"Well, good luck. Glad it went off so well."

They parted at the door of Mr. Dinwiddie's rooms and Clavering walked slowly home in an extremely thoughtful mood. He felt an uneasy distrust of the Countess Josef Zattiany, and he was not even sure that he liked her.

On the following Monday night, however, he was by no means averse from making a notable personal score. As Abbott, a dramatic critic, who happened to sit next to Madame Zattiany, made his usual hurried exit at the falling of the first curtain Clavering slipped into the vacant chair. She smiled a welcome, but it was impossible to talk in the noise. This was a great first-night. One of the leading actresses of America had returned in an excellent play, and her admirers, who appeared to be a unit, were clapping and stamping and shouting: handkerchiefs fluttered all over the house. When the curtain descended after the fifteenth recall and the lights went up and demonstration gave place to excited chatter, Madame Zattiany held out her hand toward Clavering.

"See! I have split my glove. I caught the enthusiasm. How generous your people are! I never heard such whole-souled, such—ah—unself-conscious response."

"Oh, we like to let go sometimes and the theatre is a safe place. One of the best things that can be said for New York, by the way, is its loyalty to two or three actresses no longer young. The whole country has gone crazy over youth. The most astonishingly bad books create a furore because from end to end they glorify post-war youth at its worst, and the stage is almost as bad. But New Yorkers are too old and wise in the theatre not to have a very deep appreciation of its art, and they will render tribute to old favorites as long as they produce good plays."

"But that is very fine. . . . I go to the matinee a good deal and I am often very bored. And I have been reading your current novels with the desire to learn as well as to be amused. I wish so much to understand the country in which I was born. I have received much illumination! It is quite remarkable how well most of your authors write—but merely well, that is. So few have individuality of style. And even in the best authors I find nearly all of the heroines too young. I had read many American novels before the war—they came to us in Tauchnitz—and even then I found this quite remarkable preoccupation with youth."

"Well—youth is a beautiful thing—is it not?" He smiled into her own beautiful face. "But, if you will notice, many of our novelists, capable of real psychology, carry their heroines over into their second youth, and you can almost hear their sigh of relief when they get them there."

"Yes, but they are still behind the European novelists, who find women interesting at any age, and their intelligent readers agree with them. Young women have little psychology. They are too fluid."

"Quite right. But I am afraid we are too young a country to tolerate middle-aged heroines. We are steeped in conventionalism, for all our fads. We have certain cast-iron formulae for life, and associate love with youth alone. I think we have a vague idea that autumnal love is rather indecent."

"And you—yourself?" She looked at him speculatively. "Are you too obsessed?"

"I? Good lord, no. I was in love with a woman of forty when I was seventeen."

His eyes were glowing into hers and she demanded abruptly: "Do you think I am forty?"

"Rather not!"

"Well, I am young," she said with a deep sigh of content. "But look! I see nothing, but I see everything."

Clavering glanced about him. Every neck in the boxes and neighboring seats was craned. It was evident that the people in front—and no doubt behind—were listening intently, although they could have caught no more than an occasional word of the murmured conversation. Eyes across the aisle, when not distended with surprise, glared at him. He laughed softly.

"I am the best hated man in New York tonight." Then he asked abruptly: "If you wish to avoid fashionable society why not see something of this? It would be quite a new experience and vary the monotony of books and plays."

"I may—some time, if you will kindly arrange it. But I am not a stranger to the cognoscenti. In London, of course, they are received, sought after. In Paris not so much, but one still meets them.—the most distinguished. In Berlin the men might go to court but not the women. In Vienna—well, genius will not give quarterings. But alas! so many gifted people seem to come out of the bourgeoisie, or lower down still—whether they are received or not depends largely on their table manners."

"Oh, I assure you, our cognoscenti have very good table manners indeed!"

"I am sure of it," she said graciously. "I have an idea that American table manners are the best in the world. Is it true that one never sees toothpicks on the table here?"

"Good lord, yes!"

"Well, you see them on every aristocratic table in Europe, royalty not excepted."

"One more reason for revolution—— Oh! Hang it!"

The lights had gone out. Clavering half rose, then settled himself back and folded his arms. A man stood over him. "Just take my seat, Billy, will you?" he asked casually of the eminent critic. "It's only two back."

The eminent critic gave him a look of hate, emitted a noise that resembled a hiss, hesitated long enough to suggest violence, then with the air of a bloodhound with his tail between his legs, slunk up the aisle.

"Will you tell me how you always manage to get one of these prize seats?" asked Clavering at the fall of the second curtain. "Nothing in New York is more difficult of attainment than a good seat—any seat—for a first-night. All these people, including myself, have a pull of some sort—know the author, star, manager. Many of us receive notifications long in advance."

"Judge Trent has a pull, as you call it."

"That explains it. There has been almost as much speculation on that point as about your own mysterious self. Well, this time I suppose I must. But I'm coming back."

He gave Mr. Dinwiddie his seat and went out for a cigarette. The foyer was full of people and he was surrounded at once. Who was she? Where had he met her? Dog that he was to keep her to himself! Traitor! He satisfied their curiosity briefly. He happened to know Judge Trent, who was her trustee. His acquaintance with the lady was only a week old. Well, he hadn't thought to mention it to such friends as he had happened to meet. Been too busy digging up matter for that infernal column. Yes, he thought he could manage to introduce them to her later. She had brought no letters and as she was a Virginian by birth and had gone abroad in her childhood and married a foreigner as soon as she grew up she knew practically no one in New York and didn't seem to wish to know any one. But he fancied she was getting rather bored. She had been here for a month—resting—before she even went to the theatre. Oh, yes, she could be quite animated. Was interested in everything one would expect of a woman of her intelligence. But the war had tired her out. She had seen no one but Judge Trent until the past week. . . .

He kept one eye on the still resentful Abbott, who refused to enhance his triumph by joining his temporary court, and slipped away before the beginning of the last act. Dinwiddie resigned his seat with a sigh but looked flushed and happy.

"Poor old codger," thought Clavering as he received a welcoming smile, and then he told her of the excitement in the foyer.

"But that is amusing!" she said. "How naive people are after all, even in a great city like New York."

"Oh, people as active mentally as this crowd never grow blase, however they may affect it. But surely you had your triumphs in Europe."

"Oh, yes. Once an entire house—it was at the opera—rose as I entered my box at the end of the first act. But that was a thousand years ago—like everything else before the war."

"That must be an experience a woman never forgets."

"It is sometimes sad to remember it."

"Dinwiddie tells me that your cousin, who was Mary Ogden, once had a similar experience. It certainly must be a sad memory for her."

"Yes, Mary was one of the great beauties of Europe in her day—and of a fascination! Men went mad over her—but mad! She took growing old very hard. Her husband was handsome and attractive, but—well, fortunately he preferred other women, and was soon too indifferent to Mary to be jealous. He was the sort of man no woman could hold, but Mary soon cared as little about him. And she had her consolations! She could pick and choose. It was a sad day for Mary when men left her for younger women."

"But I thought that European men were not such blind worshippers of youth as we are?"

"Yes, within reason. Mary was too intellectual, too brilliant, too well-informed on every subject that is discussed in salons, not to attract men always. But with a difference! Quite elderly women in Europe have liaisons, but alas! they can no longer send men off their heads. It is technique meeting technique, intellectual companionship, blowing on old ashes—or creating passion with the imagination. Life is very sad for the women who have made a cult of men, and the cult of men is the European woman's supreme achievement."

The delayed curtain rose and the house was silent. First-nighters, unlike less distinguished audiences, never disgrace themselves by whispering and chattering while the actors are on the stage.

At the end of this, the last act, while the audience, now on their feet, were wildly applauding and fairly howling for the author of "the first authentic success of the season," Clavering and Madame Zattiany went swiftly up the aisle. A few others also hastened out, less interested in authors than in taxi-cabs.

He handed her into her car and she invited him to enter and return with her for a sandwich and a whiskey-and-soda. He hesitated a moment. "I'll go with pleasure," he said. "But I think I'll walk. It—it—would be better."

"Oh!" A curious expression that for the second it lasted seemed to banish both youth and loveliness spread even to her nostrils. Sardonic amusement hardly described it. Then it vanished and she said sweetly: "You are very considerate. I shall expect you."

He did not walk. He took a taxi.



XI

She opened the door as he ran up the steps. "I never ask my servants to sit up," she said. "Judge Trent warned me that the American servant is as difficult to keep as to get and must be humored. When I think of the wages I pay these pampered creatures and the amount of food they consume, and then of my half-starved friends in Austria, it makes me sick—sick!"

There being no reply to the axiomatic truth involved in these words, Clavering followed her silently into the library. The log fire was still burning and he hastily replenished it. They took their little supper standing and then seated themselves in easy chairs on either side of the hearth.

"Why don't you bring over your own servants?" he asked. "Time and democracy might ruin them, but meanwhile you would have comfort. Surely you brought your maid?"

