What was it she demanded in love, that she had sought so ardently and ever missed? Could he give it to her? Was she merely glamored once more, caught up again in the delusions of youth, with her revivified brain and reawakened senses, and this time only because the man was of a type novel in her cognizance of men? Useless to plead the urge of the race in her case. . . . Nevertheless, many women, denied the power of reproduction fell as mistakenly in love as the most fertile of their sisters. But hardly a woman of Mary Zattiany's exhaustive experience! She certainly should know her own mind. Her instincts by this time must be compounded of technical knowledge, not the groping inherited flashes playing about the shallow soil of youth. . . . If her instincts had centred on him there must be some deeper meaning than passion or even intellectual homology. After all, their conversations, if vital, had been few in number.

Perhaps she had found, with her mind's trained antennae, some one of those hidden layers of personality which she alone could reveal to himself. What was it? She wanted far more than love-making and mental correspondence. What was it? He wished he knew. Tenderness? He could give her that in full measure. Sentiment? He was no sentimentalist, but he believed that he possessed the finer quality. Fidelity? That was not worth consideration. Appreciation of the deepest and best in her, sympathetic understanding of all her mistakes and of all that she had suffered? She knew the answer as well as he did. The ability to meet her in many moods, never to weary her with monotony? He was a man of many moods himself. What had saved him from early matrimony was a certain monotony in women, the cleverest of them.

But there must be something beyond, some subtle spiritual demand, developed throughout nearly twice as many years as he had dwelt on earth; born not only of an aspiring soul and terrible disenchantments, but of a wisdom that only years of deep and living experience, no mere intelligence, however brilliant, could hope to assemble. He was thirty-four. There was no possible question that at fifty-eight, if he lived sanely, and his intellectual faculties had progressed unimpaired, he would look back upon thirty-four as the nonage of life—when the future was a misty abyss of wisdom whose brink he had barely trod. She herself was an abyss of wisdom. How in God's name could he ever cross it? Her body might be young again, but never her mind. Never her mind! And then he had a flash of insight. Perhaps he alone could rejuvenate that mind.

Certainly he could make her forget. Men and women would be aged at thirty, but for this beneficent gift of forgetting. . . . He could make the present vivid enough.

He explored every nook of those personalities of his, determined to discover if he felt any sense of inferiority to this woman who knew so much more, had lived and thought and felt so much more, than himself—whom he still visioned on a plane above and apart. No woman was ever more erudite in the most brilliant and informing declensions of life, whatever the disenchantments, and for thirty years she had known in varying degrees of intimacy the ablest and most distinguished men in Europe. She had been at no pains to conceal her opinion of their intellectual superiority over American men. . . .

He concluded dispassionately that he never could feel inferior to any woman. Women might arrest the attention of the world with their talents, change laws and wring a better deal out of life than man had accorded them in the past, but whatever their gifts and whatever their achievements they always had been and always would be, through their physical disabilities, their lack of ratiocination, of constructive ability on the grand scale, the inferiors of men. The rare exceptions but proved the rule, and no doubt they had been cast in one mould and finished in another.

In sheer masculine arrogance he was more than her match. Moreover, there were other ways of keeping a woman subject.

Did he love her? Comprehensively and utterly? Clear thinking fled with the last of his doubts. . . . And when a man detaches himself from the gross material surface of life and wings to the realm of the imagination, where he glimpses immortality, what matter the penalty? Any penalty? Few had the thrice blessed opportunity. If he were one of the chosen, the very demi-gods, jeering at mortals, would hate him.

And then abruptly he fell asleep.



XXXI

He went direct from the office that evening to Mrs. Oglethorpe's house in Gramercy Park. During the morning he had received the following note from her, and he had puzzled over it at intervals ever since.

"Dear Lee:

"Will you dine alone with an old woman tonight—a rather bewildered and upset old woman? I suppose to the young nothing is too new and strange for readjustment, but I have hardly known where I am these last few days. You are the only friend I care to talk to on the subject, for you always understand. I am probably older than your mother and I look old enough to be your grandmother, but you are the only person living with whom I ever feel inclined to lay aside all reserve. Old men are fossils and young men regard me as an ancient wreck preserved by family traditions. As for women I hate them and always did. Do come and dine with a lonely puzzled old woman unless you have an engagement impossible to break. Don't bother to dress.

"Your affectionate old friend, "JANE OGLETHORPE."

"What's up?" Clavering had thought as he finished it. "Mary or Janet?"

It was an extraordinary letter to receive from Mrs. Oglethorpe, the most fearsome old woman in New York. To Clavering she had always shown the softer side of her nature and he knew her perhaps better, or at all events more intimately, than any of her old friends, for she had not treated him as a negligible junior even when he arrived in New York at the tender age of twenty-two. His ingenuous precocity had amused her and she had discovered a keen interest in the newspaper world of whose existence she had hardly been aware; no interviewer had ever dared approach her; and as he grew older, developing rapidly and more and more unlike her sons and her sons' friends, they had fallen into an easy pallish intimacy, were frank to rudeness, quarrelled furiously, but fed each other's wisdom and were deeply attached. During the war she had knitted him enough socks and sweaters to supply half his regiment; and when he had left the hospital after a serious attack of influenza it had been for the house in Gramercy Park, where he could have remained indefinitely had he wished.

But in all the years of their intimacy never before had she "broken," given a hint that she felt the long generation between them. He found her more interesting in talk than any girl, except when he was briefly in love, and her absence of vanity, her contempt for sentiment in any of its forms, filled him with a blessed sense of security as he spent hours stretched out on the sofa in her upstairs sitting-room, smoking and discussing the universe. She was not an intellectual woman, but she was sharp and shrewd, a monument of common sense and worldly wisdom. It would be as easy to hoodwink her as the disembodied Minerva, and it was doubtful if any one made even a tentative attempt. Clavering wondered which of those inner secret personalities was to be revealed tonight.

As he stood in the drawing-room waiting for her to come down he examined for the first time in many years the full-length picture of her painted shortly before her marriage to James Oglethorpe. She was even taller than Mary Zattiany and in the portrait her waist was round and disconcertingly small to the modern therapeutic eye. But the whole effect of the figure was superb and dashing, the poise of the head was almost defiant, and the hands were long, slender, and very white against the crimson satin of her gown. She looked as if about to lead a charge of cavalry, although, oddly enough, her full sensuous mouth with its slightly protruding lower lip was pouting. Beautiful she had never been; the large bony structure of her face was too uncoverable, her eyes too sharp and sardonic; but handsome certainly, and, no doubt, for many years after she had stood for this portrait in the full insolence of her young womanhood. She retained not a trace of that handsomeness today. Her hands were skinny, large-veined, discolored by moth patches, and her large aquiline nose rose from her sunken cheeks like the beak of an old eagle—an indomitable old eagle. Many women of sixty-eight had worn far better, but looks need care, spurred by vanity, and she had a profound contempt for both. No doubt if she had made a few of the well-known feminine concessions would have looked at least ten years younger than her age, for she had never had a day's illness: eight lyings-in were not, in her case, to be counted as exceptions. No doubt, thought Clavering, as he turned to greet her, she had thought it quite enough to be imposing.

She certainly looked imposing tonight in spite of her old-fashioned corsets and her iron-gray hair arranged in flat rolls and puffs on the precise top of her head, for although flesh had accumulated lumpily on her back, her shoulders were still unbowed, her head as haughtily poised as in her youth, and the long black velvet gown with yellow old point about the square neck (the neck itself covered, like the throat, with net), and falling over her hands, became her style if not the times.

"Well, Lee!" she said drily. "I suppose when you got my note you thought I had gone bug-house, as my fastidious granddaughter Janet would express it. But that is the way I felt and that is the way I feel at the present moment."

"Dear Lady Jane! Whatever it is, here I am to command, as you see. There is no engagement I wouldn't have broken——"

"You are a perfect dear, and if I were forty years younger I should marry you. However, we'll come to that later. I want to talk to you about that damnable little Janet first—we'll have to go in now."

When they were seated at a small table at one end of the immense dining-room she turned to the butler and said sharply:

"Get out, Hawkins, and stay out except when we can't get on without you." And Hawkins, whom a cataclysm would not have ruffled after forty-five years in Mrs. Oglethorpe's service, vanished.

"Jim said he had a talk with you about Janet, and that you advised him to spank her," she said. "Well, he did."

"What?" Clavering gave a delighted grin. "I never believed he'd do it."

"Nor I. Thought his will had grown as flabby as his body. But when she stood up to him and with a cool insolence, which she may or may not have inherited from me, or which may be merely part and parcel of the new manner, and flung in his face a good deal more than he knew already, and asked him what he was going to do about it, he turned her over his knee and took a hair-brush to her."

