"Perhaps it's true, mother mine, but the knowledge comes too late."

"No, it hasn't, boy!" she answered. "It hasn't. If I were a man and wanted a woman, I wouldn't let her wishes interfere in the matter. I would carry her off, if necessary. It was a good, old-time way—that!" she cried, earnestly.

"Mother! Mother! Mother!" Frank remonstrated, with a laugh, though with tears in his eyes.

"And you will have her if you want her; for you are so beautiful and dear and sweet, no woman could help loving you."

And with this biased assurance he fell asleep, as she sat by his bedside with her hand on his cheek.



XVII

MCDERMOTT VISITS HIS FRENCH COUSIN

It was true that Dermott's sudden departure for Europe had troubled Frank. But it would have disturbed him more had he known the truth, for McDermott was not only bent upon seeing Katrine, but was stirring another trouble for Frank, a trouble which McDermott felt had already slept too long.

The week before the Irishman sailed (it was the very day upon which he decided, with a laugh to himself, to give up the railroad fight and allow the new company to build the road on the Ravenel land) he wrote his French cousin, the Countess de Nemours, thus:

BEAUTIFUL LADY WITHOUT MERCY,—I am writing in a perturbed state of mind, for I think I shall get for you a great fortune. You do not answer my letters, though I have written at the lowest estimate ten thousand times. I want the date of your first marriage securely stated in written evidence; also the dates of the birth and death of the child. I want every scrap of paper which you have, concerning that sad affair of thirty years ago, ready for me when I arrive in Paris two weeks from to-day.

There is a little girl over there studying music in whom I want you to interest yourself. Her name is Katrine Dulany. She is with Josef.

Yours of the Shamrock, DERMOTT MCDERMOTT.

The Countess de Nemours' house in Paris stood in the centre of the street of the Two Repentant Magdalens. An iron door in a griffoned arch opened into a sunny court-yard, where peacocks strutted by an old fountain, and a black poodle, who was both a thief and a miser, snarled at the passers-by.

On the right of the entrance, in a kind of sentry-box, Quantrelle the Red acted as concierge. He was a man above the peasant class, ridiculously long and spare, with an unbroken record for thirty years of drunkenness and quarrelling. His narrow head was covered with irregular tufts of scarlet hair, and in his forehead were heavy furrows which curved down over the nose and waved upward and back to the temple. His eyebrows were red tufts standing fiercely out over his little red-brown eyes, and his nose, long, lean, and absurdly pointed, seemed peering at his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his overpaid retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to admit visitors when he knew Madame de Nemours to be absent, and, after conducting them by some circuitous route to unexpected rooms, he would leave them waiting until discovered by any chance domestic who happened by. And when they were ushered forth to the street he would follow them with a torrent of shrill apology, retiring, in a paroxysm of silent laughter, behind the shutters of his little box. Why Madame de Nemours endured his vagaries was indeed strange, for she was one who demanded of every other domestic something of an over-obsequiousness in service. It was a well-known fact, however, that he held an assured position in the household, and that the Countess only smiled at his grimaces and drinking, rewarding him with frequent gifts and holidays in the country.

On the morning of Dermott's coming, Quantrelle the Red sat in his little house peering out, monkeylike, expectantly, at the passers-by, and craning his long neck to keep a constant eye on the corner around which the Irishman was to arrive. As the brougham drew up to the curb the Red One sprang to his feet, threw the iron doors wide apart, and stood bowing double as McDermott entered.

"Ah, my Quantrelle!" he cried, gayly, at sight of the thin grotesqueness. "Still in your old place; still taking care of madame!"

"Till the end," was the answer, with a serious note in the voice.

"You have not changed much in the three years since I saw you last," Dermott said, inspecting him closely.

"Nor you, monsieur," Quantrelle answered. "In fact, you have changed little since twelve years ago, when I hid you and young Monsieur de Chevanne on top of my box here, after some escapade, to keep you both from the police." He scrutinized McDermott closely as he spoke. "And it's not the money (which I know well you will give me anyhow) which makes me say you are more beautiful than ever, monsieur. The same elegant pallor; the same pursuit in the eye! Had I had your looks"; he made a clucking sound in his cheek with his tongue; "and your clothes! Always the blacks and grays and very elegant! They are not my colors," he drew himself to his straightest to exhibit his maroon coat and trousers and wide green cravat with an assumed satisfaction; "but each has his own style," he finished.

McDermott laughed. "You are sober, Quantrelle!"

"Distressingly so, monsieur!"

"And if I give you money you would use it for—" McDermott paused.

"Charity, monsieur," the Red One answered, his eyes drooped religiously. He took the gold coin which Dermott gave him, tossed it into the sunshine, and slipped it into his pocket with a bow. "You will notice, I honor your integrity by not biting it to see if it be counterfeit."

"Knowing your character, it is indeed a compliment," McDermott said. "Au revoir, my Quantrelle!"

"Au revoir, Monsieur l'Irlandais!"

And Dermott passed.

Inside he found the Countess waiting in the drawing-room, and she greeted him with hands outstretched, kissing him on both cheeks in the French fashion. Afterward she stood regarding him with a slow, sweet smile, which came from one of the kindest hearts in the world.

"And this," she said, in a beautiful, quiet, warm voice, "is the Irish cousin who has not been to see me for so very long!"

Although past fifty, she was tall and slight, with the grace of a girl. Her hair, white and soft and wavy, was worn high in a style quite her own; her skin was pink and white as a child's; her blue eyes shone with tenderness, and they had a merry, dancing light in them continually. Her face was of a delicate oval, with a nose slender, beautifully modelled, and exceptionally high between the eyes. She wore a green-white dress of cloth individual in its cut and very plain, with an old silver belt and brooch to match. Her hands, fragile and beautiful as shells, were ringless.

"It seems so perfectly flat to say that I am glad to see you, doesn't it?" she asked, as Dermott smiled down at her.

"I like it just the same," he answered.

"When did you get in?" she inquired.

"I came over from Havre yesterday. I was busy with some English folk about a mine, or I would have tried to see you last evening."

"And you will stay—" She paused.

"Ten days at most."

"Ah!" she said. "That's horrid! You will miss so many pleasant things! A Bernhardt first night for one."

"I'm a horny-handed son of toil, beautiful cousin," he answered, "and I have come on business only."

There was a pause, which Dermott felt the Countess was waiting for him to break.

"Patricia," he said, a beautiful consideration for her in his voice, "I want to spare you in every way I can in reviewing the bitter business of your early marriage. I have written you only what was absolutely necessary for you to know. I discovered by accident that your first husband left quite an estate. If you were his wife and had a living child at the time of his death, and if these facts can be established, this property belongs to you. You have not as much money as you should have. I shall get his estate for you—if I can."

"About the records?" she inquired.

"If you have them ready I shall go over to Tours to-morrow to make a search for the sister of the priest."

"Dermott, dear," the Countess said, putting her hand on his shoulder affectionately, "you are not going to make trouble for any one, are you?"

"Am I not?" he answered, with a short laugh. "Am I not?"

She took a bundle of papers, which she had evidently prepared for him, from a desk which stood between the windows, but made no motion to give them to him.

"It's all so far in the past," she said, "no one can ever know what I suffered. But I want no one else to suffer in order that I may have what you term my rights."

"Patricia," Dermott answered, gravely, "the thing is all a bit in the air as yet. Your first marriage will be difficult to establish. The French law requires such absolute proof that I may not be able to obtain it. Now, don't let us discuss the matter further, nor worry that kind heart of yours." He patted her head affectionately as he spoke.

In the years past she had known him well enough to remember his moods, and she gave him the papers in silence.

"About Mademoiselle Dulany," she continued. "Since your letter, I have made inquiries concerning her. I shall be glad to know her, for her own sake as well as yours."

"I'm going to ask a great favor of you for her, Patricia," he answered. "You live in this great house alone. It would be better to have more people about you. I want you to see much of her, for I am hoping that some day she may be my wife."

He spoke the last word tenderly, a bit wistfully.

"Ah, Dermott," she cried, "I had no idea! I shall be so glad to do anything I can! Why couldn't she come and stay with me?"

"That is like you," he answered, gratefully; "but such things can never be arranged happily. They must grow. Wait until you meet her. I am to see her to-night. I will bring her to you to-morrow, if I may."

"It is arranged, this marriage?" she asked, delighted at a bit of romance.

"Not in the least," he answered, concisely.

"But she loves you?"

"On the contrary," he said, quietly, "she loves another."

"And you are hoping—" The Countess hesitated.

"Not hoping," Dermott answered, "determined."

"How old is she?"

"Nearly nineteen, and Irish."

"Irish girls are hard to change."

"But you loved your second husband, did you not?" Dermott inquired.

"I hope I was a good wife," the Countess answered, evasively, adding, "But you remember our own Tom Moore!"

"'The wild freshness of morning—'?"

Dermott stood looking into the fire, his eyes drooped, his face saddened.

"But there is something else to remember as well," Madame de Nemours said, touching him on the shoulder and looking up at him admiringly. "The half-gods go when the gods arrive. And you have everything in your favor. You are so great a man and such a charming fellow, Dermott!"

* * * * *

On the following day Katrine came alone to see Madame de Nemours, Dermott having concluded wisely that his presence would be but a drawback to any quick acquaintance between the two.

