Kate, realizing however unconsciously that when she was about he had less attention for her daughter, kept out of their way as much as possible. It occurred to her that Philip was rather neglecting his parish in Jacqueline's behalf. She smiled to herself, and frequently commended Providence for its assistance.

But Providence moved a trifle slowly for a woman accustomed to prompt and decisive action. She yearned to advise Philip to strike while the iron was hot, to claim the girl for his own before her natural youth and high spirits reasserted themselves and made her less susceptible to tenderness. She wanted to see the two she loved happy together, as she had wanted nothing else since she put the thought of happiness out of her own life. Why were they wasting so much priceless time?

Suddenly, one afternoon, as she was riding home to Storm, the reason occurred to her. Philip's pride! the same pride that would permit him to accept no help from her even as a boy, when the small income his mother left him would have been insufficient to carry him through school and seminary if he had not managed to secure tutoring positions to eke out. He had accepted, perforce, the home she offered him during vacations, but nothing more, not even a horse for his personal use. He was a poor man, would perhaps always be a poor man, dependent upon the meager salary of a country clergyman; and he was the son of a convict to boot. Was it likely that he would ask in marriage the hand of one of the young heiresses of Storm? How stupid she had been!

"Bless the boy! I'll have to take this thing in hand myself," thought Kate Kildare, glad of an excuse, and turned her horse's head toward the rectory.

Philip, absorbed in putting final touches to his next day's sermon, looked up from his desk to see her smiling in at the door of the room that was his study, his dining-room and his parlor combined.

He sprang to his feet. "You!" he cried, with a look in his eyes that might have told its own story to a woman less accustomed to appreciative male glances. "I—I was just thinking of you."

That was true enough. She would have found it difficult to come upon him at a time when he was not thinking of her, somewhere in the back of his mind. Lately, whenever he had been with Jacqueline, the girl reminded him so constantly, so almost poignantly, of her mother that sometimes he caught himself speaking to her in the very voice he used with his lady, a softer, deeper voice that was the unconscious expression of the inmost man. His congregation heard it sometimes, too, now that Mrs. Kildare had come to sit among them.—He had been writing out his sermon with unusual care because he had remembered that she would listen to it.

He ran to wheel his shabby wing-chair up to the fire, where a pot of coffee simmered on the hob, with a covered plate beside it.

"My supper," he explained, with a gesture of apology. "I often cook in here because it seems more cozy than the kitchen."

"Is Dilsey misbehaving again?"

He nodded ruefully. "I can't think where she gets the stuff, Miss Kate; the store won't sell it to her."

"Out of your emergency cupboard, I fancy. You give her all your keys, of course, for fear she will imagine you don't trust her? Oh, Phil, Phil," she laughed at his guilty face. "How you do need a wife to look after you!"

She settled herself comfortably in the comfortable chair, looking about the pleasant, twilit room with the sense of well-being that always came to her there. It was more homelike to her than the home where she had lived for twenty years, her big rough house that had taken on so irrevocably the look of the Kildares. Here faded brocade furniture, books, well-shaded lamps, a blue bowl filled with rosy apples, a jar of cedar-boughs that took the place of flowers now that the garden had gone to its winter rest—all these things spoke to her, as they spoke to Philip, of other days, of his father, even of the shadowy lady with her slight, patient cough who had been his mother, and whom Kate always winced to remember. In this place she felt among friends. She was happy to think of her Jacqueline come at last into such a haven as Philip's home.

"Bring me some of your supper—especially the coffee, it smells so good!—and then come and sit beside me. Here—" she indicated a low hassock at her feet—"where I can tweak your ear if I want to; because I'm going to scold."

Philip obeyed in silence. He had fallen rather shy of her, now that he had her here as he had so often dreamed, sitting beside him in the twilight, sharing his supper, leaning her head against the cushions of his own chair, her slender arched feet, in their trim riding-boots, resting upon his fender. It was not often that the Madam found time or occasion to stop at the Rectory. What need, indeed, when Philip was so constantly at Storm? But the image of her sat more often than she guessed just as she was sitting now, with a worshiper at her feet.

His own thoughts, more than her presence, kept him silent. The phrase she had uttered so carelessly (he did not altogether know his lady there!) had set them clamoring—"How you do need a wife to look after you...."

Philip tried in vain to remember a time when he had not loved this woman. As a child, made older than his years by the shadow of his mother's invalidism, he had treasured his glimpses of the reckless, beautiful girl with her two babies, as other children might treasure glimpses into fairyland. As an older boy, with his world already in ruins about him, he had idealized his one friend into a sort of goddess, a super-human deity who could do no wrong, whose every word was magic and whose slightest wish law. At that period, if Kate had bade him rob a bank or commit a murder, he would have done it unquestioningly, happy only to be of service to her. Later, as he grew into a thoughtful young manhood, he came to understand that even deities may have their faults; but Kate's were dear faults, never of the heart. As she became less goddess she became more human, and so nearer to him, until at last she was woman to his man. But a very wonderful woman, to be approached, even in thought, with reverence. Philip's love had so grown with him, step by step, as to be part of the fabric of himself, large now as his very nature; and that was large indeed.

Yet never once in all the years had he imagined the sacrilege of making her his wife, until there came the farewell letter from his father in prison; that man used to reading the hearts of men, who saw the truth between the lines of his son's letters, and deliberately gave the woman both loved into his son's keeping.

"She is still young," Jacques Benoix had written, "and you are young, and my time is over. You must be to her what I would have been. We must consider now nothing but her greatest happiness, you and I, her greatest good."

Since then Philip, if he had not thought of it before, thought of little else than of marrying Kate Kildare.

Not soon, of course; not until time should have brought its blessed balm of forgetfulness, when both the girls would be married and gone, perhaps, and she in her loneliness would turn to him. Meanwhile he must be at hand to take care of her, as his father had bidden him; to watch over her unobtrusively, helping her as he had with Jacqueline, sharing any trouble that came to her; making himself necessary in every way possible, so that more and more he should take with her the place of his father.

Kate was wrong in her ideas that his poverty had much influence upon Philip. Poverty and wealth mean little to the idealist; and his faith was very strong. He knew that if God gave this beloved woman into his keeping, He would provide very surely the means of keeping her.

He was patient, too; yet lately all the talk of love and of marriage, the companionship of wistful, lovelorn Jacqueline, perhaps, the sight of James Thorpe's almost fatuous happiness, had made patience newly difficult; had stirred a restlessness in him that sometimes he believed his lady noticed. When she was in the room with him, whether they spoke or not, he found it almost impossible to keep his eyes from her; and when at such times their glances met, it seemed to him there was a quick flash of response in hers, an understanding look, almost of expectancy, as if she were waiting for him to say something he did not say.

Philip was of course right. Nothing of the change in him had been lost on Kate; only she attributed it unfortunately to another cause—to Jacqueline.

She was chattering desultorily about many things, as they sat there in the deepening November dusk, by the fire; but he did not hear what she was saying. He began to look covetously out of the corner of his eye toward one of her hands that lay on the arm of the chair close beside him; a big, beautiful hand like Kate herself, capable as little Jemima's, but with the warmth, the healing in its touch, of Jacqueline's own. When he pictured her to himself, he always saw first her eyes, clear and direct as a boy's; then her lovely, curved lips; then these sentient hands of hers. He wished that he had the courage to take the hand in his own, to hold it against his breast, his cheek. It had been his often enough to hold, and even to kiss; but always of her own volition. She was as generous of caresses as her youngest daughter; but it never occurred to Philip, nor had it perhaps occurred to other men who loved her, that they might venture to take what she did not offer. Kate was the giver, always.

Even now, as if aware of his thoughts, the hand lifted, strayed over to touch the hair on his temples lightly as a butterfly, and came to rest on his shoulder, drawing him a little closer. He sat very still, thrilling to its touch. She might as well at that moment have laid her hand on his bare heart. He wondered how many more seconds he could bear it before he flung himself on his knees beside her and buried his face in her lap....

"It's nice in here, so warm and dusky and comfy," she said. "Easier to talk here than in that bare, ugly office of mine. I'm glad I came.—Now the scolding is going to commence." The hand patted him affectionately. "Phil, dear, are you quite as frank with me as you used to be? Do you still tell me everything you think and do and are? Isn't there something you keep back nowadays?"

"Nothing," he answered in a rather choked voice, making one mental reservation.

"If I hadn't your full confidence, I should miss it more than I can say. You've spoiled me, dear. I want to be in everything that concerns you."

"You are," breathed poor Philip.

She leaned a little toward him. "No confidences, then? Nothing to ask me, boy? Because it would be yours without asking." She waited a moment. Silence—a very tense silence. "I don't know whether I've ever told you how much I love you, how much I admire you. Only it's more than that. You are the sort of man—my dear, if I could have had a son like you, I should have been the proudest woman in the world! It breaks my heart to think that Jacques does not know his great boy."

She felt him trembling under her touch, and went on with her encouragement. "Think of what you have to offer the woman you love! Most men come to us soiled, with fingerprints on them which the most forgiving wife can never seem to wash quite away. But you—you are as clean as your mother left you.—Look at me, Philip! Yes, I knew it.—And what a home you will make for her! Money never made a home yet—it spoils more homes than it helps, I think, because it does away with the effort that makes anything worth while.—Oh, my dear boy, I think I shall be envious of the girl you marry!"

The voice speaking was the one she had kept, as she once told Jacqueline, to sing lullabies to her babies with—surely the most exquisite, tender, caressing voice in the world, thought Philip. He tried to listen to what she was saying, but heard only the voice. His senses were swimming in it. Suddenly he leant over and laid his cheek against her rough riding-skirt.

"Why, dearest boy!" The voice softened still more, and he felt her hands in his hair. "Did you think you could hide anything from me? What a goose! Don't you suppose I saw? I have been wondering for days why you didn't tell me. And then I knew. The money—is that, it? But how perfectly silly, dear! There's enough and more than enough for two, but if you prefer it, your bride shall come to you as poor as any churchmouse, glad and proud to do with whatever you are able to give her. We don't care much for—just things, we Kildares!"

