"Gone!" wheezed the poet.

"Quite," said Philodice, staring at the stage and calmly folding her smooth little hands.





X



When the curtain at last descended upon the parting attitudes of the players the poet arose with an alacrity scarcely to be expected in a gentleman of his proportions. Two and two his big, healthy daughters—there remained but four now—followed him to the lobby. When he was able to pack all four into a cab he did so and sent them home without ceremony; then, summoning another vehicle, gave the driver the directions and climbed in.

Half an hour later he was deposited under the bronze shelter of the porte-cochere belonging to an extremely expensive mansion overlooking the park; and presently, admitted, he prowled ponderously and softly about an over-gilded rococo reception-room. But all anxiety had now fled from his face; he coyly nipped the atmosphere at intervals as various portions of the furniture attracted his approval; he stood before a splendid canvas of Goya and pushed his thumb at it; he moused and prowled and peeped and snooped, and his smile grew larger and larger and sweeter and sweeter, until—dare I say it!—a low smooth chuckle, all but noiseless, rippled the heavy cheeks of the poet; and, raising his eyes, he beheld a stocky, fashionably-dressed and red-faced man of forty intently eying him. The man spoke decisively and at once:

"Mr. Guilford? Quite so. I am Mr. West."

"You are—" The poet's smile flickered like a sickly candle. "I—this is—are you Mr. Stanley West?"

"I am."

"It must—it probably was your son——"

"I am unmarried," said the president of the Occidental tartly, "and the only Stanley West in the directory."

The poet swayed, then sat down rather suddenly on a Louis XIV chair which crackled. Several times he passed an ample hand over his features. A mechanical smile struggled to break out, but it was not the smile, any more than glucose is sugar.

"Did—ah—did you receive two tickets for the New Arts Theater—ah—Mr. West?" he managed to say at last.

"I did. Thank you very much, but I was not able to avail myself——"

"Quite so. And—ah—do you happen to know who it was that—ah—presented your tickets and occupied the seats this afternoon?"

"Why, I suppose it was two young men in our employ—Mr. Lethbridge, who appraises property for us, and Mr. Harrow, one of our brokers. May I ask why?"

For a long while the poet sat there, eyes squeezed tightly closed as though in bodily anguish. Then he opened one of them:

"They are—ah—quite penniless, I presume?"

"They have prospects," said West briefly. "Why?"

The poet rose; something of his old attitude returned; he feebly gazed at a priceless Massero vase, made a half-hearted attempt to join thumb and forefinger, then rambled toward the door, where two spotless flunkies attended with his hat and overcoat.

"Mr. Guilford," said West, following, a trifle perplexed and remorseful, "I should be very—er—extremely happy to subscribe to the New Arts Theater—if that is what you wished."

"Thank you," said the poet absently as a footman invested him with a seal-lined coat.

"Is there anything more I could do for you, Mr. Guilford?"

The poet's abstracted gaze rested on him, then shifted.

"I—I don't feel very well," said the poet hoarsely, sitting down in a hall-seat. Suddenly he began to cry, fatly.

Nobody did anything; the stupefied footman gaped; West looked, walked nervously the length of the hall, looked again, and paced the inlaid floor to and fro, until the bell at the door sounded and a messenger-boy appeared with a note scribbled on a yellow telegraph blank:

"Lethbridge and I just married and madly happy. Will be on hand Monday, sure. Can't you advance us three months' salary?

"HARROW."

"Idiots!" said West. Then, looking up: "What are you waiting for, boy?"

"Me answer," replied the messenger calmly.

"Oh, you were told to bring back an answer?"

"Ya-as."

"Then give me your pencil, my infant Chesterfield." And West scribbled on the same yellow blank:

"Checks for you on your desks Monday. Congratulations. I'll see you through, you damfools.

"WEST."

"Here's a quarter for you," observed West, eying the messenger.

"T'anks. Gimme the note."

West glanced at the moist, fat poet; then suddenly that intuition which is bred in men of his stamp set him thinking. And presently he tentatively added two and two.

"Mr. Guilford," he said, "I wonder whether this note—and my answer to it—concerns you."

The poet used his handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle—like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, the smile of smiles illuminated everything: footmen, messenger, financier.

"Thank you," he said thickly; "thank you for your thought. Thought is but a trifle to bestow—a little thing in itself. But it is the little things that are most important—the smaller the thing the more vital its importance, until"—he added in a genuine burst of his old eloquence—"the thing becomes so small that it isn't anything at all, and then the value of nothing becomes so enormous that it is past all computation. That is a very precious thought! Thank you for it; thank you for understanding. Bless you!"

Exuding a rich sweetness from every feature the poet moved toward the door at a slow fleshy waddle, head wagging, small eyes half closed, thumbing the atmosphere, while his lips moved in wordless self-communion: "The attainment of nothing at all—that is rarest, the most precious, the most priceless of triumphs—very, very precious. So"—and his glance was sideways and nimbly intelligent—"so if nothing at all is of such inestimable value, those two young pups can live on their expectations—quod erat demonstrandum."

He shuddered and looked up at the facade of the gorgeous house which he had just quitted.

"So many sunny windows to sit in—to dream in. I—I should have found it agreeable. Pups!"

Crawling into his cab he sank into a pulpy mound, partially closing his eyes. And upon his pursed-up lips, unuttered yet imminent, a word trembled and wabbled as the cab bounced down the avenue. It may have been "precious"; it was probably "pups!"