"I am Katrine," the girl answered, in response to the Countess' query. "Mr. McDermott has been so kind as to send me to you."

"It came about in this way," the Countess explained, drawing Katrine to a couch and still keeping her hand. "There was a time when I knew Dermott, my cousin, very well. That was in Ireland, before he became the great man he now is. Since that time we have written to each other always, for he has been kind enough to give me his friendship. He came yesterday. I was sad, and told him of my lonesomeness. It is best, is it not, to be quite frank when two people are meeting as you and I are doing? In spite of all this," and here she made a slight gesture to include her luxurious surroundings, "I am quite a poor woman. And so when I told Dermott that I was lonesome in this great house, with none but servants, no companions, he spoke to me of you. He was quite practical. He said that you spent much money as you were living. He told me of your great beauty and your greater voice. I became very much interested in you, and we arranged for this talk. Now that I have seen you, I want you to come and live with me very much, very much." She was so charming in her kindness, this great lady! "But you may not desire it. The situation is awkward for me." She smiled here, and a humorous light danced in her eyes, for with all her graciousness she was quite certain of her charm. "And so we will leave you to think it over and tell Mr. McDermott, who will in turn tell the decision to me. That will save my vanity from being hurt openly in case you do not come."

Impulsively, Katrine clasped both the Countess' hands in hers.

"I want to come very much," she said. "There was never any one with whom I would rather be. I know now that you are the lady of whom Monsieur Josef spoke to me once. 'Ach!' he said, you know his way, 'she is the greatest lady in the world! It is not what she does, but what she is so beautifully.'"

As Katrine spoke with the earnestness of voice and manner always her own, the Countess leaned forward suddenly with a startled look.

"Who is it that you remind me of?" she cried, drawing her, black brows together. "If I could only think! Who is it that you remind me of?"



XVIII

KATRINE MEETS ANNE LENNOX

During McDermott's ten days' stay in Paris, Katrine saw him constantly. The evening after her first visit to the Countess he received with a gay air of irresponsibility the news that she was to take up her residence with Madame de Nemours, and though he personally assisted in the establishing of herself and Nora in the queer old house, it was with the manner of one in no way responsible for what was going forward.

Some sunny rooms on the third floor were given her, a great piano was enthroned in a bright corner, gay flowers bloomed against the faded tapestry, and the Countess urged her to choose from many pictures the ones she desired for intimate friends.

She knew that McDermott visited Josef to speak of her, and that he returned delighted with the visit; but in all of his attentions there seemed even to the watchful eyes of the Countess more brotherly kindness than the solicitude of a lover. On the night before his return to the States he had a long talk with Madame de Nemours. His visit to Tours had resulted in nothing, and it was with some depression of spirits that he was making his farewells.

But the Countess was too much occupied with her new protege to be downcast over any mythical inheritance in America, and as she stood under the lamps in the doorway bidding him farewell, she said, with girlish enthusiasm: "Don't you think about it any more. I have enough to live on nicely. And as for that glorious Katrine, I'll deave her ears with your name! No praises. Ah, I'm too old and wise for that! It will be this way. 'It's a pity,' I'll say, 'that Dermott is not better-looking,' and she'll answer, 'Sure he's one of the handsomest men in the world.' And the next day, 'How unfortunate he is so niggardly?' 'Niggardly!' she'll cry. 'He gives away everything he has. He's the soul of generosity!' Ah, trust me!" the Countess ended. "She shall persuade herself there's none other like you. And there's not!" she cried, kissing her hand to him as he went down the steps.

Within the week after McDermott's leaving Paris there occurred two events, seemingly remote from Katrine's existence, which later wrought the greatest changes in her life.

The first of these was the alarming illness of Quantrelle the Red. After a day of peculiarly unbearable conduct on his part, the other domestics in the house had revolted, and late in the evening turned him out to pass the night in his fireless sentry-box. For ten days after this occurrence he hovered between life and death with an inflammation of the lungs, during which period the De Nemours' household learned his real power, for the Countess flew into a paroxysm of rage at his treatment, discharged the cook and one of the upper maids, harangued the others, sent for the best doctors in Paris, and herself assisted in the nursing, taking little sleep or nourishment until the old fellow was well on his way to recovery.

During all of this turmoil Katrine went quietly back and forth to her lessons, in no way questioning the conduct of the Countess, for she understood to the full that human hearts form attachments by no rule.

One evening during Quantrelle's convalescence, when the Countess was her sunny self again, she offered, unasked, an explanation of her seemingly singular conduct.

"Little person," she said, putting her hand on Katrine's shoulder, "you mustn't judge too harshly my Irish temper. It was gratitude to Quantrelle which made me act as I did. There were two years of my life when I should have died but for him."

It was an amazing statement, and Katrine's face showed her astonishment.

"When I was sixteen," Madame de Nemours continued, "I was sent to a convent school at Tours. Quantrelle's father was gate-keeper there, and let me pass out the night I went to be married. I was only a child." The Countess covered her face with both hands, as though to shut out some horrid sight. "He was an American, a Protestant, and my father cursed me. Two years after the marriage my husband deserted me. Perhaps," she paused in her story, "perhaps Dermott has told you this?"

"He has never spoken of it to me," said Katrine.

"After my baby came," Madame de Nemours continued, "I was alone with poverty and ill health, and for two years, two years," she repeated, impressively, "Quantrelle, a long, thin-legged, red-haired boy, kept me alive with the money he could earn and the scant assistance his mother could lend him. It was eleven years later, four years after my baby's death and my father's forgiveness, that I married the Count. Katrine, darling, I gave him a great affection and entire devotion, but my heart died with the first love. To have that first year over! Ah, there was never another like him! You could never know, Katrine, how different he was from others."

"It was long ago?" Katrine asked.

"Thirty years. Dermott has recently been demanding papers of me. It seems there may be some property in America belonging to my first husband which he can claim for me."

A premonition of the truth came to Katrine at the sound of Dermott's name.

"And your first husband's name?" she inquired. "Will it pain you to tell it?"

"Not at all," the Countess answered, with a sad smile. "It was Francis Ravenel."

The sound of the name itself brought no shock to Katrine. She seemed to have heard it before it was spoken, but she made no sign.

She knew it was Frank's father of whom Madame de Nemours spoke, and the tales of him in North Carolina had more than prepared her for wild doings in his student days. It seemed strange, however, that Frank had never spoken of an early marriage of his father. But the more she thought of it, the firmer became her belief that he had never known it.

It was not until the gray of the following morning that she comprehended to the full the weighty significance of Madame de Nemours' early marriage, and saw clearly the significance of Dermott's stay in Carolina, with the direful resulting that might come to Frank from the Irishman's investigations there.

"If Frank's father married in America, with a wife and child living in France—" But here Katrine stopped in her thinking, putting the idea from her mind as one too horrid to entertain.

The second apparently disconnected event which led by a circuitous route to the death of Madame de Nemours, as well as to the discovery of that missing witness for whom McDermott long had searched, was announced quietly by the Countess herself one morning of the following May.

Looking up from the Paris Herald, she said to Katrine, "I see that Anne Lennox has leased the old Latour Place in the Boulevard Haussmann for an indefinite period."

The three months following the coming of Mrs. Lennox made no change in their lives whatever. Katrine was aware that Madame de Nemours and Anne exchanged visits of courtesy, each missing the other, but early in July she went with the Countess and Josef to Brittany and spent the summer in work, the world forgetting and by the world forgot.

And the divine days with Josef by the sea! His wisdom, his temper, his splendid intolerance, his prophetic imaginings, as he stormed at the imbecility of his kind!

"It's this damned idea of realism that's killing art!" he shrieked one day, on the rocks at Concarneau. "Who wants things natural? If Jones and Smith could be taught by reiterating life as it is, the race of fools would soon become extinct. My neighbor loves his neighbor's wife, and they go off together and there is murder done. Does the reading of this in book or paper stop my going off with the woman I love if I have the chance? Not a whit! Art must raise one's ideals. It's the only thing that helps you, me, any one!"

Or, again, and this was at twilight, waiting under the old crucifix for the herring-boats to come in: "Anybody with eyesight can imitate the actual. The real! What has the creative mind to do with that? It is not one great and innocent-minded girl you are to represent in Marguerite, it is all girlhood in its innocence and surrender."

And another time, on the way home from Pont-Aven:

"Women of detail, women who indulge themselves in soul-wearying repetition of the little affairs of life, have driven more men to perdition than all the Delilahs ever created."

And Katrine and he laughed together at his anathema, and went forward into a dusky French twilight, singing as they went.

Around her room she pinned the written slips which he gave at every lesson, Scripture which seemed perverted to uses other than its own:

"He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.

"Live with Goethe's Faust—learn it. You will understand Gounod's better.

"All art comes from the same kind of nature. If you didn't sing yours, you would paint it, carve it, write it, play it out; for, if it is in you to create something artistic, nothing human can stop your doing it.

"There are no mute, inglorious Miltons. Every one who has the qualifications for success succeeds."

As time passed the letters to her unknown benefactor became more and more intimate in tone by reason of her race and youth. No answer ever coming to any of them, it was as though her thoughts were written and cast into the eternal silence.