He raised his face, incredulous, listening at last to her words; a dawning rapture in his eyes. She had seen. Was she offering herself to him, Philip, as a goddess might lean to a mortal? He could not speak....

"And then I've thought," she went on, "that perhaps the thing between your two fathers was holding you back. Don't let it, ah, don't let it! Before that all happened, they were friends, dear friends. Your father was the one man Basil loved. And some day when we are all together somewhere, afterwards—if there is an afterwards!—I believe they will be friends again. It was all a hideous mistake. Surely mistakes can't last through eternity? That is my idea of what Heaven is; a place where we shall understand each other's mistakes, and forgive them. But you and Jacqueline—oh, Philip! Philip! try not to make any mistakes, you two! I couldn't bear that."

Philip was himself now, hearing every word. He whispered haltingly, praying that he had misunderstood, "What—was it you thought I—wished to say to you?"

She laughed a little. "I thought—and think—you were trying to summon up courage to ask me for my Jacqueline!"

He had risen to take his blow standing. In the dusk that filled the room above the fire-line, she could not see his face.

She went on after a moment, "And I can't, can't tell you how happy it made me, how secure.—For a while I was so troubled. Channing, you know—I thought I should have to give up my hopes.—But now he has gone, and you are here; dear, faithful fellow, so big and true! For years I've dreamed of this, ever since she was born. You and Jacqueline, his child and mine, finding together all that we have missed. And some day, your children—Ah, my dear, don't waste your moments! Years go so fast, and they do not come back."

He made a queer, hoarse sound in his throat. Kate peered up at him, for the first time suspecting something amiss. "Philip," she exclaimed, "why don't you say something? Aren't you glad that I am glad?"

Glad!—In the chaos that was his mind, only one thing stood out clear to him. His fingers unconsciously gripped the small gold cross that hung at his belt, and clung to it. He had dedicated his life to service, first of God and second of his fellow-men, chief of whom was the woman before him. All his life he had dreamed of serving her. In his boyish heroics he had defended her from lions, rescued her and her children from Indians, carried her on his back out of burning houses. Lonely youth and lonely man, dreams formed a greater part of his life than of most men's, and all of them centered about the great figure of his existence, Kate Kildare.

Now the opportunity was come. He was to serve her indeed, and sacrificially. He saw with a horrible clarity where his duty lay, and wondered that he had not seen it before. She needed him for Jacqueline as she would never need him for herself. Young Benoix was of the stuff of which martyrs are made; but as he stood there, gripping the little cross of his calling, he prayed wordlessly, desperately, that his cup might pass from him.

Kate had risen too, and stood dismayed by his silence, trying to read his face by the flickering light. "Philip, what is it? Have I made a mistake after all? Don't you love Jacqueline?" Her heart began to beat rather fast. Something of what was in the air she sensed, but without understanding.

What was it she was asking him? Oh, yes—whether he loved Jacqueline. Dear little clinging, pathetic child! of course he loved her. He must answer. He made a great effort and spoke, nodding his head.

"Yes. Oh, yes. I do love her."

Kate came closer, close enough to see the dumb pain in his eyes. She exclaimed aloud, "Philip! Is it Channing then, after all? You think he has come between you—irrevocably? No, but you are wrong! That is over, absolutely over. It is for you to take out the sting.—See, Philip, I am going to be quite frank with you, franker than women generally are, even with themselves. You don't know much about girls. I do—about my own girl, at least, for I was just such a girl once.—There comes a time to young women, as to all young animals, when we look about us for our mates. We may not seek, perhaps, but we look about. And the first that comes—is very welcome, Philip.—That is all. Nature's way. If Jacqueline still thinks of Channing—well, it is only blessed human instinct to put aside the thing that hurts. But you must help her—she can't do it, alone. Only a new love drives out the hurt of the old. Jacqueline needs you, dear."

He put out a protesting hand. She was asking him for help, his lady. He must not let her beg....

He said with stiff lips, "You think—she—would be willing—to marry me?"

Kate nodded. "I suspect she'd like to show Mr. Channing as soon as possible how little impression he has left behind him!—But it wouldn't be that, of course," she added, seriously. "Underneath the other affair, she's always been a little in love with you, Philip. Women are complex creatures, with a capacity for being attracted quite in proportion to their capacity for attracting.... And after you are once married—You know, there's really no mystery about mating, except what the poets make. Nature goes about it with a beautiful simplicity. Given two young creatures, handsome, clean, healthy, mutually sympathetic, throw them together a while without too many distractions—and there you are! It's as inevitable as that two and two make four. Don't think too much about it, dear—you're too watchful, too introspective. Just let go, and be natural. She's very sweet, my Jacqueline, very loving and tender. And you—well, you're not unattractive, you know! Don't worry.—Why, I give you my word as a mother, as a woman," she exclaimed, "that a month after you and Jacqueline are married, you will both have forgotten any ridiculous little obstacle that ever kept you apart!..."

She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Come soon," she whispered. "It will comfort the child just now to know that she is wanted."

Philip had taken the kiss with closed eyes. When he opened them again, his room was empty. He ran to the window, and saw her, a shadow shape, swing into her saddle with a shadowy wave of the hand for him. He stood there watching her out of sight, so soon out of sight; his lady, the woman he loved, so infinitely kind, and beautiful, and cruel, heedless as the gods are of homage they do not need.

He groped his way back to the chair where she had sat, leaned his cheek where hers had rested—the place was still warm—and said good-by to her....

An hour later, before his courage had a chance to fail him, he rode to Storm and asked Jacqueline to marry him.

The girl put up her lips simply as a child. "I'd love to marry you, Phil, darling. How sweet of you to ask me! And now," she said eagerly, "let's go and tell Mummy. She'll be so pleased!"



CHAPTER XLI

So there was presently another wedding at Storm, or rather in the church at Storm; and Kate could have sung with the Psalmist: "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy ways, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

Jemima, who spent as much time as her husband would spare her at Storm, in the interval between the formal engagement and the wedding, tried conscientiously to summon up courage to end in some way a situation that seemed to her impossible. But her hints and innuendoes, broad as she dared make them, had no effect upon the radiant satisfaction of her mother, nor upon Philip himself, hedged around as he was with a sort of calm serenity, an uplifted, detached air, which she had not sufficient experience to recognize as the elation that goes with martyrdom.

She began to wonder if after all she had been mistaken in Philip's feeling for her mother. He seemed quite content, even happy. Nevertheless, there was something about him that awed Jemima a little, made her usual frankness with him quite impossible.

With Jacqueline, however, she had no such feeling of awe, and she watched her sister with amazed impatience. Her infatuation for Channing had been a thing inexplicable to the fastidious Jemima; even more inexplicable was the ease with which she appeared to forget him for another lover.

Much of the girl's gaiety had returned to her. She entered into the wedding preparations with the eagerness of a child playing with a new toy. She spoke of Philip constantly, was always watching for his arrival, greeted him when he came with the utmost enthusiasm, clinging to him, sitting on the arm of his chair, kissing him, regardless of onlookers. True, she was quite as demonstrative with her mother, with James Thorpe, even with Jemima, when permitted; but, as the older girl said to herself in distaste, she was not going to marry them!

One day, shortly before the wedding, when Jemima arrived at Storm she was met by her mother at the door with finger upon lip.

"Hush! Jacky is singing again," whispered Kate, delightedly.

It was the first time the girl had been to the piano for weeks.

The two stood and listened. She sang to herself very softly, unconscious of an audience, one of the Songs of the Hill:

"A little winding road Goes over the hill to the plain— A little road that crosses the plain And comes to the hill again."

Kate realized the difference in Jacqueline's voice since she had heard it last in that Song of the Hill; clear and expressionless, then, as a boy's; so throbbing now, so poignant with understanding, that the mother's eyes filled with tears. Jemima's, too, were a little moist, and she blinked them hard, and steeled herself to say to Jacqueline that day what she had come to say.

The child must not slip further into an irrevocable mistake, if she could help it.

She made an opportunity as soon as possible to get her alone. "Jacky," she said abruptly, "are you quite sure you want to marry Philip,—and that he wants to marry you?"

The girl turned a startled face upon her—"Why, Jemmy, he asked me! Why would he ask me if he didn't want me?"

"I suspect Philip does many things he does not want to.—Didn't he know all about—Mr. Channing?" She looked mercifully away from the other's blanching face, "I wonder if that might have anything to do with his asking you?"

She waited nervously for a reply. Even the most confident of surgeons have their moments of suspense.

It came very low, "I never thought of that, Jemmy. Perhaps you are right.—Oh, if that is so, I just can't be loving enough to him to make up for his goodness, can I? Darling old Phil!—You see it was because he did know all about Mr. Channing" (the voice was almost inaudible now) "that I knew I could marry him. We understand each other, you see. I'd never expect to be first with him, to take mother's place with him, any more than he expects to take—And—and so—we could comfort each other." The voice failed utterly here, and Jacqueline ran blindly out of the room, up to the never-failing solace of Mag's baby; leaving Jemima with the miserable sensation of having been cruel where she meant to be kind, and cruel to no purpose.

That night, when Philip came at his usual time, Jacqueline settled the matter once for all. She perched upon the arm of his chair, holding his head against her shoulder so that he could not look at her.

"Reverend Flip, dear," she began, "I want you to tell me something—truly, truly, truth now! Before it is too late. People shouldn't marry each other unless they're going to be quite honest with each other, should they?"

"No, dear," he answered. "Fire away."

"You're sure, quite sure, that you really want to marry me?" She abandoned her strangle-hold, and leaned down with her cheek on his hair, to make the telling of anything disagreeable more easy for him.

She felt him start, but he said, "Very sure, sweetheart."

"And you're not just being noble," she asked, wistfully, "like Jemmy thinks?"