XI



But there were further poignant emotions in store for the poet, for, as his cab swung out of the avenue and drew up before the great house on the southwest corner of Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, he caught a glimpse of his eldest daughter, Iole, vanishing into the house, and, at the same moment, he perceived his son-in-law, Mr. Wayne, paying the driver of a hansom-cab, while several liveried servants bore houseward the luggage of the wedding journey.

"George!" he cried dramatically, thrusting his head from the window of his own cab as that vehicle drew up with a jolt that made his stomach vibrate, "George! I am here!"

Wayne looked around, paid the hansom-driver, and, advancing slowly, offered his hand as the poet descended to the sidewalk. "How are you?" he inquired without enthusiasm as the poet evinced a desire to paw him. "All is well here, I hope."

"George! Son!" The poet gulped till his dewlap contracted. He laid a large plump hand on Wayne's shoulders. "Where are my lambs?" he quavered; "where are they?"

"Which lambs?" inquired the young man uneasily. "If you mean Iole and Vanessa——"

"No! My ravished lambs! Give me my stolen lambs. Trifle no longer with a father's affections! Lissa!—Cybele! Great Heavens! Where are they?" he sobbed hoarsely.

"Well, where are they?" retorted his son-in-law, horrified. "Come into the house; people in the street are looking."

In the broad hall the poet paused, staggered, strove to paw Wayne, then attempted to fold his arms in an attitude of bitter scorn.

"Two penniless wastrels," he muttered, "are wedded to my lambs. But there are laws to invoke——"

An avalanche of pretty girls in pink pajamas came tumbling down the bronze and marble staircase, smothering poet and son-in-law in happy embraces; and "Oh, George!" they cried, "how sunburned you are! So is Iole, but she is too sweet! Did you have a perfectly lovely honeymoon? When is Vanessa coming? And how is Mr. Briggs? And—oh, do you know the news? Cybele and Lissa married two such extremely attractive young men this afternoon——"

"Married!" cried Wayne, releasing Dione's arms from his neck. "Whom did they marry?"

"Pups!" sniveled the poet—"penniless, wastrel pups!"

"Their names," said Aphrodite coolly, from the top of the staircase, "are James Harrow and Henry Lethbridge. I wish there had been three——"

"Harrow! Lethbridge!" gasped Wayne. "When"—he turned helplessly to the poet—"when did they do this?"

Through the gay babble of voices and amid cries and interruptions, Wayne managed to comprehend the story. He tried to speak, but everybody except the poet laughed and chatted, and the poet, suffused now with a sort of sad sweetness, waved his hand in slow unctuous waves until even the footmen's eyes protruded.

"It's all right," said Wayne, raising his voice; "it's topsyturvy and irregular, but it's all right. I've known Harrow and Leth—For Heaven's sake, Dione, don't kiss me like that; I want to talk!—You're hugging me too hard, Philodice. Oh, Lord! will you stop chattering all together! I—I—Do you want the house to be pinched?"

He glanced up at Aphrodite, who sat astride the banisters lighting a cigarette. "Who taught you to do that?" he cried.

"I'm sixteen, now," she said coolly, "and I thought I'd try it."

Her voice was drowned in the cries and laughter; Wayne, with his hands to his ears, stared up at the piquant figure in its pink pajamas and sandals, then his distracted gaze swept the groups of parlor maids and footmen around the doors: "Great guns!" he thundered, "this is the limit and they'll pull the house! Morton!"—to a footman—"ring up 7—00—9B Murray Hill. My compliments and congratulations to Mr. Lethbridge and to Mr. Harrow, and say that we usually dine at eight! Philodice! stop that howling! Oh, just you wait until Iole has a talk with you all for running about the house half-dressed——"

"I won't wear straight fronts indoors, and my garters hurt!" cried Aphrodite defiantly, preparing to slide down the banisters.

"Help!" said Wayne faintly, looking from Dione to Chlorippe, from Chlorippe to Philodice, from Philodice to Aphrodite. "I won't have my house turned into a confounded Art Nouveau music hall. I tell you——"

"Let me tell them," said Iole, laughing and kissing her hand to the poet as she descended the stairs in her pretty bride's traveling gown.

She checked Aphrodite, looked wisely around at her lovely sisters, then turned to remount the stairs, summoning them with a gay little confidential gesture.

And when the breathless crew had trooped after her, and the pad of little, eager, sandaled feet had died away on the thick rugs of the landing above, the poet, clasping his fat white hands, thumbs joined, across his rotund abdomen, stole a glance at his dazed son-in-law, which was partly apprehensive and partly significant, almost cunning. "An innocent saturnalia," he murmured. "The charming abandon of children." He unclasped one hand and waved it. "Did you note the unstudied beauty of the composition as my babes glided in and out following the natural and archaic yet exquisitely balanced symmetry of the laws which govern mass and line composition, all unconsciously, yet perhaps"—he reversed his thumb and left his sign manual upon the atmosphere—"perhaps," he mused, overflowing with sweetness—"perhaps the laws of Art Nouveau are divine!—perhaps angels and cherubim, unseen, watch fondly o'er my babes, lest all unaware they guiltlessly violate some subtle canon of Art, marring the perfect symmetry of eternal preciousness."

Wayne's mouth was partly open, his eyes hopeless yet fixed upon the poet with a fearful fascination.

"Art," breathed the poet, "is a solemn, a fearful responsibility. You are responsible, George, and some day you must answer for every violation of Art, to the eternal outraged fitness of things. You must answer, I must answer, every soul must answer!"

"A-ans—answer! What, for God's sake?" stammered Wayne.

The poet, deliberately joining thumb and forefinger, pinched out a portion of the atmosphere.