"I've had no maid until now since the beginning of the war. I rarely left the hospital. Heaven knows where my other servants are. The young men were mobilized and those that returned alive were either killed in the revolution or turned revolutionists themselves. No doubt the new government would have turned Mary's palace in Buda Pesth into a tenement house if it had not still been a hospital. We left during the revolution and lived in Vienna. Servants with the virus of Bolshevism in their veins would be worse than these."

"Were you ever in danger?"

"Oh, many times," she said indifferently. "Who was not?"

"Was that what broke your cousin down?"

"That and the hard work in Vienna trying to relieve the distress—while half-starved herself. Of course we had almost no money until the United States Government restored our properties."

"Will she join you here when she is well?"

"No, Mary Zattiany will never be seen again."

"Ah? As bad as that? Her friends will be distressed. I understand they saw her abroad from time to time before the war—particularly Mrs. Oglethorpe. That old set is very loyal."

"Loyal! Oh, yes. They are loyal. Mrs. Oglethorpe was ready to give me over to the police. She seemed to think that I had murdered Mary—no doubt during the revolution, when it would have been quite easy. And she seemed to resent quite bitterly my resemblance to Mary in her youth—as if I had committed a theft."

"Probably it made her feel her age. I wonder you saw her."

"I was coming down the stairs as she crossed the hall. Be sure I would not have seen her if I could have avoided it."

"Why?" He left his seat restlessly and leaned against the mantelshelf. "That sounds impertinent. All my questions have been impertinent, I am afraid. But—I should warn you—I gather that both Mr. Dinwiddie and Mrs. Oglethorpe think there is something wrong—that is, unexplained."

"Really?" She looked intensely amused. "But that is interesting. Of course I knew of Mr. Dinwiddie's curiosity from Judge Trent—but I rather thought——"

"Oh, yes, you have floored him completely. But I fancy he's more curious than ever. I—I—wish you would confide in me. I might be better able to defend you if the necessity arose."

"Don't you believe I am what I represent myself to be?"

"It is a terrible thing to say to a woman like you, but——"

He expected her to rise in her majesty and order him to leave the house, but she merely smiled again and said:

"You forget Judge Trent. Do you think if I were an impostor he would vouch for me?"

"I believe you could make any man believe what you wished him to believe."

"Except yourself."

"Remember that a newspaper man—— However, I'll speak only for myself." He thrust his hands into his pockets and tried to summon his saturnine expression, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that he looked merely wistful and boyish and that this highly accomplished woman of the world was laughing at him. "For my own sake I want to know," he blurted out. "I haven't an idea why I suspect you, and it is possible that you are what you say you are. Certainly you are far too clever not to have an alibi it would be difficult to puncture. But I sensed something that first night . . . something beyond the fact that you were a European and did a curious thing—which, however, I understood immediately. . . . It was something more. . . . I don't think I can put it into words . . . you were there, and yet you were not there . . . somebody else seemed to be looking out of your eyes . . . even when Dinwiddie thought he had explained the matter. . . ."

"You mean when he assumed that I was the illegitimate daughter of Mary Zattiany. Poor Mary! She always wanted a daughter—that is, when her own youth was over. That is the reason she was so fond of me. Do you think I am Mary's bastard?"

"I did—I don't now. . . . I don't know what to think. . . . I have never lost that first impression—wholly."

She stirred slightly. Was it a movement of uneasiness? He was horribly embarrassed, but determined to hold his ground, and he kept his eyes on her face, which retained its expression of mocking amusement.

"But you think I am an adventuress of some sort."

"The word does not apply to you. There is no question that you are a great lady."

"Of course I might be an actress," she said coolly. "I may have been on the stage in Vienna when the war broke out, become accidentally associated with Countess Zattiany, won her confidence, owing to the extraordinary resemblance—our blood may have met and mingled in Cro-Magnon days—stolen her papers, led her to talk of her youth—of course every one knew Countess Zattiany's record in European Society—forged her power of attorney with the aid of an infatuated clerk, poisoned her—and here I am!"

He laughed. "Bully plot for the movies. That is a new angle, as they say. I hadn't thought of it. And a good actress can put over anything. I once heard a movie queen, who was the best young aristocrat, in looks and manner, I ever saw on the screen, say to her director—repeating a telephone conversation—'I says and he says and then I seen he hadn't heard me.'"

For the first time since he had known her she threw back her head and laughed heartily. Even her eyes looked young and her laugh was musical and thrilling.

Then she demanded: "And do you think I am an actress—who got an education somehow?"

"I think you are an actress, but not that sort. Your imaginative flight leaves me cold."

"Perhaps you think I had Mary's personality transferred and that it exists side by side with my own here in this accidental shell. There are great scientists in Vienna."

"Ah!" He looked at her sharply. "Button, button—I feel a sensation of warmth somewhere."

She laughed again, but her eyes contracted and almost closed. "I fear you are a very romantic young man as well as a very curious one."

"I deserved that. Well, I am curious. But not so curious as—interested."

"I hope you are not falling in love with me." Her deep voice had risen to a higher register and was light and gay.

"I am half in love with you. I don't know what is going to happen——"

"And you want to protect yourself by disenchantment?"

"Perhaps."

"And you think it is my duty . . ."

"Possibly I'd fall in love with you anyway, but I'd like to know where I stand. I have a constitutional hatred of mystery outside of fiction and the drama."

"Ah." She gazed into the fire. "Mr. Dinwiddie, no doubt, is making investigations. If he verified my story, would you still disbelieve?"

"I should know there was something back of it all."

"You must have been a good reporter."

"One of the best."

"I suppose it is that."

"Partly. I don't think that if you were not just what you are I'd care a hang. Other people's affairs don't excite me. I've outgrown mere inquisitiveness."

"That is rather beside the point, isn't it? It all comes back to this—that you are afraid of falling in love with me."

"You don't look as if it would do me any good if I did."

"Why not let it go at that?"

"I think the best thing I can do is to get out altogether."

She rose swiftly and came close to him. "Oh, no! I am not going to let you go. You are the only person on this continent who interests me. I shall have your friendship. And you must admit that I have done nothing——"

"Oh, no, you have done nothing. You've only to be." He wondered that he felt no desire to touch her. She looked lovely and appealing and very young. But she radiated power, and that chin could not melt.

He asked abruptly: "How many men have you had in love with you?"

"Oh!" She spread out her hands vaguely. "How can one remember?" And that look he most disliked, that look of ancient wisdom, disillusioned and contemptuous, came into her eyes.

"You are too young to have had so very many. And the war took a good slice out of your life. I don't suppose you were infatuating smashed-up men or even doctors and surgeons."

"Certainly not. But, when one marries young—and one begins to live early in Europe."

"How often have you loved, yourself?"

"That question I could answer specifically, but I shall not."

He calculated rapidly. "Four years of war. Assuming that you are thirty-two, although sometimes you look older and sometimes younger, and that you married at seventeen, that would leave you—well, eleven years before the war began. I suppose you didn't fall in love once a year?"

"Oh, no, I am a faithful soul. Say three years and a third to each attack."

"You talk at times singularly like an American for one who left here at the age of two."

"Remember that my family went with me. Moreover, Mary and I always talked English together—American if you like. She was intensely proud of being an American. We read all the American novels, as I told you. They are an education in the idiom, permanent and passing. Moreover, I was always meeting Americans."

"Were you? Well, the greater number of them must be in New York at the present moment. No doubt they would be glad to relieve your loneliness."

"I am not in the least lonely and I have not the least desire to see any of them. Only one thing would induce me—if I thought it would be possible to raise a large amount of money for the women and children of Austria."

"Ah! You would take the risk, then?"

"Risk? They were the most casual acquaintances. They probably have forgotten me long since. I had not left Hungary for a year before the war, and one rarely meets an American in Pesth Society—two or three other American women had married Hungarians, but they preferred Vienna and I preferred Europeans. I knew them only slightly. . . . Moreover, there are many Zattianys. It is an immense connection."

"You mean you believe you would be safe," he caught her up.

"Mon dieu! You make me feel as if I were on the stand. But yes, quite safe."

"And you really believe that any one could ever forget you?"

"I am not as vain as you seem to think."

"You have every right to be. Suppose—suppose that something should occur to rouse the suspicions of the Countess Zattiany's old friends and they should start investigations in Vienna?"

"They would not see her—nor their emissaries. Dr. Steinach's sanitarium is inviolate."

"Steinach—Steinach—where have I heard that name lately?"

Her eyes flew open, but she lowered the lids immediately. Her voice shook slightly as she replied: "He is a very great doctor. He will keep poor Mary's secret as long as she lives and nobody in Vienna would doubt his word. Investigations would be useless."

"She is there then? I suppose you mean that she is dying of an incurable disease or has lost her mind. But do not imagine that I care to pry further into that. I never had the least idea that you had—— Oh, I don't know what to believe! . . . Won't you ever tell me?"

"I wonder! No, I think not! No! No!"

"There is something then?"

"Do you know why you still harp on that absurd idea that I am what I am and still am not? Do you not know what it is—the simple explanation?"

"No, I do not."