Philip cried, "Jemima be darned!" and pulled her down into his arms quite roughly.

Her relief and gratitude pierced through the armor of his abstraction.

"Oh, Phil, you are sweet!" she whispered, holding him tight. "And I'll make up to you somehow for it. I will! I will!"

The wedding was more Jemima's idea of what such an affair should be than her own had been; with a bishop officiating, and a choir in surplices (rather weak-voiced and tearful, without their beloved leader) and a matron-of-honor in a very smart New York frock, and the little church crowded to its doors, and even spilling into the road beyond. Nor was the congregation entirely composed of country-folk, tenants and the like. There was quite a sprinkling of what Jemima called "worth-while people"; not only Jacqueline's victims, who came en masse and looking rather depressed, but Mrs. Lawton and her daughters and several other women whom Jemima had firmly brought to Storm (one could not be friends with young Mrs. Thorpe without being friends with her family as well) and who needed no urging to come a second time.

Well toward the front there sat another guest, whom the eye of the matron-of-honor encountered with some distaste; an unwashed-looking person with a peddler's pack on the floor at his feet, whose beaming, innocent gaze missed no detail of the ceremony. Brother Bates was in the habit of carrying up to Misty other things besides his stock in trade and the Word of God. Very little that occurred at Storm was unknown to the man he called "Teacher."

Nobody who had any possible claim to be present missed that wedding. It was the nine days' wonder of the community. As Mrs. Sykes murmured to her chosen intimates: "To think of both them beautiful young gals bein' content to take their ma's cast-off leavin's!"—for the heart-affairs of the Madam were viewed by her realm with a certain proprietary, disapproving interest, not entirely unmixed with pride. And more than one noted that the bridegroom, waiting at the altar-steps with his best man, Farwell, was careful never to glance toward the pew where Mrs. Kildare sat, quite as beautiful and far more radiant than the young creature in white, who moved dreamily up the aisle as if her thoughts were far away. There was a certain amount of buzzing among the congregation.

Jacqueline was married in a sort of daze. She had remembered quite mechanically to keep five paces behind Jemima, to lift her skirts at the step so as not to stumble over them, even to smile at Philip because he smiled at her—a very tender, encouraging smile. As she spoke the words that made her his wife she thought triumphantly, "If Mr. Channing could only see me now!"

It was not until she was going down the aisle again on her husband's arm that the daze lifted suddenly. Her husband! She looked up at him with a little gasp, and Philip, feeling her tremble, pressed her hand, murmuring, "Steady, dear," as he would have spoken to a frightened colt.

Then she remembered that after all it was only old Philip, her friend....

Some hours later they drove back in the Ark from Storm to the rectory—their only wedding-journey—through a world white with the first snow, in honor of their nuptials. They went hand in hand through the little blanketed garden toward the welcome of the firelight that glowed through the cabin windows; and the door was eagerly opened to them by the elderly housewoman, Ella, and proud Lige, both of whom Mrs. Kildare had spared from Storm to replace the worthless Dilsey.

"We all's got two more presents!" announced Lige, a-grin from ear to ear with the joy of the occasion. "Come and look."

He led the way with a lantern toward Philip's modest stable, where they found a pretty little Jersey cow with a placard tied to her crumpled horn, which read, "Compliments of the Possum Hunters."

It was the final activity of Night Riders in that community.

They found the second present on the dressing-table in the room which Philip had fitted up, without consulting anybody, as Jacqueline's boudoir; just such a room as the girl had dreamed of, with slender white furniture, and rosy curtains, and a little shelf of her favorite books, and a lovely photograph of her mother hanging beside her bed—which had once been Philip's photograph. She could hardly withdraw her attention from the delights of her room long enough to notice the present, a small pasteboard box addressed to "Mrs. Philip Benoix," which Philip finally opened for her.

He gave an exclamation. The box contained a ring of oddly wrought pale gold, set with a sapphire cut in a crest. It was a ring which his father had worn as far back as Philip could remember. The card enclosed said simply, "For my new little daughter, Jacqueline."

"Then the warden does know where he is!" cried Philip. He had written to his father about his approaching wedding, addressing the letter in care of the state penitentiary, on the chance of its reaching him. "But how did the box get here?"

Inquiry produced no results. Ella had found it on a table beside the door. In the excitement of that day, there had been a constant stream of people coming and going, the altar guild and the choir to decorate the house with evergreens, neighbors to inspect the preparations for the bride, negroes with offers of assistance, taking the delight of their race in anything that resembles an Occasion. Any one of these visitors might have left the ring unobserved.

Ella did not think to mention that among them had been the old mountain peddler, who had come to the door to ask whether there was a Bible in that house, and been routed by Ella with a scornful, "Go 'way f'um here. Don't you know Mr. Philip's a preacher?"

But busy as she was, Ella had found time to run and get him a glass of milk, remembering that he was a protege of the Madam's, and that the Madam never permitted people to go from her door hungry.



CHAPTER XLII

The weeks that followed were the most contented of Kate Kildare's life, despite her loneliness in her great house, with no companion except the negro servants and Mag's baby. She felt like a captain who has carried his ship into port after a stormy passage. Her children were provided for; they were safe; life, which had treated her so harshly, was powerless to hurt them now. It was an attitude of mind that is apt to be rather tempting to the gods....

Jacqueline entered into her new role with touching eagerness. Somewhat to his surprise, Philip found her quite invaluable in his parochial work. She took much of the visiting off his hands, held Mothers' Meetings and Bible classes; taught Sunday-school; busied her unaccustomed needle quite happily with altar-cloths and vestments, and even more happily with socks and buttons. She discussed housekeeping matters very seriously with her mother and Jemima, more seriously than she practised them, perhaps, for Ella, trained by the Madam, had taken her two "young folks" into her protection with a capable thoroughness that is the acme of good African service, and proceeded to create such an atmosphere of comfort in the rectory as Philip had not thought possible.

He had always found his little home a pleasant place to come to; but now it was more than pleasant, with Jacqueline's eager face watching for him at the window, or her beautiful voice mingling in the twilight with the tinkling notes of his old piano. The punching-bag and other purely masculine paraphernalia had been banished to his own room, and the living-room, alas! had lost its aspect of meticulous neatness. But when Philip found a darning-basket spilled into his usual chair, or a riding-glove of Jacqueline's lying among the scattered sheets of his half-finished sermon, he did not frown. He told himself he would get used to it presently. In fact, he rather liked it. And he decidedly liked her funny little maternal airs with his clothes, and his health (which was excellent), and his finances (which were not).

Mrs. Kildare had insisted upon continuing Jacqueline's usual allowance until her coming of age; and Philip had felt it not quite fair to the girl herself to refuse; but Jacqueline knew better than to use the smallest part of that allowance toward expenses which Philip might consider his. So she consulted anxiously with her mother on the cost of food-supply, and was very firm with Ella in the matter of flour and eggs; somewhat to the amusement of both older women.

Others besides Philip realized the charm of that picturesque cabin with its young and hospitable mistress. Farwell was a faithful visitor, and even some of the "victims" respectfully renewed their allegiance, to Jacqueline's frank pleasure. The Thorpes came out from town very often, with an automobile filled with friends; Jemima having come to appreciate more fully at a distance something of the unusual atmosphere of her former home. It was no rare thing for Philip to return from an afternoon gallop and find his house full of guests, drinking tea or toddies according to their sex, and unmistakably grouped around Jacqueline as the central figure. The party usually adjourned to Storm for supper, to the huge delight of Big Liza and the quiet pleasure of the Madam herself, who looked forward to these incursions of Jemima's with a combination of dread and eagerness.

Jacqueline, on these occasions, was surprised to note the ease with which Philip entered into the duties of host, making his guests comfortable with the sort of effortless charm that usually comes only with much experience of entertaining. She realized it was the same adaptability he had shown among the mountain folk, and among the simple people of his own parish; and she began to be very proud of her husband.

Invitations poured in on them from Lexington and Frankfort and the surrounding Bluegrass country. "Why don't we go to some of these parties!" he suggested one day. "Of course I'm not a dancing-man, but I could take you very easily, thanks to the Ark, and once there I daresay you will not lack for beaux, you staid old married woman!"

"Do you want to go to parties?" she asked, rather wistfully.

"I love to see you enjoy yourself."

"Oh, but I enjoy myself without parties," she said; adding quickly, "Would it be better for the parish if I went?"

He laughed and put an arm around her. "No, Mrs. Rector. It's not that kind of parish, thank goodness!"

"Then—" she nestled against him—"I'd rather stay home at night. Wouldn't you?"

Philip admitted that he would.

His suggestion had come as the result of much covert study of his little wife. Despite her pretty, matronly airs, her contented preoccupation with new duties, he was not altogether satisfied with the look of Jacqueline. He saw things her mother failed to notice—a faint shadow beneath her eyes which made them look oddly dark, a little hollowing of the cheeks, rosy as they were; above all a certain listlessness, a sort of abstraction that she covered by forced gaiety. She appeared to have lost interest in many of the things that used to be her joy; sang often, it is true, but without enthusiasm; rarely rode the fine saddle horse that had come from Storm stables to keep old Tom company, preferring to drive with Philip in the hitherto-despised Ark—preferring apparently above all things to sit at home in front of the fire, with a puppy and her sewing for company. Tomboy Jacqueline with a needle in her hands was a sight which somehow troubled Philip even more than it amused him. Often when he came upon her unexpectedly, he noted traces of tears about her eyes—a signal always for the sudden flow of high spirits which Philip found at times almost painful.

The girl was not happy. Channing had certainly left his mark.

"Damn the fellow!" said Philip to himself, most unclerically; and his anger did not cool with time.

He redoubled his tender care of Jacqueline; considerate of every mood, constantly praising and encouraging her, daily planning little surprises for her pleasure (the puppy had been one of them); doing everything possible, in fact, except make love to her. That would have been possible, too, for she was very sweet, a true daughter of Helen; and he a young and normal man, sorely in need of comforting. But guessing what he did of the girl's heart, he would not have offered her the indignity of unwelcome love-making.