Upon the second anniversary of her farewell to Francis Ravenel, which was soon after her return from Brittany to Paris, she took from the depths of an old trunk the mementos of that time which seemed to her so far away. Such trifling things: a pine cross tied with blue ribbon; a grass ring which he had made for her once in the barley-field; a note or two; a book of collected poems, marked. Trifling things, indeed! but her heart throbbed with the sense of his presence as she held them in her hands.

In the next room Nora was clattering some tea things, making the plain, homely bustle that frequently keeps one sane. Out-of-doors it was one of Paris' divine gray days, with pinks and lavenders showing in the shadows; but neither the in-door noise nor the outside beauty held her. She was back in the Carolinas with her first love; there was the odor of pine and honeysuckle in the Paris air, a harvest moon in the sky.

"To forgive and forget and understand."

On the impulse of the moment she decided to write her story to the unknown with no names, telling the pain which haunted her always; the pain which she felt would be hers until the end. Having finished the narrative, she concluded:

"I am trying to make it very clear to you. You have been, you are, so kind. But I want you to know about me exactly as I am. The world would say that this man did not treat me well. He had faults; he had ignorances; we are none of us perfect; he was not a great man. But he was just as I would have him."

And, womanlike, she added a postscript:

"You send me too much money. Lessons in fencing, dancing, languages, music, cost a great deal. I have not been spending it all, although I have been helping an art student, who has almost starved himself to death in a room built on a roof, painting by candle-light.

"P.P.S.—Also a girl who tried to drown herself because she cannot sing, but she writes beautifully. I will send you one of her poems, to show you she is worth helping.



"P.P.P.S.—Also a very poor rag-picker with, I think, twelve children. He looks even worse than this."

The routine of her life having been thoroughly established the preceding winter, she fell easily again into the old lines. Every day she lunched with Madame de Nemours. Sometimes, when engagements left them both free, they dined together in quite a stately manner in the high, old tapestry room, and once in a fortnight she was bidden to dinner with friends of this great lady—Bartand, the dramatist; President Arnot; or Prince Cassini, with his terrible vitality and schemes for universal betterment.

One morning she was disturbed at her studies by a card from the Countess, saying that Mrs. Lennox was below and wished to see her. She had grown accustomed to the desire of strangers to be presented to her, for, as Dermott had told her, the news of her voice was already newspaper copy. In the drawing-room she found Madame de Nemours by the window talking animatedly, in her pleasant, low voice, to a lady, young and vivacious, wearing aggressive mourning.

"And this," the stranger cried, in a high, strong, musical voice, coming forward, "is the Miss Dulany of whom I have been hearing such wonderful things?" She waited for no response. "I have just been telling the Countess that I almost met you at Ravenel House, in Carolina, over two years ago. There was a house-party, and you refused to come."

Katrine flushed and turned pale again suddenly, as she realized that this was the Mrs. Lennox whom, by current gossip, Frank was to marry, and she lived over again in an instant, it seemed, the morning when she had met them riding together by the ford at Ravenel.

"I was ill, I remember," Katrine explained, recovering herself; "unfortunately ill, since I was prevented from meeting you." There was both consideration and compliment in her tone.

"Everything has changed a great deal since then," Mrs. Lennox went on, "with me as well as with others. I lost my mother the following winter," she glanced at her mourning as she spoke, "and Mrs. Ravenel has been back to the old place but once, for a few weeks only. Mr. Ravenel (you remember Mr. Ravenel?) has gone in for all sorts of things since then. Nobody knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling the Countess of him."

"I do not know Mr. van Rensselaer," said Katrine.

"What!" Mrs. Lennox cried, with amazement. "I thought you met him at Ravenel! I understood he heard you sing there, and it was because of it that he wanted to send you abroad to study."

"If it be Mr. van Rensselaer who has been so kind to me, I do not know it," Katrine answered, in no small degree annoyed by this enforced intimacy. "I have never seen him nor heard his name before in my life."

If Mrs. Lennox noted Katrine's manner she was in nowise deterred by it from going deeper into the subject.

"Mrs. Ravenel told me," she continued, with excitement in her voice, "that Nick van Rensselaer came to her at Bar Harbor, and asked the use of her name if he furnished the means to send you abroad to study. He said that he was especially anxious to remain unknown in the matter. Mrs. Ravenel told me afterward that you had declined the offer because of having inherited a fortune yourself. But, of course, I thought you must have met him; in fact, I remember that Frank said he thought so, too. By-the-way," she went on, rising to go, "he is coming over soon; Mr. Ravenel, I mean." She looked conscious for a second, as though preferring to keep something back, and then finished: "He will, of course, call while he is here?"

"He may be so kind," Katrine answered, suavely.

"Good-bye," Mrs. Lennox said, holding out a slim, black-gloved hand first to the Countess and then to Katrine. "I hope your studies will let you come to me soon. I hear you are to make your debut in the spring."

Katrine laughed. "That will be as Josef says."

"Good-bye again."

After Mrs. Lennox had left the room, Katrine and the Countess looked at each other with questioning in the eyes of each.

"You lived at a place called Ravenel," Madame de Nemours asked, "and never told me?"

"I did not think the name one you would care to hear," Katrine answered.

"Ah, you so sweet thing!" the Countess cried, impulsively, putting her hand on the girl's cheek. "You were right. There are probably thousands of Ravenels in America unconnected with my unfortunate life."

But Katrine, who had had her own surprises in the interview, inquired, "Why did Mrs. Lennox, who is very beautiful, very wealthy, and of the monde, take so much trouble to come here to tell me of a Mr. van Rensselaer?"

"I didn't think she came for that alone," answered the Countess. "I thought she wanted you to know that Monsieur Ravenel was coming over to visit her."

Naturally, a marked change in Katrine's attitude toward her unknown benefactor followed this talk with Anne Lennox. She had become accustomed to think of "The Dear Unknown" as a lady, old and beneficent. The new idea was startling. Thinking it over, she became convinced of the extreme unlikelihood that two people should have become so greatly interested in her voice at exactly the same time, and her conclusions led to believing that Mrs. Lennox had probably given her a true version of the affair. But if Nicholas van Rensselaer were her patron, instead of some white-haired old lady down in Leeds or Kent or Surrey, as she had imagined, her last letter must inevitably have told him, who had spent so much time in North Carolina, of her love for Francis Ravenel.

The obviously honest thing to do was to write to Mr. van Rensselaer immediately, to let him know that without effort or curiosity on her part his identity had been revealed to her.

Her letter to him was short to abruptness. She stated briefly the manner in which the information had come to her as well as her regret that his wish to remain unknown had been thwarted. She hoped that her voice would fulfill all the promise he thought it gave two years back; referred to the personal nature of her last letter; spoke of her desire to repay in full the money part of her obligation to him, realizing that the kind thought could never be repaid in this world, and signed herself his "grateful Katrine Dulany."

In a fortnight the answer came:

MY DEAR MISS DULANY,—Your letter reached me but a few minutes ago, and I am feeling, since its arrival, like the ass that wore the lion's skin. Mrs. Lennox was entirely wrong in her statements. It is true that I proposed the arrangement, which she told you of, to Mrs. Ravenel, but that dear lady wrote me within the week that I was too late in my offer, and that another believer in your gift had anticipated the pleasure I had promised myself in helping to give to the world a great voice.

I am extremely sorry that you are under no obligations to me. The confidences which you mention I assure you are entirely safe so far as I am concerned, for I never received a letter from you save the one which lies before me as I write.

I have heard that you will sing at the Josef recital in May. May I count upon you to write me a line as to the exact time, so that I may have the pleasure of hearing you?

If, meanwhile, there is any way that I can serve you, believe me that I shall be glad to do so, for I heard you sing "Ah! Fors e lui" one night, standing under the pines outside of your window, and my debt is great.

Sincerely, NICHOLAS VAN RENSSELAER.

And it was a curious thing to note that this letter, caused by the chatter of Anne Lennox, was the direct cause of Katrine's next meeting with Frank, a meeting which, but for this correspondence which led to an acquaintance with the Van Rensselaers, might never have taken place.

One evening, shortly after the receipt of this letter, Madame de Nemours told Katrine a piece of news for which she was not unprepared.

"By-the-way," she said, "Mrs. Lennox was here to-day. Mr. Ravenel is expected in Paris to-morrow. I have asked a party to dine with them on Friday."

Katrine had just said good-night to the Countess, and was standing in the doorway, candle in hand, with the light shining full on her face, as Madame de Nemours spoke; but she received the news with no change of face, no tremor of an eyelid. She felt it a loyalty to old love that the Countess should be forever unable to recognize in Frank the man whom they had discussed so often, namelessly; and of whom Madame de Nemours had such a slighting opinion. The strangest thing of all was that she had for this man's coming; this man for whose presence she had longed day and night for two years; the remembrance of whose words could thrill her and bring tears to her eyes or a smile to her lips; that for this man's coming, she had no thought save regret that he was to come, and determination not to meet him.

"I want to be sent away, Illustrious Master," she said, the following afternoon, to Josef, when the lesson was over, and they stood together looking at the sun going down over the gray mist of the Paris roofs. "I am not well, and there is some one coming to Madame de Nemours' on Friday whom I do not wish to meet."

Josef looked at her quickly.

"Mademoiselle Silence," he said, "I, who read voices as others read a printed page, understand. You had better see him."