"It must have been a tussle. I suppose she kicked and scratched?"

"She was so astonished that at first she merely ejaculated: 'Oh, by Jimminy!' Then she fought to get away and when she found she couldn't she began to blubber, exactly as she did when she was not so very much younger and was spanked about once a day. That hurt his feelings, for he's as soft as mush, and he let her go; but he locked her up in her room and there she stays until she promises to behave herself as girls did in his time. I'm afraid it won't work. She hasn't promised yet, but merely hisses at him through the keyhole. D'you understand this new breed? I'm afraid none of the rest of us do."

"I can't say I've been interested enough to try. Janet informed me that they were going the pace because they couldn't hold the men any other way. But I fancy it's merely a part of the general unrest which is the usual aftermath of war. This was a very long war, and the young seem to have made up their minds that the old who permitted it are bunglers and criminals and idiots and that it is up to them to demonstrate their contempt."

"And what good do they think that will do them?" Mrs. Oglethorpe's face and inflection betrayed no sympathy with the Younger Generation.

"You don't suppose they worry their little heads with analysis, do you? Somebody started the idea and the rest followed like sheep. No doubt it had its real origin in the young men who did the fighting and saw their comrades do the dying, and all the kudus carried off by the old men who ran no risks. They are very bitter. And women generally take their cues from men, little as they suspect it. However, whatever the cause, here it is, and what to do about it I've no more idea than you; but I should think it would be a good idea for Jim to take her abroad for a year."

"I don't see Jim giving up his clubs and sports, and tagging round the world after a flapper. He never took himself very seriously as a parent . . . still, he is really alarmed. . . . Are you going to marry Marian Lawrence?"

"Do you think I'd engage myself to any one without telling you first of all?"

"Better not. Are you in love with her?"

"No."

"I'm told you were devoted to her at one time. That was one of the times when I saw little or nothing of you."

"I've been devoted to quite a number of girls, first and last, but there's really been nothing in it on either side. I know what you're driving at. Shoot."

"Yes, Jim said he told you. Well, I've changed my mind. Janet's a little fool, perhaps worse. Not half good enough for you and would devil the life out of you before you got rid of her in self-defence. Let her hoe her own row. How about that writing person, Gora Dwight, you and Din are always talking about?"

"Never been the ghost of a flirtation. She's all intellect and ambition. I enjoy going there for I'm almost as much at home with her as I am with you."

"Ha! Harmless. I hope she's as flattered as I am. There remains Anne Goodrich. She's handsome, true to her traditions in every way—Marian Lawrence is a hussy unless I'm mistaken and I usually am not—she has talent and she has cultivated her mind. She will have a fortune and would make an admirable wife in every way for an ambitious and gifted man. More pliable than Marian, too. You're as tyrannical and conceited as all your sex and would never get along with any woman who wasn't clever enough to pretend to be submissive while twisting you round her little finger. I rather favor Anne."

Clavering was beginning to feel uneasy. What was she leading up to? Who next? But he replied with a humorous smile:

"Dearest Lady Jane! Why are you suddenly determined to marry me off? Are you anxious to get rid of me? Marriage plays the very devil with friendships."

"Only for a year or so. And I really think it is time you were settling yourself. To tell you the truth I worry about you a good deal. You're a sentimental boy at heart and chivalrous and impressionable, although I know you think you're a seasoned old rounder. Men are children, the cleverest of them, in a scheming woman's hands."

"But I don't know any scheming women and I'm really not as irresistible as you seem to think. Besides, I assure you, I have fairly keen intuitions and should run from any unprincipled female who thought it worth while to cast her nets in my direction."

"Intuitions be damned. They haven't a chance against beauty and finesse. Don't men as clever as yourself make fools of themselves over the wrong woman every day in the week? The cleverer a man is the less chance he has, for there's that much more to play on by a cleverer woman. It would be just like you to fall in love with a woman older than yourself and marry her——"

"For God's sake, Jane, cut out my fascinating self! It's a subject that bores me to tears. Fire away about Janet. How long's she been shut up? What will Jim do next? I'll do my best to persuade him to take her round the world. He'd enjoy it himself for there are clubs in every port and some kind of sport. I'll look him up tomorrow."

Mrs. Oglethorpe gave him a sharp look but surrendered. When he shouted "Jane" at her in precisely the same tone as he often exploded "Jim" to her son, she found herself suddenly in a mood to deny him nothing.



XXXII

They went up to her sitting-room to spend the rest of the evening. It was a large high room overlooking the park and furnished in massive walnut and blood-red brocade: a room as old-fashioned and ugly as its mistress but comfortable withal. On a table in one corner was an immense family Bible, very old, and recording the births, marriages, and deaths of the Van den Poeles from the time they began their American adventures in the seventeenth century. On another small table in another corner was a pile of albums, the lowest containing the first presentments of Mrs. Oglethorpe's family after the invention of calotype photography. These albums recorded fashion in all its stages from 1841 down to the sport suit, exposed legs and rolled stockings of Janet Oglethorpe; a photograph her grandmother had sworn at but admitted as a curiosity.

One of the albums was devoted to the friends of Mrs. Oglethorpe's youth, and Mary Ogden occupied the place of honor. Clavering had once derived much amusement looking over these old albums and listening to Mrs. Oglethorpe's running and often sarcastic comment; but although he had recalled to mind this photograph the night Mr. Dinwiddie had been so perturbed by the stranger's resemblance to the flame of his youth, he had, himself, been so little interested in Mary Ogden that it had not occurred to him to disinter that old photograph of the eighties and examine it in detail. He turned his back squarely on it tonight, although he had a misgiving that it was not Janet who had inspired Mrs. Oglethorpe's singular note.

On one wall was a group of daguerreotypes, hideous but rare and valuable. An oil painting of James Oglethorpe, long dead, hung over the fireplace; an amiable looking gentleman with long side-whiskers sprouting out of plump cheeks, a florid complexion, and the expression of a New Yorker who never shirked his civic obligations, his chairmanships of benevolent institutions, nor his port. Opposite was another oil painting of young James taken at the age of twelve, wearing a sailor suit and the surly expression of an active boy detained within walls while other boys were shouting in the park. Beside it was a water color of Janet at the age of two, even then startlingly like her grandmother. She had been Mrs. Oglethorpe's favorite descendant until the resemblance had become too accentuated by modern divagations.

Clavering did not extend himself on the sofa tonight but drew a leather chair (built for Mr. Oglethorpe) to the small coal grate, which inadequately warmed the large room. Mrs. Oglethorpe, like many women of her generation, never indulged her backbone save in bed, and she seated herself in her own massive upright chair not too close to the fire. She had made a concession to time in the rest of the house, which was lighted by electricity, but the gas remained in her own suite, and the room was lit by faint yellow flames struggling through the ground-glass globes of four-side brackets. The light from the coals was stronger, and as it fell on her bony austere old face with its projecting beak, Clavering reflected that she needed only a broomstick. He really loved her, but a trained faculty works as impersonally as a camera.

He smoked in silence and Mrs. Oglethorpe stared into the fire. She, too, was fond of her cigar, but tonight she had shaken her head as Hawkins had offered the box, after passing the coffee. Her face no longer looked sardonic, but relaxed and sad. Clavering regarded her with uneasy sympathy. Would it be possible to divert her mind?

"Lady Jane," he began.

"I wish you would call me Jane tonight. I wouldn't feel so intolerably old."

"Of course I'll call you Jane, but you'll never be old. What skeleton have you been exhuming?" He was in for it and might as well give her a lead.

"It's Mary Ogden," she said abruptly and harshly.

"Oh—I wondered how you felt about it. You certainly have been splendid——"

"What else could I do? She was the most intimate friend of my youth, the only woman I ever had any real affection for. I had already seen her and recognized her. I suppose she has told you that I went there and that she treated me like an intruding stranger. But I knew she must have some good reason for it—possibly that she was here on some secret political mission and had sworn to preserve her incognito. I knew she had been mixed up in politics more than once. I thought I was going mad when I saw her, but I never suspected the truth. The light was dim and I took for granted that some one of those beauty experts had made a mask for her, or ripped her skin off—I hardly knew what to think, so I concluded not to think about it at all, and succeeded fairly well in dismissing it from my mind. I was deeply hurt at her lack of confidence in me, but I dismissed that, too. After all it was her right. I do as I choose, why shouldn't she? And I remembered that she always did."

Here Clavering stirred uneasily.

