He forced a smile: "I had sufficient."

"I wonder," she mused, looking at his somewhat haggard features.

They found the table prepared for them in the sun-parlour; Athalie presided at the coffee urn, but became a trifle flushed and shy when Mrs. Connor came in bearing a smoking cereal.

"I made a mistake in allowing you to go home," said the girl, "so I thought it best for Mr. Bailey to remain."

"Sure I was that worritted," burst out Mrs. Connor, "I was minded to come back—what with all the thramps and Dagoes hereabout, and no dog on the place, and you alone; so I sez to my man Cornelius,—'Neil,' sez I, 'it's not right,' sez I, 'f'r to be lavin' th' young lady—'"

"Certainly," interrupted Clive quietly, "and you and Neil are to sleep in the house hereafter until Miss Greensleeve's servants arrive."

"I'm not afraid," murmured Athalie, looking at him with lazy amusement over the big, juicy peach she was preparing. But when Mrs. Connor retired her expression changed.

"You dear fellow," she said, "You need not ever be worried about me."

"I'm not, Athalie—"

"Oh, Clive! Aren't you always going to be honest with me?"

"Why do you think I am anxious concerning you when Connor and his wife—"

"Dearest!"

"What?" He looked across at her where she was serenely preparing his coffee; and when she had handed the cup to him she shook her head, gravely, as though in gentle disapproval of some inward thought of his.

"What is it?" he asked uneasily.

"You know already."

"What is it?" he repeated, reddening.

"Must I tell you, Clive?"

"I think you had better."

"You should have told me, dear.... Don't ever fear to tell me what concerns us both. Don't think that leaving me in ignorance of unpleasant facts is any kindness to me. If anything happens to cause you anxiety, I should feel humiliated if you were left to endure it all alone."



He remained silent, troubled, uncertain as yet, how much she knew of what had happened in the garden the night before.

"Clive, dear, don't let this thing spoil anything for us. I know about it. Don't let any shadow fall upon this house of ours."

"You saw me last night in the garden."

Between diffidence and the candour that characterised her, she hesitated; then:

"Dear, a very strange thing has happened. Until last night never in all my life, try as I might, could I ever 'see clearly' anything that concerned you. Never have I been able to 'find' you anywhere—even when my need was desperate—when my heart seemed breaking—"

She checked herself, smiled at him; then her eyes grew dark and thoughtful, and a deeper colour burned in her cheeks.

"I'll try to tell you," she said. "Last night, after I left you, I lay thinking about—love. And the—the new knowledge of myself disconcerted me.... There remained a vague sense of dismay and—humiliation—" She bent her head over her folded hands, silent until the deepening colour subsided.

Still with lowered eyes she went on, steadily enough: "My instinct was to escape—I don't know exactly how to tell this to you, dear,—but the impulse to escape possessed me—and I felt that I must rise from the lower planes and free myself from a—a lesser passion—slip from the menace of its control—become clean again of everything that is not of the spirit.... Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"So I rose and knelt down and said my prayers.... And asked to be instructed because of my inexperience with—with these new and deep—emotions. And then I lay down, very tranquil again, leaving the burden with God.... All concern left me,—and the restless sense of shame. I turned my head on the pillow and looked out into the moonlight.... And, gently, naturally, without any sense of effort, I left my body where it lay in the moonlight, and—and found myself in the garden. Mother was there. You, also, were there; and two men with you."

His eyes never left her face; and now she looked up at him with a ghost of a smile:

"Mother spoke of the loveliness of the flowers. I heard her, but I was listening to you. Then I followed you where you were driving the two men from the grounds. I understood what had happened. After you went into the house again my mother and I saw you watching by your window. I was sorry that you were so deeply disturbed.

"Because what had occurred did not cause me any anxiety whatever."

"Do you mean," he said hoarsely, "that the probability of your name being coupled with mine and dragged through the public mire does not disconcert you?"

"No."

"Why not? Is it because your clairvoyance reassures you as to the outcome of all this?"

"Dear," she said, gently, "I know no more of the outcome than you do. I know nothing more concerning our future than do you—excepting, only, that we shall journey toward it together, and through it to the end, accomplishing the destiny which links us each to the other.... I know no more than that."

"Then why are you so serene under the menace of this miserable affair? For myself I care nothing; I'd thank God for a divorce on any terms. But you—dearest—dearest!—I cannot endure the thought of you entangled in such a shameful—"

"Where is the shame, Clive? The real shame, I mean. In me there are two selves; neither have, as yet, been disgraced by any disobedience of any law framed by men for women. Nor shall I break men's laws—under which women are governed without their own consent—unless no other road to our common destiny presents itself for me to follow."... She smiled, watching his intent and sombre face:

"Don't fear for me, dear. I have come to understand what life is, and I mean to live it, wholesomely, gloriously, uncrippled in body and mind, unmaimed by folk-ways and by laws as ephemeral—" she turned toward the open windows—"as those frail-winged things that float in the sunshine above Spring Pond, yonder, born at sunrise, and at sundown dead."

She laughed, leaning there on her dimpled elbows, stripping a peach of its velvet skin:

"The judges of the earth,—and the power of them!—What is it, dear, compared to the authority of love! To-day men have their human will of men, judging, condemning, imprisoning, slaying, as the moral fashion of the hour dictates. To-morrow folk-ways change; judge and victim vanish along with fashions obsolete—both alike, their brief reign ended.

"For judge and victim are awake at last; and in the twinkling of an eye, the old world has become a memory or a shrine for those tranquil pilgrims who return to worship for a while where love lies sleeping.... And then return no more."

She rose, signed him to remain seated, came around to where he sat, and perched herself on the arm of his chair.

"If you don't mind," she said, "I shall smooth out that troubled crease between your eyebrows." And she encircled his head with both arms, and laid her smooth hands across his forehead. Then she touched his hair lightly, with her lips.

"We are great sinners," she murmured, "are we not, my darling?"

And drew his head against her breast.

"Of what am I robbing her, Clive? Of the power to humiliate you, make you unhappy. It is an honest theft.

"What else am I stealing from her? Not love, not gratitude, not duty, nothing of tenderness, nor of pride nor sympathy. I take nothing, then, from her. She has nothing for me to steal—unless it be the plain gold ring she never wears.... And I prefer a new one—if, indeed, I am to wear one."

He said, deeply troubled, "How do you know she never wears a ring?" And he turned and looked up at her over his shoulder. The clear azure of her eyes was like a wintry sky.

"Clive, I know more than that. I know that your wife is in New York."

"What!" he exclaimed, astonished.

"I have been aware of it for weeks," she said tranquilly.

He remained silent; she continued to caress his hair:

"Your wife," she went on thoughtfully, "will learn much when she dies. There is a compulsory university course which awaits us all,—a school with many forms and many grades and many, many pupils. But we must die before we can be admitted.... I have never before spoken to you as I have spoken to-day.... Perhaps I never shall again.... The world is a blind place—lovely but blind.

"As for the woman who wears your name but wears no ring of yours she has been moving through my crystal for many days;—I would have made no effort to intrude on her had she not persisted in the crystal, haunted it,—I cannot tell you why—only that she is always there, now.... And last night I knew that she was in New York, and why she had come here.... Shall you see her to-day?"

"Where is she?"

"At the Regina."

"Are you sure?"

The girl calmly closed her eyes for a moment. After a brief silence she opened them: "She is still there.... She will awake in a little while and ring for her breakfast. The two men you drove out of the garden last night are waiting to see her. There is another man there. I think he is your wife's attorney.... Have you decided to see her?"

"Yes."

"You won't let what she may say about me trouble you, will you?"

"What will she say?" he asked with the naive confidence of absolute and childish faith.

Athalie laughed: "Darling! I don't know. I'm not a witch or a sorceress. Did you think I was?—just because I can see a little more clearly than you?"

"I didn't know what your limit might be," he answered, smiling slightly, in spite of his deep anxiety.