"It is merely that European women, the women who have been raised in the intrigues of courts and the artificialities of what we call 'the World,' who learn the technique of gallantry as soon as they are lancee, where men make a definite cult of women and women of men, where sincerity in such an atmosphere is more baffling than subtlety and guile—that is the reason your American girl is never understood by foreign men—where naturalness is despised as gauche and art commands homage, where, in short, the game is everything—that most aristocratic and enthralling of all games—the game of chess, with men and women as kings, queens, pawns. . . . There you have the whole explanation of my apparent riddle. You have never met any one like me before."

"There are a good many women of your class here now."

"Yes, with avowed objects, is it not? And they do not happen to possess the combination of qualities that commands your interest."

"That is true enough. Perhaps your explanation is the real one. There is certainly something in it. Well, I'll go now. I have kept you up long enough."

He was about to raise her hand to his lips when she surprised him by shaking his warmly.

"I must get over that habit. It is rather absurd in this country where you have not the custom. But you will come again?"

"Oh, yes, I'll come again."



XII

Madame Zattiany adjusted the chain on the front door and returned very slowly to the library. That broad placid brow, not the least of her physical charms, was drawn in a puzzled frown. Instead of turning out the lights she sat down and stared into the dying fire. Suddenly she began to laugh, a laugh of intense and ironic amusement; but it stopped in mid-course and her eyes expanded with an expression of consternation, almost of panic.

She was not alarmed for the peace of mind of the man who was more in love with her than he had so far admitted to himself. She had been loved by too many men and had regarded their heartaches and balked desires with too profound an indifference to worry over the possible harm she might be inflicting upon the brilliant and ambitious young man who had precipitated himself into her life. That might come later, but not at this moment when she was shaken and appalled.

She had dismissed from her mind long ago the hope or the desire that she could ever again feel anything but a keen mental response to the most provocative of men. No woman had ever lived who was more completely disillusioned, more satiated, more scornful of that age-old dream of human happiness, which, stripped to its bones, was merely the blind instinct of the race to survive. Civilization had heaped its fictions over the bare fact of nature's original purpose, imagination lashing generic sexual impulse to impossible demands for the consummate union of mind and soul and body. Mutuality! When man was essentially polygamous and woman essentially the vehicle of the race. When the individual soul had been decreed by the embittered gods eternally to dwell alone and never yet had been tricked beyond the moment of nervous exaltation into the belief that it had fused into its mate. Life itself was futile enough, but that dream of the perfect love between two beings immemorially paired was the most futile and ravaging of all the dreams civilization had imposed upon mankind. The curse of imagination. Only the savages and the ignorant masses understood "love" for the transitory functional thing it was and were undisturbed by spiritual unrest . . . by dreams . . . mad longings. . . .

No one had ever surrendered to the illusion more completely than she. No one had ever hunted with a more passionate determination for that correlative soul that would submerge, exalt, and complete her own aspiring soul. And what had she found? Men. Merely men. Satiety or disaster. Weariness and disgust. She had not an illusion left. She had put all that behind her long since.

It seemed to her as she sat there staring into the last flickerings of the charred log that it had been countless years since any man had had the power to send a thrill along her nerves, to stir even the ghost of those old fierce desires. No woman had ever had more cause to feel immune. Too contemptuous of life and the spurious illusions man had created for himself, while destroying the even balance between matter and mind, even to be rebellious, she had felt a profound gratitude for her complete freedom from the thrall of sex when she had realized that with her gifts of mind and fortune she still had a work to do in the world that would resign her to the supreme boredom of living. During the war man had been but a broken thing to be mended or eased out of life; and she knew that there was no better nurse in Europe; it had always been her pride to do nothing by halves; and before that she had come to look upon men with a certain passive toleration when their minds were responsive to her own. Whatever sex charm they possessed might better have been wasted on the Venus in the Louvre.

And tonight she had realized that this young man, so unlike any she had ever known in her European experience, had been more or less in her thoughts since the night he had followed her out of the theatre and stood covertly observing her as she waited for her car. She had been conscious during subsequent nights at the play of his powerful gaze as he sat watching for a turn of the head that would give him a glimpse of something more than the back of her neck; or as she had passed him on her way to her seat. She had been even more acutely conscious of him as he left his own seat while the lights were still down and followed her up the aisle. But she had felt merely amusement at the time, possibly a thrill of gratified vanity, accustomed as she was to admiration and homage.

But on the night when he had hastened up to her in the deserted street and offered his assistance, standing with his hat in his hand and looking at her with a boyish and diffident gallantry in amusing contrast with his stern and cynical countenance, and she had realized that he had impulsively followed her, something had stirred within her that she had attributed to a superficial recrudescence of her old love of adventure, of her keen desire for novelty at any cost. Amused at both herself and him, she had suddenly decided, while he was effecting an entrance to her house, to invite him into the library and take advantage of this break in the monotonous life she had decreed should be her portion while she remained in New York.

She had found him more personally attractive than she had expected. Judge Trent, whom she had deftly drawn out, had told her that he was a young man of whom, according to Dinwiddie, great things were expected in the literary world; his newspaper career, brilliant as it was, being regarded merely as a phase in his progress; he had not yet "found himself." After that she had read his column attentively.

But she had not been prepared for a powerful and sympathetic personality, that curious mixture of naivete and hard sophistication, and she had ascribed her interest in him to curiosity in exploring what to her was a completely foreign type. In her own naivete it had never occurred to her that men outside her class were gentlemen as she understood the term, and she still supposed Clavering to be exceptional owing to his birth and breeding. It had given her a distinct satisfaction, the night of the dinner, to observe that he lost nothing by contact with men who were indubitably of her own world. There was no snobbery in her attitude. She had always been too secure in her own exalted state for snobbery, too protected from climbers to conceive the "I will maintain" impulse, and she had escaped at birth that overpowering sense of superiority that carks the souls of high and low alike. But it was the first time she had ever had the opportunity to judge by any standards but those in which she had been born and passed her life. As for Clavering, he was a gentleman, and that was the end of that phase of the matter as far as she was concerned.

It was only tonight that she had been conscious of a certain youthful eagerness as she paced up and down the hall waiting to hear him run up the steps. She had paused once and laughed at herself as she realized that she was acting like a girl expecting her lover, when she was merely a coldly—no longer even bitterly—disillusioned woman, bored with this enforced inaction in New York, welcoming a little adventure to distract her mind from its brooding on the misery she had left behind her in Europe, and on the future to which she had committed herself. And a midnight adventure! She had shrugged her shoulders and laughed again as she had admitted him.

But she felt no disposition to laugh as she sat alone in the chilling room. She was both angry and appalled to remember that she had felt a quivering, almost a distension of her nerves as she had sat there with him in the silence and solitude of the night. That she had felt a warm pleasure in the interest that betrayed him into positive impertinence, and that a sick terror had shaken her when she saw that he was making up his mind not to see her again. She had not betrayed herself for a moment, she was too old a hand in the game of men and women for that, and she had let him go without a sign, secure in the confidence that he was at her beck; but she knew now, and her hands clenched and her face distorted as she admitted it, that if he had suddenly snatched her in his arms she would have flamed into passion and felt herself the incarnation of youth and love.

Incredible. Unthinkable. She!

What should she do? Flee? She had come to New York for one purpose only, to settle her financial affairs in the briefest possible time and return to the country where her work lay. But she had been detained beyond expectation, for the slow reorganization of one of the companies in which a large portion of her fortune was invested would not be complete without her final signature. There were other important transfers to be made, and moreover Judge Trent had insisted that she become thoroughly acquainted with her business affairs and able to maintain an intelligent correspondence with her trustees when he himself had retired. She had shown a remarkable aptitude for finance and he was merciless in his insistence, demanding an hour of her time every day.

Business. She hated the word. What did it matter—— But she knew that it did matter, and supremely. She might have the beauty, the brains, and the sex domination to win men to her way of thinking when she launched herself into the maelstrom of politics, but she was well aware that her large fortune would be half the battle. It furnished the halo and the sinews, and it gave her the power to buy men who could not be persuaded. She had vowed that Austria should be saved at any cost.

No, she could not go now. She must remain for another month—two months, possibly. She was no longer in that undisciplined stage of youth when flight from danger seems the only solution. To wreck the lives of others in order to secure her own peace of mind would make her both ridiculous and contemptible in her own eyes, and she had yet to despise herself. She would "stick it out," "see it through," to quote the vernacular of these curious American novels she had been reading; trusting that she had merely been suffering from a flurry of the senses . . . not so remarkable perhaps. . . .

But her mind drifted back to the past month. Senses? And if it were not that alone, but merely the inevitable accompaniment of far stranger processes . . . if it were what she had once so long sought and with such disastrous results . . . She had believed for so many years that it existed somewhere, in some man . . . that it was every woman's right . . . even if it could not last for ever. . . . But while it lasted! After all, imagination had its uses. It helped to prolong as well as create. . . . She sank back and closed her eyes, succumbing to an ineffable languor.

It lasted but a moment. She started up with an exclamation of impatience and disgust; and she shivered from head to foot. The room was bitterly cold. There were only ashes on the hearth.