"When she came to me here last Tuesday and told me the whole truth I felt as if I were listening to a new chapter out of the Bible, but on the whole I was rather pleased than otherwise. I had never been jealous of her when we were young, for I was married before she came out, and she was so lovely to look at that I was rather grateful to her than otherwise. After her marriage I used to meet her every few years in Europe up to some three or four years before the outbreak of the war, and it often made me feel melancholy as I saw her beauty going . . . until there was nothing left but her style and her hair. But nothing else was to be expected. Time is a brute to all women. . . . So, while she sat here in this room so radiantly beautiful and so exquisitely and becomingly dressed, and leaning toward me with that old pleading expression I remembered so well; when she wanted something and knew exactly how to go to work to get it; and looking not a day over thirty—well, while she was here I felt young again myself and I loved her as much as ever and felt it a privilege to look at her. I arranged a luncheon promptly to meet several of her old friends and put a stop to the clacking that was going on—I had been called up eight times that morning. . . . I could have boxed your ears, but of course it was a natural enough thing to do, and you had no suspicion. . . . Well, as soon as she had gone I wrote to twelve women, giving them a bare sketch of the truth, and sent the notes off in the motor. And then—I went and looked at myself in the glass."

She paused, and Clavering rose involuntarily and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Never mind, Jane," he said awkwardly. "What does it matter? You are you and there's only one of the kind. After all it's only one more miracle of Science. You could do it yourself if you liked."

"I? Ha! With twenty-three grandchildren. I may be a fool but I'm not a damn fool, as James used to say. What good would it do me to look forty? I had some looks left at that age but with no use for them as women go. I'd have less now. But Mary was always lucky—a daughter of the gods. It's just like her damned luck to have that discovery made in her time and while she is still young enough to profit by it, besides being as free as when she was Mary Ogden. Now, God knows what devilment she'll be up to. What she wants she'll have and the devil take the consequences." She patted his hand. "Go and sit down, Lee. I've a good deal more to say."

Clavering returned to his seat with no sense of the old chair's comfort, and she went on in a moment.

"The unfairness of it as I looked at that old witch in the glass that had reflected my magnificent youth, seemed to me unendurable. I had lived a virtuous and upright life. I knew damned well she hadn't. I had done my duty by the race and my own and my husband's people, and I had brought up my sons to be honorable and self-respecting men, whatever their failings, and my daughters in the best traditions of American womanhood. They are model wives and mothers, and they have made no weak-kneed concessions to these degenerate times. They bore me but I'd rather they did that than disgrace me. Mary never had even one child, although her husband must have wanted an heir. I have lived a life of duty—duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the war. But noblesse oblige. What else could she do? And now, she'll be at it again. She'll have the pick of our young men—I don't know whether it's all tragic or grotesque. She'll waste no time on those men who loved her in her youth—small blame to her. Who wants to coddle old men? They've all got something the matter with 'em. . . . But she'll have love—love—if not here—and thank God, she's not remaining long—then elsewhere and wherever she chooses. Love! I too once took a fierce delight in making men love me. It seems a thousand years ago. What if I should try to make a man fall in love with me today? I'd be rushed off by my terrified family to a padded cell."

"Well—Jane——"

"Don't 'well Jane' me! You'd jump out of the window if I suddenly began to make eyes at you. I could rely on your manners. You wouldn't laugh until you struck the grass and then you'd be arrested for disturbing the peace. Well—don't worry. I'm not an old ass. But I'm a terribly bewildered old woman. It seems to me there has been a crashing in the air ever since she sat in that chair. . . . Growing old always seemed to me a natural process that no arts or dodges could interrupt, and any attempt to arrest the processes of nature was an irreverent gesture in the face of Almighty God. It was immoral and irreverent, and above all it showed a lack of humor and of sound common sense. The world, my candid grandchild tells me, laughs at the women of my generation for their old-fashioned 'cut.' But we have our code and we have the courage to live up to it. That is one reason, perhaps, why growing old has never meant anything to me but reading-spectacles, two false teeth, and weak ankles. It had seemed to me that my life had been pretty full—I never had much imagination—what with being as good a wife as ever lived—although James was a pompous bore if there ever was one—bringing eight children into the world and not making a failure of one of them, never neglecting my charities or my social duties or my establishments. As I have grown older I have often reflected upon a life well-spent, and looked forward to dying when my time came with no qualms whatever, particularly as there was precious little left for me to do except give parties for my grandchildren and blow them up occasionally. I never labored under the delusion that I had an angelic disposition or a perfect character, but I had always had, and maintained, certain standards; and, according to my lights, it seemed to me that when I arrived at the foot of the throne the Lord would say to me 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.' The only thing I ever regretted was that I wasn't a man."

She paused and then went on in a voice that grew more raucous every moment. "That was later. It's a long time since I've admitted even to myself that there was a period—after my husband's death—when I hated growing old with the best of them. I was fifty and I found myself with complete liberty for the first time in my life; for the elder children were all married, and the younger in Europe at school. I had already begun to look upon myself as an old woman. . . . But I soon made the terrible discovery that the heart never grows old. I fell in love four times. They were all years younger than myself and I'd have opened one of my veins before I'd have let them find it out. Even then I had as little use for old men as old men have for old women. Whatever it may be in men, it's the young heart in women. I had no illusions. Fifty is fifty. My complexion was gone, my stomach high, and I had the face of an old war horse. But—and here is the damned trick that nature plays on us—I hoped—hoped—I dreamed—and as ardently as I ever had dreamed in my youth, when I was on the look-out for the perfect knight and before I compromised on James Oglethorpe, who was handsome before he grew those whiskers and got fat—yes, as ardently as in my youth I dreamed that these clever intelligent men would look through the old husk and see only the young heart and the wise brain—I knew that I could give them more than many a younger woman. But if beauty is only skin deep the skin is all any man wants, the best of 'em. They treated me with the most impeccable respect—for the first time in my life I hated the word—and liked my society because I was an amusing caustic old woman. Of course they drifted off, either to marry, or because I terrified them with my sharp tongue: when I loved them most and felt as if I had poison in my veins. Well, I saved my pride, at all events.

"By the time you came along I had sworn at myself once for all as an old fool, and, in any case, I would hardly have been equal to falling in love with a brat of twenty-two."

She seized the stick that always rested against her chair and thumped the floor with it. "Nevertheless," she exclaimed with savage contempt, "my heart is as young today as Mary Ogden's. That is the appalling discovery I have made this week. I'd give my immortal soul to be thirty again—or look it. Why in heaven's name did nature play us this appalling dirty trick?"

"But Jane!" He felt like tearing his hair. What was Mary Zattiany's tragedy to this? Banalities were the only refuge. "Remember that at thirty you were in love with your husband and bent on having a family——"

"I meant thirty and all I know now. . . . I'm not so damn sure I'd have tried to make myself think I was in love with James—who had about as much imagination as a grasshopper and the most infernal mannerisms. I'd have found out what love and life meant, that's what! And when I did I'd have sent codes and traditions to the devil."

"Oh, no, you would not. If you'd had it in you you'd have done it, anyhow. All women of your day were not virtuous—not by a long sight. I'll admit that your best possibilities have been wasted; I've always thought that. You have a terrific personality and if you were at your maturity in this traditionless era you'd be a great national figure, not a mere social power. But nature in a fit of spite launched you too soon and the cast-iron traditions were too strong for you. It was the epoch of the submerged woman."

"Mary Ogden was brought up in those same cast-iron traditions."

"Yes, but Madame Zattiany belongs to a class of women that derive less from immediate ancestors than from a legendary race of sirens—not so merely legendary, perhaps, as we think. Convention is only a flexible harness for such women and plays no part whatever in their secret lives."

"You're in love with Mary."

"Don't come back to me. I won't have it. For the moment I don't feel as if I had an atom of personality left, I'm so utterly absorbed in you; and I'd give my immortal soul to help you."

"Yes, I know that. I wouldn't be turning myself inside out if I didn't. I've never talked to a living soul as I've talked to you tonight and I never shall again."

She stared at him for a moment, and then she burst into a loud laugh. It was awe-inspiring, that laugh. Lucifer in hell, holding his sides at the futilities of mankind, could not have surpassed it. "What a mess! What a mess! Life! Begins nowhere, ends nowhere." She went on muttering to herself, and then, abruptly, she broke into the sarcastic speech which her friends knew best.

"Lord, Lee, I wish you could have been behind a screen at that luncheon. Thirteen old tombstones in feathers and net collars—seven or eight of 'em, anyhow—colonial profiles and lorgnettes, and all looking as if they'd been hit in the stomach. I at one end of the table looking like the Witch of Endor, Mary at the other looking like one of our granddaughters and trying to be animated and intimate. I forgot my own tragedy and haw-hawed three times. She looked almost apologetic when she called us by our first names, especially when she used the diminutive. Polly Vane, who's got a head like a billiard ball and has to wear a wig for decency's sake, drew herself up twice and then relaxed with a sickly grin. . . . All the same I don't think Mary felt any more comfortable or liked it much better than the rest of us. Too much like reading your own epitaph on a tombstone. I thought I saw her squirm."