"That! That George! For that is Art! And Art is justice! And justice, affronted, demands an answer."

He refolded his arms, mused for a space, then stealing a veiled glance sideways:

"You—you are—ah—convinced that my two lost lambs need dread no bodily vicissitudes——"

"Cybele and Lissa?"

"Ah—yes——"

"Lethbridge will have money to burn if he likes the aroma of the smoke. Harrow has burnt several stacks already; but his father will continue to fire the furnace. Is that what you mean?"

"No!" said the poet softly, "no, George, that is not what I mean. Wealth is a great thing. Only the little things are precious to me. And the most precious of all is absolutely nothing!" But, as he wandered away into the great luxurious habitation of his son-in-law, his smile grew sweeter and sweeter and his half-closed eyes swam, melting into a saccharine reverie.

"The little things," he murmured, thumbing the air absently—"the little things are precious, but not as precious as absolutely nothing. For nothing is perfection. Thank you," he said sweetly to a petrified footman, "thank you for understanding. It is precious—very, very precious to know that I am understood."





XII



By early springtide the poet had taken an old-fashioned house on the south side of Washington Square; his sons-in-law standing for it—as the poet was actually beginning to droop amid the civilized luxury of Madison Avenue. He missed what he called his own "den." So he got it, rent free, and furnished it sparingly with furniture of a slabby variety until the effect produced might, profanely speaking, be described as dinky.

His friends, too, who haunted the house, bore curious conformity to the furnishing, being individually in various degrees either squatty, slabby or dinky; and twice a week they gathered for "Conferences" upon what he and they described as "L'Arr Noovo."

L'Arr Noovo, a pleasing variation of the slab style in Art, had profoundly impressed the poet. Glass window-panes, designed with tulip patterns, were cunningly inserted into all sorts of furniture where window-glass didn't belong, and the effect appeared to be profitable; for up-stairs in his "shop," workmen were very busy creating extraordinary designs and setting tulip-patterned glass into everything with, as the poet explained, "a loving care" and considerable glue.

His four unmarried daughters came to see him, wandering unconcernedly between the four handsome residences of their four brothers-in-law and the "den" of the author of their being—Chlorippe, aged thirteen; Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen, and Aphrodite, sixteen—lovely, fresh-skinned, free-limbed young girls with the delicate bloom of sun and wind still creaming their cheeks—lingering effects of a life lived ever in the open, until the poet's sons-in-law were able to support him in town in the style to which he had been unaccustomed.

To the Conferences of the poet came the mentally, morally, and physically dinky—and a few badgered but normal husbands, hustled thither by wives whose intellectual development was tending toward the precious.

People read poems, discussed Yeats, Shaw, Fiona, Mendes, and L'Arr Noovo; sang, wandered about pinching or thumbing the atmosphere under stimulus of a cunningly and unexpectedly set window-pane in the back of a "mission" rocking-chair. And when the proper moment arrived the poet would rise, exhaling sweetness from every pore of his bulky entity, to interpret what he called a "Thought." Sometimes it was a demonstration of the priceless value of "nothings"; sometimes it was a naive suggestion that no house could afford to be without an "Art"-rocker with Arr Noovo insertions. Such indispensable luxuries were on sale up-stairs. Again, he performed a "necklace of precious sounds"—in other words, some verses upon various topics, nature, woodchucks, and the dinkified in Art.

And it was upon one of these occasions that Aphrodite ran away.

Aphrodite, the sweet, the reasonable, the self-possessed—Aphrodite ran away, having without any apparent reason been stricken with an overpowering aversion for civilization and Arr Noovo.





XIII



At the poet's third Franco-American Conference that afternoon the room was still vibrating with the echoes of Aphrodite's harp accompaniment to her own singing, and gushing approbation had scarcely ceased, when the poet softly rose and stood with eyes half-closed as though concentrating all the sweetness within him upon the surface of his pursed lips.

A wan young man whose face figured only as a by-product of his hair whispered "Hush!" and several people, who seemed to be more or less out of drawing, assumed attitudes which emphasized the faulty draftsmanship.

"La Poesie!" breathed the poet; "Kesker say la poesie?"

"La poesie—say la vee!" murmured a young woman with profuse teeth.

"Wee, wee, say la vee!" cried several people triumphantly.

"Nong!" sighed the poet, spraying the hushed air with sweetness, "nong! Say pas le vee; say l'Immortalitay!"

After which the poet resumed his seat, and the by-product read, in French verse, "An Appreciation" of the works of Wilhelmina Ganderbury McNutt.

And that was the limit of the Franco portion of the Conference; the remainder being plain American.

Aphrodite, resting on her tall gilded harp, looked sullenly straight before her. Somebody lighted a Chinese joss-stick, perhaps to kill the aroma of defunct cigarettes.

"Verse," said the poet, opening his heavy lids and gazing around him with the lambent-eyed wonder of a newly-wakened ram, "verse is a necklace of tinted sounds strung idly, yet lovingly, upon stray tinseled threads of thought.... Thank you for understanding; thank you."

The by-product in the corner of the studio gathered arms and legs into a series of acute angles, and writhed; a lady ornamented with cheek-bones well sketched in, covered her eyes with one hand as though locked in jiu-jitsu with Richard Strauss.

Aphrodite's slender fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor; a low twang echoed the involuntary reflex with a discord.

A young man, whose neck was swathed in a stock a la d'Orsay, bent close to her shoulder.

"I feel that our souls, blindfolded, are groping toward one another," he whispered.