XIII

Clavering turned hot and cold several times during his walk home. He had been atrociously rude, impertinent. If she hadn't ordered him out of the house it must have been because she was a creature of moods, and he had merely amused her for the hour. No doubt she would wake up in a proper state of indignation and give her servants orders. . . . Or—was she sincere when she demanded his friendship, willing to put up with his abominable manners, trusting to her own wit to defeat him, lull his suspicions? Friendship! The best thing for him to do was to avoid her like the plague. He hated to admit it, but he was afraid of her, not so much of falling in love with her and going through tragedy, which was probably what it would come to, as of the terrible force so skillfully hidden in that white and delicate body, of a powerful personality fortified by an unimaginable past. She gave the impression of a woman who had been at grips with life and conquered it, from first to last. Formidable creature! An extraordinary achievement if true. But was it? Women, no matter how beautiful, wealthy, highly placed and powerfully organized, got the worst of it one way or another. When they fell in love they were apt to lose their heads, and with that the game. Technique crumbled. For a moment he imagined her in love, dissolved, helpless; then hastily changed the subject. He liked women to be strong—having long since abandoned his earlier ideal of the supine adorant—but not too strong. Certainly not stronger than himself. He had met a good many "strong" women in the last twelve years, swathed, more often than not, in disarming femininity. A man hadn't a chance with them, man's strength as a rule being all on the outside. Women grew up and men didn't. That was the infernal truth.

For the moment he hated all women and felt not only a cowardly but a decidedly boyish impulse to run away. He'd like to wander . . . wander . . . lie out in the woods and dream as he had done in his boyhood . . . before he knew too much of life . . . reading Shelley and munching chestnuts. . . . Then he remembered that woods were full of snow in winter, and laughed. Well, he'd go and see Gora Dwight. She was in Washington at the moment, but would be home on Friday. She was a tonic. Strong if you like, but making no bones about it. No soft feminine seductions there. She, too, had fought life and conquered, in a way, but she showed the scars. Must have had the devil of a time. At all events a man could spend hours in her stimulating company and know exactly where he stood. No damned sex nonsense about her at all. He knew barely another woman who didn't trail round to sex sooner or later. Psychoanalysis had relieved them of whatever decent inhibitions they might have had in the past. He hated the subject. Some day he'd let go in his column and tell women in general what he thought of them. Remind them that men were their superiors in this at least: they kept sex in its proper place and were capable always of more than one idea at a time. So was Gora Dwight. He believed he'd make a confidante of her—to a certain extent. At all events he'd refresh his soul at that tranquil font.



XIV

Gora Dwight, after the fashion of other successful authors, had recently bought a house. It was in East Thirty-fifth Street, not far from the one at present occupied by Madame Zattiany, but nearer Lexington Avenue. It was one of the old monotonous brownstone houses, but with a "southern exposure," and the former owner had removed the front steps and remodeled the lower floor.

The dining-room, on the left of the entrance, was a long admirably proportioned room, and the large room above, which embraced the entire floor, Miss Dwight had converted into a library both sumptuous and stately. She had bought her furniture at auction that it might not look too new, and on the longer walls were bookcases seven feet high. She had collected a small library before the war; and for the many other books, some of them rare and all highly valued by their present possessor, she had haunted second-hand bookshops.

The prevailing tone of the room was brown and gold, enlivened discreetly with red, and the chairs and lounges were deep and comfortable. A large davenport stood before the fireplace, which had been rebuilt for logs. There was a victrola in one corner, for Miss Dwight was amenable if her guests were seized with the desire to jazz, and a grand piano stood near the lower windows. The only evidence of sheer femininity was a tea table furnished with old pieces of silver she had picked up in France. The dining-room below was a trifle gayer in effect; the walls and curtains were a deep yellow and there were always flowers on the table.

New York knew so much about this new literary planet that it took for granted there was nothing further to be discovered. There are always San Franciscans in the great city, and when she became famous they were obliging with their biographical data. Life had been hard on her at first, for although she came of old Revolutionary stock she grew up in poverty and obscurity. Her father had been a failure, and after the death of her parents she had kept a lodging house for business women, taking courses at the University of California meanwhile; later she had studied nursing and made her mark with physicians and surgeons. Her brother, a good-looking chap with fine manners, but a sort of super-moron, had unexpectedly married into the old aristocracy of San Francisco, and Gora, through her sister-in-law, the lovely Alexina Groome,[1] had seen something of the lighter side of life. During this period she had written a number of short stories that had been published in the best magazines, and one novel of distinction that had made a "howling success" in San Francisco, owing to the unprecedented efforts of the fashionable people led by young Mrs. Mortimer Dwight; but had fallen flat in the East in spite of the reviews. Then had come a long intermission when fictionists were of small account in a world of awful facts. She was quite forgotten, for she made not even a casual contribution to the magazines; shortly after the war broke out she offered her services to England and for long and weary years was one of the most valued nurses in the British armies. At the close of the war she had returned to California, intending to write her new novel at Lake Tahoe, but finding the season in full swing she had gone to some small interior town and written it there. When it was finished she had brought it on to New York and had remained here ever since.

So ended the brief biography, which was elaborated in many articles and interviews.

As for the novel, it won her instant fame and a small fortune. It was gloomy, pessimistic, excoriating, merciless, drab, sordid, and hideously realistic. Its people hailed from that plebeian end of the vegetable garden devoted to turnips and cabbages. They possessed all the mean vices and weaknesses that detestable humanity has so far begotten. They were all failures and their pitiful aspirations were treated with biting irony. Futile, futile world!

The scene was laid in a small town in California, a microcosm of the stupidities of civilization and of the United States of America in particular. The celebrated "atmosphere" of the state was ignored. The town and the types were "American"; it would seem that merely some unadmitted tenuous sentiment had set the scene in the state of the author's birth, but there the concession ended. Even the climate was treated with the scorn that all old cliches deserved. (Her biographers might have contributed the information that the climate of a California interior town in summer is simply infernal.)

Naturally, the book created a furore. A few years before it would have expired at birth, even had a publisher been mad enough to offer it to a smug contented world. But the daily catalogue of the horrors and the obscenities of war, the violent dislocations that followed with their menaces of panic and revolution that affected the nerves and the pockets of the entire commonwealth, the irritable reaction against the war itself, knocked romance, optimism, aspiration, idealism, the sane and balanced judgment of life, to smithereens. More cliches. The world was rotten to the core and the human race so filthy the wonder was that any writer would handle it with tongs. But they plunged to their necks. The public, whose urges, inhibitions, complexes, were in a state of ferment, but inarticulate, found their release in these novels and stories and wallowed in them. The more insulting, the more ruthless, the more one-sided the disclosure of their irremediable faults and meannesses, the more voluptuous the pleasure. There had been reactions after the Civil War, but on a higher plane. The population had not been maculated by inferior races.

The young editors, critics, special writers were enchanted. This was Life! At last! Moreover, it was Democracy. These young and able men, having renounced their earlier socialism, their sense of humor recognizing its disharmony with high salaries and pleasant living, were hot for Democracy. Nothing paid like Democracy in this heaving world. The Democratic wave rose and roared. Symbolic was this violent eruption of small-town fiction, as realistic as the kitchen, as pessimistic as Wall Street. All virtue, all hope, all idealism, had gone out of the world. Romance, for that matter, never had existed and it was high time the stupid world was forcibly purged of its immemorial illusion. Life was and ever had been sordid, commonplace, ignoble, vulgar, immedicable; refinement was a cowardly veneer that was beneath any seeker after Truth, and Truth was all that mattered. Love was to laugh. Happiness was hysteria, and content the delusion of morons (a word now hotly racing "authentic"). As for those verbal criminals, "loyalty" and "patriotism"—fecit vomitare.

Their success was colossal.

Gora Dwight caught the crest of the wave and sold three hundred thousand copies of "Fools." She immediately signed a contract with one of the "woman's magazines" for the serial rights of her next novel for thirty thousand dollars, and received a corresponding advance from her publisher. Her short stories sold for two thousand dollars apiece, and her first novel was exhumed and had a heavy sale.

It was difficult to be pessimistic with a hundred thousand dollars in bonds and mortgages and the deed of a house in her strong box, but Gora Dwight was an artist and could always fall back on technique. But although her book was the intellectual expression of wildly distorted complexes, owing to the disillusionments of war, the humiliation of her ego in woman's most disastrous adventure, and the consequent repression of all her dearest urges, she deserved her success far more than any of her adolescent rivals. She had formed her style in the days of complete normalcy, and not only was that style distinguished, vigorous, and individual, but she was able to convey her extremest realism so subtly and yet so unambiguously that she could afford to disdain the latrinities of the "younger school." A marvellous feat. Most of them used the frank vocabulary of the humble home, as alone synonymous with Truth. Never before had such words invaded the sacrosanct pages of American letters. Little they recked, as Mr. Lee Clavering, who took the entire school as an obscene joke, pointed out, that they were but taking the shortest cut—advantage of the post-war license affecting all classes—to save themselves the exhausting effort of acquiring a vocabulary and forming a style.

