"Oh," he said, "I enjoyed our game immensely."

"Good," answered Nancy. "We'll have another this afternoon then."

"Indeed, yes," said Wickham, looking rather wan.

"After Mr. Riatt has gone," said Nancy distinctly. She knew that Laura had had no opportunity to convey this intelligence to Christine, and it amused her to see how she would support the blow. Christine's expression did not change, but her blue eyes grew suddenly a little darker. She turned slowly toward Riatt.

"And are you leaving us?" she asked.

"Sorry to say I am."

"What a bore," said Miss Fenimer politely. Hickson's simple heart bounded for joy. "She's refused him," he thought, "and that's why he's rushing off like this."

"Yes," said Ussher, "I should think he would want to go home and take some care of himself. It's a wonder if he doesn't develop pneumonia."

Christine smiled at Riatt across the table. "They make me feel as if I had been very cruel, Mr. Riatt," she said.

"Cruel, my dear," cried Nancy. "Oh, I'm sure you weren't that," and then intoxicated by her own success, she made her first tactical error. She turned to Riatt and said: "Don't forget that you are dining with me on Wednesday evening." She enjoyed this exhibition of power. She saw Laura and Christine glance at each other. But they were not dismayed; they saw at once that Max had not been playing his hand alone; he was going not entirely on his own initiative, and that was encouraging.

Riatt, who perfectly understood the public protectorate that was thus established over him, resented it; in fact by the time they rose from the table, he was thoroughly disgusted with all of them—weary, as he said to himself of their hideous little games. He hardened his heart even as Pharaoh did, and he felt not the least hesitation in according Laura the promised interview, for the reason that he felt no doubt of his own powers of resistance.

He permitted himself to be ostentatiously led away, upstairs to her little private sitting-room, with its books, and fireplace, and signed photographs, and he pretended not to see Nancy Almar's glance, which was almost a wink, and might have been occasioned by the fact that she herself was at the same moment gently guiding Wickham in the direction of a card-table.

Laura made her cousin very comfortable, in a long chair by the fire, with his cigarettes and his coffee beside him on a little table, and then she began murmuring:

"Isn't it a pity Nancy Almar is so poisonous at times! She isn't really bad hearted, but anything connected with Christine has always roused her jealousy—the old beauty and the new one, I suppose."

"I wonder," said Riatt, "what is the difference, if any, between a pirate and a bucaneer? Miss Fenimer and Mrs. Almar seem to me to have many qualities in common."

"Oh, Max, how can you say that? Christine is so much more gentle and womanly, so much—"

"My dear Laura, we haven't very much time, and I think you said you wanted to talk to me on a business matter."

Laura Ussher had the grace to hesitate, just an instant, before she answered: "Oh, yes, but it's your business I want to talk about. I want to speak to you about this terrible situation in which Christine finds herself. Do you realize that Nancy and Wickham between them will spread this story everywhere, with all the embellishments their fancy may dictate, particularly emphasizing the fact that it was Christine who made the horse run away. It will be in the papers within a week. You know, Max, just as well as I do, that it wasn't her fault. Is she to be so cruelly punished for it? Can you permit that?"

"It's not my fault either, Laura."

"You can so easily save the situation."

"How?"

"By asking her to marry you."

"That I will not do."

"Are you involved with some one else?"

"I might make you understand better if I said yes, but it would not be true. I'm not in love with any individual, but I know clearly the type of woman I could fall in love with, and it most emphatically is not Miss Fenimer's."

"Yet so many men have fallen in love with her."

"Oh, I see her beauty; I even feel her charm; but to marry her, no."

"Think of the prestige her beauty and position—"

"My dear Laura, what position? Social position as represented by the hectic triviality of the last few days? Thank you, no, again."

"Dear Max," said his cousin more seriously than she had hitherto spoken, "you know I would not want you to do anything that I thought would make you unhappy. But this wouldn't. I know Christine better than you do. I know that under all her worldliness and hardness there is a vein of devotion and sweetness—"

"Very likely there is. But it would not be brought out by a mercenary marriage with a man who cared nothing for her. If that is all you have to say, Laura, let's end an interview which hasn't been very pleasant for either of us."

"Oh, Max, how can you abandon that lovely creature to some tragic future?"

"You know quite well she is going to do nothing more tragic than to marry Hickson."

"And you are willing to sacrifice her to Hickson?"

"My dear Laura, I cannot prevent all the beautiful, dissatisfied women in the world from marrying dull, kind-hearted young men who adore them."

Mrs. Ussher stared at him in baffled, unhappy silence, and in the pause, the door quickly and silently opened and Christine herself entered. She looked calm, almost Olympian, as she laid her hand on Laura's arm.

"Let me have just a word alone with Mr. Riatt," she said; and as Laura precipitately left the room, Christine turned to Riatt with a reassuring smile. "Don't be alarmed," she said. "Your most dangerous antagonist has just gone. I've really come to rescue you." She sank into a chair. "How exhausting scenes are. Let me have a cigarette, will you?"

She smoked a moment in silence, while he stood erect and alert by the mantel-piece. At last, glancing up at him, she said:

"I suppose Laura was suggesting that you marry me?"

He nodded.

"Laura's a dear, but not always very wise. You see, she thinks we are both so wonderful, she can't believe we wouldn't make each other happy. And from her point of view, it is rather an obvious solution. You see, she does not know about that paragon in the Middle West."

"She existed only in my imagination."

"Oh, a dream-lady," said Christine, and her eyes brightened a little. "No wonder you thought her too good for Ned. Well, that brings me to what I came to tell you. I have decided to marry Edward Hickson."

There was a blank and rather flat pause, during which Riatt took his cigarette from his mouth and very carefully studied the ash, but could think of nothing to say. The thought in his mind was that Hickson was a dull dog.

"Have you told Hickson?" he asked after a moment.

She shook her head. "No, and I shan't till I get more accustomed to the idea myself. It isn't exactly an easy idea to get accustomed to. The prospect is not lively."

"I dare say you will contrive to make it as lively as possible."

She smiled drearily. "How very poorly you do think of me! I shan't make Ned a bad wife. He will be very happy, and Nancy and I will be like sisters. By the way, you're not in love with Nancy, are you?"

"Certainly not."

"Good. They all say it's a dog's life." She yawned. "Oh, isn't everything tiresome! If I had had any idea my filial deed in going to find my father's coat would have resulted in my having to marry Ned, I never would have gone."

Riatt struggled in silence. He wanted—any man would have wanted—to ask her whether there wasn't some other way out; but knowing that he himself was the only other way, he refrained and asked instead: "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"There is," she responded promptly. "Rather a disagreeable thing, too. But it will be all over in an instant, and you can take your afternoon train and forget all about us. Will you do it?"

He hesitated, and she went on:

"Ah, cautious to the last! It's just a demonstration, a beau geste. It's this: You see, the situation, as I have discovered from a little talk with Ned, is more ugly than has yet appeared. They are holding one thing up their sleeve. Ned, it seems, noticed the track of your feet leaving the house, and it did not stop snowing until the morning. That was rather careless of you, wasn't it? Nancy can make a good deal of that one little fact."

"What people you are!"

"Rather horrid, aren't we? Did Laura keep telling you what a wonderful advantage it would be for you to be one of us? I wish I could have seen your face."

"Yes, she did say something of the advantages of belonging to a group like this. Do you know what any man who married you ought to do with you," he added with sudden vigor. "He ought to take you to the smallest, ugliest, deadest town he could find and keep you there five years."

"Thank you," she said. "You have achieved the impossible. You have made Ned seem quite exciting. Hitherto I have taken New York for granted, but now I shall add it to his positive advantages. But you haven't heard yet what it is I want you to do."

"What is it?"

"I want you to make me a well authenticated offer of marriage before you go for good."

"Miss Fenimer, I have the honor to ask you to marry me."

"I regret so much, Mr. Riatt, that a previous attachment prevents my accepting—but, my dear man, that isn't at all what I mean. Do you suppose Wickham and Nancy will believe me just because I walk out of this room and say you asked me to marry you? No, we must have some proof to offer."

"Something in writing?"

She hesitated.

"No," she said, "one really can't go about with a framed proposal like a college degree. I want a public demonstration."

"Something with a band or a phonograph?"

She was evidently thinking it out—or wished to appear to be. "Not quite that either. This would be more like it. Suppose I send for Nancy to come here now and consult with me as to whether I shall accept your offer or not. If I told her before you, she could hardly refuse to believe it. And you would be safe, for there isn't the least doubt what advice she will give me."

"You think she will advise you against me?"

Christine nodded. "She will try to save you from the awful fate she is reserving for her brother." She touched the bell. "Do you feel nervous?"