"Don't—don't talk like that!" she breathed almost fiercely; "I am tired—suffocated with sound, drugged with joss-sticks and sandal. I can't stand much more, I warn you."

"Are you not well, beloved."

"Perfectly well—physically. I don't know what it is—it has come so suddenly—this overwhelming revulsion—this exasperation with scents and sounds.... I could rip out these harp-strings and—and kick that chair over! I—I think I need something—sunlight and the wind blowing my hair loose——"



The young man with the stock nodded. "It is the exquisite pagan athirst in you, scorched by the fire of spring. Quench that sweet thirst at the fount beautiful——"

"What fount did you say?" she asked dangerously.

"The precious fount of verse, dear maid."

"No!" she whispered violently. "I'm half drowned already. Words, smells, sounds, attitudes, rocking-chairs—and candles profaning the sunshine—I am suffocated, I need more air, more sense and less incense—less sound, less art——"

"Less—what?" he gasped.

"Less art!—what you call 'l'arr'!—yes, I've said it; I'm sick! sick of art! I know what I require now." And as he remained agape in shocked silence: "I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Frawley, but I also require less of you.... So much less that father will scarcely expect me to play any more accompaniments to your 'necklaces of precious tones'—so much less that the minimum of my interest in you vanishes to absolute negation.... So I shall not marry you."

"Aphrodite—are—are you mad?"

Her sulky red mouth was mute.

Meanwhile the poet's rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an agreeable and rambling monotone:

"Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse; sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense, modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding, thank you for a thought—very, very precious, a thought beautiful."

He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back, made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom.

"If—if you do that again—if you dare to recite those verses about me, I shall go! I tell you I can't stand any more," breathed Aphrodite between her clenched teeth.

The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul," and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere once more, and began, mousily:

ALL

A tear a year My pale desire requires, And that is all. Enlacements weary, passion tires, Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires Smothered at birth with mortal earth; And that is all.

A year of fear My pallid soul desires And that is all— Terror of bliss and dread of happiness, A subtle need of sorrow and distress And you to weep one tear, no more, no less, And that is all I ask— And that is all.

People were breathing thickly; the poet unaffectedly distilled the suggested tear; it was a fat tear; it ran smoothly down his nose, twinkled, trembled, and fell.

Aphrodite's features had become tense; she half rose, hesitated. Then, as the young man in the stock turned his invalid's eyes in her direction and began:

Oh, sixteen tears In sixteen years——

she transfixed her hat with one nervous gesture sprang to her feet, turned, and vanished through the door.

"She is too young to endure it," sobbed the by-product to her of the sketchy face. And that was no idle epigram, either.





XIV



She had no definite idea; all she craved for was the open—or its metropolitan substitute—sunshine, air, the glimpse of sanely preoccupied faces, the dull, quickening tumult of traffic. The tumult grew, increasing in her ears as she crossed Washington Square under the sycamores and looked up through tender feathery foliage at the white arch of marble through which the noble avenue flows away between its splendid arid chasms of marble, bronze, and masonry to that blessed leafy oasis in the north—the Park.

She took an omnibus, impatient for the green rambles of the only breathing-place she knew of, and settled back in her seat, rebellious of eye, sullen of mouth, scarcely noticing the amused expression of the young man opposite.

Two passengers left at Twenty-third Street, three at Thirty-fourth Street, and seven at Forty-second Street.

Preoccupied, she glanced up at the only passenger remaining, caught the fleeting shadow of interest on his face, regarded him with natural indifference, and looked out of the window, forgetting him. A few moments later, accidentally aware of him again, she carelessly noted his superficially attractive qualities, and, approving, resumed her idle inspection of the passing throng. But the next time her pretty head swung round she found him looking rather fixedly at her, and involuntarily she returned the gaze with a childlike directness—a gaze which he sustained to the limit of good breeding, then evaded so amiably that it left an impression rather agreeable than otherwise.

"I don't see," thought Aphrodite, "why I never meet that sort of man. He hasn't art nouveau legs, and his features are not by-products of his hair.... I have told my brothers-in-law that I am old enough to go out without coming out.... And I am."

The lovely mouth grew sullen again: "I don't wish to wait two years and be what dreadful newspapers call a 'bud'! I wish to go to dinners and dances now!... Where I'll meet that sort of man.... The sort one feels almost at liberty to talk to without anybody presenting anybody.... I've a mind to look amiable the next time he——"

He raised his eyes at that instant; but she did not smile.

"I—I suppose that is the effect of civilization on me," she reflected—"metropolitan civilization. I felt like saying, 'For goodness' sake, let's say something'—even in spite of all my sisters have told me. I can't see why it would be dangerous for me to look amiable. If he glances at me again—so agreeably——"

He did; but she didn't smile.

"You see!" she said, accusing herself discontentedly; "you don't dare look human. Why? Because you've had it so drummed into you that you can never, never again do anything natural. Why? Oh, because they all begin to talk about mysterious dangers when you say you wish to be natural.... I've made up my mind to look interested the next time he turns.... Why shouldn't he see that I'm quite willing to talk to him?... And I'm so tired of looking out of the window.... Before I came to this curious city I was never afraid to speak to anybody who attracted me.... And I'm not now.... So if he does look at me——"

He did.

The faintest glimmer of a smile troubled her lips. She thought: "I do wish he'd speak!"

There was a very becoming color in his face, partly because he was experienced enough not to mistake her; partly from a sudden and complete realization of her beauty.