"Then let me inform you at once. My eyes are better than many people's. Also my other self can see. And with so clear a vision, and with intelligence—and with a very true love and reverence for God—somehow I seem to visualise what clairvoyance, logic, and reason combine to depict for me.

"I used to be afraid that a picturesque and vivid imagination coupled with a certain amount of clairvoyance might seduce me to trickery and charlatanism.

"But if it be charlatanism for a paleontologist to construct a fish out of a single fossil scale, then there may be something of that ability in me. For truly, Clive, I am often at a loss where to draw the line between what I see and what I reason out—between my clairvoyance and my deductions. And if I made mistakes I certainly should be deeply alarmed. But—I don't," she added, laughing. "And so, in regard to those two men last night, and in regard to what she and they may be about, I feel not the least concern. And you must not. Promise me, dear."

But he rose, anxious and depressed, and stood silent for a few moments, her hands clasped tightly in his.

For he could see no way out of it, now. His wife, once merely indifferent, was beginning to evince malice. And what further form that malice might take he could not imagine; for hitherto, she had not desired divorce, and had not concerned herself with him or his behaviour.

As for Athalie, it was now too late for him to step out of her life. He might have been capable of the sacrifice if the pain and unhappiness were to be borne by him alone—or even if he could bring himself to believe or even hope that it might be merely a temporary sorrow to Athalie.

But he could not mistake her, now; their cords of love and life were irrevocably braided together; and to cut one was to sever both. There could be no recovery from such a measure for either, now.

What was he to do? The woman he had married had rejected his loyalty from the very first, suffered none of his ideas of duty to move her from her aloofness. She cared nothing for him, and she let him know it; his notions of marriage, its duties and obligations merely aroused in her contempt. And when he finally understood that the only kindness he could do her was to keep his distance, he had kept it. And what was he to do now? Granted that he had brought it all upon himself, how was he to combat what was threatening Athalie?

His wife had so far desired nothing of him, not even divorce. He could not leave Athalie and he could not marry her. And now, on her young head he had, somehow, loosened this avalanche, whatever it was—a suit for separation, probably—which, if granted, would leave him without his liberty, and Athalie disgraced. And even suppose his wife desired divorce for some new and unknown reason. The sinister advent of those men meant that Athalie would be shamefully named in any such proceedings.

What was he to do? An ugly, hunted look came into his face and he swung around and faced the girl beside him:

"Athalie," he said, "will you go away with me and let them howl?"

"Dearest, how silly. I'll stay here with you and let them howl."

"I don't want you to face it—"

"I shall not turn my back on it. Oh, Clive, there are so many more important things than what people may say about us!"

"You can't defy the world!"

"I'm not going to, darling. But I may possibly shock a few of the more orthodox parasites that infest it."

"No girl can maintain that attitude."

"A girl can try.... And, if law and malice force me to become your mistress, malice and law may answer for it; not I!"

"I shall have to answer for it."

"Dearest," she said with smiling tenderness, "you are still very, very orthodox in your faith in folk-ways. That need not cause me any concern, however. But, Clive, of the two pictures which seems reasonable—your wife who is no wife; your mistress who is more and is considered less?

"Don't think that I am speaking lightly of wifehood.... I desire it as I desire motherhood. I was made for both. If the world will let me I shall be both wife and mother. But if the world interferes to stultify me, then, nevertheless I shall still be both, and the law can keep the title it refuses me. I deny the right of man to cripple, mar, render sterile my youth and womanhood. I deny the right of the world to forbid me love, and its expression, as long as I harm no one by loving. Clive, it would take a diviner law than man's notions of divinity, to kill in me the right to live and love and bring the living into life. And if I am forbidden to do it in the name of the law, then I dare do it in the name of One who never turned his back on little children—"

She ceased abruptly; and he saw her eyes suddenly blinded by tears:

"Oh, Clive—if you only could have seen them—the little flower-like faces and pleading arms around—my—neck—warm—Oh, sweet!—sweet against my breast—"



CHAPTER XXV

Winifred had grown stout, which, on a slim, small-boned woman is quickly apparent; and, to Clive, her sleepy, uncertain grey eyes seemed even nearer together than he remembered them.

She was seated in the yellow and white living-room of her apartment at the Regina, still holding the card he had sent up; and she made no movement to rise when her maid announced him and ushered him in, or to greet him at all except with a slight nod and a slighter gesture indicating a chair across the room.

He said: "I did not know until this morning that you were in this country."

"Was it necessary to inform you?"

"No, not necessary," he said, "unless you have come to some definite decision concerning our future relations."

Her eyes seemed to grow sleepier and nearer together than ever.

"Why," he asked, wearily, "have you employed an agency to have me followed?"

She lifted her drooping lids and finely pencilled brows. "Have you been followed?"

"At intervals, as you know. Would you mind saying why? Because you have always been welcome to divorce."

She sat silent, slowly tearing into tiny squares the card he had sent up. Presently, as at an afterthought, she collected all the fragments and placed them in a heap on the table beside her.

"Well?" she inquired, glancing up at him. "Is that all you have to say?"

"I don't know what to say until you tell me why you have had me followed and why you yourself are here."

Her gaze remained fixed on the heap of little pasteboard squares which she shifted across the polished table-top from one position to another. She said:

"The case against you was complete enough before last night. I fancy even you will admit that."

"You are wrong," he replied wearily. "Somehow or other I believe you know that you are wrong. But I suppose a jury might not think so."

"Would you care to tell a jury that this trance-medium is not your mistress?"

"I should not care to defend her on such a charge before a jury or before anybody. There are various ways of damning a woman; and to defend her from that accusation is one of them."

"And another way?"

"To admit the charge. Either ruin her in the eyes of the truly virtuous."

"What do you expect to do about it then? Keep silent?"

"That is still a third way of destroying a woman."

"Really? Then what are you going to do?"

"Whatever you wish," he said in a low voice, "as long as you do not bring such a charge against Athalie Greensleeve."

"Would you set your signature to a paper?"

"I have given you my word. I have never lied to you."

She looked up at him out of narrowing eyes:

"You might this time. I prefer your signature."

He reddened and sat twirling the silver crook of his walking-stick between restless hands.

"Very well," he said quietly; "I will sign what you wish, with the understanding that Miss Greensleeve is to remain immune from any lying accusation.... And I'll tell you now that any accusation questioning her chastity is a falsehood."

His wife smiled: "You see," she said, "your signature will be necessary."

"Do you think I am lying?"

"What do I care whether you are or not? Do you suppose the alleged chastity of a common fortune-teller interests me? All I know is that you have found your level, and that I need protection. If you choose to concede it to me without a public scandal, I shall permit you to do so. If not, I shall begin an action against you and name the woman with whom you spent last night!"

There was, in the thin, flute-like, and mincingly fastidious voice something so subtly vicious that her words left him silent.

Still leisurely arranging and re-arranging her little heap of pasteboard, her near-set eyes intent on its symmetry, she spoke again:

"I could marry Innisbrae or any one of several others! But I do not care to; I am comfortable. And that is where you have made your mistake. I do not desire a divorce! But,"—she lifted her narrow eyes—"if you force me to a separation I shall not shrink from it. And I shall name that woman."

"Then—what is it you want?" he asked with a sinking heart.

"Not a divorce; not even a separation; merely respectability. I wish you to give up business in New York and present yourself in England at decent intervals of—say once every year. What you do in the interludes is of no interest to me. As long as you do not establish a business and a residence anywhere I don't care what you do. You may come back and live with this woman if you choose."

After a silence he said: "Is that what you propose?"

"It is."

"And you came over here to collect sufficient evidence to force me?"

"I had no other choice."

He nodded: "By your own confession, then, you believe either in her chastity and my sense of honour, or that, even guilty, I care so much for her that any threat against her happiness can effectually coerce me."

"Your language is becoming a trifle involved."

"No; I am involved. I realise it. And if I am not absolutely honourable and unselfish in this matter I shall involve the woman I had hoped to marry."

"I thought so," she said, reverting to her heap of pasteboard.

"If you think so," he continued, "could you not be a little generous?"

"How?"

"Divorce me—not by naming her—and give me a chance in life."