Katrine flushed crimson, but changed suddenly to such a whiteness that Josef thought she would have fallen.

"Forgive me," he said, tenderly, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I am the surgeon with the knife, but my work is almost done. Let me tell you something. You have worked as I have never seen any one work before. I have not praised much, but I have seen. Ah, I know! Tones, little, big, staccato, breath, breath, breath! Over, and yet again over. And the thinking a tone, which is the hardest of all. And the acting—to conceive what a character's voice should be; to understand that the timbre of Carmen's voice would not be that of Marguerite's; that the soul of the voice must change for each character. To slave, to slave, to slave, and suffer as you have done into the third year, is it not? None other can know the value of it all as I know it, and at the end what has the master done for you? Meet this man and you will find out. It is for my reward I am asking, for I, too, have done something."

Katrine took the hand of the great teacher and kissed it lovingly.

"Something?" she said. "You have done all."

"Not all; a part, a very little part," he returned. "But meet the man, my child, and you will see how much has been done by both of us. On Saturday morning you will come to me. You will say, 'Prophetic man, I am ashamed through all my being to have loved so slight a thing.' You will find you have outgrown him, and he will have only the weight of the Santa Claus, which children painlessly outgrow. And ever after you will have toward him a kindly mother-feeling, for that is woman's way toward their first loves."

Katrine shook her head. "I do not want to forget."

"No," said Josef, "you never have wanted to forget, and that has made it hard for me. You have a strange creed of your own. But sometimes, when I know beyond words that I have received a 'wireless' message from you over the roof-tops, I begin to believe you dangerous, Katrine Dulany. But your belief of 'mind-curing' people into being better has the seed of truth in it which makes so many new creeds dangerous. You can make yourself so great by fine thinking that the people who come in contact with you understand and are uplifted."

"It is a thing more subtle, Greatness!" Katrine answered.

"It is not a thing more subtle, Obstinacy!" he returned, with a laugh. "However, have your way! You are ordered, to Fontainebleau to-morrow. Your voice is in rags, shall I say? You will stay for two weeks at the house of Madame Lomard. You will lie in the open and breathe much. And so, good-bye to you!"



XIX

A VISION OF THE PAST

Anne Lennox's residence in Paris was more closely connected with Frank Ravenel than the world knew. In a letter which she had received from Mrs. Ravenel, after her illness at Bar Harbor, that comfort-loving old lady had written that she would like to go abroad for the winter if there could be found some homelike place to stay.

Mrs. Lennox had grown tired of New York, and she quickly devised a plan to take some of her servants with her, find a suitable establishment in Paris, and ask Mrs. Ravenel to make her a prolonged visit. That Francis would probably accompany his mother to Europe and visit her as frequently as business made it possible was not overlooked in Anne Lennox's calculations.

But Mrs. Ravenel, who was too fearful of her comfort to trust written descriptions, asked her son to step over to Paris, as she jauntily put it, and see Anne's home before she committed herself.

"She writes me," said Mrs. Ravenel, eyeing the invitation suspiciously, "that she has taken a house like a palace. I lived in a palace once in Venice. The walls were of marble, with moisture on them constantly, and there was but four feet of rug on a tiled floor forty feet square. When I asked for fire they brought me a china basket with three or four semi-hot coals in it, and placed it in the exact centre of the room where one was liable to trip over it. The experience cured me of 'dreaming to dwell in marble halls.' I want heat, electricity, and a large bath of my own."

According to his mother's wishes, Frank had written to Anne that business was bringing him to Paris, and that he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon her some time within the following fortnight. In the stately old house, which she had taken on the Boulevard Haussmann, Anne awaited Frank's coming with more emotion than she acknowledged to herself. She knew that he had arrived in Paris two days before, had seen that he was at the Grand Club, and the day previous had received from him a note asking permission to call at four. He had been more than deliberate in his attentions, a deliberation to which she had become accustomed. It was, in fact, part of his charm. Often, in past years, he had hurt her so much by his coldness that his coming brought a keener pleasure than the presence of a more ardent suitor might have done, if he could with any exactness be termed a suitor at all.

Long before her ill-assorted marriage had been dissolved by the death of her husband, Anne Lennox's name had been connected with that of Francis Ravenel. But it was one of the few affairs of his life which had caused no scandal, one which other women had slurred over with a laugh.

"Anne's all right, you know," they explained, "and really Frank and she would have been very well suited to each other if they could have married. At worst nothing but a flirtation; and who, knowing her husband, can blame her?" These were the excuses framed for Mrs. Lennox by her many friends. The death of her husband had brought the general belief that a wedding between Frank and herself would naturally follow. Nearly four years had elapsed, however, and marriage between them seemed no nearer than it had ever done.

Frank's present visit to Paris, Anne Lennox knew, with some bitterness, was a business one. He had made that disappointingly plain to her in his letter. But as she awaited his coming in a white crepe gown, which made her seem so fair and young, she hoped the words might be spoken which would bring to her the desired end.

With all the love of which her worldly heart was capable, she had loved this man for years, for his wealth, his family, even for his reputed successes with women, which would give added distinction to the charms of the woman whom he finally selected for a wife.

After he had been announced she rose to greet him, and stood watching him as he came slowly through the great hall, noticing the hangings as he came. It was a slight thing, but a woman in love knows the value of such signs.

"When did you come?" she asked.

"Three days ago." He offered no excuse for his tardy attention, adding only, "You've a beautiful old place, Anne."

"You like it?" she asked. "I'm delighted. You are not easily pleased. But you should see the De Nemours' place. Whenever I come back after seeing it this place seems detestably new, as if it were just varnished! It is with the Countess de Nemours that Miss Dulany lives."

She watched him with attentiveness.

"Yes!" he answered, in a tone which might either be asking or answering a question, adding: "The New York papers are heralding many complimentary things concerning her voice. Have you heard her sing?"

Anne shook her head. "She is hedged about like royalty. That dreadful Josef prescribes every minute of her day. It must be a great bore to live in the way she has done. I met her once, however. Do you know, Frank, she had never heard of Nick van Rensselaer, and when I told her he had wanted to send her abroad before her fortune came she seemed amazed. Of course, your mother denied the fact that it was Mr. van Rensselaer who enabled her to come; but I always believed it was he, didn't you?"

"You are complimenting mother's veracity," Frank answered, laughing. "If she said it was not Mr. van Rensselaer, as a dutiful son I am bound to believe it, am I not?"

"Doubtless," Anne answered, smiling. "By-the-way, Madame de Nemours has left with me an invitation for you to dine with her on Friday."

"Shall we hear Miss Dulany sing, do you suppose?" Frank asked, quietly, unimportantly.

"I don't know. She has never dined with us when I have been there. I believe she is allowed frivolities but once a fortnight. Perhaps—" But before she finished a maid entered with Madame de Nemours' card. "You can ask for yourself," Anne explained, glancing at the card. "Here is the Countess in person."

It had grown dark in the room, and Frank stood in the shadow as he was presented to the Countess, who had come with the hope of meeting him, for Katrine's sudden resolve to go to Fontainebleau had not deceived her at all. By that process of seemingly illogical reasoning by which women arrive accurately at facts, she had come to the conclusion that Katrine had gone away to avoid meeting either Anne Lennox or this Mr. Ravenel, and a far less brilliant woman than Madame de Nemours would have suspected Frank of being the man who had caused Katrine such pain in the past. That she had lived on his plantation, and that there must have been many opportunities for them to have been constantly together, unnoted in a place twenty miles from any dwelling, made the thing doubly sure. And so Madame de Nemours, by reason of her intuitions, met Francis Ravenel upon the defensive for this girl whom she had learned to love so deeply.

"I am in despair," the Countess said, after the greetings had been exchanged. "Here am I giving a dinner to distinguished Americans," this with a little complimentary gesture toward both of them, "on Friday, and Katrine Dulany ordered off to Fontainebleau by that terrible Josef. 'You are not well!' said he. 'Go on such a day, on such a train, to such a place! Say this! Think this! Imagine this!' And the poor child went off yesterday for a month to Fontainebleau, afraid to disobey. Do you know, I am thinking," she went on, "of adopting this strange child, Katrine, legally, just to circumvent Josef? For that, and other reasons," she explained, laughing, "I am so sorry you are not to meet her, Mr. Ravenel."

"I have met Miss Dulany frequently," Frank answered. "In Carolina, three years ago. Every one there was interested in her voice."

"Yes," the Countess answered, "it will be like that always with her. If I tell you something," she said, the light dancing in her eyes as she spoke, "will you be very discreet about it? I am thinking of marrying Katrine to my nephew, the Duc de Launay. He doesn't know it, being in Africa, but I am determined to be firm with both. Think of those splendid, great ways of hers! She should have been a duchess in the Middle Ages, when she could have dressed in long, brocaded stuffs and led armies or killed a king. You can see," she said, drawing her wraps about her, "I am not quite sane on the subject of this Irish child, and go before I become a regular bore. Good-bye, Mrs. Lennox; good-bye, Mr. Ravenel. I am so glad to have you both for Friday night."

She rose, and as she did so Frank came forward to assist her with her wraps. At sight of him, in the full light of the doorway, she drew back for an instant, clutched at a curtain, gave another quick look, and fell, with a white face, unconscious into Anne's supporting arms.