"It's so odd," thought Aphrodite, "that attractive people consider it dangerous to speak to one another. I don't see any danger.... I wonder what he has in that square box beside him? It can't be a camera.... It can't be a folding easel! It simply can't be that he is an artist! a man like that——"

"Are you?" she asked quite involuntarily.

"What?" he replied, astonished, wheeling around.

"An—an artist. I can't believe it, and I don't wish to! You don't look it, you know!"

For a moment he could scarcely realize that she had spoken; his keen gaze dissected the face before him, the unembarrassed eyes, the oval contour, the smooth, flawless loveliness of a child.

"Yes, I am an artist," he said, considering her curiously.

"I am sorry," she said, "no, not sorry—only unpleasantly surprised. You see I am so tired of art—and I thought you looked so—so wholesome——"

He began to laugh—a modulated laugh—rather infectious, too, for Aphrodite bit her lip, then smiled, not exactly understanding it all.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked, still smiling. "Have I said something I should not have said?"

But he replied with a question: "Have you found art unwholesome?"

"I—I don't know," she answered with a little sigh; "I am so tired of it all. Don't let us talk about it—will you?"

"It isn't often I talk about it," he said, laughing again.

"Oh! That is unusual. Why don't you talk about art?"

"I'm much too busy."

"D—doing what? If that is not very impertinent."

"Oh, making pictures of things," he said, intensely amused.

"Pictures? You don't talk about art, and you paint pictures!"

"Yes."

"W—what kind? Do you mind my asking? You are so—so very unusual."

"Well, to earn my living, I make full-page pictures for magazines; to satisfy an absurd desire, I paint people—things—anything that might satisfy my color senses." He shrugged his shoulders gaily. "You see, I'm the sort you are so tired of——"

"But you paint! The artists I know don't paint—except that way—" She raised her pretty gloved thumb and made a gesture in the air; and, before she had achieved it, they were both convulsed with laughter.

"You never do that, do you?" she asked at length.

"No, I never do. I can't afford to decorate the atmosphere for nothing!"

"Then—then you are not interested in art nouveau?"

"No; and I never could see that beautiful music resembled frozen architecture."

They were laughing again, looking with confidence and delight upon one another as though they had started life's journey together in that ancient omnibus.

"What is a 'necklace of precious tones'?" she asked.

"Precious stones?"

"No, tones!"

"Let me cite, as an example, those beautiful verses of Henry Haynes," he replied gravely.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

I'd rather be a Could Be, If I can not be an Are; For a Could Be is a May Be, With a chance of touching par.

I had rather be a Has Been Than a Might Have Been, by far; For a Might Be is a Hasn't Been But a Has was once an Are!

Also an Are is Is and Am; A Was was all of these; So I'd rather be a Has Been Than a Hasn't, if you please.

And they fell a-laughing so shamelessly that the 'bus driver turned and squinted through his shutter at them, and the scandalized horses stopped of their own accord.

"Are you going to leave?" he asked as she rose.

"Yes; this is the Park," she said. "Thank you, and good-by."

He held the door for her; she nodded her thanks and descended, turning frankly to smile again in acknowledgment of his quickly lifted hat.

"He was nice," she reflected a trifle guiltily, "and I had a good time, and I really don't see any danger in it."





XV



She drew a deep, sweet breath as she entered the leafy shade and looked up into the bluest of cloudless skies. Odors of syringa and lilac freshened her, cleansing her of the last lingering taint of joss-sticks. The cardinal birds were very busy in the scarlet masses of Japanese quince; orioles fluttered among golden Forsythia; here and there an exotic starling preened and peered at the burnished purple grackle, stalking solemnly through the tender grass.

For an hour she walked vigorously, enchanted with the sun and sky and living green, through arbors heavy with wistaria, iris hued and scented, through rambles under tall elms tufted with new leaves, past fountains splashing over, past lakes where water-fowl floated or stretched brilliant wings in the late afternoon sunlight. At times the summer wind blew her hair, and she lifted her lips to it, caressing it with every fiber of her; at times she walked pensively, wondering why she had been forbidden the Park unless accompanied.

"More danger, I suppose," she thought impatiently.... "Well, what is this danger that seems to travel like one's shadow, dogging a girl through the world? It seems to me that if all the pleasant things of life are so full of danger I'd better find out what it is.... I might as well look for it so that I'll recognize it when I encounter it.... And learn to keep away."

She scanned the flowery thickets attentively, looked behind her, then walked on.

"If it's robbers they mean," she reflected, "I'm a good wrestler, and I can make any one of my four brothers-in-law look foolish.... Besides, the Park is full of fat policemen.... And if they mean I'm likely to get lost, or run over, or arrested, or poisoned with soda-water and bonbons—" She laughed to herself, swinging on in her free-limbed, wholesome beauty, scarcely noticing a man ahead, occupying a bench half hidden under the maple's foliage.

"So I'll just look about for this danger they are all afraid of, and when I see it, I'll know what to do," she concluded, paying not the slightest heed to the man on the bench until he rose, as she passed him, and took off his hat.

"You!" she exclaimed.

She had stopped short, confronting him with the fearless and charming directness natural to her. "What an amusing accident," she said frankly.

"The truth is," he began, "it is not exactly an accident."

"Isn't it?"

"N—no.... Are you offended?"

"Offended? No. Should I be? Why?... Besides, I suppose when we have finished this conversation you are going the other way."

"I—no, I wasn't."

"Oh! Then you are going to sit here?"

"Y—yes—I suppose so.... But I don't want to."

"Then why do you?"

"Well, if I'm not going the other way, and if I'm not going to remain here—" He looked at her, half laughing. She laughed, too, not exactly knowing why.