"A trifle," he answered, and indeed he did, for he knew better than Christine could, how strange this coming interview would appear to Mrs. Almar after the conversation before lunch. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that train-time was drawing near, "and then, please heaven," he said to himself, "I need never see any of them again."

"Isn't it strange," began Miss Fenimer, and then as a servant appeared in the doorway: "Oh, will you please ask Mrs. Almar to come here for a few minutes and speak to me. Tell her it is very important. Isn't it strange," she went on, when the man had gone, "that I'm not a bit nervous, and yet I have so much more at stake than you have."

"You have a good deal clearer notion of your role than I."

"Your role is easy. You confirm everything I say, and contrive to look a little depressed at the end. Nothing could be simpler."

He hesitated. "Simpler than to look depressed when you refuse me?"

"No one really likes to be refused," she said. "Even I, hardened as I am, felt a certain distaste for the idea that Laura had been urging me on your reluctant acceptance. By the way, you did seem able to say no, after all your talk on our unfortunate drive about no man's being able to refuse a woman."

"Oh, a third party," he answered. "That's a very different thing. Had it been you yourself, with streaming eyes—" He looked at her sitting very cool and straight at a safe distance.

"I don't think I could cry to save my life," she observed. "Certainly not to save my reputation."

He did not answer. The situation had begun to seem like a game to him, or some absurd farce in which he was only reading some regular actor's part; and when presently the door opened to admit Mrs. Almar, he felt as if she had been waiting all the time in the wings.

Nancy stopped with a gesture of surprise, on finding that she was interrupting a tete-a-tete. Christine ignored her astonishment.

"Nancy dear," she said. "How nice of you to come, when I know how busy you were teaching Wickham piquet. Sit down. This is the reason I sent for you. As one of my best friends, I want your candid advice about this horrid situation."

"But Laura is one of your best friends, too," said Mrs. Almar.

"You'll see why I did not send for Laura. She is so ridiculously prejudiced in favor of Mr. Riatt. There's no question as to what her advice would be. In fact," said Christine with the frankest laugh, "she's advised it long ago—even before he asked me."

At these sinister words, Mrs. Almar gave a glance like the jab of a knife at Riatt.

"See here, Christine," she said, "every minute I spend here is a direct pecuniary loss to me. Let's get to the point."

"Of course. How selfish I am," answered Miss Fenimer. "The point is this. In view of the gossip and talk, and your own dear little suggestion, darling, that I had frightened the horse on purpose, Mr. Riatt has thought it necessary to ask me to marry him. I say he has thought it necessary, because in spite of all his flattering protestations, I can't help feeling that he's done it from a sense of duty. But whatever his sentiments may be, I've been quite open about mine. I'm not in love with him. In view of all this, Nancy, do you think it advisable that I accept his offer?"

Mrs. Almar had never been considered particularly good-tempered. Now she jumped to her feet with her eyes positively blazing. "Have I been called away from the care of my depleted bank account to take part in a farce like this?" she cried. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Christine. You know just as well as I do that that young man never even thought of asking you to marry him."

Christine was quite unruffled. "Oh, Nancy dear," she said, "how helpful you always are. I see what you mean. You think no one will believe that he ever did propose unless I accept him. I think you're perfectly right."

"They won't and I don't," said Nancy, and moved rapidly to the door.

"One moment, Mrs. Almar," said Riatt, firmly. "You happen to be mistaken. I did very definitely ask Miss Fenimer to marry me not ten minutes ago."

"And do you renew that request?" said Christine.

"I do."

Christine held out her hand with the gesture of a queen. "And I very gratefully accept your generous offer," she said.

"Well, heaven itself can't save a fool," said Mrs. Almar, and she went out of the room, and slammed the door after her.

As she went, Riatt actually flung the hand of his newly affianced wife from him. "May I ask," he said, "what you think you are doing?"

Christine had covered her face with her hands, and had sunk into a chair. For an instant Riatt really thought that the strain of the situation had been too much for her; but on closer inspection he found that she was shaking with laughter.

"I can't be sure which was funnier," she gasped, "your face or Nancy's."

Riatt did not seem to feel mirthful. "Do you take in," he asked her sternly, "that you have just broken your word."

"I've just plighted it, haven't I?"

"You promised to refuse me."

She sprang up. "I did not. I never said a word like it. If a stenographer had been here, the record would bear me out. You inferred it, I dare say. Besides, what could I do? Even Nancy herself told us no one would believe us unless I accepted you—at least for a time."

"For what time?"

"Oh, don't let us cross bridges until we get to them. We are hardly engaged yet—Max! I must practise calling you Max, mustn't I?" In attempting to repress an irrepressible smile she developed an unknown dimple in her left cheek. The sight of it made his tone particularly relentless as he answered:

"If by the fifteenth of this month you have not broken this engagement, I'll announce its termination myself."

"And you," she went on, as if he had not spoken, "must get into the habit of calling me Christine."

"Listen to me," he said, and he took her by the shoulders with a gesture that no one could have mistaken for a caress. "I do not intend to marry you."

"I see you feel no doubt of my wishes in the matter."

"I wonder where I got the idea."

"Be reassured," she said, finding herself released. "My intentions are honorable. I would not marry any really nice man absolutely against his will. Although I did say to myself the very first time I saw you, coming downstairs in that well-cut coat of yours—or is it the shoulders?—I did say: 'I could be happy with that man, happier, that is, than with Ned.' You may think it isn't much of a compliment, but Ned has a very nice disposition, nicer than yours."

"And I should say it was the first requisite for your husband."

She became suddenly plaintive. "Of course I can see," she said, "why any one shouldn't want to be married, but I can't see why you object to being engaged to me for a few weeks."

"How can I be sure you will keep your word?"

"I'll give it to you in writing," she returned. "Write: This is to certify that I, Christine Fenimer, have enveigled the innocent and unsuspecting youth—"

"I won't," said Riatt.

"I will then," she answered, and sitting down she wrote:

"This is to certify that I, Christine Fenimer, have speciously, feloniously and dishonorably induced Mr. Max Riatt to make me an offer of marriage, which I knew at the time he had no wish to fulfil, and I hereby solemnly vow and swear to release him from same on or before the first day of March of this year of grace. (Signed) CHRISTINE FENIMER."

"There," she said, "put that in your pocketbook, and for goodness' sake don't let your pocket be picked between now and the first of March."

He took it and put it very carefully away, observing as he did so: "It's a long time to the first of March."

"It mayn't seem as long as you think."

"Are you by any chance supposing," he asked with a directness he had learnt from her own methods, "that by that time I may have fallen in love with you?"

She did not hesitate at all. "Well, I think it is a possibility."

"Oh, anything's possible, but I can tell you this: Even if I were in love with you, you are not the type of woman I should ever dream of marrying."

"What would you do?"

"If I saw the slightest chance of falling in love with you—which I don't—I should try all the harder to free myself."

"I don't see how you could try any harder than you have. You begin to make me suspicious."

"Miss Fenimer—"

"Christine, please."

"Christine, I am not the least bit in love with you."

"Quite sure that you're not whistling to keep your courage up?"

"Quite sure."

"Well," she said, "just to show my fair spirit, I'll tell you that I entirely believe you. Shall I add it to the contract: And I credit his repeated assertion that he is not and never will be in the least in love with me? No, I think I'll omit the 'and never will be' clause."

"And may I ask one other question," he continued, ignoring her last suggestion. "What did you mean when you told me that you had decided to marry Hickson?"

"So I have. Don't you see? He and I are really engaged, but he doesn't know it. You and I are not really engaged, and you do know it."

"I wish I did," he returned gloomily.

"Oh, yes," she said, "you know it and I know it, but the dog—that's Nancy—she doesn't know it."

He seemed unimpressed by the humor of the situation. He walked away and put his hand on the knob.

"One thing more," he said. "I would like to be sure that you understand this. The weapons are all in my hands. The only strength of your position lies in my good nature and willingness to keep up appearances. Neither one is a rock of defense. I'm not, as you said yourself, good-tempered, and I care very little for appearances. The risk you run, if you don't play absolutely fair, is of being publicly jilted."

"And I should hate that," she answered candidly.

"I'm sure you would," he answered. "And I don't particularly enjoy threatening you with such a possibility."

"Really," said she. "Now I rather like you when you talk like that."

"Fortunate that you do," he returned, "for you will probably hear a good deal of it."

She nodded with perfect acquiescence. "And now," she said, "if you have no more hateful things to say, let's go and tell our friends of the great happiness that has come into our lives."



CHAPTER IV

As they went down the stairs—those same stairs on which only two evenings before they had first met—toward the drawing-room where their great announcement was to be made, Riatt stopped Christine in her triumphal progress.