"It is just like being married to a dear big brother," Jacqueline explained naively to her mother. "Philip is the best friend in the world!"

"I know. He would be, dear fellow," Kate replied, well content, remembering with a sudden shudder, despite the years which had passed, a husband who had never been a friend to her.

Kate was seeing very little of her new son-in-law in those days. Often as she came to the rectory—and she had formed the habit of dropping in once or twice a day on her way to and from her lonely house—she rarely found Philip at home.

"What does he find to do that keeps him so busy these winter days?" she marveled.

"Oh, sick parishioners, and ailing cows, and things like that. He's always tearing about on horseback, or making long journeys somewhere in the Ark—I wish Jemmy had never given it to him! He manages to find duties that keep him out of doors just as long as there's any daylight to see by. And as if that weren't enough, he has fixed up the choir-room over at the church for a sort of study, because he says he can't write sermons with me about—I'm too distracting! Did you ever hear such nonsense? When I sit just as quiet as a mouse, and don't do a thing but watch him, or perhaps sit on a foot-stool beside him and hold the hand he isn't using. You don't need both hands to write a sermon!"

Kate laughed at the picture, looking at her daughter with a fond maternal eye. She could understand that the girl might be somewhat distracting, in her demure little house-dress turned in at the soft throat, and her hair done neatly on top of her head as became a matron, but escaping about her face in glinting chestnut tendrils.

"I suspect it is rather difficult to be a spiritual pastor and master and an attentive bridegroom at the same time," she commented.

She put the infrequency of Philip's appearances at Storm down to the same cause. "Young birds to their own nest," she thought, a little drearily. It is a rule that is rather hard on older birds.

But Jacqueline, her eyes already opened by Jemima, was more observant, and began to realize at last that Philip was trying to avoid her mother.

The thought troubled and frightened her. What had she done? They were her entire world now, Philip and her mother; and any world of Jacqueline's must necessarily be a world of much loving-kindness.

She consulted her sister, distressfully.

"Humph!" said Jemima, and would have liked to add, "I told you so!"—but did not dare.

Thoughts, however, have an annoying way of communicating themselves independent of words, and Jacqueline nodded sadly, as though she had spoken.

"I know. I oughtn't to have married Philip—you were right. I only wanted to make him happier, and I thought he could go on adoring mother just the same, with me to comfort him in between whiles. But he won't let me,—he won't let me! And he's unhappier than ever.—Oh, Jemmy, what shall I do?"

Jemima for once was at a loss for advice to offer. She thought harsh things of her headstrong, single-minded mother, and yearned over this poor, ignorant, immolated young creature who seemed destined to waste her loveliness on those who could not value it.

"There's nothing to do," she sighed; adding with a cynicism of which she was not aware, "Except to wait for mother to grow old. It won't be long now. She can't go on looking like a girl forever!"

"Oh, Jemmy!" exclaimed Jacqueline, shocked and flushing. "Philip's not—that sort!"

"Every man's that sort," remarked the experienced Mrs. Thorpe.



CHAPTER XLIII

As the winter closed in—it was one of the open, keen, out-of-door winters which have done their share to make the dwellers on the great central plateau of Kentucky so sturdy a race of men—the Thorpe automobile was seen less frequently on the road to Storm. Kate smilingly accused Jemima of neglecting her for the furthering of her social campaign.

"A social campaign in Lexington? How absurd!" shrugged Jemima; to her mother's amusement.

It was difficult to keep pace with the development of Jemima.

"To tell the truth—I did not mean to speak of it until later—but we are finishing a book!"

"'We'?" laughed Kate.

"Yes. James has been at work on it in a desultory way for a number of years, and I am very busy looking up references, and verifying quotations, and prodding. You know scholarly men are inclined to be—procrastinating."

(The word "lazy" was to Jemima's thinking too great an insult to be applied to any one for whom she cared.)

"Is it a novel, with you in it?" demanded Jacqueline, eagerly, with unconscious wistfulness. Once she herself had hoped to be the heroine of a novel; and she surreptitiously read all the book reviews she could lay hands upon to see whether Channing had been able to finish it without her.

"A novel—pooh! It is a treatise on the Psychology of the Feminist Movement; and I think," added Jemima complacently, "that it will be more salable than James' previous works."

"I have no doubt of it," murmured her mother. "But just what is this Feminist Movement I read so much about nowadays, dear? Votes, and strongmindedness in general?"

Jemima looked at her mother, thoughtfully. "If you but knew it, you yourself are a leader in the Feminist Movement. It is seeing such women as you denied the ballot that has made most of us suffragists."

"Good Heavens! Are you that?" gasped her mother.

"All thinking women are 'that' nowadays," replied Jemima, reprovingly. "Besides, it's very smart."

Shortly after the book in question made its appearance, Jemima arrived at Storm one day quite pale with excitement. "It's come," she cried, "it's come at last! James has been offered the Presidency of ——" (she named a well-known Eastern university) "and he's already found a substitute for Lexington, and we're going on at once!"

"To live?" cried Jacqueline.

"Of course! Isn't it splendid? Oh, I've seen it coming ever since that lecture tour, and the book clinched matters."

Jacqueline embraced her sister in unselfish delight. "Think of it—'Mrs. President'! And all the young professors kowtowing, and the nice undergraduates to dance with—and what a wonderful place to live! Dear old Goddy! Oh, I am glad. That famous college! Why, it's perfectly amazing!"

"Nice, of course, but hardly amazing," corrected Jemima, herself once more. "James is a very brilliant man, you know. I always expected recognition for him. He should have had some such position long ago. But he had no knowledge of how to—take advantage of opportunities."

Kate found her voice at last. "I congratulate you, dear," she said quietly—a tribute which the other accepted with a simple nod, as becomes true greatness.

And then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly to herself, the face of the triumphant Mrs. Thorpe crumpled up into a queer little mask of distress, and she flung herself into her mother's arms and wept aloud.

The others tried to console her, weeping too. Mag's baby, dozing in front of the fire, sensed the general grief and lifted up her voice in sympathy. Big Liza, attracted by the commotion, learned the cause of it and added herself to the group with loud Ethiopian howls of dismay. The housemaid came running; and soon it was known throughout the quarters and at the stables that Miss Jemmy was going far away to live, and would never come back any more. There had not been such excitement of gloom at Storm since Basil Kildare was brought into the house dead.

It was, characteristically, Jemima herself who quelled the tides of emotion she had started.

"We mustn't be f-foolish," she gulped, mopping her eyes impartially with her mother's sleeve and Liza's apron. "It isn't as if I was af-afraid to go and live among strangers—I'm used to it. B-but I can't help wondering how you all will manage to get along without me!" The tears flowed again.—"You're such a helpless person, Mother!"

This to the Madam, the famous Mrs. Kildare of Storm! Jacqueline gasped at the irreverence.

But for once Kate was not tempted to smile at the girl's egotism. She was already foretasting the dreariness of life without the critical, corrective, and withal stimulating presence of her elder child.

The Thorpes' going, after a last Christmas together at Storm, left Kate and Jacqueline more than ever dependent upon each other. If Philip had been more exacting as a husband, he might well have complained of his wife's constant attendance on her mother in those days. But he was so far from complaining that it was at his suggestion Jacqueline formed the habit of taking her midday meal at Storm.

It was the first real breaking of ties in Kate's little family, and he knew his lady well enough to realize that her cheerful, quiet exterior concealed a very lonely heart just then. So lonely, indeed, that Kate more than once considered the idea of asking Philip and Jacqueline to come and live with her at Storm, for she missed her old-time confidential talks with Philip almost as much as she missed Jemima.

But Philip was spared at least that test of devotion.

"Young birds to their own nest," she reminded herself, sighing.

Occasionally she sent for Philip as in the old days, for the purpose of discussing business or parish matters. He always came, schooling himself to the manner that might be expected of an affectionate son-in-law, but usually managing to bring Jacqueline with him. She was puzzled and a little hurt by his new intangible reserve. She could not quite understand the change in him, and decided with some bitterness that he had lost interest in her now that she had given him what he wanted of her—namely, Jacqueline. That, she reminded herself, was the way of the world. She who knew men should not have been surprised.

And Jacqueline made up to her as best she could for Philip's defection. She had gone back lately to the ways of her little girlhood, loved to sit at Kate's feet in front of the grate fire, or even in her lap—no small accomplishment, for she was almost as tall a woman as her mother—listening while Kate read aloud, interrupting her frequently with caresses, making love to her as only Jacqueline could. Kate laughed at her for what she called her "mommerish" ways; but she found them very sweet, nevertheless. It was as if the girl were trying to be two daughters in one, and a faithless Philip to boot.

Kate, too, had gone back to old ways that winter, and occupied her hands with much sewing for Mag's baby. She had been, in the days before larger affairs took up so much of her time, a tireless needlewoman, and knew well the mental relaxation that comes to those who occasionally "sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam." She explained smilingly that she was preparing for old age, when nothing would be expected of her but to make clothes for her grandchildren; and meanwhile Mag's baby reaped the benefit.

Small Kitty had grown apace, a placid, dimpled little creature, who stayed with great docility wherever she was put, content to amuse herself with her ten fingers, or the new accomplishment of blowing bubbles out of her mouth. In all characteristics she was so different from what her own two strenuous, exacting babies had been that Kate marveled anew at the power of heredity.

"I wish you'd let me have her!" said Jacqueline one day, renewing an old complaint. "You don't love her half so much as I do, and anyway you've had three of your own."

Kate smiled to herself, and did not make the obvious answer. Instead she said, "It was to me Mag gave her, dear, to be made a 'lady' of."

"Poor Mag! Do you think you can ever do it?"