It was not long, however, before she recovered enough to be helped to her carriage; but this fainting was followed by a protracted illness, the Friday dinner was postponed indefinitely, and Katrine summoned hurriedly home from Fontainebleau.

Naturally, Anne Lennox called and brought Frank with her to make inquiries and to leave regrets. It was in this visit, as Frank stood well in the sunshine admiring the old house, that Quantrelle, peering from his box, saw him, and with an oath fell back into the shadow as though hiding from an enemy. Peering from a crack in the door, he waited Frank's departure, and after the carriage had driven away, seized a hat and ran at a mad pace down the narrow street, upsetting children and dogs as he ran.

* * * * *

Josef protested impatiently that it was a badly chosen time for the Countess to be ill, speaking as though Madame de Nemours had personally selected it with criminal thoughtlessness of Katrine, whose debut was close at hand; for despite his protests, the girl took the position of nurse, sitting up till all hours of the night, and neglecting her lessons if the Countess needed or desired her services.

The great lady herself, after the danger seemed passed, lay in silence day by day, neither questioning nor explaining. To Katrine, however, explanations were unnecessary, for she understood that to Madame de Nemours the sight of Frank had brought back, with terrible distinctness that other Ravenel who had been summoned to his accounting years before. Just how much Madame de Nemours knew of Frank's attitude to Katrine at this time was never made clear, but she clung to her adopted child with love and a new comprehension.

But no word passed between them at the time on the subject of either Ravenel, nor did these two great ladies again speak to each other on the subject of Francis Ravenel until the night of the Countess' death. But it was doubtless the bond in suffering, no less than her great love, which made the Countess write to Dermott, the first day of her convalescence, the letter which is set below:

"I am nearing the end, my dear Irish cousin, and would set the house in order before I go. What little I have (it is almost nothing, for the house goes back to the estate at my death and my income has never been large) I want to give to Katrine Dulany. I want her to have, in the old phrase, everything of which I die possessed. And of course I desire you to be the executor. Will you arrange the necessary papers and bring them with you when you come to hear her sing? And I'm hoping I may be still here to greet you and thank you once more for a lifetime of loyalty and devotion."

Sitting in his New York office, Dermott read the lines with a face saddened and gray. But the smile, so peculiarly his own, filled with cynicism and humor, came to his lips at its close.

"Talk of justice!" he said. "Why, poetry can't touch this! Things always square themselves in the long run, though we may not live to see them do it, but this is one of the times when poetic justice itself got on the job."

Dermott answered this letter of Madame de Nemours in person as soon as business made it possible. Katrine, who understood from the Countess the significance of his coming, awaited him in the reception-room on the second floor. The curtains were drawn; a fitful fire made the figures in the tapestry advance and retreat; the candles in silver sconces lit up a misty Greuze over the mantel-shelf. A great bowl of white roses filled the room with fragrance, and Dermott thought, as he bent over Katrine's hand, that it was all but an exquisite setting for the girl herself.

Nearly a year had passed since their last meeting, and naturally Dermott expected some change in her. But Katrine was entirely unprepared for the change in Dermott. She had known but the one side of him in Carolina. On his previous visits to Paris, while grateful for his kindness, she was preoccupied and sad. And so, of the serious-eyed man with the beautiful pallor and grave courtesy, she had scant remembrance.

On the instant of his coming, however, she recollected memories of the old days; recalled that underneath his bright and stagelike behavior there had ever been a certain constant attention, a sweeping glance, a quiet scrutiny of persons unaware of his observance, a memory of details and words and dates in some degree inhuman, and in the first hand-clasp she recognized the power she had not had the vision to see in the years before.

With both hands in his and her breath caught in her throat with gratitude, she said:

"If you think I'm going to try to thank you for all you've done for me here in Paris, you're mistaken, Dermott. I'm not." And then, with a quick catching of the breath: "I couldn't do it adequately, no matter how I tried. I know it was you who arranged for me to live here with Madame de Nemours; I know how you've been writing to Josef concerning my studies; I know how your kindness has followed me everywhere. That's why I can't thank you," she said, with dewy lashes and the deep note in her voice which made her speech ever seem like a caress.

"I've done little," Dermott answered. "I hope, however, to do more." There was significance in his words, and Katrine looked at him quickly, to find him, however, gazing intently into the fire. "Tell me of yourself," he said; "all of it: the work, the ambitions, and the achievements. I have hungered at times for direct news of you. Already your fame is newspaper talk. You are happy?" he asked, abruptly.

"Happier than I thought I ever could be again," she answered, with an evasion.

"Once," he began, in a remote tone, "I was in Arabia with a native serving-man whom I tried to persuade to follow me on a shooting-trip in the desert. He said he couldn't go because he had a wife who wouldn't leave him. 'I made the mistake of beating her once,' he explained to me, 'and after a man has struck a woman once she'll stick to him forever.'"

If he expected angry speech of hurt remonstrance because of the too evident implication of the story, he was disappointed, for Katrine raised her eyes to his with sad frankness. "I think it speaks a truth, Dermott," she said. "Sometimes I wonder if there ever was a woman who loved the man who was kindest to her." "It's unrecorded if it ever occurred," he answered, moodily, taking another road in the conversation on the instant. "Madame de Nemours wrote me that you are to sing at Josef's recital next month."

"Yes, it is arranged."

"That will mean an opera engagement somewhere, will it not?"

Katrine laughed. "That's as may be. It depends on how I sing."

There was flattery in the answer. "It will mean Covent Garden if it depends on that," Dermott said.

"Thank you," she replied; and in the conventionality of the response she realized anew that the jesting-time was by between them and she had a man to reckon with.

"To-morrow," he said, "Josef has written me that, with your permission, I may hear you sing. Have I that permission, Katrine?"

"You have," she answered, noting the handsome line of the bent head and shoulders.

"To-morrow at two?"

"To-morrow at two. And then," said Katrine, "you will see for yourself what I've been doing, so there's no use discussing it, is there? Tell me of yourself and Barney. Does the newspaper work go well?"

"He's doing splendidly. He's more than making good."

"And the land you purchased in North Carolina! Do the eagles flourish on it?" she inquired.

"Not yet. But there's excellent clay there, and I've turned it into a brick factory for the present. The truth is, I needn't have bought that land. I suppose you've heard of the new railroad through Ravenel?" he asked.

"Something," she said, "but not definitely."

"They're building it on the other side from the 'Eagle Tract,'" he explained, smiling at the words. "Mr. Ravenel is practically putting the thing through himself. Do you know, Katrine," he continued, "I think I have underrated Ravenel. Sometimes in the last year, when I've seen him clearing obstacles from his path," and the way Dermott knew how to belittle a rival was plainly shown in the pitying tone he used here, "I've almost admired him. I have sometimes thought if circumstances had been different he might have even been something of a man."

But Katrine's utter honesty was a thing Dermott had not calculated upon. "Dermott," she said, "I have always tried to be frank with you, haven't I?"

"And at times," he broke in, with a smile, "have succeeded discouragingly well."

"I want to be so still. Madame de Nemours has told me the story of Ravenel."

McDermott waited, serene, inspiredly silent.

"But," Katrine went on, "I was a bit prepared for it. Almost the last thing father said to me before he died was that you were planning trouble for Mr. Ravenel."

McDermott waited still, but with a sterner look upon his keen and ardent face.

"Madame de Nemours has told me you need only a paper and a certain witness at Tours to carry out your purpose. Is it true?"

"It is."

"And that purpose is—" She hesitated.

"To see justice done to Madame de Nemours," he answered.

"It will mean that Mr. Ravenel has no right either to his home or his name?"

The pleading and protest in her voice did not escape Dermott as he answered:

"It will mean just that!"

"And nothing can move you from your purpose?"

"Nothing that I can now think of," he answered, adding with some vehemence: "Katrine Dulany, is it that you know me so little? My cousin suffered much. She was deserted by a scoundrel while little more than a child. These things must be paid for. But if you think I'd do a crooked thing in business to settle a grudge or belittle a rival, you don't know me at all. There's none, not Ravenel himself, who will demand everything proven beyond doubt sooner than I. I'll take every point I can honestly, but the man who is not absolutely honest in business is a fool. Until he learns to be honest from the higher reason, he should be honest from selfishness. It pays. It's capital."

"Then you believe the cause just?"

"I believe that the present Ravenel's father married in America knowing that he had a living wife and child in France."

Katrine stood, hand-clasped, looking straight into Dermott's eyes. But what she saw was an old garden in Carolina, wind-blown pines, the scarlet creepers around an old bench, and a man with blanched face and restless eyes; what she heard, underneath Dermott's voice, were words from the past:

"I might lie to you, but the thing that separates us is family pride, family pride. I am going away to-day, going because I do not dare to stay!"

"Nothing else in life could hurt Mr. Ravenel as this thing will if proven," she said, at length.

"Naturally not," McDermott answered, succinctly; "but it is not proven yet," he added, in an impartial tone, adding, "I have not been able to find the witness I need."

Was it Katrine's imagination that made her think the door moved suddenly as by human agency? Had some of the servants been listening? She paused in her talk, and, looking into the hall, saw Quantrelle the Red pass quickly up the stairs with his daily flower for Madame de Nemours.

"And, believing that Ravenel did not belong to Mr. Ravenel," she continued, "you encouraged him to build the railroad?"