"You're not going to have the supreme cruelty," he said, "to let poor Hickson think that our engagement is a genuine one?"

Christine paused. "I wonder," she answered thoughtfully, "which in the end would deceive him most—to make him think it was real or fake?"

"You blood-curdling woman," said Riatt. "I am not engaged to you."

"Oh, yes, you are—until March first."

"I am pretending to be until March first."

She leant against the banisters, and regarded him critically. "Isn't it strange," she remarked, "that you dislike so much the idea of my trying to make you care for me? Some men would be crazy about the process."

"Oh, if I enjoyed the process, I should regard myself as lost."

She shook her head. "I'm not sure that this terror isn't a more significant confession of weakness. Who is it is most afraid of high places? Those who feel a desire to jump off."

"I'm not afraid," he returned crossly. "I just don't like it. I don't want to be made love to. That's one of the mistakes women are always making. They think all men want to be made love to by any woman. We don't."

Christine sighed gently. "You're getting disagreeable again," she said with the softest reproach in her tone. "Let's go on."

"You haven't answered my question," he said. "Are you going to tell Hickson the truth?"

"How can I? If I told him, Nancy would know at once, and the whole aim of this plot is to deceive Nancy. However," she added brightly, "I shall do what I can to alleviate his sufferings. I shall tell him that I am not in the least in love with you, that you have never so much as kissed me, and that my present intention is that you never shall."

"And you may add that my intention is the same," replied Riatt with some sternness.

Christine smiled. "There's no use in telling him that," she answered, "for he wouldn't believe it."

"Upon my word," said he, "I think you're the vainest woman I ever met."

"Candid, merely," she returned, as she opened the door of the drawing-room. The scene that greeted them was eminently suited to their purpose. Laura and Ussher were standing at the table watching the last bitter moments of the game between Nancy and the unfortunate Wickham. Hickson was not there.

"Oh, Laura," said Christine, "could I have just a word with you?"

Mrs. Ussher looked up startled. She had been deeply depressed by her unsuccessful conversation with her cousin. He had seemed to her absolutely immovable, but there was no mistaking the significant bride-like modulations of Christine's voice.

"With me?" she said, and in her eagerness she was already at the door, before Christine stopped her.

"Really," she said, "I don't know why only with you. I know you are all enough my friends to be interested—even Mr. Wickham. Max and I wanted to tell you that we are engaged. Only, of course, it's a secret."

Riatt had resolved that he would not look at Mrs. Almar, and he didn't. She was adding up the score, and her arithmetic did not fail her. "And that makes 387, Mr. Wickham," she said, and then she looked up with her bright, piercing eyes, in time to see Laura fling herself enthusiastically into Riatt's arms. She got up with a shrewd smile. "Let me congratulate you, too, Mr. Riatt," she said. "I always like to see people get what they deserve."

"Oh, Nancy, I'm sure you think I'm getting far more than I deserve," said Christine.

"You haven't actually got it yet, darling," returned Mrs. Almar.

"That sounds almost like a threat, my dear."

"More in the line of a prophecy."

At this moment the footman created a diversion by announcing that the sleigh was waiting to take Mr. Riatt to the train, and Riatt explained that he had decided not to take the train that day. Then Christine, on inquiring, found that Hickson was writing letters in the library, and went away to talk to him. She had no fear of leaving Max; she knew he was in safe hands; Laura would not allow Nancy an instant alone with him. Nor, as a matter of fact, was Riatt himself eager to subject himself to the cross-examination of that keen and contemptuous intelligence. Indeed Nancy soon drifted out of the room, and Riatt found himself committed to a long tete-a-tete with Laura on the subject of Christine's perfections, and his supposed deceitfulness in pretending indifference. "Oh, you protested too much, my dear Max," Laura insisted with the most irritating exuberance. "I knew when you began to say that she was the last woman in the world you would fall in love with, that your hour had come. No man ever lived who could resist Christine when she chooses to make herself agreeable."

Riatt felt he was looking rather grim for an accepted lover, as he answered that it was a great comfort to feel one had succumbed only to the irresistible. Before very long Christine came back, and taking in what had been going on, managed to get rid of her friend. Laura made it plain that she was only too glad to accord the lovers a few blissful moments alone.

"I can't describe to you," he said crossly, "how intensely disagreeable I find the situation."

Christine laughed. "And did you look like that while Laura was detailing my perfections? A judge about to pronounce the death sentence is gay in comparison. Cheer up. I haven't had a pleasant fifteen minutes myself. I never thought myself kind-hearted, but I assure you I really longed to tell Ned the truth. He is the nicest person."

"I believe he will make you an excellent husband."

"Oh, dear, I'm afraid he will." She sighed. "Safety first will be a dull motto to go through life with. Do you want to know what I told him? No? Well, I'm going to tell you anyhow. I said that you had made me this magnificent offer, prompted, I felt sure, by the purest chivalry; and that I felt I owed it to my family, my friends and my reputation to accept it, but that you had left my heart untouched, and that if he and you were both penniless, I should prefer him to you. That wasn't all perfectly true."

Suddenly Riatt found himself smiling. "My innocent child," he said, "let me make one thing clear to you. Any effort on your part to create an impression that you have fallen in love with me will not be crowned with success."

Christine was quite unabashed by his directness.

"I'm not a bit in love with you," she said—"not any more than you are with me, only I realize that there is a possibility for either of us, and of the two," she added maliciously, "I really think I'm the more hard-hearted."

"Perhaps you will think I am running away from danger," he answered, "when I tell you that as soon as I have seen your father, got your ring, and fulfilled the immediate necessities of the occasion, I shall go home."

"Oh, you can't do that!" cried Christine, in genuine alarm.

"You surely don't expect me to neglect my legitimate business on account of this ridiculous farce."

For the first time a certain amount of real hostility crept in their relation. They looked at each other steadily. Then Christine said politely: "Well, we'll see how things go." He knew, however, that she was as determined that he should stay as he was to leave, and the knowledge made him all the firmer.

The evening was a stupid one, devoted largely to toasts, jokes, congratulations and a few stabs from Nancy. Through it all poor Hickson's gloom was obvious.

The next day the party broke up. Wickham and Hickson taking an early express; the others, even Nancy who abandoned her motor on account of the snow, going in by a noonday train. Already, it seemed to Riatt that the bonds of matrimony were closing about him as he found himself delegated to look up Christine's trunks, maid and dressing-case.

Soon after the arrival of the train he had an appointment, made by telephone, with Mr. Fenimer. The interview was to take place at Mr. Fenimer's club, a most discreet and elegant organization of fashionable virility. Riatt was not kept waiting. Fenimer came promptly to meet him.

He was a man of fifty, well made, and supremely well dressed. He was tanned as befits a sportsman; on his face the absence of furrows created by the absence of thought was made up for by the fine wrinkles induced by poignant and continued anxiety about his material comforts. In his figure the vigor of the athlete contended with the comfortable stoutness of the epicure. He had left a discussion in which all his highest faculties had been roused, a discussion on the replenishing of the club's cellar, and had come to speak to his future son-in-law, with satisfaction but without vital interest. His manner was a perfect blending of reserve and cordiality.

"You will hardly expect a definite answer from me to-day, Mr. Riatt," he said. "You understand, I am sure, that knowing so little of you—an only child, my daughter"—He waved his hand, not manicured but most beautifully cared for. Riatt noticed that in spite of these chilling sentences, Fenimer was soon composing a paragraph for the press, and advocating the setting of the date for the wedding early in April, as he himself was booked for a fishing-trip later. He did this under the assumption that he was yielding to Riatt's irresistible eagerness. "You have an excellent advocate in Christine. My daughter has always ruled me. And now in my old age I am to lose her. I had a long letter from her by the early mail, speaking of you in the highest terms." He smiled. Riatt rose, and allowed him to return to the question of the club's wines.

Something about this interview was more shocking to him than the cynicism of Nancy and Christine; Fenimer's suave eagerness to hand his daughter over to a total stranger, did not amuse him as the women's light talk had done. He felt sorry for Christine and a little disgusted. He wondered what that letter had really said. Was Fenimer a conspirator, too, or only a willing dupe?

From the club he went to the jeweler's and selected the most conspicuous diamond he could find. Her friends should not miss the fact that she was engaged if a solitaire could prove it to them. He ordered it sent to her, much to the surprise of the clerk, who pointed out that it was usual to present such things in person.

After this he went to his hotel and found a pile of letters had accumulated in his absence.

The first he opened was in a round childish hand with uncertain margins, and a final "e" on the word Hotel.

"Dear Cousin Max," it said, "I do not know you, but Mamma says that you are going to marry Christine. I think you are very lucky, and am glad you are bringing her into our family. Victor and I love her. She comes to the nursery sometimes, but never stays long.