"Don't you really mind my walking a little way with you?" he asked.

"No, I don't. Why should I? Is there any reason? Am I not old enough to know why we should not walk together? Is it because the sun is going down? Is there what people call 'danger'?"

He was so plainly taken aback that her fair young face became seriously curious.

"Is there any reason why you should not walk with me?" she persisted.

The clear, direct gaze challenged him. He hesitated.

"Yes, there is," he said.

"A—a reason why you should not walk with me?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

And, as he did not find words to answer, she studied him for a moment, glanced up and down the woodland walk, then impulsively seated herself and motioned him to a place beside her on the bench.

"Now," she said, "I'm in a position to find out just what this danger is that they all warn me about. You know, don't you?"

"Know what?" he answered.

"About the danger that I seem to run every time I manage to enjoy myself.... And you do know; I see it by the way you look at me—and your expression is just like their expression when they tell me not to do things I find most natural."

"But—I—you——"

"You must tell me! I shall be thoroughly vexed with you if you don't."

Then he began to laugh, and she let him, leaning back to watch him with uncertain and speculative blue eyes. After a moment he said:

"You are absolutely unlike any girl I ever heard of. I am trying to get used to it—to adjust things. Will you help me?"

"How?" she asked innocently.

"Well, by telling me"—he looked at her a moment—"your age. You look about nineteen."

"I am sixteen and a half. I and all my sisters have developed our bodies so perfectly because, until we came to New York last autumn, we had lived all our lives out-of-doors." She looked at him with a friendly smile. "Would you really like to know about us?"

"Intensely."

"Well, there are eight of us: Chlorippe, thirteen; Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen; Aphrodite, sixteen—I am Aphrodite; Cybele, seventeen, married; Lissa, eighteen, married; Iole, nineteen, married, and Vanessa, twenty, married." She raised one small, gloved finger to emphasize the narrative. "All our lives we were brought up to be perfectly natural, to live, act, eat, sleep, play like primitive people. Our father dressed us like youths—boys, you know. Why," she said earnestly, "until we came to New York we had no idea that girls wore such lovely, fluffy underwear—but I believe I am not to mention such things; at least they have told me not to—but my straight front is still a novelty to me, and so are my stockings, so you won't mind if I've said something I shouldn't, will you?"

"No," he said; his face was expressionless.

"Then that's all right. So you see how it is; we don't quite know what we may do in this city. At first we were delighted to see so many attractive men, and we wanted to speak to some of them who seemed to want to speak to us, but my father put a stop to that—but it's absurd to think all those men might be robbers, isn't it?"

"Very." There was not an atom of intelligence left in his face.

"So that's all right, then. Let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes, I know! So four of my sisters were married, and we four remaining are being civilized.... But, oh—I wish I could be in the country for a little while! I'm so homesick for the meadows and brooks and my pajamas and my bare feet in sandals again.... And people seem to know so little in New York, and nobody understands us when we make little jests in Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, and nobody seems to have been very well educated and accomplished, so we feel strange at times."

"D—d—do you do all those things?"

"What things?"

"M—make jests in Arabic?"

"Why, yes. Don't you?"

"No. What else do you do?"

"Why, not many things."

"Music?"

"Oh, of course."

"Piano?"

"Yes, piano, violin, harp, guitar, zither—all that sort of thing.... Don't you?"

"No. What else?"

"Why—just various things, ride, swim, fence, box—I box pretty well—all those things——"

"Science, too?"

"Rudiments. Of course I couldn't, for example, discourse with authority upon the heteropterous mictidae or tell you in what genus or genera the prothorax and femora are digitate; or whether climatic and polymorphic forms of certain diurnal lepidoptera occur within certain boreal limits. I have only a vague and superficial knowledge of any science, you see."

"I see," he said gravely.

She leaned forward thoughtfully, her pretty hands loosely interlaced upon her knee.

"Now," she said, "tell me about this danger that such a girl as I must guard against."

"There is no danger," he said slowly.

"But they told me——"

"Let them tell you what it is, then."

"No; you tell me?"

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because—I simply can't."

"Are you ashamed to?"

"Perhaps—" He lifted his boxed sketching-kit by the strap, swung it, then set it carefully upon the ground: "Perhaps it is because I am ashamed to admit that there could be any danger to any woman in this world of men."

She looked at him so seriously that he straightened up and began to laugh. But she did not forget anything he had said, and she began her questions at once:

"Why should you not walk with me?"

"I'll take that back," he said, still laughing; "there is every reason why I should walk with you."

"Oh!... But you said——"

"All I meant was not for you, but for the ordinary sort of girl. Now, the ordinary, every-day, garden girl does not concern you——"

"Yes, she does! Why am I not like her?"

"Don't attempt to be——"

"Am I different—very different?"

"Superbly different!" The flush came to his face with the impulsive words.

She considered him in silence, then: "Should I have been offended because you came into the Park to find me? And why did you? Do you find me interesting?"

"So interesting," he said, "that I don't know what I shall do when you go away."

Another pause; she was deeply absorbed with her own thoughts. He watched her, the color still in his face, and in his eyes a growing fascination.

"I'm not out," she said, resting her chin on one gloved hand, "so we're not likely to meet at any of those jolly things you go to. What do you think we'd better do?—because they've all warned me against doing just what you and I have done."

"Speaking without knowing each other?" he asked guiltily.