"I don't know," admitted Kate, rather helplessly. A year ago she would have said "Yes" with confidence; but the year had done much to shake her faith in her own ability. "At least I shall make a useful woman of her, which is more to the point."

Only once any sign had come out of the oblivion which had engulfed Mag Henderson. It was a little cheap string of gilt beads, addressed to Mrs. Kildare and accompanied by a scrap of paper which read:

For little Kitty, so she kin have somethin' purty to remember her mama by.

Kate had put the poor little gift away sadly, dreading to think how the girl must have earned even the trifling outlay it had cost. It seemed a pitifully suitable memento of that mother—a string of cheap gilt beads, already tarnished....

Jacqueline's handiwork on these occasions was a rather ambitious venture, a peppermint-striped silk shirt, reminiscent of Professor Thorpe's courting finery, which she was making as a surprise for Philip's birthday. Kate eyed this surprise with some misgivings, and hoped that she would not be asked for an opinion upon it. The sleeves of the thing looked rather odd, as if they were facing the wrong direction; also, the buttonholes might have been spaced more evenly.

In its beginning she ventured one remonstrance. "Isn't striped silk just a little giddy for the Cloth, dear?"

"Phil needs to be giddy, Mother. I mean that my husband shall be just as stylish as Jemmy's. Besides, it won't show under his clerical vest."

"But if it won't show, what's the use of all this grandeur?"

"Why, Mummy, what a vulgar thought! It will feel, of course!—You know how it is when there are ribbons and lace on our underthings—we feel sort of superior and extra lady-like."

"Do we?" laughed Kate. "I must try it and see."

"And then men admire silk tremendously," Jacqueline informed her, seriously. "Whenever I ask Phil what to put on, he chooses something silk, and I don't believe he's ever owned anything silk in all his life; unless perhaps a handkerchief. Oh, he's going to love this shirt, you'll see!"

"I am sure he is," said Kate tenderly, and thereafter held her peace.

Jacqueline was right, Philip's delight in his "surprise" was almost touching. It was perhaps the first thing that any woman had made for him with her own hands since the days when his mother prepared for his arrival in the world. He bragged about his shirt to all of his acquaintance, loyally concealing its weaknesses; and would have worn it with equal pride had it been as uncomfortable as the shirt of Nessus.

Jacqueline, highly elated, embarked upon a series of silken adventures. If firm intention could have done it, she would have become in those days as accomplished a needlewoman as her mother and sister.



CHAPTER XLIV

Jacqueline had never quite thought out to herself the reason for Channing's unexplained disappearance. It was a subject upon which her mind dwelt constantly whenever she was alone; hence she managed to be alone as little as possible. The realization that he was a coward, as she had more than once suspected—afraid to face the consequences of his own act; afraid (the weakest cowardice of all!) of what people might say—had done much to help her pride through the humiliation of desertion, had done much, indeed, to banish him from her heart.

But she could not banish him from her mind. Again and again her thoughts went over all that had passed between them, trying piteously to discover what had happened to put them apart. He had been so madly in love, had wanted her so desperately—or was it she who had wanted him? Had she shown that too plainly?—Had she not shown him plainly enough?—Sometimes she reproached herself bitterly for her little instinctive coquetries with him. More often she asked herself in a terrified whisper whether he had ever really loved her at all, whether it was she herself who had done the seeking, the demanding?—she a shameless creature, blinded by her own feeling, to whom he had responded out of pity, perhaps (Jacqueline shivered), laughing at her all the while in his sleeve.

Poor Jacqueline! It was no wonder that her eyes were shadowed, her manner listless. Always, in these dreaded meditations, she came to a certain point where she dared think no further, but ran away from herself in a sort of panic, to the comfort of whoever happened to be nearer, Philip or her mother. And she saw to it that one of them was always near.

It was the frequency of these sudden, unexplained attacks of frantic affection that had driven Philip to the necessity of another study, where he might write sermons and attend to necessary matters free from the distraction of a wife who at any moment might fling herself into his arms demanding wordlessly to be comforted.

Not that he begrudged the little bruised soul any comfort he had to offer. He at least had gone into marriage with his eyes wide open. He understood Jacqueline far better than did her mother, who ascribed her varying moods to the whims and megrims usual with young wives in the first difficult year or two of married life.

Frequently these panics occurred at night, when she suddenly found herself awake in the black loneliness, remembering Channing. Then she would jump out of bed and run into her husband's room, a distraught, white ghost of a figure, and climb in beside him to hide her head in the ready refuge of his shoulder.

"Nightmares again?" he would ask.

And she, nodding, buried her head deeper, while he held her close and silent until her shuddering ceased, and he knew by her light breathing that she was asleep there in his arms.

Perhaps it was a comforting that worked both ways, for Philip sometimes had nightmares of his own.

One day Jacqueline, after lunch with her mother, was glancing over the numerous magazines that littered the reading-table, when she came across something which riveted her attention. Kate, getting no answer to a twice-repeated question, looked over her shoulder to see what she was reading. On the front page she saw a picture of Percival Channing, with a notice of his new book, just published.

"He finished it without me after all, you see," said Jacqueline faintly. "He—he said he couldn't."

Kate made no comment. The mention of Channing always embarrassed her quite as much as it did Jacqueline. Her duplicity in the matter of his disappearance weighed heavily on her conscience, and she longed for the time to come when she could make full confession and be absolved. She wondered if the time had come already, since Jacqueline spoke of him of her own accord.

"I suppose I ought to be proud to have helped at all with such a book as that," went on the girl, haltingly. "It says here it is the greatest book he has ever written.—And I'm in it, Mother. It's a great honor, isn't it?"

"It's a great impertinence," exclaimed Kate.

Jacqueline flushed. "Mummy, dear, you've never been quite fair to Mr. Channing, and—it's not like you. If you realized how much I—I cared for him, you would be fairer.—Mother, I want to tell you something, now that it's all done and over."

Kate braced herself for what she knew was coming.

"I—I kept on seeing Mr. Channing, even after you told me not to—You never made me promise anything, you know."

"I trusted you."

"Yes, but it isn't fair to trust people when they don't want you to! If you had asked me any questions, I think I should have told you the truth—I think so. But you didn't ask me any questions.—It wasn't his fault, Mummy. I made him come. I used to meet him in the Ruin every night." She peered at her mother anxiously, and Kate got up abruptly and crossed the room so that her face should not be visible.

"That isn't all," went on the hurried voice, rather breathless now. "You see—it didn't seem very honorable, somehow, to go on meeting him like that, on your place, when you didn't know about it—"

"No," agreed Kate.

"So—so I thought I'd just better go away with him.—Oh, he didn't ask me to, he didn't really want me to—he said it was too much of a sacrifice to ask of me. But—you and I know, Mother, don't we? that there's no sacrifice too great to make when you love a man!"

"Oh, my little girl," groaned Kate, "how could you love him like that when you knew about—that woman, knew what sort of man he was?"

Jacqueline said eagerly, "But he explained all about that woman. He never really loved her at all, but he was lonely, and she was very beautiful and fascinating, as that sort of woman knows how to be. And artistic people are so susceptible. It was a sort of experiment—experience is an author's stock in trade, you know." (Kate could almost hear Channing saying it.) "It turned out wrong, of course. Why, Mother, she was horrid! The fact that a bad woman had got hold of him was all the more reason for a good woman to—to win him back. Oh, I suppose he was weak—I know he was—but weak people are the very ones who need us most, Mother, aren't they?"

Kate came behind her chair and laid her cheek on the girl's hair. "Don't say anything more, dear. I know, I understand. Surely nobody, neither God nor man, can condemn us women for our divine gift of pity."

But Jacqueline had dedicated herself to honesty that day. "It wasn't just pity, Mummy. I——I wanted him, too! I wanted him as much as he wanted me—more, I think, because after all he never came for me. Just went away without a word." Suddenly she hid her face in her hands. "Oh, Mummy, and I loved him so! I adored him!—I loved him as much as you loved Phil's father."

Kate opened her lips in quick protest, but did not speak. How could she explain the difference between this childish infatuation for a first lover and her own devotion to such a man as Jacques Benoix? Was there, after all, such a difference? It is not the recipient but the giver that makes love a holy thing.

She knelt beside the girl, and put both arms around her. "My dear!—Did it hurt very much when he did not come?"

Jacqueline leaned her head on the warm shoulder that had received so many of her griefs, and gave way freely to the relief of weeping.

"Oh, yes, it hurt," she said between sobs. "It still hurts."

"You don't mean that you still—care for him?"

The other raised tear-filled eyes in surprise. "Now that I am married to Philip? Why, of course not! How could I? My husband is the dearest thing in the world!"

Kate laughed in sheer relief.

But the girl's lips were still quivering, and she ducked her head down on the comfortable shoulder again. "I can't help feeling ashamed, though," she sobbed. "Ashamed be-because Mr. Channing proved to be such—such a coward, and because—he never could have loved me at all, or he would have come for me, or written, or something!—He must have been glad to get away from me, just as he was from that other woman."

"Listen, darling!" Kate realized that her own moment of confession had arrived. "He did come for you! It is my fault that he has never explained to you;"—and with the girl's widening, incredulous eyes fixed upon her, she told every detail of her experience that night of the storm.

When she finished, Jacqueline was on her feet, queerly white and still. "You knew," she whispered as if to herself, "and you let me think him—? You never told me—you let me suffer—Oh, Mother!—Why, it was deceit! It was a lie!"

Kate frowned. "What of it? Lying, deceit—what are they to me beside your happiness? I only wanted that—and thank God I've got it!"

Jacqueline gave her a strange look. "My happiness," she repeated.

The tone of her voice startled Kate. "You are happy?" she said, quickly, between a statement and a question. "You told me yourself that Philip was the dearest thing in the world to you!"

Jacqueline answered, "Mother, I love Philip now better than I ever dreamed it was possible to love any one. But—It does not make you exactly happy to feel that way about a man who—who doesn't know you're there, unless you remind him."