"Your loving cousin,

"MURIEL USSHER."

Riatt laughed as he laid it down. "I bet she doesn't stay long," he said. "How she does skim the cream!" And then with an exclamation of surprise he tore open another envelope which had been left by hand. It said:

"Dear Max:

"I hope you will be pleasantly surprised to find that Mother and I are staying in this hotel. I find New York more wonderful but more unfriendly than I had been told, and I want terribly to see a familiar face. Won't you look us up as soon as you can?

"Yours as ever,

"DOROTHY."

He went to the telephone, found that she was in and immediately arranged that she should go out to lunch with him.

All the morning and some of the night, he had been engaged in the composition of a letter to Dorothy Lane. Theirs was an old and sentimental friendship, which adverse circumstances might have ended, or favoring circumstances have changed into love. As things were, it seemed to be tending toward their marriage without any whirlwind rapidity.

There was no doubt he was very glad to see her, as he hurried her into a taxicab, and told the man to drive to the restaurant of the hour. She was very neatly and nicely dressed in a tailor-made costume for which she had just paid twice as much as a native New York woman would have paid. In fact she was an essentially neat and nice little person. They talked both at once like two children about all the people at home, until they were actually seated at table, and lunch was ordered. Then Riatt made up his mind he must take the plunge.

"Dolly," he said, "do I look as if something tremendous had just happened?"

"Don't tell me you've invented a submarine, or something?"

"No, this is something of a more personal nature."

"Oh, Max, you've fallen in love?"

A waiter rushing up with rolls and butter suggested that Madame probably preferred fresh butter to salted, before Riatt answered: "No, that is just what I haven't done—and that's the secret, Dolly. I'm not a bit in love, but I am engaged to be married."

"Max! But why if—"

"I'll tell you on the second of March. It's a good story. You'll enjoy it, but for the present, my dear, you must just accept the fact that I am engaged, that I am neither wildly elated nor unduly depressed."

Miss Lane had grown extremely serious. "Who is she?" she asked.

"Her name is Christine Fenimer."

"I've seen her name in the papers."

"Who has not?" he returned bitterly.

"What is she like?"

Riatt felt some temptation to answer truthfully and say: "She is designing, mercenary, hard-hearted and as beautiful as a goddess." But he did not, and, as he paused he saw the head waiter spring forward from the doorway, smiling and holding up a pencil to attract the attention of some underling, and then he saw that Christine, Hickson and Mr. and Mrs. Linburne were being ushered in. Christine approached, tall, beautiful, conspicuous, and as divinely unconscious of it as Adam and Eve of their nakedness; she moved between the tables, bowing here and there to people she knew, not purposely ignoring all others, but seeming to find them invisible as thin air. Riatt watched as if she were some great spectacle, and was recalled only by hearing Dorothy's voice saying:

"What a lovely creature!"

"That is Miss Fenimer."

A sudden and deep flush spread over Miss Lane's face.

"And you have been telling me of your indifference to her?" she asked bitterly. "How could any man be indifferent!"

"Good Heavens," cried Riatt fiercely. "All you women are alike! Beauty isn't the only thing in the world for a man to love. There are such things as truth and honor—"

"Yes, and old friendship, too," said Miss Lane, "but they don't always amount to much."

"That is an unnecessary, unkind thing to say," he answered. "My friendship for you means a good deal more to me than my engagement to her."

"Max, I don't need to be consoled or soothed about your engagement," said Miss Lane with a good deal of spirit. "As far as I am concerned you are quite free not only to become engaged, but to have any feeling you like for the lady you have chosen. I'm sure I congratulate you very heartily."

"You mean you don't believe a word of what I have been trying to tell you."

"Oh, yes, I do. I believe you are engaged."

Perhaps it was as well that at this instant, Christine's eyes fell upon her; she stared, then laughed, and pointed him out to Hickson, who glanced at him coldly; he was evidently thinking that he would not have taken another girl out to lunch the very day his engagement was announced.

"I suppose I had better go and speak to them," Max said.

"I should think so," replied Dorothy tonelessly. "Who are the others?"

Riatt, not sorry for a moment's respite, entered into a detailed account of Lee Linburne. He was the third generation of a great fortune, augmenting rather than decreasing with years. He was but little over thirty and had taken the whole field of amusement and sports as his own. He played polo, had a racing stable and a racing yacht, had gone in recently for flying (hence Riatt's connection with him), occasionally financed a theatrical show, and now and then attended a directors' meeting of some of his grandfather's companies. The result was that his name was as widely known through the country as Abraham Lincoln's. Dorothy knew as soon as she heard his name, that he had married a girl from Pittsburg, and had gone through her native city in a private car on his honeymoon three years before, and had stopped, she rather thought, and had lunch with the Governor of the State.

On Hickson, Max touched more briefly.

When at last he did cross the room, Christine received him with the utmost cordiality.

"What luck to run across you, though of course this is the only place in New York where one can get food that doesn't actually poison one. Last week—do you remember, Lee? We dined somewhere or other with the Petermans and nothing from the beginning of dinner to the end was fit to eat. But, bless them, they did not know. Have you met Mrs. Linburne? Oh, she knows all about us. In fact every one does, for I can't resist wearing this." She moved her left hand on which his diamond shone like a swollen star. "How did you find my father?"

"Most amiable," answered Riatt rather poisonously, and regretted the poison when he saw the Linburnes exchange an amused glance. Of course every one knew that Mr. Fenimer would present no obstacles.

"Who are you lunching with, Max? Is that your little secretary?"

The tone, very civil and friendly, made Max furious, as if any one that Christine did not know was hardly worth inquiring about.

"No, it's Miss Lane—an old friend of mine. I think I must have spoken to you about her."

"Oh, the perfect provider? Is that really she?" Christine craned her neck openly to stare at her. "Why, she's rather nice looking—for a good housekeeper, that is. You're dining with me to-night, aren't you?"

"No," answered Riatt, with a sudden inspiration of ill-humor. "I'm dining with Miss Lane."

"Bring her, too! Won't she come?"

"I really can't say."

"You can ask her."

"To your house?"

Christine always knew when she was really beaten. She got up with a sigh. "Take me over," she said to him, "and I'll ask her myself." And she added to the Linburnes: "Out-of-town people are always so fussy about little things."

Riatt did not know if this slightly contemptuous observation were meant to apply to him or to Miss Lane; he hoped in his heart that Dorothy would refuse the invitation. But he under-estimated Christine's powers. No one could have been more persuasive, more meltingly sweet, and compellingly cordial than she was, and it was soon arranged that he was to bring Dorothy to dine that evening.

When it was over, and he was back again in his own seat, he could see, by glancing at Christine that she was engaged in a long humorous account of the incident, for her own table; and he could tell, even from that distance, when he was supposed to be speaking, when Dorothy, and when Christine was repeating her own words. Meanwhile Dorothy was saying:

"How charming and simple she is, Max. You always hear of these people as being so artificial and elaborate."

"Oh, they're direct enough," returned Riatt bitterly.

The bitterness was so apparent that Dorothy could not ignore it. She looked up at him for an instant and then she said seriously: "I believe I know what the trouble with you is, Max. You can't believe that she loves you for yourself. You're haunted by the dread that what you have has something to do with it. Isn't that it?"

Max now made use of the well-known counter question as an escape from a tight place.

"And what is your judgment on that point, Dolly?"

"She loves you," said Miss Lane, with conviction, and a moment afterward she sighed.

"Without disputing your opinion," returned Riatt, "I should very much like to know on what you base it."

"Oh, on a hundred things—on her look, her manner, her being so nice to me—on woman's intuition in fact."

Riatt thought to himself that he had never had much confidence in the intuition theory and now he had none.

They did not part at the termination of lunch. It was almost a duty, Riatt considered, to show a stranger a few of the sights. Miss Lane, who was extremely well-informed on all questions of art, suggested the Metropolitan Museum; and after that they took a taxicab and drove along the river and watched the winter sunset above the palisades; and then they went and had tea at the Plaza, and by the time they returned to Mrs. Lane it was almost the hour for dressing for dinner; and then Max sat gossiping with Mrs. Lane, for whom he had always had the deepest affection, until he knew he was going to be late.

They were late—a difficult thing to be in the Fenimer household. The party, a small one, was waiting when Miss Lane and Mr. Riatt were ushered in. Nancy was there, and Hickson, and Mr. Linburne without his wife this time; and Mr. Fenimer himself, doing honor to his future son-in-law by taking a meal at home.

Christine in a wonderful pink chiffon and lace tea-gown came forward to greet Dorothy, rather than Max, to whom she gave merely an understanding smile, while she held the girl's hand an instant.