The spade as a symbol vanished from fiction.

Miss Dwight had her own ideals, little as she permitted her unfortunate characters to have any, and not only was she a consummate master of words and of the art of suggestion, but she had been brought up by finicky parents who held that certain words were not to be used in refined society. The impressions received in plastic years were not to be obliterated by any fad of the hour.

No one knew, not even her fellow Californians, that she had had a disastrous love affair which had culminated in an attempt to murder her beautiful sister-in-law. Her book had been a wild revulsion from every standard of her youth, and she loathed love and the bare idea of mutual happiness in fellow mortals as she recently had loathed blood and filth and war and Germans.

Success is a great healer. Moreover, she was a woman of strong and indomitable character, and very proud. She consigned the man, who, after all, was the author of her phenomenal success, to nethermost oblivion. You cannot sell three hundred thousand copies of a book, receive hundreds of letters from unknown admirers telling you that you are the greatest novelist living, see your name constantly in the "news," be besieged by editors and publishers, and become a popular favorite with Sophisticates, and carry around a lacerated heart. The past fades. The present reigns. The future is rosy as the dawn. Gora Dwight was far too arrogant at this period of her career to love any man even had there been anything left of her heart but a pump. Her life was full to the brim. She was quite aware that the present rage for stark and dour realism would pass—the indications were to be seen in the more moderate but pronounced success of several novels by authors impervious to crazes—but she was too fertile for apprehension on that score. She had many and quite different themes wandering like luminous ghosts about the corridors of a brain singularly free from labyrinths, ready to emerge, full-bodied, when the world was ready for them.

The last time Clavering had sat opposite a woman by a log fire both had enjoyed the deep luxury of easy chairs and his hostess had seemed to melt into the depths until they enfolded her. But Miss Dwight never lounged. Her backbone appeared to be made of cast-iron. She sat erect today on a hassock while he reclined in a chair that exactly fitted his spine and enjoyed contrasting her with the other woman. Gora Dwight had no beauty, but she never passed unnoticed in a crowd, even if unrecognized. Her oval eyes were a pale clear gray, cold, almost sinister, and she wore her mass of rich brown hair on top of her head and down to her heavy eyebrows. Her mouth was straight and sharply cut, but mobile and capable of relaxing into a charming smile, and she had beautiful teeth. The nose was short and emphatic, the jawbone salient. It was, altogether, a disharmonic type, for the head was long and the face short, broad across the high cheekbones; and her large light eyes set in her small dark face produced a disconcerting effect on sensitive people, but more often fascinated them. Clavering had been told that in her California days she had possessed a superb bust, but long years of unremitting work in France and England had taken toll of her flesh and it had never returned; she was very thin and the squareness of her frame was emphasized by the strong uncompromising bones. But her feet and her brown hands were long and narrow, and the straight lines of the present fashion were very becoming to her. She wore today a gown of dark red velvet trimmed with brown fur and a touch of gold in the region of the waist. It was known that she got her clothes at the "best houses."

She was a curious mixture, Clavering reflected, and not the least contradictory thing about her was the way in which her rather sullen face could light up: exactly as if some inner flame leapt suddenly behind those uncanny eyes and shed its light over the very muscles of her cheeks and under her skin. The oddest of her traits was her apparent pleasure in seeing a man comfortable while she looked like a ramrod herself; and she was the easiest of mortals to talk to when she was in the right mood. She was morose at times, but her favorites were seldom inflicted with her moods, and of all her favorites Clavering reigned supreme. This he knew and took advantage of after the fashion of his sex. He told her all his troubles, his ambitions, which he believed to be futile—he had written plays which his own criticism had damned and no eye but his own and Gora Dwight's had ever seen—and she refreshed and stimulated his mind when his daily column must be written and his brain was stagnant. She also knew of his secret quest of the one woman and had been the repository of several fleeting hopes. And never for a moment had she thought him saturnine or disillusioned. Not she! Gora Dwight had an extraordinary knowledge of men for a woman to whom men did not make love. But if she had neither beauty nor allure she had genius; and a father confessor hardly knows more about women than a nurse about men. Moreover, she had her arts, little as men suspected it. Long ago she had read an appraisement of Madame Recamier by Sainte-Beuve: "She listens avec seduction." Gora had no intention of practising seduction in any of its forms, but she listened and she never betrayed, and her reward was that men sound and whole, and full of man's inherent and technical peculiarities, had confided in her. Altogether she was well equipped for fiction.



[1] See the author's "Sisters-in-Law."



XV

She was listening now as Clavering told her of his adventurous meeting with Madame Zattiany, of their subsequent conversations, and of his doubts.

"Are you sure she is not playing a part deliberately?" she asked. "Having her little fun after those horrible years? She looks quite equal to it, and a personal drama would have its attractions after an experience during which a nurse felt about as personal as an amputated limb. And while one is still young and beautiful—what a lark!"

"No. I don't believe anything of the sort. I fancy that if she didn't happen to be so fond of the theatre she'd have come and gone and none of us been the wiser. Her secret is sui generis, whatever it is. I've racked my mind in vain. I don't believe she is the Countess Zattiany's daughter, nor a third cousin, nor the Countess Josef Zattiany. I've tried to recall every mystery story I ever read that would bear on the case, but I'm as much in the dark as ever."

"And you've thought of nothing else. Your column has fallen off."

"Do you think that?" He sat up. "I've not been too satisfied myself."

"You've been filling up with letters from your correspondents after the fashion of more jaded columnists. Even your comments on them have been flat. And as for your description of that prize fight last night, it was about as thrilling as an account of a flower show."

He laughed and dropped back. "You are as refreshing as a cold shower, Gora. But, after all, even a poor colyumist must be allowed to slump occasionally. However, I'll turn her off hereafter when I sit down to my typewriter. Lord knows a typewriter is no Wagnerian orchestra and should be warranted to banish sentiment. . . . Sentiment is not the word, though. It is plain raging curiosity."

"Oh, no, it is not," said Miss Dwight coolly, lighting another cigarette, which she carefully fitted into a pair of small gold tongs: neither ink nor nicotine was ever seen on those long aristocratic fingers. "You are in love with her, my child."

"I am not!"

"Oh, yes, you are. I've never been misled for a moment by your other brief rhapsodies—the classic Anne—the demoniac Marian—but you're landed high and dry this time. The mystery may have something to do with it, but the woman has far more. She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld and she looks intelligent and keen in spite of that monumental repose. And what a great lady!" Gora sighed. How she once had longed to be a great lady! She no longer cared a fig about it, and would not have changed her present state for that of a princess in a stable world. But old dreams die hard. There was no one of Madame Zattiany's abundant manifestations of high fortune that she admired more. "Go in and win, Clavey—and without too much loss of time. She'll be drawn into her own world here sooner or later. She confesses to being a widow, so you needn't get tangled up in an intrigue."

"You forget she is also a very rich woman. I'd look like a fortune hunter——"

"How old-fashioned of you! And you'd feel like nothing of the sort. The only thing that worries you at present is that you are trying to hide from yourself that you are in love with her."

"I wonder! I don't feel any raging desire for her—that I can swear."

"You simply haven't got that far. The mystery has possessed your mind and your doubts have acted as a censor. But once let yourself go . . ."

"And suppose she turned me down—which, no doubt, she would do. I'm not hunting for tragedy."

"I've an idea she won't. While you've been talking I've written out the whole story in my mind. For that matter, I began it last Monday night when I saw you two whispering together. I was in the box just above—if you noticed! And I watched her face. It was something more than politely interested."

"Oh, she looked the same when she was talking to Din and Osborne that night at dinner. She is merely a woman of the world who has had scores of men in love with her and is young enough to be interested in any young man who doesn't bore her. To say nothing of keeping her hand in. . . . But there is something else." He moved restlessly. "She seems to me to be compounded of strength, force, power. She emanates, exudes it. I'm afraid of being afraid of her. I prefer to be stronger than my wife."

"Don't flatter yourself. Women are always stronger than their husbands, unless they are the complete idiot or man-crazy. Neither type would appeal to you. The average woman—all the millions of her—has a moral force and strength of character and certain shrewd mental qualities, however unintellectual, that dominate a man every time. This woman has all that and more—a thousand times more. A mighty good thing if she would take you in hand. She'd be the making of you, for you'd learn things about men and women and life—and yourself—that you've never so much as guessed. And then you'd write a play that would set the town on fire. That's all you need. Even if she treated you badly the result would be the same. Life has been much too kind to you, Clavey, and your little disappointments have been so purely romantic that only your facile emotions have played about like amiable puppies on the roof of your passions. It's time the lava began to boil and the lid blew off. Your creative tract would get a ploughing up and a fertilizing as a natural sequence. Your plays would no longer be mere models of architecture. I am not an amiable altruist. I don't long to see you happy. I'm rather inclined to hate this woman who will end by infatuating you, for of course that would be the last I'd ever see of you. But I'm an artist and I believe that art is really all that is worth living for. I want you to do great work, and I want you to be a really great figure in New York instead of a merely notable one."