"Jacqueline! Philip does not love you—?"

"He tries his best to," said the girl with a hopeless little smile, "but he can't. Oh, it's quite true!"—she stopped her mother's protest by a gesture. "I knew it before I married him. Jemmy told me—Oh, do you think I would have done such a thing, do you dream I would have accepted such a sacrifice, if I had seen anything else to do? If I had guessed that Mr. Channing really wanted me?—I belonged to Mr. Channing, Mother.—Now do you see what you have done?"

Kate had risen, too, her hands shaking. A strange and appalling thought had forced itself into her head. She asked in a sort of whisper, "Daughter, why did you marry Philip?"

The answer came with a terrible simplicity, "Because I did not want to be like Mag Henderson. Because I thought—if a baby came—you never can tell—it would be better to have a father for it."

In the silence that followed, innumerable little familiar home-sounds came to Kate's ears; the crackling of a log in the fire, a negro voice out of doors calling "Soo-i, soo-i," to the pigs, Big Liza in the distant kitchen chanting a revival hymn while she washed the dishes. Her eyes in that one moment took in, as do the eyes of a drowning person, every detail of her surroundings; the sturdy masculine furniture covered incongruously with its wedding cretonne, the piano and books that had been a part of her childhood's home, her open office beyond, with its business-like array of maps and ledgers; and all these things seemed to accuse her of something, of being a traitor to some trust. Her eyes came to rest at last upon the old flintlock rifle over the mantel-shelf, beneath the wooden, grim-faced Kildare who had carried it.

"And I did not kill him!" she muttered aloud, as if in apology to the rifle.

Jacqueline, who had been watching her fearfully, ran with a little cry and clung to her close.

"Mummy, don't look like that, don't stare so queerly! You frighten me," she wailed. "Didn't you guess—didn't you understand, when I told you how I adored him? I—I thought you would. How could I help it? I didn't know—I—Oh, Mummy!"

Kate with a gesture brushed aside her incoherences, brushed aside the thing she was confessing—a thing she saw to have been inevitable, taking into account the girl's nature, her inheritance ("From both sides," the mother reminded herself, grimly), and the man she had had to deal with. Kate told herself she was a fool not to have suspected it from the first; or rather to have allowed Channing to dull her suspicion of it with his halting statement that he was, after all, "a gentleman."

Even in that moment of sickening surprise, she faced and accepted and took upon herself the burden of her child's weakness. It was not that sin which roused in her a rapidly mounting tide of furious anger against Jacqueline. It was her sin against Philip Benoix.

"You accused me of deceit, of a lie. You!" Her voice was curiously thick, and she spoke with great effort. "Ah! There have been bad women in this family of yours, my girl, but never before, I think, a dishonorable one."

Jacqueline recoiled from her.

"Dishonorable! And my daughter! Stealing a good man's name to cover her own shame. How dared you, how dared you?" She began to stride up and down the room, the words pouring from her lips at white heat. Kate Kildare was one of the people whose quiet serenity covers a great power of anger, all the more forceful for being kept within bounds. Rarely indeed had she allowed it to force the flood-gates; and Jacqueline cowered away from her, staring, hardly believing it was herself to whom this cold fury of speech was addressed.

"Philip, left to my care by his father, Philip for whom I wanted everything good in life even more than for my own children! Oh, how dared you? So devoted to us, so grateful to me—how could he refuse? What chance had he? Even if he had known—" She turned on Jacqueline with a sudden gleam of hope. "Did he know? Were you honest enough to tell him?"

The girl gasped. "How could I?" The blood came up over her face in a painful flood and her head drooped. "But—but I think he—understood. He—seemed to."

The other gave a short, hard laugh. "Not likely! Men, even such men as Philip, don't marry the—Magdalens, however much they pity them. Unless somebody makes them, as I made Philip.—Oh, my God! And I thought he was too modest to ask for you! I thought I was offering him the best I had!"

A faint voice interrupted her. "Did you—offer me to Philip?"

If Kate was aware of the cruelty of her words, she was beyond compunction just then. "Yes! Offered you?—Good Heavens, I insisted upon it! Oh, what a fool I have been, what a blind, blundering fool! Now I understand why he was so queer, so quiet.—Taking advantage of his devotion to shunt my disgrace onto him—Jacques' son!"

At last her anger exhausted her, and she sank into a chair, quite limp and silent. She did not know just when Jacqueline left the house, had been only vaguely aware of a horse galloping down the hill recklessly, as Jacqueline, like her father before her, was wont to gallop. In the reaction of emotion, she felt rather ill, and had to struggle with a physical weakness that threatened to overcome her.

Some time later a servant, entering to announce supper, found her there in the dark, and receiving no reply to her summons, ran back to the kitchen in some alarm.

Big Liza, with the wisdom of the simple, herself brought a tray of nourishing food, and stood over her mistress firmly while she ate, obediently enough, but tasting nothing of what she put into her mouth.

Presently, however, the food had its effect. Weakness passed; and Kate found that her anger had dissipated, leaving only a great, aching sorrow, not only for her daughter, but with her. Philip receded to the back of her mind. Channing was there only as one is aware of the presence of some crawling, hidden thing in the grass, whom one intends presently to crush with a heel. All her thoughts rested now upon Jacqueline.

She saw her as she had cowered away from that torrent of wrath, her tearless, strained eyes fixed incredulously upon the mother who was hurting her. She remembered all her little tender, clinging ways, her piteous loyalty to the man who had deserted her, her gallant effort to bear gaily the load of fear that must for so long have been upon her heart. She remembered farther back than that—her fierce rage with the accusing Jemima, her arms wound tight about the mother whose weakness she had learned, her cry, "If she is bad, then I'll be bad, too! I'd rather be bad like her than good as—as God!"

Kate began to shiver. She, the defender of Mag Henderson, of all weak and helpless creatures, she had failed her own daughter!...

Her mind went still further back into the past, and recalled the scene between herself and Jacques Benoix, when she had offered herself to him, when only the fact that her lover was stronger than herself had kept her from far worse sinning than Jacqueline's—worse, because less ignorant. What right had she, Kate Leigh, reckless, headstrong, hot-hearted, to expect of her child either the sort of strength that resists temptation, or the sort that declines to shield itself at the expense of another?

Gradually she came to absolve Jacqueline from blame even in the matter of Philip. She had not sought Philip's help, she had only accepted what had been offered her—what her mother had prompted him to offer. Poor little victim, passive in the hands of stronger natures, in the hands of circumstance, heredity, character—that Fate which the ancient gods surely meant by their cryptic saying: "The fate of all men we have hung about their necks...."

If it had not been so late she would have gone to her daughter then, and begged for forgiveness. Instead she sat on before the dying fire, shivering without knowing it, sometimes unconsciously beating her breast with her hand, as Catholics beat their breasts during the mass, when they murmur, "Mea culpa, mea culpa."

It was almost dawn when she realized that the fire was out, and went stiffly up to bed, careful not to wake Mag's baby, who slept beside her in the crib that had held in turn each of her own children.



CHAPTER XLV

It was so rarely that the Madam overslept herself that her servants had no precedent to follow in the matter. The housewoman, who finally entered on tiptoe to remove the placidly protesting Kitty, reported the Madam sleeping "like a daid pusson, and mighty peaked-lookin' in the face." So it was decided not to disturb her; and the morning was well advanced before Kate reached the Rectory, where her thoughts had been hovering since her first waking moment.

The counsels of the night had taught her a new humility. She came to Jacqueline as a suppliant, begging to be forgiven not only for her moment of cruel anger but for her stupid and bungling interference in her child's life. Nothing was very clear in her mind except that Philip must be told the truth, and that, whatever happened, she and her child would bear it together.

She was disappointed to find that both Jacqueline and Philip were out, Jacqueline having driven away soon after Philip left the house.

"Driven? She was not riding?" asked Kate in some surprise. Jacqueline, like her mother, rarely used a vehicle if a saddle-horse was at hand.

"She tooken de buggy, an' she tooken Lige, too," explained Ella. "No'm, I dunno whar she went at, kase I wa'n't here when dey lef', but I reckon she'll be gone a right smart while, 'cause she lef' me word jes what I was to feed dat puppy. As ef a pusson raised at Sto'm wouldn't know how to take keer of puppy-dawgs!" She exchanged with her former mistress a smile of indulgent amusement. "I 'lows she's goin' to tek her dinner with you-all like she ginally does, ain't she?"

Kate doubted it, after what had passed; but she went back to her house and waited, hopefully.

At about the dinner-hour she was called to the telephone, and for a moment failed to recognize Philip's voice over the wire. It sounded unnatural.

"Is Jacqueline there?"

"Why, no. Not yet. Is she coming?"

"I—I don't know. Look here!—don't worry, but she's been gone for some hours, and she 's taken a trunk with her."

"A trunk?" cried Kate.

"Yes. Do you know anything about it? Has she spoken to you of making a visit, or anything?" He repeated his question, patiently; but Kate could not find her voice to answer. A premonition of disaster struck her dumb.

"You're not to worry," said Philip again. "Lige drove her over to the trolley-line, and he should be back soon. I'll telephone you what he has to say."

But Kate could not wait. She ran out to the stables and saddled a horse with her own hands, impatiently pushing aside the slower negroes.

Halfway to the rectory she met Philip, in the Ark. He held out to her an open letter.

"Lige brought it back to me. It's from Jacqueline. Read it," he said, dully.

Seated upon a restive horse that backed and filled nervously about the puffing engine, the paper fluttering in her fingers, Kate read aloud Jacqueline's farewell to her husband, only half grasping its meaning:

I didn't mean to be dishonorable, darling Philip; I didn't know I was being, till mother told me. I never thought. I only thought, suppose I have a baby, and it's a poor little thing without a father, like Mag's, that nobody wants except me, and that mother and Jemmy and everybody would be ashamed of? I couldn't bear it!—And I didn't know mother asked you to marry me—I thought you wanted to, because you were unhappy and wanted me for company—we're so used to each other. Truly, I thought that! And I thought you knew, Philip. It seemed to me that you knew, without my telling you.