"Max says this is your first visit to New York," she said, after she had introduced her father and Nancy. "It is good of you to give us an evening, when there are so many more amusing things to do, but Max says we are as interesting as Bushmen or Hottentots. I hope you'll find us so."

The hope seemed unlikely to be fulfilled, for while the presence of Mr. Fenimer, who was rather a stickler for etiquette, prevented the perfect freedom that had reigned at the Usshers', the talk turned on people whom Dorothy did not know, and it was so quick and allusive that no outsider could have followed it. Hickson, soon appreciating something in Miss Lane's situation not utterly unlike his own, was touched by her obvious isolation, and tried to make up for the neglect of the others. Riatt, sitting between Nancy and Christine, had little time left to him for observation of any one else.

When dinner was over Christine instantly drew him away to her own little sitting-room, on pretense of showing him some letter of congratulation that she had received. But once there, she shut the door, and standing before it, she said, with an air of the deepest feeling:

"You're in love with this girl."

Riatt, who had sunk comfortably down on a sofa by the fire, looked up in surprise.

"And if I am?" he answered.

"You need not humiliate me by making it so evident," she retorted, and almost stamped her foot. "Lunching with her in public, and taking her to tea, as I was told, getting here so late for dinner—I wish you could have heard the way Nancy and Lee Linburne were goading me before dinner about it."

"My dear Christine," said Max, and he was amused to hear a tone of real conjugal remonstrance in his voice, "you have lunched and dined in one day with Hickson, and yet I don't feel I have any grounds of complaint."

"Every one knows how little I care for Ned," she answered, "but people say you do care for this little Western mouse. I hate her. She's good and nice, and the kind of a girl men think it wise to marry, and just as different from me as she can be. I do hate her—and I hate myself too." And she covered her face with her hands.

"Come here, Christine," said Riatt, without moving, and was rather surprised when she obeyed. He made her sit down beside him, and taking her hands from her face, was astonished to find that she was really crying.

"Why, my dear child," he said, in the most paternal manner he could manage. "What is this all about?" And it was quite in the same note that Christine wept a moment on his shoulder. Then she raised her head, with a return of her old brisk manner.

"I'm jealous," she said. "Oh, don't suppose one can't be jealous of people one doesn't care for. I could be jealous of any one when Nancy begins teasing me and making fun of me. And I'm jealous too, because I'm sure she's a nice girl and I've made such a mess of my life, and I deserve it all; but when you came in together, as if you had just been happily married, and I looked at Ned and thought how wretched I'm always going to be with him, and what silly things I shall undoubtedly do before I die—"

"I hate to hear you talk like that."

"Why should you care? She'll never do silly things—that's clear. Is that why you love her?"

"As a matter of fact I am not in love with Miss Lane."

"My dear Max, there's really no reason why you should deceive me about it."

"That's just what she said about you."

"You mean"—Christine sprang to her feet and gazed at him like an outraged empress—"You mean that you told her that you didn't love me?"

"I most assuredly did."

"Max, how could you be so low, so despicable, so false?"

Riatt laughed. "Well, it certainly was not false, Christine," he said. "It happens to be true, you know; and I felt I owed a measure of truth to a very old and very real friendship. I told her nothing more than that—I was engaged and not madly in love."

Christine threw up her hands. "The game is up," she said. "She'll tell everybody, of course."

"She'll tell absolutely no one."

"Because she's perfect, I suppose?"

"Because she didn't for one moment believe me."

"Didn't believe we were engaged?"

"Didn't believe that any one could be engaged to so beautiful and charming a person as you are and not be in love with her."

Christine's manner softened slightly. "She thinks me charming?"

"She thinks you irresistible, almost as irresistible as Laura thinks you; and she is trying to find out why I am so eager to deceive her in the matter."

Christine clapped her hands, and executed a few steps. "She's jealous, too," she cried. "The perfect woman is jealous. I never thought of her suffering, too."

"She is not jealous, but I suppose it may hurt her feelings a little that I shouldn't—"

"Oh, nonsense, Max, she loves you. Do you think I could be deceived on such a subject? She watches you all the time. She loves you. And I think it would be very impertinent of her not to. I should think very poorly of her if she didn't. Imagine what she must be undergoing at this moment, by our prolonged absence."

"Perhaps, we'd better be going back," said Riatt calmly.

Christine barred the door, spreading out both her arms.

"She thinks you're making love to me, Max."

"And yet, Christine, I'm not."

"But she doesn't know that; she doesn't know what an immovable iceberg you are."

"No, indeed she doesn't."

Christine's manner again changed utterly. All the playfulness disappeared. "You mean," she said, "that you're not cold and immovable with her?"

"What's the use of my telling you anything, if you don't believe me?" The idea of teasing Christine had never occurred to him before, but he thought highly of it. She came toward him at once.

"Oh, Max, my dear," she said, "don't be horrid, when I'm having such a wretched time anyhow. Don't you think you might pretend to care for me just a little?"

Riatt rose. "Yes, I do," he said, "and so I shall, in public."

Christine was all the gentle, wistful child immediately.

"Never when we're alone?" she asked.

Max lit a cigarette briskly. "I don't suppose we shall very often be alone," he returned. "After all, why should we?"

She looked at him like a wounded bird: "No reason if you don't want to."

At this moment the door opened and her father came in.

"Come, come, my dear, this is no way to treat your guests," he said. "I must really insist that you go back to the drawing-room. Upon my word, Riatt, you ought not to keep her like this."

"It was a great temptation to have her a few minutes to myself, Mr. Fenimer," said Max, and Christine grinned gratefully at him behind her father's back.

"Very likely, very likely," said Mr. Fenimer crossly, "but I want to go to the club, and how can I, unless she goes back? You can't think only of yourself, my dear fellow."

Riatt admitted that this was true and he and Christine went back to the drawing-room.

Very soon afterwards, he gave Dorothy a keen prolonged look, which she did not misunderstand. She got up at once and said good night. In the taxicab, he questioned her at once as to her impressions.

"I didn't like Mr. Linburne or Mrs. Almar at all, Max. She kept asking me the greatest number of questions about you and the story of your life. What interest has she in you, I wonder?"

"None," answered Riatt, but added rather quickly, "And what did you think of Linburne?"

"I couldn't bear him, though I own he's nice looking. But he told Mrs. Almar a story—I could not help hearing—I never heard such a story in my life."

"I gather it did not shock Mrs. Almar."

"She knew it already. 'Lee,' she said, 'that story is so old that even my husband knows it,' and every one laughed."

"I'm afraid you did not enjoy yourself."

"I like Mr. Hickson very much. And I thought Miss Fenimer more beautiful than before. He was telling me what a wonderful nature she has. He said he had never seen her out of temper."

"Yes, Hickson's crazy about her," said Riatt casually.

"Dear Max, why do you try to deceive yourself about your own feeling for her?"

"Deceive myself," he said angrily. "If you knew the truth, my dear Dolly!" His heart stood still. Deceive himself! What an insulting phrase. He repressed a strong impulse to propose on the instant to Dolly. That would show her how indifferent he was to Christine. It would assure him, too.

Instead he formed a plan to go home with her and her mother, when they went.

"When are you going back, Dolly?"

"The day after to-morrow."

"Any objections to my going, too?"

"Objections! Max, dear!"

He engaged his ticket at once at the hotel office. Having done so, he felt tranquil and relieved, and perhaps the least little bit dull. The clerk assured him he was fortunate to be able to get a berth at such short notice. "Very fortunate," he agreed and was annoyed at a certain cold ring in his voice.

The next day, true to his promise to show Christine all attentions that the public could expect, he sent her a box of flowers, and at four he stopped for her and they went and took a long walk together, hoping to meet as many people whom they knew as possible.

"We won't walk in the Park," said Christine. "No one sees you there, though of course if they do, it makes an impression. But, no; we'll stick to Fifth Avenue, and study all the windows that have clothes or furniture in them, as if our minds were entirely taken up with trousseaux and house-furnishing."

She was true to her word, and not squeamish. Riatt found it rather amusing to wander at her side, dressing her in imagination in every garment that the windows so frankly displayed, and answering with real interest her constant inquiry: "Do you think that would become me? Would you like me in that? Do you prefer silk to batiste?"

They were standing in front of a stocking shop in which on a row of composition legs which might have made a chorus envious, "new ideas in hosiery" were romantically displayed, when Riatt decided to tell her of his approaching departure. He chose the street, because he was well aware that she would not approve of his plan, and he wished to avoid a repetition of last evening's scene.

"I shall have to go away the day after to-morrow," he said, and glanced quickly down on her to see how she would take it.

She was studying the stockings, and she drew away with her head at a critical angle.