"No," she said coolly, "I don't care for a divorce. I am comfortable enough. Why should I inconvenience myself because you wish to marry your mistress?"

"In decency and in—charity—to me. It will cost you little. You yourself admit that it is a matter of personal indifference to you whether or not you are entirely and legally free of me."

"Did you ever do anything to deserve my generosity?" she inquired coldly.

"I don't know. I have tried."

"I have never noticed it," she retorted with a slight sneer.

He said: "Since my first offence against you—and against myself—which was marrying you—I have attempted in every way I knew to repair the offence, and to render the mistake endurable to you. And when I finally learned that there was only one way acceptable to you, I followed that way and kept myself out of your sight.

"My behaviour, perhaps, entitles me to no claim upon your generosity, yet I did my best, Winifred, as unselfishly as I knew how. Could you not; in your turn, be a little unselfish now?... Because I have a chance for happiness—if you would let me take it."

She glanced at him out of her close-set, sleepy eyes:

"I would not lift a finger to oblige you," she said. "You have inconvenienced me, annoyed me, disarranged my tranquil, orderly, and blameless mode of living, causing me social annoyance and personal irritation by coming here and engaging in business, and living openly with a common and notorious woman who practises a fraudulent and vulgar business.

"Why should I show you any consideration? And if you really have fallen so low that you are ready to marry her, do you suppose it would be very flattering for me to have it known that your second wife, my successor, was such a woman?"

He sat thinking for a while, his white, care-worn face framed between his gloved hands.

"Your friends," he said in a low voice, "know you as a devout woman. You adhere very strictly to your creed. Is there nothing in it that teaches forbearance?"

"There is nothing in it that teaches me to compromise with evil," she retorted; and her small cupid-bow mouth, grew pinched.

"If you honestly believe that this young girl is really my mistress," he said, "would it not be decent of you, if it lies within your power, to permit me to regularise my position—and hers?"

"Is it any longer my affair if you and she have publicly damned yourselves?"

"Yet if you do believe me guilty, you can scarcely deny me the chance of atonement, if it is within your power."

She lifted her eyes and coolly inspected him: "And suppose I do not believe you guilty of breaking your marriage vows?" she inquired.

He was silent.

"Am I to understand," she continued, "that you consider it my duty to suffer the inconvenience of divorcing you in order that you may further advertise this woman by marrying her?"

He looked into her close-set eyes; and hope died. She said: "If you care to affix your signature to the agreement which my attorneys have already drawn up, then matters may remain as they are, provided you carry out your part of the contract. If you don't, I shall begin action immediately and I shall name the woman on whose account you seem to entertain such touching anxiety."

"Is that your threat?"

"It is my purpose, dictated by every precept of decency, morality, religion, and the inviolable sanctity of marriage."

He laughed and gathered up his hat and stick:

"Your moral suasion, I am afraid, slightly resembles a sort of sanctimonious blackmail, Winifred. The combination of morality, religion, and yourself is too powerful for me to combat.... So if my choice must be between permitting morality to publicly besmirch this young girl's reputation, and affixing my signature to the agreement you suggest, I have no choice but to sign my name."

"Is that your decision?"

He nodded.

"Very well. My attorneys and a notary are in the next room with the papers necessary. If you would be good enough to step in a moment—"

He looked at her and laughed again: "Is there," he said, "anything lower than a woman?—or anything higher?"



CHAPTER XXVI

Athalie was having a wonderful summer. House and garden continued to enchant her. She brought down Hafiz, who, being a city cat, instantly fled indoors with every symptom of astonishment and terror the first time Athalie placed him on the lawn.

But within a week the dainty Angora had undergone a change of heart. Boldly, now he marched into the garden all by himself; fearlessly he pounced upon such dangerous game as crickets and grasshoppers and the little night moths which drifted among the flowers at twilight,—the favourite prowling hour of Hafiz, the Beautiful.

Also, early in July, Athalie had acquired a fat bay horse and a double buckboard; and, in the seventh heaven now, she jogged about the country through leafy lanes and thistle-bordered by-roads long familiar to her childhood, sometimes with basket, trowel, and garden gloves, intent on the digging and transplanting of ferns, sometimes with field-glasses and books, on ornithological information bent. More often she started out with only a bag of feed for Henry the horse and some luncheon for herself, to picnic all alone in a familiar woodland, haunted by childish memories, and lie there listening to the bees and to the midsummer wind in softly modulated conversation with the little tree-top leaves.

She had brought her maid from the city; Mrs. Connor continued to rule laundry and kitchen. Connor himself decorated the landscape with his straw hat and overalls, weeding, spraying, rolling, driving the lawn-mower, raking bed and path, cutting and training vines, clipping hedges,—a sober, bucolic, agreeable figure to the youthful chatelaine of the house of Greensleeve.

Clive had come once more from town to say that he was sailing for England the following day; that he would be away a month all told, and that he would return by the middle of August.

They had spent the morning driving together in her buckboard—the happiest morning perhaps in their lives.

It promised to be a perfect day; and she was so carefree, so contented, so certain of the world's kindness, so shyly tender with him, so engagingly humorous at his expense, that the prospect of a month's separation ceased for the time to appal him.

Concerning his interview with his wife she had asked him nothing; nor even why he was going abroad. Whether she guessed the truth; whether she had come to understand the situation through other and occult agencies, he could not surmise. But one thing was plain enough; nothing that had happened or that threatened to happen was now disturbing her. And her gaiety and high spirits were reassuring him and tranquillising his mind to a degree for which, on reflection, he could scarcely account, knowing the ultimate hopelessness of their situation.

Yet her sheer good spirits carried him with her, heart and mind, that morning. And when it was time for him to go she said good-bye to him with a smile as tenderly gay and as happy and confident as though he were to return on the morrow. And went back to her magic house of dreams and her fairy garden, knowing that, except for him, their rainbow magic must vanish and the tinted spell fade, and the soft enchantment dissolve forever leaving at her feet only a sunlit ruin amid the stillness of desolation.

But the magic held. Every day she wrote him. Wireless messages came to her from him for a while; ceased; then re-commenced, followed presently by cablegrams and finally by letters.

So the magic held through the long sunny summer days. And Athalie worked in her garden and strayed far afield, both driving and afoot. And she studied and practised piano, and made curtains, and purchased furniture.

Also she wrote letters to her sisters, long since wedded to husbands, babies, and homes in the West. Her brother Jack, she learned, had joined the Navy at Puget Sound, and had now become a petty officer aboard the new battle-cruiser Bon Homme Richard in Asiatic waters. She wrote to him, also, and sent him a money order, gaily suggesting that he use it to educate himself as a good sailor should, and that he save his pay for a future wife and baby—the latter, as she wrote, "being doubtless the most desirable attainment this side of Heaven."

In her bedroom were photographs of Catharine's children and of the little boy which Doris had brought into the world; and sometimes, in the hot midsummer afternoons, she would lie on her pillow and look at these photographs until the little faces faded to a glimmer as slumber dulled her eyes.

Captain Dane came once or twice to spend the day with her; and it was pleasant, afterward, for her to remember this big, blond, sunburnt man as part of all that she most cared for. Together they drove and walked and idled through house and garden: and when he went away, to sail the following day for those eternal forests which conceal the hearthstone of the Western World, he knew from her own lips about her love for Clive. He was the only person she ever told.

A few of her friends she asked to the house for quiet week-ends; the impression their visits made upon her was pleasant but colourless.

And it seemed singular, as she thought it over, how subordinate, how unaccented had always been all these people who came into her life, lingered, and faded out of it, leaving only the impressions of backgrounds and accessories against which only one figure stood clear and distinct—her lover's.

Yes, of all men she had ever known, only Clive seemed real; and he dominated every scene of her girlhood and her womanhood as her mother had been the only really living centre of her childhood.

All else seemed to her like a moving and subdued background,—an endless series of grey scenes vaguely painted through which figures came and went, some shadowy and colourless as phantoms, some soberly outlined, some delicately tinted—but all more or less subordinate, more or less monochromatic, unimportant except for balance and composition, as painters use indefinite shapes and shades so that the eyes may more perfectly concentrate on the centre of their inspiration.