"I neither encouraged nor discouraged that enterprise," Dermott answered. "Fate steered, and did it well."

"And Mrs. Ravenel?" The name, as she spoke it, was a remonstrance.

"Mademoiselle Dulany," Dermott answered, "indeed you've a wrong conception of the matter. There is to be no stage play or newspaper work in the case. It will be quietly adjusted. The Ravenels are not people to permit any publicity. There will be compromises. Mrs. Ravenel, I hope, need never know the facts in the case. There is none need ever know, save Frank."

"You have never liked him, have you, Dermott?" Katrine asked, with directness.

"Never," Dermott answered, with a frankness matching her own.

"Why?"

"Faith, and there are three excellent reasons," Dermott returned, with something of his old manner: "He was himself; I was myself; and a third," he paused, with all the power of his personality in his great gray eyes, "a third," he repeated, "which I hope some time to explain to you at great length, little Katrine."



XX

THE INFLUENCE OF WORK

Of Francis Ravenel at this time much could be written. In the first months of his separation from Katrine, during all of the period of his mother's illness, he remained firm in the intention expressed in the unsent letter to visit her in Paris, ask her forgiveness, and make her a formal offer of marriage. But quick on the heels of his return to New York had followed the railroad business, to which Dermott McDermott's insolence had added new reason for making the enterprise a successful one.

But underneath the several postponements of visiting Katrine, the real cause of them all, in fact, was a fear of the well-merited rebuff which he might receive from her. He understood her pride well; and although he believed that she had not ceased to love him, he doubted if he held her respect, and many times, when instinct bade him go to her, he had recalled the pleading tones of her voice in that last interview, when she had cried: "We may never meet again! Ah, please God, we may never meet again!"

Katrine's letters, which came to him with perfect regularity, kept him closely in touch with her daily life in Paris. He looked anxiously in them for any variation in her sentiments toward himself, but found none.

Reading one night in Firdousi, he discovered a passage which described Katrine so perfectly to him that he put a marker between the pages of the book, and kept it by his bedside to read at night as a pious person might have kept the confession of his faith.

"She was an elemental force," wrote the old poet, "and astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after day radiating every instant redundant joy and grace on all around her. Though the bias of her nature was not to thought but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments, believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble."

And there were sometimes bits of her letters which drove him wild with regret for what he had done.

"Is personal happiness, after all," she wrote once, "a very important thing? Nothing can ever make me suffer again as I have suffered, for I have learned to use a man's solace: work; work in which I can go far away from myself and be as impersonal as a problem in geometry. But I ask myself, Is that what was intended? Sometimes I seem to touch the edge of the knowledge that it is (perhaps) greater to be a sad, little, suffering, incompetent mother, than to be the person which trouble and music have made of me."

But in his self-abasement Frank failed to take into the accounting the stupendous effect which the New York influences and the handling of great affairs had had upon his own character. Day by day he had learned more plainly the lessons of responsibility, of continued and concentrated action, and even McDermott himself could not use Napoleon's great question, "What has he done?" more meaningly than Frank himself did now.

But with this new manhood came a finer comprehension of his baseness to Katrine, and an emphasized doubt as to whether she ever could forgive the miserable selfishness which he had displayed.

In his visits between the States and England (he made three during Katrine's stay in Paris, besides the one in which he had met the Countess de Nemours) he went from one side of the question to the other in his thinking, wanting to visit Katrine, but realizing to the full that Mademoiselle Dulany, a singer to the world, or Katrine, adopted daughter of the Countess de Nemours, and a possible duchess, were worlds removed from the little Irish girl who had loved him in the Carolina woods. Fontainebleau! Fontainebleau! Since the day the Countess had told him of Katrine's being there, the name repeated itself in his head like a song. He remembered the silence of the great trees, the nightingales at dusk among them, and dreamed of a day with Katrine there, hearing her quaint humor, her daring speeches, her tenderness, her selfless view of life, of herself, of everything in all the world save him.

At the Christmas-time of Katrine's last year in Paris, he received a quaint illumination with the following note of explanation:

MY DEAR UNKNOWN FRIEND,—I have thought this out and printed it, too. It is not very well done, but I have tried to make it sincere. Of course I got the idea of making prayers for myself from R.L.S.

I am sending it to you with a heart full of hope that your Christmas may be a merry one.

Affectionately, KATRINE DULANY.

He read and reread the printed lines, and finally had them framed and hung by his bedside, where they were the first thing upon which his eyes rested in the morning:

"Grant me the ability to do some one thing well.

"Give me sympathy for the suffering of others which has been brought to them by their own acts.

"Grant that I may have courage for the weak and the friendship of those who demand the best of my nature.

"Remove all doubts from me that there will be ultimate peace and happiness for every one.

"Let fear of the consequences of a right act be far from me. Let me forget the words expediency, convention, and reward.

"Grant me largeness of judgment, and silence for all weakness, especially that of woman.

"And give me, each day, my daily work, with rest at night under some friendly stars."

* * * * *

Early in April, after the lonesomest winter of his life, he received the following letter from his mother, who was still in Paris with Anne Lennox:

MY DEAR, DEAR CHILD,—I have been going about a great deal, meeting old friends and making some new ones, which accounts for my not having written you last week. Anne's house is like a Union Station for repose and solitude. She has people in to luncheon and dinner and tea, and I suspect even for the cafe au lait in the mornings. I enjoy it, however. One is seldom bored, though frequently exhausted. Why I am writing this dull introduction I cannot say, for I have more important things to tell.

I have met Katrine Dulany.

Anne and I went to the Countess de Nemours' reception on Friday night. We were all in a whirl of unfinished sentences when Miss Dulany entered. I wish you might have seen her, as she came toward us! Of course she was a very pretty child in North Carolina, but she has developed into something really remarkable. She wore white, decollete, with her hair Madonna-wise. And she has such distinction! Such repose! Truly, Frank, she came in so quietly that she made every one else seem to enter on horseback.

Coming directly toward me, she said: "Perhaps you do not remember me, Mrs. Ravenel! I am Katrine Dulany. My father was overseer of your plantation, in North Carolina, for nearly three years." It was as though Mary Queen of Scots had come to life and asked me if I remembered when she was my parlor-maid!

And she stayed and talked to me with sweetest deference and an appeal in her eyes, and I went home quite exalted to think this much-desired person had singled me out for such marked attention.

But during the night (and oh, my little, little boy! you will forgive me if what I write hurts you, won't you?) I awoke suddenly, and it seemed that everything was clear to me. I recalled your story of loving the woman whom you didn't think it right for you to marry, of your inexplicable stay at Ravenel through an entire summer, your depression afterward, and your sudden plunge into business. I couldn't help putting these things together and believing that this little Irish girl was the woman in the case.

But if you don't want me to know, I won't know. I never knew anything you didn't want me to. That's a mother's way. And don't say a word about the matter to me unless you care to. Believe me, boy of my heart, I will respect your silence.

It is three months since you have been here. Miss Dulany sings on the 23d. Can't you come over? Every one is going, and we have taken a box. Do come.

MOTHER.

Even to his mother Frank could not bring himself to mention Katrine's name, and he avoided all explanations by cabling his reply:

Will arrive in Paris on the 20th.—F.R.



XXI

THE NIGHT OF KATRINE'S DEBUT

The yearly recital of Josef's pupils is an event to which Paris looks forward with interest, for the great teacher makes of it always an artistic triumph. That year there was more than usual excitement over the event, because of the first appearance in public of Mademoiselle Dulany, whose voice had been enthusiastically written of by every critic whom Josef had permitted to hear her sing. Two of the greatest singers of the world, old pupils of Josef, had been bidden to sing with her. Campanali and Rigard, whose sonorous bass tones have thrilled two continents, came gladly at the bidding of their old master, to whom they owed so much. The opera was "Faust." The house was packed from pit to dome, with seats in the aisles, and many great people.

The Countess, trembling with excitement, had with her in her box her old friends the Townes, from London, for the event. In the next box the Duc d'Aumale and a party of club men were making bets about the success of the evening. In the next sat Francis Ravenel, with his mother and Anne Lennox. He was more excited than he had believed it possible for him to be over anything in life. The lights, the chatter of the gay throng, the moving of the people in their visiting from place to place, the tuning of the instruments, jarred upon his nerves frightfully and heightened the tension at which he was. Outwardly, however, he appeared as unmoved as if sitting alone at the club. His mother and Anne were recognizing many acquaintances in the audience, and there was a constant procession of men coming to the box to pay their respects. With every one the topic was La Dulany. "Would she have stage fright?" Josef said not. "Will she be as beautiful as rumor has said?" "It is a great undertaking for an absolutely unknown debutante to sing with Campanali, who will, nay, must, naturally take all the honors."

Meanwhile, Katrine, in her little white room at the Countess de Nemours', had just written:

DEAR UNKNOWN,—I have shut every one out of my room and shall see them no more until afterward. Can I do it? I have prayed God, who knows how I have suffered and worked and despaired and desired, to help me now. I have asked Him to remember what I have tried to do, to remember my self-denials, my surrender, my lonesome life, my broken heart, and give it me to do this one thing well.

They will all be there, all those people who have heard of me, and Josef. Ah, for his sake, too, I have prayed to do greatly, inspiredly, the thing he would have me do! And he will be there, too, I am told. He has crossed the ocean to hear me sing. Oh, dear God, just once, if never again, let him know me through my voice, know that I forgive and forget and understand!