"How did they take it individually?" Clavering hoped she was finally diverted. "Were they jealous and resentful?"

"Some. Elinor Goodrich had always been too besottedly fond of her to mind. Others, who had been merely admirers and liked her, were—well, it's too much to say they were enchanted to see Mary looking not a day over thirty, but they were able to endure it. Isabel Lawrence thought it downright immoral, and Polly Vane looked as if she had fallen into a stinking morass and only refrained from holding her nose out of consideration for her hostess. I think she feels that Mary's return is an insult to New York. Lily Tracy was painfully excited. No doubt she'll begin collecting for the Vienna poor at once and finding it necessary to go over and distribute the funds in person. Mary lost no time getting in her fine work for Vienna relief."

"But they'll all stand by her?"

"Oh, yes, she's Mary Ogden. We'd be as likely to desert New York itself because we didn't like the mayor. And she'll need us. It's the young women she'll have to look out for. My God! How they'll hate her. As for Anne Goodrich and Marian Lawrence——"

Clavering sprang to his feet. "Who's that? Jim?"

A man was running up the stairs.

"Janet," said Mrs. Oglethorpe grimly. "She's out."



XXXIII

"Don't be a flat tyre, Don't be a dumb-bell; Run from the dumb ducks, Run from the plumbers. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Oglethorpe pounded on the door with his stick. There was a sudden hush in the room, then a wild scurry and a slamming door. He rattled the knob and, to his surprise, for he had assumed that these wild parties of his young friends were soundly barricaded, the door opened.

There were only four young men standing about a table covered with the remains of a chafing dish supper and many champagne bottles, but an excited whispering came through the partition. Young Farren was leaning against the table, his large moon-face pallid with fright. As he recognized Oglethorpe and Clavering fright was wiped out by astonishment and relief.

"Thought you were the police," he muttered. "Though they've got no business here——"

"I've come for Janet. Go into that room and bring her out at once."

"Janet ain't here. Haven't seen Janet for a week. Tried to get her on the 'phone early this afternoon and couldn't——"

"If you don't go into that room and fetch her, I will." As he started for the inner door, Farren with drunken dignity opposed his broad bulk.

"Now, Mr. Oglethorpe, you wouldn't do that. Ladies in there. Chorus girls——"

"That's a lie. Stand aside."

Farren, who was very young and very drunk, but who had a rudimentary sense of responsibility where girls of his own class were concerned, burst into tears. "You wouldn't, Mr. Oglethorpe! I swear to God Janet's not there. But—but—some of her friends are. They wouldn't want you to see them." His mood changed to righteous indignation. "What right you got breaking into a gentleman's rooms like a damned policeman? It's an outrage and if I had a gun I'd shoot you. I'd—I'd——" And then he collapsed on a chair and was very sick.

Oglethorpe turned to Clavering, who had thought it best to remain in the hall and watch other exits. "Just stay there, will you?" He turned to the three gaping youngsters. "You dare make a move and I'll knock your heads together. Just remember that you're drunk and I'm sober."

He went into the next room, and immediately saw several forms under the bed. He reached down and jerked them out by their legs. They rolled over, covering their faces and sobbing with fright. Emancipated as they were and disdainful of pre-war parents, when it came to late parties in a bachelor's rooms they exercised strategy to slip out, not defiance.

"Oh, Mr. Oglethorpe," gasped one convulsively. "Don't tell on us, p-l-e-a-s-e."

"I've no intention of telling on you. You can go to the devil in your own way for all I care. I'm after Janet——"

"She's not here——"

"That's what I'm going to find out." He opened the door of a wardrobe and another girl tumbled into his arms, shrieked, and flung herself face downward on the bed. But it was not Janet. He investigated every corner of the apartment and then returned to Clavering, slamming the door behind him.

"She's not there, Lee," he said, leaning heavily against the wall. "Where in God's name is she? I don't know where to look next. This is her particular gang. She has no other intimates that I know of. But what do I know about her, anyway?"

"You're sure she isn't hiding anywhere at home?"

"Searched the house from top to bottom."

"I suppose it isn't likely that she's gone to any of her aunts."

"Good Lord, no. She'd take a chance on mother, but never with any of the rest of the family, and she's got no money. I saw to that. D'you suppose she's roaming the streets?"

"Well, she can't roam long; legs will give out. Perhaps she's home by now or at Mrs. Oglethorpe's. Better telephone."

They went out and found a public telephone. Janet had not been seen nor heard from.

"You don't think it's going to be another Dorothy Arnold case?" gasped Oglethorpe, who seemed completely unnerved.

"Good Heavens no, Jim! And she's able to take care of herself. Nobody better. She'll give you a scare and then turn up—with her thumb at her nose, likely. Better come up to my rooms and have a drink."

"Orright. I can't go home and I don't want to be alone anywhere. I'd go out of my senses. Anything might happen to her, and I shan't call in the police until the last minute. Filthy scandal."

"Police? Certainly not. And as Janet is cold sober, be sure she'll come to no harm."

A few moments later they were in the lift ascending to Clavering's rooms. "Hullo!" he said, as he opened the door of his little hall. "The fool maid has left the light on," and, as they entered the living-room, "what the devil—" Cigarette smoke hung in the air.



There was a wild shriek from a corner of the room, a slim girl leapt across the intervening space like a panther, and flinging herself upon Oglethorpe, beat his chest with her fists.

"You damned old plumber, you old dumb-duck!" shrieked his little daughter. "What did you come here and spoil everything for? He'd have had to marry me tomorrow if you'd minded your own business. I'll claw your eyes out." But her hands were imprisoned in her father's hard fists, and she turned and spat at the petrified Clavering. "I hate you! I hate you! But I'm going to marry you all the same. One way or another I'll get you. I meant to wait awhile; for I hadn't had fun enough yet, and I'd have precious little with you, you old flat tyre. But when I heard that old Zattiany woman'd got hold of you—and then locked up and not able to do a thing—I thought I'd go mad. I dropped my diamond bracelet out of the window and one of the servants let me out—I won't tell which. You've been seen coming out of her house at all hours, but she's a thousand years old and nobody cares what she does, but I intended to rouse this whole house and I'd have been so compromised you'd have had to marry me. You're a gentleman if you are a damned old left-over, and you're a friend of granny's and dad's. I'd have had you tied up so tight you'd have toddled straight down to the City Hall."

Clavering stared at her, wondering how women felt when they were going to have hysterics. What a night! And this girl's resemblance to her grandmother was uncanny. He could see the Jane Oglethorpe of the portrait in just such a tantrum. And he had thought he knew both of them. He wanted to burst into wild laughter, but the girl was tragic in spite of her silly plot and he merely continued to regard her stonily.

"How did you get in?" he asked. "That's not easy in this house."

"I just got in the lift and told the boy I was your sister just arrived from the South and he let me in with the pass key. He took me for sixteen and said that as you weren't one for chickens he'd chance it."

"He'll get the sack in the morning."

"I don't care what happens to him." Suddenly she burst into tears, her face working like a baby's, and flung herself into her father's arms.

"Make him marry me, daddy. Make him! I want him. I want him."

Oglethorpe put his arms about her, but his sympathies were equally divided, and he understood men far better than he did young girls. "You wouldn't want to marry a man who doesn't love you," he said soothingly. "Where's your pride?"

"Who cares a damn about pride? I want him and that's all there is to it." She whirled round again. "Do you think you're in love with that rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if she's a day? She's hypnotized you, that's what. It isn't natural. It isn't. It isn't."

"I certainly shall marry Madame Zattiany if she will have me."

"O-h-h." Tears dried. She showed her teeth like a treed cat. Her eyes blazed again and she would have precipitated herself upon him, but her father held her fast. "Oh! Oh! Oh! It can't be. It can't be. It's as unnatural as if you married granny. It isn't fair. How dare she come here with her whitewash and sneak young girls' lovers away from them?"

"Really, Janet."

"Oh, I know, you thought you didn't care for me, but you always did, and I'd have got you in time. I knew there was no chance for Marian and Anne; they're old maids, and I'm young—young. If I'd cut out the fun and concentrated on you I'd have got you. I wish I had! I wish I had! But you were such an old flat tyre I thought you were safe."

"What in heaven's name makes you think you're in love with me?" exploded Clavering. "Your opinion of me is anything but complimentary, and I'm everything your chosen companions are not. You don't want me any more than I want you. You've simply been playing some fool game with yourself——"

"It's not! It's not! It's the real thing. I've been in love with you since I was six. Ask daddy. Daddy, didn't I always say I was going to marry him?"