And the centre of all, for her, was Clive. Since her mother's death there had been no other point of view for her, no other focus for the forces of her mind, no other real desire, no other content. He had entered her child's life and had become, instantly, all that the child-world held for her. And it was so through the years of her girlhood. Absent, or during his brief reappearances, the central focus of her heart and mind was Clive. And, in womanhood, all forces in her mind and spirit and, now, of body, centred in this man who stood out against the faded tapestry of the world all alone for her, the only living thing on earth with which her heart had mated as a child, and in which now her mind and spirit had found Nirvana.

All men, all women, seemed to have their shadowy being only to make this man more real to her.

Friends came, remained, and went,—Cecil Reeve, gay, charmed with everything, and, as always, mischievously ready to pay court to her; Francis Hargrave, politely surprised but full of courteous admiration for her good taste; John Lyndhurst, Grismer, Harry Ferris, Young Welter, Arthur Ensart, and James Allys,—all were bidden for the day; all came, marvelled in the several manners characteristic of them, and finally went their various ways, serving only, as always, to make clearer to her the fadeless memory of an absent man. For, to her, the merest thought of him was more real, more warm and vivid, than all of these, even while their eager eyes sought hers and their voices were sounding in her ears.

Nina Grey came with Anne Randolph for a week-end; and then came Jeanne Delauny, and Adele Millis. The memory of their visits lingered with Athalie as long, perhaps, as the scent of roses hangs in a dim, still room before the windows are open in the morning to the outer air.

The first of August a cicada droned from the hill-top woods and all her garden became saturated with the homely and bewitching odour of old-fashioned rockets.

On the grey wall nasturtiums blazed; long stretches of brilliant portulaca edged the herbaceous borders; clusters of auratum lilies hung in the transparent shadow of Cydonia and Spirea; and the first great dahlias faced her in maroon splendour from the spiked thickets along the wall.

Once or twice she went to town on shopping bent, and on one of these occasions impulse took her to the apartment furnished for her so long ago by Clive.

She had not meant to go in, merely intended to pass the house, speak to Michael, perhaps, if indeed, he still presided over door and elevator.

And there he was, outside the door on a chair, smoking his clay pipe and surveying the hot and silent street, where not even a sparrow stirred.

"Michael," she said, smiling.

For a moment he did not know her, then: "God's glory!" he said huskily, getting to his feet—"is it the sweet face o' Miss Greensleeve or the angel in her come back f'r to bless us all?"

She gave him her hand, and he held it and looked at her, earnestly, wistfully; then, with the flashing change of his race, the grin broke out:

"I'm that proud to be remembered by the likes o' you, Miss Athalie! Are ye well, now?—an' happy? I thank God for that! I am substantial—with my respects, ma'am, f'r the kind inquiry. And Hafiz? Glory be, was there ever such a cat now? D'ye mind the day we tuk him in a bashket?—an' the sufferin' yowls of the poor, dear creature. Sure I'm that glad to hear he's well;—and manny mice to him, Miss Athalie!"

Athalie laughed: "I suppose all your tenants are away in the country," she ventured.

"Barrin' wan or two, Miss. Ye know the young Master will suffer no one in your own apartment."

"Is it still unoccupied, Michael?"

"Deed it is, Miss. Would ye care f'r to look around. There is nothing changed there. I dust it meself."

"Yes," said the girl in a low voice, "I will look at it."

So Michael took her up in the lift, unlocked the door for her, and then with the fine instinct of his race, forbore to follow her.

The shades in the square living-room were lowered; she raised one. And the dim, golden past took shadowy shape again before her eyes.



She moved slowly from one object to another, touching caressingly where memory was tenderest. She looked at the furniture, the pictures,—at the fireplace where in her mind's eye she could see him bending to light the first fire that had ever blazed there.

For a little while she sat on the big lounge, her dreamy eyes fixed on the spot where Clive's father had stood and she remembered Jacques Renouf, too, and the lost city of Yhdunez.... And, somehow her memories receded still further toward earlier years; and she thought of the sunny office where Mr. Wahlbaum used to sit; and she seemed to see the curtains stirring in the wind.

After a while she rose and walked slowly along the hall to her own room.

Everything was there as she had left it; the toilet silver, evidently kept clean and bright by Michael, the little Dresden cupids on the mantel, the dainty clock, still running—further confirmation of Michael's ministrations—the fresh linen on the bed. Nothing had been changed through all these changing years. She softly opened the clothes-press door; there hung her gowns—silent witnesses of her youth, strangely and daintily grotesque in fashion. One by one she examined them, a smile edging her lips, and, in her eyes, tears.

All revery is tinged with melancholy; and it was so with her when she stood among the forgotten gowns of years ago.

It was so, too, when, one by one she unlocked and opened the drawers of dresser and bureau. From soft, ordered heaps of silk and lace and sheerest linen a faint perfume mounted; and it was as though she subtly renewed an exquisite and secret intimacy with a youth and innocence half-forgotten in the sadder wisdom of later days.

* * * * *

From the still and scented twilight of a vanished year, to her own apartment perched high above the sun-smitten city she went, merely to find herself again, and look around upon what fortune had brought to her through her own endeavour.

But, somehow, the old prejudices had gone; the old instincts of pride and independence had been obliterated, merged in a serene and tranquil unity of mind and will and spirit with the man in whom every atom of her belief and faith was now centred.

It mattered no longer to her what material portion of her possessions and environment was due to her own efforts, or to his. Nothing that might be called hers could remain conceivable as hers unless he shared it. Their rights in each other included everything temporal and spiritual; everything of mind and matter alike. Of what consequence, then, might be the origin of possessions that could not exist for her unless possession were mutual?

Nothing would be real to her, nothing of value, unless so marked by his interest and his approval. And now she knew that even the world itself must become but a shadow, were he not living to make it real.

* * * * *

It was a fearfully hot day in town, and she waited until evening to go back to Spring Pond.

When she arrived, Mrs. Connor had a cablegram for her from Clive saying that he was sailing and would see her before the month ended.

Late into the night she looked for him in her crystal but could see nothing save a blue and tranquil sea and gulls flying, and always on the curved world's edge a far stain of smoke against the sky.

Her mother was in her room that night, seated near the window as though to keep the vigil that her daughter kept, brooding above the crystal.

It was Friday, the twenty-first, and a new moon. The starlight was magnificent in the August skies: once or twice meteors fell. But in the depths of her crystal she saw always a sunlit sea and a gull's wings flashing.

Toward morning when the world had grown its darkest and stillest, she went over to where her mother was sitting beside the window, and knelt down beside her chair.

And so in voiceless and tender communion she nestled close, her golden head resting against her mother's knees.

Dawn found her there asleep beside an empty chair.



CHAPTER XXVII

One day toward the end of August, Athalie, standing at the pier's end, saw the huge incoming liner slowly warping to her berth; waited amid the throngs in the vast sheds by the gangway, caught a glimpse of Clive, lost him to view, then saw him again, very near, making his way toward her. And then her hands were in his and she was looking into his beloved eyes once more.

There were a few quick words of greeting spoken, tender, low-voiced; the swift light of happiness made her blue eyes brilliant:

"You tall, sun-bronzed, lazy thing," she said; "I never told you what a distinguished looking man you are, did I? Well I'll spoil you by telling you now. No wonder everything feminine glances at you," she added as he lifted his hat to fellow passengers who were passing.

And during the customs' examination she stood beside him, amused, interested, gently bantering him when he declared everything; for even in Athalie were apparently the ineradicable seeds of that original sin—which is in all femininity—the paramount necessity for smuggling.

Once or twice he spoke aside to the customs' officer; and Athalie instantly and gaily accused him of attempted bribery.

But when they were on their way to Spring Pond in a hired touring car with his steamer trunk and suit-cases strapped behind, he drew from his pockets the articles he had declared and paid for; and Athalie grew silent in delight as she looked down at the single and lovely strand of pearls.