"Yes.... But I did it first to you. Still, when I tell them about it, they won't let you come to visit me. I tried it once. I was in a car, and such an attractive man looked at me as though he wanted to speak, and so when I got out of the car he got out, and I thought he seemed rather timid, so I asked him where Tiffany's was. I really didn't know, either. So we had such a jolly walk together up Fifth Avenue, and when I said good-by he was so anxious to see me again, and I told him where I lived. But—do you know?—when I explained about it at home they acted so strangely, and they never would tell me whether or not he ever came."

"Then you intend to tell them all about—us?"

"Of course. I've disobeyed them."

"And—and I am never to see you again?"

"Oh, I'm very disobedient," she said innocently. "If I wanted to see you I'd do it."

"But do you?"

"I—I am not sure. Do you want to see me?"

His answer was stammered and almost incoherent. That, and the color in his face and the something in his eyes, interested her.

"Do you really find me so attractive?" she asked, looking him directly in the eyes. "You must answer me quickly; see how dark it is growing! I must go. Tell me, do you like me?"

"I never cared so much for—for any woman——."

She dimpled with delight and lay back regarding him under level, unembarrassed brows.

"That is very pleasant," she said. "I've often wished that a man—of your kind—would say that to me. I do wish we could be together a great deal, because you like me so much already and I truly do find you agreeable.... Say it to me again—about how much you like me."

"I—I—there is no woman—none I ever saw so—so interesting.... I mean more than that."

"Say it then."

"Say what I mean?"

"Yes."

"I am afraid——"

"Afraid? Of what?"

"Of offending you——"

"Is it an offense to me to tell me how much you like me? How can it offend me?"

"But—it is incredible! You won't believe——"

"Believe what?"

"That in so short a time I—I could care for you so much——"

"But I shall believe you. I know how I feel toward you. And every time you speak to me I feel more so."

"Feel more so?" he stammered.

"Yes, I experience more delight in what you say. Do you think I am insensible to the way you look at me?"

"You—you mean—" He simply could not find words.

She leaned back, watching him with sweet composure; then laughed a little and said: "Do you suppose that you and I are going to fall in love with one another?"

In the purpling dusk the perfume of wistaria grew sweeter and sweeter.

"I've done it already—" His voice shook and failed; a thrush, invisible in shadowy depths, made soft, low sounds.

"You love me—already?" she exclaimed under her breath.

"Love you! I—I—there are no words—" The thrush stirred the sprayed foliage and called once, then again, restless for the moon.

Her eyes wandered over him thoughtfully: "So that is love.... I didn't know.... I supposed it could be nothing pleasanter than friendship, although they say it is.... But how could it be? There is nothing pleasanter than friendship.... I am perfectly delighted that you love me. Shall we marry some day, do you think?"

He strove to speak, but her frankness stunned him.

"I meant to tell you that I am engaged," she observed. "Does that matter?"

"Engaged!" He found his tongue quickly enough then; and she, surprised, interested, and in nowise dissenting, listened to his eloquent views upon the matter of Mr. Frawley, whom she, during the lucid intervals of his silence, curtly described.

"Do you know," she said with great relief, "that I always felt that way about love, because I never knew anything about it except from the symptoms of Mr. Frawley? So when they told me that love and friendship were different, I supposed it must be so, and I had no high opinion of love ... until you made it so agreeable. Now I—I prefer it to anything else.... I could sit here with you all day, listening to you. Tell me some more."



XVI



He did. She listened, sometimes intently interested, absorbed, sometimes leaning back dreamily, her eyes partly veiled under silken lashes, her mouth curved with the vaguest of smiles.

He spoke as a man who awakes with a start—not very clearly at first, then with feverish coherence, at times with recklessness almost eloquent. Still only half awakened himself, still scarcely convinced, scarcely credulous that this miracle of an hour had been wrought in him, here under the sky and setting sun and new-born leaves, he spoke not only to her but of her to himself, formulating in words the rhythm his pulses were beating, interpreting this surging tide which thundered in his heart, clamoring out the fact—the fact—the fact that he loved!—that love was on him like the grip of Fate—on him so suddenly, so surely, so inexorably, that, stricken as he was, the clutch only amazed and numbed him.

He spoke, striving to teach himself that the incredible was credible, the impossible possible—that it was done! done! done! and that he loved a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon loveliness unspoiled, sweetness untainted, truth uncompromised.

"Do you know," she said, "that, as you speak, you make me care for you so much more than I supposed a girl could care for a man?"

"Can you love me?"

"Oh, I do already! I don't mean mere love. It is something—something that I never knew about before. Everything about you is so—so exactly what I care for—your voice, your head, the way you think, the way you look at me. I never thought of men as I am thinking about you.... I want you to belong to me—all alone.... I want to see how you look when you are angry, or worried, or tired. I want you to think of me when you are perplexed and unhappy and ill. Will you? You must! There is nobody else, is there? If you do truly love me?"

"Nobody but you."

"That is what I desire.... I want to live with you—I promise I won't talk about art—even your art, which I might learn to care for. All I want is to really live and have your troubles to meet and overcome them because I will not permit anything to harm you.... I will love you enough for that.... I—do you love other women?"

"Good God, no!"

"And you shall not!" She leaned closer, looking him through and through. "I will be what you love! I will be what you desire most in all the world. I will be to you everything you wish, in every way, always, ever, and forever and ever.... Will you marry me?"

"Will you?"

"Yes."

She suddenly stripped off her glove, wrenched a ring set with brilliants from the third finger of her left hand, and, rising, threw it, straight as a young boy throws, far out into deepening twilight. It was the end of Mr. Frawley; he, too, had not only become a by-product but a good-by product. Yet his modest demands had merely required a tear a year! Perhaps he had not asked enough. Love pardons the selfish.