The carriage is ready. Good-bye, dear, dear room, dear old books, dear old scores! Good-bye, Dear Unknown!

It is the last time I can write you of my hopes to be great. To-morrow you will know what I have done. But whether I go to success or failure, I kiss you with my heart full of love and gratitude, and so-good-bye!

KATRINE.

* * * * *

"There is Josef now; look, Mrs. Ravenel!" Mrs. Lennox cried, pointing to a man who had just entered the stage box. "The man with the iron-gray hair. And the eyes! Did you ever see such eyes? And who is that with him? Great Heavens," she exclaimed, "it is that pervasive Irishman who was down in North Carolina, Dermott McDermott!"

Josef, pale as a statue, had taken a place in the shadow of the box, back from the reach of opera-glasses. His hands trembled, and at times his lips twitched backward, as one who has lost control through too long a strain.

"Do look out for him," Katrine had said to Dermott, the night before, between tears and a smile. "I can get through it all right, but I am fearful it may kill Josef. He takes me very seriously, you know."

A heavy knocking came. The leader took his place. The overture began, and when the curtain rose Campanali received the genuine ovation which was his due. At the conclusion of that great duet, "Be Mine the Delight," there was the vision of Marguerite at the spinning-wheel, and, after three years, Francis Ravenel saw Katrine, but in a blurred vision with fold upon fold of gauze between them. Finally the soldiers and maidens disappeared, and there came an expectant hush. One heard now! The pause was marked, intentional, before there came toward the footlights, in their most relentless glare, a girl with gladness and joy in her very walk. Neither a heavy German peasant girl nor a French soubrette. No dreary, timid, maedchen, but a glad young soul conscious of nothing save joy, with the beauty in her face of youth and power as she looked at the gay throng of the fair. Then, with the gaze of the entire house upon her, her eyes encountered those of Faust. There was no start of surprise, but, as though drawn to him by a law beyond control, her eyes rested in his, and with no gesture, without a note sung, with nothing but a change in expression, one understood great love had come to her, the first love of a woman, which is never lived over nor forgotten.

And Francis Ravenel, sitting back of the others in the box, recalled that look and drew behind the curtains. In memory, soft arms were round his throat as a voice, the same, yet not the same, sang:

"No signor, not a lady am I, Nor yet a beauty, And do not need an arm To guide me on my way."

A golden voice, with tones so breathed they had the liquidness of the bluebird's call, as Paris held its breath before the beauty and wonder of it; a voice which Frank remembered amid the pine and honeysuckle underneath the night blue of the Carolinas, saying:

"God keep you always just as you are, beloved."

* * * * *

From the first scene to the clear end, when, in the divine trio, Campanali, Rigard, and Katrine caught fire from each other and went mad together, in that great, strong music where right triumphs, as the song climbs higher and higher in its great insistence, it was such triumph as no first performance had been in the memory of our generation, a success that admitted no cavilling or question, a success indisputable and unparalleled, and before the performance was ended the papers were chronicling, for the ends of the earth, that a world star had arisen in the firmament of song.

McDermott's face was an open book for all who cared to read. The one woman on earth for him was triumphing, and his thoughts were all for her, and Master Josef saw and noted even in his excitement and trembling.

Frank, too, gloried in Katrine's success, but underneath the pleasure there was a senseless jealousy, a resentment of the position in which it placed her to him. And the conduct of Dermott McDermott during the evening was another bitter morsel for his palate; for the Irishman carried an air of ownership of everything, even of Josef; gave an appraising and managerial attention to the audience; and bowed to Katrine, when she smiled at him over a huge bunch of green orchids with an Irish flag in the ribbons, with such an air of proprietorship that it made the time scarcely endurable to Frank. But he played the game by a masterly method, and drew nearer to Anne, looking into her eyes with the devotion which he knew so well how to assume, despising himself as he did so. But after the last brava had been given and he had put his mother into the brougham, saying, abruptly, that he preferred to walk, his heart and head came to an unexpected encounter. He stood alone, unnoting the passers-by, oblivious of the superfluous praise of Katrine's voice which he heard in the broken talk, looking into the distant sky at the two great towers of Notre Dame.

It was not far to the De Nemours' house. Although very late, it would doubtless be filled with friends congratulating Katrine, and under the circumstances, he reasoned, there could seem no precipitancy in calling immediately to offer congratulations.

He found the house a blaze of light, with servants going back and forth with arms full of flowers. In front there were many carriages and fiacres. By the entrance arch were several newspaper men, one of whom spoke Frank's name as he passed. Everywhere there was an air of bustle and disorder. On the second floor he saw lights being carried from one room to another, as though hurried preparations were being made.

Giving his card to the French servant, who had ushered him with an important and excited manner into a small reception-room, he waited. His heart throbbed like a school-boy's with his first love. In a minute he would see her, would hold her hand. In his pocket he carried a letter, one of Katrine's many letters, to "The Dear Unknown."

"I have not forgotten this old love," she had written, "I shall never forget. I never close my eyes without thinking of him nor without a prayer for him upon my lips."

Suddenly there came a laugh, a jolly, musical sound of real mirth, and he heard Dermott's voice dominating and directing on the upper floor. Immediately after there came a silence, and then, from the turn in the stairs, he heard the same voice, with a touch of insolence, speaking to the servant to whom he had given the card:

"Say to Mr. Ravenel that Mademoiselle Dulany regrets that it is impossible for her to see him." And then, with a dramatic note, "Tell him," the Irishman added, "she leaves within an hour to sing before the Queen."



XXII

FRANK AND KATRINE MEET AT THE VAN RENSSELAER'S

In the three months which followed Katrine's great success, Frank heard of her constantly, always with a curious self-belittling and a reviewing of his own conduct, fine in its self-depreciation. He had betrayed the great unspoken trust of the finest human being he had ever known, and afterward dallied, for fear of rebuff to his vanity, from squaring the account as well as he could by giving her a chance to refuse him openly. He felt that he could never again be to her what he had been. Three years of such work as she had done would change her ideals much.

He reflected, too, upon the changes in himself, one of the greatest being his recognition of the sound virtues of Dermott McDermott. There had been times when circumvention by this son of Erin had been so masterly, so deft, so unexpected that Frank had felt like extending a congratulating hand. Once he had actually laughed aloud, at a board meeting, over an election which McDermott had dictated. But these things assumed a new importance when he thought of Dermott's love for Katrine, for the queer Celtic genius was singularly unattuned to failure in anything, and never, in any matter save that of the railroad, could Frank claim a complete victory. And those who believed the railroad issue still unsettled were not wanting.

Soon after the Paris visit, Frank heard, through Anne Lennox, of the death of Madame de Nemours. The letter reiterated, as well, that Katrine had sung to England's good old Queen. Before this confirmation Frank had doubted this statement as one of the outputs of Dermott's oriental imagination.

In August, having had no letter from Katrine or his mother for over a month, he accepted Nick van Rensselaer's invitation to Waring-on-the-Sea, with no knowledge whatever as to the other members of the party. As he was driven up the carriageway, under great New England pines, and saw the shining sea and the far-off Magnolia hills, he thought, for the first time, of other guests who would probably be there, and recalled with annoyance how one meets the same people everywhere. After he had dressed for dinner, he stood looking from the balcony of his room into the twilight thinking of Katrine, and wondering why her monthly letter had not arrived.

At the foot of the stairs he encountered Sally Porter, whom he had not met since she had been his mother's guest at Ravenel, three years before.

"Why, Frank Ravenel!" she cried, at sight of him. "I thought you were in—where did we hear he was, mother?"

"Several places, my dear," her mother responded, placidly.

"Java, Japan, or Jupiter," Nick van Rensselaer broke in, coming forward with outstretched hand. "How are you, old man!"

As Frank returned the grip he looked over Nick's shoulder to a merry group which stood near the entrance to the music-room, and his amazed eyes rested upon Katrine Dulany. A new Katrine, yet still the old. She wore white lace. Her black hair was parted and rippled over the ears into a low coil. There was even more the look of an August peach to her than he remembered: dusky pink with decided yellow in the curve of her chin, as he had once laughingly asserted. But the softness and uplifted expression of the misty blue eyes were the same, and added to all was the repose of manner which comes only from the consciousness of power or of sorrows lived beyond.

For a moment he seemed unable to make any effort to go to her, and then came to him an intense consciousness of himself, of her, and their mutual past. As their eyes met, however, he discovered that whatever embarrassment existed was his own, for Katrine saw him, seemed to make sure that her eyes did not deceive her, and with a glad smile stretched both hands toward him.

"Why, it's Mr. Ravenel!" she cried.

Her eyes rested in his as she spoke. "It has been three, oh, so many years, since we have met," she began, with a smile.

"Don't," he answered, holding her hands. "It was only yesterday."

"Three yesterdays," she said, with the old "make-believe" look in her eyes. "Half a week. Somehow it seems longer, doesn't it?"

"I was sorry to miss seeing you in Paris last May," Frank said. "I wanted so much to congratulate you; but congratulations would have been an old story even at that time."

"Everything was in such a ferment the night you called," she explained. "Josef was quite beside himself, and I was rushing off somewhere, I remember, and I didn't get the card until afterward," again the perfectly frank, sweet look, "but I recall that it gave me pleasure to know you came."