"Yes, when you were little more of a baby than you are now. Can't you imagine how ashamed you'll be of such an undignified performance as this?"

"I ashamed? Not much. I always intend to do just as I please and damn the consequences."

"A fine wife you'd make for Lee or any other man."

"I'd make him the best wife in the world. I'd do everything he told me. No, I wouldn't. Yes, I would." Sheer femaleness and the spirit of the age seesawed inconclusively. "Anyhow, I'd make you happy, because I'd be happy myself," she added naively. "Much happier than your grand-mother——"

"Perhaps you will oblige me by making no further allusion to Madame Zattiany."

"No, I won't. And the first time I see her when there's a lot of people round I'll tell her just what she is to her face."

"If you dare!" Clavering advanced threateningly and she swung herself behind her father, who, however, took her firmly by the arm and marched her to the door.

"Enough of this," he said. "You come home and pack your trunk and tomorrow we take the first steamer out of New York. If there isn't one, we'll take the train for Canada——"

"I won't go."

"It's either that or a sanitarium for neurotics. I'll have you strapped down and carried there in an ambulance. You may take your choice. Good night, Lee. Forget it, if you can."

As Clavering slammed the door behind them he envied men who could tear their hair. He had wanted to spend a long evening alone thinking of Mary Zattiany, dreaming of those vital hours before him, and he had been treated to a double nightmare. For the moment he hated everything in petticoats that walked, and he felt like taking a steamer to the ends of the earth himself. But he was more worn out than he knew and was sound asleep fifteen minutes later.



XXXIV

Janet had her revenge. Words have a terrible power. And Janet's vocabulary might be as primitive as lightning, but unlike lightning it never failed to strike.

"That old Zattiany woman." "She's a thousand years old and nobody cares what she does." "That rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if she's a day." "Much happier than your grandmother." The phrases flashed into his mind when he awoke and echoed in his ears all day. No doubt similar phrases, less crude, but equally scorching, were being tossed from one end of New York Society to the other. If Janet knew of his devotion to Madame Zattiany others must, for it could only have come to her on the wings of gossip. He was being ridiculed by people who grasped nothing beyond the fact that the woman was fifty-eight and the man thirty-four. Of course it would be but a nine days' wonder and like all other social phenomena grow too stale for comment, but meanwhile he should feel as if he were frying on a gridiron. Anne Goodrich would merely exclaim: "Abominable." Marian Lawrence would draw in her nostrils and purr: "Lee was always an erratic and impressionable boy. Just like him to fall in love with an old woman. And she's really a beautiful blonde—once more. Poor Lee." As for Gora and Suzan Forbes—well, Gora would understand, and impale them sympathetically in her next novel, and Suzan would read up on endocrines, blend them adroitly with psychology, and write an article for the Yale Review.

He avoided the office and wrote his column at home. Luckily a favorite old comedian had died recently. He could fill up with reminiscence and anecdote. But it was soon done and he was back in his chair with his thoughts again.

It had been his intention when he awakened on Sunday after a few hours of unrefreshing sleep to dispatch his work as quickly as possible, take a long walk, and then return to his rooms and keep the hours that must intervene until Monday afternoon, sacred to Mary Zattiany. But if man wishes to regulate his life, and more particularly his meditations, to suit himself he would be wise to retire to a mountain top. Civilized life is a vast woof and the shuttle pursues its weaving and counter-weaving with no regard for the plans of men. It was impossible to ignore Mrs. Oglethorpe's appeal, and it was equally impossible to refuse to aid in the hunt for that damnable Janet when her distracted father and his own intimate friend took his cooperation as a matter of course. And even if he had remained at home, no doubt she would have wiggled her way in before he could shut the door in her face. Then there would have been the devil to pay, for she would have seen to it that he was hopelessly compromised. No doubt she would have run out on the balcony and screamed for help. Her failure was the one saving grace in the whole wretched night.

But she had planted her stings.

He was in a fine frame of mind to make love to a woman. He had pictured that scene as one of the great moments of life, so subtly beautiful and dramatic, so exalted and exulting, so perfect in its very incompleteness, that not a lifetime of suffering and disappointment could blur it. And he felt exactly like the flat tyre of Janet's distinguished vernacular. Even his body was worn out, for he had had but nine hours' sleep in two nights. What a dead cinch the playwrights had. A man might as well try to breathe without oxygen on Mount Everest as attempt to give his own life the proper dramatic values. He was a cursed puppet and Life itself was a curse.

He excoriated himself for his susceptibility to mere words; he who juggled in words, and often quite insincerely when it suited his purpose. But "that rejuvenated old dame," and "that old Zattiany woman" crawled like reeking vapors across some fair landscape a man had spent his life seeking, blotting out its loveliness, turning it to a noisome morass.

He had used equally caustic phrases when some young man he knew had married a woman only ten years older than himself, and when old men had taken to themselves young wives. And meant them, for he was fundamentally as conventional and conservative as all men. . . . But he cared less that he would be the laughing stock of New York than that his own soul felt like boiling pitch and that he was ashamed of himself.

He looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes to four. There was neither love nor desire in him and he would have liked to throw himself on the divan and sleep. But he set his teeth and got to his feet. He would go through it, play up, somehow.

He felt better in the nipping air and soon began to walk briskly. And then as he crossed Park Avenue and entered her street he saw two men coming down her steps. They were Mr. Dinwiddie, and the extremely good-looking young man whom Osborne had brought to the box on Monday night. The young man was smiling fatuously.

A wave of rage and jealousy swept Clavering from head to foot. She, at least, could have kept these hours sacred, and she had not only received this grinning ape, but evidently given him a delectable morsel to chew on. He could have knocked both men down but he was not even permitted to pass them by with a scowling nod. Another contretemps.

Dinwiddie hailed him delightedly.

"Good old Lee! Haven't seen you in an age. Where've you kept yourself? Know Vane? Mother's an old friend of Mary's. He's head over like the rest of us. Who says we don't live in the age of miracles?"

"Yeh, ain't life wonderful?" Clavering's jocular faculty was enfeebled, but it came to the rescue. He was staring at Vane. Evidently this young man was unimpressed by searing phrases and he must have heard several, for, if he remembered aright, "Polly Vane" with "her head like a billiard ball," who "wore a wig for decency's sake," had been one of the most resentful women at the luncheon. For a moment he had a queer impression that his stature had diminished until the top of his head stood level with this glowing young man's waistcoat. And then he shot up to seven feet. Something had turned over inside him and vomited forth the pitch and its vapors. But he still felt angry and jealous. He managed to reply, however:

"Well, I must be getting on. Have an engagement at four. See you in a day or two, Din." He nodded to young Vane and in another moment he was taking Madame Zattiany's front steps three at a time.



XXXV

When Mary Zattiany had reached her bedroom on Sunday morning she had leaned heavily on her dressing-table for a few moments, staring into the mirror. Then she curled her lip and shrugged her shoulders. Well, it was done. She had been as bald and uncompromising as she knew how to be. A picturesque softening of details, pleas to understand, and appeals to the man's sympathy, might be for other women but not for her. Life had given her a respect for hard facts and an utter contempt for the prevalent dodging of them.

She had told him that she was determined to relate her story in full as much for his sake as her own. But she had told it far more for her own. Before going any farther she was determined to know this man, who may only have intoxicated her, as thoroughly as it was possible for a woman to know any man she had not lived with. If he met the test she could be reasonably sure that for once she had made no mistake. If he did not—well, perhaps, so much the better. Surely she had had more than her share of love, and she had something to do in the world of vastly greater importance than wasting time in a man's arms. And did she really want passion in her life again? She with her young body and her old mind! Did she?

She recalled those brief moments of complete and ecstatic surrender. Or tried to recall them. She was very tired. Perhaps she might dream about them, but at the moment they seemed as far away as her first youth.

She awoke the next day only in time to dress and go to Mrs. Ruyler's for luncheon. She attended a concert in the afternoon, and she did not return from the Lawrences' until midnight. On Monday she lunched with Mrs. Vane and brought "Harry" and Mr. Dinwiddie home with her. She would give herself no time to think and brood. She was too wise to harden her heart against him by bitter fancies that might be as bitterly unjust, and assuredly she had no intention of meeting disaster weakened by romantic castle-building. Not she. Let events take their course. Whatever came, she had the strength to meet it.

As Clavering entered the library she was standing by the hearth, one hand on the mantelshelf. Her repose was absolute as she turned her head. In her eyes was an insolent expression, a little mocking, a little challenging. There was no trace of apprehension. As she saw Clavering's angry face her brows lifted.