"You've both taken the conceit out of me and bucked me up. . . . But I want you to meet her, and I don't know how to bring it about. I have an idea that your instinct would get somewhere near the truth."

"Suppose I give a party, and, a day or two before, you ask her casually if she would like to come—or put it to her in any way you think best. Nobody calls these days, but I have an idea she would. People of that type rarely renounce the formalities. Then, if I'm really clever, I'll make her think she'd like to see me again and she will be at home when I return her call. Do you think you could work it?"

"It's possible. I've roused her curiosity about our crowd and I'll plant a few more seeds. Yes, I think she'll come. When will you have it?"

"A week from Saturday."

"Good. You're a brick, Gora. And don't imagine you'll ever get rid of me. If she is unique, so are you. This fireside will always be a magnet."

Miss Dwight merely smiled.



XVI

Clavering walked rapidly toward Mr. Dinwiddie's club. He was in no haste to be alone with himself, although he should have been at his desk an hour ago. But it was time Dinwiddie had some news for him.

The club was deserted as far as he was concerned and he went on to Mr. Dinwiddie's rooms in Forty-eighth Street. There he found his friend in dressing-gown and slippers, one bandaged foot on a stool.

"Gout?" he asked with the callousness of youth. "Wondered why I hadn't heard from you."

"I've tried to get you no less than four times on the telephone."

"When I'm at work I leave orders downstairs to let my telephone alone, and I've been walking a lot."

"Well, sit down and smoke. Standing round makes me nervous. You look nervous yourself. Been working too hard?"

"Yes. Think of taking a run down to Florida."

"Perhaps I'll go with you. But I've something to tell you. That's the reason I called you up——"

"Well?"

"Don't snap my head off. Got a touch of dyspepsia?"

"No, I haven't. If you had to turn out a column a day you'd be nervous too."

"Well, take a vacation——"

"What have you found out?"

"It took me a week to get in touch with Harry Thornhill, but he finally consented to see me. He's lived buried among books for the last twenty years. His wife and two children were killed in a railway collision——"

"What the devil do I care about Harry Thornhill!"

"You're a selfish young beggar, but I would have cared as little at your age. Well—a cousin of his, Maynard Thornhill, did move to Virginia some thirty-five years ago, married, and had a family, then moved on to Paris and remained there until both he and his wife died. Beyond that he could tell me nothing. They weren't on particularly cordial terms and he never looked the family up when he went over. Has Madame Zattiany ever said anything about brothers and sisters?"

"Not a word."

"Probably married and settled in Europe somewhere, or wiped out. You might ask her."

"I'll ask her no more questions."

"Been snubbing you?"

"On the contrary, she's been uncommonly decent. I got rather strung up the last time I was there and asked her so many leading questions that she'd have been justified in showing me out of the house."

"You impertinent young scamp. But manners have changed since my day. What did she tell you?"

"Nothing. I'm as much in the dark as ever. What have you found out about Josef Zattiany?"

"Something, but not quite enough. I met an Austrian, Countess Loyos, at dinner the other night and asked her about the Zattianys. She said the family was a large one with many branches, but she had a vague idea that a Josef Zattiany was killed in the war. Whether he was married or not, she had no idea. . . ."

Clavering stood up suddenly and looked down on Mr. Dinwiddie, who was smiling less triumphantly than ruefully. "Well?" he asked sharply. "Well?"

"I see you've caught it. It's rather odd, isn't it, that this Austrian lady, who has lived her life in Viennese Society, knows nothing apparently of any young and beautiful Countess Zattiany? I didn't give her a hint of the truth, for I certainly shall not be the one to loose the bloodhounds on this charming young woman, whoever she may be. Told her that I recalled having met a very young and handsome countess of that name in Europe before the war and wondered what had become of her. . . . But somebody else may let them loose any moment. A good many people are interested in her already."

"Well, they can't do anything to her. She's a right to call herself whatever she likes, and she asks no favors. But I'd like to hypnotize Judge Trent and get the truth out of him. He knows, damn him!"

"He's laying up trouble for himself if he's passing off an impostor—letting her get possession of Mary's money. I cannot understand Trent. He's a fool about women, but he's the soul of honor, and has one of the keenest legal minds in the state. That she has fooled him is unthinkable."

"He knows, and is in some way justified. Madame Zattiany must have your friend's power of attorney. That's positive. And there is no doubt that Countess Zattiany—Mary Ogden—is in some sanitarium in Vienna, hopelessly ill. She let that out."

"Poor Mary! Is that true?"

"I'm afraid it is . . . perhaps . . . that may be it. . . ."

"What are you talking about?"

"When she was mocking my curiosity she suggested that she might have been an actress and won the confidence of Countess Zattiany owing to the resemblance. It struck me as fantastic, but who knows? . . . Still, why should she use the name Zattiany even if your friend did give her the power of attorney . . . unless . . ." he recalled Gora's suggestion, "she is out for a lark."

"Lark? She hasn't tried to meet people. I can't see any point in your idea. Absurd. And that woman is no actress. She is grande dame born and bred."

"I've met some actresses that had very fine manners indeed, and also the entree."

"Well, they don't measure up according to my notion. This girl is the real thing."

"Then why, in heaven's name, doesn't your Countess Loyos know anything about her? If Madame Zattiany is what she says she is, they must have met in Viennese Society a hundred times. In fact she would have been one of the notable figures at court."

"The only explanation I can think of is that Madame Zattiany is all that she claims to be, but that for some reason or other she is not using her own name."

"Ah! That is an explanation. But why—why?"

"There you have me . . . unless . . . Ah!" The familiar glitter came into his eyes and Clavering waited expectantly. This old bird had a marvellous instinct. "I have it! For some reason she had to get out of Europe. Maybe she's hiding from a man, maybe from the Government. Zattiany may be one of her husband's names—or her mother's. Of course Mary would be interested in her—with that resemblance—and help her out. She knew her well enough to trust her, and somebody had to represent her here. Of course Trent knows the truth and naturally would keep her secret."

"Another plot for the movies . . . still—it's a plausible enough explanation . . . yes . . . I shouldn't wonder. But from whom is she hiding?"

"Possibly from her husband."

"Her—her——"

"Like as not. Don't murder me. I think you'd better go to Florida and stay there. Better still, marry Anne Goodrich and take her along——"

Clavering had flung himself out of the room.



XVII

He charged down Madison Avenue, barely escaping disaster at the crossings in the frightful congestion of the hour: he was not only intensely perturbed in mind, but he was in a hurry. His column was unfinished and an article on the "authentic drama" for one of the literary reviews must be delivered on the morrow. In the normal course of events it would have been written a week since.

He was furious with himself. Passionate, impulsive, and often unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a strictly personal experience designed by a malignant fate to deprive youth of its illusions, embitter and deidealize it, fill it with a cold and acrid contempt for militarism and governments, convert it to pacificism, and launch it on a confused but strident groping after Truth. It was incredible to him that any one who had read history could be guilty of such jejunity, and he attributed it to their bruised but itching egos. After all, it had been a middle-aged man's war. Not a single military reputation had been made by any one of the millions of young fighters, despite promotions, citations, and medals. Statesmen and military men long past their youth would alone be mentioned in history.

The youth of America was individualism rampant plus the national self-esteem, and the mass of them today had no family traditions behind them—sprung from God knew what. Their ego had been slapped in the face and compressed into a mould; they were subconsciously trying to rebuild it to its original proportions by feeling older than their fathers and showering their awful contempt upon those ancient and despicable loadstones: "loyalty" and "patriotism." Writers who had remained safely at home had taken the cue and become mildly pacifist. It sounded intellectual and it certainly was the fashion.

Clavering, whose ancestors had fought in every war in American history, had enlisted in 1917 with neither sentimentalism, enthusiasm, nor resentment. It was idle to vent one's wrath and contempt upon statesmen who could not settle their quarrels with their brains, for the centuries that stood between the present and utter barbarism were too few to have accomplished more than the initial stages of a true civilization. No doubt a thousand years hence these stages would appear as rudimentary as the age of the Neanderthals had seemed to the twentieth century. And as man made progress so did he rarely outstrip it. So far he had done less for himself than for what passed for progress and the higher civilization. Naturally enough, when the Frankenstein monster heaved itself erect and began to run amok with seven-leagued boots, all the pigmies could do was to revert hysterically to Neanderthal methods and use the limited amount of brains the intervening centuries had given them, to scheme for victory. A thousand years hence the Frankenstein might be buried and man's brain gigantic. Then and then only would civilization be perfected, and the savagery and asininity of war a blot on the history of his race to which no man cared to refer. But that was a long way off. When a man's country was in danger there was nothing to do but fight. Noblesse oblige. And fight without growling and whining. Clavering had liked army discipline, sitting in filthy trenches, wounds, hospitals, and killing his fellow men as little as any decent man; but what had these surly grumblers expected? To fight when they felt like it, sleep in feather beds, and shoot at targets? Disillusionment! Patriotism murdered by Truth! One would think they were fighting the first war in history.