She was laughing, a trifle excited, as she turned to face him where he had risen. But, at the touch of his hand on hers, the laughter died at a breath, and she stood, her limp hand clasped in his, silent, expressionless, save for the tremor of her mouth.

"I—I must go," she said, shrinking from him.

He did not understand, thrilled as he was by the contact, but he let her soft hand fall away from his.

Then with a half sob she caught her own fingers to her lips and kissed them where the pressure of his hand burned her white flesh—kissed them, looking at him.

"You—you find a child—you leave a woman," she said unsteadily. "Do you understand how I love you—for that?"

He caught her in his arms.

"No—not yet—not my mouth!" she pleaded, holding him back; "I love you too much—already too much. Wait! Oh, will you wait?... And let me wait—make me wait?... I—I begin to understand some things I did not know an hour ago."

In the dusk he could scarcely see her as she swayed, yielding, her arms tightening about his neck in the first kiss she had ever given or forgiven in all her life.

And through the swimming tumult of their senses the thrush's song rang like a cry. The moon had risen.





XVII



Mounting the deadened stairway noiselessly to her sister's room, groping for the door in the dark of the landing, she called: "Iole!" And again: "Iole! Come to me! It is I!"

The door swung noiselessly; a dim form stole forward, wide-eyed and white in the electric light.

Then down at her sister's feet dropped Aphrodite, and laid a burning face against her silken knees. And, "Oh, Iole, Iole," she whispered, "Iole, Iole, Iole! There is danger, as you say—there is, and I understand it ... now.... But I love him so—I—I have been so happy—so happy! Tell me what I have done ... and how wrong it is! Oh, Iole, Iole! What have I done!"

"Done, child! What in the name of all the gods have you done?"

"Loved him—in the names of all the gods! Oh, Iole! Iole! Iole!"

"——The thrush singing in darkness; the voice of spring calling, calling me to his arms! Oh, Iole, Iole!—these, and my soul and his, alone under the pagan moon! alone, save for the old gods whispering in the dusk——"

"——And listening, I heard the feathery tattoo of wings close by—the wings of Eros all aquiver like a soft moth trembling ere it flies! Peril divine! I understood it then. And, stirring in darkness, sweet as the melody of unseen streams, I heard the old gods laughing.... Then I knew."

"Is that all, little sister?"

"Almost all."

"What more?"

And when, at length, the trembling tale was told, Iole caught her in her white arms, looked at her steadily, then kissed her again and again.

"If he is all you say—this miracle—I—I think I can make them understand," she whispered. "Where is he?"

"D-down-stairs—at b-bay! Hark! You can hear George swearing! Oh, Iole, don't let him!"

In the silence from the drawing-room below came the solid sobs of the poet:

"P-pup! P-p-penniless pup!"

"He must not say that!" cried Aphrodite fiercely. "Can't you make father and George understand that he has nearly six hundred dollars in the bank?"

"I will try," said Iole tenderly. "Come!"

And with one arm around Aphrodite she descended the great stairway, where, on the lower landing, immensely interested, sat Chlorippe, Philodice and Dione, observant, fairly aquiver with intelligence.

"Oh, that young man is catching it!" remarked Dione, looking up as Iole passed, her arm close around her sister's waist. "George has said 'dammit' seven times and father is rocking—not in a rocking-chair—just rocking and expressing his inmost thoughts. And Mr. Briggs pretends to scowl and mutters: 'Hook him over the ropes, George. 'E ain't got no friends!' Take a peep, Iole. You can just see them if you lean over and hang on to the banisters——"

But Iole brushed by her younger sisters, Aphrodite close beside her, and, entering the great receiving-hall, stood still, her clear eyes focused upon her husband's back.

"George!"

Mr. Wayne stiffened and wheeled; Mr. Briggs sidled hastily toward the doorway, crabwise; the poet choked back the word, "Phup!" and gazed at his tall daughter with apprehension and protruding lips.

"Iole," began Wayne, "this is no place for you! Aphrodite! let that fellow alone, I say!"

Iole turned, following with calm eyes the progress of her sister toward a tall young man who stood by the window, a red flush staining his strained face.

The tense muscles in jaw and cheek relaxed as Aphrodite laid one hand on his arm; the poet, whose pursed lips were overloaded, expelled a passionate "Phupp!" and the young man's eyes narrowed again at the shot.

Then silence lengthened to a waiting menace, and even the three sisters on the stairs succumbed to the oppressive stillness. And all the while Iole stood like a white Greek goddess under the glory of her hair, looking full into the eyes of the tall stranger.

A minute passed; a glimmer dawned to a smile and trembled in the azure of Iole's eyes; she slowly lifted her arms, white hands outstretched, looking steadily at the stranger.

He came, tense, erect; Iole's cool hands dropped in his. And, turning to the others with a light on her face that almost blinded him, she said, laughing: "Do you not understand? Aphrodite brings us the rarest gift in the world in this tall young brother! Look! Touch him! We have never seen his like before for all the wisdom of wise years. For he is one of few—and men are many, and artists legion—this honorable miracle, this sane and wholesome wonder! this trinity, Lover, Artist, and Man!"

And, turning again, she looked him wistfully, wonderingly, in the eyes.



THE END

* * * * * * * * *

Errata (noted by transcriber)

The variation between single and double quotes for nested quotations is unchanged.

so many agreeable-looking men." [internal close quote missing] sounded a staccato monotone [stacatto] for understanding me." [me.'"] She leaned forward thoughtfully [foward]