"What did you let those fellows in for?" he demanded, glaring at her from the door. "You set this hour for our meeting and I just missed finding them here in this room. I should have thought you would have wanted to be alone before I came——"

And then for a moment Mary Zattiany's mind felt as young as her body. It seemed to her that she heard ruins tumbling behind her, down and out of sight. Her head felt light and she grasped the mantel for support; but she was not too dazed to realize that Clavering was in anything but a love-making mood, and she managed to steady her voice and reply lightly:

"I lunched with Polly Vane, and her devoted son was hanging 'round. Mr. Dinwiddie was also at the luncheon, and as they both walked home with me I could do no less than ask them in for a moment. But I never have the least difficulty getting rid of people."

"Ah!" He continued to stand staring at her, and, as he had anticipated, he saw only Mary Zattiany. As far as he was concerned Mary Ogden had never existed. But he still felt no immediate desire to touch her. He came over and stood opposite her on the hearthrug, his hands in his pockets.

"What have you been through?" he asked abruptly. "I've been through hell."

"So I imagined," she said drily. "I can't say I've been through hell. I've grown too philosophical for that! I have thought as little as possible. I left it on the knees of the gods."

There certainly was neither despair nor doubt in that vital voice of hers as she looked at him, and she was smiling. He twitched his shoulders under those understanding eyes and turned his own to the fire with a frown.

"I don't believe you had a moment of misgiving. You were too sure of me."

"Oh, no, I was not! I know life too well to be sure of anything, mon ami. Unlike that nice Vane boy, you have imagination and I gave you some hard swallowing. Poor boy, I'm afraid you've been choking ever since——"

"Don't 'poor boy' me. I won't have it. I feel a thousand years old." He glared at her once more. "You are sure of me now—and quite right . . . but I don't feel in the least like kissing you. . . . I've barely slept and I feel like the devil."

For the first time in many days she felt an inclination to throw back her head and give vent to a joyous laugh—joyous but amused, for she would always be Mary Zattiany. But she merely said: "My dear Lee, I could not stand being made love to at four in the afternoon. It is not aesthetic. Suppose we sit down. Tell me all about it."

"I'll not tell you a thing." But he took the chair and lit a cigarette. "I'm more in love with you than ever, if you want to know. When will you marry me?"

"Shall we say two months from today?"

"Two months! Why not tomorrow?"

"Oh, hardly. In the first place I'd like it all to be quite perfect, and I'd dreamed of spending our honeymoon in the Dolomites. I've a shooting box there on the shore of a wonderful lake. I used to stay there quite alone after my guests had left. . . . And then—well, it would hardly be fair to give New York two shocks in succession. They all take for granted I'll marry some one—I am already engaged to Mr. Osborne, although I have heard you alluded to meaningly—but better let them talk the first sensation to rags. . . . They will be angry enough with me for marrying a young man, but perhaps too relieved that I have not carried off one of their own sons. . . . Polly is in agonies at the present moment . . . we'll have to live in New York more or less—I suppose?"

"More or less? Altogether. My work is here."

"I believe there is more work for both of us in Europe."

"And do you imagine I'd live on your money? I've nothing but what I make."

"I could pull wires and get you into one of the embassies——"

"I'm no diplomat, and don't want to be. Rotten lazy job."

"Couldn't you be foreign correspondent for your newspaper?"

"We've good men in every European capital now. They've no use for more, and no excuse for displacing any of them. Besides, I've every intention of being a playwright."

"But playwrighting isn't—not really—quite as important as poor Europe. And I know of several ways in which we could be of the greatest possible use. Not only Austria——"

"Perhaps. But you'll have to wait until I've made money on at least one play. I'll be only too glad to spend the honeymoon in the Dolomites, but then I return and go to work. You'll have to make up your mind to live here for a year or two at least. And the sooner you marry me, the sooner we can go to Europe to live—for a time. I've no intention of living my life in Europe. But I'm only too willing to help you. So—better marry me tomorrow."

"I can't get away for at least two months—possibly not then. Ask Judge Trent. And a honeymoon in New York would be too flat—not?"

"Better than nothing . . . however—here's an idea. I'll get to work on my play at once and maybe I can finish it before I leave. If it went over big I could stay longer. Besides, it'll be something to boil over into; I don't suppose I shall see any too much of you. What's your idea? To set all the young men off their heads and imagine you are Mary Ogden once more? It would be a triumph. I've an idea that's what you are up to."

"Certainly not," she said angrily. "How trivial you must think me. I've not the least intention of going to dancing parties. I should be bored to death. I hardly knew what young Vane was talking about today. He seems to speak a different language from the men of my time. But it is only decent that I bore myself at luncheons and dinners, for my old friends have behaved with the utmost loyalty and generosity. Jane Oglethorpe would have been quite justified in never speaking to me again, and I have violated the most sacred traditions of the others. But it has not made the least difference. Besides, I must keep them up to the mark. I have their promise to form a committee for the children of Austria."

"Well, that's that. We'll marry two months from today. I can finish my play in that time, and I won't wait a day longer."

"Very well. . . . I met Marian Lawrence the other day. I'm told you were expected to marry her at one time. She is very beautiful and has more subtlety than most American women. Why didn't you?"

"Because she wasn't you, I suppose. Did she stick a little bejewelled gold pin into you?"

"Only with her eyes. She made me feel quite the age I had left behind me in Vienna." And then she asked irresistibly, "Do you think you would have fallen in love with me, after a much longer and better opportunity to know me, if you—if we had met in Vienna before that time?"

"No, I should not. What a question! I should have loved you in one way as I do now—with that part of me that worships you. But men are men, and never will be demi-gods."

This time she did laugh, and until tears were in her eyes. "Oh, Lee! No wonder I fell in love with you. Any other man—well, I couldn't have loved you. My soul was too old." And then her eyes widened as she stared before her. "Perhaps——"

He sprang to his feet and pulled her up from her chair. "None of that. None of that. And now I do want to kiss you."

And as Mary Zattiany never did anything by halves she was completely happy, and completely young.



XXXVI

He left her at ten o'clock, and the next morning rose at seven and went to work at once on his play. He chose the one that had the greatest emotional possibilities. Gora Dwight had told him that he must learn to "externalize his emotions," and he felt that here was the supreme opportunity. Never would he have more turgid, pent-up, tearing emotions to get rid of than now. He wrote until one o'clock, then, after lunch and two hours on his column, went out and took a long walk; but lighter of heart than since he had met Mary Zattiany. He also reflected with no little satisfaction that when writing on the play he had barely thought of her. All the fire in him had flown to his head and transported him to another plane; he wondered if any woman, save in brief moments, could rival the ecstasy of mental creation. That rotten spot in the brain, dislocation of particles, whatever it was that enabled a few men to do what the countless millions never dreamed of attempting, or attempt only to fail, was, through its very abnormality, productive of a higher and more sustained delight, a more complete annihilation of prosaic life, than any mere function bestowed on all men alike. It might bring suffering, disappointment, mortification, even despair in its train, but the agitation of that uncharted tract in the brain compensated for any revenge that nature, through her by-product, human nature, might visit on those who departed from her beloved formulae.

Nevertheless, and before his walk was finished and he had returned home to dress for dinner with her, the play was on one plane and he on another, visioning himself alone with her in the Austrian agapemone. And cursing the interminable weeks between. He anathematized himself for consenting to the delay, and vowed she'd had her own way for the last time, He foresaw many not unagreeable tussles of will. She was far too accustomed to having her own way. Well, so was he.

For two weeks he left his rooms only to walk, or dine or spend an hour with her in the afternoon when she was alone. He rebelled less than he had expected. If he could not have her wholly, the less he saw of her the better.

Dinners, luncheons, theatre parties, receptions, were being given for her not only by her old friends—who seemed to her to grow more numerous daily—but by their daughters and by many others who made up for lack of tradition by that admirable sense of rightness which makes fashionable society in America such a waste of efficiency and force. And whether the younger women privately hated her or had fallen victims to that famous charm was of little public consequence. It was as if she had appeared in their midst, waved a sceptre and announced: "I am the fashion. Always have I been the fashion. That is my metier. Bow down." At all events the fashion she became, and it was quite as patent that she took it as a matter of course. The radiant happiness that possessed her, refusing as she did to look into the future with its menace to those high duties of her former dedication—clear, sharp, ruthless children of her brain—not only enhanced both her beauty and magnetism, but enabled her to endure this social ordeal she had dreaded, without ennui. She was too happy to be bored. She even plunged into it with youthful relish. For the first time in her life she was at peace with herself. She was not at peace when Clavering made love to her, far from it; but she enjoyed with all the zest of a woman with her first lover, and something of the timidity, this tantalizing preliminary to fruition. How could she ever have believed that her mind was old? She turned her imagination away from that lodge in the Dolomites, and believed it was because the present with its happiness and its excitements sufficed her.