It was not the war they took seriously but themselves.

Like other men of his class and traditions, Clavering had emerged from the war hoping it would be the last of his time, but with his ego unbruised, his point of view of life in general undistorted, and a quick banishment of "hideous memories." (His chief surviving memory was a hideous boredom.) One more war had gone into history. That he had taken an infinitesimal part in it instead of reading an account of it by some accomplished historian was merely the accident of his years. As far as he could see he was precisely the man he was before he was sent to France and he had only unmitigated contempt for these "war reactions" in men sound in limb and with no derangement of the ductless glands.

As for the women, when they began to talk their intellectual pacificism, he told them that their new doctrine of non-resistance became them ill, but as even the most advanced were still women, consistency was not to be expected—nor desired. Their pacificism, however, when not mere affectation—servility to the fashion of the moment—was due to an obscure fear of seeing the world depopulated of men, or of repressed religious instinct, or apology for being females and unable to fight. He was extremely rude.

And now this infernal woman had completely thrown him off his balance. He could think of nothing else. His work had been deplorable—the last week at all events—and although a month since nothing would have given him more exquisite satisfaction than to write a paper on the authentic drama, he would now be quite indifferent if censorship had closed every theatre on Broadway. Such an ass, such a cursed ass had he become in one short month. He had tramped half the nights and a good part of every day trying to interest himself by the wayside and clear his brain. He might as well have sat by his fire and read a piffling novel.

Nevertheless, until Gora Dwight had brought her detached analytical faculty to bear on his case, he had not admitted to himself that he was in love with the woman. He had chosen to believe that, being unique and compact of mystery, she had hypnotized his interest and awakened all the latent chivalry of his nature—something the modern woman called upon precious seldom. He had felt the romantic knight ready to break a lance—a dozen if necessary—in case the world rose against her, denounced her as an impostor. True, she seemed more than able to take care of herself, but she was very beautiful, very blonde, very unprotected, and in that wistful second youth he most admired. He had thought himself the chivalrous son of chivalrous Southerners, excited and not too happy, but convinced, at the height of his restlessness and absorption, that she was but a romantic and passing episode in his life.

When Gora Dwight had ruthlessly led him into those unconsciously guarded secret chambers of his soul and bidden him behold and ponder, he had turned as cold as if ice-water were running in his veins, although he had continued to smile indulgently and had answered with some approach to jocularity. He was floored at last. He'd got the infernal disease in its most virulent form. Not a doubt of it. No wonder he had deluded himself. His ideal woman—whom, preferably, he would have wooed and won in some sequestered spot beautified by nature, not made hideous by man—was not a woman at all, but a girl; twenty-six was an ideal age; who had read and studied and thought, and seen all of the world that a girl decently may. He had dreamed of no man's leavings, certainly not of a woman who had probably had more than one lover, and, no doubt, would not take the trouble to deny it. He hated as much as he loved her and he felt that he would rather kill than possess her.

It was half an hour after he reached his rooms before he finished striding up and down; then, with a final anathema, he flung himself into a chair before his table. At least his brain felt clearer, now that he had faced the truth. Time enough to wrestle with his problem when he had won his leisure. If he couldn't switch her off for one night at least and give his brain its due, he'd despise himself, and that, he vowed, he'd never do. He wrote steadily until two in the morning.



XVIII

He awoke at noon. His first impression was that a large black bat was sitting on his brain. The darkened room seemed to contain a visible presence of disaster. He sprang out of bed and took a hot and cold shower; hobgoblins fled, although he felt no inclination to sing! He called down for his breakfast and opened his hall door. A pile of letters lay on his newspapers, and the topmost one, in a large envelope, addressed in a flowing meticulously fine hand, he knew, without speculation, to be from Madame Zattiany.

He threw back the curtains, settled himself in an armchair, read his other letters deliberately, and glanced at the headlines of the papers, before he carefully slit the envelope that had seemed to press his eyeballs. The time had come for self-discipline, consistently exercised. Moreover, he was afraid of it. What—why had she written to him? Why hadn't she telephoned? Was this a tardy dismissal? His breath was short and his hands shaking as he opened the letter.

It was sufficiently commonplace.

"Dear Mr. Clavering:

"I have been in Atlantic City for a few days getting rid of a cold. I hope you have not called. Will you dine with me tomorrow night at half after eight? I shall not ask any one else.

"Sincerely, "MARIE ZATTIANY."

So her name was Marie. It had struck him once or twice as humorous that he didn't know the first name of the woman who was demanding his every waking thought. And she had been out of town and unaware that he had deliberately avoided her. Had taken for granted that he had been polite enough to call—and had left his cards at home.

Should he go? He'd have his breakfast first and do his thinking afterward.

He did ample justice to the breakfast which was also lunch, read his newspapers, cursed the printers of his own for two typographical errors he found in his column, then called up her house. Feeling as normal and unromantic as a man generally does when digesting a meal and the news, he concluded that to refuse her invitation, to attempt to avoid her, in short, would not only be futile, as he was bound to respond to that magnet sooner or later, but would be a further confession of cowardice. Whatever his fate, he'd see it through.

He gave his acceptance to the butler, went out and took a brisk walk, returned and wrote his column for the next day, then visited his club and talked with congenial souls until it was time to dress for dinner. No more thinking at present.

Nevertheless, he ascended her steps at exactly half-past eight with the blood pounding in his ears and his heart acting like a schoolboy's in his first attack of calf love. But he managed to compose himself before the footman leisurely answered his ring. If there was one point upon which he was primarily determined it was to keep his head. If he gave her a hint that she had reduced him to a state of imbecility before his moment came—if it ever did!—his chances would be done for—dished. He looked more saturnine than ever as he strode into the hall.

"Dinner will be served in the library, sir," said the footman. "Madame will be down in a moment."

A tete-a-tete by the fire! Worse and worse. He had been fortified by the thought of the butler and footman. An hour under their supercilious eyes would mean the most impersonal kind of small talk. But they'd hardly stand round the library.

However, the small table before the blazing logs looked very cosy and the imposing room was full of mellow light. Two Gothic chairs had been drawn to the table. They, at least, looked uncomfortable enough to avert sentiment. Not that he felt sentimental. He was holding down something a good deal stronger than sentiment, but he flattered himself that he looked as saturnine as Satan himself as he warmed his back at the fire. He hoped she had a cold in her head.

But she had not. As she entered, dressed in a white tea gown of chiffon and lace, she looked like a moonbeam, and as if no mortal indisposition had ever brushed her in passing. Instead of her pearls she wore a long thin necklace of diamonds that seemed to frost her gown. She was smiling and gracious and infinitely remote. The effect was as cold and steadying as his morning's icy shower.

He shook her hand firmly. "Sorry you've been seedy. Hope it didn't lay you up."

"Oh, no. I fancy I merely wanted an excuse to see Atlantic City. It was just a touch of bronchitis and fled at once."

"Like Atlantic City?"

"No. It is merely an interminable line of ostentatiously rich hotels on a board walk! None of the grace and dignity of Ostend—poor Ostend as it used to be. The digue was one of the most brilliant sights in Europe—but no doubt you have seen it," she added politely.

"Yes, I spent a week there once, but Bruges interested me more. I was very young at the time."

"You must have been! Don't you like to gamble? The Kursaal could be very exciting."

"Oh, yes, I like to gamble occasionally." (God! What banal talk!) "Gambling with life, however, is a long sight more exciting."

"Yes, is it not? Atlantic City might do you good. You do not look at all well."

"Never felt better in my life. A bit tired. Generally am at this time of the year. May take a run down to Florida."

"I should," she said politely. "Shall you stay long?"

"That depends." (Presence of servants superfluous!) "Are you fond of the sea?"

"I detest it—that boundless flat gray waste. A wild and rocky coast in a terrific storm, yes—but not that moving gray plain that comes in and falls down, comes in and falls down. It is the mountains I turn to when I can. I often long for the Austrian Alps. The Dolomites! The translucent green lakes like enormous emeralds, sparkling in the sun and set in straight white walls. A glimpse of pine forest beyond. The roar of an avalanche in the night."

"New York and Atlantic City must seem prosaic." He had never felt so polite. "I suppose you are eager to return?" (Why in hell don't those servants bring the dinner!)

"I have not seen the Alps since two years before the war. Some day—yes! Oh, yes! Shall we sit down?"

The two men entered with enormous dignity bearing plates of oysters as if offering the Holy Grail and the head of Saint John the Baptist on a charger. Impossible to associate class-consciousness with beings who looked as impersonal as fate, and would have regarded a fork out of alignment as a stain on their private 'scutcheon. They performed the rite of placing the oysters on the table and retired.

Madame Zattiany and Clavering adjusted themselves to the Gothic period. The oysters were succulent. They discussed the weather.

"This was a happy thought," he said. "It feels like a blizzard outside."

"The radiator in the dining-room is out of order."

"Oh!"