Kate looked up here. "Did you know?" she asked.

He nodded, without speaking.

Kate's head drooped over the letter. "And her mother didn't," she thought.

But it's all been wrong, somehow, and the only way I know to make it right is to go away, as your father did. Please, please let that make it right! You don't believe in divorce, of course, but I know enough to know this marriage of ours is not a real marriage, and could be put aside if people knew what sort of girl I have been. The Bishop will help you, I am sure. So I have written him all about it.

Kate gasped; but the courage of it brought up her drooping head again.

You must forgive me if you can, darling Philip, and thank you, thank you, thank you for being so sweet to me always! You must never worry about me, either. I am not going to die or anything like that. There is somebody who will help me, who always would have, only I didn't know it. I did him an injustice. Mother did not tell me. I can't forgive mother for that quite yet, but I will some day; and some day, perhaps, she will forgive me. You'll make her, won't you, Phil?

Oh, I do love you both so much! It nearly breaks my heart to go away from the precious little house, and the puppy, and Storm, and baby Kitty, and everything. I've never been away before.—You won't take off your winter flannels till the frost is out of the ground, will you? Promise me! And don't try to find me, because I don't want to be found. Only don't let mother fret about me. I shall think about you always, no matter where I am.

JACQUELINE.

The two stared at each other for a moment without a word. Then Philip said hoarsely, "She means Channing, of course!"

"No, no!" muttered the mother, shrinking, fighting against her own conviction. "She loves you too much for that. It is you she loves, now. She couldn't! She must have gone to Jemima. Oh, I am sure she has gone to Jemima! Come, we'll telegraph."

She started for the Rectory at a gallop, her thoughts as usual translating themselves into action. Over the telephone she dictated a long wire to Jemima, carefully worded so that the curiosity of a country telegraph operator should not be aroused. Her brain never worked better than in an emergency.

"Now," she said briskly, turning to the dazed and silent Philip, "come up and show me what you want in your bag."

"Where am I to go?" he asked vaguely.

"I'll tell you as soon as I hear from Jemima. But there is no time to waste."

He stood quite idle in the little rose and white bower he had prepared for his bride, watching Kate hurrying about his own room beyond, packing necessities into his worn old leather satchel, somewhat hampered by the activities of Jacqueline's puppy, who made constant playful lunges at her feet.

He could not quite realize what had happened—that Jacqueline, his playmate, his little friend, his wife, had gone out of the safe haven of his home back to the man who had betrayed and deserted her. It seemed like a hideous dream from which he must soon awake. How had he failed her? What desperate unhappiness must have hidden itself in this pretty white room where he had hoped she might be happy!

At intervals during the night before, he had waked to hear her softly stirring about, and wondered why she did not come to him as usual, to be soothed into drowsiness. Once he had almost broken his custom and gone in to her, feeling that she had need of him. How he wished now that he had followed this impulse! Yes, and many another like it....

Looking about, he noticed that her glass lamp was quite empty of oil, and that her darning basket stood beside it, full to overflowing with neatly darned and rolled socks of his own. So that was how she had spent the night, doing her best to leave him comfortable! A great lump rose in his throat. He saw, too, that both his own photograph and that of her mother were gone. She had taken them with her.

His daze began to break. He remembered phrases in Jacqueline's letter: "I didn't mean to be dishonorable ... I didn't know mother asked you to marry me ... I did him an injustice."

He went in to Kate, and demanded abruptly to know how this thing had come about.

It was a question she had been dreading, but she answered it fully and frankly, sparing herself not at all. He listened with an oddly judicial air, new in her experience of him. When she described her share in Channing's disappearance, he interrupted her quickly.

"You deceived her?"

"Yes. I know now that it was wrong."

He made no comment; but when she came to her confession to Jacqueline that it was she who had suggested their marriage and not Philip, he interrupted her again.

"Kate," he said slowly and incredulously, "you have been cruel!"

At any other time he would have noticed how her never-idle hands were shaking, the paleness of her lips, the dark shadow of pain in her eyes. But just then he was not thinking of her. He was thinking of Jacqueline.

He turned away abruptly, and looked over the portmanteau she had been packing. On the top lay the peppermint-striped silk shirt his wife had made for him. He saw it through a sudden blur of tears.

"There's one thing you've forgotten to pack," he muttered, and slipped into the bag something which Kate removed as soon as his back was turned. It was a pistol.

She was startled by this. "Perhaps I'd better go after Jacqueline myself," she suggested.

"It is my right. I am her husband," was the stern answer.

In an incredibly short space of time, the telephone rang with Jemima's return message.

No word from Jack. P. C.'s address in New York is No. 5, Ardmore Apartments. James and I will meet her there. Don't worry.

"Thank Heaven for Jemima!" uttered her mother, turning from the telephone. "You'll have time to catch the evening train in Frankfort for New York, Philip. I'll meet you at the trolley station with money and all that."

He had not thought of money, would have started upon his quest with empty pockets. But it was characteristic of a new era that he accepted her financial help now quite simply, without demur, without thought, even, as he might have accepted it from his own mother.

The last thing he saw as the train pulled out of the station was Kate's face gazing up at him whitely from the platform, and he leaned far out of the window to promise, "I will not come back without her!"

But not then, nor until long afterwards, did he realize that for hours he had been with his dear lady at a time of great distress to her, without once realizing her presence; his thoughts yearning and his heart aching for another woman, for his wife, Jacqueline.

It was the moment of Kate's justification, of her triumph, had she but known it. But she did not know it.

She rode home slowly and yet more slowly through the twilight world, into which came presently a pale winter moon, serene and beautiful and mocking. There was no longer need of action, to stimulate her. She had reached the end of her strength.

The sensitive horse beneath her moved with increasing care, sedately and cautiously, as if he realized that he must be brains as well as feet for two. He was an experienced animal, and had known what it was to carry children on his back.

When he came to the front door of Storm, he paused of his own accord, and nickered anxiously.

So the servants found the Madam, and when they saw that she could not dismount, it was Big Liza who lifted her down in her strong old arms, as she had lifted her once before when she came, a bride, to Storm. She carried her in to a couch, moaning over her, "Oh, my lamb, my po' lamb; what is dey done to you now?"

The Madam could not answer.

* * * * *

Jemima Thorpe reached her mother's bedside two days later, greatly to the relief of the household, and of Dr. Jones.

"No, it does not seem to have been a stroke of any sort," explained that worthy and anxious man. "If Mrs. Kildare were an ordinary woman, I should call it hysteria, but she's not the neurotic type. It appears to be acute exhaustion, following, possibly, a shock of some kind." He looked at Jemima inquisitively, but without eliciting the information he sought. "At any rate, I am glad you have come, and I should suggest that Benoix and his wife be sent for. I hear they've gone off on a trip to New York?"

"To Europe," amended Jemima calmly. "They are now on the ocean, so they can't be sent for."

The doctor's eyes widened. Journeys to Europe were not usual among his patients. "Europe! Isn't that very sudden?"

"Very sudden," agreed Jemima. "Now shall we go in to mother?"

Perforce, he opened Mrs. Kildare's door, and announced with his cheeriest bedside manner, "Here's your girl home again."

The heavy eyes flew open. "Jacqueline!" she whispered.

But when she saw that it was not Jacqueline, the lids closed, and it seemed too much trouble to lift them again.

Jemima went on her knees, and laid a timid cheek on her mother's hand, that strong, beautiful hand lying so strangely limp now upon the counterpane. For the first time in her life she knew the feeling of utter helplessness. Her efficiency had failed her. In this emergency, she could not produce the thing her mother needed.

She wished with all her heart for her inefficient sister.



CHAPTER XLVI

Philip's pursuit of his wife came to have for him, before it was done, something of the strangeness of a nightmare, one of those endless dreams that come to fever patients, filled with confused, vague details of places and persons among whom he passed, leaving nothing clear to the memory afterwards except unhappiness.

And indeed the mental condition that urged him on was not unlike fever, compounded as it was of passionate pity for Jacqueline, and white-hot rage against the man who had taken his wife from him. He could not bear to think of the frightened misery that must have driven the girl to such a step, nor of the wretched disillusionment in store for her. Jacqueline ashamed; his gallant, loyal, high-hearted little playmate cowering under the whips of the world's scorn—it was a thought that drove all the youth out of Philip's face, and left it so grim and fierce that many a passing stranger stared at him covertly, wondering what tragedy lay behind such a mask of pain.

Only once did the effect of Jacqueline's shame upon his own life occur to Philip, and then he wrote a hasty line to the Bishop of his diocese, offering to resign at once from the ministry. No other alternative occurred to him. If Jacqueline had needed him when he married her, how infinitely greater was her need of him now! What came to either of them they would share together, he and his wife.

Nor was his decision entirely altruistic. Her going had already taught him one thing. "We are so used to each other," the piteous little letter had said. Yes, they were used to each other; so used that they would never again be able to do without each other.

His search did not end in New York. He found there only the news, gathered by James and Jemima Thorpe, that Channing had sailed a few hours before for Europe, and not alone. The steamship office had registered the name of a Mr. James Percival and wife, in whom it was not difficult to recognize the author.

Philip followed by the next boat, but found some difficulty, inexperienced traveler that he was, in coming upon traces of the pair, who doubled and twisted upon their tracks as if conscious of pursuit. It was some weeks before he ran his quarry to earth in Paris, having been directed to one of those "coquettish apartments" known to experts in the art of travel, who scorn the great, banal caravansaries of the ordinary tourist.

Entering an unpretentious gate between an apothecary shop and a patisserie, he found himself in one of the hidden court-yards of the old city, where a placid, vine-covered mansion dozed in the sun, remote from the rattle of cobblestones and the vulgar gaze of the passing world. Doves preened themselves on the flagging, a cat occupied herself maternally with her young on the doorstep, birds were busy in the ivy. It was an ideal retreat for a honeymoon.