"It's a queer thing," she said, "that certain stripes do make the ankle look large. Theoretically they ought to make it look slim, but you take my word for it, Max, they don't."

"Nothing could make your ankles look anything but slim, Christine," he replied politely.

"No, my ankles are rather good, aren't they?" she replied, and then as if she had now disposed of the more serious topic, she added: "And so you are going home? Well, you mayn't believe it, but I shall really miss you a great deal. Oh, look at these jade flowers! They're really good."

Riatt looked at the pale lilac and pink blossoms starting from their icy green leaves, but he hardly saw them. He was disgusted at the discovery of an unexpected perversity in his nature. He found himself hardly pleased at the absence of protest with which his announcement was greeted. All her attention was absorbed by the jade.

"Wouldn't it look well on our drawing-room mantel-piece?" she said.

"I'll give it to you as a wedding present," he answered. "That is, if you think Hickson would like it."

"I don't think he'll like anything you ever give me. He did not even like my ring. He thinks the stone too large. By the way, I never properly thanked you for the ring. It has been most splendidly persuasive. Even Nancy grew pale when she saw the proof of your sincerity."

"Will it be sufficient even in the face of my continued absence?" he asked, for it occurred to him that perhaps she had not understood that he meant to remain in the West indefinitely.

"Oh, I think so," she answered, pleasantly. "You might write to me now and then, and I'll show just a suitable paragraph here and there to an intimate friend."

A new idea suddenly occurred to him. Had she any motive for desiring his absence? Had some unexpected possibility cropped up? Did she want to get rid of him? Not, he added, that he minded if she did, but it would be rather interesting to know.

"I'm going a little earlier than I expected," he went on, "because the Lanes are going, and I hate to make that long journey alone."

She nodded understandingly. "It will be much nicer for you to have them."

He looked at her coldly. It seemed to him he had never known a more callous nature. And to think that the evening before she had actually shed tears, simply because he took another girl to lunch! It caught his attention, he said to himself, just as a study in human nature.

He did not see her the next day until evening. They were both to dine at Nancy's—(thus had the proposed dinner with Mrs. Almar deteriorated) and go afterward to the opera. Nancy of course would not have dreamed of crowding three women into her box, so the party consisted of herself and Christine, Riatt, Roland Almar—a pale, eager, little man, trying to placate the world with smiles, and once again Linburne, whose handsome dark head, and curved mouth, half cynical, half sensuous, began to weary Riatt inexpressibly.

After dinner he found that he and Mrs. Almar were to go in her tiny coupe, and the four others in Linburne's large car.

"And so," she observed as soon as they started, "the mouse preferred the trap after all?" And he could feel that she was laughing at him in the shadow.

"But feels none the less grateful for the kind intention to rescue him."

"Oh, I don't care much for the gratitude of a man in love with another woman."

"You judge me to be very much in love?"

This general conviction on the part of the ladies of his acquaintance was growing monotonous. Nancy continued:

"But come back in two years, and we'll talk of gratitude then. In the meantime let us stick to the impersonal. What do you think of Linburne?"

"I've had many opportunities of judging. I've been nowhere for two days without meeting him."

Mrs. Almar laughed with meaning.

"I wonder why that should be," she said.

"What do you mean?" Riatt asked, but at that moment they drew up before the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, and the doorman, opening the motor's door, shouted "Ten—Forty-five"—a cheerful lie he has been telling four times a week for many years.

In the opera box, Riatt at once seated himself behind Christine. There is no place like the opera for public devotion. Christine was resplendent in black and gold with a huge black and gold fan that made the fans of the temple dancers—the opera was "Aida"—look commonplace and ineffective.

Behind it she now murmured to Max:

"And what poisonous thing did dear Nancy tell you coming down?"

"Nothing—except what everyone has been telling me for the last few days—that I seemed very much in love."

"And that annoyed you, I suppose."

"On the contrary. I was delighted to find I was such a good actor."

"People who pretend to be asleep sometimes end by actually doing it. Pretending is rather dangerous sometimes."

"Yes, but you see I shan't have to pretend after to-morrow."

"Are you all packed and ready?"

"Mentally I am."

In the entr'acte which followed quickly after their entrance, Christine dismissed him very politely. "There," she said, "you don't have to stay on duty all the time. You can go and stretch your legs, if you want."

He rose at once, and as he did so, Linburne slipped into his place.

Riatt had caught sight of Laura Ussher across the house, and knew his duty demanded that he should go and say a word to his exuberant cousin who, he supposed, regarded herself as the artificer of his happiness.

"Oh, my dear Max," she began, hastily bundling out an old friend who had been reminiscing about the days of the de Rezskes, and waving Riatt into place, "every one is so delighted at the engagement, and thinks you both so fortunate. How happy she is, Max! She looks like a different person."

"I thought she looked rather tired this evening," answered Riatt, who always found himself perverse in face of Laura's enthusiasm.

Mrs. Ussher raised her opera glass and studied Christine's profile, bent slightly toward Linburne, who was talking with the immobility of feature which many people use when saying things in public which they don't wish overheard. "Oh, well, she doesn't look as brilliant as she did when you were with her. But isn't that natural? I wonder why Nancy asked Lee Linburne and where is that silly little wife of his. Oh, don't go, Max. It's only the St. Anna attache; we met him on the coast last summer."

But Riatt insisted on making way for the South American diplomat, who was standing courteously in the back of the box.

He wandered out into the corridors, not enough interested in any of his recent acquaintances to go and speak to them. Two men coming up behind him were talking; he could not help hearing their dialogue:

"Who's this fellow she's engaged to?"

"No one knows—a Western chap with a lot of money."

"Suppose she cares anything about him?"

"Oh, no, she's telling every one she doesn't. They say he's mad about her."

"Ought to be, by Jove. I always thought the only man she ever cared for—"

Riatt found himself straining his ears vainly to catch the name, but it was drowned in other conversations that rose about him. He understood now why Christine had been angry at his telling Dorothy that he was not in love, for he found himself annoyed at the idea of her having told everybody that she wasn't. But, it's a different thing, he thought, to tell one intimate friend in confidence, or to give the news to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Then the juster side of his nature reasserted itself, and he saw that she was only laying the trail for the breaking of her engagement. Yet this evidence of her good faith did not entirely allay the irritation of his spirit.

When he went back to the box, Linburne was gone, and the man who had replaced him, yielded to Riatt with the most submissive promptness. But this time no easy interchange occurred between them.

About half past ten, Christine leaned over to her hostess, and said: "Would you care at all if I deserted you, dear? I'm tired."

"Mind when I have my Roland to keep me company?" said Nancy. "One seems to take one's husband to the opera this year."

At this point Linburne, who had been standing in the back of the box, came forward and said: "Won't you take my car, Miss Fenimer? I'll go down and find it for you."

A look that passed between them, a twinkle in Nancy's eyes, suddenly convinced Riatt that the scheme was for Linburne to take Christine home. He did not stop to ask why this idea was repugnant to him, but he said firmly:

"I have a car of my own downstairs, and I'll take Miss Fenimer home." It was of course a lie, as the simple taxicab was his only means of vehicular locomotion, but a taxi, thank heaven, can always be obtained quickly at the Metropolitan. Christine consented. Linburne stepped back.

They drove the few blocks in silence. He went up the steps of her house, and when the door was opened he said: "May I come in for a few minutes? I shan't have time to-morrow probably."

"Do," said Christine. She went into the drawing-room and sank into a chair. "Who ever heard of not saying good-by to one's fiancee?"

He saw that she was in her most teasing mood, and somehow this made him more serious.

"Perhaps," he said rather stiffly, "you think I carry out your instructions too exactly. Perhaps I show a more scrupulous devotion in public than you meant."

"Oh, no. It looked so well."

"It would not have looked so well for Linburne to take you home."

She clapped her hands. "Excellent," she said, "but you know it is not necessary to take that proprietary tone when we are alone."

"Even as a mere acquaintance I might offer you some advice," he said.

"I'm rather sleepy as it is," she returned, yawning slightly.

For the first time Riatt had a sense of crisis. He knew he must either save her, or leave her. He could not give her a little sage advice and abandon her. It would be like advising a starving man not to steal and going away with your pockets full. He could not say, "Have nothing to do with a selfish materialist like Linburne," when he knew better perhaps than any one how empty of any ideality or hope her relation to Hickson was bound to be. Yet on the other hand, he could not say, "Come to me, instead." He despised her method of life, distrusted her character, disliked her ideas, and was under no illusion as to her feeling for himself. If he had come to her without money she would have laughed in his face. What chance would either of them have under such circumstances? It was simple madness to consider it. And why was he considering it? Just because she looked lovely and wan, sunk in a deep chair in all her black and gold finery, just because her face had the lines of an Italian saint and her voice had strange and moving tones in it.