Moreover, she was having one novel experience that afforded her much diversion. The newspapers were full of her. It took exactly five days after Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon for the story she had told there to filter down to Park Row, and although she would not consent to be interviewed, there were double-page stories in the Sunday issues, embellished with snapshots and a photograph of the Mary Ogden of the eighties: a photographer who had had the honor to "take" her was still in existence and exhumed the plates.

Doctors, biologists, endocrinologists, were interviewed. Civil war threatened: the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human mechanism with mere scientific acumen on the other. Doctors, notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers, found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose steady degeneration was a source of respectable income. When it was discovered that New York actually held a practicing physician who had studied with the great endocrinologists of Vienna, the street in front of his house looked as if some ambitious hostess were holding a continual reception.

Finally Madame Zattiany consented to give a brief statement to the press through her lawyers. It was as impersonal as water, but technical enough to satisfy the Medical Journal. At the theatre and opera people waited in solid phalanxes to see her pass. Her utter immobility on these occasions but heightened the feverish interest.

Women of thirty, dreaming of becoming flappers overnight, and formidable rivals, with the subtlety of experience behind the mask of seventeen, were desolated to learn that they must submit to the claws and teeth of Time until they had reached the last mile-post of their maturity. Beauty doctors gnashed their teeth, and plastic surgeons looked forward to the day when they must play upon some other form of human credulity. As a subject for the press it rivalled strikes, prohibition, German reparations, Lenin, prize-fights, censorship and scandalous divorces in high life.

"Why isn't your head turned?" Clavering asked her one day when the sensation was about a month old and was beginning to expire journalistically for want of fresh fuel. (Not a woman in New York could be induced to admit that she was taking the treatment.) "You are the most famous woman in America and the pioneer of a revolution that may have lasting and momentous consequences on which we can only speculate vaguely today. I don't believe you are as unmoved as you look. It's not in woman's nature—in human nature. Publicity goes to the head and then descends to the marrow of the bones."

"I'm not unmoved. I've been tremendously interested and excited. I find that newspaper notoriety is the author of a distinctly new sensation." And then she felt a disposition to play with fire. Clavering was in one of his rare detached moods, and had evidently come for an hour of agreeable companionship. "I am beginning to get a little bored and tired. If it were not for this Vienna Fund—and to the newspapers for their assistance I am eternally grateful—I believe I'd suggest that we leave for Austria tomorrow."

"And I wouldn't go." Clavering stood on the hearthrug smiling down at her with humorous defiance. "You switched me on to that play, and there I stick until it is finished. No chance for it in a honeymoon, and no chance for undiluted happiness with that crashing round inside my head."

She shrank and turned cold, but recovered herself sharply and dismissed the pang. It was her first experience, in her exhaustive knowledge of men, of the writing temperament; and after all it was part of the novelty of the man who had obliterated every other from her mind. Nor had she any intention of letting him see that he could hurt her. She smiled sweetly and asked:

"How is it coming on? Are you satisfied with it?"

"Yes, I am. And so is Gora Dwight. I've finished two acts and I read them to her last night."

"Ah? Your Egeria?"

"Not a bit of it. But she's a wise cold-blooded critic. You can't blame me for not even talking about it to you. I see so little of you that I've no intention of wasting any of the precious time."

"But you might let me read it."

"I'd rather wait until it's finished and as polished and perfect as I can make it. I always want you to know me at my best."

"Oh, my dear! You forget that we are to be made one and remain twain. Do you really believe that we shall either of us always be at our best?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't care a hang whether we are or not. I'll have you, and all to myself. And I won't say 'for a while, at least.' Do you imagine that when we return to New York I'm going to let Society take possession of you again? Not only shall I work harder than I've ever worked before, but I'd see little more of you than I do now. And that I'll never submit to again. I'll write my next play inside this house, and you'll be here when I want you, not gadding about."

She felt a sudden pang of dismay, apprehension. New York? She realized that not for a moment had she given up her original purpose. But why disturb the serenity of the present? When she had him in the Dolomites . . . She answered him in the same light tone.

"I'm having my last fling at New York Society. When we return we'll give our spare time to the Sophisticates. I see far less of them now than I like." Then, with a further desire to investigate the literary temperament, even if she were stabbed again in the process, she looked at him with provocative eyes and said: "I've sometimes wondered why you haven't insisted upon a secret marriage. I'm told it can be done with a reasonable prospect of success in certain states."

"Don't imagine I didn't think of it . . . but—well—I think the play would go fluey . . . you see. . . ."

"I see! And what about your next?"

"The next will be a comedy. I'll never be able to write a tremendously emotional play again."

"And meanwhile you will not deny that the artist has submerged the lover."

"I admit nothing of the sort. But you yourself let the artist loose—and what in God's name should I be doing these cursed weeks if you hadn't? You know you never would have consented to a secret marriage. You've set your heart on the Dolomites. . . . How about that interval of travel, by the way? Liners and trains are not particularly conducive to illusions."

"I thought I'd told you. My plan is to be married there. I should go on a preceding steamer and see that the Lodge was in proper condition. I want everything to be quite perfect, and Heaven only knows what has happened to it."

"Oh! This is a new one you've sprung. But—yes—I like the idea. I'd rather dreaded the prelude." And then he made one of those abrupt vaultings out of one mood into another which had fascinated her from the first. "God! I wish we were there now. When I'm not writing——! How many men have you got in love with you already? But no. I don't care. When I'm here—like this, Mary, like this—I don't care a hang if I never write another line."



XXXVII

During the following week she gave a dinner and insisted upon his attendance. She had given others to that increasing throng that had been young with her in the eighties and to others who had stormed and conquered that once impregnable citadel, but, she informed him, it was now time to entertain some of the younger women, and he must help her.

He consented readily enough, for he was curious to see her surrounded by a generation into which she had coolly stepped with no disadvantage to herself and, from all he heard, considerable to them. He knew that not only Vane but other men in their late twenties and early thirties were paying her devoted attentions. Dinwiddie, who met him in the Park one day and dined with him in the Casino, had spoken with modified enthusiasm of these conquests, but added that it was yet to be demonstrated whether the young men were egged by novelty or genuine coveting. When he hinted that she may have appealed to that secret lust for the macabre that exists somewhere in all men, Clavering had scowled at him so ferociously that he had plunged into rhapsody and bewailed his own lost youth.

And then he had endeavored to sound the young man in whom he was most interested, but of whose present relations with Mary Zattiany he had no inkling; he had not seen them together nor heard any fresh gossip since her second debut. But he was told to shut up and talk about the weather.

Clavering, who knew that he would not have a moment alone with her, went to the dinner in much the same mood as he went to a first-night at which he was reasonably sure of entertainment. It certainly would be good comedy to the detached observer, and this he was quite capable of being with nothing better in prospect. Nevertheless, he was utterly unprepared for the presence of Anne Goodrich and Marian Lawrence, for he understood that the dinner was given to the more important of the young married women. But they were the first persons he saw when he entered the drawing-room. They were standing together—shoulder to shoulder, he reflected cynically—and he knew that they privately detested each other, and not on his account only.

How like Mary Zattiany, with her superb confidence in herself, to ask these beautiful girls who she had heard wanted to marry him themselves. Well, he understood women well enough to be indulgent to their little vanities.

He was almost the last of the guests, but he had time to observe the two girls before dinner was announced, in spite of the fact that he was claimed by other acquaintances before he could reach them.

Anne looked regally handsome in gold-colored tissue and paillettes that gave a tawny light to her eyes and hair, and to her skin an amber glow. She held her head very high, and in spite of her mere five feet five, looked little less stately than Madame Zattiany, who wore a marvellous velvet gown the exact shade of her hair. Marian Lawrence was small but so perfectly made that her figure was always alluded to as her body, and she carried her head, not regally, but with an insolent assurance that became her. She was very beautiful, with a gleaming white skin that she never powdered nor colored, and hair like gold leaf, parted and worn in smooth bands over her ears and knotted loosely on her neck in the fashion known as a la vierge. Her large grayish-green eyes were set far apart and her brows and lashes were black. She had a straight innocent-looking nose with very thin nostrils, into which she was capable of compressing the entire expression of a face. She generally wore the fashionable colors of the moment, but tonight her soft shimmering gown was of palest green, and Clavering wondered if this were a secret declaration of war. She, too, was of the siren class, and it was possible that she and Mary Zattiany derived from some common ancestress who had combed her hair on a rock or floated northward over the steppes of Russia. But there were abysmal differences between the two women, as Clavering well knew. Marian Lawrence, with great natural intelligence, never read anything more serious than a novel and preferred those that were not translated into English. She took no interest whatever in anything outside her inherited circumference, and had prided herself during the war upon ignoring its existence. She was as luxurious and as dainty as a cat and one of the most ardent sportswomen in America. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a stained-glass window, and she was a hard, subtle, predatory flirt; too much in love with her beautiful body to give it wholly to any man. She had never really fallen in love with Clavering until she had lost him, and he, his brief enthusiasm for her unique beauty and somewhat demoniac charm having subsided, had avoided her ever since; although they danced together at the few fashionable parties he attended. He knew her better now than when he had seen her daily, almost hourly, at a house party in the White Mountains, and almost as often for several weeks after his return. This was shortly after his mistake with Anne, and her attraction had consisted largely in her complete difference from a really fine character toward whom he felt a certain resentment for having so much and still lacking the undefined essential. He had not deluded himself that he would find it in Marian Lawrence, but her paradoxes diverted him and he was quite willing to go as far as her technique permitted. It had never occurred to him for a moment that she was seriously in love with him, but he had had more than one glimpse of her claws and he regarded her uneasily tonight. And what were she and Anne whispering about?