Philip, his jaw set and his heart pounding, jerked at the old-fashioned bell-handle, and the door was presently opened by a mustachioed lady in the dressing-sacque and heelless slippers which form the conventional morning-wear of the lower bourgeoisie. But, yes; she admitted in answer to his inquiry; the American Madame was chez elle. "Also Monsieur," she added, with smiling significance. "Ah, the devotion of ces nouveaux maries!"

She added that if Monsieur would attend but one moment, she would mount to announce his arrival.

The clink of a coin arrested her. "If Madame will have the goodness to permit," suggested Philip, in French as fluent and far more correct than her own, "I prefer to announce my arrival in person."

She shrugged. "But perfectly! As Monsieur wishes. It is a little effect, perhaps? Monsieur is the brother, possibly; the cousin?" she asked, with the friendly curiosity of her kind.

"Monsieur is the husband," said Philip grimly, and passed.

The concierge gasped. "The husband! Name of a name!"

But seeing that he was already mounting the stairs, paying no attention whatever to her virtuous horror, the French-woman followed him on tiptoe, murmuring to herself, "Mais comme c'est chic, ca!" She had her racial taste for the spectacular.

At first she was somewhat disappointed. Applying alternately eye and ear to the keyhole, she detected none of the imprecations, the excited chatter, the nose-tweaking, the calling down of the just wrath of Heaven, which the occasion seemed to demand.

"Ah bah, these English!" she muttered scornfully, "If but my Henri were to discover me in such a situation—la, la!"

Philip, entering without knocking, had begun quietly and methodically to remove his coat before Channing was aware of his presence. The author looked up from his desk, surprised, and jumped to his feet, with an expression of pleasure in his face. Philip's brain registered that fact without attempting to explain it. Channing was undoubtedly glad to see him.

"Why, Benoix! Where have you dropped from? I did not hear you knock! What in the name of all that's pleasant brings you to Paris?"

He advanced with outstretched hand. Just at that moment, a woman entered from the room beyond.

Philip, bracing himself, turned to face his wife....

But it was not Jacqueline. It was a Titian-haired, lissome young woman upon whom he had never laid eyes before, and who returned his stare with self-possessed interest.

Philip gave a great gasp. "Channing! Who—who is this woman?"

"My wife," announced the author, with a laughing bow. "You seem surprised. Hadn't you heard? But of course not—it was all so sudden. And I'm glad to say the papers don't seem to have got hold of it yet, thanks to my forethought in booking passage under only half my name. Some time before I sailed, Fay and I decided to—to let matters rest as they were, and—she came with me." He was a trifle embarrassed, but carried off the introduction with an air. "Mrs. Channing—Mr. Benoix!"

Philip was utterly bewildered. "Do you mean to say you have not seen Jacqueline?"

"Jacqueline Kildare?" Channing's smiling ease left him. "Yes, I did see her in New York, the day I left. You didn't think—" An inkling of the other's errand dawned on him. He was suddenly alarmed, and, as usual in moments of emergency, burst into his unfortunate glibness of speech. "Why, she came to see me about studying for opera, something of that sort—that was all. I had promised her introductions. Unfortunately she came just as I was preparing to leave, and I had no time to do much for her. I gave her letters to several teachers, and got her the address of a good boarding-place...."

Philip muttered an exclamation.

"Oh, and I did more than that," said Channing quickly. "I talked to her like a Dutch uncle; advised her to go straight back to Kentucky, and not to do anything without her mother's permission—a great woman, Mrs. Kildare! I told her New York was no place for a young girl alone, and that she had been most indiscreet to come to me. I told her about my—er—my marriage, of course. I offered her money—"

"You did what?" asked Philip, suddenly.

"Why—er—yes!" Channing was taken aback by his tone. "Why not? You know what an impulsive, reckless child she is—she might very well have run off without any money in her pocket, and I should have been uncomfortable, quite miserable, to think—"

Philip's fist stopped the flow of words upon his lips.

"Wh-what did you do that for?" stammered the author, backing away.

"Put up your fists, if you've got any," was the answer.

Channing defended himself wildly, but without hope. He felt that his time had come. A certain conviction paralyzed his already sluggish muscles, "He knows!" he thought. "She's told him!"

Various things swam into his dizzy memory—the business-like punching-bag in the rectory at Storm, the pistol in Philip's riding-breeches, the fact that his father had been a convicted "killer" in the penitentiary. "He means to do for me!" thought Channing, and looked desperately around for help.

But there was no help. The woman he had acknowledged as his wife stood in a corner of the room, her skirts drawn fastidiously about her, looking on with unmistakable and fascinated interest. At the keyhole Madame la concierge also looked on, unobserved, breathing hard and thinking better thoughts of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Channing, his chin cut, his nose swollen to twice its natural size, undertook a series of masterly retreats. It was then that Madame, at the keyhole, began to fear for her furniture, and considered interference. Chairs were overturned, the table went crashing. At last a foot-stool completed what Philip's fists had begun. Channing tripped over it, fell heavily for the third time, and lay without moving.

His utter panic had saved him. Philip was tired of knocking him down, and jerking him to his feet, and knocking him down again. He let him lie this time, turned him over with a contemptuous foot, and put on his coat.

"It was like punching a meal-bag!" he muttered, and strode out of the room without a glance for either the woman in the corner, or the one he surprised on the threshold.

Madame had been of two minds, as to whether to shriek for the gendarmes, now that all was safely over, or to fling herself upon the bosom of this gallant defender of his marital honor. But Philip was too quick for her. She did neither.

Presently Channing opened a puffy and wary eye. "Gone?" he asked faintly. "Then for God's sake why don't you get me something to stop this infernal nose-bleed?"

His wife brought him a towel and a basin of cold water, and presented them to him rather absently.

"Good Heavens, what an experience! Why, the brute might have killed me!—it runs in his family. Why didn't you go for help?"

"I was too interested," explained Mrs. Channing. "I've never seen a clergyman fight before." She added, with an impartiality unusual in a bride of several weeks, "You're not much of a man, are you, Percival dear?"

Out in the street Philip strode along buoyantly, his clerical collar somewhat awry, a black eye making itself rapidly apparent, indifferent to the curious glances of the people who passed. Now and then he stood still and laughed aloud, while Paris gazed at him indulgently, always sympathetic with madness.

To think that he had imagined Jacqueline capable of leaving him for a creature like Channing, flabby, wordy, feebly vicious! Somewhere at home she was waiting for him; lonely, perhaps, wondering why her husband did not come to her, but safe and unashamed. Possibly her mother and Jemima had already found her.

The thought reminded him of certain letters in his pocket, given him that morning at the American Express, and unopened in the excitement of at last running Channing to cover. He drew them out, hoping to find among them one from Storm.

The first was from his bishop, pooh-poohing his offer to resign from the ministry, and suggesting a long vacation. It ended with a sentence that touched Philip deeply: "Assure your brave little wife of the lasting friendship of an old man who collects rare virtues (other people's virtues) as certain connoisseurs collect etchings, and who considers moral courage the rarest of the lot."

Philip turned to his other letter. At sight of the hand-writing he started, and looked quickly at the postmark. It was that of a little town in the Kentucky mountains.

Lately he had thought very often of his father, as he always thought in all the critical moments of his life. At such times the man whose face he had forgotten seemed very near to him. The feeling of nearness deepened as he opened his letter, the first from Jacques Benoix since he had left prison. It was almost as if his father stood there beside him, with a hand on his shoulder.

When he had finished reading, he turned blindly into a church he was passing (it happened to be the cathedral of Notre Dame) and knelt with hidden face before the statue of that coquettish, charming, typically Parisienne madonna, who is not unaccustomed to the sight of men praying with tears.



CHAPTER XLVII

A fleeting, illusory hint of spring appeared for the moment in that street known among all the world's great avenues—the Champs Elysees, the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter den Linden—as "The Avenue." Its pavements glistened with a slippery coating of mud that had yesterday been snow, its windows blossomed with hothouse daffodils and narcissi, also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for his spring building.

A girl, moving alone and rather wearily among the chattering throng, caught this hint of changing seasons, and a wave of nostalgia passed over her that was like physical illness. A flower-vendor held out a tray of wilted jonquils. She bought a few of them—only a few, because she must needs be careful of her money—and held them to her face hungrily. They brought to her mind gardens where such flowers were already pushing their fat green buds up out of the fragrant earth—Storm garden, Philip's little patch of bloom—encouraged by a breeze that was full of sunlight. She saw the birds that flitted to and fro over those gardens upon their busy errands: sweet-whistling cardinals, bluebirds with rosy breasts, exquisite as butterflies; the flashing circles of white made by mocking-birds' wings as they soar and swoop. The noisy street faded from her eyes and ears, and she moved among the crowd as if she were walking a Kentucky lane, with the March wind in her hair.

So she was not at all surprised to meet a familiar face, and murmured absently, her thoughts on other matters, "That you, Mag?"

Then she came to herself with a start. The woman to whom she had spoken had passed quickly. Jacqueline wheeled in time to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd; a flashily dressed, too-stylish figure, mincing along on very high heels, and dangling in one hand a gilt-mesh bag. The paint that made a mask of her face, the heavy black rimming her eyes, the very perfume that left its trail behind her, told their own story. But the carriage of the head, the free, country-girl's swing of the shoulders, were unmistakable. It was Mag Henderson.

Jacqueline followed her, half running. She had so longed for the sight of a face from home that the thought of losing her seemed unbearable. It did not matter to Kate Kildare's daughter that this was a woman of the streets, a hopeless derelict. She remembered only that she had once been her faithful, devoted ally.

But it mattered to Mag Henderson. Impossible that she had failed to recognize Jacqueline; impossible that she did not hear the clear, ringing voice crying after her, "Mag, wait for me, wait!"