All the way to Spring Pond she held them so, and her enchanted eyes reverted to them whenever she could bring herself to look anywhere except at him.

"I wondered," she said, "whether you would come to the country or whether you might think it better to remain in town."

"I shall go back to town only when you go."

"Dear, does that mean that you will stay with me at our own house?"

"If you want me."

"Oh, Clive! I was wondering—only it seemed too heavenly to hope for."

His face grew sombre for a moment. He said: "There is no other future for us. And even our comradeship will be misunderstood. But—if you are willing—"

"Is there any question in your mind as to the limit of my willingness?"

He said: "You know it will mark us for life. And if we remain guiltless, and our lives blameless, nevertheless this comradeship of ours will mark us for life."

"Do you mean, brand us?"

"Yes, dear."

"Does that cause you any real apprehension?" she laughed.

"I am thinking of you."

"Think of me, then," she said gaily, "and know that I am happy and content. The world is turning into such a wonderful friend to me; fate is becoming so gentle and so kind. Happiness may brand me; nothing else can leave a mark. So be at ease concerning me. All shall go well with me, only when with you, my darling, all goes well."

He smiled in sympathy with her gaiety of heart, but the slight shadow returned to his face again. Watching it she said:

"All things shall come to us, Clive."

"All things," he said, gravely,—"except fulfilment."

"That, too," she murmured.

"No, Athalie."

"Yes," she said under her breath.

He only lifted her ringless hand to his lips in hopeless silence; but she looked up at the cloudless sky and out over sunlit harvest fields and where grain and fruit were ripening, and she smiled, closing her white hand and pressing it gently against his lips.

Connor met them at the door and shouldered Clive's trunk and other luggage; then Athalie slipped her arm through his and took him into the autumn glow of her garden.

"Miracle after miracle, Clive—from the enchantment of July roses to the splendour of dahlia, calendula, and gladioluses. Such a wonder-house no man ever before gave to any woman.... There is not one stalk or leaf or blossom or blade of grass that is not my intimate and tender friend, my confidant, my dear preceptor, my companion beloved and adored.



"Do you notice that the grapes on the trellis are turning dark? And the peaches are becoming so big and heavy and rosy. They will be ripe before very long."

"You must have a greenhouse," he said.

"We must," she admitted demurely.

He turned toward her with much of his old gaiety, laughing: "Do you know," he said, "I believe you are pretending to be in love with me!"

"That's all it is, Clive, just pretence, and the natural depravity of a flirt. When I go back to town I'll forget you ever existed—unless you go with me."

"I'm wondering," he said, "what we had better do in town."

"I'm not wondering; I know."

He looked at her questioningly. Then she told him about her visit to Michael and the apartment.

"There is no other place in the world that I care to live in—excepting this," she said. "Couldn't we live there, Clive, when we go to town?"

After a moment he said: "Yes."

"Would you care to?" she asked wistfully. Then smiled as she met his eyes.

"So I shall give up business," she said, "and that tower apartment. There's a letter here now asking if I desire to sublet it; and as I had to renew my lease last June, that is what I shall do—if you'll let me live in the place you made for me so long ago."

He answered, smilingly, that he might be induced to permit it.

Hafiz appeared, inquisitive, urbane, waving his snowy tail; but he was shy of further demonstrations toward the man who was seated beside his beloved mistress, and he pretended that he saw something in the obscurity of the flowering thickets, and stalked it with every symptom of sincerity.

"That cat must be about six years old," said Clive, watching him.

"He plays like a kitten, still."

"Do you remember how he used to pat your thread with his paws when you were sewing."

"I remember," she said, smiling.

A little later Hafiz regained confidence in Clive and came up to rub against his legs and permit caresses.

"Such a united family," remarked Athalie, amused by the mutual demonstrations.

"How is Henry?" he asked.

"Fatter and slower than ever, dear. He suits my unenterprising disposition to perfection. Now and then he condescends to be harnessed and to carry me about the landscape. But mostly he drags the cruel burden of Connor's lawn-mower. Do you think the place looks well kept?"

"I knew you wanted to be flattered," he laughed.

"I do. Flatter me please."

"It's one of the best things I do, Athalie! For example—the lawn, the cat, and the girl are all beautifully groomed; the credit is yours; and you're a celestial dream too exquisite to be real."

"I am becoming real—as real as you are," she said with a faint smile.

"Yes," he admitted, "you and I are the only real things in the world after all. The rest—woven scenes that come and go moving across a loom."

She quoted:

"Sun and Moon illume the Room Where the ceiling is the sky: Night and day the Weavers ply Colour, shadow, hue, and dye, Where the rushing shuttles fly, Weaving dreams across the Loom, Picturing a common doom!

"How, Beloved, can we die— We Immortals, Thou and I?"

He smiled: "Death seems very far away," he said.

"Nothing dies.... If only this world could understand.... Did I tell you that mother has been with me often while you were away?"

"No."

"It was wonderfully sweet to see her in the room. One night I fell asleep across her knees."

"Does she ever speak to you, Athalie?"

"Yes, sometimes we talk."

"At night?"

"By day, too.... I was sitting in the living-room the other morning, and she came up behind me and took both my hands. We talked, I lying back in the rocking chair and looking up at her.... Mrs. Connor came in. I am quite sure she was frightened when she heard my voice in there conversing with nobody she could see."

Athalie smiled to herself as at some amusing memory evoked.

"If Mrs. Connor ever knew how she is followed about by so many purring pussies and little wagging dogs—I mean dogs and pussies who are no longer what we call 'alive,'—I don't know what she'd think. Sometimes the place is full of them, Clive—such darling little creatures. Hafiz sees them; and watches and watches, but never moves."

Clive was staring a trifle hard; Athalie, lazily stretching her arms, glanced at him with that humorous expression which hinted of gentlest mockery.

"Don't worry; nothing follows you, Clive, except an idle girl who finds no time for anything else, so busy are her thoughts with you."

He bent forward and kissed her; and she clasped both hands behind his head, drawing it nearer.

"Have you missed me, Athalie?"

"You could never understand how much."

"Did you find me in your crystal?"

"No; I saw only the sea and on the horizon a stain of smoke, and a gull flying."

He drew her closely into his arms: "God," he breathed, "if anything ever should happen to you!—and I—alone on earth—and blind—"

"Yes. That is the only anxiety I ever knew ... because you are blind."

"If you came to me I could not see you. If you spoke to me I could not hear. Could anything more awful happen?"

"Do you care for me so much?"

In his eyes she read her answer, and thrilled to it, closer in his arms; and rested so, her cheek against his, gazing at the sunset out of dreamy eyes.

* * * * *

They had been slowly pacing the garden paths, arm within arm, when Mrs. Connor came to summon them to dinner. The small dining-room was flooded with sunset light; rosy bars of it lay across cloth and fruit and flowers, and striped the wall and ceiling.

And when dinner was ended the pale fire still burned on the thin silk curtains and struck across the garden, gilding the coping of the wall where clustering peaches hung all turned to gold like fabled fruit that ripens in Hesperides.

Hafiz followed them out under the evening sky and seated himself upon the grass. And he seemed mildly to enjoy the robins' evening carolling, blinking benevolently up at the little vesper choristers, high singing in the sunset's lingering glow.

Whenever light puffs of wind set blossoms swaying, the jet from the fountain basin swerved, and a mellow raining sound of drops swept the still pool. The lilac twilight deepened to mauve; upon the surface of the pool a primrose tint grew duller. Then the first bat zig-zagged across the sky; and every clove-pink border became misty with the wings of dusk-moths.

On Athalie's frail white gown one alighted,—a little grey thing wearing a pair of peacock-tinted diamonds on its forewings; and as it sat there, quivering, the iridescent incrustations changed from burnished gold to green.

"Wonders, wonders, under the moon," murmured the girl—"thronging miracles that fill the day and night, always, everywhere. And so few to see them.... Sometimes, to me the blindness of the world to all the loveliness that I 'see clearly' is like my own blindness to the hidden wonders of the night—where uncounted myriads of little rainbow spirits fly. And nobody sees and knows the living splendour of them except when some grey-winged phantom strays indoors from the outer shadows. And it astonishes us to see, under the drab forewings, a blaze of scarlet, gold, or orange."

"I suppose," he said, "that the unseen night world all around us is no more wonderful than what, in the day-world, the vast majority of us never see, never suspect."

"I think it must be so, Clive. Being accustomed to a more densely populated world than are many people, I believe that if I could see only what they see,—merely that small portion of activity and life which the world calls 'living things,' I should find the sunlit world rather empty, and the night but a silent desolation under the stars."

After a few minutes' thought he asked in a low voice whether at that moment there was anybody in the garden except themselves.

"Some people were here a little while ago, looking at the flowers. I think they must have lived here many, many years ago; perhaps when this old house was new."

"Could you not ask them who they were?"

"No, dear."

"Why?"

"If they were what you would call 'alive' I could not intrude upon them, could I? The laws of reticence, the respect for privacy, remain the same. I am conscious of no more impertinent curiosity concerning them than I am concerning any passer in the city streets."

"Have they gone?"

"Yes. But all the evening I have been hearing children at play just beyond the garden wall.... And, when I was a child, somebody killed a little dog down by the causeway. He is here in the garden, now, trotting gaily about the lawn—such a happy little dog!—and Hafiz has folded his forepaws under his ruff and has settled down to watch him. Don't you see how Hafiz watches, how his head turns following every movement of the little visitor?"

He nodded; then: "Do you still hear the children outside the wall?"

She sat listening, the smile brooding in her eyes.

"Can you still hear them?" he repeated, wistfully.

"Yes, dear."

"What are they saying?"

"I can't make out. They are having a happy time somewhere on the outer lawns."

"How many are there?"

"Oh, I don't know. Their voices make a sweet, confused sound like bird music before dawn. I couldn't even guess how many children are playing there."

"Are any among them those children you once saw here?—the children who pleaded with you—"

She did not answer. He tightened his arm around her waist, drawing her nearer; and she laid her cheek against his shoulder.

"Yes," she said, "they are there."

"You know their voices?"

"Yes, dearest."

"Will they come again into the garden?"

Her face flushed deeply:

"Not unless we call them."

"Call them," he said. And, after a silence: "Dearest, will you not call them to us?"

"Oh, Clive! I have been calling. Now it remains with you."

"I did not hear you call them."

"They heard."

"Will they come?"

"I—think so."

"When?"

"Very soon—if you truly desire them," she whispered against his shoulder.

* * * * *

Somewhere within the house the hour struck. After a long while they rose, moving slowly, her head still lying on his shoulder. Hafiz watched them until the door closed, then settled down again to gaze on things invisible to men.

* * * * *

Hours of the night in dim processional passed the old house unlighted save by the stars. Toward dawn a sea-wind stirred the trees; the fountain jet rained on the surface of the pool or, caught by a sudden breeze, drifted in whispering spray across the grass. Everywhere the darkness grew murmurous with sounds, vague as wind-blown voices; sweet as the call of children from some hill-top where the stars are very near, and the new moon's sickle flashes through the grass.

Athalie stirred where she lay, turned her head sideways with infinite precaution, and lay listening.

Through the open window beside her she saw a dark sky set with stars; heard the sea-wind in the leaves and the falling water of the fountain. And very far away a sweet confused murmuring grew upon her ears.

Silently her soul answered the far hail; her heart, responding, echoed a voiceless welcome till she became fearful lest it beat too loudly.

Then, with infinite precaution, noiselessly, and scarcely stirring, she turned and laid her lips again where they had rested all night long and, lying so, dreamed of miracles ineffable.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Clive's enforced idleness had secretly humiliated him and made him restless. Athalie in her tender wisdom understood how it was with him before he did himself, and she was already deftly guiding his balked energy into a brand new channel, the same being a bucolic one.

At first he had demurred, alleging total ignorance of husbandry; and, seated on the sill of an open window and looking down at him in the garden, she tormented him to her heart's content:

"Ignorant of husbandry!" she mimicked,—"when any husband I ever heard of could go to school to you and learn what a real husband ought to be! Why will you pretend to be so painfully modest, Clive, when you are really secretly pleased with yourself and entirely convinced that, in you, the world might discover a living pattern of model domesticity!"

"I'm glad you think so—"

"Think! If I were only as certain of anything else! Never had I dreamed that any man could become so cowed, so spiritless, so perfectly house and yard broken—"

"If I come upstairs," he said, "I'll settle you!"

Leaning from the window overlooking the garden she lazily defied him; turned up her dainty nose at him; mocked at him until he flung aside the morning paper and rose, bent on her punishment.

"Oh, Clive, don't!" she pleaded, leaning low from the sill. "I won't tease you any more,—and this gown is fresh—"

"I'll come up and freshen it!" he threatened.

"Please don't rumple me. I'll come down if you like. Shall I?"

"All right, darling," he said, resuming his newspaper and cigarette.

She came, seated herself demurely beside him, twitched his newspaper until he cast an ominous glance at his tormentor.

"Dear," she said, "I simply can't let you alone; you are so bland and self-satisfied—"

"Athalie—if you persist in tormenting me—"

"I torment you? I? An humble accessory in the scenery set for you? I?—a stage property fashioned merely for the hero of the drama to sit upon—"

"All right! I'll do that now!—"

But she nestled close to him, warding off wrath with both arms clasping his, and looking up at him out of winning eyes in which but a tormenting glint remained.

"You wouldn't rumple this very beautiful and brand new gown, would you, darling? It was so frightfully expensive—"

"I don't care—"

"Oh, but you must care. You must become thrifty and shrewd and devious and close, or you'll never make a successful farmer—"

"Dearest, that's nonsense. What do I know about farming?"

"Nothing yet. But you know what a wonderful man you are. Never forget that, Clive—"

"If you don't stop laughing at me, you little wretch—"

"Don't you want me to remain young?" she asked reproachfully, while two tiny demons of gaiety danced in her eyes. "If I can't laugh I'll grow old. And there's nothing very funny here except you and Hafiz—Oh, Clive! You have rumpled me! Please don't do it again! Yes—yes—yes! I do surrender! I am sorry—that you are so funny—Clive! You'll ruin this gown!... I promise not to say another disrespectful word.... I don't know whether I'll kiss you or not—Yes! Yes I will, dear. Yes, I'll do it tenderly—you heartless wretch!—I tell you I'll do it tenderly.... Oh wait, Clive! Is Mrs. Connor looking out of any window? Where's Connor? Are you sure he's not in sight?... And I shouldn't care to have Hafiz see us. He's a moral kitty—"

She pretended to look fearfully around, then, with adorable tenderness, she paid her forfeit and sat silent for a while with her slim white fingers linked in his, in that breathless little revery which always stilled her under the magic of his embrace.

He said at last: "Do you really suppose I could make this farm-land pay?"

And that was really the beginning of it all.

* * * * *

Once decided he seemed to go rather mad about it, buying agricultural paraphernalia recklessly and indiscriminately for a meditated assault upon fields long fallow.

Connor already had as much as he could attend to in the garden; but, like all Irishmen, he had a cousin, and the cousin possessed agricultural lore and a pair of plough-horses.

So early fall ploughing developed into a mania with Clive and Athalie; and they formed a habit of sitting side by side like a pair of birds on fences in the early October sunshine, their fascinated eyes following the brown furrows turning where one T. Phelan was breaking up pasture and meadow too long sod-bound.

In intervals between tenderer and more intimate exchange of sentiments they discussed such subjects as lime, nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and the rotation of crops.

Also Athalie had accumulated much literature concerning incubators, brooders, and the several breeds of domestic fowl; and on paper they had figured out overwhelming profits.

The insidious land-hunger which attacks all who contemplate making two dozen blades of grass grow where none grew before, now seized upon Clive and gnawed him. And he extended the acreage, taking in woods and uplands as far as the headwaters of Spring Pond Brook, vastly to Athalie's delight.

So the October days burned like a procession of golden flames passing in magic sequence amid yellowing woods and over the brown and spongy gold of salt meadows which had been sheared for stable bedding. And everywhere over their land lay the dun-coloured velvet squares of freshly ploughed fields awaiting unfragrant fertilizer and the autumn rains.

The rains came heavily toward the end of October; and November was grey and wet and rather warm. But open fires became necessary in the house, and now they regularly reddened the twilight in library and living-room when the early November dusk brought Athalie and Clive indoors.

Hither they came, the fire-lit hearth their trysting place after they had exchanged their rain-drenched clothes for something dry; and there they curled up on the wide sofas and watched the swift darkness fall, and the walls and ceiling redden.

It was an hour which Athalie had once read of as the "Children's Hour" and now she understood better its charming significance. And she kept it religiously, permitting herself to do nothing, and making Clive defer anything he had to do, until after dinner. Then he might read his paper or book, and she could take up her sewing if she chose, or study, or play, or write the few letters that she cared to write.

Clive wrote no more, now. In this first year together they desired each other only, indifferent to all else outside.

It was to her the magic year of fulfilment; to him an enchanted interlude wherein only the girl beside him mattered.

Athalie sewed a great deal on odd, delicate, sheer materials where narrowness and length ruled proportions, and where there seemed to be required much lace and many little ribbons. Also she hummed to herself as she sewed, singing under her breath endless airs which had slipped into her head she scarce knew when or how.

An odd and fragrant freshness seemed to cling to her making her almost absurdly youthful, as though she had suddenly dropped back to her girlhood. Clive noticed it.

"You look about sixteen," he said.

"My heart is younger, dear."

"How young?"

"You know when it was born, don't you? Very well, it is as many days old as I have been in love with you. Before that it was a muscle capable merely of sturdy friendship."

One day a packet came from New York for her. It contained two rings, one magnificent, the other a plain circlet. She kissed him rather shyly, wore both that evening, but not again.

"I am not ashamed," she explained serenely. "Folkways are now a matter of indifference to me. Civilisation must offer me a better argument than it has offered hitherto before I resign to it my right in you, or deny your right to me."

He knew that civilisation would lock them out and remain unconcerned as to what became of them. Doubtless she knew it too, as she sat there sewing on the frail garment which lay across her knee and singing blithely under her breath some air with cadence like a berceuse.

* * * * *

During the "Children's Hour" she sat beside him, always quiet; or if stirred from her revery to a brief exchange of low-voiced words, she soon relapsed once more into that happy, brooding silence by the firelight.

Then came dinner, and the awakened gaiety of unquenched spirits; then the blessed evening hours with him.

But the last hour of these she called her hour; and always laid aside her book or sewing, and slipped from the couch to the floor at his feet, laying her head against his knees.

* * * * *

Snow came in December; and Christmas followed. They kept the mystic festival alone together; and Athalie had a tiny tree lighted in the room between hers and Clive's, and hung it with toys and picture books.

It was very pretty in its tinsel and tinted globes; and its faint light glimmered on the walls and dainty furniture of the dim pink room.

Afterward Athalie laid away tinsel and toy, wrapping all safely in tissue, as though to be kept secure and fresh for another Christmas—the most wonderful that any girl could dream of. And perhaps it was to be even more wonderful than Athalie had dreamed.

* * * * *

December turned very cold. The ice thickened; and she skated with Clive on Spring Pond. The ice also remained through January and February that winter; but after December had ended Athalie skated no more.

Clive, unknown to her, had sent for a Shaker cloak and hood of scarlet; and when it arrived Athalie threw back her lovely head and laughed till the tears dimmed her eyes.

"All the same," he said, "you don't look much older in it than you looked in your red hood and cloak the first day I ever set eyes on you."

"You poor darling!—as though even you could push back the hands of Time! It's the funniest and sweetest thing you ever did—to send for this red, hooded cloak."

However she wore it whenever she ventured out with him on foot or in the sleigh which he had bought. Once, coming home, she was still wearing it when Mrs. Connor brought to them two peach turnovers.

A fire had been lighted in the ancient stove; and they went out to the sun-parlour,—once the bar—and sat in the same old arm-chairs exactly as they had been seated that night so long ago; and there they ate their peach turnovers, their enchanted eyes meeting, striving to realise it all, and the intricate ways of Destiny and Chance and Fate.

* * * * *

February was a month of heavy snows that year; great drifts buried the fences and remained until well into March. April was April,—and very much so; but they saw the blue waters of the bay sometimes; and dogwood and willow stems were already aglow with colour; and a premature blue-bird sang near Athalie's garden. Crocuses appeared everywhere with grape hyacinths and snow-drops. Then jonquil and narcissus opened in all their loveliness, and soft winds stirred the waters of the fountain.

May found the garden uncovered, with tender amber-tinted shoots and exquisite fronds of green wherever the lifted mulch disclosed the earth. Also peonies were up and larkspur, and the ambitious promise of the hollyhocks delighted Athalie.

Pink peach buds bloomed; cherry, pear, and apple covered the trees with rosy snow; birds sang everywhere; and the waters of the pool mirrored a sky of purest blue. But Athalie now walked no further than the garden seat,—and walked slowly, leaning always on Clive's arm.

In those days throughout May her mother was with her in her room almost every night. But Athalie did not speak of this to Clive.



CHAPTER XXIX

Spring ploughing had been proceeding for some time now, but Athalie did not feel equal to walking cross-lots over ploughed ground, so she let Clive go alone on tours of inspection.

But these absences were brief; he did not care to remain away from Athalie for more than an hour at a time. So, T. Phelan ploughed on, practically unmolested and untormented by questions, suggestions, and advice. Which liberty was to his liking. And he loafed much.

In these latter days of May Athalie spent a great deal of her time among her cushions and wraps on the garden seat near the fountain. On his return from prowling about the farm Clive was sure to find her there, reading or sewing, or curled up among her cushions in the sun with Hafiz purring on her lap.

And she would look up at Clive out of sleepy, humorous eyes in which glimmered a smile of greeting, or she would pretend surprise and disapproval at his long absence of half an hour with: "Well, C. Bailey, Junior! Where do you come from now?"

The phases of awakening spring in the garden seemed to be an endless source of pleasure to the girl; she would sit for hours looking at the pale lilac-tinted wistaria clusters hanging over the naked wall and watching plundering bumble-bees scrambling from blossom to blossom.

And when at the base of the wall, the spiked buds of silvery-grey iris unfolded, and their delicate fragrance filled the air, the exquisite mingling of the two odours and the two shades of mauve thrilled her as no perfume, no colour had ever affected her.

The little colonies of lily-of-the-valley came into delicate bloom under the fringing shrubbery; golden bell flower, pink and vermilion cydonia, roses, all bloomed and had their day; lilac bushes were weighted with their heavy, dewy clusters; the sweet-brier's green tracery grew into tender leaf and its matchless perfume became apparent when the sun fell hot.

In the warm air there seemed to brood the exquisite hesitation of happy suspense,—a delicious and breathless sense of waiting for something still more wonderful to come.

And when Athalie felt it stealing over her she looked at Clive and knew that he also felt it. Then her slim hand would steal into his and nestle there, content, fearless, blissfully confident of what was to be.

But it was subtly otherwise with Clive. Once or twice she felt his hand tremble slightly as though a slight shiver had passed over him; and when again she noticed it she asked him why.

"Nothing," he said in a strained voice; "I am very, very happy."

"I know it.... There is no fear mingling with your happiness; is there, Clive?"

But before he replied she knew that it was so.

"Dearest," she murmured, "dearest! You must not be afraid for me."

And suddenly the long pent fears strangled him; he could not speak; and she felt his lips, hot and tremulous against her hand.

"My heart!" she whispered, "all will go well. There is absolutely no reason for you to be afraid."

"Do you know it?"

"Yes, I know it. I am certain of it, darling. Everything will turn out as it should.... I can't bear to have the most beautiful moments of our lives made sad for you by apprehension. Won't you believe me that all will go well?"