"You will take in Miss Goodrich," Madame Zattiany had said to him, her eyes twinkling, and he had merely shrugged his shoulders. He did not care in the least whom he talked to; it was the ensemble that interested him. Anne and Marian were the only girls present. The other women were between twenty-five and thirty-five or -six. Madame Zattiany would seem to have chosen them all for their good looks, and she looked younger than several of them.

Mauve was the fashionable color of the season. There were three mauve gowns and the table was lit by very long, very thin mauve candles above a low bank of orchids. Mrs. Ruyler had disinterred the family amethysts, but Mrs. de Lacey and Mrs. Vane, "Polly's" daughter-in-law, wore their pearls. There were several tiaras, for they were going on to the opera and later to a ball. The company numbered twenty in all and there were three unmarried men besides Clavering, and including Harry Vane. Clavering found Marian Lawrence on his left, and once more he caught a twinkle in Madame Zattiany's eyes as the guests surrounded the table.

He had not seen Anne since the night of Suzan's party, when they had varied the program by sitting on the floor in front of the fire, roasting chestnuts and discussing philosophy; then playing poker until two o'clock in the morning. He asked her if she were comfortable and happy in her new life.

"Rather!" She smiled with all her old serene brightness and her eyes dwelt on him in complete friendliness. "I'd even sleep in the studio, but have made one concession to my poor family. They're not reconciled, but, after all, I am twenty-four—and spent two years in France. I have had three orders for portraits—friends of the family, of course. I must be content with 'pull' until I am taken seriously as an artist. If I can only exhibit at the next Academy I shall feel full-fledged."

"And what of your new circle?"

"I've been to several parties and enjoyed myself hugely. Some of them get pretty tight, but I've seen people tighter at house parties and not nearly so amusing. And then Gora and Suzan! I've never liked any women as well. . . . This is the first dinner of the old sort I've been to since I started."

"Ah?" asked Clavering absently. "Why the exception?"

"Well, you see, I am tremendously intriguee, like every one else. I'd met her several times at home, and she came one day to my studio, where the Sophisticates made the most tremendous fuss over her. But I was curious to see her in her own old home, where she had reigned so long ago as Mary Ogden. Mother told me that everything was unchanged except the stair carpet and her bedroom." Her tone was lightly impersonal, and still more so as she added: "Why don't you write a novel about her, Lee? She must be the most remarkable psychological study of the age. Fancy living two lifetimes in the same body. It puts reincarnation to the blush. I suppose she'll bury us all."

Clavering shot her a sharp investigating glance, but replied suavely: "Not necessarily. The same road is open to all of you."

Miss Goodrich had never looked more the fine and dignified representative of her class as she lifted her candid eyes with an expression of disdain.

"My dear Lee! Really! There are some women above that sort of thing."

"Above? I don't think I follow you. But of course she's given hide-bound conservatism a pretty hard jolt."

"It's not that—really. But all women growing old and trying to be or to look young again are rather undignified—according to our standards at least, and I have been brought up in the belief that they are the highest in the world. And then, one's sense of humor——!"

"Humor? Is that what you call it?" (Damn all women for cats, the best of them. Anne!)

"Why, yes, isn't it rather absurd—for more reasons than one? To my mind it is the complete farce. She has regained the appearance—and—possibly—the real feeling of youth, with all its capacity for enthusiasm and unworn emotions—it seems rather ludicrous, but still it may be; certainly the interior should be in some degree a match for that marvellously restored face and body—but the whole thing is made farcical by the fact that she never can have children. And what else does youth in women really mean?"

"Experience has taught me that it means quite a number of other things. And painting portraits is not fulfilling the first and highest duty of womanhood, dear Anne."

Miss Goodrich flushed, but accepted his score calmly. "Oh, I shall marry, of course. But then, you see, I am young—really young."

"What are you two quarrelling about?" broke in Miss Lawrence's husky voice. She had smoked steadily since taking her seat at the table, not so much because she had an irresistible passion for tobacco as because it destroyed her appetite and preserved her figure. "I haven't seen Anne blush like that since she got back from France."

"I was just telling her how beautiful she looked tonight." And angry as he was, it amused him to hear Anne's little gasp of pleasure.

"Yes, doesn't she?" Miss Lawrence blew a ring and smiled sweetly. "I've always been jealous of Anne. She's such a beautiful height. I'm so glad the giraffes of the last generation seem to have died out. Too bad, when Madame Zattiany rejuvenated herself, she didn't slice off a few inches. She dwarfs even men of your height, although, of course, you are really taller. But then tall women——" She shrugged her shoulders, her crisp voice softened and she went on as if thinking aloud. "Do you know . . . to me she does not look young at all. I have a fancy she's hypnotized every one but myself. I seem to see an old woman with a colossal will. . . . But I'd like to know the name of that whitewash she uses. It may come in handy some day. Not for another ten years, though. Oh, Lee! it's good to be really young and not have to be flattened out on a table under broiling X-Rays and have your poor old feminine department cranked up. . . . I wonder just how adventurous men are?"'

But Clavering, although seething, merely smiled. He knew himself to be like the man who has had a virulent attack of small-pox and is immune for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he would cheerfully have twisted her neck. She was holding that slim lily-like throat up for his inspection, a cigarette between her thin scarlet lips as she looked at him over her shoulder. At sixteen she could not have been more outwardly unblemished, and she emanated a heady essence. Her long green eyes met his keen satiric ones with melting languor. But she said unexpectedly:

"I hear she's going to marry Mr. Osborne, mother's old beau—or is that Mr. Dinwiddie? How can one straighten out those old-timers? But it would be quite appropriate, if she must marry—and I suppose she's dying to; but I notice she hasn't asked either of them tonight. I suppose it makes her feel younger to surround herself with young people. It certainly makes me feel frightfully young—— I mean she does."

"Do you think it good manners to discuss your hostess at her own table?"

"Oh, manners! You'll always be a Southerner, Lee. New York has always prided itself on its bad manners. That is the real source of our strength."

"Pretty poor prop. It seems to me a sign of congenital weakness."

"Oh, we never defend ourselves. By the way, I hear Jim Oglethorpe rushed poor little Janet off to Egypt because he found her in your rooms and you refused to marry her. You're not such a gallant Southerner, after all——"

"What a lie! Who on earth started such a yarn?" But he turned cold and his hand shook a little as he raised his wine glass.

"It's all over town, and people think you really ought to marry her. Of course those ridiculous little flappers don't care whether they are talked about or not, but their families do. I hear that old Mrs. Oglethorpe is quite ill over the scandal, and she always swore by you."

"Mrs. Oglethorpe, I happen to know, as I dined there last night, was never better and is delighted with the idea that Jim has taken Janet abroad to get her away from that rotten crowd."

She looked nonplussed, but returned to the charge. "How stories do get about! They even say that he horsewhipped you——"

"Pray don't overtax your powers of invention. You know there's no such story going about or everybody here would have cut me dead. Try another tack."

"Well, I'll confess I made that up just to get a rise out of you." She looked at him speculatively. "But about Janet—well, you see, I know you for a gay deceiver—mother is always using those old expressions that were the fashion in her—and Mary Ogden's—day. I hear you even made love to our fair hostess until you found out the truth and then you dropped her like a hot potato—or a cold fish. I was surprised when she told me you were coming here tonight, and asked her at once to seat us three together so that Anne and I could save you from feeling embarrassed—not that I told her that, of course. I merely said we were such old friends we would naturally have a thousand things to talk about. She didn't turn a hair; I'll say that much for her. But perhaps she thinks she's playing you on a long string. She's playing several poor fish who are here tonight."