She was a woman of the world. Why in thunder didn't she make things easier? Had she asked him here merely because she was too bored to eat alone? He hated small talk. There was nothing he wanted less than the personalities of their previous conversations, but she might have entertained him. She was eating her oysters daintily and giving him the benefit of her dark brown eyelashes. Possibly she was merely in the mood for comfortable silences with an established friend. Well, he was not. Passion had subsided but his nerves jangled.

And inspiration came with the soup and some excellent sherry.

"By the way! Do you remember I asked you—at that last first-night—if you wouldn't like to see something of the Sophisticates?"

"The what?"

"Some of them still like to call themselves Intellectuals, but that title—Intelligentsia—is now claimed by every white collar in Europe who has turned Socialist or Revolutionist. He may have the intellect of a cabbage, but he wants a 'new order.' We still have a few pseudo-socialists among our busy young brains, but youth must have its ideals and they can originate nothing better. I thought I'd coin a new head-line that would embrace all of us."

"It is comprehensive! Well?"

"A friend of mine, Gora Dwight—at present 'foremost woman author of America'—is giving a party next Saturday night. I'd like enormously to take you."

"But I do not know Miss Dwight."

"She will call in due form. I assure you she understands the conventions. Of course, you need not see her, but she will leave a card. Not that it wouldn't be quite proper for me merely to take you."

"I should prefer that she called. Then—yes, I should like to go. Thank you."

The men arrived with the entree and departed with the soup plates.

Once more he had an inspiration.

"Poor old Dinwiddie's laid up with the gout."

"Really? He called a day or two after the dinner, and I enjoyed hearing him talk about the New York of his youth—and of Mary's. Unfortunately, I was out when he called again. But I have seen Mr. Osborne twice. These are his flowers. He also sent me several books."

"What were they?" growled Clavering. He remembered with dismay that he hadn't even sent her the usual tribute of flowers. There had been no place in his mind for the small amenities.

"A verboten romance called 'Jurgen.' Why verboten? Because it is too good for the American public? 'Main Street.' For me, it might as well have been written in Greek. 'The Domesday Book.' A great story. 'Seed of the Sun.' To enlighten me on the 'Japanese Question.' 'Cytherea.' Wonderful English. Why is it not also verboten?"

"Even censors must sleep. Is that all he sent you?"

"I am waiting for the chocolates—but possibly those are sent only by the very young men to the very young girls."

He glowered at his plate. "Do you like chocolates? I'll send some tomorrow. I've been very remiss, I'm afraid, but I've lost the habit."

"I detest chocolates."

Squabs and green peas displaced the entree. The burgundy was admirable.

Once more he was permitted to gaze at her eyelashes. He plunged desperately. "The name Marie doesn't suit you. If ever I know you well enough I shall call you Mary. It suits your vast repose. That is why ordinary Marys are nicknamed 'Mamie' or 'Mame.'"

"I was christened Mary." She raised her eyes. They were no longer wise and unfathomable. They looked as young as his own. Probably younger, he reflected. She looked appealing and girlish. Once more he longed to protect her.

"Do you want to call me Mary?" she asked, smiling.

"I hardly know whether I do or not. . . . There's something else I should tell you. I swore I'd never ask you any more questions—but I—well, Dinwiddie kept on the scent until he was laid up. One of the Thornhills verified your story in so far as he remembered that a cousin had settled in Virginia and then moved on to Paris. There his information stopped. . . . But . . . Dinwiddie met a Countess Loyos at dinner."

"Countess Loyos?"

"Yes—know her?"

"Mathilde Loyos? She is one of my oldest friends."

"No doubt you'd like to see her. I can get her address for you."

"There is nothing I want less than to see her. Nor any one else from Austria—at present."

"I think this could not have been your friend. She emphatically said—I am afraid of being horribly rude——"

"Ah!" For the first time since he had known her the color flooded her face; then it receded, leaving her more pale than white. "I understand."

"Of course, it may be another Countess Loyos. Like the Zattianys, it may be a large family."

"As it happens there is no other."

Silence. He swore to himself. He had no desire to skate within a mile of her confounded mysteries and now like a fool he had precipitated himself into their midst again. But if she wouldn't talk. . . .

"Suppose we talk of something else," he said hurriedly. "I assure you that I have deliberately suppressed all curiosity. I am only too thankful to know you on any terms."

"But you think I am in danger again?"

"Yes, I do. That is, if you wish to keep your identity a secret—for your own good reasons. Of course, no harm can come to you. I assume that you are not a political refugee—in danger of assassination!"

"I am not. What is Mr. Dinwiddie's inference?" She was looking at him eagerly.

"That you really are a friend of Countess Zattiany, but for some motive or other you are using her name instead of your own. That—that—you had your own reasons for escaping from Austria——"

"Escaping?"

"One was that you might have got into some political mess—restoration of Charles, or something——"

She laughed outright.

"The other was—well—that you are hiding from your husband."

"My husband is dead," she said emphatically.

He had never known that clouds, unless charged with thunder, were noisy. But he heard a black and ominous cloud gather itself and roll off his brain. Had that, after all, been . . . Nevertheless, he was annoyed to feel that he was smiling boyishly and that he probably looked as saturnine as he felt.

"Whatever your little comedy, it is quite within your rights to play it in your own way."

"It is not a comedy," she said grimly.

"Oh! Not tragedy?" he cried in alarm.

"No—not yet. Not yet! . . . I am beginning to wish that I had never come to America."

"Now I shall ask you why."

"And I shall not tell you. I have read your Miss Dwight's novel, by the way, and think it quite hideous."

"So do I. But that is the reason of its success." And the conversation meandered along the safe bypaths of American fiction through the ices and coffee.



XIX

They sat beside the fire in chairs that had never felt softer. He smoked a cigar, she cigarettes in a long topaz holder ornamented with a tiny crown in diamonds and the letter Z. She had given it to him to examine when he exclaimed at its beauty.

Z!

But he banished both curiosity and possible confirmation. He was replete and comfortable, and almost happy. The occasional silences were now merely agreeable. She lay back in her deep chair as relaxed as himself, but although she said little her aloofness had mysteriously departed. She looked companionable and serene. Only one narrow foot in its silvery slipper moved occasionally, and her white and beautiful hands, whose suggestion of ruthless power Clavering had appreciated apprehensively from the first, seemed, although they were quiet, subtly to lack the repose of her body.

Once while he was gazing into the fire he felt sure that she was examining his profile. He made no pretensions to handsomeness, but he rather prided himself on his nose, the long fine straight nose of the Claverings. His brow was also good, but although his hair was black, his eyes were blue, and he would have preferred to have black eyes, as he liked consistent types. Otherwise he was one of the "black Claverings." Northumbrian in origin and claiming descent from the Bretwaldes, overlords of Britain, the Claverings were almost as fair as their Anglian ancestors, but once in every two or three generations a completely dark member appeared, resurgence of the ancient Briton; sometimes associated with the high stature of the stronger Nordic race, occasionally—particularly among the women—almost squat. Clavering had been spared the small stature and the small too narrow head, but saving his steel blue eyes—trained to look keen and hard—he was as dark as any Mediterranean. His mouth was well-shaped and closely set, but capable of relaxation and looked as if it might once have been full and sensitive. It too had been severely trained. The long face was narrower than the long admirably proportioned head. It was by no means as disharmonic a type as Gora Dwight's; the blending of the races was far more subtle, and when making one of his brief visits to Europe he was generally taken for an Englishman, never for a member of the Latin peoples; except possibly in the north of France, where his type, among those Norman descendants of Norse and Danes, was not uncommon. Nevertheless, although his northern inheritance predominated, he was conscious at times of a certain affinity with the race that two thousand years ago had met and mingled with his own.

He turned his eyes swiftly and met hers. She colored faintly and dropped her lids. Had she lowered those broad lids over a warm glow?

"Now I know what you look like!" he exclaimed, and was surprised to find that his voice was not quite steady. "A Nordic princess."

"Oh! That is the very most charming compliment ever paid me."

"You look a pretty unadulterated type for this late date. I don't mean in color only, of course; there are millions of blondes."

"My mother was a brunette."

"Oh, yes, you are a case of atavism, no doubt. If I were as good a poet as one of my brother columnists I should have written a poem to you long since. I can see you sweeping northward over the steppes of Russia as the ice-caps retreated . . . reembodied on the Baltic coast or the shores of the North Sea . . . sleeping for ages in one of the Megaliths, to rise again a daughter of the Brythons, or of a Norse Viking . . . west into Anglia to appear once more as a Priestess of the Druids chaunting in a sacred grove . . . or as Boadicea—who knows! But no prose can regenerate that shadowy time. I see it—prehistory—as a swaying mass of ghostly multitudes, but always pressing on—on . . . as we shall appear, no doubt, ten thousand years hence if all histories are destroyed—as no doubt they will be. If I were an epic poet I might possibly find words and rhythm to fit that white vision, but it is wholly beyond the practical vocabulary and mental make-up of a newspaper man of the twentieth century. Some of us write very good poetry indeed, but it is not precisely inspired, and it certainly is not epic. One would have to retire to a cave like Buddha and fast."