"Good-by," he said briefly.

She sprang up. "Good gracious," she said, "and are you going just like that? You know it is customary to extract a promise to write. At least to beg for a lock of the hair." (She drew out a golden lock, and let it crinkle back into place again.) "Or do you think you will remember me without it?"

"I'm not so sure I want to remember you."

"I hope you don't. It's the things you don't want to remember that you never can get out of your head."

"Good-by," he said again.

"Haven't you one nice thing to say to me before you go?"

"Not one."

"Wouldn't you at least admit that I had enlarged your point of view?"

"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?" he said.

She shook her head, and began to approach him. He felt afterward as if he had known exactly what she meant to do, and yet he seemed to lack all power to prevent her—or perhaps it was will that was lacking. She came up to him, very deliberately put her arms about his neck, and, almost as tall as he, laid her head on his shoulder; and then murmured under his chin: "But you must never, never come back."

He stood like a rock under her caress; he did not make any answer; he did not attempt to undo the clasp of her arms. He was as impassive as a hunted animal who, in some terrible danger, pretends to be already dead.

It was a matter of only a few seconds. Then she dropped her arms, and he went away.



CHAPTER V

Running away is seldom a becoming gesture, yet it is one that should at least bring relief; but as Riatt went westward, he was conscious of no relief whatsoever. The day was bitter and gray, and, looking out of the window, he felt that he was about as flat and dreary as the country through which he was passing.

He sat a little while with the Lanes in their compartment.

"I suppose you'll be glad to get home and see George and Louise and the children," said Mrs. Lane, referring to some cousins of Riatt's about whom, it is to be feared, he had not thought for weeks.

Dorothy laughed. "What does he care for home-staying cousins when he is leaving a lovely creature languishing for him in New York?" she said.

"I doubt if Christine does much languishing," he returned, though the idea was not at all disagreeable to him.

"You two are the strangest lovers I ever knew," said Miss Lane.

Riatt wondered if that were an accurate description of them—lovers, though strange ones.

He left his old friends presently and went and sat in the observation-car. What, he wondered, had Christine meant by her last words, about never coming back? Never come back to annoy with his critical attitude? Never come back to watch her deterioration as Hickson's wife? Or never come back to disturb her peace of mind and heart by his mere presence? He debated all interpretations but the last pleased him most.

A bride and groom were in the car. The girl was not in the least like Christine. She was small and wore a pair of the most fantastic gray and black boots that Riatt had ever seen; but she was very blond and very much in love. Riatt hated both her and her husband. "People ought not to be allowed to show their feelings like that," he said to himself, as he kicked open the door leading to the back platform, with a violence that was utterly unnecessary.

Nor did things mend on his arrival at his home. His native town was naturally interested in his engagement; it showed this interest by keeping the idea continually before him. It assumed, of course, that he was going to bring his bride home. The rising architect of the community came to him with the assumption that he would wish to build her a more suitable house than that of his father, which, large and comfortable, had been constructed in the very worst taste of the early "eighties." No, Riatt found himself saying with determination, his father's house would be good enough for his wife. He thought the sentiment sounded rather well, as he pronounced it. But this did not solve his difficulties, for now it was but too evident that he must at least redecorate the old house; and he found himself, he never knew exactly how, actually in process of doing over a bedroom, bathroom and boudoir for Christine, just exactly as if he had expected her ever to lay eyes on them.

Mrs. Lane came to him with the suggestion that he would wish Christine to be one of the patronesses of the next winter's dances. The list was about to be printed. Max hesitated. "It would be a little premature to put her down as Mrs. Riatt, wouldn't it?" he objected. Mrs. Lane thought this was merely superstitious, and ordered the cards so printed without consulting him further.

Every one asked him what he heard from her, so that he actually stooped once or twice to invent sentences from imaginary letters of hers. He even went so far as to read the society columns of the New York newspapers, so that he might not be caught in any absurd error about her whereabouts. Such at least is the reason by which he explained his conduct to himself.

He was shocked to find that he was restless and dissatisfied. The only occupation that seemed to give any relief was gambling; or, as a mine-owning friend of his expressed it, in making "a less conservative and more remunerative investment of his capital." He spent hours every day hanging over the ticker in the office of Burney, Manders and Company—and this young and eager firm of brokers made more money in commissions during the first two weeks of his return than they had during the whole year that preceded it.

On the whole he lost, and Welsley, his mining friend, seeing this began to urge on him more and more the advisability of buying out the majority of stock in a certain Spanish-American gold mine. At first he always made the same answer: "You know as well as I do, Welsley, I would never put a penny into any property I had not inspected."

But gradually a desire to inspect it grew up in his mind. What would suit his plans better than a long trip, as soon as the breaking of his engagement was announced? A week at sea, two or three days on a river, and then sixty miles on mule-back over the mountains—there at least he would not be troubled by accounts of Christine's wedding, or assertions that she had looked brilliant at the opera.

He had been at home about two weeks, when her first letter came. So far the only scrap of her handwriting that he possessed was the formal release that she had given him the afternoon they became engaged, and which, for safe keeping doubtless, he always carried in his pocketbook, and which he sometimes found himself reading over—not as a proof that he could get out of his engagement, but rather in an attempt to verify the fact that he had ever got into it.

However unfamiliar with her writing, he had not the least doubt about the letter from the first instant that he saw it. No one else could use such absurd faint blue and white paper and such large square envelopes. As he took it up, he said to himself that it had never occurred to him that she would write, and yet he saw without any sense of inconsistency that he had looked for this letter in every mail. And yet, so perverse is the nature of mankind, that he opened it, not with pleasure, but with a sudden return of all his old terror of being trapped.

"Dear Max," it said. "I have been pretending so often to write to you for the benefit of my inquiring friends, that I think I may as well do it as a tribute to truth.

"How foolish that was—the night you went away! One gets carried away sometimes by the drama of a situation, without any relation to the facts, and the idea of parting forever from one's fiance is rather dramatic, isn't it? I cried all night, and rather enjoyed it. Then in the morning when I woke up, everything seemed to have returned to the normal, and I could not understand what had made me so silly.

"Don't suppose that because you have gone, I am therefore freed from the disagreeable criticism of which you made such a speciality. Ned comes in almost every day to tell me that he does not approve of my conduct. I am not behaving, it appears, as an affianced bride should. Don't you like to think of Ned so loyally protecting your interests in your absence? His criticisms are, I suppose, based on the attentions of a nice little boy just out of college, who calls me 'Helen,' and writes sonnets to me which are to appear in the most literary of weeklies. Look out for them. They are good, and may raise your low estimate of my charms. The best one begins:

"When the blond wonder first on Paris dawned—

"Isn't that pretty?

"Write to me. At least send me a blank envelope that I may leave ostentatiously on my desk.

"Yours at the moment,

"CHRISTINE."

Riatt's first thought on laying down the letter was: "Hickson never in the world objected to any little poet just out of college, and she knows it very well. It's Linburne he is worried about—Linburne, whose name she does not even mention." And how absurd to attempt to make him believe she had cried all night. That was simply an untruth. Yet oddly enough, it came before his eyes in a more vivid picture than many a scene he had actually witnessed.

A few minutes later he went to the club and looked up the literary weekly of which she had spoken. There was no sonnet in it, but the issue of the next week contained it. Riatt read it with an emotion he could not mistake. It brought Christine like a visible presence before him. Also it made him angry, to have to see her like this, through another man's eyes. "Little whelp," he said, "to detail a woman's beauty in print like that! What does he know about it anyhow? I don't believe for one second she looked at him like that."

The sonnet ended:

She turned, a white embodiment of joy, And looking on him, sealed the doom of Troy.

He was roused by a friendly shout in his ear. "Ho, ho, Max, reading poetry, are you? What love does for the worst of us!" It was Welsley, who snatched the paper out of his hand, running over the lines rapidly to himself: "Hem, hem, 'carnation, alabaster, gold and fire.' Some queen, that, eh? Have you had your dinner? Well, don't be cross. There's no reason why you shouldn't read verse if you like. And this young man is the latest thing. My wife says they are going to import him here to speak to the Greek Study Club."

"I shall be curious to hear him, if the Greek Club will ask me," said Max.

"Oh, you'll be in the East getting married," answered Welsley.

Strangely enough, it was with something like a pang that Max said to himself that he wouldn't be.

"Carnation, alabaster, gold and fire."

It was not a bad line, he thought.

After dinner, he felt a little more amiable, and so he sat down and wrote his first real letter to his fiancee.

