen to you, what will you do?"

"Do?"

"Yes.... If it does happen, what will you do, Clive?"

"But—"

"Answer me!"

"I—"

"Please answer me. What will you do about it?"

"Nothing," he said, flushing.

"Why not?"

"Why not? What is there—what would there be to do? What could I have to say to you if—"

"You could say that you loved me—if you did."

"To what purpose?" he demanded, red and astonished.

"To whatever purpose you followed.... Why shouldn't you tell me? If it ever happened that you fell in love with me again I had rather you told me than that you kept silent. I had rather know it than have it happen and never know it. Is there anything wrong in a man if he happens to fall in love with a girl?"

"He can remain silent, anyway."

"Why? Because he cannot marry her?"

"Yes."

"If you ever fell in love with me—would you wish to marry me?"

"If I ever did," he said, "I'd go through hell to marry you."

She considered him, curiously, as though trying to realise something inconceivable.

"I do not think of you that way," she said. "I do not think of you sentimentally at all.... Only that I care for you—deeply. I don't believe it's in me to love. I mean—as the world defines love.... So don't fall in love with me, Clive.... But, if you ever do, tell me."

"Why?" he asked unsteadily.

"Because you ought to tell me. I should not wish to die and never know it."

"Would you care?"

"Care? Do you ask a girl whether she could remain unmoved, uninterested, indifferent, if the man she cares for most falls in love with her?"

"Could you—respond?"

"Respond? With love? I don't know. How can I tell? I believe that I have never been in love in all my life. I don't know what it feels like. You might as well ask somebody born blind to read an ordinary book.... But one thing is certain: if that ever happens to you, you ought to tell me. Will you?"

"What good would it do?"

"What harm would it do?" she asked frankly.

"Suppose, knowing we could not marry, I made love to you, Athalie?"

Suddenly the smile flashed in her eyes: "Do you think I'm a baby, Clive? Suppose, knowing what we know, you did make love to me? Is that very dreadful?"