"Yes."

"Then smile at me, Clive."

His under lip was still unsteady as he drew nearer and took her into his arms.

"God wouldn't do such harm," he said. "He couldn't! All must go well."

She smiled gaily and framed his head with her hands:

"You're just a boy, aren't you, C. Bailey, Junior?—just a big boy, yet. As though the God we understand—you and I—could deal otherwise than tenderly with us. He knows how rare love really is. He will not disturb it. The world needs it for seed."

The smile gradually faded from Clive's face; he shook his head, slightly:

"If I had known—if I had understood—"

"What, darling?"

"The hazard—the chances you are to take—"

But she laughed deliciously, and sealed his mouth with her fragrant hand, bidding him hunt for other sources of worry if he really was bent on scaring himself.

Later she asked him for a calendar, and he brought it, and together they looked over it where several of the last days of May had been marked with a pencil.

As she sat beside him, studying the printed sequence of the days, a smile hovering on her lips, he thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

A soft wind blew the bright tendrils of her hair across her cheeks; her skin was like a little girl's, rose and snow, smooth as a child's; her eyes clearly, darkly blue—the hue and tint called azure—like the colour of the zenith on some still June day.

And through the glow of her superb and youthful symmetry, ever, it seemed to him, some inward radiance pulsated, burning in her golden burnished hair, in scarlet on her lips, making lovely the soft splendour of her eyes. Hers was the fresh, sweet beauty of ardent youth and spring incarnate,—neither frail and colourlessly spiritual, nor tainted with the stain of clay.

* * * * *

Sometimes Athalie lunched there in the garden with him, Hafiz, seated on the bench beside them, politely observant, condescending to receive a morsel now and then.

It was on such a day, at noon-tide, that Athalie bent over toward him, touched his hair with her lips, then whispered something very low.



His face went white, but he smiled and rose,—came back swiftly to kiss her hands—then entered the house and telephoned to New York.

When he came back to her she was ready to rise, lean on his arm, and walk leisurely to the house.

On the way she called his attention to a pale blue sheet of forget-me-nots spreading under the shrubbery. She noticed other new blossoms in the garden, lingered before the bed of white pansies. "Like little faces," she said with a faint smile.

One silvery-grey iris he broke from its sheathed stem and gave her; she moved slowly on with the scented blossom lifted to her lips.

In the hall a starched and immaculate nurse met her with a significant nod of understanding. And so, between Clive and the trained nurse she mounted the stairs to her room.

Later Clive came in to sit beside her where she lay on her dainty bed. She turned her flushed face on the pillow, smiled at him, and lifted her neck a little; and he slipped one arm under it.

"Such a wonderful pillow your shoulder makes," she murmured.... "I am thinking of the first time I ever knew it.... So quiet I lay,—such infinite caution I used whenever I moved.... That night the air was musical with children's voices—everywhere under the stars—softly garrulous, laughing, lisping, calling from the hills and meadows.... That night of miracles and of stars—my dear—my dearest!—"

* * * * *

Close to her cheek he breathed: "Are you in pain?"

"Oh, Clive! I am so happy. I love you so—I love you so."

Then nurse and physician came in and the latter took him by the arm and walked out of the room with him. For a long while they paced the passage-way together in whispered conversation before the nurse came to the door and nodded.

Both went in: Athalie laughed and put up her arms as Clive bent over her.

"All will be well," she whispered, kissed him, then turned her head sharply to the right.

When he found himself in the garden, walking at random, the sun hung a hand's breadth over the woods. Later it seemed to become entangled amid new leaves and half-naked branches, hanging there motionless, blinding, glittering through an eternity of time.

And yet he did not notice when twilight came, nor when the dusk's purple turned to night until he saw lights turned up on both floors.

Nobody summoned him to dinner but he did not notice that. Connor came to him there in the darkness and said that two other physicians had arrived with another nurse. He went into the library where they were just leaving to mount the stairs. They looked at him as they passed but merely bowed and said nothing.

A steady, persistent clangour vibrated in his brain, dulling it, so that senses like sight and hearing seemed slow as though drugged.

Suddenly like a sword the most terrible fear he ever knew passed through him.... And after a while the dull, ringing clangour came back, dinning, stupefying, interminable. Yet he was conscious of every sound, every movement on the floor above.

* * * * *

One of the physicians came halfway down the stairs, looked at him; and he rose mechanically and went up.

He saw nothing clearly in the room until he bent over Athalie.

Her eyes unclosed. She whispered: "It is all right, beloved."

Somebody led him out. He kept on, conscious of the grasp on his arm, but seeing nothing.

* * * * *

He had been walking for a long while, somewhere between light and darkness,—perhaps for hours, perhaps minutes. Then somebody came who laid an arm about his shoulder and spoke of courage.

Other people were in the room, now. One said:

"Don't go up yet."... Once he noticed a woman, Mrs. Connor, crying. Connor led her away.

Others moved about or stood silent; and some one was always drawing near him, speaking of courage. It was odd that so much darkness should invade a lighted room.

Then somebody came down the stairs, noiselessly. The house was very still.

And at last they let him go upstairs.



CHAPTER XXX

Lights yet burned on the lower floors and behind the drawn blinds of Athalie's room. The night was quiet and soft and lovely; the moon still young in its first quarter.

There was no wind to blow the fountain jet, so that every drop fell straight back where the slim column of water broke against a strip of stars above the garden wall. Somewhere in distant darkness the little owl trilled.

* * * * *

If he were walking or motionless he no longer knew it; nor did he seem to be aware of anything around.

Hafiz came up to him through the dusk with a little mew of recognition or of loneliness. Afterward the cat followed him for a while and then settled down upon the grass intent on the invisible stirring stealthily in obscurity.

The fragrance of the iris grew sweeter, fresher. Many new buds had unfolded since high noon. One stalk had fallen across the path and Clive's dragging feet passed over it where he moved blindly, at hazard, with stumbling steps along the path—errant, senseless, and always blind.

For on the garden bench a young girl sat, slender, exquisite, smiling as he approached. But he could not see her, nor could he see in her arms the little flower-like face, and the tiny hands against her breast.

"Clive!" she said. But he could not hear her.

"Clive," she whispered; "my beloved!"

But he could neither see nor hear. His knees, too, were failing; he put out one hand, blindly, and sank down upon the garden bench.

All night long she sat beside him, her head against his shoulder, sometimes touching his drawn face with warm, sweet lips, sometimes looking down at the little face pressed to her quiet breast.

And all night long the light burned behind the closed blinds of her room; and the little silvery dusk-moths floated in and out of the rays. And Hafiz, sitting on the grass, watched them sometimes; sometimes he gazed at his young mistress out of wide, unblinking eyes.

"Hafiz," she murmured lazily in her sweetly humorous way.

The cat uttered a soft little mew but did not move. And when she laid her cheek close to Clive's whispering,—"I love you—I love you so!"—he never stirred.

Her blue eyes, brooding, grew patient, calm, and tender; she looked down silently into the little face close cradled in her arms.

Then the child's eyes opened like two blue stars; and she bent over in a swift ecstasy of bliss, covering the flower-like face with kisses.

THE END



Novels by Robert W. Chambers

Athalie Who Goes There! Anne's Bridge Between Friends The Hidden Children Quick Action Blue-Bird Weather Japonette The Adventures of a Modest Man The Danger Mark Special Messenger The Firing Line The Younger Set The Fighting Chance Some Ladies in Haste The Tree of Heaven The Tracer of Lost Persons A Young Man in a Hurry Lorraine Maids of Paradise The Business of Life The Gay Rebellion The Streets of Ascalon The Common Law Ailsa Paige The Green Mouse Iole The Reckoning The Maid-at-Arms Cardigan The Haunts of Men The Mystery of Choice The Cambric Mask The Maker of Moons The King in Yellow In Search of the Unknown The Conspirators A King and a Few Dukes In the Quarter Ashes of Empire The Red Republic Outsiders

THE END