"If we were really engaged, my dear Christine," he wrote, "you would have had a night letter long before this, asking you to explain to me just how it was that you did look on that amorous young poet. His verse is pretty enough, though I can't say I exactly enjoyed it. However, my native town thinks very highly of him, and intends to ask him to come and address one of our local organizations. If so, I shall have an opportunity of questioning him on the subject of the sources of his inspiration. 'Is Helen a real person?' I shall ask. 'Not so very,' I can imagine his replying. Ah, what would we both give to know?

"My friends here, stimulated by Dorothy Lane's ravishing description of you, have asked many times to see your picture. I am ashamed of my own carelessness in having gone away without obtaining one for exhibition purposes. Will you send me one at once? One not already in circulation among poets and painters. I will set it on my writing table, and allow my eyes to stray sentimentally toward it whenever I have people to dinner.

"By the way, the day I left New York I told a florist to send you flowers every day. We worked out quite an elaborate scheme for every day in the week. Did he ever do it?

"Yours, at least in the sight of this company,

"MAX RIATT."

In answer to this, he was surprised by a telegram:

"So sorry for absurd mistake. Entirely misunderstood source of the flowers. Enjoy them a great deal more now. Yes, they come regularly. A thousand thanks. Am sending photograph by mail."

Riatt did not need to ask himself from whom she had imagined they came. Not the poet, unless magazine rates were rising unduly. Nor Hickson, who failed a little in such attentions. No, it was Linburne—and evidently Linburne's attentions were taken so much as a matter of course, that she had not even thanked him, nor had he noticed her omission.

He did not answer the telegram, nor did he acknowledge the photograph but, true to his word, he established it at once on his desk in a frame which he spent a long time in selecting. The picture represented Christine at her most queenly and unapproachable. She wore the black and gold dress, and the huge feather fan was folded across her bare arms. Every time he looked at it, he remembered how those same arms had been clasped round his own stiff and unbending neck. And sometimes he found the thought distracted his attention from important matters.

It was about the middle of February when he received one morning a letter from Nancy Almar. He knew her handwriting. She was always sending him little notes of one kind or another. This one was very brief.

"Clever mouse! So it knew a way to get out all the time!"

All day he speculated on the meaning of this strange message. Had Nancy discovered some proof of the nature of his engagement? Had Christine been moved by pity to tell Hickson the truth? On the whole he inclined to think that this was the explanation.

The next day he knew he had been mistaken. He had a letter from Laura Ussher—not the first in the series—urging him to come back at once.

"Max," she wrote, with a haste that made her almost indecipherable, "you must come. What are you dreaming of—to leave a proud, beautiful, impressionable creature like Christine the prey to so finished a villain as Linburne? You are not so ignorant of the ways of the world as not to know his intentions. Most people are saying you deserve everything that is happening to you. I try to explain, but I know you saw enough while you were here to be put upon your guard. Why don't you come? I must warn you that if you do not come at once you need not come at all."

Riatt had just come in; it was late in the afternoon. The letters were lying on his writing table; and as he finished this one, he raised his eyes and looked at Christine's picture.

He did not believe Laura's over-wrought picture. Christine was no fool, Linburne no villain. There was probably a little flirtation, and a good deal of gossip. But that would all be put a stop to by the announcement of Christine's engagement to Hickson. He did not even feel annoyed at his cousin's suggestion that he did not know his way about the world. He knew it rather better than she did, he fancied.

And having so disposed of his mail, he took up the evening paper which lay beneath it, and read the first headline:

Mrs. Lee Linburne to seek divorce: Wife of well-known multimillionaire now at Reno—

As he read this a blind rage swept over Riatt. He did not stop to inquire why if he were willing to give Christine up to Hickson he was infuriated at the idea of Linburne's marrying her; nor why, as he had allowed himself to be made use of, he was angry to find that he had been far more useful than he had supposed. He only knew that he was angry, and with an anger that demanded instant action.

He looked at his watch. He had time to catch a train to Chicago. He went upstairs and packed. He knew that what he was doing was foolish, that he would poignantly regret it, but he never wavered an instant in his intention.

He reached New York early in the afternoon. He had notified no one of his departure, and he did not announce his arrival. He went straight to the Fenimers' house—not indeed expecting to find Christine at home at that hour, but resolved to await her return.

The young man at the door, who had known Riatt before, appeared confused, but was decided.

Miss Fenimer, he insisted, was out.

Glancing past him Riatt saw a hat and stick on the hall table. He had no doubt as to their owner.

"I'll wait then," he said, coming in, and handing his own things to the footman, who seemed more embarrassed still.

Taking pity on him, Riatt said:

"You mean Miss Fenimer is at home, but has given orders that she won't see any one?"

Such, the man admitted, was the case.

"She'll see me," Riatt answered, "take my name up."

The footman, looking still more wretched, obeyed. Riatt heard him go into the little drawing-room overhead, and then there was a long pause. Once he thought he heard a voice raised in anger. As may be imagined his own anger was not appeased by this reception.

While he was waiting, the door of a room next the front-door opened and Mr. Fenimer came out. His astonishment at seeing Riatt was so great that with all his tact he could not repress an exclamation, which somehow did not express pleasure.

"You here, my dear Riatt!" he said, grasping him cordially by the hand. "Christine, I'm afraid—"

"I've sent up to see," said Max, curtly.

"Ah, well, my dear fellow," Mr. Fenimer went on easily, "come, you know, a man really can't go off in the casual way you did and expect to find everything just as he likes when he comes back. I have a word to say to you myself. Shall we walk as far as the corner together?"

To receive his dismissal from Mr. Fenimer was something that Riatt had never contemplated.

"I should prefer to wait until the footman comes down," he answered.

"No use, no use," said Mr. Fenimer, suddenly becoming jovial, "I happen to know that Christine is out. Come back a little later—"

"And whose hat is that, then?" asked Max.

It had been carelessly left on its crown and the initials "L.L." were plainly visible.

Mr. Fenimer could not on the instant think of an answer, and Riatt decided to go upstairs unannounced.

As he opened the drawing-room door he heard Christine's voice saying: "Thank you, I shall please myself, Lee, even without your kind permission."

The doors in the Fenimer house opened silently, so that though Christine, who was facing the door, saw him at once, Linburne, whose back was turned to it, was unaware of his presence, and answered:

"You ought to have more pride than to want to see a fellow who has made it so clear he doesn't care sixpence about seeing you."

Christine openly smiled at Max, as she answered: "Well, I do want to see him," and Linburne turning to see at what her smile was directed found himself face to face with Riatt.

Max made a gesture to the footman, and shut the door behind his hasty retreat, then he came slowly into the room.

"In one thing you are mistaken, Mr. Linburne," he said. "I do care whether or not I see Miss Fenimer."

Linburne was angry at Christine, not only for insisting on seeing Riatt, but for the lovely smile with which she had greeted him. He was glad of an outlet for his feelings.

He almost shrugged his shoulders. "An outsider can only judge by your conduct, Mr. Riatt," he answered. "And I may tell you that you have subjected Miss Fenimer to a good deal of disagreeable gossip by your apparently caring so little."

"And others by apparently caring so much," said Max.

Christine was the only one who recognized at once the fact that both men were angry; and she did not pour oil on the waters by laughing gaily. "You can't find any subject for argument there," she observed, "for you are both perfectly right. You have both made me the subject of gossip; but don't let it worry you, for my best friends have long ago accustomed me to that."

"I hope you won't think I'm asking too much, Mr. Riatt," said Linburne, with a politeness that only accentuated his irritation, "in suggesting that as your visit is, I believe, unexpected, and as mine is an appointment of some standing, that you will go away and let me finish my conversation with Miss Fenimer."

Max smiled. "Oddly enough," he said, "I was about to make the same request to you. But I suppose we must let Miss Fenimer settle the question."

Christine smiled like an angel. "Can't we have a nice time as we are?" she asked.

This frivolous reply was properly ignored by both men, and Riatt went on: "Don't you think you ought to consider the fact that Miss Fenimer and I are engaged?"

"Miss Fenimer assures me she does not intend to marry you."

"And may I ask if you consider that she does intend to marry you—that is if you should happen to become marriageable?"

"That is a question between her and me," returned Linburne.

Riatt laughed. "I see," he said. "The matrimonial plans of my future wife are no affair of mine?" And for an instant he felt his most proprietary rights were being invaded.

"Miss Fenimer is not your future wife."

"Well, Mr. Linburne, I hear you say so."

"You shall hear her say so," answered Linburne. "Christine," he added peremptorily, "tell Riatt what you have just been telling me."

There was a long painful silence. Both men stood looking intently at Christine, who sat with her head erect, staring ahead of her like a sphinx, but saying nothing. After a moment she glanced up at Max's face, as if she expected to find there an answer to her problem. She did not look at Linburne.