At dinner Francis found, with some annoyance, that he was placed between Mrs. Dysart and Miss Porter, at the remote end of the table from Katrine, whom he could see at Nick van Rensselaer's right, showing her dimples and the flash of white teeth and scarlet lips as she told some story of her own.

He noted how easily she was first, so sure of herself and her power, but with a marked deference to the women as well as to the men who courted her attention so openly. "Such considered conduct!" he commented to himself, approvingly.

No chance came to him to talk to Katrine again that night, but, analytical as he was of woman, he could discern no smallest sign that it was by any design of hers, nor that she noted his presence more than that of another. She neither avoided nor sought his glance, and it was not until midnight that he had even a word alone with her.

"I am going to sing," she said, turning with a pretty smile toward a group in which he was standing.

In a minute he came forward and led her to the piano. "The Serenade," he said.

Her eyes gleamed through the long lashes as she looked away from him.

"Ah," she answered, "I seem to have outgrown it!"



XXIII

AN INTERRUPTED CONFESSION

On the fourth day, because of a nasty twist at polo, the doctor ordered Frank to rest. Coaching and golf had left the house deserted as he lay on the couch in the second hall, thinking of Katrine's masterly deftness in avoiding him.

"I have never known another woman who could have done it so well," he thought. "She seems to have neither resentment nor remembrance. It is as though the whole affair had never been. I wonder—"

The noise of a door opening at the far end of the corridor disturbed his reflections, and as though walking into his thought, Katrine came down the hall.

She wore a house-gown of pale blue, low in the neck, with long, flowing sleeves. Under her arm she carried a music-score in regular school-girl fashion, and she was humming to herself as she came.

Frank lay perfectly still; his eyes closed as she approached him.

"I am not going to bid you a good-morning, seeing that I am obliged by doctor's orders to do it in this position. It doesn't seem respectful," he explained.

The surprise, the dimples, the gay, low laugh seemed such a part of her as she paused beside his couch.

"You are ill?" she asked. "Or," with a twinkle of the wide eyes, "didn't you want to go on the coaching-party?"

"I took a fall at polo yesterday. I was not at dinner last night. I am flattered at the way you have dwelt upon my absence."

"I dined at the Crosbys' or I might have spent a sleepless night concerning it. There were a great many people there. Your friend, Dermott McDermott, for one. He is coming here to-day." Her face was illumined by the spirit of teasing as she spoke. "Only," she went on, with a sweet and instant sympathy, "I am hoping you are not badly hurt or suffering."

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, the matter, except the doctor. He is all broken up over the accident, and says I must lie here or somewhere for two or three days to cure a wrench in my back which I didn't have."

Katrine laughed as she turned to go.

"I was intending to study some," she said, looking down at her music. "Will it annoy you?"

A quick, amused smile came to his face at the question, and he looked up with eyes full of laughter as he answered:

"Certainly, I am naturally unappreciative of music."

"I didn't mean that," Katrine explained, smiling back at him as she went along the corridor.

"Miss Dulany!" he called.

She turned toward him, her face waiting and expectant.

"As the German girl said in Rudder Grange, 'It is very loneful here.'"

"You mean," she asked, "that you would like to have me stay with you?"

"Nobody on earth could have stated my wish more accurately," he answered, in a merry, impersonal tone, as though addressing some imaginary third person.

She came back to him, drawing a low wicker chair near the couch and putting her music on the floor beside her. "I shall be glad to stay if you want me to. Shall we talk?" And here she took up the books he had put beside him for amusement. "Balzac, Daudet." She made a little disapproving gesture.

"You do not care for them?" he asked.

"They are not for me, those horrible realist folk. I like books where things fall as they should rather than as they do; and the poetry where beautiful things happen. Things as they aren't are what I care for in literature."

He laughed. "We won't read," he said, "and I sha'n't talk. You must. All about yourself, the wonderful things that you have been living and achieving. You will tell it all in just your own way, full of quick pauses and sentences finished by funny little gestures."

This was dangerous walking, and he felt it on the instant.

But the Irish of the girl, the instinct to make a story, to entertain, came at his demanding, bringing the old gleam back to her eyes.

"Ah!" she said, deprecatingly. "The tale of me! It would bore you, would it not? It is just full of Josef and work and the Countess and Father Menalis and a few great names, and then more work, with a little more Josef," she added, with a smile. And then dropping into the warm, sweet, intimate tones he remembered so well, she said, simply, "It was hard, but glorious in a way, too," she added, after a moment's thinking, "every morning to awaken with the thought of something most important to do; work which one loves, lessons with this great, great soul who knows why art is! The languages for one's art, the fencing for one's art, the eating, breathing, dancing, thinking, living for one's art! With Josef's eternal 'Think it over! Think it over!' and Paris with all of its beautiful past! And there were lonesome days, too, when I felt I could never do it, with sleepless nights of discouragements. Ah," she said, the scarlet coming to her cheeks, "I have lived! It's a great thing to say that, isn't it? But I have lived! One day, I remember, Josef was all fussed up. It was a horror of a day, and he told me that maybe I would never sing, that my temperament might not do, and I went home with thoughts of suicide and didn't go back to him for nearly a week. Then he sent for me. 'Where have you been?' he demanded, fiercely. 'I am going to give it all up,' I answered. And he took me by the shoulders. 'My God!' he cried, 'with a genius like yours, could you give it up?' 'But you said the last time I was here—' I began. 'Bah!' he interrupted, putting his hand on my shoulder, 'you can't believe a word I say. I am a great liar.' And we both cried a little, although, even then, he kept telling me how bad crying was for the voice, and we did some Pagliacci together, just as if nothing had happened."

"It must have been a wonderful life," Francis said, a great appreciation in his voice.

"It was; I miss it here—some, although people are so kind. And you?" she demanded. "Tell me about yourself."

"There is nothing to tell. Things are just the same with me. I suppose they will never be much different."

"Mrs. Lennox told me last winter that you were doing quite wonderful things in business."

He smiled, but made no explanation. "Are your engagements arranged as yet, Katrine?" he asked.

"It is probable that I shall sing in St. Petersburg first. It is what I want most if I sing in public next winter at all."

There was a pause.

"You have not changed so much as I had thought," he said, at length.

"More than I show, I am afraid," she answered.

"Oh," he returned, "even I can discern some changes. You are more, if I wanted to be subtly flattering, I should say, you are more beautiful, more of the world in appearance, and I know what the Countess meant when she said you were becoming 'epic, grand, and homicidal,' or something like that."

"How horrible!" she laughed.

"Not at all, only not as I remembered you." He spoke the words slowly, against his will and his judgment, and in defiance of taste or conduct, looking up as he did so into eyes which from their first glance, over three years before in the woods in North Carolina, had been able to stir him as no other eyes had ever done. And it seemed to him as though in that look all conventions were dropped between them. "You were kind to me then, Katrine."

She looked at him steadily, as a child might have done, with no shrinking in her glance, with neither anger nor shame. "And you?" she asked, wistfully. "Were you very kind to me?"

"I was not. God!" he said, "if you could only know how I have suffered for the way I acted! To feel such shame as I have felt! Oh," he cried, "nobody on earth could make me talk this way but you! There was always between us a curious understanding, wasn't there, Katrine, even apart from the other?" He finished vaguely.

"I knew you would suffer. I was sorry for that," she answered, gravely.

"Were you, truly? Were you big enough for that?"

"Well," and the sad smile with which the Irish so often speak of personal grief came to her lips, "you see, I loved you. And when one loves one wishes for happiness for the one beloved, does one not? Yes," she said, "I was honestly sorry to think that you would have even a regret. I would have taken all the sorrow if I could."

"You loved me then?" His head was gone. He remembered only the sweetness of her presence and the nearness of her. "You did love me then, Katrine?"

She rose suddenly as though to leave him.

"Don't go," he said, reaching his hand toward her with pleading in his tone.

She reseated herself, her face exquisitely pale. "Ah," she said, "you know I loved you! I was so young, and it was all so terrible to me! Please God, you may never suffer as I did! I have lain awake night after night praying to die, or waking with dread at the knowledge that as soon as consciousness came the horrible pain would return with it, and there came the resentment to the great God for my birth, as though that could make any real difference. But it was good for me. The very best thing in all the world. Nothing else could ever have taught me as it did."

"Katrine!" he cried, and, the doctor's orders forgotten, he sat up and leaned toward her "believe me, I have waited all these years to see you, to talk with you! But unless two people are entirely honest, I knew the thing would be impossible. I thought you would forgive me, would understand as you grew older!"

"I understood then," she interrupted. "My whole life had trained me to understand. I was not in the least critical of you. I am not now. You followed your birth and your training. You had been taught no self-control. Women had spoiled you. You had never had to consider others. I want to be perfectly frank with you about it all. I never deceived you in word, tone, or look. I shall not begin now. You were my ideal man in everything. You know," she paused, an amused smile upon her lips and her lids lowered, "you know I thought Henry of Agincourt, Wolfe Tone, and Robert Bruce must have been like you, and I was grateful to the good God for letting me live in your time and country."

She ceased speaking, and her eyes rested upon the far-away sea with the remembering tenderness a woman might give to an old plaything of childhood before she continued: